If someone had told Kyle a year ago that he would be here, he would have laughed so hard that his lungs would break. He would have said that no force, earthly or otherwise, could ever, ever make him spend time with Owen Odell. Especially not this kind of time, with his arm wrapped tightly around Owen's waist, their bare bodies pressed closely together. Clearly, had he said that, he would have been incorrect, but if they had never met those witches – or whatever they called themselves – this never would have happened.

Neither Kyle nor Owen were particularly popular in school, but they both had their places in the social hierarchy and neither of them ever tried to break that system. Kyle hung out with his group of friends – mostly skaters and people in bands – and Owen hung out alone. Kyle had never liked Owen; he was just too good and not only was it annoying, it was creepy. And Owen had never liked Kyle (Kyle was never quite sure why, although he figured his occasional teasing might have something to do with it). They ignored each other for the most part, except for those times when Kyle couldn't resist taunting Owen. It was easy because Owen always ignored him and never did anything back. But that day had been different.

There were three new girls in school – sisters. One was a senior and the other two were twin juniors. Kyle didn't know much about them, aside from the fact that they were pretty hot. He'd also known, even before it happened, that they were fond of getting their noses stuck in other people's business. He had one class with the twins and even on their first day, they were trying to sort out everyone's problems. By the time they got to Kyle and Owen, they'd only been in school for a few months. The sisters didn't even know either of them. But they thought they did, and okay, Kyle thought to himself, maybe the situation was the way it had seemed, but that still didn't give three crazy sisters the right to mess up their lives forever. Kyle knew one thing, he thought as he lay there and pulled Owen more tightly to him: he would not be the person he was now if it hadn't been for those meddling sisters.

It was the last day of school before summer vacation. Everyone was a bit rowdy. Another 45 minutes and they could all go home for two-and-a-half months, hang out with friends, and forget for a while the people that they didn't like. Kyle had decided to give Owen a parting gift. He hadn't planned on hurting him or anything, he just pushed all of his books out of his hands and onto the floor while the two of them were passing in the hall. Normally Owen, goody-two-shoes that he was, would just kneel and pick them up from the floor quietly, probably without even looking up at Kyle. Apparently he was in a bad mood that day.

"Hey!" he'd called, and Kyle remembered stopping mid-step. "Pick those up, asshole!" Kyle turned around slowly and stared wide-eyed at the smaller boy. He was incredulous; he wasn't sure he'd ever heard Owen's voice before, and even if he had, it had definitely never been that loud.

Eventually he managed to snap himself out of his stupor and quickly spit out the most obscene thing he could think up in such a short amount of time. "Why don't you bend over and get them yourself?" he'd asked, thrusting his hips forward perversely in an attempt to embarrass Owen enough to shut him up. It worked…kind of. Owen didn't say anything, he just kind of ran at Kyle and drove his fist into his gut. Naturally, Kyle wasn't pleased with this. He didn't typically get into physical fights but he wasn't going to just take it either. He fought back and that was about when the sisters showed up. There were a few other people watching Kyle and Owen fight, but not many. When the sisters arrived, they all dispersed. Kyle couldn't even remember if the girls had told them to stop. All he knew was that they said something weird and suddenly he had to get to the bathroom. He was going to puke.

And apparently Owen had felt a similar sensation because they raced to the bathroom and threw themselves down onto the floor in neighboring stalls. Kyle remembered staying there, hands pressed against the dirty tile floor while he emptied his stomach into the toilet. He vaguely heard Owen doing the same. The rest of the afternoon was a blur for both of them. They both went right to sleep when they reached their empty houses. And both were completely oblivious to the fact that they would never be the same again.

Thinking back on it now, Kyle wondered if he wished that things would have turned out differently. Sometimes living was agony, but moments like this were perfection. He'd always laughed at people who talked about finding their "other half" but he found it even more ridiculous now. His "other half" had been gift-wrapped and handed to him, although it had not been very well-received. He chuckled quietly, trying not to wake Owen, pressed a kiss against his neck, and recalled the events of the morning after their fight.

As soon as Kyle woke up, he realized that something was not right. For one thing, he wasn't in his bed, but on top of that, he felt…squished. Not physically squished, but kind of like there was too much of himself and not enough body – as if he was wearing clothes that were five sizes too small. He sat up and looked around. He was outside somewhere. This was just too weird. Kyle had never been a sleepwalker. And even if he had, while that might have explained what he was doing outside (and completely out of sight from his house), it didn't account for the strange squished feeling. What the hell? he thought to himself. It was then that he realized something really weird was going on. Because the answering voice, the voice that said Holy shit, was not his own.

At first Kyle had looked around himself frantically, figuring that there must have been someone close by. But there was no one. He was suddenly aware of a dull throbbing in his head and he reached up to rub it warily, only to have his arm suddenly jerked back down to his side, seemingly of its own accord. It felt like he'd moved it, but he hadn't made the decision to do so. Then the strangest thing happened. "What is going on here?" Kyle said aloud – except he didn't say it. His lips formed the words, he heard the question being asked in his own voice, but it wasn't Kyle who asked the question. He screamed. About a second later, he screamed again, only this time it was a scream coming from whatever it was that first spoke out loud.

All Kyle could do was sit there, terrified. Eventually, he tentatively asked, "Hello?"

His own mouth, but not Kyle himself, replied, "Um…hi."

"Oh my God, what the fuck?" Kyle said miserably, quickly becoming afraid for his sanity.

"Kyle?" the whatever-it-was asked hesitantly in Kyle's voice.

"How do you know my name? Who the hell are you?"

"Owen," the thing answered, sounding just as terrified as Kyle felt. "Owen Odell."

"Owen?" Kyle's head nodded. "Owen Odell," Kyle said, as if trying to wrap his mind around the idea. "What's going on?"

"I have no idea. I feel…funny."

"I feel funny." Still, he couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief. "I thought I was possessed." He blanched. "You're not a demon, are you?"

"I don't think so… Are you?"

"No, I'm not a demon…I don't think."

Kyle felt sick. The part of him that, well, wasn't him said, "I think I'm going to be sick."

"You mean I'm going to be sick," Kyle replied. "This is my body."

"You're not helping," Owen said miserably.

Kyle nodded and tried to breathe evenly. "This is insane," he muttered. "I'm going insane."

"We can't both be going insane," Owen said, not sounding very convinced himself. "We just have to figure out what's wrong with us."

"I feel like Gollum," Kyle said, a bit freaked out about listening to someone else talk with his own voice.

"Like The Lord of the Rings?" Owen asked, and Kyle nodded. "You think we're, like…sharing a body…or something?"

"Or something," Kyle agreed. "All I know is, I feel weird, like I'm squished in here. And you're talking with my voice, but you're not me." Owen nodded with Kyle's head, and Kyle had the sensation of standing up. He looked down, and surely enough, his legs were moving so that he could get to his feet. "Where are you going?" he asked, more than a tad bit panicked to discover that Owen had control over his body. In much the same way that he normally would, Kyle stopped his body from moving and sat back down on the ground.

"Hey!" Owen complained. "I have to get home. I have to get away from here. This is just too creepy."

"You can't go home. You're in my body, and I can't just go into your house."

"Well, I'm not going to your house!" Owen said indignantly.

Kyle got angrily to his feet, but just as he was about to storm off to the left, the other side of his body jerked to the right, so he didn't end up going anywhere at all. "We can't just stand here all day. We have to figure out what to do." Owen didn't say anything. "No matter what's going on, we're pretty sure that we look like me, right?" Owen nodded reluctantly. "So it doesn't make sense to go to your house. What would it look like to your parents?" Owen simply crossed Kyle's arms impatiently. "Let's go to my house and just…try to figure this out. Okay?" Owen eventually sighed his consent and Kyle was able to walk without hindrance. It took him a while to discover where he was in relation to his house, but after a bit of wandering he realized that he was in the park where he used to play as a kid. He was – they were – sneaking through his front door twenty minutes later. Luckily, it seemed that his parents were still in bed.

Owen didn't say anything the entire way to Kyle's house, and he kept it up when they got inside. It was when Kyle went up to the bathroom and looked in the mirror that Owen let out another scream of horror, causing Kyle to clap a hand over his mouth. "I look like you," Owen said in shock when Kyle removed his hand.

"We already knew that," Kyle replied, irritated. Owen just whimpered, apparently finding the situation even harder to deal with now that he could actually see it. Kyle led them down the hall to his bedroom, shut the door, and sat down on his bed, only to have Owen stand him up again and start pacing. "Would you stop that?" Kyle asked, and sat them back down.

"No!" Owen stood up and began pacing again. "You may be perfectly calm about all of this, but I am the one stuck in your body."

"Trust me, I don't want you to be here either," Kyle said, and sat down, "but that's no reason to wear a hole in my carpet."

Owen didn't say anything, but he glared (as if Kyle could even see him do it) and stood up. The next few minutes were spent constantly standing and sitting, as the two of them tried to fight for dominance, which was difficult when neither of them understood what was going on, or how they could get more control over their shared body than the other had. Eventually, though, Kyle won, and managed to sort of pin Owen down. He wasn't exactly sure how he'd done it, but for the moment at least, Owen was subdued.

"Now, we need to figure out how this happened," Kyle began, not bothering to hide the slightly smug tone of his voice. "Things like this don't just happen. Two people don't just wake up one morning to find that they're in the same body."

Owen tried to look sardonic, but he gave up and said, "Then what the hell happened to us?"

"Someone must have done something to us."

"Are you suggesting that we're…under some kind of spell?" Owen asked, and Kyle felt his eyes grow wide. "Oh," Owen said, and in Kyle's confusion he lost whatever grip he'd had on Owen, unintentionally allowing the other boy to get control over their body and stand up again. Before Kyle could stop him, Owen was running out into the hallway and down the stairs. "Oh," he kept saying. It was getting on Kyle's nerves.

"What? What? If you don't tell me what you're 'oh-ing' about, Owen, I swear to God… Where are we going?"

"Remember yesterday, in the hall?" Kyle thought about it. Actually, the whole incident had been completely forgotten, what with the whole suddenly sharing a body with somebody else… But now he remembered shoving Owen's books out of his hands and getting in a fight, needing to find a toilet, and then going home to pass out.

"Yeah…?"

"Remember how we both ran to the bathroom at the same time? And did you go right to sleep when you got home?"

"Yeah, but I don't see what that has to do with anything."

Owen sighed impatiently, now running down the street with Kyle's legs. "That was right after those Rimbaud sisters showed up, remember?"

"Yes, I remember, but I still don't see what –"

"Some people say that they're witches," Owen interrupted suggestively.

"Oh, don't tell me that you believe that bullshit."

"Kyle, either we're both completely crazy or we're seriously both trapped in the same body – I'd say that both of those are fairly good reasons to at least consider the possibility that witches exist. Or do you have another explanation?"

Unable to argue with this logic, or to come up with something better, Kyle sighed in defeat and allowed Owen to keep them running. They passed the park where they'd woken up and kept going. It wasn't until they'd been running for a good twenty minutes that Kyle asked, "Where are we going anyway?"

"To their house," Owen replied, as if the answer was obvious.

"You know where they live?" Kyle couldn't keep the tone of surprise from his voice. He found it hard to believe that someone as…Owen-y as Owen Odell would know where three hot sisters lived.

Owen apparently recognized his surprise for what it was, because he answered grudgingly, "They live in my neighborhood." In any other situation, Kyle would have laughed, but he wasn't used to running so much and his legs were burning.

Ten minutes later, they were there. Owen stopped running and turned to face the conventional-looking white house. He seemed to be frozen in place, so Kyle took control again. "Never been to a girl's house before, Owen?" he asked mockingly. Owen didn't answer and Kyle snickered, walking up to the doorstep. With a deep breath, he rang the bell.

It was only a moment before a chipper-looking girl, Kyle recognized her as being one of the twins, was at the door. She didn't give them a chance to say anything before grinning widely and calling over her shoulder, "They're here!"