You carefully descend the stairs, eyes switching between scanning for any movement and looking down to find the next further away than usual step. ‘If I can maybe warn him before he sees me, it’ll be less of a shock’ you reason to yourself – halting at the last step, hand on the rail, bending over and shifting as you try to look in each direction.
Coast seemingly clear you move off the step into the hallway proper, and decide to check the living room first – it being the closest. Advancing across the hallway to the threshold of the large open room, you look around – he isn't in here, if he was he would likely be lounging on one of the couches.
But before you have a chance to continue the search there is the shuffling of feet on carpet behind you and Benji is talking before you have time to react, quickly and with audible agitation.
“So, I did something dumb – I was doing a hand-plant at the top of the mega when I slipped and – who are you?”. Shoulders hunched and head down facing into the room away from him, you stand completely still – the predator has become the prey – he’s right behind you, and not only do you not have a plan of what you're going to say, you’ve now run out of time to think of one.
“Hey? Dude. Where's my brother?” Benji demands, and while impatience is clear in his voice, seemingly no anger or fear. 'Makes sense I guess, I'm not really a threat to him like this' you think.
“Uhh, well” you start to slowly turn towards him, hands up in a sign of surrender, “funny story bro” – Benji’s initial reaction as you turn is confusion at a stranger in his house, but as you talk its shifting rapidly to incomprehension as he recognises the face standing in front of him.
‘Oh fuck, I think I broke him’ you half joke half genuinely worry to yourself – he’s stopped moving, perhaps even stopped breathing, mouth open in a slight O, brows so deeply furrowed you can barely see his eyes.
“The hell?” a pause for breath “Who the hell are you? Why do you look like me?” he throws his arms in the air and waves them as he raises his voice to almost shouting.
“Benji, Ben, little brother – its uhh” the words simply aren't coming, how can you possibly explain this? Only one thing occurs to you, if in doubt be blunt – often that's the best way to get through to Benji anyway.
“It’s me, Nathan. I bought magic socks and accidentally transformed in to you” as you finish speaking Benji still seems panicked, “but I’m still me, your brother. I just look like you … well a slightly younger version of you from like a month ago ... its complicated” you helpfully tack on, a sheepish and you doubt particularly reassuring smile on your face.
“What are you even talking about? Who are you?!” your younger brother remains unconvinced, and having raised his hand to point at you during his last statement, you have to stifle a laugh as the spiderman meme poops in to your head, ‘not the time’.
“It’s me. Nathaniel Moore. Your brother. I used magic socks and turned in to, well you” for apparent illustrative purposes you wave your hands up and down the length of your currently reduced body. Realising the futility of just repeating who you are ad infinitum, a thought occurs to you. Its a cliché, but it seems to work in movies - “I swear its me – ask me a question only I would know”.
Benji's eyes narrow to slits and his head pops forward a bit – you can see him trying to make sense of what he's seeing, staring intently at your face, at his face, and something must click.
Slowly but with dramatic flair, he crosses his arms over his chest - “Fine. What did I have for dinner last night?”.
“Same thing as me, mom made meatloaf” you smugly reply, mirroring his actions and crossing your own arms.
Apparently shocked you would have access to such confidential information as what your mom cooks for dinner, he purses his lips and takes a moment to consider your answer, looking down and to the side. “That's too easy, you could have been spying on us or something!”.
“Then why did you ask it dipshit” you cant help but huff. You are a little worried however, 'this seemed like a better plan when he might actually ask me a useful question'.
“Hey! Screw you! Uhh..” you can almost imagine him rummaging around in his memories, trying to find something suitably difficult to challenge you with. Then a cuspid smile appears on his face as he apparently finds what he’s looking for. “If you are Nate, then you’ll know what happened when we were camping 3 summers ago”.
You have to think for second to understand what he’s talking about, but then you grit your teeth, ‘that little shit’.
“I..” you take a deep breathe, resigned to the humiliation “I sharted. We'd just put the tents up, and I bent over and accidentally sharted - I had to jump in the river to clean off”.
Possibly the most embarrassing memory of your life – your dad and brother staring at you in shock, knowing immediately what had happened because you'd gone bright red. Stunned and not sure what to do, at 13 years old you’d nearly burst in to tears - probably would’ve if your dad hadn't quickly told you to go jump in the creek. When you came back Benji was silent but smirking, and everyone just pretended like you'd gone for an impromptu swim. Not a memory you want to revisit.
Benji’s eyes widen in comprehension and his arms drop to his side with small thumps. “Believe me then?” you try to seize the advantage, “because I’ve got other stuff I could talk about – like how I looked at my laptop earlier and you left your XXXHub tab open, asian school girl uniforms huh Benji?”. It’s your turn for a vicious grin.
“SHUT UP!” he squeaks initially becoming flustered, but pauses to look at you – properly. “I’ve told you, don’t call me that” then his eyes go up and down, taking your image in, but paying special attention to your face.
“Magic is real?” he states more than asks, lifting his arm and lightly poking at your chest, as if you check you're real.
“Yeah, apparently. It’s a long story, but … yeah. I have magic socks”.
“Magic” a pause for emphasis “socks. Not like, a wand or amulet or something? Socks?” He’s crossed his arms again and is looking at you like you just said two plus two equals cheese.
You cant help but sigh in exasperation – ‘this is what he’s hung up on? Not the fact he has a magical twin, but that it isn't the right sort of magic?!’. “Look, I just bought socks - I didn’t know they could do” you gesture “this”.
It seems like most of the tension has dissipated in the last few moments of conversation, Benji certainly looks calmer – it’s only now that you notice he has a bloody lip. You anxiously look him up and down, the leg of his pants has a large rip as well, you can just make out blood on the leg underneath.
A sudden burst of older brotherly protectiveness asserts itself. “What happened to you?”, you move closer to cup his chin. At first he makes to step back, but not fast enough to stop you getting hold of him and tilting his head to the side.
“Gettoff!” he whines and lightly pushes you away. “I’m fine. I just wiped out. Landed a bit hard” he reaches up to run his thumb over the cut on his lip. Suddenly alert his eyes shift to look at you directly “you cant tell mom. I’m grounded, she’ll go nuts if she finds out I was at the skate park”.
“She’ll be pissed” you agree honestly, examining all the signs of physical injury. “your okay though, right? Nothing broken?”
“Nah, just slid down the ramp face first. I’m fine – nearly had it too” he shrugs his shoulders and then smiles proudly. “I was thinking, maybe we just tell her I walked in to a door or something? If you back me up, she’ll totally buy it… wait” Benji looks you up and down again. “How are you going to explain …” he just points at you.
“Well, I cant turn back for a couple of hours. So I was just kinda hoping mom doesn’t come home until then” you reply nonchalantly, rubbing your foot back and forth lightly on the carpet, digging your big toe in and twisting. At this point, that's really as much of a plan as you had – hope no one notices you until you could change back.
“So, you can turn back? It isn't permanent or anything?”.
“Oh god no, I’m not stuck as you” you say quickly - Benji looks both mock hurt and relieved. You don’t mention the fact that for a brief period you were worried about the exact same scenario. “The instructions said wait a couple of hours - I put my own shoes on, and I turn back”.
As you finish talking Benji shakes his head slightly as he looks down at your feet. “So they're magic socks, and you have to wear shoes to make them work?”
Following his eyes you also look down, to the mismatches socks you had borrowed earlier – compare your feet to his, roughly the same size – and then realize what he’s thinking.
“Oh, not these – these are yours. The magic ones are upstairs”. A sudden look of disgust crosses Benji's face, and he grabs at the jersey you're wearing.
“You’re wearing my clothes? Dude”.
“What? Mine didn’t fit – its not my fault you’re short!” you both stare at each other for a moment, subconsciously raising your hand to move another stray hair out of your view, pushing it behind your ear.
“Wait, why do you have long hair? And” he steps up to you, almost toe to toe, “who are you calling short?”. At that distance its more obvious the younger boy does have a height advantage - but only an inch, two at most. Another sign you are currently a past version of him.
“It’s to do with the shoes ... I think." you shrug your shoulders, "the socks turn you into someone as they were when they last wore the shoes. I was wearing the black ones in your room, so I guess you haven't worn those since before you got a haircut”.
Up close you take stock of the boy before you – 5’2 or 5’3, lean (you saw it earlier in the mirror, no real muscle but there's no fat on him).
Deep green eyes, something the two of you share, even when you’re your normal self. A clear complexion, small smattering of freckles across his nose and under his eyes. A tween on the cusp of a growth spurt to take him to manhood.
He’s wearing a thinly stripped deep blue and white long sleeved t-shirt, with dark grey pants – rolled up at the ends, and mismatched green and black crew socks in a pair of scuffed vans.
The major physical difference between how the two of you currently look is hair – you sporting light brown hair down to your shoulders, grungy and uncared for. His however is now a much more in vogue modern mullet with faded sides. With the back cut fairly short its almost more of a mohawk – and he’s obviously taken the time to style it with product. Now cut shorter it even looks like a ever so slightly darker shade of brown.
Your mom wasn't pleased when she first saw the new hair style, she’d (less than happily) asked your dad why he had allowed it. But he just smiled and shrugged his shoulders. And you could begrudgingly admit – it suited Benji, suited his style - eventually even your mom agreed. She’d said something about it ‘being a sign he’s growing up, caring about his appearance, even if he does look like a punk’.
Your thoughts are pulled back to the present though when Benji suddenly asks “Wait, you went into my room and took my shoes? Why did you want to change in to me?”.
“I didn’t. I didn’t mean to change in to anyone. Its a long story” – as much as it makes sense he's asking questions, its getting irritating having to answer them. Thinking it through, maybe there’s a way to kill two birds with one stone. “Look, why don’t you use them?”.
“What? As in become someone else? I can do that?” you cant tell if he’s frightened or excited, but it wasn't a no.
“Sure, I think.”
“You think?” he squawks indignantly.
“The instructions didn’t say anything about being single user. It’ll be faster for you to understand if you use them - and I’m pretty sure if you change you’ll lose the bloody lip, so mom wont know you wiped out”. You decide to give him a light push “come on, they’re in my room”.
As you walk past him to the stairs, he slowly turns and seemingly having decided, follows you. As a pair of slightly mismatched twins you rapidly climb the stairs and head towards your bedroom.
As you enter you head straight for your bed and plop yourself down, laying the magic socks across your lap, then reaching for the small set of instructions – but Benji has stopped near the door and is staring at the floor by your closet. “Those the ones?” he points to the black shoes on the carpet.
“Yeah – here” you pass him the instructions and as he studies them, you idly swing the socks around in your hand, growing impatient with his slow comprehension.
When he's finally done, Benji turns the card over in his hand and looks down at you “this cant be real – they cant be magic”.
But you just shrug your shoulders, “honestly, I have no idea. I thought I’d just bought normal socks. If its not magic, I don’t know what it is”. Rubbing one of the socks between your fingers you wonder, is magic real? Is something like nanobots more likely? “But they do work”.
In the last couple of hours, apart from being scared almost to death, and then amazed – you’ve been thinking about all of the possibilities the socks represent. You could become someone older, someone richer, someone handsome, someone famous. But you’ve also been thinking they could be dangerous, and that if people knew about them they might try to take them off you – hell even your parents would likely confiscate them.
“And whatever they are – we should keep it between us. You can try them now, but you have to keep it a secret – okay?”
He seems to consider for a moment, before a sly grin breaks out across his face “I wont tell anyone – but if you keep using them, I want to as well. Gotta share bro!”. He sticks his hand out expectantly, fingers waving up and down, so you hand him the magic socks.
“Don't make me regret this twerp" you try to look stern, but crack as you make eye contact, you cant wait to see what the transformation looks like from the outside. "Who are you going to turn in to?”.