This fic is rated PG for mature themes.

Disclaimer: I don't own Arthur (yet).

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Judging from the sunlight creeping through the blinds of the west-facing window, it was late afternoon. So why was she lying in bed? She never took naps after school. She felt rather strange, so perhaps she was sick. Not only was she lightheaded and groggy, but it seemed that every part of her body was, inexplicably, sending her signals that they were no longer as she remembered them.

With some effort Muffy managed to push herself into a sitting position. Her head spun crazily. Her clothing felt unfamiliar against her skin. Cotton underwear? What had happened to her silk? "Ooohh..." she groaned, and her voice sounded somewhat lower in pitch, as if she had a throat infection.

She jumped down to the floor and fought to steady herself. It was clear she was no longer wearing her dress, or even the same shoes as before. The dizziness started to fade, and she shortly felt confident enough to walk.

Her braids, which normally bounced about her shoulders, were nowhere to be seen. Even her gait seemed off, as if her center of gravity had shifted. Perceiving with relief that she was in her own bedroom, she stepped slowly and hesitantly toward the full-length mirror.

She gasped in horror at the sight. The figure staring back at her had a body shape and facial features similar to her own, but resembled a boy instead of a girl. The reflection had short, neatly trimmed red hair, and wore a stylish brown polo shirt with a pair of matching corduroy slacks. Looking down, she saw a pair of brown leather shoes adorning her feet.

Having short hair came as an unpleasant shock, but not an unfamiliar one, as she had once cut most of it off to cure a nasty case of head lice. Yet the style of her new haircut, and the clothes and shoes she was wearing, represented the cutting edge of fashion...for boys. What had possessed her to make herself look like a boy?

As she gazed at the boyish reflection, memories started to trickle into her brain...

"Look over there!" she exclaimed, pointing at a display in the Toys-4-U store. "It's the new Princess Peach doll house!"

"I want it! I want it!" cried Prunella, who hurried along the mall corridor with the other girls in tow. When they reached the toy shop, they became disheartened at the sight of the price tag.

"$49.99," Fern moaned. "I can't afford that."

"Look at that construction," Francine marveled. "I'll bet it's solid pine."

Muffy dropped a hand into her pocket and started to draw out her wallet, then made a somber face and let it slide back in. "Maybe later," she said disinterestedly.

A few minutes later the girls were seated together in the food court, enjoying ice cream cones. "Muffy, I've never seen you pass up a new doll house before," Prunella remarked.

Muffy glanced up at her briefly and took another lick from her cone.

"Are you okay?" asked Prunella.

Muffy sighed. "I'm fine. I've just been thinking lately..."

"Look out, everyone," said Francine with a grin. "Here comes another crazy Muffy scheme."

"No, it's not a scheme," said Muffy solemnly. "I feel like...like something's missing from my life, and it's not a doll house."

"Whatever it is," said Fern, "it must be very expensive, or you would have bought it by now."

"No, I think she's talking about some kind of unfulfilled spiritual need," said Prunella.

Muffy looked at each of her friends in turn. "I really like you girls," she said earnestly. "I like shopping with you, I like trying on clothes with you, I like doing other stuff with you. The problem is...well, you're girls."

"I can change," Francine responded.

"What I need is a boy to do things with," Muffy went on.

"You mean, like a boyfriend?" asked Fern.

"Or a brother," Muffy continued. "But the boys at our school only care about sports, and action movies, and power tools. They have no interest in the finer things."

"What's wrong with power tools?" Francine wondered.

The flashback ended, and a horrifying realization gripped Muffy. Turning away from the mirror, she hurried into the bathroom and closed the door. After spending a few moments fumbling for the zipper, she pulled down the brown slacks she was wearing, and saw...

"NOOOOOOO!"

Alerted by the scream, Mrs. Crosswire burst into Muffy's bedroom. Seeing that the bathroom door had been shut, she knocked on it three times. "Are you all right in there?" she called out. Seconds passed, and the only sound she heard from inside the room was a child's bitter sobs.

Finally the door slowly opened, and a red-haired boy with tear-stained cheeks appeared before her. "No, I'm not all right," he said in a voice devoid of hope or happiness. "I'm a boy."

"Of course you are," was Mrs. Crosswire's calm response to what should have been startling news.

Then another figure appeared from behind the woman's back--a second Muffy. "Oh, good, you're awake," said the lookalike girl with a glib smile.

The boy who had been Muffy struggled to make sense of what he was seeing and hearing. His gender had changed, his mother didn't seem to care, and there was a girl in his room who looked and spoke exactly like him, or rather, like the girl he no longer was.

Stark terror overwhelmed his mind as his memories became focused and he realized the truth of the situation.

"Oh, no," he mumbled in a weak, anguished voice. "I'm the clone. I'm the freaking clone!"

Muffy nodded and kept smiling. "We decided to call you Dwayne, after Grandpa," she informed him.

The boy's eyes flashed fire. "Unclone me!" he demanded angrily. "I don't want to be a boy!"

"Calm down, Dwayne," Muffy reassured him. "You'll get used to it."

Dwayne, as he was now called, glowered fiercely at Muffy and her mother, and wished he could simply erase himself from existence. Their concerned gazes soon softened his indignant heart, and he lowered his face shamefully. "This is all my fault," he admitted glumly. "I didn't think about how a boy clone would react to having my personality. How could I have been so stupid?"

"You've only been alive for fifteen minutes," Muffy pointed out. "How can it be your fault?"

Mrs. Crosswire motioned to the boy. "Come into the dining room," she instructed him. "You haven't eaten yet, so you must be hungry."

Tears still streaming from his eyes, Dwayne trudged after Muffy and her mother. "This is horrible," he lamented on the way to the dinner table. "Now I'll be a boy for the rest of my life."

"Get over it," said Muffy flippantly. "Being a boy isn't bad, or at least so I've been told."

Pulling himself onto a chair, Dwayne brushed aside a sales receipt marked 1 CLONE, 8 YRS, MALE, $49,995, and reached into his pants pockets in search of a handkerchief. He couldn't find one, so Muffy handed him one of hers, and he mopped his eyes and cheeks with it.

Claude, the manservant, laid a plate of leftover chicken cordon bleu in front of the despondent boy. Muffy seated himself across from him, still smiling gleefully. "After dinner," she announced, "I'm going to introduce you to all my friends, and then we're going shopping."

Dwayne only grunted miserably.

"Don't you like shopping?" asked Muffy, her smile fading.

"Well, duh," the boy snapped. "Of course I like shopping. I'm you."

Muffy watched silently as Dwayne sliced himself a portion of chicken and hesitantly raised it to his mouth, as if unsure of how to eat in his new body.

"Maybe you need a little time to adjust," she suggested. "I understand. Hey, Mom, what time does the mall close tonight?"

"Nine o'clock," came her mother's voice.

Dwayne sighed bitterly. "Look at me, Muffy," he groused with a mouth full of chicken. "I'm a boy. How would you like it if you were a boy?"

Muffy pondered his question for a few moments. "I wouldn't like it at all," she replied in a serious tone.

The red-haired boy shook his head sadly. "Now I'll have to wear boy clothes," he complained. "I can never wear dresses again. I'll never be a fashion model, and I'll never get married and have babies."

"Look at the bright side," said Muffy cheerfully. "You don't have to sit down to pee anymore."

"You are so rude," Dwayne shot back. "My life is over, and all you can do is make jokes. You have no idea what I'm going through."

He took another bite of chicken while Muffy gazed sympathetically at him. While he chewed, the girl lowered her eyes and he started to hope for a helpful comment from her.

"I was wrong," she finally spoke up. "I thought you'd be an Autumn like me, but you're definitely a Winter."

Dwayne groaned despairingly.

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