~*~Brian’s point of view~*~

I couldn’t believe it. I watched Nick’s expression as he walked around the side of the house. He was as astounded as I was.

One of Kelly’s friends had had to leave early, and I’d been asked to move my car—well, Nick’s car. I’d been the first one here, but everyone else had parked too close to each other. It was my jeep, Nick’s car, the friend’s car, and then someone else’s right on her bumper; it wasn’t a car I recognized, so it probably belonged to someone else in the neighborhood. Four cars in a row, I was asked if I knew how to parallel park, which of course I did, to be able to get out from in between, since the other girl couldn’t.

I was a good parallel parker. Usually. A few moments ago, though, I’d managed to put a long scrape not only in Nick’s car while driving it but… against my own jeep. Of course.

“What did you do?” Nick exclaimed. “My car! Why were you driving it?”

I lowered my voice. “Because they asked me to move it, and how would I have explained it to them when I pulled out my keys to the jeep? I saw your keys next to the couch…”

I should’ve just rented a car for this whole ordeal.

“I put one microscopic indent in your jeep, and you…”

“You think I did this on purpose?” I asked astounded. “Look at my jeep!”

Nick took this as a satisfactory explanation for it having been an accident. What he couldn’t believe was how I could have messed up. “After that big lecture you gave me about my driving skills,” he muttered. Nick let out a sigh. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and seemed to get his temper under control. “Well, nothing we can do about it now.”

He was taking this much more calmly than I would have expected.

I just wanted to go home. I knew this was going to be quite an evening, but I hadn’t been expecting such a bad one. This was the first I’d spoken with Nick since the start of it. He’d been hanging out with Madeline and then… Kevin of all people. And they looked like they’d had a good time. Who’d have thought?

I wonder what Kate thought of me after my car incident? She’d watched it from Kevin’s front yard. Not that things were going well with her before that, either. Several times, there had been awkward pauses in our conversations. I was just freezing up, which wasn’t like me. I was so nervous, my sense of humor, something I could usually rely on completely, was failing me.

Nick cut our conversation short and went back inside, his hands balled into fists over the car, but his composure otherwise neatly intact.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Kate asked me when I walked up to her.

I nodded, managing a weak smile. A little voice in the back of my head was saying, You are a loser.

“Come on,” she said, guiding me inside.

We ended up going on the back deck though, where it was quieter. The sun had almost set, so there was an orange glow in the sky. Kate offered to go get us each a soda.

“Thanks,” I said, taking a drink out of her hand and thinking that it would’ve been more gentleman of me to offer to do that instead of making her go. “So are you going to miss working at the shop when your grandmother comes back?”

Kate didn’t look like she knew how to answer this question. “Um… in some ways. I mean, I’m not sure where I’ll end up now. I haven’t really found my dream job anywhere. It was interesting though.”

“What was?”

“Just seeing all the people come in there. A lot of them know my gran personally, and they just take everything that’s in there to heart. All of the magic stuff. It’s fun to talk with them. They are nice people, just a little cra…” she stopped herself suddenly, and took a big gulp of her soda.

I laughed. “Crazy, huh?”

“Well, not you,” she blushed.

“How am I any different than them?” I laughed.

“I don’t know. That kind of thing doesn’t seem to be one of your normal interests. And I don’t know how much you believe in everything. You and Brian just have the weird fascination with the skull,” Kate raised an eyebrow inquisitively. She trailed off, obviously hoping for an explanation.

“I, uh, um…” I stuttered. And we’d finally had a conversation that was going smoothly. “Just need to do the research on it, figure out what exactly it is. So,” I said, wanting to hear more from her, “Why are you so skeptical on it? I thought magic was like a girl thing.”

“A girl thing?” she started laughing. “What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Doesn’t it go hand in hand with all the happily ever after stuff? Every chick flick is full of magic.”

“Yeah, well,” Kate suddenly looked off in the distance, at the fading traces of sunlight. “My Prince Charming never showed, much less on his white horse. Just because you grow up watching those movies doesn’t mean you don’t eventually get real. I honestly don’t know if I pity or envy those people who come in, wanting ingredients for love potions and tarot cards to figure out their futures. They really think that the mercandise is going to come in and fix their life. I guess it comes down to whether or not you think ignorance is bliss.”

I listened carefully, not expecting as much cynicism as I was hearing, although she kept her voice as light as she could.

“It’s just not up to that stuff to do anything for you. I think everyone is responsible for themselves,” she shrugged. “And,” she added, “I let it go, but don’t think I fell for your ‘oh, it’s just research’ line you keep giving me or that I didn’t notice the quick subject change back to me.” Kate grinned.

I smiled sheepishly. “You’re too smart, you know.”

“I know,” she said.

Kelly was opening a few gifts, so we joined everyone in the living room. Kevin handed out pieces of cake. Nick looked like he was having a blast with Madeline. We didn’t really speak to each other as Kate and I came in. I couldn’t believe my bad luck getting the car out. I’d misjudged the distance and then I hadn’t reacted quickly enough.

Kate went over to Kelly, to help her unwrap a present that was tied in ribbon. The knot wouldn’t come out. Kevin went to try and find scissors. I spotted AJ and walked over to him, realizing this had been my first opportunity tonight to talk to him.

“Hey,” I said.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing. You?”

“Nothing.”

“Cool.”

Okay, this had been a meaningless conversation so far. I wondered how to broach the subject. He beat me to the punch.

“Looks like you and Brian got over your little prank.”

“What prank?”

Nick heard mention of his name. Well, my name, but he knew by now who AJ was talking about. He joined us, as Madeline was next to Kelly on the couch, giving Kelly the gift that she’d brought.

“What are you guys talking about?” Nick asked.

“Our ‘prank,’” I repeated for Nick. Turning back to AJ, “I thought you believed us.”

AJ hesitated. He opened his mouth and then closed it. When he finally spoke, the words were different than whatever he’d been about to say. “Of course I don’t. It just doesn’t make any sense. That cannot possibly happen.”

“And yet it has,” Nick said.

“Well, if you’re still trying to keep it up, you’re doing a poor job of it. You’re finally starting to act like yourselves again,” AJ crossed his arms, looking a mixture of emotion, including uncertain and annoyed.

“We are not trying to do anything!” I said.

“AJ,” Nick said. “Would we lie about something that important? And what do you mean, acting like ourselves again?”

“Both of you have been off since the group got back together,” AJ answered. “We’d all noticed.” We were still staring at him. Realizing he was going to have to spell it out for us a little better, AJ continued. “Come on. Like Brian, you and Kevin had been fighting like Nick and Kev usually do. But tonight you were playing basketball and talking and, you know. Just stuff like that.”

“Hey, AJ, come here,” Howie was with a different group people, laughing at a joke we weren’t privy to. AJ looked relieved to be saved from this conversation. He bolted without another word to us and joined Howie.

I was simply annoyed. It seemed to me that AJ did, almost, believe us. He just didn’t want to admit it to himself. Nothing he’d said about us going back to normal made sense. We weren’t back to normal; that was the problem.

Nick had sighed and taken a sip of his drink when AJ left. All of a sudden, he stopped, staring at the cup in his hand and then back at me. “Oh my God.”

“What?” I asked.

“You get what’s going on, don’t you?”

I stared. “No.”

Nick looked past me for a few seconds, thinking hard and shaking his head in disbelief. “I’m drinking sweet tea.”

“So?”

“I hate sweet tea.”

“Okay.” What did that have to do with anything?

Nick waved an arm in the air impatiently. “Didn’t you hear what AJ said? Don’t you get what it means? We’re turning into each other.”

“Duh, Nick. That’s nothing new.”

“No,” I thought he was going to wring my neck. “We switched bodies before. Now, we’re literally turning into each other.”

Funny how it wasn’t that he was drinking tea that made me finally understand and believe him. Or that I’d shown Nick’s driving skills this evening. Or that he’d been getting along with Kevin.

That’s not why it dawned on me. We were actually becoming each other. The epiphany came when I realized that Nick had figured it out before me.

“Oh God,” I said. What were we going to do now?