The treehouse wasn’t very far into the woods, but it had been a while. It took Carter about ten minutes longer than it should have to get there with how many times he needed to retrace his steps. He moved quickly, kicking up dead leaves and keeping watch for other people about that he’d have to avoid. Once or twice he tripped over his skirt and tumbled.

He was low on time. The shadows of the trees were getting longer, and the light against the ground was noticeably tinted yellow.

When he finally found the treehouse, Carter hesitated. What if she wasn’t there? Because unless he’d been wrong and she had run to a friend’s house, that meant she’d be spending the night alone in an unknown, unsafe location.

As much as he hated her right now, he’d rather get into trouble because she told the neighbors he scared her away.

The treehouse itself was pretty dilapidated. It had been three years since Carter and his friends had last used it, and even then they’d been using it since they were nine and their families put it together for them. A short four-year tenure for the treehouse, if not for the face that Victoria and her friends had moved in afterward to girl it up when the boys left.

He approached slowly, trying not to step on any leaves or twigs. But his shoes kept sinking into the wet dirt and it was clear they were made to look good and not endure any kind of serious trekking.

She’d probably heard him stomping through the leaves on the way here, but he still walked slowly as not to alert her of his presence. There were curtains over the windows, so even though he kept his gaze trained on them he couldn’t see anything inside.

Once he reached the rope ladder, though, stealth was out of the question. Hoping not to slip off with the slippery shoes he was wearing, he took a deep breath and started climbing.

There was the sound of scuffling inside. So she was here.

Or, at least, he hoped it was here.

And that she was alone.

He pushed the trapdoor open and pulled himself inside.

Victoria was easy enough to find. She was curled up into a corner and sniveling, the book clutched firmly to her chest. She was glaring at him, but didn’t maintain eye contact.

She was angry, but Carter wasn’t entirely sure she was angry at him. At least, not exclusively.

Carter closed the trapdoor, causing Victoria to jump when it slammed shut. He sat down on the bench, which was covered in dirty, girly cushions.

There was silence for a time, broken only by the occasional sniffle from Victoria.

“Why did you do this?” Carter asked.

Victoria gave an empty laugh before saying, “I just wanted to spend time together. That’s all. If I left you alone, you’d just spend the entire weekend on your computer and pretending I don’t exist. Just like always. It sucks not having a brother or sister who wants to be a brother or sister.”

Carter didn’t want to look her in the eye after that. It was true enough that he’d wanted the weekend to himself; he still felt like he’d earned that much. It wasn’t like she couldn’t have asked to do something together any other weekend.

But he also couldn’t convince himself that he’d have wanted to say yes to any such offer.

“Why not just tell me this, then?” he asked.

“You wouldn’t have listened,” she said, “Or just called me a liar.”

“That’s not—”

“Ever since middle school started,” she continued, “all the kids stopped hanging out together. They found other friends. I didn’t, and nobody in the neighborhood wanted to stay my friend. Now there’s nobody to come over and play. I wanted just one friend, and I wanted it to be you. At least you might be able to tell me what to do about it.”

Carter was having a hard time blinking away tears. It must have been the child’s body that was causing him to be so emotional. There was no way he’d…

Dear God, that stung.

“Why weren’t you just honest with me at the start?” he asked, wiping away the tears from his eyes now. “I would have believed you about that.”

“I…” she started crying again, “I was afraid you’d say I was just a loser or something. That I didn’t deserve any friends for being so weak.”

“Victoria…”

“I thought… if I made you act like an older brother or sister, you’d see what you were doing wrong. And then I’d get to spend time with a sister for once. I was always jealous of Amy and Tiff for having older sisters.”

Carter was silent. He wondered if it was him spending so little time with Victoria that made her want a big sister, or if she’d have felt like that anyway.

How was it she had a family and still ended up a lost and lonely kid?

“Did you ever talk to mom about this?”

“She’s always just saying to ‘be patient’ and ‘try talking to people’. She doesn’t care.”

“She cares,” Carter said quickly, “She just doesn’t… know what it’s like to be in middle school. It’s been like… a hundred years since she was in school.”

Victoria laughed at that, despite herself.

At least she could still laugh, Carter thought. He felt pretty shitty himself, to learn that all this was happening to his sister and he’d done nothing but make it worse.

He wasn’t ready to forgive her for what she did. But he understood where her heart had been this whole time.

“So what about the spell?” he asked.

“Sorry about that,” she whispered.

“No, does it really last twenty-four hours? It will wear off, right?”

“Yeah. I was telling the truth about that. I never got good at dispelling things.”

“Well, can’t you at least try?”

“No!” she cried, causing him to jump, “I don’t know what it will do to you!”

Carter took a moment to recompose himself and changed the topic.

“So… how does the spell work, then?”

Victoria glanced down at the book in her hands and set it off to the side.

“There’s a spell,” she said, “I have to take a picture of the person being transformed, place it on top of a picture of the person you should look like, and rip them both at once while saying the spell. I didn’t have a second picture of you, so I had to use a different spell to fix the first picture.”

“Convenient,” he mused, “Wait… you need a picture? Then how come I looked like just a girl version of me the first time?”

Victoria opened her mouth, but didn’t answer immediately. Then she shrunk down even further and said, “I used mom’s high school yearbook picture.”

Carter wasn’t entirely sure he was going to be able to keep his balance. His vision was pretty blurry and he could almost feel vomit crawling up his throat.

He saw his teenage mom in her underwear.

There was not enough therapy in the world…

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he eventually managed to stutter out.

It was getting pretty dark in the treehouse. Carter glanced out the window to see the ground shrouded in darkness and only a few beams of light dancing through the trees.

Victoria was still curled up in the corner and walking gently. Occasionally a whimper would escape her.

“We need to get home pretty soon,” Carter said, “I don’t want to be stranded in the dark. I don’t think either of us remembers the way home well enough for that.”

Victoria just nodded and slowly stood up, grabbing the book as well.

Carter was the first down the rope ladder. Briefly he considered taking off the shoes, but then he’d be walking on the cold ground with nothing to protect his bare feet.

Plus, they’d return to full size and he didn’t want to have to carry a pair of his mother’s dirty shoes.

Victoria followed Carter slowly, meaning that they weren’t outpacing the darkness like Carter wanted. Victoria clearly wasn’t in a good place, though, barely responding to Carter’s questions with only a grunt or two.

Carter was worried about her, but he was also worried about getting lost in the woods or somebody they knew seeing them and taking a picture.

Still, there was probably nothing to be done about it. They made it back to the backyard and in the house without too much difficulty.

The twins kicked off their shoes, one pair transforming back to normal except for being caked in dirt (Carter would have to do something about that before their parents got home), and Carter told Victoria to wait while he ordered Chinese for delivery. Neither particularly felt like leftover pizza right now.

They might have a lot of leftovers to explain to their parents when this weekend was over. But of all the things on Carter’s plate at the moment, that was definitely the single-least worrying.

Once the order was confirmed, Carter sighed and leaned back into his chair. Now that he was wearing a less-restrictive skirt, he had gone back to stretching out his legs as he sat. His arms were a little sore; at his height now, the desk came all the way up to his chest, so he had to keep his arms up high to reach the keyboard.

Now that he had a moment to reflect, the surreality of being his sister’s clone was finally starting to sink in.

Carter returned to the living room and plopped down on the couch beside Victoria. She tensed up a bit, but didn’t say anything and didn’t scoot away. The spell book was sitting on the side table, out in the open and unguarded.

She wasn’t even trying to take control anymore. It was like she’d lost any agency whatsoever.

Maybe he wasn’t remembering everything correctly, but somehow Carter found that more frightening than anything else he’d encountered today.

“You want to watch TV?” he asked. He knew his voice must have sounded the exact same as hers, but coming from him it sounded different.

If he recorded it, he’d bet it would sound just like Victoria on the playback, though.

“Not really in the mood. Here.”

She gave him a weak toss of the remote.

Carter simply put it to the side and brushed some hair out of his face.

“Maybe next weekend we can do something to patch up the treehouse,” he said, “It’s probably still good enough that we can fix all the problems. Maybe install a glass window on top to look out at the stars? Or… the branches of the tree I guess. Never mind that part.”

Victoria just grunted and slid down in her seat.

Carter sighed and flicked on the TV to a random channel. Sound and light filled the room, but it didn’t really improve the mood. Carter let his shoulders drop and sank down in his seat as well. He began to rub his head against the couch, causing his hair to frizz up with static.

“So my friend Ben and I have been fighting about this game…” he started.

Victoria gave him a weird look.

“…it’s all pretty stupid,” he admitted, “But things are still pretty tense between us. He won’t even let me copy his homework. Which sucks because Mrs. Johnson is a bi—er… she’s really throwing on the homework.”

A chuckle escaped Victoria, but she crossed her arms and looked away.

“Mr. Cecil is just as bad. Less homework, but we have an essay due every two weeks.”

“Ugh… I hope I don’t have to take his class.”

“He teaches geometry.”

“What?” she turned to face him. Carter was keenly aware that she didn’t have to look up towards him anymore. “How can he do that? He can’t make you write an essay for a math class.”

“I know, right?”

“That’s just as bad as Ms. Miller. She assigns all the homework at the beginning of the week, but we can’t do any of it because she hasn’t gone over it all yet.”

Carter winced.

“I remember Ms. Miller. Does she still have that mole on her left cheek?”

“Well duh, how do you get rid of a mole?”

“Makeup?” he offered, “Cosmetic surgery?”

Victoria laughed, and Carter joined her. They were laughing at the expense of someone else, but they were laughing again.

They continued, and dinner arrived about halfway through their conversation. Carter, the eldest despite his appearance, had to handle the delivery ma. He also had to lie and say that their mother was home and in the shower to alleviate the man’s concern.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Victoria eagerly awaiting to tell him something new and continue the conversation. Despite himself, he couldn’t help but smile.

They talked through dinner, though they did take a… probably inevitable turn.

“You know… Alex and Daisy would probably freak out if they woke up in each other’s bodies.”

“What about that cheerleader down the street? What’s her name? Can’t you just imagine her suddenly looking six feet tall?”

“The first thing she’d do is pass out in terror.”

The two laughed, and Victoria put down her fork, her plate empty.

Carter added, “You know that if we ever did any of that, we’d have to tell them about the magic and they’d just want in?”

“Yeah,” Victoria admitted, “But it’s fun to think about.”

Carter nodded in agreement.

Victoria shuffled about in her seat a bit.

“Hey… can I ask you something?”

“Yeah?”

“Would you… brush my hair for me?”

“Um… okay. Sure, yeah. Just let me put away the dishes and leftovers.”

Carter met Victoria in her room. She was sitting on her bed with a brush that she handed to him.

This was pretty surreal, Carter thought. If not for everything else that had already happened today, he’d be almost certain this was a dream.

He sat behind her and placed the brush uncertainly on the top of her head.

“Ahh! No!”

“What?” he asked, “I thought you wanted this?”

“You have to start from the bottom so it doesn’t get tangled.”

Carter rolled his eyes but did as she asked, pulling the brush through her hair and moving it around every few strokes.

“So…” Victoria began, “Is it really that bad, being a girl?”

Carter stopped for a moment to consider the question, and continued brushing.

“It isn’t being a girl that’s the problem, he told her, glancing at his small hands and hairless arms, “It’s just that you forced me into it and tried to control my behavior. I probably wouldn’t have said yes if you’d asked me, I know, but it was still wrong of you to do.”

Victoria began to shrink underneath him.

“But…” Carter continued, trying to salvage the situation, “It did make me curios. So there’s good with the bad as well.”

Victoria didn’t respond, but it seemed like she was thinking it over.

“Hey, so… feel free to say no,” he began, “But, um… I was thinking…”

He definitely had her attention now.

“Can I try on one of your dresses?”

“Now you want to try on a dress?”

“It’s stupid. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. It’s just…”

She got up from the bed and went to the closet, where she picked out a yellow dress and brought it back to Carter.

“Here, this is one of my favorites.”

Carter took the dress in his hands, his heart pounding ferociously in his chest. He stood up and looked toward the door.

“Okay,” he said, “I’ll be right back.”

He returned to his own room and stripped out of his skirt and top before sliding the dress over his head.

It fit… perfectly, of course. And it still looked the same as when he was holding it.

He returned to Victoria, his stomach churning once again.

“Oh, so that’s what I look like,” she mused, “Except your hair’s a mess. Let me brush t.”

Carter followed her motion towards the bed and sat down. The feel of a brush through his long hair was a brand new sensation. But she was gentle, probably more gentle than he was with her own hair.

“So… if I’m wearing your clothes when the spell wears off… what happens to them?”

“Um… I guess they get torn up. You’re going to have to take it off before that.”

“Well I’m not wearing this forever,” Carter said, rolling his eyes.

Victoria finished brushing his hair and let it fall around his shoulders. He stood up and swayed a little, noticing how the dress and his hair responded to his movements.

“So what’s it like wearing a dress for the first time?” Victoria asked.

“A lot like wearing a skirt for the first time,” he replied, “Just… roomier. Like a toga or something,”

“Have you ever worn a toga before?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then how to you know what it feels like?!”

“Ugh.”

He sat back down on the bed, pulling his legs together so his knees touched. Victoria sat beside him, still looking at him for direction.

She still looked tense and uncertain, as if she were a deer waiting to bolt at any moment.

She still didn’t really feel comfortable around him.

He couldn’t leave this hanging over her head forever. Even if it meant that his heart wasn’t going to be in it.

“Victoria, I… I forgive you for what you did.”

Victoria looked stunned. Carter opened his mouth to say more, but she quickly grabbed him in a very tight hug. He started to object, but closed his mouth as she started sobbing in relief.

“Thank you,” she said, once she had stopped crying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He patted her on the back, insisting, “It’s okay. Just try not to get too many tears on your dress.”

Carter did give the dress back to her and changed into his own pajamas, which then immediately transformed into a bright pink ensemble decorated in cartoon kittens. When he got back into the living room where Victoria was waiting in her own pajamas, she looked as if she wanted to trade outfits.

“You sure we can’t have ice cream?” she asked, plopping down on the couch beside him.

“After all that candy earlier? No. We’d both feel sick.”

He changed the TV’s input to the DVD player and hit play, also stifling a yawn in the process.

“No we won’t. You’re my age now, remember? You’re not an old man anymore.”

“But I am in charge, and I remember being your age and thinking I could do the exact same thing. I couldn’t then and I couldn’t now.”

Victoria just rolled her eyes.

“I’m already letting you watch a second PG-13 movie today,” he reminded her, pointing at Iron Man on the menu screen, “We can have ice cream tomorrow.”

“Alright, fine,” she said, rubbing her eyes, “Just hit play already.”

It was barely 7:30 when they started the movie, but Carter saw Victoria yawn a few more times (it must have been contagious, because so was he) before she eventually just couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore. And after such a long day, he couldn’t blame her. He was going to be out soon enough.

He quit the DVD and turned off the TV set, throwing the remote to the floor before leaning back himself.

Technically, there was still a full day of him looking like his sister to get through. And he might just go stir crazy sitting in this house all day. And there would be problems if their parents got home early or they had to leave the house themselves for some reason. And for all he know falling asleep made the spell permanent or something—though if that were the case it probably wouldn’t last twenty-four hours. But it was late and it was getting hard for him to care.

At the very least, he knew that he wouldn’t feel nearly as much outside his comfort zone tomorrow. And it would be a relief not to have his stomach doing backflips all day.

And, if he were being completely honest with himself, in the last few moments of consciousness remaining that he wouldn’t remember in the morning anyway: in a roundabout fashion, Victoria’s plan did work. They were indeed closer as siblings, and hopefully would be for the rest of their lives.