03: Drinking it in

“You’re kidding? I missed that one.”

“Right in our own paper, page five. I looked for the disclaimer at bottom saying it was some kind of joke, but there wasn’t anything. Apparently these students say they went to sleep like normal one night, and when they woke up the next everything was changed.”

“Everything? Like what?”

“Well, not everything. Let’s see,” there was the sound of rustling paper, “it says here that one boy is complaining because he woke up right handed, and one girl’s hair changed color. Those are the only two it lists.”

“Not exactly plastic surgery, then. Making people right handed and changing their hair color.”

“No, more like some science fiction movie. I guess they were lucky it wasn’t worse. They could have grown horns or a third eye…”

Or been turned into a girl… I thought listening to the announcers ’Ha, Ha’ing their way through the rest of the news program.

Oh, this was a weird dream. Now it was providing me with a reason why I had woken up as a girl… or at least company. A bunch of other students that had ‘changed’.  It didn’t sound as if they had changed as radically as I had, though. Of course, maybe they wouldn’t have told a reporter if they had.

“I’m going to get a paper and a Coke,” I said, “Want one?”

“Yea, Thanks.”

“Dr. Pepper?” I asked.

“Yeah, like always. I really need to quit.”

“Don’t we all,” I said. I pulled up to the gas station and, leaving her still brooding over whatever had happened at rehearsal, I went inside.

I found the papers first, and started leafing through it. Page five they had said. Sure enough, there was the story. I grabbed the paper and grabbed our drinks, a Dr Pepper for Jenny and a Cherry Coke for me. The clerk checking me out leered at me… which might have been pleasant, I suppose, if he hadn’t been dressed in a grungy pair of striped overalls, and had greasy long hair.

I kept the radio on on the way home, but there was nothing else about the change in the news. When we hit the house Jenny went off to her room and slammed the door… well, almost, and I went to ‘my’ room.

I wanted to read the paper, but first I wanted to get out of these awful clothes. I stripped down to my ‘panties’ and stood for a minute, staring at ‘myself’ in the mirror. I sure was good looking, and it sure did nothing for me.  And I had already been turned on by one boy, and turned ‘off’ by another.  Sighing I sat down on the bed, opened my Coke, and opened the paper.

Who am I?

A group of students at the university have come to me with a very strange story. It seems that they all woke up, one day this week, changed. The person that stared them in the mirror was not them; the face was not their face.

The differences were minor, a girl had a change in hair color, a boy became right handed.  In every case they told me that they still looked ‘right’, like they could be their own sister or brother, but still completely unexpected.  I intereviewed each of them extensively, and privately, and none of can think of anything that they did which could have led to such a change. Indeed, I can’t find anything they even have in common with each other, except they have each changed.

And, they quickly realized, they were the only people who knew that they had changed. All of their friends and family accepted their new form as exactly what they had grown up with, or come to school with, etc. The dresses in the girls closet were changed to reflect her ‘new’ hair color, and all of the boys clothes fit his shortened frame.

The each, naturally, went rushing off to their parents, who were mystified. Siblings and friends were all supportive, but ignorant. The first few students found their friends and family wondering if it wasnt’ some great practical joke, or, worse, an issue for the psych department. But as more and more students came forward with similar stories over the next week, their worries changed to quiet support and encouragement.

The students then complained to the college adminstration, who dismissed them presumtively; claiming, with apparent justification. Their was no eveidence, despite the fact that all of those that had changed went to the same college, that the college itself had had anything to do with the changes. Indeed, they seem to take the line that there were no actual changes… that, despite the number and diversity of the students involved, it was all one big practical joke.

To tell you the truth, I have never written a story like this before. If it wasn’t for the fact that there were so many of these students, and the fact that interviewed many of their friends and family, I wouldn’t have written it at all.  And I still don’t know if I believe it. But I believe they believe it.

I sat staring at the paper, and took another sip of my Coke. Next to the bed on a reading table was a notepad underneath a book. I grabbed the notepad, which had written on it in strong black letters,  “Roberta Smith, My Journal, Private, do not touch.” I read. Oh, well, I didn’t think she would mind if I used it in my dream. After all, I was her, sort of.  I leafed through her various pages until I got to a blank page. Amused, I wrote todays date on the top of the next page, and then wrote:

Reasons why this is a dream.

_____________________________________

1) I am a girl. Boys do not turn into girls overnight, except in dreams and bad sci-fi novels.

2) I keep having dream-like flashes. The Wodehouse script showing up in my backpack, for example.

3) My name is not the same, but it is way too similar to be something like an alternate reality.

4) Everything else is way too similar too. Same parents, same sister, she is in the same activities, she drinks Dr. Pepper. I’m still in the play.

I looked up at the room. It was weird. It was definitely a girls room, all in pink, all neat, all frilly, but it was somehow… familiar. As if it was the kind of thing I might have done if I was a girl. Weird.

5) I woke up… I scratched that out

5) When I dreamed I was waking up, I felt really weird. And I still feel weird.

6) I am a girl. I actually feel like a girl. I enjoyed chatting with that boy, Jervis… as a girl. I had fantasized about him in the bathroom as a girl might, without any kind of horror or shock that would have been natural if I wasn’t dreaming. I always have weird dreams, usually involving getting caught naked somewhere but often about other things… flying, being married, being an alien. I keep noticing how people are dressed.

I stared at the paper, but couldn’t think of anything else right then. So  I took a deep breath and wrote:

Reasons why this is not a dream

________________________________

1) It is going on way too long.

2) It is too logical and reasonable, even with the weird bits. I haven’t transformed into something else.

3) I feel weird, but not dream weird. I feel like I have a fever or something.

There were steps in the hall, and my door opened.