The Regression Stone

The Freshmen

Darcy woke up first the next morning, as usual, and could still sense her sister was fast asleep. As she rolled out of bed, she placed her feet on the ground and got to her feet to stretch. Something felt off but she didn't think much of it, she assumed she must not have slept as well as she thought she did.

She quietly turned the knob on her door to exit, careful not to disturb Sonia, and made her way to the bathroom to get ready for the day. As she entered the bathroom, she noticed her first surprise of the day.

Staring back in the mirror at her was her 14-year old self! She rubbed her eyes and blinked several times, but the image didn't go away, she kept staring at her younger self in disbelief. She quickly looked around the room and everything started to become clearer, she was shorter than she had been yesterday, and upon inspection was less developed too.

"Oh no, whatever happened to Cole happened to me now!" she muttered under her breath to herself. Her voice even sounded higher and less mature! She left the bathroom and headed back into her room to share the news with Sonia.

When she got into her room she closed the door behind her and approached her sleeping sister. Upon looking at her, she Darcy realized that they had both regressed just like Cole did. She placed her hands on her sister's shoulder and started gently pushing her, trying to wake her up.

Groggily, Sonia began to wake up,

"Darce, not yet, let me sleep a bit longer" she said, also with a higher pitched voice.

"Sone, you need to wake up, it's important" Darcy responded in a serious tone.

Sonia stretched in bed and rolled over to see what was so important to her sister, and what she saw shocked her.

"Darce! What happened to you! You're younger!" came her shocked response.

"Go look in a mirror, it's not just me..." Darcy warned her sister.

Sonia clasped her hands over her mouth, Darcy was right, she sounded younger! Sonia boltede up from the bed and stood up, taking stock of the room and noticing that she had slightly shrunk during the night, everything seemed ever so slightly taller. She ran over to the mirror in the room and gasped in horror at her 14 year old reflection.

"We got younger!" she squeaked in surprise at her equally confused sister.

"Exactly like what happened to Cole, we're probably the same age now" Darcy tried to comfort her sister.

"So does that mean we're the only three who remember being older?" Sonia asked, shuddering at the thought of having to relive freshman year.

"Only one way to find out" Darcy responded, going over to her phone and picking it up. Names and conversations she hadn't seen before filled the text logs. She switched over to photos and it was the same thing, they were 14 in all their recent photos and with friends she had no clue who they were. Darcy sighed,  "Yeah, the exact same thing as Cole. We need to text him to let him know."

Darcy flipped back to her phone and tried to find Cole in her recent texts, but he was nowhere to be seen. Confused, she flipped to her contacts and began browsing for Cole, but he wasn't anywhere in her phone.

"This is weird, Sone, I don't have Cole in my phone. Can you text him on yours?"

Sonia nodded and grabbed her phone, scrolling to her most recent texts to also turn up empty. She browsed through her contacts and well and Cole was absent from her phone.

"What's going on! Cole's nowhere in my phone!" Sonia began panicking,

Darcy paused for a moment and concentrated, trying to think of what this could mean.

"Don't overreact yet, in this new reality we may not be as close with Cole as we are. But if he still remembers everything, then we can fix that easily. What I'm more worried about is how to get us all back to our proper ages!" she reassured Sonia.

Sonia kept looking at her sister and then at herself, still in disbelief in how they just lost years of their lives.

"How old do you think we are?  14?"

"Looks that way, I don't like it any more than you." Darcy reassured.

"So what do we do? Everyone is going to think we're 14? Are we not going to know anyone but they know us?" Sonia continued to spiral into her stress.

"This is going to suck Sone, I'm really sorry we're going through this, but that's what's happening. We just have to go through our day like everything is normal and try not to draw any suspicion to us as we do."

Sonia agreed with her sister by nodding, slowly beginning to calm down.

"And then we keep researching what's going on, because whatever happened to Cole now happened to us. We can regroup with him on the bus, he'll want to know he's not alone in this."

Sonia nodded again at her sister. Darcy always knew how to calm her sister down and have her look at things from a rational approach.

"Is there anything you wished you could do over in freshman year? Well now's your chance. That's probably the only good thing that's going to come out of this, so we should look on the bright side."

Sonia paused to think about this question,

"Maybe I wouldn't try so hard to try and fit in? I didn't like some of the mean girls I used to hang out with" she responded,

"Great! Then if you're hanging out with any mean girls today, go hang out with someone cool instead. Like me!" Darcy joked.

Sonia rolled her eyes at her sister, suddenly seeming more like herself. She looked back into the mirror and remarked at how much younger she looked, still in disbelief.

"You're right Darce, let's make the most of this and figure out how we can grow back up again!"

"That's the spirit. I call dibs on the shower!" She shouted as she dashed out of their room and toward the bathroom to prepare for her day.