By the time my alarm clock went off, I’d already been awake for a good hour. The little time I had spent sleeping last night had been ruined by horrible nightmares. In one, I came out on stage singing one of the new songs, and I realized all of the fans were pointing at me, some snapping photos, others staring in disbelief. I turned and saw the other guys staring, also, shocked expressions on their faces. When I looked down, I realized that I wasn’t wearing any clothing.

In another dream, I was looking into a mirror. I was still in Brian’s body, but I was myself- Nick- in the reflection. My reflection wasn’t mimicking me, though. Nick was pounding on the mirror, trying to shatter the glass and break through from the other side. But no matter how hard he tried, the mirror remained intact.

Finally, I stopped trying to go back to sleep. I’d been too afraid that when I woke up this morning, I wouldn’t know who I was. That I’d be lost, possibly forever. Why had this happened to Brian already, but not to me?

Just in case, I’d taken a post-it note and placed it on the bathroom mirror: You are Nick!

I grabbed a cup of coffee at a drive-thru on the way to Brian’s. It had taken a lot to make him go home last night. He kept wanting to know why he couldn’t go to his “real” home. I somehow convinced him that it would be fun to house-sit for each other. We were supposed to be in the studio in an hour, but I knew that neither of us would be there. I couldn’t take any chances, work would have to wait. I hadn’t even called Kevin because I didn’t know what to say.

When I pulled up to Brian’s house, I groaned when I saw a car parked in the driveway behind his. The front door was unlocked, so I let myself in. Both of them were in the living room, one lying on the couch, and the other on the recliner.

“Brian,” I whispered, shaking his shoulder. “Wake up.”

He didn’t budge.

“Brian!” I screamed again.

“Mmm,” he turned away from me.

I rolled him off of the couch.

With a thud and an “ow,” he slowly stood up, rubbing his butt.

“Dude! What are you doing?”

“Me? What is my brother doing here?”

Brian looked around. “Your brother? I don’t see Harold.”

I groaned. “What were you and Aaron doing?”

He looked a little guilty. “Well, you’ve got some pretty cool video games… And some of them are better with two player. You’re not mad, are you? We didn’t trash your place or anything.”

I looked around at the empty soda cans and chip bags. The space did look rather messy, but Brian didn’t realize he’d done this to his own house.

“Come on, we need to get downtown.”

“For what?”

“You don’t even remember the skull?”

“What skull? I could use an extra, considering you just broke mine by shoving me off of the couch!”

“I’ll explain on the way there,” I said, half lying. “Come on.” I expected him to request taking a shower first, since he smelled of Doritos and Coke, or at least want to change clothes, but he simply grabbed his house keys.

“Should I wake Aaron?”

“No, he’ll be fine,” I responded.

Aaron was drooling slightly, his head flopped to one side. I closed the door on the snoring blonde and drove Brian to see Kate’s grandmother.

Sure enough, when we arrived at the shop, there was a kindly old lady standing where Kate usually was behind the counter. She had Kate’s sparkling eyes, though wrinkles crinkled her face. There was a sense of strength to her, despite the fact that she had to be in her eighties, as well as a sharpness.

“Hi, I’m Nick,” I said, setting the book on the counter.

“I’m Nick,” Brian corrected me, laughing. “This is Brian,” he introduced me.

Kate’s grandmother smiled at me, but she looked Brian up and down. I had been in such a hurry to get here when the store opened that I hadn’t given a second thought to what Brian was wearing, which was a bathrobe over smiley-faced boxers and a t-shirt with Mario on it. He was even in slippers instead of regular shoes.

Great, he looks like he just escaped from a mental hospital, I thought. When she looked at me questioningly, I said, “He’s not a morning person,” as if that answered the question. “Did Kate tell us we’d be stopping by?”

I prayed that Kate hadn’t spoken with her since her falling-out with Brian.

“Yes, I’m Faye, it’s nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard quite a bit about you, Nick,” she said with a half-smile, turning to Brian.

I was relieved that she was simply questioning his sanity, but didn’t seem to harbor any resentment. She hadn’t spoken to Kate afterall. Finally some good luck.

“I have some questions… they are going to seem a bit odd.”

“My specialty,” Faye said, motioning at the shop surrounding her.

“What are we here about, Brian?” Brian asked, still confused. I’d avoided his interrogations in the car by turning on the radio and distracting him with things we were driving by.

“Shh,” I said in the same tone that someone would use to scold a toddler. “Do you remember the skull my friend AJ purchased?”

She nodded. “It’s very rare. Quite a piece to have in one’s collection. I wouldn’t be surprised if its hundreds of years old. And it has been wonderfully preserved.”

“What do you think about skulls having magical powers?”

Faye looked down at the book. “Well, some cultures certainly believe magic takes a more predominant role in our lives than our country usually acknowledges. We are a young nation, and most of the history tends to get lost or turned to fairytale.”

“What do you mean predominant role?”

“Well, personally, I believe that magic can come in all forms, great and small, and that it guides us when we’ve fallen off the path. Perhaps that is a product of, like I said, our society associating magic with children’s stories. Still, I think the universe sometimes has a way of pushing us in the right direction.”

“Well how can you get it to… stop pushing you?”

Faye looked at me more closely. “What exactly is your predicament?”

“Well…” Where should I begin? “AJ showed us the skull when he first got it, and…”

Faye’s expression suddenly turned to one of understanding and realization. “You’re souls have changed places,” she said. Her voice sounded slightly eerie, almost like what I expect a physic would sound like.

I looked down, hoping to somehow be back to my old self, but I was still Brian. “How can you tell?”

“A body is only skin deep,” she said cryptically. “A soul is endless.” Faye was now staring only at Brian. “His is very weak, though. Come,” she said, walking from behind the counter. “You must tell me everything.”

She could see- or sense- our souls? Wow. What was crazy was that nothing really surprised me anymore.

“What do you mean my soul is weak?” Brian demanded. “Who are you again?” he asked Faye.

I shushed him again, and we followed Faye to some bean bag chairs upstairs, but not before she changed the sign on the door to “Closed.”

I related all of the important facts to her, how we’d woken up the next morning in each other’s bodies, how we’d visited AJ with the skull but had no success, and, finally… how we were now becoming each other.

“I mean, I like sweet tea now! …And then Brian lost it yesterday,” I said. “He thinks he’s really me now.”

“Of course I’m me!” he said. “This is all crazy!”

“Please,” I said, with a sudden desperation. “You have to believe me!” I’d just realized that, now that Brian was this far gone, no one did.

Faye nodded comfortingly. “Of course I do. But we have to act quickly. This transformation has been in place for far too long.” She grabbed the book from me. “Give me a few minutes to read, now that I understand your situation.” She headed down the stairs to be able to concentrate.

“Brian,” I said, pleading with him.

“Nick,” he said. “Stop calling me Brian.”

I remembered how we had tried to convince AJ and had failed. I now had three missed calls from Kevin on my cell phone. And more and more memories were seeping into the edge of my consciousness. A Christmas in Kentucky with my parents and grandparents, performing in Grease at Tates Creek High, and…

Finding out that I- Nick- had decided to remain with the old record company to record a solo CD. I could feel Brian’s pain, a feeling of betrayal. He’d considered me like a brother, and I’d deserted not the group, it wasn’t about that to him. I’d abandoned him. Never in this whole body-switching experience did I ever feel totally and wholly in his shoes until now. His perspective was crystal clear.

“Brian, I never meant to hurt you,” I said, snapping out of my reverie.

“What do you mean? You’re just making me more confused.”

“We were best friends for a long time,” I said. He nodded. “Yeah, I know.” He seemed a little sad, knowing how things changed.

There was so much I wanted to say, but I couldn’t explain right now. I could only hope that I’d have the chance to talk to Brian again. “You’ve known me for most of your life, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I know everything that I just told Faye seems unbelievable, but would I ever lie to you about something this important?”

Brian thought for a moment. “No, but…”

"Please, I need you to think as hard as you can. Just think that there’s a possibility that I’m right. That you’re really Brian, and I’m really Nick, and you’ve just gotten lost in my head.”

He sighed. “Ok,” he looked off and looked as if he were clearing his mind.

That’s it, I thought. I waited.

And waited. “Well?”

“What?”

“What were you thinking about?” Did he remember who he really was? He’d ben thinking hard.

“I was just wondering…” he trailed off.

“Yeah?”

“Were French Fries invented by the French? I mean, is that why they’re called French Fries?”

I suppressed the urge to cry. Then I suppressed the urge to punch him.

“So… nothing about being Brian?”

He began to laugh. “I’ve never seen you go so far for a prank.”

I stared at him, momentarily holding his full attention. “I swear, Brian, I’m not lying. I promise you that I’m telling the truth.”

His smile faded and he was staring back.

“Well,” Faye said. “You two have quite the predicament.”

“Is there any hope?”

She hesitated. “Yes, I think there is.”

I let out a sigh. As Brian stared off at some books behind her, I asked Faye another question I’d been wondering. “Why is this affecting him more than it is me? I mean, I have his interests and some of him memories now, but it’s happening gradually. He’s like Nick Carter 4.0. I mean, I don’t act like that!”

“Well, I think it’s that you took to his body more easily than he did yours. His body rejected it, and so the magic pushed him harder on the path that it wanted him to take. Does that make sense?”

I thought again of the memory I’d relived of Brian finding out about my solo record. And about how mad at me he’d been the night of the cookout. Finally, I remembered how he was planning to quit the group as soon as we had this sorted out. Yes, she had to be right.

“So how exactly did all of this happen in the first place?”

“You say you were fighting when you felt the energy from the skull?”

“Yeah.”

“It seems there was a second where your thoughts… connected, I think is the best word to use. And that was somehow transmitted into the skull. A very old spell was then placed on the two of you. To become of one body and, essentially, one mind. The problem is that, after a certain period, when the spell is not completed, the magic takes on a more literal meaning.”

“But how do we fix it?”

“You’ll need the skull, and you’ll need to connect thoughts again,” Faye explained.

I sensed the hesitation. “But?”

“It will only work if you two are able to connect as before, as Brian and Nick.” She glanced at Brian. “His soul has to be present for that connection to be recreated.”

My heart sunk.

“I believe you, Nick.”

“You called me Nick!”

“That’s your name, moron, isn’t that what you keep telling me?”

“So you believe me?”

“You’re not a liar. If you say this is what’s going on, what choice do I have? So what do we do now?”

“We go get the skull from AJ.”

**********

And AJ was not very happy when he answered his door.

“Where the hell have you guys been? You didn’t show up at the studio! Kevin’s about to explode.”

“Yeah, well, when is Kevin not stressing about something? At least I give his life meaning,” I walked past him inside.

“Nick, why are you dressed like that?” AJ was taking in Brian’s odd clothing choices.

“He’s coming up with outfit ideas for the tour,” I said sarcastically. “Listen, I’m on a really tight schedule here, where’s your skull?”

“My what?”

“Your skull!”

“Which one?”

“Lou Pearlman’s… what do you mean which skull? Do you have extras lying around?”

“Umm… you guys said it had weird powers.”

“Yeah, not that you believed us. But I need to borrow it. This is really important, AJ. I can’t even begin to explain. Please just give it to me.”

“I can’t.”

“AJ, I’ll do anything you want, just let me borrow it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” I was practically screaming now.

“I sold it.”