A tense moment of silence engulfed the bedroom, the two suburban teens sizing one another up like a pair of gunfighters in some ancient Western town. Downstairs, the sounds of Martha washing some dishes could be heard.
*Think think think think* thought Bill as he realized that Paige had some crazy spidey sense and had somehow caught on to the fact that he wasn’t Willow! Worse, she wasn’t going to let it go until he admitted who he really was! *This is bad, this is really, really bad. Thanks so much for this shitty new reality we’re stuck in, Eve.*
Paige strained the muscles in her neck as she gazed into her gangly friend’s endlessly expressive blue-green eyes, the worried girl searching for something, *anything* to latch onto so she could dismiss her suspicions. But all she saw in Willow’s eyes was fear, and not the dewy-eyed sort of fear that Willow had when she saw a spider krumping around her ceiling. It was kind of fear of someone who was lost in a foreign country at 2:00 A.M.
“Willow, you’re scaring me! Why are you acting like you don’t know me?!”
“I...I don’t know what you’re talking about, Paige. I…”
“Yes you do! You know and I know that you’re not acting like yourself. Just tell me what happened at school, OK? Tell me what happened with the cheerleaders” Paige begged weakly.
Not acting like yourself...
Bill grew silent once again, though only for a moment. He found a way out of this.
Paige watched as Willow’s facial expression gradually started to change quality from bewilderment and disgust into something more...
Willow began to well up. Tears fell below her glasses and trailed down her soft cheeks, a look of childlike sadness developing across her face.
...familiar.
“THOSE BITCHES!” Willow sobbed, grabbing Paige and hugging her tightly. Paige, having no choice, squeezed her tightly in return.
“THEY WERE ALL SO MEAN TO ME! THEY...THEY WERE LAUGHING THE SECOND I WENT INSIDE THE GYM! THEY W-WERE MAKING FUN OF ME RIGHT TO MY FACE! THEY C-CALLED ME A LESBIAN NERD, AND I-I-I-I...” Willow began to stutter.
As Paige felt Willow's body tremble with spasms of histrionic sadness, a part of her felt relaxed once more. This was the friend that she knew.
“Is...is that why you were acting so weird since you got home? You were holding it all in?”
“Yes. I d-didn’t want t-to melt down i-in front my parents. They woul-wouldn’t understand my pain like y-you do!” Willow stuttered through pathetic wheezing gasps, her nose filled with snot.
“It's OK, Willow. You're back home now. You're safe again with your family” consoled Paige, calmly guiding her sheltered friend to her bed and sitting her down upon an ocean of pink. Willow was still shaking, so the heavyset girl grabbed her hand.
“You're going to be OK. You’re not the problem, Wills. They are.”
“BUT WHY WERE THEY MAKING FUN OF ME?! I NEVER DID ANYTHING TO THEM!”
Paige breathed slowly.
“Some people are just mean. It doesn’t matter if you’re nice to them or not, they’re still going to treat you like shit one way or the other.”
Willow buried her face in her palms and cried.
“But I see them laughing and getting along with each other. There must be something wrong with me!” Willow sniffled. “If they hate me so much, there must have been something I did to deserve it! Some flaw that I can’t see.”
Willow began to adjust her glasses, as if she were subconsciously ashamed of them.
“I mean, I never hurt anybody! People aren’t despised for no reason, or at least they shouldn’t be!”
Paige sometimes wished that she didn’t have to walk around Willow’s pollyanna view towards life. She had accepted long ago that she was a nerd and was always going to be at the bottom of the social hierarchy, until high school ended anyway, and she was cool with that. Why couldn’t Willow?
As close the two were, Paige grew frustrated that she could never be completely straight with her childlike friend. She could never speak the honest truth and break Willow’s heart that life wasn’t like a Disney movie. In real life, Cinderella never meets Prince Charming, she remains unloved and abused forever. In real life, Snow White is never broken from the witch’s spell, she dies in the forest alone and forgotten. In real life, Simba never gets to overthrow Scar and avenge his father. At best he gets to remain in exile with Timon and Pumbaa, which honestly didn’t sound so bad to Paige. In real life, Elsa gets murdered by Prince Hans before she even gets a chance to rescue Anna.
Life was hard and cruel, which was why an innocent like Willow needed to be protected from it.
“Tell me, can any of them illustrate half as good as you?” Paige asked, trying to distract Willow’s mind from her pain.
Willow, whose tear soaked face slowly lifted away from her hands, gazed with a doe-eyed expression at Paige and shook her head.
“No” she squeaked out.
“Did any of them learn Korean over the course of a four days just so they could talk to that foreign exchange student?”
“no” she said so quietly that Paige had barely even heard it.
“Are any of them as good at Fortnite as you are?”
“P-probably not.”
“Are any of them as kindhearted as you?”
“Eve, maybe.”
“Eve's a bitch just like the rest of them, she just hides it better.”
“I don't think that's really true. I think that Eve is...”
“If Eve Kazinski was as much of a saint as she pretended to be, she wouldn't have invited you over there to be humiliated in the first place.”
Willow looked at Paige for a moment, the puzzlement returning on her face, then receding. Mousily, she nodded her head.
“I guess y-you’re right.”
**
7:34 P.M
Martha smiled as she watched her daughter bounce down the stairwell with a renewed gusto for life, Paige casually pulling up the rear. She hadn’t been eavesdropping on the conversation the two had been having upstairs, but judging by the redness around Willow’s eyes, her guess that Willow had needed to cry in private away from Mom and Dad turned out to be right on the money. Martha wondered casually if she should do something for Willow something to get her mind off of being rejected, maybe treat her to some new earrings or perhaps some bubble tea.
With a giggle, Willow and Paige pulled up some chairs and sat around the large dinner table, along with Greg and Kimmy who were already present. Greg, having little enough in common with Willow’s pudgy friend to chit chat with her, was instead watching an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience on his iPad.
“Feeling better, honey?”
“Much” said Willow, casually wiping away a stray tear with a red sleeve.
“It’s so nice of you to join us tonight, Paige” beamed Martha. “I had a feeling you were going to stop by, so I made extra meatloaf just in case. You know how much we all love having you over for dinner, dear.”
“I’m honored, Mrs. Strasserman. You know how many times my dad and I have let Willow stay overnight at our place.”
“You never let my friends stay over late!” whined Kimmy.
“That’s because your friends are always knocking shit over and giving everyone a headache.”
Paige's eyes widened at the profanity. Willow almost NEVER swore outside of when the two girls were alone in private, and even then Willow often treated it like some grand sin or something and typically only did it when she was extremely upset about something, as she just had been. Paige saw Willow's mom stiffen for a moment as well, almost as if the older woman fought the urge to chastise her daughter for the crude language, but simply went on with bringing the family's dinner over to the table. Paige frowned for a moment before writing it off as just another stress-related fluke.
“Shut up, Willow!”
“No, you shut up!”
“Nerd! I would have made the cheerleading team no sweat.”
“They don’t accept little twerps like you on the team either!”
“Greg, tell the girls to stop fighting” asked Martha as she turned around to open the oven.
“Willow, Kimmy, knock it off” answered Greg, half not paying attention, half smirking.
“Mom, if Dad gets to play with his toys at the dinner table, I do too!” whined Kimmy again.
Everyone in the room including Paige gave Kimberly a soft, patronizing chuckle. When she realized that she wasn’t being listened to, Kimmy pouted.
“Actually, Kimmy’s right” announced Martha as she laid her culinary work of art in the middle of the table. “Greg, remember when we promised each other that we’d spend at least an hour a day as a family without any distractions?”
“Mmmmaybe? I thought that just meant the kids couldn’t play with their phones at the table.”
“Nope, it counts for you too, sweetie.”
“But I’m the breadwinner of this house!”
“And I run the house. I’m the Executive Branch and you’re just the Treasurer.”
Greg pouted just as Kimberly had and wordlessly turned off the device.
“Now go put that thing in the living room like a good boy” teased Martha in a half mocking tone.
As Greg sheepishly did as his wife told him to, Paige grinned.
“I see who wears the pants in this family.”
“We both wear the pants” Martha said as she began to fill everyone’s plate. “He just knows that life is easier if he lets me get my way. That’s what every husband learns eventually.”
Out of nowhere, Willow made a whipping sound, the spontaneity of it causing Kimmy to giggle and Paige to give a witch like cackle.
wuh-PSSSH
Paige then made similar sound, making a pantomime of holding a whip.
wuh-PSSSH
“Hey, you can’t whip me, I’m the whipmaster! I whip you!” Willow yelled out. wuh-PSSSH
“Whip this!” Paige countered. wuh-PSSSH
“Suck my whip!” Willow snapped. wuh-PSSSH
The double entendre briefly threw Paige off since it was out of character for Willow to make dirty jokes, but she was having too much fun and let it go.
The two continued to goof off pretending to whip each other until Greg reentered the kitchen.
wuh-PSSSH
wuh-PSSSH
wuh-PSSSH
“What’s all this hissing about? Did I just enter a rattlesnake convention?” he asked deadpan.
“A geek convention” Kimmy moaned. “And you just won first prize with your dad joke.”
“Shush, Kimberly. It’s your turn to say grace” gently scolded Martha as she and Greg joined their children at the table.
"Before Kimmy starts" interrupted Greg, "in my ongoing quest to be the whitest man in America, I need to remind you four that the actual sound of a horsewhip is WHOOPAH."
Martha gave a small knowing smile at her husband's reference. Willow, Paige, and Kimmy stared blankly at him.
"Chandler Bing? From Friends? None of you ever saw that episode?"
More blank stares.
"Guess it was before your time, you philistines" moaned Greg.
"Not everyone is ancient like you, Mr. Strasserman" joked Paige.
"OK, that's enough, honey. Kimberly?" insisted Martha.
Kimmy went through the motions during the incantation, not truly understanding why a prayer was necessary before dinner. Willow similarly was paying lip service, not being very religious or pious herself, but going along with it to please her mother’s sense of tradition.
Once Kimmy was finished, the four Strasserman’s and their guest dug in and enjoyed themselves immensely, all of them living up to the mantra to eat, drink, and be merry. The drama surrounding Willow’s rejection was all but forgotten.
**
11:00 P.M
Bill laid under a sickeningly girly bedspread, trying to relax after the rather stressful day he'd been through, his new bedroom lit by the warm light of the lamp on his bedside table. Unlike most nights where he often went to sleep in just his boxers, tonight he was fully adorned in Willow's cute pink pajamas with little Pokemon slippers stitched into the pants. A portion of his male pride was mortified at the choice of sleepwear, but he had to admit that the PJs were really comfortable.
He also wasn't used to the army of stuffed animals strewn across the floor and the bodyguard cabal of Barbie dolls watching over him the shelf, but then again, what was the functional difference between any of them and his collection of Funko Pops down in the basement? Were they still even down there in this reality? Bill hadn't had a chance to explore the rest of the house, after dinner and finishing out the rest of 'family time' (Something the Strasserman family hadn't done in the previous version of reality) it had been time for Paige to go home and for the whole family to retire to bed.
To his surprise, he was barely even fazed by the physical changes like the pair of modest breasts he now owned, the void between his legs, and the nearsightedness. They were all quite strange and alien compared to his normal body, sure, but for some odd reason he had just rolled with it. Maybe years of consuming video games and comic books had desensitized him to weirdness. Or maybe he was naturally levelheaded. Who knows? Didn’t really matter.
*So this is who I would have been if I had been born a girl Bill thought. It’s not too different. Mom and Dad and Kimmy are pretty much the same. Willow is so innocent though, so much more than I am. Is it because Mom and Dad sheltered her more? Is it because she's two years younger than me? Did getting bullied all the time toughen me up unlike Willow who wasn't?*
Bill shifted his thoughts into more concrete matters. He was feeling proud of himself for managing to fool his family and Paige as well as he had tonight. From what he could tell, nobody aside from Paige suspected that he wasn’t really who they thought he was, and even Paige seemed to buy into that crocodile tears scared little girl act eventually.
Deception was a talent that Bill didn't really like to talk about. It was something that he didn't even like to admit to himself, but the truth was that he was good at it. He was good at lying to people, good at spinning webs of bullshit to his advantage, and good at using guile and chicanery to escape seemingly insurmountable situations like this one.
He didn't know where he had gotten it from.
Maybe it had developed naturally with him having to always keep one step ahead of bullies like Rob and Big Jon. He couldn't fight them with his muscles, so he had to outwit them instead.
No, it came before that.
His grandfather Earl liked to call Bill “The Flim Flam Man” when he was a little kid, after an old George C Scott movie. It was meant as an endearing joke at a time when Bill was obsessed with learning about magic and card tricks, often performing shows in front of his family. He had really taken to it for it a while, believing that it was going to be his passion in life. Then at some point after Kimmy was born, he grew more interested in other things, and dreams of being the next Houdini were dashed.
Yeah, that was it. Being a magician and being a liar was a fine line. One was just socially acceptable and the other wasn't.
Hey, maybe that's why Gloria and I hate each other so much. She's a bullshitter just like me. We know how the other one thinks.
Bill wasn't 100% confident in this line of reasoning. Maybe he had a dark side that he wasn’t willing to face, but it would have to do for now, as he just heard his mother switch off the light to the upstairs hallway, meaning that she was about to turn in for the night. The Strasserman home was effectively closed for business.
"Lights out, girls!" Bill heard his mom call from the end of the hall. He expected the door to his parent's bedroom to close, but there was simply a long pause.
Figuring his mother was waiting on him specifically (most sound from Kimmy's bedroom had ceased a few minutes ago, the younger girl most likely having already fallen asleep), Bill rolled over and ignored the feeling of his boobs shifting and squishing together as he clicked the bedside lamp off.
"Goodnight girls, love you!" His mother called once more.
"Night mom" Bill replied in his girly voice, and there was only silence from Kimmy, confirming his suspicion that she'd already gone to sleep. He listened as the door to his parent's room creaked closed with a click, and the muffled shuffling as his mother moved about the master bedroom, no doubt preparing herself for bed, the nightly ritual of putting her daughters to bed now complete.
Which was another strange change. In his original reality, Bill wasn't expected to adhere to a curfew so long as he was quiet. Kimberly yes, because she was only twelve, but not Bill. Again he had to wonder if it was another factor towards Willow being so exceedingly sheltered in this new life he found himself in. Was being born a girl and a couple of years later than he'd originally been contributed THAT much of a difference? Were his parents simply babying Willow this late into her teens or was this girl he'd been tossed into the life of simply THAT immature?
Regardless, now that he was left entirely alone, it was time to get some answers. Quickly and quietly, Bill scurried from bed and unplugged Willow's phone from the corner wall where it was charging and turned it on. Like a lone candle, it lit up the dark room. Bill smiled a braces clad grin as the app for Google Chrome launched, and after he returned to bed, for the next couple of hours, the boy turned girl searched through his current identity’s digital footprint. It never hurt to be informed.
The first link he found in Willow’s search history was to her DeviantArt profile, which contained a motherload of anime inspired artwork dating back nearly four years. Even though Bill wasn’t really into anime very much, he had watched enough of it to recognize that Willow was talented at imitating the art style of different manga.
This confirmed some of the conversation threads that he read earlier about Willow blabbing to Paige about how she was aiming at going to art school after she graduated, dead set on being an animator and cartoonist. From this gallery, she could definitely get work. Bill had no clue what he wanted to do after he left high school. He had no overwhelming passions other than steering clear of Big Jon and maybe getting laid, so for all of her quirks, Willow had one thing going for her that he didn’t.
Good for her…
Naturally, Willow had a Tumblr account where she also posted her work, and likewise geeked out about her various obsessions. She seemed to have a crush on a new different hunky celebrity practically every week, and interestingly enough, a couple of girl-crushes as well!
Bill also combed through Willow’s accounts on Fanfiction.net, Amino Apps, Archive Of Our Own, Twitter, Reddit, and various forums, where it was more than obvious, if it wasn’t already, that she was a dyed in the wool nerd and was proud of that fact. Again, not that different from Bill, just more girlish and with slightly different interests. She was even part of Shermer High's 'tutoring' forum, designed for the students that couldn't make it in person. She wasn't a moderator, though not for lack of trying, her private message inbox was full of repeated requests to be made a mod but always shot down because she wasn't school staff or part of the actual tutor program the school ran. And it seemed, as Bill read through more and more messages, the admin (Mr. Laurell, head of the computer lab) was very kindly trying to let Willow know that she simply was too nice to do what needed to be done as a moderator. But it seemed like that part had gone over Willow's head. But as for the forum itself, most of the school students that were registered to the forum seemed like they were taking advantage of his feminine self's kindness and generosity (and most not even bothering to say thanks when Willow practically did the assignment for them).
Regardless though, it was something that Bill never would have done given that he simply didn't like people enough to offer his help. Hell, he had rarely helped Tom! A strange shiver of...something shot through BIll's girly body when he thought of his former friend, who now barely even knew that Willow even existed.
'That was weird' Bill muttered as he went back to scoping out Willow's online life. All in all, Willow was more or less the same person online that she was with everyone else. Too nice, a little naive, and either blocked or deleted comments where she had the power to do so, or ran from any arguments. Bill himself wasn't one to spend hours arguing online, but seeing this alternate version of himself running from confrontations Willow could clearly win with her superior geek knowledge if she was just a little more assertive was certainly disappointing.
Bill rolled his new eyes and continued catching himself up on a life in progress.
It was a little after one in the morning when Bill received a private message from Facebook Messenger. There was an icon of Eve Kazinski pop up in the middle of the screen. Curiously, he clicked on it.
Sent from Eve, 1:05 A.M: Hi Willow! Sorry, it took me like six hours to figure out how this dang thing works. Did I forget to mention to you that I’m really old? Like, old enough to have seen the first episode of SNL live on television old! Anyway, after I logged into Facebook, I searched for you but forgot your last name! I had to like go through fifty other girls named Willow before I finally figured out that you’re the girl with the photo of you kissing that cartoon kid with the fancy watch. Anyway...