# The First Swap: I Got the Cheer Captain's Body

I only came to this party because my roommate Dev begged me to drive him. That's it. That's the whole reason I was standing in the kitchen of some huge off-campus house, holding a warm soda, watching half the football team do something very stupid with a lot of confidence.

"Okay, okay, everybody listen up!" shouted Marcus Webb, linebacker and self-appointed king of the party. He was standing on a chair holding up his phone like it was a sacred artifact. "The app is real. My cousin's roommate downloaded it and his whole floor swapped last month. Fifteen minutes, everyone who's opted in, random pairs. Bodies only, heads stay put. It wears off at the end of the night."

"Bodies only? What does that even mean?" someone yelled.

"It means your head goes where it's always been, and everything under your neck draws a new lottery ticket! I don't make the rules!"

"That's fake," said Devon, which is my name, so the other Devon — Dev, my roommate — yelled "It's REAL, bro" over me, and the room mostly cheered, because it's a party and nobody needs a reason.

But apparently there was a list. Apparently you had to add your name. And apparently Dev added my name while I was getting us sodas, because when I came back he showed me my own name sitting right there on his phone under "PARTICIPANTS: 47."

"You what?"

"You're welcome! It's a once in a lifetime thing!"

I tried to get my name off. I really did. But the app had some nonsense on it about how "entries are final once the cycle begins," and then the countdown hit zero before I finished reading the sentence.

The world went soft. Like someone smeared Vaseline on my glasses. I remember the kitchen lights stretching sideways, a couple of people whooping, and then nothing at all for maybe two seconds.

Then I was sitting somewhere I hadn't been sitting, at a way more comfortable height, and my soda was suddenly a lime seltzer, and my shoulders were two feet narrower than they'd been ten seconds ago.

I looked down.

Okay. So. Bodies only, heads stay put. That checked out. My head was still my head. My voice was still — well, I was about to confirm that. But from the neck down, I was …