Martin and Chris must have forced him to break up with me, I decided.

One of them probably had some hot chick they wanted to impress,

and they were planning on offering to let her take my place in the band,

once I was out of the picture. That had to be it!

But now that I knew it,

what was I supposed to do with that knowledge?

I couldn’t very well go up to Keith and say,

“Hey, I read in this book I found that you still liked me,

so why don’t we both tell the stupid band to go screw itself so we can go out?”

If he missed me so much that he couldn’t stand to be in Martin’s basement,

though,

maybe just seeing me would be enough to make him do all the work for me.

Of course,

I couldn’t just go over to his house,

not without some sort of an excuse.

I sighed, eyes wandering around my room while I tried to think of one,

until they landed on the stack of Keith’s CDs sitting by my CD book. Perfect.

I started to stand, only to pause over the book for a moment.

Should I look forward, and see if this was a good idea?

Maybe just a peek, to be sure?

Would there even be an answer there?

I hadn’t gotten far enough into the book to know if there was anything in it past that day;

even if there was, would looking at it,

especially if it told me that going to see Keith now was a bad plan, change things?

If that changed things, had my looking at the part that told what happened in the basement while I wasn’t there done anything?

Honestly, thinking like that made my head hurt, and wasn’t getting me anywhere.

I slipped a bookmark in, then closed the book and stashed it back in my desk drawer.

There was only one more of the cookies Lela had made me left,

so I decided to eat it for good luck, and resolved to call her back –

she’d left me a few voice-mails that afternoon that I’d ignored – a

nd apologize when I got home.

“I’m going for a walk!”

I called towards the kitchen after quickly changing into some normal,

slightly nice,

clothes.

“I’ll be back in time for dinner!” I didn’t wait for an answer.

I noticed my hands were shaking when I opened the door,

so I put my earbuds back in and started playing the music from that CD again to try and calm down.

I’d have to remember to ask Keith where he’d gotten it, or at the very least,

what group it was.

A block or so away, my car pulled up next to me.

“Where are you going?”

my mom asked through the window.

“Just going for a walk,” I told her.

“Do you want a ride?”

I shook my head. “I’ll be back for dinner.”

She nodded, pulled back out into the street.

I watched her drive away, then continued on towards Keith’s house,

turning the volume on my MP3 player up a little to try to cover up the sound of my heart thumping in my chest.

The Past Ain’t Through With You

I blinked a couple of times,

a great number of questions running through my head, not the least of which was,

“Where am I?”

Looking around gave me a quick, quite basic answer –

on a sidewalk –

but that didn’t help me very much.

It seemed like a familiar sidewalk, yet there was something strange about it, something that made it feel unfamiliar at the same time.

That feeling only grew worse when I stood, making everything start to spin slightly.

I reached up to take my earbuds out, wondering if it might not help to be able to hear as well.

It might have worked better, were I on a less boring street,

but it’s the thought that counts.

I was starting to get a headache just from looking around,

as my eyes tried to take in everything, something it normally would have had no problem with,

but now,

when everything looked wrong in some way I couldn’t quite place,

I wasn’t surprised.

I wanted to sit down;

other than the sidewalk,

however, there wasn’t really any place to do so.

What had happened to me?

My memory felt fuzzy,

hard to focus on.

I wondered briefly if I’d gotten mugged, but that wasn’t really the sort of thing to happen in this place,

certainly not while it was still bright out.

So what then?

I could recall looking at the book

, and grabbing the CDs,

and heading out

, and I thought I remembered a car pulling up next to me,

but there didn’t seem to be anything connecting any of that with where I was now.

In fact, I realized, looking around, I didn’t even have the CDs anymore.

Had I gone to Keith’s already?

Why couldn’t I remember it? Could it have gone -that- badly?

But wait, there was something else,

something right on the edge of my memory.

I had a feeling it was important somehow,

if I could only figure it out. I decided to sit down after all,

even closing my eyes as I did my best to concentrate,

putting everything into trying to salvage that one piece of the puzzle,

before it was too late and my memory erased it forever,

overwriting it with some insignificant little thing,

like how many lights were on in the house behind me,

or the sound of a car a few streets over, or the shape of the mailbox a block down.

That last thought made me pause,

heart fluttering momentarily as I realized that perhaps it was a clue to what I was trying to remember.

Before I could figure out how, unfortunately,

I found myself pulled out of my meditation by a sudden feeling of warmth around my bottom.

My eyes sprang open as I forced my bladder back under my control.

I hadn’t had an accident in…

well, I couldn’t even remember how long!

Certainly, a very long time.

What was wrong with me?

How serious was whatever had caused this sudden loss of memory?

I glanced down at the crotch of my pants, making sure I couldn’t see a wet spot there,

while lifting my bottom and feeling there as well. Luckily,

it seemed as if I’d stopped myself before causing any serious damage to anything beyond my panties –

not that that wasn’t bad enough. But while I was checking, I noticed a few other things.

First of all, my pants had seemed to have grown appliques of ladybugs on the pockets, staring up at me with smiling faces.

Secondly, my shirt, which was a bit low-cut,

I admit, had grown an extra patch of fabric, nullifying that act of immodesty.

However, the third thing made that rather irrelevant, as I realized that, somehow,

I no longer had anything to show off with a shirt like the one I had originally put on.

My hands darted up to my chest,

as if expecting to find my breasts hiding there.

“Wh-What’s happening?” I asked out loud,

followed by a gasp as I heard how high my voice had suddenly become.

A slow, impossible realization dawned on me considering why everything had seemed so odd when I’d come to, or whatever I’d done.

Everything looked huge, far bigger than it should.

I reached up further, to my hair, pulling some in front of my face.

All of it was blonde, as was the handful from the other side I looked at.

My hands looked smaller, too, more soft and fragile somehow,

my fingernails painted bright pink, a color I hadn’t tolerated in years.

“Oh, crap,” I whispered, letting go of my hair before clenching my little hands into fists.

“What the hell is going on?!”

At another time, it might have been funny to hear my kiddy voice cursing,

even as lightly as that, but I wasn’t in the mood to be amused.

It was the book. It had to be.

This was some kind of punishment for looking at something I wasn’t supposed to,

and trying to use that knowledge for my own gain. I should never have chased that girl down…

She was probably a guardian angel or some weird thing like that.

Or… Even if it wasn’t the book’s fault, it had to have the answer as to what actually -did- do it. Right?

And some way to change me back. Assuming,

of course, that I ever could do that…

Then again, if the book was somehow the cause of this in the first place,

would trying to solve it with the book just make things worse?

Or maybe using the book like that was something she wasn’t supposed to do,

so there wouldn’t be anything in it about this at all.

Of course, it was possible the book had no connection to this whatsoever.

But people didn’t just become younger, no more than they just found books about their own lives.

Having both things happen to you, in so small a span of time, seemed like much too big a coincidence to ignore.

But really, I reasoned, people -didn’t- get younger.

That was impossible on a whole other level than the book,

since I’m pretty sure it broke a few laws of physics or something.

I was dreaming, most likely, or I’d done some weird sort of drug while I was at Keith’s –

which probably meant we had patched things up, at least.

A quick and painful pinch ruled out the first.

Common sense should have ruled out the second,

since, as far as I know, Keith wasn’t into any crazy, illicit substances,

nor would I normally have partaken in them if he’d offered.

If he was, though, and we’d just made up, then I guess I might have been a little more willing to try. I must have been…

But that didn’t help me at the moment.

What was I supposed to do?

Should I go home, not knowing what I was going to wind up seeing next?

If this stuff was powerful enough to make me actually -feel- like my body had changed –

I tried to ignore that I’d never heard of anything that powerful,

consoling myself when I failed by reminding myself I didn’t have extensive knowledge of such things –

who knew what would happen?

My parents were going to know something was up if I started seeing my food get up and dance on my plate or something,

because I doubted I could just pretend that I -wasn’t- seeing something like that.

I’d just go back to Keith’s, then.

I’d call my parents, tell them I was going to eat at Lela’s, maybe even spend the night, then head over there.

I could get an explanation of just what the hell he’d given me at the same time.

It was as good a plan as I was going to come up with,

so I reached into my pocket for my phone.

But what I found there wasn’t my phone.

Sure, it was a phone, and it probably worked, but it was much clunkier,

and cheaper looking.

My real phone was probably made mostly of plastic,

too, but it wasn’t nearly as obvious as it was on this one.

I flipped it open and was greeted by a couple of frames of an animated sun smiling and waving at me.

My stomach began to tighten up into a knot.

“I’m going crazy,” I mumbled out loud.

Maybe I should have Keith come get me instead of trying to make it to his house…

If he wasn’t fried, too.

His number wasn’t listed in my contact list, though, nor were the vast majority of my friends’ numbers.

The home was right on top of the list, with my parent’s cells under that.

My grandparents were in there, too, but other than that, the only other number was Lela’s.

I tried to remember Keith’s number, but all I could come up with was the area code,

and the first four numbers,

which didn’t do me a lot of good.

I looked through the phone numbers again, and finally, I bit the bullet and pressed the dial.

“It took you long enough,”

Lela answered her phone, sounding a little annoyed.

“I was wondering how many times I was going to have to call and apologize to your voice mail…”

“Lela, you have to come and get me!” I blurted out, surprised to find myself sniffling.

“I don’t know what happened, but I’m freaking out!”

“Calm down,” she ordered, going into the voice she used when she was babysitting.

Any other time, I’d have found it annoying, but it actually was a little soothing. “Where are you?”

I glanced up and down the street, trying to figure out the answer. “I-I think this is Oak Street.”

“I’ll borrow my mom’s car,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Thank you,” I sighed in relief. “Thank you so much.”

“No problem,” she assured me. “See you in…”

“Oh!” I interrupted. “Can you call my parents and tell them I’m eating at your house tonight?”

She paused for a moment before answering. “Are you?”

“Yes?”

“Then I guess I can. Just sit tight.”

I hung up, set the phone down on the sidewalk beside me, and hugged my knees to my chest.

How did I get myself into this stuff?

Or, rather, why did I let myself get talked into it?

Was I really that helpless to Keith’s (admittedly not-inconsiderable amount of) charm?

I had only let him talk me into trying marijuana once while we were going out,

but after getting him to take me back –

or perhaps during the course of convincing him to do so? –

I’d let him talk me into whatever this was? How desperate was I?

It literally was only a minute or so before I heard a car on the street,

and looked over to see that it was Lela’s moms.

It might as well have been Lela’s, really, since her mom and dad worked the same schedule and rode into work together in her dad’s car,

but every once in a while her mom would take it out somewhere.

A moment later, I heard my phone ring.

“Your parents were acting really weird,”

Lela informed me as soon as I answered.

“But it’s fine. You’re clear for staying over tonight if you need to, too.”

“Thanks…” I said, confused.

“But why are you calling to tell me?”

“Well, I’m on Oak Street, but I don’t see you,

so where do you think you really are?

I thought you might mean Oak -Drive-,

but that’s all the way on the other side of town, and…”

“I see you,” I told her, feeling the knot in my stomach twist,

and tears start coming to my eyes…

“I’m right here!”

“Where? The only person I see outside is some little girl…”

She stopped as she saw me wave to her, then her voice took on a chilly air.

“Is this some practical joke?” she demanded.

“You really had me scared, Skye!”

“It’s not a joke,” I whimpered, star