[kaylor] mirrored;

no use crying over spilled coffee;

When she had first learned of the switch, as it had been coined, Taylor didn't believe her teacher.  

She didn't believe in magic or witches and wizardry. She recalled nervously glancing at her classmates, but only a few of them seemed phased by the conversation at hand.

Furrowing her brows, Taylor begins to scrawl down the notes. She wouldn't let her confusion ruin her grades, and she knew there was a notebook check the next week. She felt as if she was writing down fictitious notes as she penned sentences like, "When the dominant half of the soul pairing turns twenty-one, their souls will switch at midnight."

"Would anyone like to guess how it works?" The class withholds their groans when Simone raises her hand enthusiastically, making it clear that she was well-educated on the subject, as she was with everything else.

"The dominant person switches first because their soul is stronger. Until then, the recessive half will not switch and will be stuck in a state of limbo until their soulmate turns of age. It's rare that the ages are distant in numbers, though, due to health conce--"

"Thank you, Simone," Ms. Wallowitz says tersely, nodding to silence the young girl who seems miffed that she's been cut short. "As your classmate was beginning to explain, the ages of soulmates are never too far apart. There have been rare cases where soulmates' have been years apart, but when this happens, there is often detrimental results, sometimes leading to the death of one of both soulmates. At the most, soulmates will only be a few months apart in age." Taylor eyes Matt moving uncomfortably in his seat for a moment, as if he knows the next question that will be asked. "Matt, your parents are quite the special case. Would you like to explain how that happens?"

The blonde-haired boy groans and shifts in his seat, leaning his cheek into his hand as if there are a thousand better things he could be doing at that very moment. "If the soulmates have met before the switch, the health effects are lessened. The soul cannot withstand not being near its counterpart for long," Matt explains, surely having this speech rehearsed a hundred times before. 

When his parents realized they were soulmates, news stations from across the globe flocked to Taylor's small town in Reading, Pennsylvania, waiting for his father to make his way back to his soulmate.

They were shocked at how Matt's father had been healthily living for so long considering his soulmate and he were two entire decades apart. He was nineteen when his wife was born. She had been born into the family of his close friend in town whom had gotten accidentally pregnant, and he had thought nothing of it really until he turned twenty-one and there was no switch. The years ticked by and he had married two other women who were stuck in limbo with him, but eventually they both passed away, for theyhad not ever met their soulmates, even accidentally. When he was forty, he was switched into the body of a college girl blowing out the candles on her birthday cake.

"What happens when the soulmates are re-united?" Tommy asks timidly.

"Good question, Thomas. When the soulmates first see each other after the switch, they immediately return to their bodies."

The bell rings and Taylor closes her notebooks and folders, tucking her pen into her hair. This new knowledge had rocked her world; someone out there, somewhere in this world, would be her soulmate and there was nothing she could do but wait.

/ / /

Each year passed by fast and Taylor soon found herself graduated from highschool. The topic of the switch rarely came up; besides what they had learned on that first day back in middle school, there was not much else that could be taught or learned about it. 

Taylor remembers the first time she witnessed someone switch. She had been at a house party, nursing a red solo cup of water, when suddenly a girl started shrieking and screaming, patting at her own body. The music had been stopped rather suddenly and a crowd formed around the girl.