This was done for the 'A Shifting Lesson Gone Wrong Contest' at MCBC. I admit that it's not that original, and kinda dumb. But I had fun making everything seemed overdramatic.

This is a tribute, in a way, to one of my favorite supporting characters in the Mediator Series…I think you know who I'm talking about. Sadly though, I own none of the characters in the Mediator series. Meg Cabot does.

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I had told him. Never mess with the shifting powers.

But did he listen? Of course not.

It all started on a Wednesday afternoon a few weeks ago. As usual, I drove to Paul's house for our weekly so-called shifting lessons. Although I've hardly learned anything from these lessons other than discovering that the best way to pass the time while Paul droned on about The History of Shifting was by daydreaming about Jesse. Or about what Andy would be cooking for dinner later.

I parked the car on the driveway and got out. The front door was naturally locked, so I rang the bell. After a few seconds, the door opened and Dr. Slaski's attendant, Mark, stood there.

"Hi Suze," he said, smiling as usual. I realized that I've never seen him not smiling. I guess you need to be a permanently cheerful person to be able to handle grumpy old men in wheelchairs. At least he finally stopped calling me Susan.

"Hi Mark," I said, and walked in.

"Paul's in his room," he told me. I nodded, and he walked to the kitchen while I made my way upstairs.

Paul's room door was closed, which was strange because usually he had left it open. Mostly because I asked him to, just in case he tried any stunt like the first time I went to his place. I knocked on the door a few times. I didn't know what he was doing and I didn't want to just walk in. What if he wasn't wearing anything? Or worse, doing something while not wearing anything?

Suze. Shut up and knock again.

I did.

"Paul?" I called out. There wasn't any sound coming from inside the room, and I wondered if he wasn't actually at home, and Mark had made a mistake. I realized that Paul didn't confirm our lesson for today at school like he usually did, and I wondered if he had forgotten about it. Which was fine by me.

It was then that I heard his voice, but it sounded vague. Like he was talking to someone else. And I almost ran back the car. I couldn't imagine if the door opened and Kelly was there. She would probably sack me from the student council board for trying to steal her boyfriend. As if I care. Well, not much.

But I couldn't stand not knowing what was happening, so I tested the knob, and found that it was unlocked. Bracing myself for the worst, I opened the door and peeked in, where I was greeted with a strange sight.

Paul was standing on the floor, surrounded by about a dozen of lit candles while he read something from a book that looked like one of those he used for the shifting lessons. He looked up as I walked in and his expression turned to shock.

"Suze! What are you doing here?" he said, looking a little panicked.

I couldn't say anything for a moment as took in the sight before me. When I walked further I noticed that there was another circle of lit candles besides the one he was standing on, and my heart started pounding. I didn't like what I was seeing.

"Paul, what are you doing?"

He shrugged, trying to look unconcerned but his eyes were guarded. "Nothing, I'm just trying on some stuff I found in the book."

I stared at him. "What kind of stuff? Paul, are you performing….an exorcism?"

My heart was racing, and suddenly I was so scared I felt like throwing up. He couldn't do that to Jesse. He promised.

He rolled his eyes. "No, I'm not. Okay? So can you please leave?"

I felt a little better, but I knew that I shouldn't trust so easily anything he said. "Maybe you shouldn't mess with these shifting things. How do you know if they won't go wrong?"

"Look, I know what I'm doing okay? I've done research and all that. I'm not stupid," he said, looking a little mad.

"Well, have you asked your grandfather? I mean, he would know –"

"That old man knows nothing," he cut me off, sounding furious. "I know what I'm doing, I've been a shifter all my life. You think walking to and from Shadowland is all we shifters can do? We can do so much more, things you can't even begin to imagine. You would have known that if you had paid attention in the lessons. But whatever, now it's my turn to apply what I've learned. Just the tip of all the things I could do."

I listened to him in alarm as I tried to understand what he was implying. He sounded like he had gone power-crazy or something. There was this crazed look in his usually cold blue eyes, and he was gripping the book so hard, it looked like the brittle pages would crumble in a few seconds.

Fumbling for words, I managed to say, "But what exactly are you planning to do?"

Paul stared at me, a twisted smile slowly appearing on his face. "You'll find out soon enough. But maybe you shouldn't be here, Suze. It might ruin the surprise. Just go."

Fear crept up inside me, and I realized that I didn't want to find out what he had in mind. Because it might be too awful to comprehend. But at the same time I had to know what he was doing.

He had started chanting the words again, and I was paralyzed with indecision.

"Paul, don't do this," I said anxiously. I called his name again to try to distract him but he ignored me. The thought that had first occurred to me emerged again.

Jesse. Maybe Paul was planning something about Jesse. It didn't look like he was planning an exorcism though, but what the heck did I know, according to him.

It was when a shimmer of blue appeared in the other circle of candles that I realized that I was right.

As Jesse slowly materialized, I knew I had to stop Paul. So I marched to his circle as Jesse said, "Susannah?"

Just as I was raising my hand to slap his stupid chanting face, Paul suddenly looked up from his book and the next thing I knew I had fallen onto the floor. It took me a few moments to understand the fact that Paul was protected in his circle by an invisible force of some kind. I made my way to Jesse and reached out to him, but my hand bumped into an invisible wall. He looked at me with a confused expression, and it was a sign of how hormonally-charged I was that I could still think about how good he looked even while his life – well, afterlife – was in danger.

All the while Paul continued chanting, and that's when I became panicked with helplessness. I didn't even know what the hell he was doing, even less how to stop it. The more time I wasted not doing anything, the more the process that Paul was doing proceeded.

Perhaps it was anger or frustration or stupidity that lead me to walk over to his bed, pulled out the box of shifting materials from underneath and took the books out before throwing it at him. Of course they bounced back from the invisible wall but I kept on throwing the books at him. Paul stopped his chanting for a moment to laugh at me. Jesse was cursing in Spanish, and now looked as if he could tear off Paul's head in an instant.

Paul stopped laughing though when one of the books that bounced back hit this glass ornament of some kind that was on his desk, which shattered into pieces. Before he could say anything about it, the next book I had thrown knocked into one of the candles of his circle, which thudded to the floor and went out.

All three of us looked at the fallen candle for a second. Then I picked up another book and threw it at Paul. It hit his head squared this time.

Realizing that I had to disrupt the circle in order to break the invisible force, I hurried over to Jesse to kick away one of the candles. Unfortunately, Paul was faster. He had pulled my arm and threw me to the other side of the room before I could even blink.

As he bent down to pick up the candle again, I felt a white hot fury swelled inside me. How dare he try to get between Jesse and me. He promised that he would leave Jesse alone if I attended his stupid shifting lessons!

Without thinking, I ran over to Paul and as he saw me coming he stood up, but I swung my arm and punched him. He stumbled backwards, mostly in surprise rather than pain. I swung my arm to punch him again, but he grabbed it and twisted it around my back.

"Suzie can't be a good girl and stay away, can she?" He said in this thin, scary voice. Then he pushed me off.

Despite the pain, I tried to hit him again. I didn't care anymore. He didn't seem like he wanted to hit me though, instead he kept pushing me away. Perhaps he shouldn't, because when I stumbled back after about the third time he had pushed me, I accidentally knocked over one of the candles surrounding Jesse. He stepped out of the circle, the force broken.

Jesse didn't waste any time in trying to get back to Paul for locking him in that invisible prison and so I found myself watching a re-enactment of that fight during the party at my house some months back.

This time though, there were no loud music to cover the noise of them crashing around the room and a few seconds later, Mark had stormed into the room and tried to disentangle both of them. Well, since he couldn't see Jesse, he was basically trying to stop Paul from fighting against himself. When he finally managed to pull Paul away from punching thin air, Paul wrenched out of Mark's grasp and rushed over to the opened book that he was holding before.

"Paul, the circle is broken. You can't do anything anymore," I cried out.

"I can!" He shouted, enraged. "It's too late, Suze! You're too late! So much for true love!"

And he chanted the final words that sealed his fate.

It was like everything happened in slow motion. I remembered jumping forward to tackle Paul but feeling scared out of my mind that it was too late, whatever it was, and Jesse and Mark calling out for me. Or for Paul. I didn't notice, in my haste to get to Paul.

Paul dodged me though, and shoved Jesse instead, back into the second circle. I remembered someone shouting – maybe it was me – and Mark coming forward to help and Jesse getting up again and Paul finally falling after someone – again, maybe it was me - brought him down. Everything was so noisy and chaotic it was a wonder that Dr. Slaski himself didn't wheel into the room to join the commotion.

Then there was a gust of white smoke, and everything went quiet.

A few seconds passed, and I looked around the room. Jesse was standing over Paul, who was lying on the floor besides me. I was sprawled on the ground, a few feet away from Mark, who was standing and looking very confused.

Jesse was the first to speak. "Querida, are you alright?"

Grasping his hand, I got up, feeling achy all of a sudden. I turned and saw that Paul was still on the floor, looking around with this lost expression on his face.

I was still angry at him, but it looked like Jesse was okay, and whatever it was that happened didn't affect him. Paul, on the other hand, looked as if he got the full strength of that blast. So I said tentatively, "Paul?"

He looked up at me, still looking lost and bewildered.

"Suze?"

But it wasn't him who said my name. It was Mark. I looked over at him, and he looked back at me in a stunned expression. He was definitely not smiling.

It was then that I realized what had happened. As I looked back to Paul on the floor and again to Mark in that circle of candles, the truth hit me so hard that I could only stare at them in silent astonishment.

And I didn't even cover my ears when a second later, the person who appeared to be Mark fell to his knees and screamed out in the most anguished and painful voice I've ever heard.

"Noooooooooooo!"

And that was how Paul Slater became stuck in the body of a 26-year-old blonde male attendant while the aforementioned attendant enjoyed life in the body of a 17-year-old shifter with rock-star looks.

Permanently.

Oh well. I told him not to mess with the shifting powers.