EXCUSE MY FRENCH

Fun fact: I was hopeless.

After I left Dana, I decided to go wander around the school grounds by myself. The campus was prettier than my own high school in Iowa, but I lived in the middle-of-nowhere; everything was prettier than in Iowa.

Beyond the parking lot were the football fields. I strolled by there and observed the classrooms. Approximately twenty-four hours before, I was jumping out of one of them. My eyes judged the distance from the windows to the ground, and all I could comment on it was yikes.

Then I found myself walking off of school property and heading in the direction I had came in on the bus. I assured myself that my break from school was necessary, that I needed time to adjust to my surroundings before I'd take on the challenge of going to school as someone else.

Oh well, as long as I wasn't dying, it was an improvement over yesterday. And that was my mantra until the sun set and I found myself back at the house. The bad-language-sensitive woman was there serving chicken for dinner, as was a man and two other people I didn't recognize. I smiled and stuffed my face with food rather than trying to talk.

All my stress came to an end after I took a shower that evening; all of my worries ceased to exist when my head hit the pillow.

• • • •

The next morning, my eyes fluttered open to a dastardly sight: there were string lights covering the walls and ceilings.

Yes, it was pretty for decoration, but then again, I didn't have any string lights in my bedroom in Iowa, and neither did Tegan or Clarke in their rooms.

So that meant one thing: I still wasn't myself.

And after spending an entire day as a dude, I was expecting that that would be the end of it. My logic was flawed. I thought that throwing myself out of a window would mean the end of this too.

It technically was since I had woken up as Clarke, but now it appeared treating Clarke well and not throwing him out of a window had the same effect.

God damnit. There had to be a bright side.

That was what I was desiring as I stared at the rainbow string lights that morning. Bright sides had existed in small doses so far on my adventure. As Tegan, it was exciting because under the impression I was dreaming, I was free to do whatever I wanted, including punching teachers and free falling to the concrete.

And as Clarke I was tall.

No, it wasn't as profound as anyone would've hoped, but it was still meaningful to me. So perhaps as this mystery person in this mystery location that I was right now had another thing to offer, because as my dad often liked to say, "There's always a silver lining."

I stretched my arms and legs and coaxed myself out from underneath the covers. That was when I got a look at my chest.

And you know what I discovered? I had boobs. And you know what that meant? That I was back in a girl's body. If anything, I was already one mini-step closer to being Sadie again.

Still, while that relaxed me temporarily, I had to wonder why I was here in this girl's body.

Reincarnation was starting to make sense, but there were a few things wrong with the idea. First off, I didn't die. And second, if this were reincarnation, how come I joined in at such an odd moment in these people's lives? People were reincarnated into babies, not random teenagers for a day.

Not to mention that my parents believed in Heaven and would have given me a lecture about considering reincarnation as a possibility.

Huh, maybe that was my silver lining today; that I didn't have to endure my parents' nagging.

But after I crossed reincarnation off the list of possibilities, only one idea remained: that someone was playing a prank on me.

It was unlikely, but my preferred option. And in order it to be true, it would have to be the greatest prank ever devised.

But who had it out for me this bad? Part of me wondered if it could have been Brandi Schumann, the girl that Dana reminded me of yesterday.

When I won the school-wide limbo competition in the eighth grade, my classmates raved about it for days. But not too soon after, Brandi moved from Oregon, becoming an instant celebrity in our school. Her arrival took away any temporary coolness that I could have had.

"Brandi?" I called out, just in case it was her behind this.

Ten seconds passed and nobody responded to my yells. The next thing to do was to try for someone else louder.

"Mom?! Dad?!" I yelled since Brandi wasn't responding. But then again, I had no real reason to be calling for my parents. They had no reason to prank me like this, unless this was their idea of the "fun side" they always claimed they had, or maybe a punishment because I didn't sweep the garage last week.

There was a slight shuffle coming from the other side of the wall, signaling that maybe I was right about this one, and was about to find myself as Sadie again.

I cracked a smile, but instead of my parents coming through the door and shouting "gotcha!" or "you just got punk'd!", a boy's voice traveled in from the opposite side of the wall.

"Tais-toi!" he screamed, much to my disliking, and it became very apparent that he wasn't either of my parents.

Two things about this outcome were bad. First, some kid was just yelling at me for no reason, and second, this wasn't a prank being pulled on me.

But before I could process it all further or at the very least, scream into a pillow, the bedroom door opened.

A large man with a moustache and blue pajamas came inside, peeking his head from behind the opened door. When he and I made eye contact, he raised his eyebrows.

"Tu vas bien?" he asked. "Qu'est-ce que tu criais?"

My head tilted sideways like a dog. Was I going insane? I didn't understand anything he said. Perhaps changing bodies for the third time wasn't good for your health, resulting in a fried brain.

There was more silence on both ends of the conversation, yet there was nothing I could to say to him except: what?

"J'ai fait le petit déjeuner," he said. "Tu as faim?"

Still nothing. Personally, I blamed the fact that I've lived in teeny tiny Harmony, Iowa my entire life for my less than spectacular word language skills.

Despite how confused I was, I did try to analyze what he was saying. "Tu" was Spanish, but that was as much as I knew and I didn't recognize any of the other words he said as being Spanish.

As this all raced through my brain, I had to keep quiet to think, and it also was probably best to not speak at all than to risk looking like a fool.

"Parle moi," the man said, which sounded more like French than Spanish to me.

There was a very high chance that it wasn't even French, considering that I had trouble recognizing a few of my English vocabulary words on an exam two weeks ago.

The man continued to stare and no words were being shared between us.

I didn't know how to speak French, but that didn't stop me from trying. Remember that I took Spanish in school, so please excuse my French.

"Bonjour?" I mustered out. After hearing the word a bunch of times from TV, I knew enough that that's how French people greeted each other. My only hope though was that I didn't completely butcher it.

"Bonjour," the man said back. "Avez tu veux du temps seul?"

Womp.

That was the sound of my already limited French going out the window (hey, just like Tegan!). With no idea how to answer that, I was out of French words. However, what he said sounded like a question and I felt compelled to answer. After all, all questions deserve an answer.

But how was I supposed to answer when I didn't even know what the question was?

While that was an excellent point, I didn't think of it at the spur of the moment, so I stuttered out the following string of words: "Baguette. Oui. Eiffel Tower. Hors D'oeuvres."

There they were: the only French words my brain could produce at such a crucial moment in time. And if knowing four words could ever be seen as impressive, it should be noted that I learned all those words from TV.

Once the words left my lips, the man became just as confused as I was. But then he said something else that I didn't quite catch before he went for the door. Maybe it was him leaving the room to go call the doctor for how strange I was acting.

All I could comment on the matter was: merde.

A/N: I had a request to provide some translations, so here we go!

Je fais le petit dejeuner: I made breakfast

Est ce que tu vas bien: Are you okay?

Avez-vous faim: Are you hungry?

Parle moi: Speak to me.

Avez tu veux du temps seul?: Do you want some time?

Merde: Shit