I hated my father's idea, but I knew it was something we needed. We needed money, I knew our household was struggling just to put food on the table. Who I was really angry at was my mother, who looked at me just waiting for an answer while smiling from cheek to cheek. The mother, who, despite us needing money, refused or at least tried her best to fail at finding a job.
"How do you expect me to feel, Dad? Awful! Look at me, I'm Mom! I'm an old woman!" I hated that my words of disdain seemed to perk my mother up. Even as dad scratched the back of his head, wondering how to respond to my disgruntled attitude, she was behind him, smiling away. "I understand it's difficult to take in, but one of us had to do it. You have a role to fill now, and so does our son." He said, while motioning towards Mom. I couldn't believe how casually he had addressed her as me. Sure, she had my body, but it wasn't like he wasn't aware it was her.
"How could you do this to me, Dad? I can't live like this." I told him while looking at my hands like the strangers they were. "Come now, you've spent days preparing for this. You've done such a good job referring to me as Steve, yourself as Cathy and your son as David. The only difference now is you look the part. It makes it a whole lot easier for all of us, trust me." His response was hardly uplifting, it was a few annoying smirks away from being something my mother would have said. "It may be easier for you, but it's horrible for me! I feel awful, and you--" He cut me off.
"Let's not talk about this here. Come now, let's go home." I wanted to tell him no, but I knew there was no ready solution here. So we resumed our conversation in the car. "I know being old doesn't feel great, but you get used to it. I'm old too ya know. You have to understand, you're Cathy now, my beautiful wife. It seems weird now, but I guarantee you, in a couple months, you won't even like the idea of being anything else." He tried to convince me, very poorly I might add. What he said next just made my stomach knot up. "And... if I'm being honest, I'm a bit surprised. I kind of expected it to be easier to tell the difference between you two, but... you really do seem like the real Cathy."
"Oh, that's because..." My mother jumped up and down in the backseat, quickly going on explanation all about the muscle memory issue. I guess she got it explained to her as well. While she did, all I could do was sit and ponder just how much I was acting, move and looking like my mother. ('Is this how my mother sits?') I asked myself as I looked down, seeing that beyond my large breasts were two long legs, clamped together at the knees, but spreading about otherwise. One thing was certain, as a guy, I doubt it was how I used to sit. I could still remember being a guy, I could remember sitting down in cars, I could even remember sitting once or twice with my legs this close and thinking how it was uncomfortable and afraid it made me look "like a girl." Seeing that my body had taken up that uncomfortable position on it's own, it was only normal to conclude it had to be my mother's instincts. Getting paranoid at how much I was becoming like my mother, I looked to calm myself down, so of course, as was my mother's habit, I found both my hands sliding institutionally up to the emptiness on my forehead so they could swoop through my hair as if to let the stress just slip out of the brown locks. I stopped myself, just a few inches into the brown thicket. ('Stop, stop, stop! This is -- dammit, can I really...? How much am I going to have to focus everyday to stop these habits!?') I asked myself as I slammed my head onto the back of the seat and forced my knees apart. Fighting 41 years of muscle instinct as someone with only 16 was going to be no easy feat, they were stronger and more ingrained than anything I had.
"That explains a lot, but that's a good thing. It should only make things easier for you two." My father said after hearing the new information. The rest of the conversation was mostly the same. What laid for me next was the moment I think I was most afraid of... how my brother and sister would react to my new body. More to the point, how they would make fun of me and make me miserable.
The moment we were back in the house, Mariah and Lucas were there eying us all. Bradley was likely too disinterested in the idea and still off playing somewhere. "So... are you two actually each other?" Mariah asked, switching her gaze back and forth between us, seeming rather skeptical. "We sure are, I am now your darling brother." My mother eagerly told them. "Y-yeah..." The word was lost under my breath, but dad made sure to clarify by putting his hand on my shoulder, then my mother's. "Believe it or not, it did. These two are now each other, but as for you two, I expect you to treat it like nothing happened. This is still your beautiful mother Cathy..." He paused while looking at me. "...and this is your brother, David." He continued while looking at mom.
"I don't believe it." Mariah said with a skeptical slanted gaze. "Little David, are ya really stuck wearing Mom's heels?" Lucas added, hoping to get a rise out of me. "Boo... I hate it when you call me "little" David, Lucas!" My mother was already eager to pick up her new role and stole the words that were addressed to me. "I am stuck in her stupid heels." I said anyway. Mariah continued to look at me, and once more said... "I don't believe it."
"Perhaps for the best." Dad remarked with a finger raised. "It'll be easier for you to treat her as your proper mother if you think she is." I hated the logic. "Daddy, are you for real? I was looking forward to not being poor anymore. Don't tell me this was just some joke." She whined. "Yeah, I dunno if I buy this either." Lucas, perhaps inspired by our sister's skepticism, joined her front. Their disbelief just made me angry, and so I felt my hands clenching tightly around my elbows in frustration.
"Why not!? I'm definitely Dave, the same one which yelled at you each and every time you walked around the house with just a bra on like some sorta slob!" I yelled out at her, and though I heard my mother's voice echo back, I...