Kyle and Jordan had been close since they were 6. Now 12-years-old, their parents –neighbors on a dead-end suburban lane– trusted the boys with entire afternoons and evenings unsupervised, and the two boys had mapped every bush, fence, and crawlspace within three blocks by the end of July.
It was during one of their bored, meandering explorations that they stumbled across the pendant. They'd been poking around in the attic above Jordan's garage, when they found an odd, heavy amulet tangled in a shoelace. The pendant itself was unremarkable—cheap brass, glassy red stone—but when Kyle looped it around his neck, a jolt of static ran through the both of them. Then they suddenly swapped bodies.
At first, they panicked: Jordan, as Kyle, screamed and flailed; Kyle, in Jordan, gawked at his own face. But after the first terror wore off, the boys realized they could swap back by touching the pendant together and thinking hard about their own names. It became a secret hobby—a new game.
They started small: swapping to ace each other’s math tests, to score free sodas from Kyle’s older brother’s friends, to see if the sensation of being taller or stronger or left-handed really felt any different inside someone else’s skin.
The power grew addicting. Inevitably, the games grew riskier. After a week, they wondered what would happen if they tried it on someone who wasn’t in on the trick.
That was how they hatched the prank on Kyle’s older sister, Lila, and her boyfriend, Ethan: sneak upstairs during family movie night, swap into the couple, and see if the pendant worked just as well on the unsuspecting as the willing.
They waited for the right moment and crept up to Lila’s room, giggling, their hands clammy with anticipation. Lila’s door was closed but unlocked, and they could hear her and Ethan giggling.
Jordan whispered, “Now?” and Kyle, who’d always wanted to outsmart his sister, nodded.
The pendant pulsed when they touched it and thought the names. Next, there was a sickening lurch. Then Kyle found himself blinking in the warm, perfumed gloom of Lila’s room.
Only it wasn’t Kyle anymore—it was Lila. He felt the distinct tightness of her t-shirt across a chest that definitely wasn’t his.
Ethan (or rather, Jordan, now in Ethan) was staring at him with wild, incredulous eyes.
It only took seconds for the boys to realize they’d done it: not only had they swapped into Lila and Ethan, but they’d done so in the middle of something …very strange.
The sensation took Kyle by the throat —he became immediately, horribly aware of an impossible pressure inside his new body, an invasive, fleshy presence moving with intent. Hot, radiating pulses.
Then the weight of Lila’s breasts on his chest, the electric tingle in the skin of her thighs, the taste of vanilla lip balm. He didn’t even know how to breathe with this body. He let out a small, startled gasp.
Jordan, in Ethan’s body, mouthed “holy shit” and gripped the bedsheet, stunned by the unfamiliar strength in his arms.
“Let’s keep going,” Kyle whispered, surprised at the tremor in his own voice.
“Are you serious?” Jordan asked, though his voice—Ethan’s voice—came out husky and thick.
“Yeah,” he said, letting the syllable hang in the air, “I mean—why not? We’re them.”
He looked at his own—her own?—arms, how skinny the wrists were, the shocking smoothness of the skin, the pink of the nail beds.
“This could be our only shot to know how it feels. Like, for real.”
“We’re not gonna wuss out now,” he added, “This is what they’d do, right?”
“Come on,” Kyle said, and tried to make it sound casual, like he was still in charge, “What, you don’t wanna see what this is like?”
“You’re the one acting weird, dude.”
“Just—go with it, okay?” Kyle said, and he shifted his hips.
Jordan shrugged, rolled his massive new shoulders, and grinned sheepishly, “Okay… but if you freak out, we’re switching back immediately.”
Kyle giggled, mortified by the sound, and nodded, “Yeah, just… go slow, okay?”
He pushed in, slow. Kyle—wearing Lila’s face—let out a helpless, melodic moan, the sound bizarrely at odds with Kyle’s usual flat sarcasm.
Jordan started to cautiously move in and out, at first in short, experimental stabs, then gradually longer, smoother strokes.
He started to cautiously move in and out.
“Oh, dude. This actually feels amazing!” Kyle swooned, voice rising high and clear in Lila’s register.
His head lolled back against the pillow.
“Oh, dude. This actually feels amazing!” Kyle swooned.
The rhythm got sloppy, then frantic. The pressure built and built until there was nowhere for it to go but out. He came hard inside Kyle, shuddering violently.
He collapsed on top of Kyle. They stayed like that for a moment, dazed and sweaty.
Jordan finally rolled off, chest heaving, and stared at the ceiling. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. Kyle lay motionless, eyes wide, still breathing through Lila’s pouty, slightly parted lips.
After a minute, Kyle said, “That was… something.”
Jordan nodded, “We should probably switch back.”
“Yeah,” Kyle whispered, voice trembling.
They fumbled for the pendant, hands shaking, and focused hard on their names, their bodies, the little markers of self that they both suddenly missed. With a jolt, they snapped back to their original forms—two skinny boys, sprawled on the carpet outside Lila’s room, shirts rumpled, faces red-hot with embarrassment and excitement.
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