Nathan ran a hand through his hair, organizing it, straightening it, all while looking into his phone camera, just to make sure he looked presentable. He’d been doing this since he first rang the doorbell, which had to have been minutes ago at this point.

He put his hands in his pockets nervously. What was taking them so long? He didn’t want to drive all the way to his parent’s house for forty-five minutes only to learn that his family didn’t trust him anymore. They couldn’t have given up on him that quickly. Didn’t he deserve a chance? If it were them, he would’ve-

The front door opened, and in the doorway stood Mrs. Parker, Nathan’s mother.

Tears built up in Nathan’s eyes. It’d been so long since he’d seen her face. He almost forgot what it looked like.

Mrs. Parker was about to say something, but she was cut off by Nathan hugging her.

“I’m sorry.” He said, sniffling through tears.

Mrs. Parker was shocked, but nevertheless returned the hug.

“Nathan, I… what are you sorry about?”

“Everything.” He said. “I’m sorry about… drinking. I’m… sorry about… not see…ing you. I’m sorry about… making you… worry about… me. I’m sor…ry I turned my life… to shit. I’m-”

“Nathan.” She interrupted. “Why would we be mad at you?”

He didn’t respond, he didn’t know how.

“We’re not mad at you.”

“Dissa…pointed?”

“No, we just wanted to help you.” She answered. “We still love you, you know. I was worried you forgot.”

Nathan gripped onto his mother tightly, his sobs not stopping for a second.

“I did.”

***

Sitting in his old favorite chair in the living room, Nathan could smell the exact same smell he remembered from his childhood. The wooden floors were still emitting the same subtle wood scent, even after all these years.

What a way to welcome him back.

It was odd that the old house didn’t quite feel like “home” anymore. Nathan guessed he’d been away from it for too long. Though being inside did make him feel like a kid again. Pretty hard not to feel that way when he cried to his mother as a twenty-four year old man.

Yeah, that was kind of embarrassing. But maybe he just needed to see her in person again.

Mrs. Parker came back out into the living room. “The others won’t be here for a couple hours. Your dad’s out watching some orchestra and-”

“Dad’s watching an orchestra?” Nathan asked. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Mrs. Parker took a seat on the couch across from Nathan’s chair. “He was talking about it for a while. He wanted me to go too, but I can’t stand the noise.”

“I get that.” Nathan agreed. “What’s Kate doing?”

“I don’t know.” Mrs. Parker answered, getting out her laptop. “She’s at a friend’s house doing… whatever, I don’t track this stuff anymore.”

“Oh.”

She opened the laptop. “Well, make yourself at home. We’re gonna be making some dinner later, if you wanna stay for that.”

“Uh… of course.” He answered. “I’ll… be up in my room then… or, what’s left of it.”

Mrs. Parker smiled. “It’s really nice to see you again. I’m sure Kate will be very happy.”

Nathan nodded, smiling. “Yeah, I’m sure she will.”

***

Walking through the first floor hallway, Nathan was surprised to see how much of the house had stayed the same, but he wasn’t sure why he was surprised. One year was, relatively speaking, not a very long time, it just felt like his time away had been so much longer. The neverending insanity of the past few years must have seriously fucked up his sense of time.

Nathan turned to the stairwell to the second floor, about to walk up, then he immediately stopped.

Another switch. Why did it have to be now, of all times?

Natalie groaned and leaned back against the wall. Nothing about this visit felt personal anymore, which was a real shame. Nathan was so happy to be here, why couldn’t he go a full day without her interrupting?

Back in her timeline, there wasn’t much drama between her and her family. She still visited her parents every few months and kept in close contact with Kate. No one had reason to worry until a couple weeks ago when Mr. “I’m so glad my name isn’t Ben” Dover bailed on her and disappeared. What a prick. If she ever got her hands on that man she’d feel sorry for what she’d do to him.

…Maybe she should’ve visited her parents back when she was still Natalie.

Well, if she had to be in charge for the time being, she might as well check out her old bedroom and see what was different about it. Who knows? It could be an educational experience.

She made her way up the stairs and, looking around the house with her own eyes, she could confirm that yes, it was much the same. Every room was in the exact same place and all the windows were in the same area. The house looked identical, save for a few of the photos framed on the wall.

Natalie stopped in front of one of the family photos, one she remembered being taken when she was thirteen. In place of herself and the dress she wore that day was an awkward looking early teen boy wearing a suit and tie alongside her father. Aside from that, the photo was exactly the same. Her parents and Kate were wearing the same clothes and stood in the same positions.

Natalie’s eyes became fixed on Kate and she snickered. This photo was taken when she was what… six? Seven? Somewhere around there. Either way, Natalie recalled some messages she found while reading through Nathan’s and Kate’s phone conversations. Quite a few of them were about Kate having always wanted a sister, much to Nathan’s annoyance. She laughed. At some point Kate should really send Astian a letter to wherever the hell “magic prison” is. Maybe he’d appreciate the thanks.

Taking a couple steps forward, Natalie’s eyes laid on the next photo, one taken on graduation day. Thankfully Astian wasn’t in it, just Nathan, and he was wearing a black cap and gown as opposed to the red one she wore. Her high school was one of those ones that had boys and girls wear different colors for graduation. Yeah, she had grown up in a hick town, if that wasn’t obvious enough.

The next photo in line was a picture of Nathan in a boy scout uniform against an American flag. Wait, she’d seen this one before, this was when Nathan became an Eagle Scout! She recalled that the neckerchief he was wearing in this one looked different from the one in other scout photos.

She looked at the picture with as much envy as she did when looking at any of Nathan’s other scouting photos. It wasn’t fair. Sure, some people might say winning a state championship in cheerleading is just as big an accomplishment as becoming an Eagle Scout, but no one actually believed it. Scouting was way more important. Employers were always going to hire the former boy scout over the former cheerleader. That was just the way of the world. It wasn’t enough that Natalie had to steal Nathan’s life, she had to take away his status as an Eagle Scout too.

No, she shouldn’t be going down that train of thought. Not now. She had to remember what Nathan told her, to stop saying so many awful things about herself. It wasn’t her fault, and acting like it was wasn’t helping anyone.

Natalie sighed. She tried to lighten up her mood by thinking about how her parents would one hundred percent be the ones who’d never shut up about their son being an Eagle Scout. They’d wear that shit on their sleeve, displaying it on their car as if it was their accomplishment. She failed to suppress a laugh, yeah they were those kinds of parents all right.

Natalie saw her bedroom very close by and almost went inside, but was stopped when she saw the last picture to the side of the door, a picture of Kate and some other teenage girls in cheerleading uniforms.

So Kate was a cheerleader in this timeline too? Natalie hadn’t expected that. The whole reason Kate became a cheerleader in the first place was because she wanted to be more like her big sister. Then again, Kate clearly wanted to become a cheerleader of her own volition. Even if she didn’t have a sister, she’d still want to be one, just with some other justification of “why”, so Natalie supposed it wasn’t really that surprising.

Natalie took a few more steps forward and, low and behold, there it was. Her old bedroom. Or Nathan’s bedroom, more accurately. It’d been a while since she’d been in there, she wondered how much of it was left. Nathan’s bedroom must’ve been pretty different from hers as well, or maybe it was the same. She was all too eager to find out.

When Natalie finally opened the door to Nathan’s room, the first thing she noticed was that, as a teenager, Nathan did personalize his living space, at least a little bit.

The second thing she noticed was that his bedroom was more similar to her’s than she first expected.

The setup was, for the most part, exactly the same. The closet was still to the right of the front door and was covered by a pair of bifold doors with a lightswitch to the side. She flipped it and, just as in her timeline, the light didn’t come on. That bulb had long since burnt out and no one ever bothered to replace it. The room still had the same queen sized bed laying across from the door, though the sheets, covers, and pillows were gone, just as she remembered. A small flat screen TV laid to the left of the bed and the right of the closet, sitting there idle and unplugged. It was laying above a tall, skinny set of drawers made of the same wooden material as the smaller, wider set in the front of the bed. The room even had the same constellation poster right beside the bed to the right. She chuckled, she missed that poster. She might take it with her before she left.

That was where the similarities ended, however. The walls of this room were a light yellow, whereas in her timeline they were a light blue. She didn’t know why that of all things changed, but she could speculate. It might’ve had something to do with her parents, mainly her father. The room had been yellow from the start, and blue was always Natalie’s favorite color. So her father, being a “girl dad”, would probably be more susceptible to repainting his little girl’s room to her favorite color. That was her theory at least. It wasn’t like she had much to go off of, but that’s what made the most sense.

She assumed there were other differences too. It’s safe to say teenaged Nathan didn’t have a vanity set or a storage box of pads in his room, and probably didn’t have girl’s clothes in his now empty drawers and closet. Of course, it was a bit hard to compare the differences when the room had been stripped of half its contents. It was a little sentimental being in such a barren room once filled with life. It reminded Natalie of the simpler days, the better days, the days before Astian.

The days that didn’t happen.

Natalie shook her head and left the room.

***

Man, there were a ton of photos here that Nathan left behind.

Natalie flipped through another page of the photo album labeled “Nathan” and saw more of what were mostly boy scout photos. These ones looked like they were taken when Nathan was about fourteen. There was a picture of him and a bunch of other guys she recognized from her old school in berets. There were some adults with them and Nathan was holding an American flag. This must have been from one of those veteran’s day parades. She remembered those. Did this town still do them? Probably, there weren’t many towns as in love with traditions as this one.

There was another picture of Nathan, the asshole, and a few other guys in swimming clothes at a lake. Nathan was wearing a shirt, but no one else was. And was it just her or did Nathan look a little… uncomfortable? Natalie hadn’t noticed until then that once he was a teenager, Nathan was never shirtless in swimming photos. She kind of felt bad for him. Back then she always thought guys were a little mean to other guys who didn’t like going shirtless in the water. It reminded her of how girls could be mean to other girls who didn’t like wearing bikinis.

How they could be mean to her.

She closed her eyes. That train of thought was sure bringing back some pretty shitty memories. Ones she tried to forget but always came back with a vengeance.

She sighed as her mind replayed the events against her will.

At the end of eighth grade, right after the last day of school, there was a pool party being held at some kid’s house. She didn’t remember their name but they were a junior at the time and her friends all said they were going. So she went with them, and she was excited too. What fourteen year old wouldn’t want to hang out with all the cool high schoolers?

The problem was that she didn’t feel comfortable wearing a bikini.

She said that to her mother and she said “oh sweetie you don’t need to wear one if you don’t want to. I bet your friends are uncomfortable about it too. Besides, no one is going to care.”

And Natalie believed her. Why would people care that some middle schooler wasn’t wearing a bikini? Looking at it now, anyone who’d want that is kind of creepy. So she decided to wear a wetsuit to the party, full body coverage. She didn’t expect anyone to notice.

Once she actually got to the pool, people noticed. And they laughed.

“What a dork.” She heard one guy say.

A few older girls came up to her and mockingly asked if she was going surfing. Natalie retorted and said “no”, intending for it to sound menacing and certain, but it came out whiny and petulant, as if she was a toddler. She got red in the face afterward.

“You better go catch some waves, hun.” One girl said to her. She took a bucket and filled it with pool water, throwing it all on her.

Natalie immediately began crying and ran away, trying to ignore all the laughter. She hid in one of the bathrooms and desperately tried to dry herself off, texting her mother to come and pick her up. She was acting exactly like some lame kid trying to fit in with the cool crowd, the one the older kids all saw her as. They won, she lost.

And she never wore a wetsuit again.

Natalie breathed in deeply. There was something about that memory where recalling it made her feel like she was fourteen again. Right in the center of all that mockery. Intellectually she knew that, as a grown woman, she shouldn’t care what some dumb teenagers did to her ten years ago, but sometimes it was just too hard.

But hey, on the brightside, she could rest easy knowing none of that actually happened!

Somehow that made it even worse.

***

“You know, I don’t really like swearing, it’s not professional.” Mrs. Parker said while chopping up onions. “This is more a personal thing, but I always thought it makes a person look dumb. You especially shouldn’t swear in a job interview, but this man didn’t seem to understand that. Or that you should come to an interview not smelling like weed. Or that you shouldn’t start an interview with ‘nice tits’. Really, I still don’t get how some people are so bad with self-awareness.”

Natalie hadn’t been paying attention to her mother, instead just sitting at the table and lazily checking her phone. She kind of felt bad for it, but she wasn’t in the best of moods. Hopefully her mother would understand.

“Uhh… yeah.” Natalie gave a non-committal reply. “I get that.”

“Oh, there I go again, talking too much, not seeing that no one’s listening” Mrs. Parker laughed. “I need to stop that.”

“No, I don’t mind.” Natalie said. “People need to talk.”

“Well… thanks. It’s nice to have someone to… at least talk at. It’s better than nothing.”

“It is.” Natalie agreed. “It really is.”

If only she had someone she could really talk to.

“You know Nathan.” Mrs. Parker started. “You look very nice today.”

“Don’t remind me.” Natalie thought. She hated the fact that she could only look “nice” as a man. Men were supposed to be hot in the sense that they were someone else, someone she could caress and feel so loved and protected with. She didn’t feel that way about men at all anymore, not since she switched realities. The idea of loving men as a man was repulsive, and any time she saw a man she would’ve found attractive as Natalie, she couldn’t stop thinking about her own male body and was instantly turned off.

But, it was a compliment, and she didn’t want to be rude so she tried to thank her. And, truth be told, if she had to be a man, she’d rather be a good looking one than one that looked like a slob.

“Thanks.” Natalie replied. “But… I don’t really look nice.”

“But you do though! You put yourself down too much. You look nice when you, you know, put some effort into it.”

“No, I’m ugly.” Natalie said before she could stop herself.

“Oh now don’t say that. If you have to go there then I have to remind you of this poor little boy that cried in elementary school because he thought he was so ugly.”

Wait, what-

“It’s not easy being that boy’s mother. You can assure him that he’s handsome, but he says you’re just saying that because you’re his mom. But you tell him that since you’re his mom, you know him the best. And that he takes after you, and looks like you, so if he’s calling himself ugly, he’s calling you ugly too. So you ask him if he thinks you’re ugly, and that’s when he stops. You then tell him that everything in the world is beautiful, even him. Now, I don’t like that story. I don’t like telling it, but every time you say you’re ugly, I have to bring it up again.”

…

She might need to discuss some things with Nathan later.

Mrs. Parker turned the stove on, putting the chopped onions, tomatoes, and garlic into a pot, alongside some sticks of butter and salt and pepper.

“I think you’re gonna love this tomato sauce, Nathan. I’ve been spending a lot of time on it. It smells very nice. Why don’t you come and look?”

Natalie stood up from the dining room table and walked over to the kitchen, looking into the pot.

“It does smell good.” Natalie said.

Mrs. Parker smiled. “I knew you'd like it.”

“Well hey, I haven't eaten it yet.”

Mrs. Parker hit Natalie's shoulder.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry.” Natalie said. “It looks better than Dad’s cooking anyway”

“Yeah I don't know what's up with him. It feels like he doesn't try.”

“Maybe we can teach him.”

“That would be a very annoying day.”

Natalie and her mother shared some laughter as Mrs. Parker brought them into a hug.

“Nathan?”

“Yes?”

“It's good to have you back.”

Natalie returned the hug, leaning her head into her mother's shoulder.

“It's good to be back.” She said.

If only Nathan could've experienced this in-person.

***

It was only a few minutes later that a knock was heard on the front door.

“Oh.” Mrs. Parker said. “I forgot to say, I didn’t want to tell your dad or Kate you were here, I wanted it to be a surprise. I just wish I could see the look on their faces!”

“I bet Nathan would too.” Natalie thought.

“I’ll remember to tell you about it.” She replied. “And are they both here now?”

“Yeah, your dad picked up Kate on his way home.”

Kate didn’t have a car in this timeline yet either? That was a shame. Were her parents having money problems?

“Well, don’t keep them waiting.” Mrs. Parker said. “Go on.”

Natalie grinned nervously, nodding her head and finally making the long trek to the front door. She didn’t know where all this sudden hesitation was coming from. Maybe she was afraid they’d somehow know she wasn’t Nathan. Or that Nathan wouldn’t be able to experience seeing all his family again himself. Shit, switch back! Switch back now! She couldn’t be clogging up all his time like this!

Natalie sat on the living room couch for a moment, trying desperately to force her mind back to Nathan. She couldn’t take this from him, he deserved this more than anything. She was being a real-

At the first sign of dizziness, Natalie stopped. No, she wasn’t going to pass out and live through another terrible memory, not with her family in the house. Nathan definitely wouldn’t want that.

So, to get it over with, Natalie quickly went to the front door, seeing the impatient figures in the window and opening the door to let them in.

Those figures, her father and Kate, both froze in place upon seeing her.

And in less than a second, Natalie switched back to Nathan.