Tyler didn't have anything to do for the weekend and his sister was having a slumber party. With the help of a magic necklace, his weekend was going to be anything but boring.

Alyssa watched me pace back and forth across my room with a look of both amusement and annoyance on her face. She was clearly waiting for me to make my decision, but also knew that I was nervous about what I was about to do. And honestly, why shouldn’t I be nervous? It wasn’t every day a young man decided to turn himself into a girl for a slumber party.

But that was ultimately my goal. Alyssa was having a slumber party, our parents were leaving for the weekend, and since I had nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, joining in on it was the only option that didn’t make me the lone boy in the house. Yes, it would likely be embarrassing for at least a little bit, but I was sure I’d get the hang of being one of the girls pretty quickly, especially if everything I’d read about the necklace was true.

This would’ve been so much better if Alyssa had a friend I had a crush on. I could just hang out with her and try to win her over, or something. No, of course she had to have friends that I just tolerated. At the very least, according to what I’d read, they wouldn’t have any idea I was Alyssa’s brother. They’d think I was just some girl they’d always known, hopefully they knew me as Alyssa’s sister or something easy like that.

Alyssa rolled her eyes and grabbed the small box off my night stand. “C’mon, Tyler, just get it over with.”

I took the box from her. “It’s still just a little daunting, Lys.” I opened it up and looked at the necklace. An orange diamond attached to a chain. It looked so very unassuming, and yet I knew exactly what it could do.

There were supposedly seven different types of magical necklaces, all different colors and all different effects. Three of them changed males into females, three changed females into males, and the seventh was a complete mystery, at least according to the websites and books I’d found that talked about them. The red, orange and teal ones were the ones that changed males, which was why I had an orange one in a box right now. Myth and legend said there were hundreds of the necklaces out there, each one containing one of the seven gems. The red one required sex, the orange one required interest and the teal one required what the book called Intent, but I didn’t know what that meant.

Needless to say, the red one and the teal one were not choices I was going to go with.

Alyssa had asked me before I’d found one of the necklaces why I was doing this instead of just locking myself in my room for the night. I hadn’t told her that the reason I’d gone with this option was because I was genuinely curious what being a girl at a slumber party would be like. I knew all the stereotypes, and she’d told me that they usually engaged in at least a few of them (typically painting nails and boy gossip, she said), but just the idea of being there actually kind of excited me. I didn’t know if that was just me or if most guys harbored at least a slight curiosity in this sort of thing, but either way, just like the orange necklace desired, I had an interest.

I pulled the necklace out and held it up, catching a glint from the lamp light from the corner. Almost painfully unassuming, and yet apparently extremely powerful.

Alyssa whistled. “Pretty, So how’s this thing work? You just put it on?”

I shook my head. “It needs something to work with,” I explained from what I’d read. “It can’t just change you, it sort of molds you into what you’re giving it.”

She blinked. “So… We have to get you clothes?”

I shrugged. “I kinda figured I’d just borrow something from you.”

She stood up. “I guess mostly, buuuuuut...” She had a mischievous grin on her face. “I have an idea.”

I felt myself shiver. “What are you thinking, Lys?”

“Well, you don’t just wanna be my twin from the neck down, do you?”

It didn’t take me long to put two and two together. “You’re not…”

“Hey, I’m sure you’ll like having Mom’s boobs at sixteen.” She pointed at her own chest. “I don’t see me getting them anytime soon, so one of us should benefit from our genetics.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said with no small amount of incredulity.

She smirked. “At least then my friends won’t think it’s weird that the girl they don’t know has the exact same proportions as me.”

I set the box with the necklace down on my desk. “Are they really gonna care and or notice?”

She pulled shirts out of her closet and held them up against me. “Trust me, they’ll notice.” She threw the shirts back into the closet and went rooting around in her dresser drawer next. “It’s like a requirement, we have to check other girls out.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever, I guess.” If it made the act more convincing, I supposed I could mix and match a couple things from Mom with Alyssa. All I needed was clothes, the necklace would just change me into a female version of myself, simply matched to the proportions of the clothes I was wearing. Mom and Lys weren’t that far apart in body shape even if Lys had never matched Mom in the bust department.

She smiled. “I’m glad you’re seeing things my way, little sis.” She reached into the back of her closet, where I couldn’t see what she was getting, and pulled out a small bundle of clothes. “Mom’s bra, Emily’s panties, Yelena’s skirt and Natalie’s tanktop and wedges.”

I blinked. “Have… Have you been hiding stuff back there for tonight?”

“Uh, no!” It didn’t take her long to blush. “Okay, the bra yes, but everything else was stuff I borrowed from my friends like months ago, they’ll never notice it’s literally their stuff you’re wearing.”

I rolled my eyes again. I was too excited about actually seeing the results of this to change my mind now. How would the necklace interpret the new me? What would she look like? There was no time like the present to find out, really.

I knew from my reading that the necklace had to go last, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to work with anything. That wasn’t a big deal to me, though it meant I’d be standing around awkwardly in girls’ clothes for however long it took. There was no consensus about length of time, with some saying an hour and some saying ten, though most said three hours was likely the median. Sitting in my room playing my PS5 for a few hours while I changed wasn’t a problem to me.

“Okay, whatever, I’ll take them. Gimme a minute and I’ll be back in here after I’m dressed.”

A look of disappointment crossed her face. “You mean I have to wait?”

“I’m sorry, you want to see your little brother naked?”

She blinked, as if she hadn’t thought that far ahead yet. “Oh, yeah.”

I sighed, took the clothes and walked across the hall to my bedroom. I locked the door to make sure Alyssa didn’t try and sneak peeks at me while I was changing. To say my sister was weird would be an understatement. One of her favorite things to do was find ways to embarrass me. When I’d told her all about this, I’d worried she was going to take every opportunity to turn this into yet another one of her jokes on me. I was pretty sure she’d still try at some point.

I stripped out of my clothes and took a deep breath. This was the first time I’d ever crossdressed, even if it wouldn’t be crossdressing for very long. I’d had so few girlfriends that even touching girls’ underwear was kind of foreign to me. Emily’s panties were very silky, very smooth. I pulled them up my legs and discovered as I pulled them over my hips just how… Gentle they felt. Boy underwear wasn’t this soft or comforting.

Seeing as I didn’t have breasts (yet) and I had exactly zero experience with bras outside of taking Alyssa’s out of the dryer when she forgets her laundry, I hooked the bra and then pulled it down over my head like a shirt. It hung loose on me, but that wasn’t going to stay true forever. I noticed that the bra and panties were almost matching, which made me assume she found one of Mom’s bras that came as close as possible to matching Emily’s panties.

I took a look at Yelena’s skirt and wondered how the tiny black cloth could be remotely considered clothing. It looked like it was made for someone with much wider hips than I had, so hopefully it wouldn’t fall right off of me after I slipped it on. I sat on the edge of my bed and pulled the skirt on, then up as far as I needed to. I was definitely right about it being for wider hips, but thankfully it didn’t just fall off of me. It was just loose.

I set the shoes aside for the moment and grabbed Natalie’s tanktop. It was probably the easiest part of dressing up like this after the panties, although the shirt was clearly meant to hug curves I didn’t yet have. I also hoped that it was stretchable enough to accommodate Mom’s breasts, since although Natalie was the largest of Alyssa’s friends, she was still smaller than Mom.

God, the thought that Mom and I would be the same cup size in a few hours was weird and exciting all at the same time.

Finally I stepped into the shoes, which were wedge sandals that made me a couple inches taller, but weren’t obnoxiously difficult to walk in. There was still a bit of a learning curve, but it wasn’t hard to become accustomed to, and I figured once I had the body for them, they’d be much easier. I actually wondered if my feet would suddenly be perfectly designed for heels, since that’s what the necklace was sculpting me to. Hopefully I’d still be able to wear tennis shoes in the future.

I unlocked my door, then called Alyssa over. The amused smirk on her face told me that she was more than happy with the results. She had the box with the necklace in her hands and tossed it at me. I pulled it out of the box and took another deep breath. It was time to take the plunge. Lys walked around behind me and helped me with it.

“There we go!” she said, her enthusiasm impossible to ignore. “Now how long is it gonna take?”

I shrugged. “Could be upwards of an hour or as little as twenty minutes. Nobody online is consistent.”

The smile faded from her face. “Aw, you mean we have to wait?”

I rolled my eyes. “You don’t get to complain. Either way, I’ll be done by the time your friends show up.”

She sighed. “Alright. So what do we do until then?”

I shrugged. “I’m gonna play video games.”

“Really? That’s all you’re gonna do?”

“Well, yeah, what else am I gonna do?”

She held up a bottle of nail polish I hadn’t noticed her walk in with. “Manicure?”

“Isn’t that something you save for the slumber party?”

She groaned. “Come on! Let me have fun with this before the girls get here!”

I shoved her out of my room and locked the door.

---

The changes didn’t take an hour to start. About 45 minutes into Ghost of Yotei, I started to notice the controller felt different in my hands. My fingers had definitely changed, getting slimmer and more delicate looking. My arms shrank shortly after that. That was all for at a little while.

An hour and fifty-three minutes in, I had to readjust myself in my chair because I’d gained a little extra padding in the rear. Emily had a really nice ass, and here I was about to inherit it, which was more than a little disorienting. Would it technically then also be my nice ass? I didn’t have Emily’s more olive skintone, so in a way, it wasn’t really hers, was it?

At two hours, fifteen minutes, looking down at the controller in my lap was a little more difficult with what was blocking my view. I knew the girls would be growing eventually, and I knew they’d be pretty big, but I still wasn’t ready for how big. I didn’t know why, but I felt like I was bigger than I should’ve been. The bra didn’t feel uncomfortable (well, at least not too uncomfortable), so presumably I was exactly the right size for it, like I should’ve been. The tanktop felt a little tighter, though.

Two hours and thirty-nine minutes in, my body hair disappeared completely. I didn’t peek in my underwear to see if everything down there faded away, but I was willing to bet that was the case. I ran a hand up my legs and felt a shiver up my spine. Were girls’ legs normally sensitive or was this an effect of the transformation that would go away? I’d need to ask Lys later on.

My feet were the next thing to change at two hours and fifty-two minutes. Dainty was definitely the word of the day when it came to certain parts of me. Other parts of me were huge, and yet nothing seemed to look out of place, which was bizarre and relieving at the same time.

I could feel my face softening and changing at about three hours, seventeen minutes in. I avoided looking at anything reflective until I was done changing, because I wanted to take everything in at once. I knew from Mom and Lys about what I’d look like, though, and at the very least, the curly ringlets of reddish-brown hair that fell onto my shoulders met my expectations.

The moment of truth came at the three hour and forty-eight minute mark. To say it was odd to feel my balls shrivel up and force themselves inside my body, followed swiftly by my dick shrinking and settling itself as my new clit, would be an understatement of epic proportions. The panties suddenly touching a pair of lips I hadn’t had before was just as odd as anything, but at the same time, they now felt like they fit better than before.

I waited until four hours had passed since I put the necklace on before deciding that the changes had stopped. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to let Alyssa in my room before or after I checked myself out. At the very least, I figured I should see what my face looked like. Presumably, I looked like a younger her or Mom.

I stepped in front of the mirror I had on the back of my closet door and nearly felt my heart stop. I looked my reflection up and down, almost positive that I was dreaming or hallucinating. The girl staring back at me had definitely won the genetic lottery thanks to the clothes the necklace had to work with. I’d gone in expecting to be a physical match with Alyssa from the neck down, but there was absolutely nothing of my sister in the new me except what we’d share by having the same parents.

The curly haired redhead staring back at me was younger (obviously), but unlike Lys, I was pretty damn stacked. Lys was pretty, and it wasn’t like she was hurting for male attention, but I was a head-turner. The combination of Mom’s chest, Natalie’s upper body and Emily’s hips and ass gave me an almost perfect hourglass frame, one that a lot of girls would be jealous of immediately upon seeing me. I could barely believe that the person staring at me had been anything other than this almost caricature of femininity, let alone that she was me.

There was a loud banging on my door. “Tyler, c’mon! It’s been hours! You’ve gotta be mostly done by now!”

After that, I heard Mom say, “Give him some time.”

Oh, shit, I forgot Mom and Dad hadn’t actually left yet. I looked at the clock and saw they still had about an hour before they had to get to the airport. Man, was I glad they were in on this and I wasn’t trying to hide anything. Well, I sorta wasn’t trying to hide anything.

I walked over to the door and unlocked it, then said, “One minute, then you can come in.”

Through the door, Alyssa exclaimed, “Holy shit, is that your voice?!”

Mom added, “It’s a very lovely voice, sweetie!”

Dad (who was also out there, apparently) threw in, “You could be a singer easy, champ!”

I sighed. This was starting to be embarrassing without actually having anything to be embarrassed about. I did have a pretty nice sounding voice, though. It was weird hearing it come out of my mouth, but then again my mouth looked 100% different now, so maybe it wasn’t.

I took a deep breath. “Alright, come on in.”

The door opened almost in slow motion, or at least that was how I perceived it. There was a loud creaking sound as it inched itself around its arc, and I almost felt like the hallway outside was shrouded in darkness. I knew it was just my brain playing tricks on me. My family seeing me like this for the first time was almost as nerve wracking as myself seeing me like this for the first time just a minute ago.

And then the door was open and all three of them were just instantly in the room, like time had sped up just as much as it had slowed down. Mom and Alyssa were at either side of me, apparently taking stock of what I looked like, while Dad just stood there and looked like he was silently judging me.

After about five minutes of poking and prodding, Mom finally said, “You look beautiful, sweetie!”

Lys nodded. “Yeah, you turned out way better than I thought you would!” She giggled. “There’s no way my friends are gonna believe you’re really my sister.”

I shrugged. “They’ll never know any better.” All three of them seemed confused. I explained, “The necklace alters peoples’ memories as long as I have it on. So long as nobody saw me before and after today, they’ll never know I was anybody but Bethany.”

Mom’s eyes lit up. “You already came up with a name? Bethany’s a wonderful choice!”

I smiled. “Thanks. I jotted down a bunch of different names and this one just felt right.”

Dad asked, “That’s not going to screw your mother and I up after we leave the house, is it?”

I shook my head. “Nope. You saw me this morning before the transformation. Lys’s friends barely pay attention to me at school or whenever they’re here, so as far as they’re going to be concerned, I’ll just be Lys’s awkward sister they barely know.”

Lys put her arms around me. “Then you’ll fit right in!” She turned to Mom and Dad. “So, you guys enjoy your trip, we’ll be just fine!”

“She’s probably right,” said Dad. “We should probably get going, anyway. Traffic’s a bitch this time of day, we’re gonna need to pay for the parking, go through the stupid TSA checks, yadda yadda yadda.” He patted me on the shoulder. “You kids have fun this weekend. No boys over, you understand me?”

Lys rolled her eyes. “Aw, c’mon! That’s half the fun!”

I crossed my arms. “I am here for a slumber party, not a bring-your-own-boy party.”

Mom gave me a really weird look after I said that.

---

We spent the first hour after Mom and Dad left playing dress up with my new body. Alyssa wanted to see how I’d look in different outfits, because of course she would. I’d assumed this would be one of those stereotypical things we did during the slumber party, not before, but she assured me that this would be the only time we did this.

Not like I really cared, though. I was having fun.

Just from the sheer amount of them compared to boys’ clothes and the fact that an addiction to shopping is a cliche girl trait, I’d always suspected that trying on clothes as a girl would be more entertaining and in a lot of ways more rewarding as a girl. Little did I know just how much I’d enjoy the different ways I could style myself with different outfits. I could look trendy in a white blouse, tan slacks and black pumps; I could look professional with a gray blazer and skirt and some slightly more modest heels; I could look cute in a tanktop, short shorts and a pair of sandals (naturally heels, because apparently Lys wasn’t letting me wear anything else); or I could sexy in a little black dress. Just altering the way different tops or bottoms showed off or covered my various assets was a treat. Some cleavage here, a little hint of asscheek there, a whole lot of leg with this one, show my stomach off with that one, the options were almost literally endless.

I could also tell that Lys was enjoying this more than she thought she would. She’d even joined in and the two of us modeled different kinds of outfits for each other. Matching outfits, contrasting outfits, complimentary outfits, we did everything under the sun and then some. We were almost to the point of wearing each other out just trying on her clothes. Making it to the slumber party was starting to look like a pipe dream.

That was when the doorbell went off.

I had just changed into a pair of shorts and a babydoll top when Lys ran downstairs to find out which of her friends had shown up first. I decided against putting on any shoes at the moment, because the feel of the carpet on my bare feet was surprisingly pleasant. I’d had no idea girls’ feet were more sensitive, or at the very least mine felt that way.

I hit the bottom of the stairs and saw Natalie was the first to arrive. She greeted me with a big smile and an almost bigger hug. “Bethany! It’s been a little while! I never see you at school or here anymore!” I guess that meant I wasn’t as awkward as I thought I’d be.

I giggled. “Yeah… I’m kinda busy sometimes…”

She broke off the hug. “Yeah, busy. Is that what you’re calling Jake these days?”

Lys gave me a confused look, but I had almost less understanding of why Natalie would bring up my friend Jake than she did. Unless…

Holy shit, were ‘Bethany’ and Jake dating?

My giggles turned to nervous laughter. “Yeah… Jake…” Now I was almost curious as to why the new me and Jake weren’t hanging out–or on a date, apparently–this weekend. God, what had I gotten myself into on that front?

I really should’ve expected it, though. The necklace changed reality while it was on, and assuming ‘Bethany’ was a straight girl, she probably would have a boyfriend, especially with how good I looked. That my best friend had become my boyfriend was a little weird, but probably not unreasonable. Now I just had to worry about him showing up and wanting to take me out on a date.

The three of us sat around the living room chatting while we waited for Emily and Yelena to show up. I was pretty sure Alyssa and I were both surprised when I somehow managed to join a conversation about Love Island with a surprising amount of knowledge on the subject, especially considering I’d never watched a single episode of it. I could only assume I’d read something about it while scrolling through social media posts or something, because I knew a little more than I was comfortable with.

Yelena was the second one to arrive, who also greeted me with a hug like we’d been friends our whole lives, and really as far as she was concerned, we might’ve been. Lys had known Yelena since they were in pre-school, so Lys’s little sister was probably a regular fixture in their friendship, even though she’d always regarded me with a mixture of disdain and scorn. I was almost curious how Emily would feel about me, as she and I had already been friends when I was Tyler.

Adding Yelena into the conversational mix brought with her discussion of the girls’ swim team, as Yelena was probably the school’s fastest swimmer and she was proud of it. In particular, she brought up a super cute boy she’d met from the last meet.

“His eyes were just…” She let out a moan. “God, I could get lost in them! And he moved like he was born in the water, way faster than I could do. He beat my time by six full seconds, and I was positive nobody in our county could do that!”

Natalie giggled. “So he’s dreamy and he can swim, is that all you’ve got?”

“Does he need to be anything else?”

“Uh, yeah, how about what he’s packing?”

Yelena shook her head. “I don’t need to know that until the honeymoon. After that, I don’t care what’s filling up that Speedo, I just know it’ll belong to me and we’ll be making mer-babies until I’m dried up.”

Lys laughed. “Okay, no way he’s that hot!”

“I mean, he probably couldn’t give Marcus any competition.”

I was actually kinda surprised Marcus hadn’t been mentioned up to now. Lys’s boyfriend, Jake’s older brother, and apparently Yelena’s yard stick for measuring potential boyfriends for some reason. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, admittedly, but I didn’t think Yelena had a crush on him. Weird, but something to think about.

“You’re being quiet, Beth,” Natalie said.

I looked up from my lap, where my eyes had drifted for no reason. “Oh, I’m just…”

Yelena giggled. “She’s just thinking about Jake, that’s all. Probably wants to blow off the slumber party to go make out with him!”

I felt my face turn red. Lys looked as amused as Yelena and Natalie obviously were. Now she had a little sister to tease about boys, she was practically giddy and I could see it clear as day. She’d obviously gotten over any reservations she had about this and was enjoying it as much as I was.

I posed like I was deep in thought. “Y’know, that does sound like an idea,” I said, playing into the person they thought I was.

Natalie laughed. “Girl, stop it! We haven’t had a slumber party in months thanks to you and Lys spending all your time with the Matheson boys.”

Lys asked, “Can we really help it? Marcus drives me wild and Beth and Jake have been dating since the crib.” She crossed her legs. “We just got lucky in love, that’s all.”

Yelena nodded. “Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before. It’s a shame there aren’t enough Matheson boys for all of us.”

Natalie giggled. “Imagine the five of us all dating the same family.” She looked at her watch. “Speaking of the fifth one, where the hell is Emily? We have rom-coms to watch on Netflix and she is taking forever to get here.”

Lys held up her phone. “She texted me a minute ago, she’s on her way, she just needed to get some of that airpopped stuff we all like.”

Yelena’s eyes lit up. “Ooooh, those popcorn chips? God, I love those. I will totally cheat on my diet for those things.”

I laughed. “I think we’ll all cheat for those.” I had no idea why I’d said that, because so far as I knew, I’d never eaten them a day in my life, but I did know what they were, since Lys bought them all the time. We probably had a dozen bags in our snack cupboard right now. Why Emily felt the need to buy any was a mystery to me.

The conversations continued like that for the next twenty minutes as we waited for Emily to arrive. The topics shifted, going through the cliche subjects like hair styles (Natalie liked mine, Yelena thought I could do better) and makeup (Natalie told me I ‘needed’ nail polish ASAP while Yelena tried to decide what color it should be) right back to, of course, boys (opinions here were just that Jake and Marcus were lucky they had me and Lys, because we could do so much better than them). Every topic brought with it more than its fair share of giggling and embarrassment from all of us, not just me.

What struck me as the most bizarre was that I was somehow a natural at all of this. I had genuinely taken a liking to trying to figure out what nail polish to put on when we got around to that part of the evening, and somehow I had a whole list of stuff Jake and I had done on various dates to justify that he and I were perfect for each other. Very little of this even felt like I was pretending. Lys and I even seemed to have complimentary stories when it came to a double date we’d had a few weeks ago. Something about this whole thing was kinda weird, but I felt myself getting too caught up in everything to really notice any of it.

Finally, Emily showed up with like seven Dollar General bags on her arms filled with Pop Corners. “Guess who’s here, bitches!” She unloaded the bags onto the kitchen table and then we were all ready to start our slumber party.

---

“Hey, Beth, what’s that necklace?” Emily asked me, the first one who’d even noticed it.

I touched it, having almost forgotten about it. “Oh, this? I got it for cheap at a thrift store.”

“It’s super pretty.”

I blushed. “Thanks. Jake told me he liked it on me, too.”

Yelena laughed. “Like Jake ever thinks you look bad in anything. You could wear a paper bag and he’d compliment you.”

“Hey, I’d look great in a paper bag, thank you very much!”

Lys was suddenly behind my chair and tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, Beth, can we talk upstairs a second?” She looked back at the rest of the group. “Nothing serious, just sister stuff.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good idea, be up there in a sec.”

Lys walked upstairs and I made a quick detour to the kitchen to grab a soda so it didn’t look like we were both rushing up there. I followed her a few moments later and found her in her bedroom, glancing at her phone.

“Shut the door,” she said, concern in her voice.

I did as she told me. “You said this wasn’t something serious.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I said that down there, to them.” She walked over to me and handed me her phone, where I saw a picture of the two of us at the beach from this past summer. Just out of frame was Marcus, his arms wrapped around her. I remembered this picture pretty clearly, but there was something different about it. It wasn’t a picture of Lys and Tyler, it was a picture of Lys and Beth, and Marcus wasn’t the only one just out of frame, as I recognized Jake’s hand on my shoulder.

“Oh, wow…” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah. Have you noticed that our responses to anything about… Well… You? I guess… Are a little too natural?”

I nodded. “Yeah, and I figured that’d happen eventually, not right out of the gate.”

Her eyes twitched a little. “Uh… What? You knew we were going to start remembering things about you this way?”

I nodded again. “It’s part of the magic of the necklace, otherwise we’d never know what they’re talking about. I just kinda thought there’d be a little bit more of a gap period.” I saw something in her eyes that almost looked like fear, so I reassured her, “We’re not gonna forget me, we’re just getting memories of my life as Beth so that we’re not out of sync with everybody else.”

“What about Mom and Dad?”

I shrugged. “According to everything I read, they’ll be like us and keep their original memories but gain new ones about Beth.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about this?”

I sat down on her bed. “I was kinda hoping we’d get further into the night before it mattered, and get too caught up in the fun.”

Sigh sighed. “Well… I guess if we were enjoying ourselves too much, we would’ve just rationalized it, so I can understand that. Plus, I can’t say it’s been bad knowing what my friends are talking about in regards to a little sister I didn’t have a few hours ago.” She sat down next to me. “So what happens when you change back? Do the Beth memories just fade away?”

I chuckled nervously. “I guess we’re gonna find out…”

---

“Stop it!” Emily exclaimed. “He did not!”

Natalie nodded. “I swear to god, yes he did!”

“No!”

Natalie turned to me. “He didn’t!”

I nodded. “Yeah, he kinda did.”

“Evan Hirsh was staring at my ass the entire time? And nobody told me before?!”

Lys giggled. “What were we supposed to say?”

“Only that the school’s most flamboyantly gay guy has been faking it this entire time to sneak peeks at me!”

Yelena shrugged. “It’s entirely possible you just look close enough to a guy for him.”

Natalie threw a pillow at her. “Bitch, shut up! You’ve been jealous of my ass ever since middle school!”

Lys laughed. “I’d rather be jealous of Emily or Beth in the ass department.”

Of course, Lys knew it was the same ass, so she’d make that kind of comment where the two of us were the only ones in on it. I rolled my eyes, but pretended I was flattered by it.

Emily finished off a can of soda and burped, which was hilariously boylike, something I wasn’t really ready for. “You’re jealous of your little sister, Lys? I’ve seen your mom, I wanna know which generation Beth’s ass came from, because that gene clearly skipped more than just one.”

I giggled. “I just got lucky, that’s all.”

Yelena leaned back on the couch. “I wish I had your kinda luck. My ass is more like a sack than a pillow and my tits are closer to a board.” She looked over at me. “I’m not too proud to say it, you’re kinda the hottest one here, Beth.”

Emily nodded. “No kidding. Some girls pay money to look as good as you, and you’re all natural.”

Natalie smirked. “At least I’m not jealous of you, Beth. I may only be a B-cup and my butt isn’t as big, but my guy likes me the way I am and I’m a thousand percent happy with that.”

Lys held up her hands defensively. “I’m not jealous, I’m just sore that I didn’t get to reap the benefits of our genetics the way you did.” She winked at me, hopefully out of view of everybody else.

“Hey,” I said, a gentle tinge to my voice, “we’re all pretty here, and I don’t see any of us hurting for male attention, either.” Mischievously, I added, “Except Yelena, who’s so desperate, she’s looking at mermen at Barnridge High.”

She threw a pillow at me. “Hey! He was hot, okay?!”

Through fits of giggling, Emily asked, “Is that so when people ask you why they smell fish, you can just say it’s your boyfriend?”

Yelena threw a pillow at her now. “You are so gross!”

Natalie said, “Hey, if that merman was hung like a seahorse, I’d be all over him.”

Lys added, “If that merman reproduced like a seahorse, I’d be all over him, because then he’d be the pregnant one and I’d never have to worry about stretch marks.”

“Look at Lys, using that marine studies elective knowledge,” Emily said in an almost mocking tone. “Guess it paid to sit in a classroom studying fish all day.

Lys snorted. “Paid off more than any of your electives have.”

“I guess you got me there, girl.”

Natalie clapped her hands together. “Okay, now that we’ve spent like two hours talking about boys and fish, let’s get to some movies while we do our nails!”

Yelena jumped up from the couch and grabbed the remote. “Hell yes! I’ve got just the one to start with, it’s called Our Little Secret, and it’s hilarious!”

---

“See, I knew it soon as I saw your necklace, orange is your color,” Emily told me as she finished painting the nails on my left hand. The right hand and both my feet were already done. I had to admit, she was right. Orange actually looked really pretty on me.

We were on our third movie by the time we got around to doing my nails, as it ended up being we’d spend the majority of a movie just picking out somebody’s color and then the last twenty minutes were usually spent actually painting anybody’s nails. First was Yelena (she got purple), then Emily (yellow) and then me (orange, like the necklace). It was fast approaching midnight, and we still had Natalie and Lys to go. Luckily, we had no shortage of movies to watch, and tomorrow was Sunday, so no school to worry about.

Up until now, I’d never known that picking out nail polish at a slumber party required everybody to agree, but we didn’t actually start painting nails until it was unanimous what color a girl was getting. We spent the majority of the time debating how the polish would compliment our features, our outfits, our jewelry, everything. Not a single thing was taken for granted, which led to a lot of debates not just about color but shade, texture, pattern. As I learned very quickly, boys know very little about what it takes to decide what nail polish to go with. I was kinda lucky that the necklace was giving me as much knowledge as I needed so I didn’t seem like the awkward one who didn’t know anything.

Natalie, next to me on the couch, yelled so loud that I nearly jumped. “No! Dammit, Veronica! He’s all kinds of wrong for you!”

Lys nodded. “Yeah, she should’ve gone with Liam. Looks and he actually cared when her grandmother died. I know who I woulda picked.”

“I would’ve gone with the pool boy,” Emily said with a smirk, “that man could fill out some shorts.”

I rolled my eyes. “He was in one scene.”

“One scene was all he needed to get me in need of a good hosing.”

Through a mouthful of Popcorners, Lys said, “You talk dirtier than the boys, sometimes.” She gulped them down. “It’s no wonder you can’t keep a boyfriend.”

I laughed. “Lys, I’ve heard you with Marcus before, you can talk dirtier than a boy.”

She snorted out a laugh. “You’re one to talk, just the other night on the phone, ‘Jake, next time you’re over, let’s put a few new stains on my sheet’!”

I felt myself blush. She’d heard that? Granted, that was a memory we had because of the necklace, but I thought I’d been a little more discreet about that. And the stains on my sheet, for that matter.

Naturally, all three of the others took note of that, each one turning to look at me. Natalie was the first to speak. “What’s this? Our sweet, innocent little Bethany has already given it up to her special friend?”

I tried to retreat into the couch cushions, but all I succeeded in doing was hugging a throw pillow. “Please don’t tell my mom and dad!” I squealed out.

Yelena jumped out of her chair and onto the rug on the floor. “Oh, you have got to spill it, girl! Details, now!”

Emily nodded. “I’m super curious. I still haven’t yet, and now I find out my bestie’s little sister has? I wanna know more!”

I sighed. The almost-but-not-quite-nonexistant cat was out of the bag now. I was almost angry at the necklace for giving me memories of having sex with Jake, even though according to said memories, I’d really enjoyed it at the time. I should’ve just kept my big mouth shut about Lys talking dirty to Marcus. I should’ve known it would backfire on me.

“You guys have got to promise me this never leaves the house, okay?” I asked.

Natalie did a mock Boy Scout salute. “Slumber party rules, girl, you know that.”

Emily nodded. “Yep, we take this to our graves, or our first sorority party when we get to college, whichever comes first.”

Yelena brushed it off like it was nothing. “I’ve kept my mouth shut about way bigger things than my friend fucking her boyfriend.”

I sighed again. “Okay…” I spent a second remembering what the necklace had cooked up for me, then started my story. “It was Homecoming night. Remember Rex Tyrell spiked the punch with his dad’s bourbon? Well, I kinda had a little too much, and after nearly killing myself in those six inch heels you” - I pointed at Natalie - “made me wear, Jake brought me home. I wasn’t quite drunk enough to black out, but I was definitely in a very impaired state of mind, and Jake’s eyes nearly popped out of his head when I just let my dress hit the floor.”

Emily’s eyes widened. “Holy shit, you just let loose right there?”

I shook my head. “Oh, no, I was drunk enough that I attempted very poor foreplay and nearly fell down the stairs. He carried me back into my room and tried to put me to bed, but I pulled him onto the bed and started kissing him. It wasn’t very long before his clothes were gone, and we went somewhere neither of us were expecting… Which for me meant right down on him.”

Lys looked confused. “What kind of foreplay involves the stairs?”

“Very poor foreplay.”

Yelena asked, “So how was your first time? What you can remember of it, anyway.”

I giggled nervously. “It was… Magic. Jake was so gentle, he went at my pace and he didn’t try to make me do anything I didn’t want to do. I’m pretty sure I went off before he did that night, and… Well… Several times before he did.”

Natalie laughed. “Holy shit! No wonder you two hold onto those Matheson boys!”

I felt myself blush again. “Yeah, that’s the only time we ever did it without a condom, and I made sure I got on birth control right away. Mom and Dad still don’t know, and I’d really like to keep it that way until I absolutely can’t.”

Lys put a hand on my shoulder. I assumed those were the details she knew about as well, since my Beth memories told me I’d let her know about my and Jake’s first time. Being able to confide in my sister about things like this was something I as Beth really appreciated, because Lys never judged me for what I told her, and it always stayed between us. It wasn’t something Tyler really got to experience, although Lys still wasn’t really judgy of me when I was a boy.

The rest of the girls were all just as sympathetic, which made me feel a whole lot better about telling them about this fake memory. Talking with them, laughing with them, everything about Beth was starting to become more and more real for me, and every passing moment made me feel less like I was just some boy pretending to be a girl and more like I belonged.

Beth was slowly but surely becoming a lot more real than she was just a few hours ago.

---

“So,” Mom started as she took a slice of pizza from the Little Caesar’s box, “how was your first slumber party, Beth?”

I scarfed down the slice I had in my mouth when she asked, then burped lightly. “It technically wasn’t my first, I have memories of a bunch of other ones.”

“Still, it was your first one really participating. How was it?”

I giggled. “A lot more fun than I thought it would be. And a lot more… I think ‘affirming’ is the only word I can think of to describe it. It felt like I found something I was missing.”

“And what would that be?”

Lys grabbed a slice and jammed it in her mouth, then said, “That she’s just as much of a chatty gossip as any other seventeen year old girl.” She took a drink of soda. “I’ve never seen her more comfortable than when we were doing hairstyling this morning.”

I turned my head from side to side to make my now wavy red hair shake. “I really like having long hair, okay? And styling it is fun!”

She snapped her fingers. “And Lifetime Channel dramas! She’s like an encyclopedia of ‘em!”

I turned red. “Okay, those I sorta watched as a boy, sometimes.”

She wolfed down a breadstick. “All in all, I loved having a little sister for the weekend.” She put her arms around me. “I hope we can do this more often.”

I nodded. “I don’t see why not. This was a lot more fun than I was expecting it to be. Except when you and Natalie had Jake call and try phone sex with me on speaker phone.”

Dad sat down and set his drink down on the table. “Kids still do that these days? I woulda thought phone sex with out with your mother’s and my generation.”

“All this tells me,” Mom said through bites of her pizza, “is that Alyssa’s been listening to your sister a little too much. Remember when she made us do that on our first Valentine’s Day as a couple?”

Dad nodded. “And I remember what you were wearing that day. A black V-neck sweater and nothing else.”

I looked over at Mom. “Ooh, Mom. Getting saucy on Valentine’s Day.”

She shook her head. “Not at all! Linda was over helping me get ready for our date that night and she called your father up and put us on speaker before I had a chance to finish getting dressed. She used to love pranks like that when we were younger.”

Dad nodded. “Six kids of her own took the prankster out of her.”

“Aunt Linda is my favorite aunt,” Lys said with a mischievous smile.

I jabbed her with my finger. “Whatever, you are not doing that to me again, even if Jake was the perfect gentleman about it.”

Mom perked up. “On the subject of one Mister Jake Matheson, I suddenly have a memory of helping you prepare for a birthday date with him, and you were wearing a very pretty yellow dress.”

I turned even redder than before. “Yeah, he took me to a hockey game, so I was freezing.”

Lys leaned closer. “I bet he kept you pretty warm, though,” she said in a sing-song voice.

Dad laughed. “I’d ask if I need to give that boy the Dad Talk, but I remember giving it to both him and Marcus at the same time.”

Lys nodded. “Marcus takes the time to remind me every time we make out that you made a big show out of cleaning your gun that day.”

I added, “And Jake likes to bring up the fact that you locked the door so they couldn’t get out.”

Dad smiled. “I do love my theatrics. Imagine if they knew the gun was fake.”

Mom chimed in. “My father did the same to this one” - She pointed at Dad - “when we were your age.” She took a drink. “Same fake gun, too.”

I finished off my pizza and put my plate in the dish washer, then stretched. After the rest of the girls left this afternoon, Lys and I had spent more time just doing sister stuff, and it had worn me out a bit. I loved every second of it, though, and wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

I walked upstairs to my bedroom and saw that at some point after the girls showed up yesterday, my bedroom gained a vanity and some yellow wallpaper I’d never seen before. We’d only raided Lys’s makeup supply for our nail painting escapades last night, so my room could’ve changed at any point and I never would’ve known until now. Those were the only overt additions, though I was positive my clothes had changed. I still had all my games, movies and all the other boy stuff I’d been interested in before, so despite overall being a girly girl, I had a little bit of tomboy in me.

I sat down on my bed and breathed a sigh of relief. I was a little disappointed the weekend was over, but I was also pretty sure it wouldn’t be the last slumber party I took part in. I’d had a lot of fun, and learned a lot about myself that I hadn’t thought I would. I’d grown a lot closer to my sister in the process, so this was a win pretty much all around.

My phone buzzed on my night stand. I grabbed it and saw a text from Jake. I smiled as I read it.

Did nybody figure it out?

I was really happy I’d told him about everything beforehand.

nope but i did tell them about our 1st nite, I texted back.

aw that ws supposed to be special

it still is babe

I left him a little heart emoji and tossed my phone back on the night stand. Maybe I’d let Lys know that Jake was in on it the whole time. Or maybe I wouldn’t. Either one was kinda fun.

---

“C’mon, girls!” Mom yelled from the hallway. “Time to get up!”

I sat up and yawned. At first, I thought it was weird that I felt like I hadn’t gotten a whole lot of sleep, but then I remembered that I’d been awake until about two in the morning texting Jake and realized I really hadn’t gotten a whole lot of sleep. After barely sleeping the night before thanks to the slumber party, I’d probably only gotten a few hours of sleep the whole weekend.

I heard Alyssa yawn as she asked, “Mom? Why did you say ‘girls’? Tyler should be back to normal by now.”

I presume Mom shrugged. “You were both girls when I went to bed last night, it’s already growing on me.”

I stood up and wandered over to my door half asleep. I had to pee something awful, and I could only hope I got to the bathroom up here before Lys did. It’s a stereotype that girls take forever in the bathroom, but it was one that Lys practiced to perfection. She could take upwards of an hour in there, and with Mom then using the downstairs bathroom and Dad in the master bathroom off of their bedroom, that usually left me the last one to get a chance to do anything.

I stepped out into the hallway, stretched and yawned. “Good morning, everybody!” I said through the yawn.

Mom, Dad and Alyssa all stood there staring at me, and in unison, they all stammered, “B… Buh… Beth?”

I blinked. “Yeah?”

“Wuh… How… Why… What’s going on?!” Lys screamed.

I scratched at my chin. “Did I forget to mention that I wasn’t changing back?”