High school records unusual amount of swaps

Because of the relative rarity of swaps, most public institutions have not bothered to educate its faculties or, in the case of schools, student bodies, about the matter. Many students at Algonquin Memorial High School in upstate New York had unanswered questions and unassuaged fears when the first swap occurred among their ranks. What they didn't know was that it wouldn't be the last.

Bret Turnbull and Harvey Kidman were not very close. Both 15, Turnbull was known to be a tormentor of smaller students like Kidman. On a February day, Kidman was forced to hide underneath the track bleachers while Turnbull sought to terrorize him. though Turnbull had been reprimanded for his behavior on various occasions, it was no deterrent. It was a classic case of bully and victim, until the swap.

When, during a fourth period lunch session, Turnbull found himself sitting across from a chess board, he knew something was amiss. To his own personal shock, he had been swapped into the body of his favourite victim, whom he had nicknamed "Worm."

"I hate this," said a mournful Kidman, sitting in the shoes of a much larger but more physically agressive body. "I don't believe this was the only way the bullying could have stopped. He probably would have stopped picking on me if I'd turned into someone else. Anyone else. now I have to live with his face."

Kidman has reportedly been quite depressed since the incident, and has sought counselling, something he wouldn't even do when he was the target of Turnbull's scorn. Turnbull, for his part, seems to have settled down, but has been demoted to a benchwarmer on the school's baseball team, on which he was once a starting pitcher. It should be noted that, if one more serious incident had been reported between him and Kidman, he would have been removed from the team altogether.

The two were used as an example, sitting beside one another on the auditorium stage in front of all of their peers, to present an information package provided by the Bureau for International Swap Affairs. As the principal went over the details, that it could happen to anyone and was in fact happing all around the world, one student had his mind on other things.

Paul Derrien, 17, had one thing on his mind that day, like most days, and that was Kayla Aronson, 16. A grade below him, she had captured his imagination when they met briefly in the library. She was, however, dating another boy in his grade, Mike Hadley. That was to change one mid-March afternoon.

"It was actually the Friday before March Break," explains Derrien. "I was in math, I had just written a test when I felt like I was falling asleep. And that's not unusual I guess because I was pretty bored. And the first thing I sense is, like, the smell of sweat, and I get really warm. I hear all these voices around me echoing and footsteps running. It was like I had sleep-walked down to the gym."

It took a moment for Paul to realize what had happened. The girl had to catch her breath, bolting breathlessly from the gymnasium to the principal's office, where she was met by a famiiar face.

"She looked at me," Kayla recalls, "And I think she almost broke down in tears. And I almost did too."

"To suddenly be confronted, in this public place, with what has happened to you, it's a lot to take on," she recalls. "And at that time, you don't even grasp exactly how your life has changed. No, it takes a few days of walking around in someone els'es shoes before it starts to set in... this is different, and scary, but I can do it."

Kayla and Paul (now commonly referred to by students as "Kyle and Paula" despite the BISA's preference for not changing names,) were seen often in public together afterward. They say that at first, it was mostly for support, because not everyone has the advantage of being in close proximity to their body's prior owner.

"There were other advantages," Paul explains, "Because Mike [Hadley] wouldn't leave me alone for almost a month after the swap. and being seen with Kay in my old body, that gave people the idea that we were, you know, together."

In reality, Paula explains that was never the intention. "The last thing any teenage boy wants to see in the mirror is a pair of breasts, and the last thing he needs is to be gawked at or even hit on by guys incessantly. We were there for each other."

"And be for long," Kayla adds, "I thought, Paul makes a pretty nice girl. And I stopped looking at her as some guy in my old body, but as one of my closest friends."

It was, however, a shock to their friends when Kayla and Paul first kissed in the cafeteria.

"Paul used to have this wicked jumpshot," explains friend Dale Karlov, "We played basketball a lot. And now he's a girl, kissing boys. we haven't, um, talked a lot since."

"At first, I thought it was gross," says Melissa Kelown, a classmate of Kayla's, "But things change."

The change she describes echoes her own. Kelown was sitting at home reading on her bed one night when she felt feint and decided to lie back.

"And when I woke up, it was like the worst dream ever."

While Kelown did not have to address the same type of change Kayla and Paul did, the swap she found herself in was in a more serious situation.

"I was due after the end of the semester," explains Darla Montgomery, 29, a physics teacher at Algonquin Memorial. "[My fiancé] Bryan and I were very busy buying baby things and planning our finances. He'd already gone to bed and I was still awake, and then it happened."

Kelowna, in a body almost 6 months pregnant, now must face the unwilling duty of acting as a surrogate mother to her teacher.

"I feel so bad that she has to live with this," laments Mongomery, "Being pregnant isn't something you can just live with and get on with your life. It affects everything around you, especially at this late stage."

Kelowna, optiistic, says that she is grateful for the amount of leeway she has been given with her studies. "I don't think this is, like, an ordinary teen pregnancy," she jokes, adding "And when this is over, whatever body I'm in, I don't think I'll be having sex for a very long time."

Officials are concerned this matter could touch off perhaps the first-ever 'maternity' suit for the courts to argue over, but Kelowna is not looking to make herself the child's mother.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm doing all the work and hopefully I get something in return, but I don't want to, like, keep their baby hostage or anything. They're totally the parents. I'm just, like filling in."

Bertrand Mosses, the vice principal of Algonquin Memorial High School, has observed that three separate swaps have occurred, all concerning members of the faculty and student body.

"I don't like it, and it seems very odd," he scratches his head as he says, "It's as though somebody's targetting my people and I don't like it at all. The swaps seem totally random but this sort of thing doesn't happen when it's random."

No one can say for sure when, where or why a swap will occur, but Mosses is keeping a close eye on his school until the answers are divined.