With a start she sat up and look wildly about. She'd been dreaming, but of what, it slipped away from her before she could hold onto it. Seeing the backyard, then the house, she yawned and muttered, "I must have dozed off for a bit," before uncurling herself, standing and then stretching.
Afterward, a series of yawns that escaped her once or twice, Jacob stumbled back into the house. She still couldn't remember what she'd been dreaming and seeing that it was nearly four in the afternoon, she muttered, "Shit," as she realised she still didn't have any of her homework done. Hastily grabbing her backpack off the table, hoping she could at least get a decent start on the stuff she hadn't managed to do during study-hall, Jacob exited out of the kitchen and headed upstairs to her room.
There, she dropped the pack on her bed, sat down next to it and reached to unzip it, but stopped. Looking about her room, it was as something clicked and the events of the past twenty-fours came crashing down. Standing, she slowly crossed her room and stood before the mirror. Peering at her reflection, Jacob tried to force herself to believe the person looking back wasn't really her normal reflection, but found herself having trouble with such a thought. Mentally going over everything, including that she was more and more convinced her name was Emily, it suddenly dawned on Jacob that at some point, she stopped thinking of herself using male pronouns.
Troubled by this, she tried for a minute or so to think of herself as he, him and use himself in describing something about herself, but none of it felt right or made sense. Looking in the mirror, Jacob saw only a girl of fifteen peering back and thought it made more sense to think of herself using she, her and herself. Feeling like another part of her previous life had just been stolen from her, Jacob turned away from the mirror and traipsed back to her bed. Sitting, down, she put her hands in her lap and stared down at the pert swell of her chest. Feeling only the soft fabric of her panties pressed into the flat skin she had out front, she eventually reached for her backpack and unzipping it, not really wanting a reminder that her genitalia was a vulva between her legs, "How it normally is and where it is supposed to be," her reasoning insisted, Jacob dragged out the first take-home assignment she could find and began working on it.
But she didn't get too far. Her mind simply unable to focuse, she eventually gave up. Turning to a different assignment, thinking it was because she simply wasn't getting what she was looking at, Jacob growled in frustration when she was met with the same result. Leaping off the bed, agitated, she began to pace back and forth. Her mind whipped up into a fervour, she tried to sort out what was accurate and what wasn't right. Turning to her mirror, she stalked toward the reflective device, gazed at herself, abruptly turned away and headed for the door to her room. Locking it, she stepped to the middle of her room and, before she could change her mind, she stripped off the clothes her sister had helped her pick out.
Unsure why she'd let Kaitlyn pick out her outfit, though feeling the younger girl had, amazingly, done a good job, Jacob stood naked in the middle of the room for a minute or two. Staring at the the clothes she'd tossed onto his bed, breathing evenly, she soon turned back to the mirror. Approaching it, she stared at her naked reflection. Taking in her breasts, which she cupped, rubbed a fingertip over the erect nipple, pressed them lightly together, then, finding she was starting really enjoy the sensation, she dropped her arms back to her side and peered at the swatch of pubic hair covering her groin. Everything she was seeing, the lack of boy parts, her boobs, flat stomach, pronounced hips, butt and thighs, the hourglass figure her body had slowly developed since she started puberty, and which she thought was still forming, the feminine face, the red hair, all of it told her that she was looking at a girl.
"So why do I feel it is wrong? It is, in some way, a lie?" Jacob asked herself.
A sense of failure washing over her, most because she was only coming up with partial answers, the majority telling her that the key to everything lie with her sister and the boy who had a crush on her, she turned away from the mirror. Heading over to her bed, she considered all the things she knew about being a girl that she learned growing up as one and found there were blank spaces. Reaching for her clothes, she instead changed tactics and instead picked up the flannel shirt. Pulling the garment on, finding it was soft and felt nice against her skin, Jacob pulled it closed, curled on her bed and pulled her homework closer.
Yet, she still found she couldn't concentrate on it. Idly tapping her pencil on the assignment, she asked herself, "Jacob? Or Emily?" and writing her name on top of the paper, she stared at the word she'd written: Emily.
Unhappy with what she'd scribed, Jacob erased it and wrote instead Jacob. Feeling this was wrong, she rubbed that out and re-wrote Emily. Something about this seemed right, but why, she found herself drawing a blank. Throwing the pencil down, she reached for her leggings, panties and shirt and shrugging off the flannel, she muttered, "I must be Emily. Why else would people keep calling me this and I keep answering to it," as she re-dressed.
Afterward, she sat and stared at what she'd written, studying her handwriting. Certain it had been written by a girl, she examined how neat and careful it was, how it seemed to flow and had just the right feminine touches to confirm what she thought. Idly reaching for her pencil, she stated, "The name I have written is a girl's name. My handwriting looks like a girl's," and remembering the untidy scrawl her sister sometimes wrote in, she added, "Or at least, what seems to by a girl's handwriting," but, still unsatisfied, the nagging doubt that she couldn't really be a girl still eating at her, Jacob stared at the paper, trying to sort out and find the answer.
Somewhere downstairs a door closed and realising her mom and sister was home, Jacob threw down her pencil. Exclaiming, "Shit," she thought about how she hadn't gotten any of her homework done and that her mom wouldn't be too thrilled when she found out, then considered how she was nowhere close to figuring out the dilemma of whether she was a boy named Jacob who'd switched bodies with the girl he'd had a crush on since forever, or if she really was Emily and she was having some sort of breakdown. Recalling her sister and the boy who had a crush on her had something to do with her problem, she remembered that the boy didn't seem to be around whenever she went looking for him.
Troubled by this, she stood and hurried across her room. Unlocking and opening her door, she peeked out into the hall and waited. When her sister came rushing up the stairs, ladened with shopping bags, Jacob stepped out and followed her toward her bedroom. There, she stepped inside and as her sister dropped her stuff on her bed, Jacob found herself surprised by what she saw.
No longer was her sister's room a disgusting pigsty, crawling with whatever weird experiment Kaitlyn was currently fascinated with. Rather, Jacob was taken back to find it was clean and smelled fresh. Suddenly distracted by her observations as her sister stated, "I've got something to tell you. And I think it might be important," Jacob didn't wait to find out what it was as she blurted out, "Am I a girl? Or am I boy? Tell me, who am I? Jacob? Or Emily?" and hugging herself, she gazed imploringly at her sister.