2

"Uhhh…" Justin Russo took a deep tired breath and blinked his eyes. Pulling his sheets up, he turned to his side, repositioned his arm under his pillow and once more tried to enter his dreams with Hilary Duff feeding him strawberries on a blanket during a picnic in paradise. A rascally thought, the image of her big brown eyes staring back upon him and the ideal of joining in a kiss with her danced through his thoughts. He opened his eyes to his bedroom, glanced on his alarm clock and tried slipping back to the realm of fantasy. A brief image of his bedroom from the fireplace to the wall of books and the sight of fencing swords mounted above the bureau and he sunk deep beneath the satin sheets with his face within a goose down pillow.

This was not his bedroom.

His conscious mind next had him jumping up and scrambling to his feet from the four-poster bed. His feet landed on plush carpet, and he spun round standing in his underwear wondering where he was. Where was he? How'd he get here? His eyes passed from the Victorian furniture to the oak chest at the foot of the bed. The room was paneled in mahogany like the great castles of England. It was decorated not with the trappings of a modern teenager, but with the pursuits of a young British heir. There was the bust of Shakespeare with the antique pewter bric-a-brac on the bureau, the mini-statues of naked scantly-clad goddesses mounted on pedestals in the corners, the fencing swords over his right shoulder on the wall and the large armoire of clothing belonging to whoever rightly lived here. The fireplace was carved from marble tarnished with soot and highlighted atop with the painted austere image of a forgotten young prince in silver armor. The books on the shelves were in a majority of diverse subjects, from history to fiction and the arts, but mostly the works of the ancients such as Ovid, Homer and Hesiod as well as the classics… De Foe, Du Maurier and Champlain. His eyes rounded in surprise, Justin slowly suppressed the shock trying to recall how he got here, and then, gradually recalled the last thing he said to his sister.

"Ohhhh, stupid, stupid…" He slowly sat down on the edge of the bed. "What did I do? What do I do?" he sighed and rubbed his head trying to stave off the last vestiges of sleep. "I've got to get home… where's my wand?" He started looking around the room.

The door to his personal bathroom opened and someone came striding out wearing a heavy blue flannel robe. Her short blonde hair was still a bit wet, and she pulled the belt tight to keep from flashing any parts of her body. Surprised at her sudden appearance, Justin skirted his body to look over his shoulder and slid off the bed on to the floor, looking up at child's eye level at this beautiful girl not at least distressed to see him in this room.

"Yeah, I used your bathroom again…" She stated matter of factly. "What are you going to do about it?"

"What?" Justin looked at her confused, realized he was only wearing underwear and started tugging the blankets off the bed to cover up his bare chest.

"Oh, please…" His new sister chuckled a bit. "I used to change your diaper. It's nothing I've seen before!'

"What?" Justin repeated. She was his older sister?

"William…" The voice of another person wanting to be introduced opened the bedroom door and leaned in to the room. "The power went out in the North Wing and I need you to fix it again." She stood over Justin on the floor. The nineteen-year-old wizard was as confused as ever. Who was William? Was that supposed to be him? In ridding himself of Alex, did he place himself in another family or did he change the past? Was his father downstairs married to another woman, was his mother married to another man? Just what happened to him, and was there a chance this life was better than his last life?

"Why is he on the floor?" Sara Michelle Troy turned to her little sister. Blonde, athletic and dressed in a black and lavender dress with black tights, she looked to her boy-crazy sister. Garbed in her brother's bathrobe, Tricia Gayle Troy turned her head to Sara with nearly the same disdain and ego of another diva-like daughter.

"I finally got him worshipping at my feet." Tricia mumbled and cackled a giggle out loud while adjusting her robe on her way out to her room down the hall.

"I hate her so much." Sara watched her vanish into her room three doors down and turned to the young man she thought was her brother. "William, fuse box…"

"Why can't you fix it?" Justin asked her.

"Into that musty basement in these clothes?" Sara gestured to her attire. "Besides, you told me to never touch it."

"Wait!" Justin grabbed a pillow off the bed to hide his lower body, rose back up to his feet and leaned out of the bedroom than venture beyond it. Sara turned round to him, tossing her blonde locks over one shoulder as she turned back to him.

"There's something I got to tell you." Justin tried thinking. "I'm not… I mean… This is wrong. This isn't right. I got to put things back."

"What?" Sara jostled her head in confusion. Her eyes narrowed perplexed, and she gingerly and warmly rubbed Justin on the shoulder. "William, I love you, but… I just can't go back there again."

"What?" Justin shrieked in a girl's voice and watched Sara turn and head down the hall past antique paintings, old gas lamps and decorative furniture filling sections of empty hall in what was obviously a very large and very grand mansion. Exhaling defeatedly, his confusion was making him disoriented. He stepped into the hall with his hand to his head, trying to figure out his surroundings, but in that moment of discourse, a figment with long hair dashed from the library across the hall and into his room trailing a towel in her right hand. In this new family, he didn't have two older sisters, he had three, and they all took turns tormenting him. Her name was Lisa Dawn Troy, and the only way to tell her apart from her twin sister was her long brown hair.

"No, no, no, no, no!" Dropping the pillow, Justin chased after her giggling ahead of him. She loved to tease him and hear him scram for mercy. He was her favorite sibling to abuse. She jumped into his bathroom, and slammed the door ahead of him. Justin crashed into it trying to stop her.

"This isn't fair!" Justin screamed through the door shaking his finger. "I did not ask for any of this! I finally got my own bathroom and you are not welcome in it!"

"I don't care if you come in…." Lisa spoke as Justin checked the door. It wasn't locked.

"But I'm not wearing any clothes now." Lisa added.

Justin nearly choked on his stomach contents and pulled the door shut to protect himself.

"This will not be the end of this!" He posed rising his left hand clenched into a fist in firm declaration. "I will have my own bathroom again!" He sauntered backward, heard the surge of hot water coursing through the pipes of the house to a shower not occupied by himself and dropped to sit on the edge of the bed in defeat.

"I've got to get my life back." He told himself with an echo of desperation.