Family Friend

 

I’d jerked off to photos of Maya hundreds of times—maybe more, if you counted the screenshots I’d saved and then deleted in panic, only to re-download them weeks later when her Instagram privacy settings relaxed. Maya: the older daughter of one of my parents’ friends, a girl so out-of-my-league I only ever interacted with her through filtered pixels and the occasional polite comment thread. She was three years ahead of me at school, a senior when I was a freshman, and her every post was like a coded message to some secret society of cool kids. She wasn’t the kind of girl I’d ever have a shot with—for one thing, she barely knew I existed outside of our parents’ forced hangouts. But that didn’t stop me. It became a ritual: she’d post a new bikini pic from her family’s lake house or some over-filtered group shot from a party, and I’d obsessively scroll, zoom, crop, and savor the image with a kind of perverse reverence. I wasn’t in love with her, not in any real way, but she had the best body I’d ever seen in real life, and for a long time that was enough.

Over the years, my fixation evolved from garden-variety horniness to something bordering on pathological. I started inventing plausible reasons to check her socials—maybe she posted about a mutual friend, or there was some school event I needed intel on. Every new upload was a gift, a fresh angle or pose to commit to memory. I noticed patterns: how she’d always tilt her head to the left, how her smile never quite reached her eyes, how she’d hold her phone just above eye-level for the most flattering perspective. I built a mental library of her outfits, her jewelry, the way her hair changed color with the seasons. As my own body mutated through adolescence, so did my obsession with hers.

Then, one Saturday in late spring, my family got invited to a sprawling backyard cookout at Maya’s parents’ house—a monster of a place with fake Greek columns, a heated pool, and a trampoline that no one over age twelve was allowed to use. I didn’t want to go, but my mom guilted me into it, and I spent most of the afternoon sulking by the grill. Maya was there, home from college for the weekend, which made things both better and exponentially worse. She looked taller than I remembered. She wore cutoff shorts and a tank top that seemed to defy both gravity and social norms. The whole time, she floated between cliques of older kids and adults, laughing too loud and flipping her hair for invisible cameras.

After dinner, the younger kids organized an improvised game of hide-and-seek, and somehow I got roped into playing. I considered hiding in plain sight, maybe even locking myself in one of the guest bathrooms, but my competitive streak kicked in and I decided to go for the win. I slipped through a side door, past the mudroom, and into the labyrinthine innards of the house. Most of the lights were off, and the hum of distant conversation echoed through the halls. I ducked into the laundry room, a converted utility closet stacked with towers of detergent and baskets of rumpled towels. The perfect hiding spot, I thought.

Except, apparently, Maya had the same idea. I didn’t notice her at first—she was crouched behind the dryer, rummaging for an outlet to charge her phone. I froze, terrified she’d see me, but she seemed oblivious, engrossed in her own world. I tried to back out quietly, but just then, a weird gurgling sound came from the washing machine. I looked down and saw water pooling around its base, creeping toward my shoes. Before I could react, the washer gave a violent shudder and everything went bright white, like the afterimage from a camera flash.

I remember the static shock first—a jolt that zapped straight from my toes to my teeth—and then the sensation of falling backwards through a slow-motion tunnel. I heard Maya shriek, or maybe it was me, and then the world collapsed into a single, echoing heartbeat. When I came to, the room was spinning and my skin felt wrong, like I’d been shrink-wrapped in a new layer of nerve endings. I tried to sit up, but my limbs didn’t respond the way I expected. My perspective was off—a foot higher, maybe—and my hair kept falling into my eyes.

Across from me, Maya was sprawled on the tile, blinking rapidly. She propped herself up, glanced down at her own chest, and made a sound like she was about to throw up. We locked eyes, and in that instant, I knew something impossible had happened. I mean, I’d seen every body-swap movie ever made, but I never thought it would feel this… real.

That was the exact moment I realized the leak from the washing machine had done something to us. Something epic, something irreversible. 

I reached up to touch my face and felt a nose that wasn’t mine, lips too full, skin smooth and faintly perfumed. My hands—my god, my hands—were slender, with chipped pink polish on the nails. I looked down and saw a pair of breasts, Maya’s breasts, the very same ones I’d spent years obsessing over. 

Across the room, Maya stared at her new body in abject horror, tugging at the waistband of my jeans and poking at my chest.

“What the fuck,” she whispered, her voice now two octaves lower than normal. 

I tried to speak, but all that came out was a strangled gasp.

It was like all the blood in my body had been instantly replaced with fireworks. Holy shit. I needed to check myself out. Not just a glance or a poke, but a full, clinical, top-to-bottom evaluation—preferably with a mirror, and definitely alone. The urge was so overwhelming I almost missed what Maya was saying as she tugged at the hem of her new, too-large t-shirt and tried to process the physics of the situation. She kept muttering “no fucking way” under her breath, and I realized that if I didn’t get some privacy, I'd combust on the spot.

But how? I couldn't just say "Excuse me, I need to investigate these incredible tits for science." I needed a cover story. I needed time.

Before I could manufacture an excuse, someone the kid who was the seeker walked into the laundry room.

He was a couple grades below me, a tiny, ginger child, and he stopped short at the door, taking in the carnage: me and Maya, both looking like we'd just survived a chemical explosion, the puddle of water, the half-melted surge protector, the actual smoke curling toward the ceiling.

The kid pointed at us and said, "Whoa," as if we were the best thing he'd discovered all night. Then: "You guys okay?"

Maya—my body—seemed to glitch for a second, then nodded, trying to look cool and in control. "Yep," she said, but it came out in my voice: a strained, adolescent croak. I watched myself—her—run a hand through hair that was suddenly way too short, jaw flexing as she processed her own timbre.

"I think the washer blew a fuse," I muttered.

There was no universe in which I could stay in that room another second, not with my hands shaking, my head spinning, and the low, thrumming pulse of panic and awe vibrating through every cell. I HAD to get out. I needed to be alone, to lock a door, to stare at myself in the mirror until the reality of the situation either resolved into a logical explanation or—preferably—glitched back to normal. It wasn’t even a question. The urge was so primitive it overrode every shred of self-consciousness.

I launched myself into the hallway, nearly slipping in the fresh puddle of soapy water, and stumbled in the direction of the main foyer. Immediately, I was hit by the noise and energy of the party—a wave of laughter, grilling meat, and the high, sugary shriek of children careening through the space. But it was all wrong. I felt every brush of air, every jostle, like I’d been peeled down to the nerve. The feeling of a t-shirt, a real girl’s t-shirt, clinging to my ribs was a constant reminder that this was not a joke or a fever dream. I was Maya, and Maya’s body moved differently, occupied space with a magnetism I had never known and wasn’t prepared for.

Navigating through the mass of half-drunk adults and bored teens, it was impossible not to notice the stares. I sensed them—maybe imagined them, but they came all the same—prickling across my bare thighs, up my arms, lingering on my chest. I tried to shrink, to walk small, to minimize the attention, but that only made every step more awkward. The balance was off; my center of gravity was completely different, and for a terrifying few seconds I lost the ability to walk in a straight line. Everything jiggled. My hair, now platinum blonde and a foot longer than I was used to, swung into my mouth every time I turned my head.

I made it past the kitchen, narrowly avoiding a group of college guys circled around the punch bowl, and took the stairs two at a time, desperate for the safe haven of Maya’s bedroom. I remembered the way there from the one time she’d shown me her Tarantino posters at a family function, and I clung to that memory like a lifeline. Each step pounded through my body like a drumbeat: This is real, this is happening, this is you now.

The hallway was mercifully empty. I sucked in three shaky breaths and kept moving, past the wall of framed baby photos and the linen closet, until I reached Maya’s door: a wooden slab covered in peeling stickers and Sharpie graffiti. I ducked inside and shut it behind me, then locked it for good measure.

The room was exactly as I remembered: fairy lights strung across the ceiling, walls plastered with polaroids, the bed unmade and littered with throw pillows. Maya’s scent was everywhere—coconut, sweat, a hint of something medicinal—and it triggered a weird nostalgia for memories that weren’t even mine. I staggered over to the mirror above the vanity and forced myself to look.

That’s when the full insanity of it hit me. For almost a minute, I just stood there, gripping the edge of the table, staring at my new reflection with mounting disbelief and wonder.

My hands started to shake as I reached for the hem of the tank top, and I thought: Holy shit. I have to see this.

The first touch was like calling up an icon I’d worshipped from afar—except the icon was now me, and I was somewhere between a demigod and a pervert in the act of exploring it. The mirror didn’t filter or smooth or crop reality. There was nothing left to the imagination, so my imagination short-circuited instead. Every part of Maya that I’d ever obsessed over was now right here, immediately present, unabstracted and alive. The tank top fell away with terrifying ease, and I blinked at the impossible geometry of my borrowed cleavage, at the soft, sun-baked tan lines, at the radiance of skin usually visible only in a pixelated square on my phone. My hands, trembling, performed an inventory: collarbone, neck, shoulders. I tried to catalog every sensation, but mostly I just stared. Objectivity was impossible. The longer I looked, the less real it felt.