When I awoke, my first thought was that I could really go for some chocolate pudding.

“Hey, Nurse Cross, coul—“  I began.

But, initially startled by the once again unfamiliar sound of my voice, I remembered.

Oh, God, I remembered.

How many more have to die for you?

The killer’s words had struck a chord, it seemed.  The killer.  I called him that, but who had he killed?  He’d shot me, but I hadn’t died; no, I’d condemned my one and only friend to that fate.  He’d poisoned the girl whose body I now possessed, but it was I who put her in the path of the needle.  Not to mention Janice, in whose death he had no part.  So while I called him ‘the killer,’ who was I to talk?  I had quite a body count myself.  But I was alive.  I drew breath through lungs that were not my own, lungs stolen from an innocent bystander out of greed and fear, but draw breath I did. And try as I might, I could not regret that.

But whose lungs had I stolen?  Whose body, whose life?  Who was I now? Unfortunately, I didn’t know much.  The ride ‘home’ form the police station had been decidedly unenlightening.  The girl’s mother wasn’t exactly in the mood for banter and my attitude hadn’t helped matters at all.  She obviously expected a show of remorse, but I was positively giddy just to be alive, and it showed.  Eventually, after enduring a stern lecture on taking things seriously and a making a courageous effort to wipe “that damn smile” off my face, I did manage to mutter out an apology, but all I earned for my troubles was a dismissive grunt.

I might have learned more, but by the time we’d arrived at the dingy two-bedroom I was apparently privileged to call “home,” I was exhausted.  I didn’t know if it was the result of my own harrowing afternoon, some kind of spiritual exertion from my multiple supernatural jumps or the just preexisting state of the body I’d taken, but I felt like I’d been up for days. Practically as soon as I found the room that was supposed to be mine—which I accomplished on my very second try—I was asleep.

So here I was, some hours later, sitting on an alien bed in a run-down apartment, and I didn’t even know my name.

No, that wasn’t right.

I knew my name.  My name was Jake.  Jake Ligouri. What I didn’t know was the name of my…my what?  My host? My vessel?  Those terms sounded pleasant, benign—inviting, even.   But as I remembered staring out of the eyes of Nurse Cross at the bullet riddled corpse of pretty, young Janice Luray, I knew there was only one term to describe those with whom I traded lots—victims.

Such moralizing would have to wait, however, as it was at this point that my victim’s mother came barging through the door—and barge she did.  She was not a slim woman, and striding across the pale blue carpet she resembled nothing so much as a wide, plodding riverboat piled high without regard for shape and form.

“Rose!” she shouted.  “What in God’s name are you still doing in bed?“

Rose. Well, that was one question answered, at least.

“Um, I’m not feeling so good…” I began

“Are you serious?” she demanded. “You think you can do what you did yesterday and then stay home watching cartoons while Mommy makes you soup and crackers?  You’re lucky I let you stay in my house at all after what you did!  After all I’ve given up to put food in your foul little mouth, clothes on your ungrateful little back?  After all I’ve sacrificed?”

“I…I just…” I stammered, caught off guard by her vehemence and flying spittle.

“Not another word!” she snapped.  “You are going to school today. You are going to school tomorrow.  And you are going to school every damn day after that.  I don’t care if you’re bleeding out your ears.  If you really need a doctor, call 9-1-1.  Either way, you are getting hell out of my house.”

I nearly snapped.  I knew she was really angry with the real Rose, not me.  And for all I knew Rose deserved every last hate-filled sentence.   But I didn’t think so, and even if she did, I didn’t care.  I had effectively lost my own mother, my own family, and this was my substitute?  This angry, bitter whale?

I wanted to scream, to shout, to teach her a lesson she’d never forget.  I could, too, of that I was sure.  It would be easy, really, with my newfound ability.  I could make her pay…but I didn’t.  Instead, I simply clenched my jaw and glared.

“Fine,” I said.

There was a long silence, and then the whale grunted.

“Hmph,” she said. “That’s what I thought.”

Striding over to the bed with a smug satisfaction that made me hate her even more, she picked up a pile of clothes and shoved them into my arms.

“Get dressed.  There’s no time for a shower, so just wash your face and get back out here.”

I glanced warily at the bundle she’d handed me.  The clothes smelled faintly of alcohol and cigarette smoke.

“I don’t think these clothes are clean,” I said as flatly as I could manage.

“Did you wash them?” said the whale.  “Then no, Rose, I suppose they wouldn’t be clean, would they?” 

With a heavy sigh she looked down, squeezed her eyes shut and pinched the bridge of her nose like she had a migraine.

“Just get dressed, Rose.  Just get dressed, and go to school.  I can’t take any more of this from you today.  I really can’t.”

Smelly clothes in hand, I walked out of the tiny room, across the two by two square of carpet that served as a hallway and stepped into the bathroom.

Closing the door behind me, I turned my attention immediately to the bathroom mirror. This was the first time I’d actually been able to look at my new body in more a sneaking glance in than the car’s rear-view mirror, not to mention the first time I wasn’t distracted by extreme fatigue and immediate mortal peril.

The first thing I noticed was my hair.  It was pink.  Bright pink.  I’d noticed it before, in the instant before the switch, but I’d forgotten over the course of the night.  But there was no way anyone who saw it could miss that hair.  That I noticed the hair first is particularly telling, given what took second on my list of discoveries: my figure. 

Body awareness is something most people just take for granted.  The knowledge of where all the bits of you are and the ability to navigate without using your vision to carefully guide each limb around obstacles are things most people just take for granted.  But as I was about to discover, this ability does have some limitations the average person never encounters.

Because, as I found out, while the ability to identify the  position of body parts relative to one another and feel pressure on the skin are both genuine, universal senses, the actual shape and size of one’s body is something that must be learned through practice.

So while I’d felt the pressure of the covers on my skin and the weight of breasts on my chest, I had simply assumed my body was generally similar in shape to Janice’s.  None of the sensations were noticeably different; nothing I’d felt had indicated just how differently I was shaped.  But a different I was.

Janice had been petite, toned, and athletic. Her breasts were small but perky, her body lithe and nimble.  The reflection in the mirror was…not.   Rose’s body was much more developed.  While nothing like her mother, she also wasn’t fashion-model skinny.  Now, to be clear, as Rose I wasn’t chubby—not even slightly overweight.  What fat I did have was mostly concentrated in the ‘right’ places, and my figure still swept in and out without inappropriate blobs in-between.  But I wasn’t fit.  Gone was the muscle definition I’d known both as my male self and as Janice.  Instead, my new body was soft and smooth, naturally curvy and—most alarmingly—full breasted.  Rose’s bosom wasn’t nearly as large as her mother’s, but Rose—I—was also several hundred pounds lighter. 

With a gulp, I hefted—hefted!—one of my breasts.  This was new.  My breasts as Janice could be squeezed—though not often, thanks to the twenty-four hour suicide watch—but they simply could not be hefted like this.

Before I could explore any further, however, my antics were cut short by a furious pounding on the bathroom door.

“Rose!  What in the world are you doing in there?  Get dressed, you’re going to be late!”

Oops.  Right.  For a moment I’d forgotten there was a world outside that bathroom.  I wanted to ignore her, forget again and just—but the moment was lost.

“Uh, Sorry.  I’ll be right out!” I called.

With that I regretfully turned my attention to the slightly-smelly clothing I’d been given.  The pile contained a black tank-top with a pink skull on the front that looked far too small to fit anyone older than five, an almost-matching pink tartan skirt that didn’t look like it would reach even halfway to my knees, black panties and bra, a black and silver studded belt with bracelets and collar to match, and a pair of black fishnet stockings.

I was not thrilled.

As Janice I’d never worn the bras her family brought me, but the ridiculous tightness of the tank-top had convinced me that donning this one would be a good idea.  It didn’t really bother me; my refusal at the hospital had been a matter of comfort, not principle, and in this case wearing the bra seemed like the more comfortable alternative. Besides, I was curious as to what size she—I—was.   Picking up the garment, I examined the tag: 36-D.  That was actually smaller than I expected, since I knew Janice was a “32-B” and by sight I’d have guessed more than two sizes separated her bosom from Rose’s.

The rest of the clothes went on easily enough, including the tiny tank top which possessed apparently supernatural stretching abilities and ended up fitting snugly but comfortably.  I did dither over the issue of the fishnets for a time.  On the one hand, they looked ridiculous, served no practical purpose, and were needlessly feminine.  But after donning the tiny pink skirt my legs felt incredibly exposed.  In the end, I opted to wear them, just so I wouldn’t feel quite so naked.

Once finished, I appraised the finished product in the mirror.  I had to admit the whole outfit was actually pretty flattering, if you liked the whole “punk-rocker” look, but it hardly seemed like the sort of thing a mother would tell her daughter to wear.  Are girls even allowed to wear such short skirts to school?  And couldn’t the spiked accessories be qualified as weapons?  I had some serious doubts about this outfit.  Even with the fishnets, my nearly bare legs made me feel quite exposed. I reasoned that Rose obviously wore this kind of outfit all the time, so nobody at her school would give it a second thought, and assured myself that it was her body anyway, so why should I be embarrassed? Nevertheless, I walked out of the bathroom feeling extremely self-conscious.

The whale was standing there, looking like an extremely frustrated bean bag chair.

“Um,” I began, hoping I’d be ordered to change, “do you really want me to wear this?”

She laughed derisively.

“Do I want you to wear that? Now you suddenly care what I think, and about your wardrobe of all things?  Well, fine, here’s what I think: no, Rose, you look like a hooligan and a slut.  Once upon a time I’d have said ‘No daughter of mine is leaving this house looking like that, no sir.’  But frankly, at this point I wouldn’t care if you went to school naked just so long as you’re supervised and out of my house for a few hours.  At least today your belly’s covered and you’re not wearing that god-awful makeup.”

“Fine.  Great.  Glad you’re pleased.” I said. What a caring little family Rose had.  No wonder she wanted to rebel a little.

The whale paused, looking at me quizzically for a few seconds.  Then she started to say something, but the hiss and pop of hydraulic brakes made her change the subject.

“The bus is here.” She said.  “Go on, you know he won’t wait.”

With a grimace, I made my way toward the door.  The bus?  I hadn’t ridden the school bus since the seventh grade.  Actually, come to it, what grade was Rose in?  Just how old was she, anyway?  How—

“Rose!”

I snapped around to see why the whale was shouting at me.

“Your bag?” she said, tossing it at me.

“Oh, right.  Thanks.”

Again she looked at me oddly.

“Go on, then.” She said after a moment.

“Right,” I said, marching out the door.

The walk from the apartment to the bus was easy.  I didn’t even think about it.  The trouble started when I got to the bus door.  Suddenly I was faced with parading this ridiculous outfit down a tiny isle past dozens of my new classmates, and convincing my legs to carry me onward became much more challenging.  It wasn’t that there were thirty pairs of eyes following my every movement; for the most part the others weren’t paying me any attention at all.  Some were sleeping on backpacks, some finishing last-minute homework assignments.  Some just stared blankly out the window.  But a few younger looking guys, probably freshmen, were stealing glances—at my chest.

In some ways I was relieved.  After all, it was my legs that felt naked, and they about which I was most self conscious.  That the boys seemed not to care about my practically naked legs was actually a very good thing for my confidence, though I realized afterward that given the position of the seats they probably couldn’t have seen below my waist anyway.  Still, they were treating me just as socially awkward high school freshmen would any other person with breasts.  I had no reason to feel uncomfortable.  I wasn’t particularly worried for Rose’s modesty, and I certainly hadn’t come anywhere close to considering this new body to be “me” yet.  And yet for some reason, uncomfortable I was.

As I took an empty seat near the back of the bus, I wondered why.  Why did their stares make me so uneasy?  Then I realized the answer; I was afraid they’d see through my disguise.  On one level I knew the fear was silly.  As Janice I’d outright shouted my true identity, even tried to provide proof and still no one would believe me.  How could someone possibly figure it out from the way I walked onto a bus?  But that’s not what it felt like.  It felt like I was wearing a paper-thin disguise and at any moment everyone would see that Jake Ligouri was trying to impersonate the girl named Rose.  The fact was, I’d never tried to hide myself before.  Until now, I’d insisted to all who would listen that I was really Jake Ligouri and the fact that no one believed me was a sign of my failure, not my success.  But now things were different.  Now, I wanted people to believe that I was Rose; or—more precisely—not to realize that I wasn’t. 

Because not everyone at the hospital had refused to believe my story, and a return visit from the lone exception was not something I wanted to invite.

The rest of the bus ride I spent gathering information.  What I hadn’t been able to glean from conversations with the whale was easily found in the backpack she’d given me.  Most helpful was Rose’s Student ID card.  From this I learned that Rose apparently went to West Lowery Central High, a different school in the same district as my own West Lowery Western.  I also learned that Rose’s last name was Cassidy and that she was a senior; one year older than I was.  Personally, I didn’t think ‘Rose Cassidy’ rolled off the tongue the way a name properly should, but with a mother like the whale I supposed she was lucky not to have been named Mud. I also found her notebook, complete with a class schedule taped to the inside cover.  I might not have any idea what was going on, but at least I could show up for the right classes.

So, as I stepped off the bus and toward the school, for about thirty seconds I was certain I had everything I needed to successfully impersonate Rose Cassidy.  Then I met Liz.