Chapter 1: Thirty Minds, One Body

All thirty kids in our homeroom woke up to find ourselves—somehow—all crammed inside the bullied heroine of a melodramatic romance novel. Each of us was stuck controlling a different body part. Lucky me, I got stuck as her eyes. My best friend Marissa? She ended up as the mouth. And our homeroom teacher? He landed as her butt. Yeah, you read that right.

Seriously, what even was this, a fever dream? One minute we were huddled in our classroom, rain hammering the windows—thunder rattling the ceiling tiles—and the next, boom. Lightning struck, everything went blinding white. When we came to, we were all jammed into the mind and body of the story’s tragic heroine, lying face-down and unconscious in a massive four-poster bed. Each of us got assigned to a body part: hands, ears, nose, hair, chest, legs—you name it. Marissa wailed, “No way! If the heroine kisses the hero, does that mean I have to kiss him? I haven’t even had my first kiss yet!”

A couple of classmates started sniffling, and honestly, I wanted to hand them a tissue—even though I was just as freaked out. I could practically feel the panic ripple through our shared mind, like the first day of high school all over again.

“What’s with all the crying? It’s so loud!” snapped the left hand, voice cold and rough.

“Chill out, man. Of course the girls are freaked out,” replied the right hand, trying to sound cool but not really pulling it off.

We all went quiet. The class troublemaker and the football captain had landed as the heroine’s left and right hands. Those two were always at each other’s throats, and now they were literally attached. The universe had jokes, apparently.

We started calling roll, figuring out who was where. It was like homeroom attendance, but way weirder. Except this time, nobody wanted to answer.

“Jason?”

“Yeah, left leg here!”

“Marcus?”

“Right leg, I guess!”

“Ha, what are the odds?”

“Yeah, hilarious.”

“Ben?”

“I’m the nose!”

By the end, almost everyone was present. Relief and nerves tangled together—like realizing you’re not alone in a nightmare, but hey, it’s still a nightmare.

“Wait, where are Ms. Bennett and the class president?” someone asked. We all looked around—yep, they were missing.

“Maybe they didn’t get zapped? Lucky them!”

We all felt a pang of envy. The kind of envy that makes you wish you were anywhere else—even stuck in algebra class.

Then, the class president’s voice piped up, thick with misery. “I’m here… I’m the large intestine.”

Silence. Even the troublemaker and football captain shut up. It was cafeteria-bombshell silence.

Nobody liked the class president—he was always tattling and brown-nosing teachers—so someone snorted, “Serves you right, karma!”

“Oh, please, you’re just the small intestine and you’re laughing at me?”

They started arguing, both getting red in the face. We scrambled to break it up, the kind of fight where nobody wants to be the one to call a teacher.

“Knock it off!” the football captain barked. “We’re all in this together. No point fighting.”

For once, the troublemaker agreed. “Yeah, we’re all screwed. Let’s focus.”

Marissa added, “Right. We’re classmates, not enemies. Let’s help each other.”

After a minute, everyone calmed down. The tension eased, just a bit, like after a fire drill when you realize it’s not the real thing.

Then someone remembered, “Wait, wasn’t Ms. Bennett with us when the lightning hit?”

Everyone thought back. You could feel the gears turning—memories scrambling, trying to land somewhere.

“Yeah! She was!”

“Ms. Bennett, are you here? Say something if you are!”

We waited, anxious. Suddenly, the door creaked open and a stern old woman stormed in, holding a leather belt. She glared down at the heroine, unconscious on the bed, and snapped, “You brat, let’s see if a good beating will teach you!”

She raised the belt and whipped it down hard on the heroine’s backside. The sound cracked through the air. I swear, even in that weird shared body, we all flinched.

“OWWW! It hurts! Help! Somebody help!”

Ms. Bennett’s scream came from the heroine’s lower back. The realization hit us like a slap: our teacher was the heroine’s butt. Unbelievable. The belt cracked down again and again. Ms. Bennett shrieked until the heroine’s butt started bleeding.

“Quick, save Ms. Bennett!” I yelled, snapping out of it. My voice—well, my thoughts—were shaky, but determined.

Everyone started shouting. It was chaos, thirty voices all trying to be heard at once, like lunchtime in the cafeteria when someone spills their tray.

“Stop! Stop!”

But the old woman couldn’t hear us and just hit harder. The pain was sharp, raw, and collective. It was the kind of hurt that made you want to crawl out of your own skin.

“Do something! Save me!” Ms. Bennett sobbed. Her voice, usually so stern in class, was desperate and small.

I had an idea. “Can you guys move?”

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