The light through Sam’s window was a pale gold, soft and sleepy — the kind of morning that usually meant cold toast, one of Mom’s long shifts, and another pointless day at school pretending not to exist.
But this morning wasn’t usual.
Sam blinked awake slowly, the sheets tangled around his legs, his limbs heavy and out of place. Then he remembered.
The glitter.
The nighty.
The laughter.
The weight of someone else’s body.
The makeup had smeared in his sleep. His face felt stiff and crusted around the eyes, like his skin was wearing a mask of its own. He rubbed it slowly, sitting up and letting the worn pink nighty fall off one shoulder.
He caught his reflection in the cracked closet mirror.
Jo Tanner.
Still him.
Still in this stupidly flawless body — long legs, pouty lips, bed-messed hair that looked like it belonged in a shampoo commercial. Even the boxers looked good on him, despite being Sam’s old ones stretched around Jo’s slim hips. It was infuriating.
“I hate this body,” Sam mumbled. “Hate it. Hate it. Hate it.”
He tore the nighty off, letting it flop to the floor like a defeated flag. A quick cold splash of water and he wiped away the glittered clown mess from his cheeks, though his hair stayed in wild spirals thanks to Mom’s enthusiastic braiding.
He threw on the jeans and buttoned shirt from last night — still snug, still annoyingly flattering — and walked barefoot into the living room, hoping it was time. Hoping he could be himself again. Finally.
Then he froze.
The living room was a museum of identity.
There were clothes everywhere.
Shirts and dresses and tights and tank tops. Pajamas and socks and baby onesies and old soccer jerseys. A pair of neon ballet leggings from some cousin’s failed dance phase. A worn flannel onesie that had to be from Sam’s second birthday. His dead father’s jeans and the checked shirt he used to wear at barbecues. Glittery girl jeans from a girl his mom babysat for like 5 years ago, who’d moved to California. His mom’s wedding dress, and high school prom dress, both yellowed the smallest amount from age, folded next to his first kindergarten sweater.
The couch was buried. The coffee table disappeared beneath a mountain of life stages and people past.
His mom knelt in the middle of it all, folding something delicately.
She looked up and smiled like it was just another Tuesday.
“Oh good, you’re up,” she said brightly. “Perfect timing. I think we’re ready.”
“…Ready for what?” Sam asked, eyes wide.
She gestured to the mountain of memories surrounding them. “Your transformation’s probably worn off by now, or close. You said last night you wanted to be yourself again.”
“I do,” he said quickly, stepping over a pile of scout uniforms.
She nodded, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Well then, grab the medallion. Let’s see if it works the other way.”
He blinked at her. “Wait — all of this—?”
Her voice softened. “Just in case you didn’t want to stop.”
Sam’s heart pounded in his chest.
“But there’s—these are from everyone! My cousins... family. Our neighbors. kids i dont even know you baby sat like years again, even You.”
“I kept a lot of things,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t throw memories away, even if they come with stains and missing buttons.”
“But…” He looked around again. “Why are there girl clothes?”
Her smile didn’t falter. “Why not? The medallion doesn’t care. Boy, girl, younger, older. It’s all just… clothes now.”
Sam didn’t know what to say. The weight of it all — this living collage of lives, of possibilities — pressed against him like a silent crowd.
His mom stood, brushing her knees. “Don’t worry. We’ll go slow. You said you just want to be you again, and that’s what we’ll do. Okay? and than i can have a look for me”
He nodded, still overwhelmed, and missing the whole thing about her saying looking for her thing she said.
She handed him the medallion.
His fingers wrapped tightly around it.
“I’m ready,” he said. “I don’t care what Jo Tanner’s got going for him. I want to be me.”
She stepped back, clearing a space. “Alright. Just think about yourself. Picture it. Go slow.”
He closed his eyes. Took a breath.
Then he stepped forward — and his bare foot slipped on a pile of clothes.
“Whoa—!”
He stumbled forward, landing hard on his side, his hand flinging out to break the fall.
The medallion was still in his grip.
It landed directly onto fabric.
A shirt.
A skirt?
He wasn’t sure.
All he knew was the moment it hit, pain ignited in his skin — that same burning, twisting electricity that told him:
It was happening again.
His mom gasped. “Sam—!”
“I didn’t mean to—!”
He could already feel it — the sensation of shrinking, stretching, reshaping.
His body was transforming.
But into who?
He looked down, eyes widening as skin began to shift.
He’d landed on a random pile.
A pile full of cousins.
Neighbors.
Relatives.
Boys.
Girls.
People he’d never even met.
“Oh no…”
His voice cracked.