Chapter 2: The Weight of a Different Laugh

The goo is cold. It's always cold.

I flow down the stairs, past the third step—it creaks even without weight—and out the door. Emma is behind me, sleeping. She doesn't know. She'll never know.

The night air is cool, but not cold. Mid-April. The trees are starting to leaf out. I can see it in the dark—the small, tight green nodes on the branches, the way the streetlamp catches them. The sidewalk is wet from rain that must have come through earlier. I don't feel it the way I would if I had feet. I feel it as a temperature, a texture, a fact.

I flow east, toward campus. The streets are quiet. A car passes, its tires hissing on the wet pavement. The sound comes to me from all directions at once—I'm still not used to this. The 360-degree vision. The way the world wraps around me instead of sitting in front of me.

Olivia's house is three blocks from Emma's. Same street. Same neighborhood. I could have walked it as Emma, but I'm goo now, and goo moves faster.

I seep under the front door. The house is warmer inside. The same smell—coffee and old wood and something floral. But different, too. The floral is lavender in Emma's room. Olivia's room smells like acrylic paint and coffee and a candle that's been burning too long.

The stairs creak. The third step from the bottom groans. I feel it pass through me—a vibration, a memory of weight. I flow up.

Olivia's door is ajar. The light is on.

I slide under the door.

She is sitting on her bed. Mustard-yellow sweater, sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Black leggings. Bare feet. Her hair is in a messy bun—dark brown, wavy, a few strands escaping at the temples. She has a sketchbook open in her lap, but she's not drawing. She's staring at the wall. At nothing. Her right hand is curled around a pencil, but she's not moving it.

I am behind her desk, in the shadow of a stack of canvases. She doesn't see me. She can't see me. I am a clear puddle on the floor, and she is sitting on her bed, and she is beautiful in a different way than Emma. Fuller. Warmer. Her dimples are hidden because she's not smiling. Her jaw is set. She looks tired.

I should feel something. Guilt, maybe. Or the same electric certainty I felt the first time. But I don't feel either. I feel curious. I feel like a scientist approaching a new specimen. I want to know what her body feels like. What her voice sounds like from the inside. What her life is like when you're living it instead of watching it.

I flow toward her. Across the floor, past the leg of her desk, past a pile of clothes that didn't make it to the chair, to the edge of the bed. She shifts her weight. Her foot dangles over the edge. Her toes are bare, unpainted. Her nails are short. She's chewed them.

I reach her ankle. I flow up, over her skin, toward her face. She doesn't flinch. She doesn't notice. She's still staring at the wall, her mind somewhere else entirely—somewhere I can't reach yet, but will.

I reach her mouth. Her lips are slightly parted. She is breathing through them, slow and even. I flow inside.

The entry is warm. Her mouth, her throat, the passage of her body—all warm. She gags. A single, sharp contraction of her throat. Her hand jerks, the pencil clattering to the floor. Then it passes. I spread outward, integrating. Her cells accept me. Her body takes me in. I am no longer a separate substance. I am her.

The first breath is hers. The air is stale and warm—the closed air of a room she's been in for hours. It tastes like coffee and something sweet—the candle, maybe, or the lingering ghost of a pastry. Her chest rises and falls. The weight on her chest is different than Emma's. Fuller. Heavier. Her lungs are smaller than mine. Her heartbeat is slower than Emma's—a steady, patient thrum.

I open her eyes.

The room is the same room I saw from the floor. Colorful. Cluttered. Walls covered in prints and sketches. Art supplies everywhere—brushes, paints, sketchbooks, a jar of pencils. Clothes draped over a chair. A desk lamp casting warm, yellow light. The window is dark, but through the gap in the curtains, I can see a slice of the streetlamp's orange glow.

I look down at her hands. My hands. Dark brown hair escaping from the bun, falling into my face. I push it back. The gesture is automatic—she does this a hundred times a day. Her hands are smaller than Emma's. The fingers are shorter, stubbier. There's a callus on her middle finger from holding a pencil. A smear of blue paint on her thumb.

I flex the fingers. They move exactly as I expect. The muscle memory is already mine.

I stand up. The weight of her hips is different. Wider. Fuller. Her center of gravity is lower. The sweater is soft, slightly scratchy—wool, maybe. It presses against my chest, and I feel the shape of her breasts under it. I take a step. Her stride is shorter than Emma's. Quicker. She walks with a slight bounce, a lightness that doesn't match her moody expression.

I stop in front of the mirror on the closet door.

The girl in the glass is me.

Olivia Sutton. Dark brown hair, dark eyes, olive skin. Dimples hidden by the serious set of her mouth. A tiny tattoo of a star behind her right ear—I can see it in the mirror, a small dark shape against the skin. Her eyebrows are thicker than Emma's. Her lips are fuller. She is curvy—the sweater drapes over the swell of her breasts, the leggings cling to her hips and thighs.

I raise my hand. She raises hers. I touch my face. She touches hers. The skin is warm. The star tattoo is real. The callus on my finger is real.

I laugh. The sound is brighter than Emma's. Louder. It resonates in her throat with a warmth that feels like it belongs there. I laugh again, just to hear it. The laugh turns into a snort—a small, undignified sound—and I cover my mouth with my hand. The body does it automatically. She snorts when she laughs. She covers her mouth. She doesn't like the way her laugh sounds.

I stand there for a long time.

The candle is burning on the nightstand. The room is warm. Somewhere downstairs, I hear a door close. Olivia's sister—Sophia, probably—calls up the stairs: "Olivia? I'm making tea. You want some?"

Her voice. My voice. I have to answer.

"No, thanks," I say. The words come out in her cadence, her pitch, her specific brightness. "I'm good."

"Okay," Sophia calls back. "Night."

"Night," I say.

Footsteps retreat. A door closes. The house is quiet again.

I turn back to the mirror. The girl in the glass is still me. Her cheeks are slightly flushed. Her eyes are bright. She looks—alive. She looks like someone who is about to do something she's been waiting to do for a long time.

I am going to enjoy this.

I learn the weight of her hair—the way it escapes the bun, the way it curls at the temples, the way it feels when I pull it loose and it falls to my shoulders. Dark brown, wavy, thick. It smells like sandalwood and citrus—her perfume. I learn the cold of her feet on the kitchen tile in the morning. The way her right hand cramps after holding a pencil too long. The way her breasts move under the sweater—fuller than Emma's, a heavier weight that I feel in my shoulders.

I learn her routines. The late wake-ups—8 AM, always rushing. The studio time in the afternoon, when she paints or sketches or stares at a canvas and does nothing at all. The way she makes coffee—quick, careless, not the ritual Emma has. She drinks it black, same as me. I learn the third step from the bottom. I step over it without thinking. So does Sophia. So does Emma. We exchange glances—a silent, shared knowledge. I am one of them now.

I learn the Thursday café with Maya.

We sit at a small table in the corner of a café near campus—not The Daily Grind, a different one, smaller, with a quieter hum. Maya is warm, low-voiced, thoughtful. She talks about her gallery submission. She's worried about it. She hasn't started. She talks with her hands, the same way Olivia does. She asks me about my portfolio review.

I answer as Olivia. I use her words, her cadence, her specific turns of phrase. I tell Maya that I'm worried, that I haven't started preparing, that I'm scared I'm not good enough. The words come out easily—they're true. Olivia is scared. I feel it in her chest, a tight knot that has nothing to do with me.

Maya nods. She understands. She feels the same way. We sit in silence for a moment, and it's not uncomfortable. It's the silence of two people who know each other well enough not to fill it.

The thrill is there—the warm ribbon behind my sternum. But it's quieter this time. Less electric. More like a steady hum. She is looking at her best friend. She is seeing Olivia. She has no idea that the girl across from her is a nineteen-year-old man who has never been comfortable in his own skin.

I take a sip of coffee. The cup is warm in my hands. The coffee is good. I mean—I don't mean anything. I'm just drinking coffee.

The weeks pass in a rhythm I am starting to know.

I go to her classes. I sit in the back of the studio, watching the professor demonstrate brush techniques. I sketch in her sketchbook—crude, unskilled, nothing like what she can do. But my hand knows how to hold the pencil. My wrist knows the motion. The muscle memory is there, even if the art isn't.

I study in the library, the second floor this time. I walk across campus in the spring rain, my backpack heavy on my shoulders, my hair damp at the ends. I stop at the café for coffee. The barista knows Olivia's order—a large black coffee, no sugar.

I make dinner with Emma and Sophia. We eat pasta and argue about whose turn it is to do dishes. I mediate. I am the creative one. I am the messy one. I am Olivia.

I go to the farmers market on Saturday with Sophia. We buy bread and cheese and a small pot of honey. Sophia takes photos on her film camera. She is shy, sweet, anxious. She trails after me like a shadow. I buy her a cinnamon roll from the bakery stall. She smiles—a real smile, dimples and all.

I lie on Olivia's bed at night and stare at the ceiling. The room smells like paint and coffee. The sketchbook is open on my chest. I am not drawing. I am just lying here, breathing, feeling the rise and fall of her chest.

This is my body now. These are my hands. This is my voice. I am Olivia Sutton, and I have been Olivia Sutton for three weeks, and I am—happy. Not the same happy as Emma. A different happy. Louder. Messier. More uncertain. But happy.

The thought should scare me. It doesn't.

The fourth week brings a decision.

I am in the bathroom, getting ready for bed. Olivia's nightly routine: wash face, brush teeth, moisturize. I do it automatically, the way she does it, the way her body knows how. I look at my reflection in the mirror—the girl with the dark hair and the dark eyes and the star tattoo behind her ear.

I could stay.

The thought is not new. It has been there for days, a quiet hum beneath everything else. I could stay. I could live this life forever. I could let Nolan Pierce fade away, dissolve into the past, become a story I used to know. I could be Olivia for the rest of her life—for the rest of my life.

But I can't. Not yet.

I have to know if the first time was a fluke. I have to know if the second time is just as real. I have to go back, to test it, to see if the fantasy holds when I am not inside it. I have to know if I can leave and come back, if the power works, if this is something I can do again.

I have to know.

I stand in front of the mirror, and I make a decision. Tomorrow. I'll leave tomorrow.

The leaving is harder than I expected.

I wait until everyone is asleep. Emma's light is off. Sophia's light is off. The house is quiet—just the hum of the refrigerator, the creak of the third step settling. I stand in the middle of Olivia's room, looking at the bed, the desk, the canvases stacked against the wall. The room I have lived in for a month.

I don't want to go.

But I have to. I have to know.

I close my eyes. I focus. I will myself to withdraw—the way I willed myself to dissolve, the way I willed myself to flow. The goo seeps out through my mouth, a slow, strange release. I feel her body empty. I feel her consciousness return—a flicker, a gasp, a sudden presence that is not me. She is back. Olivia is back.

I pool on the floor, a shimmering puddle. She stirs on the bed. She blinks. She sits up.

"What—" she says. Her voice is her own again. "I must have fallen asleep."

She doesn't see me. She can't see me. I am a clear puddle on the floor, and she is rubbing her eyes, trying to remember what she was doing. She remembers everything, of course. She remembers my actions as her own. She thinks she painted. She thinks she went to class. She thinks she had coffee with Maya.

She doesn't know.

I flow under the door. Down the stairs. Out of the house. The night air is cool. I flow west, toward downtown, toward the laundromat, toward the apartment that I have not seen in two months.

I reform in the alley.

It takes moments—my body coalescing from the shimmering pool, bones and skin and muscle returning. I am naked. The cold air bites at my skin. I am male. I am Nolan. My shoulders are too broad. My hands are too rough. My voice, when I speak—I don't speak—is too low.

I climb the stairs to my apartment. The washing machines are still humming. The mug that says "WORLD'S OKAYEST PERSON" is still on the windowsill, cold now. The coffee has dried to a dark ring at the bottom.

I stand in front of the mirror.

My old face looks back at me. The thin wire glasses. The overgrown dark hair. The narrow shoulders. I push my glasses up with my thumb—an automatic gesture, still mine. My knuckles are still knobby. My hands are still the only part of me that feels like my own.

I don't hate this body. I never have. I just don't feel at home in it.

I sit on the edge of my bed. The floor hums beneath my feet. The alley is dark outside the window. The gray cat with the torn ear is still on the dumpster, watching nothing.

I think about Olivia. I think about her hands, her hair, her voice. I think about the way she laughs—the way I laughed, through her. I think about her portfolio review, three weeks away now. I think about Maya, who still has no idea. I think about the third step from the bottom, and how I knew to step over it.

I think about going back.

I will. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But soon. I will go back. I will be her again.

But for now, I sit here, in my old body, in my old life, and the longing is still there. It is familiar. It is mine. It has been with me for as long as I can remember.

The washing machines hum below me. The gray cat is still on the dumpster, watching nothing. The mug says WORLD'S OKAYEST PERSON. I push my glasses up with my thumb.