What troubled me most was the nature of the change. I hadn’t taken the world into me as I had once before. This, I knew, was a sweeping change, which meant it involved more than just me.

I didn’t know it yet—but what I had done was shift time for a single heartbeat, for every living human male. That might seem like nothing—but it was long enough for a different sperm to fertilize my mother’s egg.

And it wasn’t just me.

That 0.73 seconds was a hiccup for the entire world—like that awkward time lag you get when you’re on a phone call to someone in a different country. Everything in human history happened a heartbeat later than it would have. It altered the world in ways that were impossible to tally. Streets and businesses had different names. Even some buildings were altered.

But none of that compared to the human change.

About three in four people looked the same, proving that some destinies had great inertia and took far more effort to change. But one in four had the same sperm/egg issue I had. About half of those people stayed the same sex but looked like their own nonexistent sibling. The other half, however, had an instant biological sex change. In other words, one in eight guys were now girls, and one in eight girls were now guys.

Now go look at yourself in the mirror, because, for all you know, it could be you. But don’t worry about it, because even if it was you, you’d never know. Pleasant dreams.

At 9:00 the next morning, the doorbell rang. Not at 8:59, or 9:01, but precisely 9:00. Because my mom once told Layton that ringing a doorbell before 9:00 a.m. was rude. Layton had a very literal worldview. That was part of a much larger problem.

“Ashley’s not down yet,” I heard my mom say. “You can wait if you like.”

“Thank you, Ms. Bowman.”

Although my parents here split up ages ago, my mom kept her married name, because the name meant something here in Taylorville. She considered clout to be part of the divorce settlement.

I had just woken up after a medicated sleep courtesy of last night’s ER doctor. I wasn’t ready to access my memories of Layton in this world. I would much rather have had the emotionally detached analysis of the Edwards than all the emotionally charged internal data detailing my life as a girl. But honestly, I wasn’t ready to face the Edwards either.

It ached to breathe. The doctor had said the bruising would look worse before it looked better. “Rest and time,” she had said. I sat up in bed and lifted my pajama top to see the bruise, but my view was obscured by a breast.

Right. I had those now.