Allison starts to reconcile with your dad in order to make you jealous.

You watch the taillights disappear down the street—Dad's rental sedan, sleek and expensive because of course it is. Your mother sits in the passenger seat. Except she's not your mother. She's Allison wearing your mother's face, her body, her voice, and right now she's heading to dinner with your father who thinks he's romancing his ex-wife back into his life.

Your stomach twists.

"They look good together," David says from behind you.

You spin around. Your younger brother lounges against the doorframe, arms crossed, that insufferable smirk on his face. He's fifteen and thinks he's hilarious.

"Shut up."

"I'm serious." David pushes off the frame, saunters into the living room. "Dad's been happier in the last week than I've seen him in years. And Mom—well, Allison—she's trying really hard, you know? You should give her credit."

"Credit for what? Pretending to be Mom so convincingly that Dad wants to fuck her?"

The words come out harsher than you intended. David's smirk falters, but only for a second.

"Jesus, Tim. That's—"

"That's what's happening." You turn back to the window even though there's nothing to see now. Just the empty street, the neighbor's porch light, the same suburban nothing you've stared at your whole life. "He wants her back. You know what that means."

"Yeah, but Allison won't—"

"Won't she?" You round on him again. "She agreed to the dinner. She got all dressed up. She put on Mom's perfume, David. I could smell it when she walked past me."

David opens his mouth, closes it. He doesn't have an answer for that because there isn't one. Allison did all those things. You watched her do them, watched her move through the house like she belonged here, like she'd always been here. She borrowed Mom's jewelry—the silver bracelet Dad bought her for their tenth anniversary. She wore Mom's heels, the black ones with the ankle strap that made her legs look longer.

Except they weren't Mom's legs.

They were Allison's.

Except they weren't.

Your brain short-circuits every time you try to think about it.

"She's doing it to make you jealous," Tabitha says.

You hadn't heard her come downstairs. Your sister perches on the arm of the couch, thirteen years old and way too perceptive for her own good. She looks at you with those dark, serious eyes that always make you feel like she can see straight through your bullshit.

"What?"

"Allison. She's trying to make you jealous. It's obvious."

"That's insane."

"Is it?" Tabitha tilts her head. "She's your girlfriend, Tim. She loves you. And you've been avoiding her for a week."

"I haven't been—"

"You fled the room when she tried to kiss you."

The memory hits like a fist to the gut. Allison in the hospital, reaching for you with Mom's hands, leaning in with Mom's face, and the screaming wrongness of it sending you stumbling backward, gasping for air, your body rejecting the reality your mind was trying to accept.

"That's different."

"How?"

"Because—" You don't know how to explain it. How do you tell your thirteen-year-old sister that every time you look at Allison now, your entire nervous system revolts? That you see your mother's hair, your mother's eyes, your mother's mouth forming words you know are Allison's, and some primal part of your brain just screams wrong wrong wrong?

"She's scared," Tabitha says quietly. "She thinks she's losing you."

"She's not losing me. I just need time to—"

"Time to what? Get used to it?" Tabitha slides off the couch arm, walks over to you. She's small, barely comes up to your shoulder, but right now she feels about ten feet tall. "Tim, she died. She died, and they put her in Mom's body, and now she has to pretend to be someone else for the rest of her life. And the one person who's supposed to love her no matter what can't even look at her."

The words land like stones. You want to argue, want to defend yourself, but Tabitha's right and you both know it.

"I'm trying," you say weakly.

"Try harder." She squeezes your arm once, then heads back toward the stairs. "Because Dad doesn't know she's Allison, and if you don't figure your shit out, he's going to think she's Mom. And Mom wanted Dad back, Tim. Remember? Before she died, she talked about it all the time."

She disappears upstairs before you can respond.

David whistles low. "Damn. When did she get so scary?"

"Shut up."

"You want a beer? I think Mom—I mean, there's some in the—" He stops, grimaces. "This is so fucking weird."

"Yeah."

You collapse onto the couch. David rummages in the kitchen, returns with two beers and hands you one without comment. You're both underage, but after everything that's happened, it seems like the least important rule to break.

The beer tastes like carbonated piss, but you drink it anyway.

"Do you think she'll really do it?" David asks after a while.

"Do what?"

"Go through with the whole... reconciliation thing. With Dad."

You take another swig of beer. "I don't know."

But you do know. Or at least, you suspect. Because Allison isn't stupid, and she isn't passive, and when she looked at you this afternoon—really looked at you—there was something in her eyes that made your chest tight. Determination. Desperation.

Steel.

She's fighting for you. And if you won't fight back, she'll find another way to make you react.

Even if that means using your father as a weapon.

________________________________________

They're gone for two hours.

You spend the first hour pretending to watch TV with David. Some action movie with explosions and one-liners, the kind of thing you'd normally enjoy, but you can't focus on it. Your mind keeps drifting to the restaurant—what are they talking about? Is Dad touching her? Holding her hand across the table? You imagine his thumb brushing over her knuckles, that old familiar gesture you remember from when they were still together, and your stomach clenches.

David falls asleep halfway through, head lolling against the couch cushion. You let him stay there. He's always been able to sleep through anything—a talent you've never shared.

The second hour, you pace.

Kitchen to living room. Living room to kitchen. You check your phone obsessively even though Allison hasn't texted you since this morning, a simple "Going to dinner with your dad tonight" that made you want to throw the phone across the room.

You don't know what you're expecting. A play-by-play? A warning? An apology?

At 9:47, headlights sweep across the living room wall.

Your heart kicks into overdrive. You freeze in the middle of the kitchen, beer forgotten on the counter, as the car doors slam outside. Low voices, too muffled to make out words. Then the jingle of keys, the scrape of the lock.

They come through the door together, and the first thing you notice is that they're touching.

Dad's hand rests on the small of her back—of Allison's back, of Mom's back, fuck—guiding her inside with the kind of casual possessiveness that makes your teeth grind. She's laughing at something he said, her head tilted back, and the sound is your mother's laugh, that throaty, feminine chuckle you heard a thousand times growing up.

But the eyes that find yours over Dad's shoulder are pure Allison.

Bright. Defiant. Gotcha.

"Tim!" Dad's smile could power a small city. He looks younger than he did this morning, looser, the tension in his shoulders gone. "Didn't expect you to still be up. How was your evening?"

You **** your throat to work. "Fine. Quiet."

"We had a wonderful time." Dad shrugs out of his jacket, drapes it over the back of a chair. "La Maison Rouge—have you been there? Outstanding food. I told Jen we should make it a regular thing."

Jen.

The casual intimacy of the nickname hits you sideways. He used to call her that, back before the divorce, before the fights and the cold silences and the night Dad's suitcase appeared by the front door.

"Sounds great," you manage.

Allison—Mom—moves past Dad into the kitchen, her heels clicking on the tile. She's flushed, cheeks pink, and when she reaches for a glass from the cupboard, you catch a whiff of wine on her breath.

"You want anything, Don?" she asks. Her voice is steadier than yours would be. "Water? Coffee?"

"Water would be perfect." Dad follows her into the kitchen, and you're suddenly, acutely aware that you're in the way. He leans against the counter next to her, close enough that their shoulders brush. "You know, Tim, your mother and I had a really good conversation tonight. About the future. About—well, a lot of things."

"Great," you repeat. You sound like a malfunctioning robot.

Allison fills two glasses with water, hands one to Dad. Their fingers overlap on the glass for just a second—a brief, electric point of contact—and Dad's smile softens into something more intimate.

"I've missed this," he says quietly, and even though he's looking at her, the words feel like they're meant for the room, for the universe. "I've missed us. I know I screwed up, Jen. But if you'll give me another chance—"

"Don." Allison's voice is gentle, but there's an edge underneath. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"I know, I know." He reaches out, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and you have to look away because the gesture is so familiar, so Dad, and watching him do it to Allison is like swallowing glass. "But I mean it. I want to make this work. For us. For the kids."

"We'll see."

She steps back, putting space between them, and you catch the flicker of calculation in her eyes. She's playing him. She's playing him, and he has no idea, and you should feel relieved except all you feel is sick.

"I should head out," Dad says, draining his water. "Early flight tomorrow. But I'll call you this week, okay? Maybe we can do this again."

"Maybe."

He kisses her cheek—a quick, chaste press of lips that still lasts about three seconds too long—and then he's grabbing his jacket, clapping you on the shoulder as he passes.

"Take care of your mom, Tim. She's special."

The door closes behind him. Silence swallows the house.

Allison sets her glass down with a deliberate clink.

"Well," she says, turning to face you fully. "That went well."

You stare at her. At your mother's face with Allison's expression, that challenging tilt of the chin you've seen a hundred times before—usually right before she does something reckless or brilliant or both.

"What the fuck was that?"

"Dinner."

"Bullshit." You push off the counter, close the distance between you. She doesn't back up. "You were flirting with him. You let him touch you."

"He's my husband. Technically." Her lips curve—not your mother's smile, but something sharper. "Besides, I thought you didn't care what I did."

"I never said that."

"You didn't have to." She crosses her arms under her breasts—Mom's breasts, you can't think about that—and the defensive posture is so quintessentially Allison that for a second, the dissonance cracks. "You can barely stand to be in the same room as me, Tim. You look at me like I'm some kind of monster."

"That's not—"

"It is." Her voice hardens. "I died. I came back in the wrong body, and now the person who's supposed to love me can't even kiss me without running away. So yeah. I went to dinner with your dad. I laughed at his jokes. I let him flirt with me. Because at least he can look at me without flinching."

The words cut deeper than they should. You open your mouth, but nothing comes out.

"You want to know what the worst part is?" She steps closer, and the scent of her—wrong, wrong, it's the wrong scent, the perfume Mom used to wear mixed with something underneath that your brain insists is Mom—makes your pulse spike. "I can see it. In your eyes. You know it's me. You know. But your body doesn't believe it, does it? You look at this face and all you see is your mother."

"Allison—"

"Don doesn't have that problem." Her voice drops, intimate and cruel. "He sees Jennifer. His ex-wife. The woman he was married to for eighteen years. And you know what? This body remembers him."

Your blood turns to ice. "What?"

"Muscle memory. Physical response." She's close now, close enough that you can feel the heat radiating off her skin. "When he touched my back, my spine arched into it. When he tucked my hair behind my ear, I leaned into his hand. I didn't mean to, Tim. But Jennifer's body knows him. It wants him."

"Stop."

"Why? Because it makes you uncomfortable?" Her eyes glitter, and you can't tell if she's angry or **** or both. "You think this is easy for me? I'm eighteen years old, and I'm stuck in a forty-year-old woman's body that responds to a man I don't even know. But at least he wants me. At least he can touch me without looking like he wants to vomit."

"That's not fair."

"None of this is fair!" Her voice cracks, and suddenly she's not the steel-edged girl playing games with your father—she's Allison, raw and terrified and falling apart in front of you. "I didn't ask for this. I didn't ask to die, or to wake up in your mother's body, or to have everyone I know think I'm dead. But here I am. And the one person who's supposed to be on my side can't even look at me."

Tears streak down her cheeks—Mom's cheeks—and the sight splinters something in your chest.

"I'm sorry," you whisper. "Allison, I'm sorry, I—"

"Show me."

"What?"

"Show me you're sorry." She grabs your hand, presses it against her chest. Her heartbeat thunders under your palm, rapid and bird-fragile. "Touch me, Tim. Prove that you can see past this face. Prove that you still love me."

Your hand is shaking. You can feel the curve of her collarbone under your fingers, the warmth of her skin through the thin fabric of her dress, and every nerve in your body is screaming at you to pull away because this is wrong, this is your mother, except it's not, it's Allison, it's always been Allison, and if you can't bridge this gap then you're going to lose her.

You lean in.

It takes everything you have. Every ounce of willpower, every scrap of love you've ever felt for her. You focus on her eyes—Allison's eyes, even if they're set in the wrong face—and you try to block out the rest. The shape of her lips. The angle of her jaw. The scent of her skin.

Your lips brush hers.

And your body rejects it.

The wrongness slams into you like a wall—visceral, instinctive, undeniable. This is your mother's mouth. Your mother's breath. Your mother's face tilting up to meet yours, and every cell in your body is screaming NO, STOP, WRONG, and you jerk back so hard you nearly fall.

Allison stares at you. Her expression shatters.

"I can't," you **** out. "Allison, I can't, I'm sorry—"

"Get out."

"What?"

"Get. Out." Her voice is flat, empty. "Go upstairs. Go to your room. I don't care. Just get away from me."

"Allison—"

"NOW."

You flee. Again. Like a coward. You take the stairs two at a time, your vision blurring, and you don't stop until you're in your room with the door locked behind you.

You sink onto the edge of your bed, head in your hands, and try to breathe.

Downstairs, you hear the faint sound of crying.

________________________________________

You don't sleep.

You lie in bed staring at the ceiling, replaying the night over and over. The way Dad looked at her. The way she leaned into his touch. The way she said this body remembers him and the horrible, sickening truth of it.

Jennifer's body knows Don. It spent eighteen years with him—sleeping next to him, making love to him, carrying his children. Those memories might not be in Allison's brain, but they're written into her muscle fibers, her nerve endings, the autonomic responses she can't control.

And if the body wants him—if it responds to him—then what happens when Dad pushes for more?

What happens when he tries to kiss her? Touch her? Take her to bed?

Will Allison be able to say no? Or will Jennifer's body betray her, pull her into something she doesn't want, with a man she doesn't love?

The thought makes you want to break something.

Around two AM, you hear footsteps in the hallway. They pause outside your door—one heartbeat, two—and then move on.

You almost go after her. Almost unlock the door and call her name and beg her to come back so you can try again, try harder. But you don't. Because you know how it'll end. With her reaching for you, and your body recoiling, and the hurt in her eyes cutting deeper than any knife.

You're still awake when the sun rises.

________________________________________

Breakfast is tense.

Allison moves through the kitchen like a ghost, pouring coffee, setting out cereal boxes, her face carefully blank. She's dressed in jeans and one of Mom's old sweaters, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, and she looks so much like your mother on a lazy Saturday morning that it physically hurts.

David and Tabitha exchange glances but say nothing. They eat in silence, the clink of spoons against bowls absurdly loud.

You can't eat. You push Cheerios around your bowl and avoid Allison's gaze.

"Your father called this morning," she says eventually. Her voice is polite, distant. "He wants to take me out again next weekend. I said yes."

Your spoon clatters against the bowl. "You what?"

"I said yes." She finally looks at you, and her eyes are empty. "Why not? He's charming, he's attentive, and he actually wants to spend time with me. Unlike some people."

"Allison—"

"It's Jennifer," she corrects sharply. "At least when your father's concerned. He called me 'honey' on the phone, Tim. He said he can't stop thinking about me. He asked if I'd like to go away for a weekend—just the two of us. Rekindle the romance."

Your stomach drops. "You can't."

"Why not?"

"Because—" You struggle for words. "Because you're not her. You're not Mom. You're my—"

"Your what?" She leans forward, and there's a dangerous glint in her eye. "Your girlfriend? Are you sure about that? Because from where I'm standing, it doesn't seem like you want a girlfriend who looks like this."

"That's not—"

"Then prove it." She stands, walks around the table until she's right in front of you. David and Tabitha have gone statue-still, watching with wide eyes. "Kiss me. Right now. In front of your siblings. Show me that you can do it."

Your heart is pounding so hard you think it might burst. You look up at her—at Mom's face wearing Allison's challenge—and you want to. God, you want to.

But you can't move.

The silence stretches, unbearable.

"That's what I thought." Allison's smile is bitter. She straightens, smooths down her sweater. "Don's picking me up at seven tonight. Dinner and a movie. Maybe afterward we'll come back here, have a glass of wine, see where the night takes us."

She walks away before you can respond.

David breaks the silence first. "Dude."

"Shut up."

"No, seriously. Dude." He points his spoon at you. "You need to fix this."

"I know."

"Do you?" Tabitha's voice is quiet but cutting. "Because it seems like you're just going to sit here and let her date Dad out of spite."

"It's not spite. It's—" You don't know what it is. Desperation? A test? A punishment? "She's trying to make me jealous."

"So be jealous!" David throws his hands up. "Fight for her! Do something other than sitting here like a sad sack while Dad moves in on your girlfriend."

"She's in Mom's body."

"So?" Tabitha tilts her head. "She's still Allison. Her brain, her memories, her personality—all Allison. The body is just... packaging."

"It's not that simple."

"Yes, it is." She stands, carries her bowl to the sink. "You're making it complicated because you're scared. But here's the thing, Tim—Allison's scared too. She's terrified. And instead of helping her, you're pushing her away. So yeah. She's going to date Dad. She's going to let him touch her and kiss her and maybe more, because at least then someone will treat her like she's worth something."

The words hit like a slap.

"And the worst part?" Tabitha looks at you with something dangerously close to pity. "Dad doesn't even know he's kissing your girlfriend. He thinks he's getting his wife back. But you know. You know, and you're letting it happen anyway."

She leaves. David follows, throwing you one last incredulous look.

You sit alone at the kitchen table, surrounded by dirty dishes and the ruins of your relationship, and try to figure out what the hell you're supposed to do now.

________________________________________

Seven o'clock comes too fast.

You're in your room when you hear the doorbell, Dad's cheerful voice drifting up the stairs. Allison's laugh—Mom's laugh—rings out, bright and musical. Footsteps, the rustle of coats, the door closing.

Silence.

You move to the window in time to see them walk to the car. Dad's hand is on her lower back again, and she's leaning into him, saying something that makes him grin. He opens the passenger door for her, waits until she's settled before closing it with a soft click.

Gentleman. He's being a perfect gentleman, the way he probably was when he and Mom first started dating, before marriage and kids and affairs turned everything sour.

The car pulls away.

You stand at the window long after the taillights vanish, your reflection staring back at you in the darkening glass.

Somewhere in the house, a clock ticks.

________________________________________

They come back at eleven.

You're on the couch pretending to read when the door opens. You hear them before you see them—low voices, a feminine giggle, the scuff of shoes on the entryway tile.

Then they round the corner, and your stomach clenches.

Dad has his arm around her waist. Allison's cheeks are flushed, her eyes bright, and there's a looseness to her movements that suggests wine or cocktails or both. She's wearing a different dress than this morning—something dark and clingy that you recognize from the back of Mom's closet—and her hair falls in soft waves around her shoulders.

She looks beautiful.

She looks like your mother.

"Tim!" Dad's grin is boozy, unrestrained. "Still up, huh? We had an amazing time. Didn't we, Jen?"

"Amazing," Allison echoes. Her eyes find yours, and there's a flash of something—triumph? Guilt? Anger?—before she looks away. "The movie was wonderful. Very romantic."

"Classic date night." Dad steers her toward the kitchen. "I was just telling Jen, we should do this more often. Make up for lost time, you know?"

You watch them move together, Dad's hand never leaving her waist, and the casual intimacy of it makes your teeth grind.

"How was your night?" Allison asks. She's pouring wine now—two glasses, red, the expensive bottle Mom always saved for special occasions. "Do anything interesting?"

"Not really."

"Mmm." She hands Dad a glass, then takes a long sip from her own. "That's a shame. You should get out more, Tim. Have some fun."

The barb lands. You **** yourself to stay seated, fingers digging into the couch cushion.

Dad raises his glass. "To second chances."

"To second chances," Allison murmurs, and they clink glasses.

They drink. Dad says something you don't catch, and Allison laughs—that throaty, warm sound that used to be your mother's and now belongs to her and it's wrong, all of this is wrong, but you can't move, can't speak, can't do anything but watch.

Dad sets his glass down, turns to face her fully. His hands come up to frame her face, thumbs brushing her cheekbones, and you see the moment the mood shifts. The air thickens. Allison's breath catches.

"I've been wanting to do this all night," Dad says softly.

He kisses her.

It's not chaste. It's not a friendly peck or an experimental brush of lips. It's a real kiss, deep and hungry, Dad's mouth slanting over hers, his hands sliding into her hair. And Allison—

Allison kisses him back.

Her hands come up to grip his shoulders, her body arching into his, and you watch in frozen horror as your father devours your girlfriend in your mother's body, and she lets him, she lets him, she's making a small sound in the back of her throat that might be pleasure or surrender or both.

When they finally break apart, they're both breathing hard.

"Wow," Dad whispers.

Allison's eyes drift past his shoulder. Lock onto yours.

And she smiles.