"Then go jerk off. That's what guys love to do all the time, right?"
"Cher!" yipped the guy Sherry had just addressed. "I can't believe you said that!"
Again, Sherry's brain perceived something wrong. This time it was the way this boy was behaving. Actually, it was more to how this boy wasn't behaving. She couldn't put her finger on it, but Craig just seemed to be acting different somehow. He wasn't the usual, swaggering butthead who so irritated her most of the time.
Suddenly, something clicked. Craig had just called her "Cher." And before that, her best friend had used the hated "Chair" when addressing her. Twice, in fact.
She went quiet. She was at a complete loss. None of this made sense. She couldn't come up with any hypothesis to investigate. She turned to look at Craig, and then back at Carly. For the first time since she got there, she really examined her friend. She was sitting in a slouched position. Her hair was a mess. It didn't even look like she'd brushed it that morning. She held her spoon in her fist, rather than as a spoon should be held, between fingers and thumb. Those knees were still splayed apart.
"Something is wrong here!" she said, tensely.
Complete silence met her pronouncement.
Finally the boy behind Sherry spoke.
"Maybe we should just tell her."
Sherry's now firm decision that something was very, very wrong, was cemented when her best friend looked at her brother and said, "No fucking way, Carly."
Sherry's first reaction was to the word she knew Carly never used because she thought it was vulgar and stupid.
Only then did she realize that Carly had just called Craig ... Carly.
*****
"I don't understand," moaned Sherry, looking from one twin to the other.
Carly's reaction was understandable. She had empathy for her friend. Women are nurturing, and Carly responded to the situation in a completely normal way.
The only problem was that she was in a male body when she did it.
She flowed toward her friend and enveloped her in a big, comforting, intimate hug of affection.
"It's going to be okay, Cher," she murmured into her friend's hair which, for some reason or other, was a lot lower down than it used to be.
"What are you doing?!" yelped Sherry, struggling in the tight grip of the person she thought to be Craig Austin. "Let go of me, you creep!"
Her fists flailed against the firm chest that had been pressing against her. Carly let go in horror, and stepped back, arms wide.
"I'm sorry, baby," she groaned. "I forgot that ... I'm sorry." Sherry watched as the boy turned to his sister and said, "We have to tell her. This isn't going to work. We were crazy to think we could pull this off!"
What made the difference, at that moment, was the way in which the words, "I'm sorry, baby," were delivered. Sherry and Carly were, in fact, best friends. They had spent hours and hours together, doing this or that, but always talking. It was, in fact, Carly who had first called Sherry "Cher" while they were dancing and singing in Carly's bedroom, pretending to be stars on stage. And another pet name Carly used a lot, when she addressed Sherry, was "Baby." Carly was the only person, in fact, who ever called Sherry "Baby."
It had been said with a male voice, but the inflection and emotion and simply the smooth, effortless way it came across was all Carly. There was the essence of Carly, if you will, in the way she delivered that line.
To Sherry ... it sounded like Carly.
That was impossible of course, but it gave her pause and made her think. She was doing that when the actual voice of her best friend said, "She'll never believe us."
Suddenly very alert, and tense with the intuition that something very important was about to happen, Sherry turned to the girl at the table and said, "What won't I believe?"
"That we were abducted by aliens and they switched us into each other's body," said "Craig," from behind her.
There was no hesitation. Sherry's reaction to that was simply habit. She turned her head and sneered.
"Nice try, butthead." Her face swiveled back to her friend at the table.
"Kar? What's going on? Please. You can tell me."
Interestingly, it was Craig who knew what to do in this situation. While he hadn't been there during all those talks this girl had had with his sister, he was well aware of the depth of their friendship. He had, in fact, had a crush on Sherry once upon a time. But then he got to know her a little too well and the personality flaws in her that he perceived, cooled his ardor for her. Soon his libidinal attentions were focused on another girl, and Sherry became one of the stable of Carly's friends that he enjoyed teasing. He actually liked her, but he would never have told her that.
He understood what was probably going through Sherry's mind right now. So he adopted the role of his sister on a more personal level and motioned for Sherry to sit down at the table.
"Sit. We'll explain. You want something to eat?"
Sherry sat, but it was an auto pilot sort of thing. So was the shake of her head and the "No," that answered the question.
Craig reached across the table and took Sherry's hands in his sister's hands. He marveled at how similar they were. The skin of both was soft and supple, the fingers long and slender. Sherry's nails had little tiny pictures of palm trees and blue skies on them and he wondered, briefly, who had the patience to paint such tiny pictures on ten fingernails at once. Being a boy, he had no idea they were simply peeled off a sheet and stuck on.
He was surprised to feel that ball of heat in his middle, and an outpouring of something that was undeniably affection. It was the first time he had experienced the body he was in reacting to friendship, and he was startled that the feeling was so strong.
"We went camping last weekend," he said.
Sherry nodded.
"Something happened. We don't actually know what it was, but when we woke up one morning, something was different."
"What?" asked Sherry.
"I think the best thing to do right now is for me to go outside, and for you and ... him ... to talk," said Craig, letting go of one of Sherry's hands long enough to point at Carly.
"What? Talk to Craig? Why?"
"Because I want you to ask him questions that only I should know the answers to," said Craig.
"I don't understand," moaned Sherry.
"I want you to pretend that what he said a minute ago is true ... that we were abducted by aliens and they switched us. If that were true, then I am really Craig, and he," Craig pointed at his sister again, "is really Carly. And you can tell who is who by asking questions that only Carly knows the answers to." He squeezed her hands gently. It was easy because these hands weren't as strong as what he was used to. "Will you do that for me?" he asked, in closure.
"But why?" whined Sherry. "That's silly, Kar. I don't understand."
"You will," said Craig, standing up. "I promise. It's going to be hard, but you'll understand."
And then he left the kitchen. He opened the front door that Sherry had so recently come through, and went out to do a survey of the yard. Keeping it mowed and picked up was one of his chores. He suspected that would remain the same, and he might as well give things some attention.
*****
Craig's speech had given Carly time to think, and settle down. She acknowledged that his idea was brilliant, but was also smart enough to know things would be rocky until Sherry really was convinced that this incredible thing was true.
She already knew how she was going to do that convincing. But she also knew that she needed to ease into that.
First, she went to sit where Craig had been sitting before. She did not reach to take Sherry's hands.
"I know this is crazy," she said. "But do what he ... Carly ... that girl who just left ... said. Ask me questions that only Carly would be able to answer."
"This is stupid," said Sherry, frowning. "I don't know what you two are trying to do, but it's not funny."
"Just ask some questions, Cher!" snapped C
arly. She was beginning to feel the fear of believing that nobody would ever believe this, and that ... well ... she didn't know what would happen if she had to be in Craig's body the rest of her life and nobody believed it was really her in there.
"Okay," said Sherry, her chin jutting out in defiance. "Here's one. Why are you all of a sudden calling me Cher instead of Chair, like you always do?"
Surprisingly, that question calmed Carly down. It was a logical question, and it encouraged her to answer logically. Perhaps logic would win the day.
"That's not a question only Carly would know," she said. "My brother can be a butthead. In fact, he likes being a butthead, but when he chooses to be one and not to be one isn't something I know. You need to focus on questions that only Carly would be able to answer. Come on. Try one. Maybe something we did on a sleepover that we swore never to tell anybody about, or some secret we shared."
"What if Carly told you about all that?" asked Sherry, suspiciously.
"Could she have told me everything?" asked Carly.
"How am I supposed to know? She adores you. For some reason she thinks the sun rises and sets on you. Even when you're being a jerk!"
"For pity's sake, don't ever tell him that!" said Carly, automatically. Then she realized what that probably looked like to Sherry.
This wasn't working. Sherry couldn't contemplate what she was being asked to contemplate. Maybe it was time for the Hail Mary after all. Carly leaned forward and lowered her voice.
"There was a sleepover, two years ago. It was at your house and Jennifer Abernathy was supposed to be there, but she got grounded because her mother found her vibrator under her mattress. You know how her mother is. Jenn snuck a call to us and warned us that her mother would probably talk to our mothers and encourage them to search our rooms too."
Sherry went so still that an observer might have thought her a statue. Carly went on.
"You and I ... the person inside this body ... took Johnny out in the back yard and buried it. It was in the corner by the fence where your mom grows tomatoes in the summer time."
Sherry's head tilted.
"You know about Johnny? How do you know that? How can you possibly know that?" Johnny was a latex dildo, named after Johnny Depp, which Sherry had ordered off the internet as an experiment to see if it could be done. She had used one of those prepaid credit cards she got at Walmart. Because her mother was single, and worked long hours to support their family of three, it had been easy to intercept the delivery of the package. She and Carly had, in fact, been together when the package was first opened, and Johnny was both examined and named. That process led to the use of the same card to purchase something called a "Rabbit" for Carly. It had taken all their allowance, but both thought it was worth it in the end. No pun intended.
"I also know what we did that night because Johnny was buried in the back yard," said Carly, softly.
"No way!" blurted Sherry. "She would never have told you that!"
"She didn't," said Carly, desperately. "That's because what we're saying really happened. Somehow, we got switched into each other's bodies. I'm Carly, Cher. Inside this body is me, your best friend, the only person who has ever licked your cunny and the only person whose cunny you have licked."
Sherry bolted to her feet, her face pale.
"She swore she'd never tell!" she moaned.
"I didn't tell!" Yelled Carly, also jumping to her brother's feet. "It's me in here! You have to believe me!"
Carly sat back down and slumped.
"Please," she begged. "You have to believe me. I'll go crazy if you don't."
Oddly, it was the begging that settled Sherry. She'd spent years hanging around the Austin house, and she knew Craig Austin pretty well. He would never beg like that. Not in front of one of his sister's friends. He would consider that a sign of weakness.
For the first time, a glimmer of amazement crept into her mind. Could it be true?
She sat back down. Of course it couldn't be true. It was just too crazy. But something was going on. Instead of alien abduction, she imagined some mad scientist had strapped them down - how could be worked out later - and attached wires to their heads. Then - how could be worked out later - he had caused each of their memories to be transferred to the other. That would mean that Craig had his own memories, and his sister's as well. And vice versa. That could be tested, because not only were there things that had been kept secret from Craig, there were also a few things she had demanded Craig never, ever tell Carly. Carly had left the house, but she could always test her later.
"Okay," she said. "I'll ask you some questions."
"Good!" sighed Carly. "Things only Carly would know."
"I'll decide what questions to ask," said Sherry, stiffly.
Carly put her hands up in surrender, and sat back.
*****
Craig was bent over, fixing one of the little fences his mother loved to put around all the trees in their yard, when he heard a familiar voice call out, "Looking good, baby." He stood up and turned to find John Black and Curtis Lundquist standing on the sidewalk, twenty feet away. Neither was what Craig would have categorized as a friend, but they knew each other. They simply hung in different groups.
"'Sup?" he greeted them automatically, idly wiping his hands on the back of the shorts he was wearing.
"Any chance I could rub my hands on your ass like that, too?" said Curtis, grinning.
Craig understood instantly. He got pissed instantly too.
"You're an asshole, Larson, you know that?"
"Ooooo. Carly has a potty mouth. You can come talk dirty in my ear any time," crowed the boy. "I know how to make you squeal."
Craig marched over to the two boys, who were posturing and grinning, having a great time. He didn't stop when he got to Curtis' personal space, stepping right up to the boy. He was surprised to feel his breasts impact the boy's chest. That thought was an errant one, though, because he was already involved in guiding his right knee in an upper thrust that went between Larson's legs. He overdid it, intending the blow to be devastating, but his shorter legs caused some of the force to be lost.
Still, it was effective, and Curtis bent over, holding his groin and sank to one knee.
"You want some too, asshole?" asked Craig, looking over to the totally shocked face of John Black.
Black stepped back and raised his hands.
"Hey, we were just fooling around," he complained.
"Well , fool around somewhere else," growled Craig.
Then he turned to stalk back into the house.
*****
Sherry was in shock.
Her working hypothesis that memories had been traded by a mad scientist was in tatters. That was simply by virtue of the fact that Sherry spent enough time with her friend to know there had been no opportunity for a scientist of any kind to have access to the twins. Whatever had happened had taken place quickly, over a single weekend, in fact. And she just couldn't bring herself to believe that Mr. and Mrs. Austin would intentionally let their children be experimented on.
That left her with the only other theory that had, thus far, been put forth.
Alien abduction? Impossible. Crazy. Out there!
But it was obvious that the person she was talking to had the full range of Carly Austin's memories.
And there was no way in the world that Carly would have told her brother not only that they had behaved like lesbians on multiple occasions, but that each had her own favorite flavor of body wash they used when such a meeting was anticipated.
No way.
Could it be true? Could the essence of Carly Austin ... the thing that made Carly different from every other person on the planet ... have been transferred to her brother's body?
Was she actually talking to Carly?
She was just thinking of some questions to ask the other twin when that twin stormed through the front door and stomped into the kitchen.
"You'll never guess what just happened!" growled the im
age of her best friend. "Curtis Lundquist just said he could make you squeal in bed. The son of a bitch said he wanted to feel your ass!" He stopped, blinked a few times, and then sighed, "My ass!"
Sherry was electrified. It had all come out so smoothly, so naturally - so much like something Craig would say! She turned back to Craig/Carly and said, "Not a word. Don't say a word. I'm going to ask him a question and don't you say a word!"
She wasn't aware she had used the male pronoun when indicating the question would be directed toward the other girl in the room.
But Carly was.
Sherry turned back to Carly/Craig.
"When we were twelve, we were on a walk in the woods, all three of us. Carly was way ahead and I said I had to pee. What did you say?"
Carly's image frowned, but then relaxed.
"I told you to go ahead and pee."
"And what did I say then?"
"You said you couldn't pee because there was no toilet."
"And you said?"
"I said you could pee anywhere."
"And then what happened?"
"You took your shorts down and I held you up under the arms while you peed," said Craig.
"You never told me that!" squealed Carly, through Craig's throat.
"And then I showed you how far a guy can pee," said Craig, proudly, thrusting out his breasts.
"Oh, my God," sighed Sherry. "It's fucking true!"
"That's exactly what Dad said," said Craig.
"Oh my God!" moaned Sherry. "What are we going to do?"
"I don't know about you," said Craig, who somehow felt relieved that their secret wasn't a secret anymore, "but Carly and I are trying to learn enough about each other's friends to pass when school starts."
Sherry looked at him, her eyes wide.
"That will never work. I could tell something was off almost as soon as I got here."
"Why?" asked Carly, finally reaching for her friend's hands. "Help us. How could you tell? What made you suspicious?"
Sherry looked at her hands, and then at Craig/Carly. She suppressed the urge to pull her hands free.
"Well, you called me Cher, for one thing, and she ... I mean he ..." she nodded toward Craig, "called me Chair."
Alien Exchange Program Page 9
