Kelly stared at the TV without actually watching it, leaving it on whatever channel it had been on when she turned it on. Some news station talking about war somewhere she'd never heard of, not even in her World Studies class, riots or protests somewhere in Europe which she tried to listen to because she'd always wanted to go to France or Italy or Norway, really any exotic and romantic place, but the anchorwoman's voice faded into so much background noise as she listened tot he sounds of Nina taking a shower. it was hard to tell, but it sounded like Nina was crying.
She could understand that as she felt like crying herself, but the tears wouldn't come. Yeah, she was sad, but also angry, guilty too because this was all her fault. It had started out as a harmless game as far as she was concerned and maybe the two of them had taken things a little too far and on some level she'd known that she could get in trouble for what she was doing. When she'd given it any thought she'd just figured that they'd get detention for a few days, maybe a week at most. What gave Anna the right to ruin her life for some harmless teasing? Not just her life though, but her Nina's as well.
She had a week to figure out what she was going to tell her family, how to get them to believe what had happened to her and hope that they wouldn't be mad that she'd gotten turned into a guy. She was sure that her mom would be furious though and maybe her dad too.
Pushing the remote off the sofa, she lay down and began to cry.
She was still crying when Nina came out of the shower, wrapped tightly in a fluffy pink and green bathrobe. Through her own tears Kelly could see that Nina's eyes were puffy and red from crying, but her expression was one of determination.
"I have an idea," she said, her voice cracking as she spoke. Clearing her throat, "I've got..."
Nina stopped and rubbed at her neck, scowling.
"Just say what it is already," Kelly said in a rush, hating the way her voice sounded, grating and crackling in her years. She didn't sound like a guy, but she didn't sound like herself either.
"If magic is real," Nina whispered, looking embarrassed at having even suggested that much.
Kelly shifted position so that she was propped up on one arm, "I think we can agree that it is."
She gestured at her own flat chest with her free hand, hidden by the baggy shirt she was wearing. In doing so she caught sight of her hand and felt a renewed sense of horror. That wasn't her hand, the fingers were all wrong it ways she couldn't be sure of, to thick or long or something.
The had she was looking at wasn't hers, it couldn't be.
"Okay," Nina kept her voice at a whisper, "We know magic is real and if it did this to us maybe we can use magic to fix us."
Kelly stared at her. It was the absolute dumbest thing that she'd ever heard for some many reasons, not the least of which was that she was still having a hard time wrapping her head around magic being real at all. She had proof every time she looked at herself, or even moved her body the wrong way and felt things, but magic being real? That took more than a few hours to come to terms with.
"How?" Kelly demanded, the sound of her voice immediately distracting her from her hand. She hated it so much, but unlike Nina she wasn't going to let herself be frightened into whispering. She had to prove that she was stronger than that.
"I don't know," Nina sighed, "That's why I want to talk to you about it."
Was that a plea for help or a compliment? Kelly didn't know because she sure didn't feel smart. Someone who was smart wouldn't be frozen, staring at her hand and wondering if she should grow her nails out long again and get a manicure despite hating the look of long nails and thinking that nail polish felt gross. A smart person wouldn't get stuck on wondering if painted nails would make her hands look better and more like her own and if the looking better was worth the feeling worse.
"It's a bad idea," she said, nearly stopping there because of her voice. Spite and anger kept her talking though. Sitting around too afraid to speak was letting Anna win and she wasn't going to let that bitch win, "Where would we learn magic from? How long does it even take to learn in the first place? And Anna already did this to us, so what's preventing her from doing it again or stopping us from doing anything to her. For all you know she's us on some sort of magical block list so even if we go through all that trouble and learn magic and find a way to cast the right spell it won't even get through to her."
"You really think magic works like that?" Nina's voice nearly rose from a whisper to a squeak of alarm, "That just like blocking someone on social media you can block them from doing spells on you?"
"I don't know," Kelly snapped, her voice cracking, "If I did do you think she would have been able to do this to us?"
"I don't know," Nina sat down on the floor next to the sofa, crossing her arms uncomfortably over her flat chest, "Maybe? Anna could be really good at being a witch."
"If she was she would have just made herself a normal girl and none of this would have happened," Kelly grumbled, wondering if that was even true. Why hadn't Anna just used a spell to give herself boobs or get rid of her dick? That sounded like the easy thing to do. Why was the first spell she tried such an awful one?
"So you don't think she's that good a witch?" Nina asked hopefully, taking the wrong thing out of Kelly's comment.
"I told you, I don't know," Kelly sat up, crossed her arms over her chest and immediately uncrossed them. Her boobs should have been there and their being gone was offensive, "Changing the subject because I don't want to hear anything or even think any more about Anna or magic, how bad is my voice?"
Nina gave the matter some thought, her thinner lips twisting into a slight pout, "You still sound like you, just with a cold or something. Way better than me."
"That's because you won't actually talk, just whisper."
Her friend shrugged, as though whispering was just a thing she did and it couldn't be helped.
After that, they sat in silence, Kelly on the sofa, Nina on the floor, staring at the TV and lost in their own thoughts.