Maya wakes you up and pulls off the covers. You look at your flat, hairy chest in near-awe; you smile and feel your short hair, then you finally stand up and look at your pull-up, and see it's completely soaked.
"Hm, I guess you temporarily lost a little control during the metamorphosis." Maya says, poking it.
"You're probably right, Maya!" You say, enjoying those to be the first words you say in your restored, deeper-than-ever voice. You rip off the pull up and sigh in satisfaction of seeing yourself back to the way you once were. "It's like it never left..." You say.
"Heheh, yep..." Maya looks up into your eyes.
You get the wipes and clean yourself off, and see that your clothes have changed into men's, so you dress, while Maya sees her pull-up is dry, so she just takes it off and replaces it with a non-sweaty one. You do your morning routines together, and head out as Maya goes to school, and you head off to work.
-
When you return home, Maya comments that she was so anxious to get back to you, that she had a little accident after her lunch break. So you watch as she heads into the bathroom and comes back out in just a bra and a fresh pull-up.
She sits down on the couch next to you, and you huddle together.
"...what are our feelings now?" She asks you. "We were a romantic couple who hardly ever touched each other for five years, and then we were a pair of BFFs for another four years..." She melts into your chest. "What are we now? I feel so progressively attracted to you, and I'm not even sure if part of me feels wrong for feeling that way."
"Me neither."
The two of you sit there, thinking about it, and then decide to get over it. You make out for 15 straight minutes, and have confirmed that the two of you are now officially a couple again. Suddenly, memories of your families being anxious and/or disapproving of your living together comes into your minds, but they don't make you fret.
"What are we gonna do with the rest of the afternoon?" Maya asks.
You look into her eyes, and give an amused smirk, to which she smiles.
You get up and head into the room with the notebook; you pull it out of its secret spot (inside the cut-out spot of a large dictionary), a pen, and Maya sits down at the same desk you've had since you were 13.
"Man... so many possibilities... I can't decide." Maya taps the pen against the desk.
You pace the room.
"Hey, when was the last time that you read through the whole thing from the beginning?"
"From the beginning?" The training-pant-clad 20-year-old looked out into space with her mouth slightly. "I.... don't think I ever read it back that far."
"....I never did either." You say, looking at her with shock. You walk up to her.
"Did neither of us seriously ever read the beginning of the book!?"
She stands up excitedly.
"You think we should??"
"Hell yeah!" You say, grabbing the book and crashing into the bed with Maya in your arms.
The front cover has no text on it. The first page has nothing written on it. You flip over to the second page, and see a few things written.
"I have a delicious sandwich." It said.
"The first thing written in the book..." Maya pointed out.
"Yeah, and clearly was from before I had it." You added.
Next, it read,
"Clayton Hoile will miss his 9'o clock appointment."
Whatever that was for, who knows.
Then,
"The water does not get me wet, nor any clothes as I wear them, items as I hold them, or this notebook."
"So this book is waterproof?" Maya thought out loud as you stood up, got a little cup of water, dipped your fingers, and let a few drops drip onto the pages. Amazingly, they just slid right off. Slowly, you started pouring more and more of the cup onto the book, and it all came right off.
"Wow so, we just never spilled water on it all this time!" You point out.
Laying back down, the next thing that was written,
"I will not be affected by this book without my conscious, willing consent."
"Wow, smart." Maya said. "Maybe we should have done something like that.
"Yeah probably." You respond.
Finally, there was one more thing written on the page,
"I am the owner of a large, valuable plot of land."
"Seeing as the author didn't specify what land or what it would look like," Maya points out, "he or she was probably going to sell it."
"Yeah." You turn a page, and realize there's two missing pages.
"Someone ripped pages out of here?" Maya wondered.
"Guess we'll figure that one out later." You say, moving on to the next page.
It reads,
"It was a dark and stormy night. My mom said she had to visit her sick mother for a few hours. My mom's car doesn't start."
"Hey this is different handwriting." Maya points out. "This is clearly a different owner."
"Yeah..." You say, looking at the text closely and entranced.
You both look down at the bottom of the page, and see one last thing written.
"I was born in 2003 instead of 1981."
"Oh wow, so this was a little more recent than I thought." Maya points out. "Hey wait a sec, Julie--I mean Julie...I MEAN Ju... *bleh* ...JAKE," Maya catches her breath, "...this looks like your handwriting... and you were born in 2003."
You both slowly sit up on the bed.
"Ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." You moan in dizzying shock.
Maya flips the page, and sees that the first entry reads,
"16 year olds have the same responsibilities and expectations as 1 year olds."
"Maya, tell the book to have little timestamps appear under every entry." You instruct her.
She nods, fetches a pen, goes all the way over to a new page, and writes,
"All entries to this book will have time stamps corresponding to the exact date, and time of day, that they were written."
Going back to the start, the first four entries were dated to 1951, and the fifth to 1953.
Flipping to the next page, the entries are all labelled for 9 to 10 pm, February 1st, 2004. After that, the entries start at 2020 like they expect.
"Maya...?"
"...mhm?"
"...have it show the names."
She nods, goes back up to the new page, and writes,
"All entries to this book will feature the names of the person who wrote it."
You both watch as "Maya Coria; directed by Jake Phillips" appear beneath the two entries on the page. Going back a few pages really quickly, they see most of them to say "Maya Coria; directed by Julia Phillips".
"I see, so it gives fairly specific credit where credit is due." Maya observes.
She then goes back to the first page, and those original five entries all read,
"Madame Cynthia Phillips IV."
"Grandma??" You exclaim.
"Since when was she called 'Madame' and 'IV'? I thought she was just called Cindy." Maya questions.
"Clearly, she lived a much more complicated life than she led my family to believe. Unless my mom was hiding secrets as well, which I don't think is very likely." You say.
Nervous and taking a deep breath, both you and Maya grab the page together, and slowly turn it over. On the next page, all the entries shown are now labelled,
"Jake Phillips; February 1st, 2004."
You both take another deep breath.
"Ohhhh maaaaaaaaaaannnn..." You say, rubbing your face.
"You're... actually..." Maya stutters to find the phrasing. "...you were born 43 years ago??"
"Looks like it." You mutter through your hands. You stand up and start laughing and pacing the room.
"But wait, your mom is 46!" Maya crosses her legs on the bed. "So... so I guess the book made her younger too." She looks up at you. "Jake! You made your ENTIRE FAMILY TWENTY YEARS YOUNGER."
"Not really; it cuts off at my grandma." You point out, raising an eyebrow to her.
"...OH! OH MY GOD. You're right!" Maya squirms on the bed. "Cindy made herself immune to the book, so that explains why she had your mom at like 50-something!"
"Right. And you know how she got sick when I was a baby, and eventually died from it when I was four?" You explain.
Maya looks down at the book.
"Oh no... so like, you must have just been playing around with the book before you knew what it did, and didn't even realize that..." Maya thinks. "Well wait, if she was immune to the book..."
"I don't think she was really sick." You explain.
"Really??"
"Yeah I think it just altered reality around it, and made everyone else THINK that she was sick, but that she wasn't actually. Who knows, maybe she's still alive." You say.
"Okay so let me get this straight; you obtained the book at some point when you were..." She looks. "23, then you made everyone think Cindy was sick, and then turned yourself into a baby..."
"Yeah and based on what we know, Grandma must have known what happened. She knew that everyone in her family had gotten younger. But she probably didn't assume I was the one responsible for it."
"Do you have any idea why you would want to be a baby?"
"Well..." you sit down on your legs on the floor across from Maya. "I remember the whole reason the first thing I did with the book in 2020 was to get rid of teenage responsibility; because let's face it, I have troubles with that kind of stuff. By the time I was 16, I was really stressed out about it, and that's what started this whole thing. So I can imagine, growing up in the 80's and 90's, living all the way to be 23, I might have gotten REALLY depressed and stressed out if I didn't have the therapy and power of this book that whole time. So if at 16 in 2020, I wanted to wear diapers and not deal with relationships, I can assume that at 23 in 2004, I was so desperate to abandon adulthood, that I wanted to just flat-out become a baby. Though, I bet I didn't think I'd lose my memories along with it."
Maya flipped over to the new page, and wrote,
"Please explain how Jake obtained the book back in 2004, and what happened."
Jake got up and watched as several paragraphs of text appeared over the next page-and-a-half on the book, explaining what happened [exactly what the reader already knows, from reading the original chapters.]
"Really?? The EXACT same thing happened twice?" You start frantically pacing the room again.
"That is pretty weird..." Maya says, re-reading through it.
"Well, now let's ask the book to explain everything else." You say, standing over Maya and looking at the book upside-down.
She takes another deep breath, pulls out the pen, and writes,
"Please explain a brief summary of how Madame Cynthia Phillips IV obtained and used this book, how it affected her life and the rest of the world, what she ended up doing with it, how it wound up in their basement, what happened to her in 2004 and afterwards, and finally; please restore the missing pages of this book."
You both look at the text. You watch a date and name have appeared beneath it, and then...