I awoke with a yawn. When did I fall asleep? Whatever. As I arose from under the sheets, I examined my body, just to be safe. When I saw how much I'd grown overnight, that's when I got scared.

I was taller, but that didn't concern me so much as the expansion my chest had undergone. "Oh, great," I said with a sigh as I stared down at what I dearly hoped wasn't the result of some kind of discreet plastic surgery.

"Why am I looking at my boobs?"

"The hell?" I said.

"Who's that?" the other voice said, echoing my thoughts about her. "Who's in there?"

"In there?" I said. "I'm not anywhere. I'm in my—" and I realized, this wasn't my room I had been sleeping in. "This is Lily's room," I gasped, if the various American history-themed things scattered around the place were any indication.

"Claire?"

"Wait a minute." I rushed out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, where I looked into the mirror above the sink and screamed. "Oh my god!"

"I'm in your body, Claire!" Lily observed from her end.

"And I'm in yours!"

After staring at "my" reflection for a moment, I slapped myself in the face one, two, three times in a row.

"Ow!" I heard Lily cry.

"Sorry," I said, not quite sure if I meant it or not. I turned the faucet on and splashed some water in my face, for much the same reason I'd just slapped myself/ourselves. "You felt that?" I asked.

"Whatever your body does, mine does, too!" Lily explained. "It hurts!"

"I said I was sorry!"

"It's not just the slapping!" Lily said. "It's everything! I feel everything!"

"You mean, like, if I do this," I said, scratching the back of one hand with the fingers of the other, "you feel it, too?"

"Yeah! So stop it!"

"I can't just stop moving, Lily!" I said. Beginning to feel woozy, I moved to sit down on the toilet.

"Ow!" Lily cried, along with a crashing sound. My head pounded as the sound reverberated inside. "Claire!"

"What did I do?!"

"I'm in your house!"

"So?"

"There's no chair here!"

"So?!"

"I'm on my back in the bathtub here!"

"Well, what do you want me to do about it?"

"I already told you! Stop moving!"

"Claire?" the voice of an older woman I hadn't heard in a while said. I felt compelled to answer, until I noticed that the voice was only in my head.

Lily, however, was there to meet the one calling my name. "Aunt Lis—Mom?"

"My mom?" I said quietly, though it wasn't as if Mom could hear me anyway.

"Lily?" Aunt Sophia called from the living room.

"What are you doing in the tub?" Mom said to Lily, shortly after the sound of her footsteps stopped, presumably upon entering the bathroom at our house. "Are you okay?"

Thinking quickly, I remembered what we'd learned in the past few minutes. I gave a thumbs-up to nobody in my sights, but if I was doing this correctly, my Mom was receiving the signal.

"Fine," Lily told her. "Fine, Mom."

I watched Aunt Sophia step into the bathroom I'd been sitting in a moment later. "Who are you talking to, Lily?" she asked me.

"Let me help you up," Mom told Lily. I could hear her grab Lily's arms to do so, but rather than the reassuring sound of a body being lifted out of the tub, instead I heard the sound of a struggle, almost like she were trying to lift something much heavier. "Claire!"

"I can't move," Lily said.

I closed my eyes for a few seconds, now starting to get a clearer understanding of what was truly going on. My cousin was going through an inescapable hell, and there was nothing I could do about it.

"Lily?" Aunt Sophia said, placing her hand on my shoulder. "Did you hear me?"

"Wally, call a doctor!" I heard my Mom shout. My ears hurt from the panicked cry, and my eyes began to tear up.

"No," I said in response to what I was hearing with Lily and Mom in California.

"No?" Aunt Sophia asked me. "Why are you crying, Lily? What happened?" She kneeled down onto her knees to comfort me.

I tried not to move, for Lily's sake, but not only was this option just as bad as the alternative; I couldn't even keep it up for too long before failing. I had been looking straight forward, at the wall and floor of the bathroom I was sitting in, but Aunt Sophia lightly put her hands on my face and pulled it to look towards her. And I knew Lily could feel this change in direction. "What's going on?" Aunt Sophia demanded in a motherly fashion.

I couldn't even answer the question.

In my head, I heard another fast-moving set of feet, those of my father, as he entered the bathroom to see Lily, in my body, "sitting" on her back in the bathtub. "I've called 911," he said. "An ambulance is on its way. It's going to be okay, sweetie."

"Lily!" Aunt Sophia said, tapping me on the cheek. "Wake up!"

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Do you want me to call a doctor?"

"No, I'm just going to stay here, if that's all right."

"Why? If you don't tell me what's going on, I can't help you, Lily!"

"Claire, can you hear me?" I heard Dad say.

"Yes!" I said without thinking. I guess I secretly hoped that somehow, he would hear me say this.

But he didn't. He heard Lily instead. "Yes," she said in a whimper.

"Are you…" he said, swallowing to prepare himself for the possibility of living with a daughter who was "…paralyzed?"

"…Yes," Lily said. "…And no."

"What do you mean?"

"Lily, it's me," Aunt Sophia said, continuing her futile attempts to connect with me during these horrifying moments. "Your mother. Can you hear me?"

"Make it stop!" I screamed, jumping off the toilet seat. A second later, I heard another crashing sound, another painful echo through my head, as Lily was tossed around by my careless movement.

"Claire!" Mom and Dad gasped at once, while Aunt Sophia shouted, "Lily!"

"Lily, what happened?" I shrieked, flailing my arms around, again without thinking. "I'm sorry! Speak to me!"

"Is she having a seizure?!" Mom cried. Quickly, I stopped moving my arms. Or, I tried to, but the nervous fear the events we were experiencing caused them to keep moving, albeit in smaller, more controlled motions now.

"I'm calling a doctor!" Aunt Sophia said, running out of the bathroom to get the phone.

"I hit my head," Lily said to me. "On the wall."

"I'm so sorry!" I told her. I lifted one hand toward my mouth to begin biting my fingernails, only to remember soon thereafter that Lily was being forced to do the same. "No!" I said with an angry swing of my arm.

"You hit me!" Dad shouted. "Right in the eye!"

"Dad!" I cried.

"I feel like I'm gonna throw up," Lily said.

"We called the paramedics, honey," Mom said. "They're on their way, Claire. But you need to sit down now!"

I screamed louder than I ever have before.

"Lily!" Aunt Sophia shouted, running back into the bathroom where I was. "Whatever's going on, I promise you, we're going to fix it!" The phone still in her hand, I watched her speak into it: "Yes? Um, it's my daughter, Lily. I don't know what happened; I—I think she's hearing voices in her head or something. She's screaming, like she's trying to help them…."

"It's Lily!" I tried to tell her, even knowing how foolish I sounded. "She's me now, I'm Claire, and she's me!"

"…That's her," Aunt Sophia nodded while continuing to talk to the doctor on the other end. "She's talking gibberish. She's going crazy. No, nothing like this has ever happened before…."

"Hang up the phone! There's nothing you can do!"

"Sit down, Lily."

"Lily's in California! I'm Claire!"

"No, you're not, now sit down."

"No!" Scaring all parties involved, I ran up to my aunt to pull the telephone out of her hand, once again completely forgetting about my obligation to protect the cousin whose body I was controlling. I managed to grab the phone and hang it up, but not before hearing screams from my parents and Lily as the latter tore past them. "Where are you?" I asked Lily.

"Hallway," she grunted back. "Ow. Damn it! That hurt!"

"How many times do I have to tell you I'm sorry?" I said.

Aunt Sophia stole the phone from my distracted hand and said, "Who are you talking to?"

"Lily!"

"What?" Lily replied.

"No, no, your mom!"

"Lily!" Aunt Sophia said, rightfully thinking I'd just insulted her in some way.

"Mom?" Lily said. Meaning she could hear my world in her head just as I could hear hers in mine.

"Right here, honey!" my Mom told her.

"The trapdoor!" Lily shrieked. "Get to the trapdoor!" It took me a moment to register the fact that this order was directed at me.

"The trapdoor!" I repeated her words.

"Oh, no, you're not going to the trapdoor, Lily," Aunt Sophia shook her head.

But I ignored her and made a run for it.

Sadly, that didn't last long. I'd barely entered the kitchen before a force out of my control (for once) stopped me dead in my tracks, or nearly so. My head started spinning, my legs grew numb, and my eyes blinked rapidly in an attempt to stay open and awake. I collapsed onto the floor, unconscious. And things were only going to get worse from there.