Girl For A Spell
By Ellie Dauber

Email Ellie Dauber

Friday

Alan was back in the morning.

I climbed out of bed and carefully stripped off the nightie. It had looked great on Alice, but it was much too small for me as Alan, so tight that it was almost painful to wear. It was also still a little damp from my - from Alice's, umm - exertions of the night before. Still, I was very careful as I took it off. There was still a little of Alice in me, I guess, because I was thinking that I didn't want to tear anything that pretty. I stuck it in the dirty clothes hamper and headed in to take a morning shower.

Fifteen minutes later, I was dressed and downstairs. Aunt Therese had breakfast waiting.

Jerry and Phil didn't want to have much to do with me at school, which was fine by me. Phil had a black eye and walked a little hunched over as if his ribs hurt. He claimed that he had tried to help an old guy who was being robbed and had gotten beaten up for his troubles. Well, it sounded better than the old "I fell down some steps" routine, though very few people believed him.

I did run into Rick Medford. He stopped me in the hall on my way to Algebra. "How's your cousin?" he asked.

It was a little weird. As Alice, I really liked him - liked him enough that it scared me. But as Alan, he was just another friend, a guy that I'd known since grade school but didn't hang out with very often. "Okay, I guess."

"She say anything about what happened - about last night?" He was definitely worried that Alice might have said something to Aunt Therese, and the date would be off. I wondered if it would have made a difference. Aunt Therese might have enjoyed knowing how I'd panicked when Phil grabbed me, and how I'd needed a male protector just like any other weak, timid little girl. Of course, I couldn't tell him that.

"I was upstairs when she came in. I heard her talk to our Aunt for a couple of minutes, then she went to her room. I don't know what they said, but, from the tone, it sounded fairly routine." I decided to have a little fun. "Why? Did something happen that my Aunt and I should know about?"

He squirmed. "No! Ah - you know how it is, Alan. I'm spending time with a girl that lives with you. I thought that she might have said something about how she feels about me."

"So you want me to spy on her for you. Nope, we don't tell each other's secrets in my family." He looked really sad, and I decided to toss him a crumb. "I will say that she's really looking forward to that date you have with her on Saturday." Before we could say anything else, the bell rang. We both had to run to get to our classes. I thought that I might see him after school, but I didn't. Of course, I couldn't wait around to look for him.

I got home about five minutes before the change. Aunt Therese was sitting in the living room reading from some over-sized book with a leather cover; _The Joy of Witchcraft_, maybe. She looked up as I came in. "Good afternoon, Alan. I thought that we might have something easy this evening, so I'm sending out for pizza. You can putter around as Alice until I call you for dinner."

That sounded simple enough. As I headed upstairs to change - my body and my clothes - it occurred to me that Aunt Therese had been a lot more pleasant the last couple of days. Maybe, she was mellowing. Or, maybe, timid, ladylike little Alice didn't put as much of a strain on our relationship as I had as Alan. Whatever the reason, Aunt Therese could be fairly nice when she wanted to be. Having seen what she could do when she was angry, I decide that her nice side was _much_ more preferable. I decided to encourage it by behaving better.

Then I remembered that her wanting better behavior was exactly why she'd turned me into Alice. Was the whole thing some kind of mind game? I planned to think about that after I'd changed.

It was 4 o'clock. I didn't need to hear the bank clock. I could feel the change begin. My hands were getting smaller, my fingernails growing out and shaping themselves. I loosened my pants and let them fall past my widening hips. I stepped out of them and out of my shoes -- which were, again, far too big - at the same time. It was trickier taking off my T-shirt as my breasts grew out. As I pulled the shirt off over my head, I felt my hair -- so short a minute ago -- fall down against my neck and back. Anybody looking in my room would have wondered why pretty little Alice Webster was standing there in her cousin's jockey shorts and socks.

She didn't wear them for long. I stepped out of the shorts, holding my feet, so the socks came off at the same time. I walked over to the dresser and picked a matching lemon panty and bra set from my drawer. I stepped into the panties, pulling them up tight against my butt and hips. The nylon felt so much better than Alan's cotton shorts that I wondered why I'd even tolerated them as a boy. I put my arms through the straps of the bra, leaning in to get my breasts into the cups. Then I reached behind and fastened it as if I'd been doing it for years instead of for a few days.

As I walked over to get a shirt and blouse from the closet, I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror. Even without any make-up I looked pretty good. Phil and Jerry would kill to see me looking like this. Not that I wanted them to see me like this. It was too bad that they were such jerks. They were both kind of cute. Rick was much more handsome, but they weren't too bad looking.

I'd listened to both guys brag about their sexual exploits for years, and the memories of some of their stories flooded back into my brain. If only a third of them were true, they were both accomplished lovers, and I wondered -- What was I thinking? It was bad enough to fantasize about Rick, but now Phil and Jerry. "Don't go there, girl," I said to myself.

I decided to do some homework before dinner. The Library closed early on Friday, 6 PM, so I didn't expect to see Rick until tomorrow. I thought that if I could get all my homework done, I could spend some time with him on Sunday. I'd have to see how the date went, but it sounded like a good idea. Especially since I was going to have to stay home and write that paper the first part of next week.

English was easy, read some more of _Jane Eyre_, the book we were discussing in class. I finished a chapter and put the book aside. It had gotten more interesting now that I was Alice, but I was well ahead of the class discussion. We had no civics homework, since we were supposed to be working on the paper. I spent a half hour going over Spanish vocabulary, then moved on to Algebra. I was still working on math problems, when Aunt Therese called me down for the pizza.

I was a little surprised at what she'd ordered. First of all, it was the small size, rather than the medium one that I would have expected. More important was the kind of pizza. She'd ordered half with just mushrooms, her favorite, I guess, and half sausage, onion, and extra cheese, my favorite. This was the first time that we'd had pizza since she'd arrived. How had she known?

"Well, I am a witch, you know, Alice." She reached in and pulled out a slice, carefully putting it on a plate.

"As if I could forget." I picked up a slice and took a bite. After that we didn't talk much, just ate. I finished that piece and another, but I had trouble with the third. I left almost half of it. I guess my stomach was just smaller. Aunt Therese ate about as much as I had, leaving some crust and part of a third slice. No wonder she'd only order the six sliced small pie.

After we finished the pizza, I found myself cleaning up without even being asked. Something Alan would never have done. I also found that I was starting to think of Alan in the third person, as if he were somebody else and not my real self. Did Alan -- did I -- think about Alice the same way? I thought that he -- that I -- did, but it still bothered me.

I went in to watch some TV. Aunt Therese was watching the news. I sat down on the sofa and tried to listen, but after a while I found myself getting a little bored. I looked over and saw that Aunt Therese was doing something with a needle and thread.

"It's called embroidery, dear," she said without looking up. "Would you like to try it?"

I figured what the heck and went over. Aunt Therese showed me the stitch she was doing. Then she threaded a second needle and let me make a couple stitches in a corner of the fabric. It was really easy and a lot more fun than I'd have expected it to be.

Aunt Therese reached into a big cloth bag, something shopping bag size, next to her chair. "Ah, here you are, dear. I got this in the mail a while back as a promotion for that new crafts store in the Maytown Mall." She handed me a small paper bag with a picture of a strawberry on it. I opened it up to find a piece of white cloth, a line drawing of the strawberry showing what colors went where, and a little cardboard piece with about six different shades of colored yarns wrapped around it.

Aunt Therese fit the cloth to plastic circle from her bag and showed me how to thread the needle. In a few minutes, I was happily sewing away.

It only seemed like a short time had passed, when Aunt Therese mentioned that it was past eleven o'clock. I looked at the embroidery I had been working on. The strawberry was about half done. So were the leaves and a little of the decoration around the edge. And it looked pretty good.

Aunt Therese agreed. "I thought that you might have a bit of talent for sewing," she said.

"But I can't sew," I said. "I mean, I, as Alan, can't sew." I'd tried to sew on a loose button one time a couple months ago, and I was all thumbs. Suddenly I realized what I'd been doing. How could I have a skill as Alice that I didn't have as Alan

"But you're not Alan, dear. That is, you and Alan are two different personalities, two different people within the same body. The same magic that keeps you from knowing about cars the way he does also gives you skills, or, rather, the potential for skills that he doesn't have."

It seemed simple enough, but it bothered me. Alan and Alice were two different people. But I was Alice a lot more of the time than I was Alan. If I stayed Alice too long -- if I didn't change back over the Summer -- would there be any of Alan left.

I gave Aunt Therese bit of a sad smile. "I'm not sure I like that, but I did enjoy learning how to do embroidery. Thank you, Aunt Therese." All of a sudden, I felt very sleepy, so I added, "and good night." I put down my work, promising myself to get some more of it done over the weekend. If I got it done before I changed back to Alan full time, it would make a nice souvenir. I yawned and went up to bed. It never occurred to me that the thought of not_switching back to Alan wasn't quite as scary as it had been a few days before.

As I changed into my nightie, I realized how much later it was than I had been going to bed. Since I was going to be Alice all weekend, I didn't need the extra sleep to have the energy for the change. I'd just have to remember not to stay up too late on Sunday.

And, best of all, it meant that I could stay out later with Rick. What had Aunt Therese said? Be home by 11:30. That was time enough for a lot of things to happen. I was beginning to think of some of them, then I dozed off. Smiling.

...continued on Saturday