Lori Jensen pulled into her driveway with a sense of uneasiness. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something had been bothering her all day. It was just a sense that there was something wrong or off. She pulled in and saw that her husband Dan was already home. Since she hadn’t gotten a call from him, she felt better that everything was okay.

Lori walked in the house and saw that the rest of her family was all outside. Dan was at the grill and her two daughters were sitting in lawn chairs across from each other. Amy was fiddling with her Kindle while Kelly was playing her 3DS. Lori went upstairs to change out of her scrubs and put on some shorts.

Lori sighed as she stripped off her work clothes and changed into a t-shirt and blue shorts. “I need to call Jen” she thought as she walked back down and out onto the deck.

“Hi Mom” her younger daughter Kelly called out to her as she opened the sliding glass door.

“Hey Honey…How was your day?” she asked.

Amy looked up over the top of her Kindle and caught Kelly eye. Kelly just smiled as said “Good; how was yours?”

“Oh, just fine I guess…another day” Lori replied as she pulled up a chair. “What are we having tonight dear?” she asked Dan.

“I’m just grilling up some burgers…Amy made a salad earlier to go with it” Dan replied.
“Awesome” Lori said as she slouched down a bit in the seat and closed her eyes against the setting sun allowing herself to relax.

“So Mom…we got like 4 bags of trash out of the attic and another 3 bags that can go to Goodwill” Amy said.

“Now that’s good news for the day…I wondered if you two were going to clean up there today”

“What…don’t you think your daughters are responsible enough to do their chores?” Amy said with mock indignation.

That night, after dinner, Lori called her sister Jennifer as she watched her two daughters laughing with each other in the warm dusk of a summer’s night.

Two weeks later…

“Amy...Kelly…could you two come down her for a minute” Lori called up the stairs to her daughters.

Amy got off her bed and slowly opened the door. Kelly was also leaning out of her cracked door. They looked at each other and began to whisper.

“What do you think Mom wants?” Kelly whispered first.

“I have no idea” Amy responded. They both came out and Kelly led the way down the stairs with Amy close behind.

“Hi Aunt Jen!” Kelly said as she entered the living room and she ran across the room to give her aunt a hug.

Jennifer had a wide smile as she hugged her niece and said “You sure have changed since the last time I saw you” Then she saw Amy enter the room “And so have you; you’ve definitely grown some more since last Christmas” she said as Amy came over for a hug. “You’re so pretty and grown up Amy” she said as Amy sat next to Kelly on the couch and Jennifer and Lori sat down across from them.

“So why are you in town Aunt Jen? Usually you don’t come by in the summer” Amy asked.

“Well, your Mom gave me a call and…” Jen began.

“…and there’s something, I have to ask you” Lori finished. “Where did you find our book?”

Amy and Kelly gave each other a quick sideways look before Amy said “What book?” innocently enough.

Lori pulled the leather bound book from beneath the cushion of her chair and laid it on the coffee table between them, then she dropped a folded piece of paper down on top of it and sat back in her seat.

Amy felt her stomach drop out so fast, it was like she was on a roller coaster, but one that never stopped going down.

Kelly broke out in a cold sweat and was unable to move or speak; they had been exposed.

Amy’s guilt and surprise caught up to her quickly and she managed to spit out “How did you…”

“…know” Lori finished for her daughter. She and her sister shared a glance and a nod and said “While it appears that everything in the world has changed to fit your new reality, there are still some people who can see the difference; people who have used the spell themselves in the past” she said and dropped her head. A tear came from Lori’s eye as Jennifer eased forward on her seat.

“It’s okay girls” she began “Your mother and I know what you’re going through because that spell you found was ours. We used it a long time ago and our lives have never been the same since”

Amy and Kelly were dumbfounded. They could only sit and stare in disbelief as Jennifer began to tell the story.

“You know me as your Mom’s younger sister…but that wasn’t always the case. I was her older sister until…” she dipped her hand toward Kelly “…the summer of 1989 when I was 17 and your Mom was 10.”

Lori now said “we were unsupervised that summer just like you two were as your grandma and grandpa were at work and when we came across the spell. It was just a folded piece of paper in the bottom of a trunk. We didn’t know it would work and we were just joking around and that was when we switched ages…just like you two did”

Jennifer picked the story back up. “We found that book in the bottom of an old box that neither of our parents could ever remember even getting, let alone looking at, so after we switched, no one ever knew. But now we know that since we switched, we are the only ones who can see or tell that you two switched”

“Do you know what I went through in that moment two weeks ago when I saw you two sitting on the deck trying to act like nothing was wrong? My heart was about to leap out of my chest. I couldn’t believe my own eyes…I mean Amy…you had become and adult and then I saw my little Kelly again. Seeing you back at 10 again, I knew in an instant what had happened. But I also realized that no one else could tell a thing and if I freaked out, all hell would have broken loose. I saw all the pictures had changed just like when Jen and I had said the spell and switched ages twenty five years ago. I remember that day so clearly…” Lori drifted off.

Jennifer began anew “It was a hot day in late July, the 23rd…a Wednesday and our dad told us to clean up the basement. I had just turned 17 and was excited about starting my senior year of High School. My birthday was originally June 8th, 1972 and your Mom’s was March 14th, 1979 but that was about to change. I was down in the basement and had worked my way to a back corner where a lot of our grandparents and great grandparent’s things had come to rest. Your Mom was sorting through a bunch of old records on the other side of the room when I opened the box and found a brown leather book with nothing on any of the pages; but a folded up piece of paper stuck in the middle”

“She called me over and had me read it and we both had a good laugh at it but neither of us took it seriously…just like you two must now have. But anyways, we decided to read it out loud. We read the first part together, then I read a line and Jen read her two and I had another and then we finished up together and then boom” Lori was just getting going. “I remember you were wearing a Guns and Roses t-shirt and jean shorts and you had that 80’s hair with all those bangs in front and even though we were working in the basement, it was all teased up…and you just got this shocked look on your face and I remember so clearly how you started to shrink right before my eyes. You went down so smooth and steady; it was like a balloon having the air let out of it. Your face never changed that shocked expression as you shrank down shorter and shorter until I was taller and looking down at you”

Jennifer smiled slightly at the memory. “Yeah, I remember the shock factor of the moment and I remember feeling like the floor was moving below me. Then I remember feeling just how big my shirt and shorts felt on me and realizing that something wasn’t right at all. That was when I looked up at you and I screamed”

“Oh I remember that scream so well. It was so high pitched that it scared me. You sounded like a little girl screaming her head off...”

“…I was a little girl screaming her head off” Jennifer finished.

“Anyway, I knew something was wrong and it hit me that the stupid spell was actually working on us. I was growing; I was growing bigger and taller and older and Jennifer was growing smaller and shorter and younger right there. I wanted to stop it and switch us back but we just kept going in our opposite directions so I started to scream too” Lori rambled

“And that made me flip out even more because her scream sounded so different to me. Your Mom had a high pitched voice as a little girl and when I suddenly heard this deep voice screaming away in front of me, it freaked me out. That and the fact that I lost my shorts at that moment” Jennifer said.

“Oh yeah…I remember your shorts just drooping then giving up and sliding down your legs and pooling up on your feet. Your shirt was so big that it covered you down to your knees. It was when your hair went flat and pulled in that I really noticed just how young you looked” Lori replied.

“See and since I was watching you, it was the opposite for me. I watched you getting taller and taller and your face was maturing and looking older and then your hair started to grow and change. I remember thinking ‘she looks like she’s in high school now’ before I saw the top button on your shorts pop and I looked down again. I saw your long legs and your boobs poking out of your shirt and I thought I was going to faint. I sat down on a trunk that was behind me and started breathing way too fast” Jennifer said.

“And I came over to you and told you to not worry and that it would be alright…it was the strangest feeling at that moment; I was kneeling down in front of you trying to comfort you…” Lori shook her head at the memory.

“…and it’s been that way ever since.” Aunt Jennifer said to the still speechless girls. “We never switched back; we couldn’t switch back and neither can you”

“Yeah, we kind of figured that” Kelly said.

“Anyway” Jennifer started up again. “After we stopped hyperventilating in the basement and realized that we had switched ages with each other, we ventured back upstairs. I went straight for the lockbox in the office and pulled out our birth certificates. I found mine on top and read that my birth year had switched to 1979 and I pulled out Lori’s and saw hers was 1972 and my jaw just dropped”

“Let me guess” Amy said “Your rooms had changed décor too”

They both nodded “Like it had always been that way” Lori said. “So we acted squirrelly for the rest of the summer but no one ever guessed why”

“And even though I can remember that day as clear as anything, I forgot what it was like to be 17” Jennifer said.

“I know that feeling all too well” Kelly said suddenly. “I can’t remember how to drive, but I know that I did drive. And I know I was a good student but my knowledge stops at the 4th grade now; it’s so frustrating” as Jennifer nodded knowingly.

“And for you” Lori said. “Things are just there. You remember sitting in a class you know you were never in and learning a subject that you now know and it’s just there”
Amy just nodded.

“So I went to High school that fall and fit right in. I had a boyfriend and did fine in all my classes and went off the college; but I sit here as your 42 year old Mom and not a 35 year old”

“And I sit here your 35 year old aunt, not your 42 year old aunt. I had to go through all those grades again…I don’t envy you that Kelly, but you do still get to do everything, even if you have to do some things twice; like going through puberty. It sucks but since you don’t really remember it you just have to live your life, accepting life as it comes” Jennifer said.

Kelly nodded “I realize that”

“Good for you” Jennifer added in.

“I have a question: Why didn’t you destroy that piece of paper and that book? Why take it with you for us to stumble on one day?” Amy asked.

Lori and Jennifer exchanged a glance before they turned to the girls and Lori said “We thought we did destroy it”

“What?” Amy said.

“A few weeks later that summer” Jennifer began “We took that book and that piece of paper and dropped them in the lake”

“So how did it end up in our attic?” Amy asked.

Lori just looked at her oldest daughter “You should also ask, why did it show up when you two were the exact same ages that we were when we switched?”