Tim blinked and looked around with confusion.
He was no longer in Paul's attic.
Instead he was standing in a hallway at school – only school looked radically different now.
Somehow it had become morning on a school day. The corridor was bustling with crowds of teenagers coming in the doors and busying themselves at lockers. In fact, Tim stood in front of an open locker himself right now.
But all the students were dressed funny, almost like this was some Dress Up Day and the theme was 1980s fashion. Everyone wore strangely out of date clothes from the '80s... yet nothing seemed fake or costume-like. The clothes were authentic and looked bright and new – not old or faded in the slightest.
Additionally, the posters hanging on the walls had all changed from what Tim remembered. The lettering on everything had an out-of-date, 1980s feel to it.
Then Tim realized how he himself was dressed: he was wearing girls clothes from the 1980s!
Tim had on a bright, bold, purple, off-the-shoulder shirt that clearly exposed a wide, lavender bra strap on one bare shoulder. A plastic, glossy pastel pink, vinyl belt encircled his waist. He was wearing a short, denim skirt that ended a few inches above his knees and exposed his now smooth, perfectly shaved legs. Towards the bottom of his legs, a pair of light purple legwarmers were scrunched about his calves. His feet were encased in a pair of hot pink tennis shoes. He could feel big, dangling earrings hanging down from his previously un-pierced earlobes. Likewise, Tim felt the strange sensation of long hair all along his neck and shoulders.
With a bit of relief, Tim noted he was still physically male – but somehow he was now clad in the perfectly fitting clothes of some girl from the 1980s.
Then he looked into the locker. He found a neon purple book bag, a bunch of staple-scarred posters of celebrities ripped from some magazines, some folders and papers labeled “Bridget Robinson” and dated 1985, and finally a small mirror attached magnetically to the locker.
Gazing into the mirror, Tim gasped at his reflection. Although he still saw himself as a normal male (albeit one dressed in female attire), in the mirror Tim saw the reflection of some teenage girl with big, huge, poofy blond hair (and too much makeup!) The image in the mirror perfectly mimicked Tim's every movement as well. When he blinked, she blinked. When he turned his head, she turned her head. When he smiled, she smiled.
And she had a beautiful smile, Tim thought nervously.
“This isn't really happening,” he said softly to himself.
Had Paul's stupid magic spell somehow actually worked? Was Tim now trapped in the past, living the life of some teenage girl named Bridget?