The rest of the evening passed sleeplessly (but uneventfully) for the Donaldsons. As the morning sun arose, they all staggered out of the front door of the strange house blinking blearily, each of them fully expecting the strange events of last night to be proven nothing but a bad dream.
Instead, they saw themselves in the garish, morning light still dressed in one another's clothes and wearing each other's hairstyles.
“What are we going to do Mom?” sobbed Megan. “I don't want to wear Alan's stinky clothes and have everyone think I'm now my own dumb brother.”
“Calm down, calm down everyone,” soothed Janet, rubbing her new bald spot uncomfortably. “We'll just have to make due the best we can. Steve, do you have the book?”
Repeated attempts throughout the book to re-activate the book had proven fruitless. Nonetheless, it seemed the family's only potential link to any possible reversal of this strange role reversal that had swept them.
Steve nodded wordlessly, clutching the heavy leather tome under one arm while scratching at his chest where the training bra he now wore was chaffing him.
“I'd better drive, under the circumstances,” said Janet. “Uh... Alan, why don't you ride up front with me in the front passenger seat.”
Alan slung his purse over a shoulder. He wore a pouting expression on his face as he silently got into the front of the car.
Steve took Megan's place in the backseat while she scooted over into where Alan normally sat. Janet took Steve's place in the driver's seat and, trying desperately to pretend everything was normal, started the car and drove the family back home.
It was a painfully long, quiet trip.
Finally arriving home, the family silently filed into the house and each of them made an individual bee line for a mirror to examine their new reflections. Again, it was all just as they had feared – no change since last night.
Steve was now trapped in the life of his daughter... Megan was in the life of her older brother... Alan had become his own mother... and Janet was the new head of the household, stuck in her husband's identity.