Changing at the Pool

“Oh no, the loser looked at me!” cried out Kayla. “He’s going to infect me with his total lack of interest. I’m going to be hated by everyone, and Jack’ll stop loving me!”

“Nothing’ll stop me from loving you,” said Jack. “No matter what you may become, I’ll never let him take more say in your life than me.”

They pointed and laughed at Samiel. Another day, another group of people, another mockery. Samiel knew not to stick around any longer and kicked a rock to leave them.

It had been like this all his life. It didn’t take much for the bullying to start when he was a kid. A passing word from his drunken mother that he, Samiel Hawk, was named after the devil from Der Freischütz, led to the beginning of his end. Word spread around town, and before long everyone from old geezers to kids in the cradle knew he was not someone to adore, but rather someone to mock.

He kicked the rock further down the street, aiming for the nearest cars. Of course, his poor hand-eye coordination meant he’d never succeed, but it did let off a little bit of stress to kick a rock.

He had hoped college would be different. For all his years stuck in isolation and getting bullied over his name, he always clutched onto the fragment of hope that one day, he’d reach college and make some friends with the specter of his name behind him.

He was only half right. The specter of his name indeed was long behind him. But when he approached a couple of freshmen entering his class, the results were disastrous.

“Hi! I’m Sam!” he had said, trying his hardest to hide his real name.

The girl had picked her head up from the desk. “Brittney. Pleasure to meet you.”

“You too.” And then he was stuck. What should he talk about now? He couldn’t talk about his life – that’d depress anyone. He didn’t have time to watch television, nor did he have any interest in sports. As a result, he hung around awkwardly until the class began, and the girl was long asleep.

The students didn’t take long to catch up to his awkwardness. Every so often he thought he’d be friendly with them, but they’d only look to backstab him, time and time again.

At least this time they weren’t punching him.  He had plenty of scars on his body to remind him of his time in public school where the guys would use him as a personal punching bag – be it for lunch money, stress relief, or even boredom therapy. That was probably one of the main reasons why he gained so much weight. A kid once told him that he’d take hits better if he had some more fat to absorb it, so combined with his own self-loathing and doubt, this led to his current potbelly.

Yet, after high school, that excuse didn’t work anymore. Everyone was more passive, and chose to use their words instead. To his shock, he found out how much worse these hurt.

“Samiel, right?” asked one girl loud enough for him to hear back in class that day. “Yeah, I know him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he died a virgin. If you can’t speak with a girl, how do you expect to sleep with her?”

“Isn’t he smart?” asked another. “I’m sure he’ll be plenty rich and able to buy the girls he wants.”

“Oh, so he can get all their diseases? Yeah, that sounds like Samiel all right.”

Samiel slammed his fist into a street lamp. “Damn my mother,” he growled. “Damn her to hell!”

He never knew what had happened to his mother. She had always been far too into her drinking, to the point where he and his father had intervened several years prior. But she simply didn’t listen, and kept up her habits, draining bottle upon bottle, as well as spending all of their hard-earned cash. Samiel often went hungry in high school as a result.

But two years before his graduation, he came home to the surprise of his life. His mother was gone. His dad was still at work, and he was still at school when she left. There was no note, and no warning. She simply packed up her bags and left.

His dad believed she had run off with the religious fanatics. She had recently been talking more and more to her parents, who wanted nothing more than for their daughter to return to them. But that, he concluded, was nothing more than an old man’s desire for his wife to do the better option.

To Samiel, he believed that she had simply run off into the streets, thinking she could sell her body and make money to feed her addiction. Of course, life doesn’t work like that, and she probably is lying dead in a ditch somewhere where the crows are pecking her bones dry.

Despite all these warnings about drinking, Samiel no longer cared. Alcohol was the only friend he had in the world. He could drown all his sorrows away, and for a time, be left alone to his fantasies. He’d be the most popular stud in the college, getting all the ladies – and some of the men for that matter – and the people would cheer his praises. Or when he got bored of that, he could be some glorious king and all the people who mocked him would have to bow down before him.

That’s why he was heading for the bar. All his efforts to socialize had fallen to squat, so he had no choice but to take to the bottle and let his sorrows float away like a balloon on the wind.

Yet the bar seemed dark. “It’s just a trick of the light,” he said. The bar always looked dark from the outside, especially at night. He grabbed the handle and pulled.

“Hey, kid,” said a voice.

He turned around, and a police officer stood in the street with a club in his hand.

“Yeah?” he asked. Police officers never really scared him anymore. He had seen much worse than them in his lifetime.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to go into the bar.”

The police officer patted his club in his hand. “Well, tough luck. It’s closed today for renovations, or I’d be in there too. Now, can I see your license?”

“License?” Samiel asked. “For what?”

“You’re entering a bar, so you’ve got to be 21 or older.”

Samiel scoffed. This policeman wasn’t too bright. “Bars are open to anyone of any age,” he said. “As long as I don’t drink, I’m in perfect compliance with the law. I have no reason to give you my ID.”

The policeman put his club away, knowing full well that he was beat. “Well, don’t hang around here for too long. I could arrest you for loitering if you do.” But he walked away from the bar, leaving Samiel alone.

“Crummy luck.” Samiel kicked the door, trying to let his anger out. The door, of course, kicked back and made Samiel jump and howl with pain.

“Make that horrible luck,” he groaned. He flung his bag over his back and continued to the attached building – a swimming hall. Why the university combined a bar and a swimming hall into one building would never make sense to him, but that’s life.

“I brought these with me, I might as well use them.” He held his bag complete with his books and notes, but also with the most important items – his swim trunks.

There wasn’t much that could go wrong in the swimming pool. He’d lose some weight, he’d be able to throw off some stress, and he’d get a chance to at least check out a couple of girls. Even if they were bound to make fun of him, they were still hot and worth including in his fantasies as his personal escorts.

His dad had said something to that like too, years ago when he had first started entering puberty. “You may think girls are icky now, but in a few years, you’ll be dying to go to the pool to see their boobs begging for release out of their tiny bikinis.”

He had gotten very close to his dad over the years. His dad could be a little goofy at times, but he was still much more down to earth than his mother. At times, his dad would be the only person he’d speak to the entire day, considering his mom would be in a drunken stupor, he’d keep his head down all day at school, and none of the teachers ever called on him thanks to his ever slipping grades. It wasn’t that he wasn’t smart, it was simply he lost any sense of care for a school where nobody ever came close to liking him.

That’s why, even after his mom left him, he still held onto hope knowing that his dad would be there. His dad wouldn’t do something as ludicrous as naming his son after the devil to spite his parents like his mom did.

“This life is cruel,” he said as he slipped on his swim trunks. He looked into the mirror at his bloated belly and his ever developing man boobs. He had told himself so many times he’d do something about that, but food was one of the only vices allowed to him in this world.

Maybe in a kinder world, he’d be loved and accepted. But all he ever learned during his years of mockery was that the world is filled with lies and deceit, placed there by the cruel and unkind abomination known as mankind. Maybe he could be reincarnated as a deer one day. Deer don’t seem to judge each other like humans.

But even when you take other people and their attitudes out of it, life still can be true.

It was only three weeks until graduation when he got pulled out of class. What he thought was going to be a lecture on how he had to bring himself up and out of the spring slump, it instead turned out to be the most horrifying news imaginable – his dad was hospitalized with a stroke.

The doctors gave much better news, namely that the stroke was only a minor one, and he should be able to walk and talk pretty normally after he recovered. But the receptionist gave him much worse news – that their health insurance had a very high deductible, so until they shelled out a couple thousand of their own cash, they’d be paying every penny of his dad’s treatment.

That’s how Samiel found himself working in the switch yard, breaking his back with every heavy item he had to pick up.

“Hey Samiel, stop slacking off!” his boss would yell. “I’m not paying you to be fat, lazy, and stupid!”

His coworkers would laugh at his expense. But surprisingly, this job wasn’t quite as bad as he thought. After all, in school he was mocked for free. At least here he’d get a nice paycheck every other week that he could contribute to that evil insurance term called a deductible.

Samiel passed by the showers, where of course an old fat man had decided to shower naked without a modesty cover around him. He did his best not to vomit and went into the toilet stall.

“Same old school, same old life,” he mumbled. He really had thought his first day of school would have been different here. He really thought that somehow, somebody would have become his friend. But all he was going to get was more mockery and deceit, carried over from his days in public school.

He grabbed a chunk of flab on his belly. “Maybe if I work this off, I could become ‘worthy’ for them.” For with many of the guys and girls he had tried to talk to that day, they all said the same thing to him – that he simply wasn’t worth the time and effort to talk to. He was in a much lower social caste than them, so he had to get away.

Yet when he walked into the pool, he found yet another horrible thing ruining his life. He couldn’t even swim his misery away. The lanes were all blocked off for swim practice. He swore under his breath and stomped over to the far end of the pool.

He lay down on a bench and stared up at the slanted ceiling. Maybe the chlorine was getting to his brain, but he had never felt this miserable in his life. Why did everything have to wrong for him? Why did he have to deal with something like this? His fat rolled around on the holes in the bench, pushing against them.

“I guess I’m gonna have marks when all’s done here.”

He went through everything wrong with his life. His family had been a burden. But there were far scarier things. What about his future? Was he going to have to struggle through four years of loneliness in this hellhole? And then after that, what would happen? He’d have no references thanks to his boss hating him at work, and it wasn’t like the teachers would be willing to do anything to help him. One passing glance at them today let him know that they’re more interested in which students would be their friends than what they actually accomplished.

“From friendless to homeless.” He held his hand up over his face to shield himself from the bright floodlights above. “What a life.” There really was no hope. He closed his eyes and let his heart drop to his feet. What use was his life anymore? He’d be best off falling into the pool and drowning at this point. He silently cursed the lifeguard who’d never rescue him.

But beyond all that he hated about his life, nothing hurt more than the destroyed potential. Having no friends was one thing, and he doubted he’d ever get to experience a real friendship, much less a loving relationship. But when he thought about all the people he met that day, and how they all had lived normal lives in normal situations, he couldn’t stand it. There would never be a turning back of time. He’d never get to experience a school life filled with friends and a loving family and all the wonderful things that he should have experienced.

“Why me?” he grumbled. He closed his eyes to try and drift off to a bit of a sleep. Nobody would care if he slept here. They’d rather want to stay away from him so they wouldn’t “catch his loserness” or whatever that jerk Kayla had said.

He wasn’t sure if he actually fell asleep or not. All he knew was that he heard giggling, and he had learned that the horrible sound of a giggle probably meant he was about to either get his heart strangled, or he’d have to defend himself against and incoming punch.

But he was still left alone on this side of the pool. He checked around on both sides to try and find the source of the giggles, but nobody was there. The only people in the pool were the lifeguard on duty, and a couple of girls on the other side of the pool.

His eyes naturally wandered over to them. They weren’t “bursting out of bikinis” as his dad had once told him. In fact, they seemed to rather be a bit flat and streamlined, and all of them wore the same one-piece bathing suit.

“Oh, a swim team,” he mumbled to himself. He couldn’t get his eyes off that sleek blue bathing suit with the white trim on the side. He had to wonder what wearing that suit would feel like, gripping on his on swim trunks.

“I mean, like, isn’t he so hot?” asked one of the girls. “I totally want to ask him out!”

“You better not!” said another. “You know what happens when you choose your love based on appearance alone.”

“But he’s so cute!”

“And he’ll be cute after you get to know him. Come on, you’re in high school now. Grow up a little.”

The girls burst out in giggles.

He clenched his fist in an attempt to let out some anger.

“By the way, where’s Coach Grassler?” asked one of the girls.

“She’s usually early. Do you think something happened to her?”

The tallest girl jumped and set her feet apart. “She always starts with us stretching, so let’s get to work. Come on, spread them!”

The girls giggled, like they always do from stupid jokes in high school. But without regards of their butts sticking out, they reached down to touch their toes.

He glared at them as the giggled about their hot math teacher and how he used some strange word called “cockles.” They were so carefree and lighthearted, it made him sick.

Why did they get to have such a happy life? They really weren’t that much different than him. They had their own share of family problems, he was sure. Yet they had each other, and that made them be so much better than him.

He jumped off his bench and clenched his fist. “Stupid girls and their horrible social butterflies,” he grumbled. “Young, beautiful, social, close… I hate it all! They should just fall in a ditch and get some disfiguring scar or something.” His mind raced through all the horrible things that could happen to them to make them more like himself.

Truth be told, he was jealous. He wanted nothing more than to be a part of their circle, laughing about stupid things and having his entire life ahead of him. But jealously leads to nothing more than anger, and from anger springs more anger. He slammed his hand into the wall as he turned a corner – and of course the wall slammed back at his hand. He groaned as pain seeped into his hand and he had to shake it off.

He had to get out of this damned pool and get a breath of fresh air. He wasn’t going to make any friends here. Even if there were more people here than those five girls, who’d think of talking to him in a pool? They’re here for laps, not socializing. Maybe he could try basketball one day or something.

He spotted the locker room just ahead. He’d go in, take a pee, maybe take a shower if that stupid naked man had finished up his business, and head out for a breather. Those girls hadn’t done anything to him. He was more angry at himself than them. He knew that inside, and until he could release himself from that sort of crap, he’d never be able to move on with his life.

“Come on, on your back and arc! I want to see your boobs in the air!”

He clenched his fists and stared down. He had enough of these stupid swimmers, who could even talk about private parts like that. He never had a friend like that. But he knew what would happen if he approached them. They’d make fun of his potbelly, tell him to leave them alone, and if he persisted, they’d fake out about him harassing them. They were so horrible in every way, shape, and form.

And then he crashed.

He fell onto the ground with a thud. In front of him was the lifeguard, who had taken a much worse tumble than he did. “Watch where you’re going,” he grumbled.

The lifeguard sat up and glared at him. “What did you say, punk?”

He sure looked smaller to Samiel from a distance. “Nothing.”

The lifeguard stood up and walked over to Samiel. “What where I’M going? Why don’t you watch where YOU’RE going you little fat twerp? You’re lucky I’m on the job or I’d beat your head in right now.”

“Did you not see my head pointed down?” asked Samiel. “That means I’m not looking at you! It’s called looking up for once. Use your head!”

“Maybe I will break my job’s pledge to keep people safe for you,” he said.

“And why aren’t you on the stand in the first place?” asked Samiel. “You’re putting people in danger from your carelessness. Wouldn’t your boss love to hear about this one?”

The lifeguard gritted his teeth together. But Samiel knew he had him cornered. A job would prevent him from doing anything other than yelling at him, or in the worst case…

“Get out of the pool area,” he said.

“That’s what I was doing until you interrupted me,” said Samiel. He turned into the locker room as the lifeguard turned away with a scowl. He took the opportunity to glare at the girls one last time. Their eyes were on the lifeguard, and a couple of them were blushing. They really didn’t care at all about how crappy a guy was, so long as he was hot.

He slammed the door shut and stormed to the bathroom. He turned to go use the urinal after he passed by the sink. But he clicked his tongue.

“What kind of public facility doesn’t have one?” he grumbled. He pulled open the main stall and relieved himself inside. He must have fallen asleep out in the room, considering he went before he walked out, and needed to go now as well.

He froze for a moment. That’s right, he did go before he went out. He went in a urinal.

He opened the door, but where the urinal was supposed to be was a second sink. There was no way that it changed in the short time he was out in the pool area.

Further, the walls in the locker room were tiles blue. Here they were tiled a bright pink that nearly blinded him.

When he heard a couple of giggles coming from back in the locker area, he gulped, realizing his mistake. He must have lost his sense of direction when he had crashed into that lifeguard. Somehow, he had turned into the girls’ locker room instead of the boy’s. Judging from the giggles, this had to be the school locker room instead of the general locker room, making it even worse. If somebody caught him in here, he’d have a court appearance for sure.

The voices got closer. He jumped back in the stall and slammed the door shut.

“I think I’ll stop in the bathroom before we go for a swim,” said a girl.

“No, don’t come in here,” he thought. He had enough miserable luck in his life, he didn’t need another curse on him.

“Come on,” said another girl. “The pool’s closing soon!”

“Fine,” she grumbled. “I’ll just go in the pool.”

“Ew!” shrieked the other two before they burst in a fit of giggles. All of them left the locker room.

For the first time in his life, Samiel felt lucky. Of course, he wondered the truth in her says she’d go in the pool, but it gave him a chance. He’d sneak through the locker room and escape on the non-pool side before anyone would be able to see him.

He exited the stall and prepared to set his plan in motion. He couldn’t hear any other voice coming from down in the locker area, so he had another piece of good luck in his life. Besides, it wasn’t like there’d be too many school girls coming in here with the pool closing so soon in the first place.

“That lifeguard was so cute!” He heard from outside the door. “I wanted to ask him out right then and there!”

“What about the boy from before?”

“Eh, forget him. My heart now belongs to the lifeguard.”

Why are the voices getting closer? They were supposed to be in the pool by now.

“Well, I’m glad to have a night off for once,” said a girl. “We’ve been training like dogs for these championships, and my body really need a night to lay in bed and write in my diary.”

“You keep a diary? So cute!”

He could care less about her diary. Right now, all he cared about was how his luck ran out. They’d be opening that door any moment now, and he’d be caught here. He thought about the bathroom stall again, but that’d be far too suspicious. There were five of them, and at least one of them was going to need to pee some time.

There was only one place they could possibly not want – the shower room. They didn’t swim, so it wasn’t like they needed to get chlorine off of them or anything. He sprinted down the hall and pulled it open. The locker room door clicked and opened the instant her got into the shower room. He closed the door behind him and locked it. He was safe for the moment. But how long he’d have to stay in here, only those girls would know.

“It’s no matter about what that lifeguard looks like. Didn’t you hear what he said?” asked one of the girls.

“Always the responsible one. I thought artists weren’t supposed to be responsible.”

“Shut up! You’re the sporty captain, and you don’t really care at all.”

“Enough already,” said a third and calmer voice. “In the end, we’ve got some time, so we can have a bit of an adventure today. Maybe we can even get you a boyfriend.”

“Me?” asked the artist. “I’m not interested!”

“Maybe that’s because you like women better?” suggested a fourth voice, filled with cheer and smug mockery.

“Don’t let her bother you,” said the last voice. “Come on, we’ve got the day off, so I want to go out somewhere. How does shopping sound?”

“Do really none of your care about the coach?” asked the artistic one.

“Well, I mean, of course we do,” said the adventurous one. “But what’s the point of worrying about it? Let’s face it – there’s nothing we can do about it. She got in a car crash, and that’s the end of the story. The lifeguard said there was nothing to worry about and it’d be fine, so that’s that.”

“It’s just a shame that we couldn’t hold a captain’s practice,” said the sporty voice. “I could’ve come up with a good routine for all of us.”

“I’m sure we could have a good workout in here,” suggested the adventurous voice. “Let me show you where it feels best.”

“Stop it!” giggled another girl.

Samiel wasn’t sure what to feel. He checked and double checked the lock to make sure that it was actually locked, but it still didn’t feel safe in that shower room. There were a few vents, but they were far too small for anyone to look down through or even be in. It was good that he couldn’t get caught from anyone looking in, but it was always bad in that he had no actual method of escape. He’d have to wait it out.

On the other hand, he kind of wanted to open up the door and join in with those girls. Maybe it was because of their lesbian suggestions, but he really felt like he wanted to be a part of them. He wanted to laugh with them and talk with them about so much of everything.

This thought made him even more bitter. He had lost his chance to ever get in a situation like that, however dissimilar it may have been. He’s in college now, and they’re in high school. He would have been mocked by them for his name, and he’d never have been able to talk to them in the first place. Besides, even if he had a normal life, a normal family, a normal name, and normal upbringing, he’d still have been excluded from them for the sole reason that he was a guy. Having that kind of fun was a privilege only available for girls.

“But Mrs. Grassler can’t have been in a crash,” said the outgoing girl. “She always drove me everywhere, and she was the safest driver I’d ever seen.”

“Anything can happen to anyone,” said the adventurous girl. “She wasn’t even at fault in the first place. Regardless, she’s safe, and we don’t need to worry about her anymore for the night.”

“Maybe she had a few too many again!” laughed the sporty one.

“I just said she wasn’t at fault.”

They giggle.

One of the girls footsteps approach the shower.

“Where are you going?” asked the artist.

“If we’re going out, I want to at least be clean for it,” said the outgoing one. “I’d rather not smell like chlorine on the town!”

“You weren’t even in the pool,” said the sporty one.

“Yeah, come on, you’re just wasting time. You don’t need a shower,” said the cheery one.

The outgoing girl laughed. “You know I don’t take long in the shower. I’ll be out in five minutes, and then we can hit the town. It’s going to be so nice to have a night at the movies, at the shopping mall, and maybe even stopping by the tavern!”

“The tavern? Why do you go there?”

“They have some pretty cute guys dancing on stage.” Her feet come closer to the shower room and she grabs a hold of the handle.

Samiel’s heart raced. His entire life now depended on a mechanical lock. Even though it made no difference, he still backed away from the door in an attempt to put some distance between himself and his fate. He begged silently for the lock to be in good working condition. He begged for it to stay still.

And then his back hit a wall. Well, not quite a wall, but rather a faucet. The shower shot on above him, drenching him from head to toe. He cursed silently at his luck as he stood under the warm water which bathed over his skin. It would have felt nice if he wasn’t a flimsy piece of sheet metal away from jail.

The handle turned, but then it stopped. “Is someone in here?” asked the outgoing girl.

The sporty girl laughed. “Oh, that’s probably Sarah.”

“Sarah? Why are you in the shower?” asked the outgoing girl.

“Because she was running late and didn’t know what happened,” said the cheery girl. “She probably thinks there’s a training session today still.”

Samiel thought for a second. “Is this how girls usually talk?” he wondered. “If I’m supposed to be this newcomer, why are they talking to themselves instead of me?”

The outgoing girl kept herself planted outside the shower. “Listen, Sarah, the coach was involved in a car crash. It wasn’t anything big, so don’t worry about her being hurt or anything like that! But she won’t be able to make it to practice tonight, so we were going to use our free time to hit the town. You know, shopping and checking out the cute guys in the mall and all. You’re invited too, of course! We wouldn’t want to go anywhere without you. Even as the sixth girl on the team, you’re still part of the team!”

Samiel clenched his fist at his chest. Why couldn’t this have been his reality? Why couldn’t he have had friends like these who would invite him anywhere and everywhere no matter what the circumstance? He wasn’t sure if it was the water pouring out of the shower, or something it his eye, but a drop of water fell down his cheek.

But he didn’t dare speak a word. As much as he wanted to say yes, he knew he was still a guy. That was fantasy on the other side of the door, not reality. His reality was still that he was a loser, a loner, and had no future to speak of.

The outgoing girl rattles the door handle, which made Samiel’s heart jump. “Come on, open the door. I want to take a shower too!”

But Samiel didn’t move.

“Come on, Sarah! We’re both girls, so it’s not like there’s any problem seeing each other naked. Open up!”

He prayed again for the lock to hold still.

“Sarah R. Dawn, open this door now!” she shouted.

A shiver ran down Samiel’s spine. That was way too weird. Something was really bothering him, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

“Leave her be,” called the cheerful one. “Let her touch herself in peace.”

The other girls giggled at the crude joke.

“Ugh, fine!” shouted the girl. “I’ll leave you be for now, but you better hurry! I’m skipping my shower for you now, all right? Hurry up and join us.”

He waited for her footsteps to fade away. He stared at his hand. Sure, this entire situation was awkward and annoying. But that wasn’t what really what was bugging him. The thing that bothered him was the name that she had called him.

“Sarah R. Dawn,” he said as quiet as possible. The name sounded far too familiar to him. Somehow, he even thought he knew what the R. stood for. It was for Rei, wasn’t it?

But he had never knows a Sarah Dawn, or for that matter, many Sarahs at all. There was one a couple grades above him, but these were high school girls, and she’d be a senior or have a job by now. That was the only Sarah he could remember.

“Come on, Fiona! What’s taking you so long?” asked the sporty girl.

Fiona, the artsy one of the group. She had been painting since she had turned five, but ever since she discovered anime four years ago, she had stopped painting traditional art and instead tried to draw in a manga style. She had improved a lot, but it’d never really sell in the west.

“This motivational poster is kind of off center,” she said to the sporty girl.

Samiel had no idea how he knew Fiona’s name or her passions. Nothing told him that she was the artistic one in the group, and nothing made him know her past. Did he read about it in a paper or something? That had to be it.

But he also knew that the sporty girl was named Ally, short for Allison. She participated in volleyball in the fall, swimming in the winter, and lacrosse in the spring. In the summer, she’d always be out for her jogs before going to the pool to swim her laps and compete for the summer team. Despite all her training, she still claimed to this day that the small summer league was the entire reason why she trained year-round. She wanted to win for the team there, so she joined other swim leagues in the winter to get better.

He couldn’t figure out how he knew that. That wouldn’t have been in any newspaper. Did the girls talk about that before? He tried to think, but he couldn’t seem to figure it out no matter how hard he thought back in his memories.

“By the way, did you hear about what Nick did to me?” asked Ally.

“No, what?” asked Fiona.

“I forgot my lunch money today, and when I was telling him about it, you know what he was like? He was all like ‘Aw, I’m sorry.’ And then he went ahead and ordered three slices of pizza for himself! He’s such a jerk. He could have offered me one, and I’d have even offered to pay him back, but noooo, he had to be all like ‘I’ll take all three and you’ll starve.’”

Fiora giggled. “Well, that’s Nick for you. He’d eat everything in that cafeteria if he could afford it.”

“But this isn’t hunger! This is spite and him being a total jerk!”

“I know, I know. But should you really be eating pizza in the first place? That goes right down to your thighs.”

She grumbled. “I don’t care,” she said. “When a girl’s angry, she needs to eat away her feelings!”

It still amazed Samiel that they could go on and on about seemingly trivial things without a care in the world. They didn’t have to care about their dad’s medical bills, where there mom had ever gone, or whether they’d have anyone to listen to their problems. He never thought such a life could have been possible.

He jerked out of his trance. They were in the locker area now. There was a three turns to get from his shower area to them. This was his chance. If he sprinted out, he could get into the main pool area with nobody seeing him. He’d have to open the shower door quiet enough to not alert the girls, but that’d be the least of his problems.

He stared down to try and clear his head before he sprinted. But, as he did, he noticed something horrifying. He was nothing but skin from head to toe! Where did his bathing soon run off to?

He must have taken it off by habit when he turned on the shower. He looked around to try and find them, but they were nowhere to be found. That was impossible! How could they disappear?

But even worse, he now couldn’t operate his plan. How could he run off into the main pool area with no swim trunks? A guy coming out of the girl’s locker rooms would be weird, but a naked guy would never run by unnoticed.

He lifted his hand to tap his temple and determine what he could do. But, his hand didn’t move. It stayed down by his side, not twitching a bit when he commanded it to. He tried to turn his head, but it wouldn’t move again. He was stuck, not moving at all.

What was going on?

His heart beat rapidly as he tried to think through the situation as the warm water caressed his skin. There was no use panicking. There had to be some sort of logical explanation as to why he couldn’t move.

The first, and most obvious explanation, was that the bar actually wasn’t closed, and it was his memory playing tricks on him. But since he didn’t smell alcohol on his breath, he had to assume that it wouldn’t be the answer. The next best explanation was that he was dreaming. Yet, if he was dreaming then he should have the ultimate control over his actions. He tried to move in response, but it did nothing. He was completely stuck still.

The water continued to pour over his body, getting hotter by the second. He wanted to turn it off, but despite the increased heat, he couldn’t turn around and adjust it. He couldn’t even cry for help.

But the heat started to change. Instead of feeling hot, it felt tingly, as if his entire body was turning to pins and needed. He stared down at his body and saw that his skin was indeed literally rippling with every tingle. It was so surreal for him to see the lumps moving out towards his fingers and away from his body, disappearing into nothingness.

He checked down at his fingers to see what was going on, and there he saw the true fascination of the situation. On each lump was a clump of hair.

He checked down on his chest and indeed, instead of the dark black mound that there used to be, the hair was now lighter and thinned, and a whole less curly. In reverse animation, it became ever smaller and cleared, until finally he saw a sight he hadn’t see in many years – the bare skin of his chest.

Was this some kind of prank those girls pulled? They must have poisoned the shower somehow to paralyze him and destroy all the hair in his body. But that couldn’t be, because then his hair would’ve fallen on the ground – not disappeared into thin air. Beyond that, he could still feel the hair on his head, even if it felt a little longer and heavier than before.

He tried to keep himself calm. It was only hair, it’d grow back. From his experiments in shaving off a small section of his arm, he knew that in about a week it’d be back to normal. It wasn’t like he particularly cared much about his body hair, but it did seem a bit weird to him how he seemingly didn’t have a single hair on his entire body. Though he couldn’t see his legs over his gut, so maybe he couldn’t conclude that just yet.

But, as if the water knew what he was thinking, it condensed around the stomach. It started rumbling in all direction. Samiel started to feel nauseous from the constant motion in his gut, but he wasn’t about to throw it up. Instead, his stomach shook off tiny lumps of fat, one by one, which travelled through his body. Most of them went to his arms and out his fingertips, just like the body hair had gone out. But every so often, one would deposit itself a little more south, making its home on his thighs or his butt.

Panic seeped through him. The body hair at least he could hide. But this was an extreme weight loss. How would he ever explain how he somehow lost fifty, maybe even a hundred pounds in a single night? Not to mention, his thighs were way too big now. They still had a gap between them for his manhood to fit between, but they were far too close for comfort.

Despite all that, he could confirm that his legs had undergone the same hair removal as the rest of the body. He was as bare as the day he was born from top to bottom.

Then he heard a crunch. He didn’t want to look at his arm, where the crunching sound had come from, but he knew that he had to. Curiosity won him over, and he saw a completely disfigured arm – about an inch shorter than the other. But the other arm crunched in turn, shrinking the same amount. His back crunched, followed by his legs, and then another at his arm.

All around his body, his bones were cracking and shifting. And with each crunch, something became shorter. He would have screamed if he had use of his vocal chords. Even if it didn’t hurt, it was far too freaky and scaring him as to what exactly was happening. Was he going to die? Was he going to become two inches tall?

But, the crunching slowed, and eventually stopped with him almost a foot closer to the ground. Every part of his body was proportional and petite, fitting his new four foot ten body perfectly.

He closed his eyes. “I learned my lesson,” he said. “I should have never gone into the girl’s locker room, even if it was a mistake. Please, let’s end this here. My life it already hard enough.”

His eyes opened again as he realized that he actually had full control of his eyes again. He commanded his arm to move, and sure enough, it followed his orders. He walked around, and despite his seemingly even wider thighs, he managed to walk – until he hit the end of the water stream.

There was some sort of invisible wall keeping him in the shower. He tried banging on it, but it did nothing. Nobody could hear him outside, much less save him from his fate.

He sat down on the ground, feeling a much thicker rear to cushion him. He was turning into some sort of a freak thanks to this weird shower. What was going on? What could ever force this kind of changes?

His chest started to itch. He had always had man boobs, but with the elimination of his fat, they had disappeared leaving him with a flat chest. But that wasn’t about to stay. The pink area around his nipple became wider and poked out of his chest a little bit. It sort of tingled as everything in his body focused on that one area. Below the areole, wave upon wave of fat began to build up, pushing them away from the body.

“This can’t be real.” His voice cracked a bit, confirming to him that his conclusions were right.

The mounds grew and spread further and further out. He prayed that whoever the god was that was doing this wouldn’t torture him with back pain for the rest of his life.

And so, they stopped. They weren’t huge, to say the least. In fact, they were probably a bit on the smaller side, stopping about two inches past the chest line. On the top of his head, he knew that this meant they were a B-cup. The small lumps of areole returned to the contour of the breast, signifying the end of their growth.

What girls experienced over a matter of years, he had just experienced over a matter of seconds.

But, with the growth of his breasts, he knew exactly what was happening. He was turning into a girl.

He grabbed the hair on his head, and to his amazement, it had grown without him realizing it. It had reached the middle of his torso, ending in a clear straight line. It was a lot heavier than he expected – especially considering that it was wet and carrying more than double its weight – but simply the length of it contributed to its size. He pulled a strand in front of his face to see even more had changed than its length. It had turned a dark blond color, although he had to assume part of the darkness had to do with how it was wet.

His body tingled again, informing him of the next change. He watched in awe as the contours of his body changed. His stomach’s sides curved in, while his hips expanded. His arms thinned and lengthened out, becoming daintier and ending with nails ending just beyond the fingers. His eyelashes seemingly doubled in volume, and his lips puckered up a tiny bit. His throat receded, eliminating any trace of an adam’s apple. His ankles thinned and pulled away from his now-toned calves, the product of many hard years of swimming.

His body was that of a girl’s from top to bottom, except for the groin. When the tingling spread there, he gulped, a bit surprised at the lack of adam’s apple in his throat to react.

“No,” he said. But there was no longer a crack in his voice. It was a full octave higher, turning from a tenor into a sweet mezzo-soprano. He tried to pinch his skin, which he noticed was a lot softer and smoother, but this was no dream. He wasn’t about to wake up from it.

His balls went first. They pulled up close to his body and tried to ram themselves in. Panic seeped through his body. This was going to hurt so bad!

He took several deep breaths, even as his nausea rose. Nothing good came out of panicking. It would run its course, and then it’d be over. Deep breaths, he told himself. Deep breaths.

And then they popped in. But to his surprise, it didn’t feel painful. Rather, it felt kind of good. And as they wound their way through his innards and dissolved his prostate before taking their position and turning into ovaries, that good feeling only increased.

His pleasure quadrupled when the skin of his penis folded back on itself. He wanted to be horrified as he watched his penis split in two and get sucked up bit by bit into his body, but it just felt too good to panic about. He let out a soft moan as the pleasure increased and the intact parts shrunk down. The pleasure spread through his body, getting deeper and more exquisite, until finally every part of his body contracted and jolted with joy.

When he recovered from what he assumed was a female orgasm, he saw the full array of female genitalia where his penis used to be. He was a girl, inside and out.

“Just my luck,” Samiel, now Sarah, grumbled. “Why can’t anything go right in this world?”

She took a moment to explore her new body. Her breasts felt so soft, and the nipples were so sensitive. And her lady parts were even more fun than that. She could already imagine all the fun time she’d have with that after they finished shopping tonight.

But she didn’t have long, as something blue came out of her womb. She shrieked, not knowing what it was, but it started to creep up her body. It covered her hips, but left a part of her butt still hanging out, and crawled up her sides. When she touched it, she felt a very nylon sort of material splitting off from her skin.

When two straps appeared on her shoulders, she realized exactly what she was wearing – the same blue bathing suit as those girls from earlier.

“What do I do?” she thought. Nobody had ever written a manual on how to handle this sort of situation, because such a situation had never existed before. She had gone into a shower room a guy, and came out a girl. But she wouldn’t be able to live like this. Her father would never recognize her, she had no identification, no money, no home, nor anything that would help her live any further in this life.

She turned off the shower and lay against the wall while trying to ignore the softer squishy feelings in her butt. She had no idea anymore about anything. Maybe she could get some sort of start in this world by whoring herself out or something.

“Come on, Sarah!” shouts Ally. “You’ve been in there forever! Are you really touching yourself or something?”

She didn’t know what to do. She could see three options. First, she could continue to hide in here. She didn’t have to greet them at all, and they’d go away. Second, she could go out and explain to them exactly what had happened. They’d probably think her some kind of a lunatic, but it’d probably be best for them to know the truth before divulging their deepest and darkest secrets. Third, she could pretend like she actually was Sarah R. Dawn, and nobody would question her. If reality adjusted enough to give her a swimsuit, she probably had some sort of dry clothes she could change into once she got out. Once she got home – or to wherever they were going, she could figure out what to do from there.

Ally bangs on the door. “Sarah, are you all right? Come out, or at least say something to me! I’ll have to get the lifeguard if you don’t.”

Her heart beat. Option one wasn’t an option at all. These girls weren’t going to leave her alone. She had to face them in this new body.

It took all the force of will she could muster, but she somehow managed to turn the lock. What if she wasn’t even the same Sarah? Would they be all embarrassed?

But the door flung open, and Ally stood outside with her arms folded.

“Sheesh, you sure took your sweet time.”

This was the moment of truth. Sarah could either admit to the truth, or hide it. But she wanted to be friends with Ally, she knew that. Allison Preston, or Ally, was a really good person in the first place. Losing a friend over something as silly as this was fallacy.

“I… I’m sorry,” she managed to get out. “I kind of lost myself in a daydream.”

“About that boyfriend of yours that you won’t tell us?” asked the adventurous girl.

But she didn’t need to think of her as the adventurous girl anymore. She was Brianna Wave, though everyone called her Bree. She was the one who pulled her out of her shell in her home and introduced her to travelling around, parties, and boys. Or, at least, introduced Sarah to those sorts of things.

“I don’t have a secret boyfriend!” she shrieked. Her face must’ve been red as she clenched both of her fists by her side.

Ally laughed along with everyone else. “Well, you’re done, so that’s that. Go on a get changed a little quicker than you shower. I do want to get shopping tonight!” She didn’t seem to mind slipping off her bathing suit in front of us as she entered the shower. “I’ll be a little faster than Sarah, assuming she didn’t let all the hot water out.”

She followed the girls into the locker room. The other three had changed already, so they sat around on the benches gossiping about. Sarah pulled open the locker which seemed to call to her, and a bag fell out of it. She was a bit scared that it wouldn’t be her bag, but when she found an ID in it, she heaved a sigh of relief.

She pulled out the clothes folded up inside the bag. They weren’t anything special, consisting of a black cap-sleeved shirt with butterfly patterns of the shoulders, and a pair of jeans. But despite being only made for a girl, they somehow felt right for her.

“You’re still wearing that?” asked Fiona. Fiona Tendt, of course, was her full name, as Sarah realized.

“What’s wrong with it?” Sarah dried herself off and lay out her shirt. She checked out the butterflies on the sleeves. “It’s kind of cute.”

The outgoing girl picked it up. “Well, it is cute, that’s for sure. But you’ve been wearing it since like, last year. You need something to keep up with the times. And I know just the right person to do it.” Sarah did too. Chloe Cateman was the most outgoing girl she had ever met. There wasn’t a single day off that she wasn’t out of the house and going somewhere – be it the beach, the movies, another town, or even vacations around the world. If anyone knew about what was popular in the world, it’d be her.

“Eh, leave her alone,” said the cheery girl. “She can wear it as long as she wants, so long as it looks cute.” Melissa Sunfield, the cheery girl in the group, commonly called Liz or Lizzy. She was a bit childish at times, but at the other times she could be a little suggestive.

As these identities flooded into Sarah’s mind, she also started to realize a lot more about herself. She didn’t have a dad recovering from a stroke, or an alcoholic mom dead in a ditch somewhere. She had a warm loving family which made sure her every need was cared for. She got into spats with them, naturally, over things like her curfew and where she was allowed to go. But even so, she knew they loved her.

She had lived a mostly carefree life, and didn’t have to worry about anything more than what her backstroke time was going to be, and counting the number of days left until the end of her freshman year. It was a wonderful life with her teammates, and her friends who were one and the same.

“Come on, you’re still toweling yourself off?” asked Bree.

She shifted her eyes aside. “My hair’s pretty wet still.”

“That’s why you use a hairdryer, silly! Don’t tell me you forgot yours again.”

She fumbled through her bag, finding things that she never thought she’d see or need like a tampon or a handheld mirror. Yet she couldn’t find a hairdryer.

“Come on, just use mine.” Liz plugged hers in and Fiona took the lead in dragging Sarah towards the outlet. The warm air flowed through her hair.

“You always wear that same ponytail,” said Fiona. “Come on, let’s give you a makeover while we’re at it!”

Her hands dug into Sarah’s hair and began to work on rearranging its hairstyle. She would have probably tried to resist, but she was stuck in her own mind.

She didn’t know what to think. Inside, she was panicking. Everything in her life had been flipped over in an instance, turning her from a dullard of a guy to a meek, but loved teammate and friend. How was she going to live her life like this? She was going to have to act all girly for the rest of her life unless she found some sort of miracle water that could reverse the curse. And then she’d change back and have to repair all the damages that everyone would suffer because she existed.

But as Fiona’s hand messed with Sarah’s hair, Liz blow dried it, and Bree helped pull up a pair of soft panties up Sarah’s leg, she felt rather calm. She felt like she belonged here. Why was she alarmed in the first place?

“You’re still not ready?” Ally entered the locker area, naked as the day she was born, with her long black hair draping her back down to her butt.

“Put some clothes on,” laughed Bree. “We’re not all nudists, you know.”

“I’m not a nudist! I just didn’t want to get my bathing suit all soaked.”

Sarah couldn’t help but giggle a bit.

“There!” said Fiona. “Your hair is complete!”

She held Sarah’s mirror in front of her to see what she did. She really didn’t do too much, to be honest. Instead of one ponytail, she made a pair of them, and had them loop back on themselves at the bottom. But this was really the first time she got a good look at her face.

She saw herself as she was. She wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. She had a few freckles, and her face was probably a little too thin. But she was real, and nobody could ever change that. She was genuine, a real girl.

The Samiel still inside Sarah realized that there was a lot more to this than a sudden change of reality. She had always wanted a second chance in life, and by some sort of magic, or drug, or something, she had been given it. Her time had been reversed, and she’d be able to enjoy a high school life with friends, family, and hope for a happy future.

Yet she wasn’t another girl. She was still Samiel, but only in a different body and with different attitudes on life. Yet everything bad about Samiel was gone. She was completely purified, and had a new chance to start over in joy.

Sarah shed a tear. “I am Sarah R. Dawn,” she said.

“And that’s something to cry about?” laughed Bree.

She hit her lightly.

“Well, I will tell you something to cry about.” Ally put her hands on her hips. “In the time the four of you managed to do Sarah’s hair and get her in her underwear, I managed to take a shower, come out here, pull out my bag, and completely change into my street clothes.”

“Well, that’s because you don’t have any fun doing it!” Liz snickered.

“I’ll tell you what is fun: Going out on a shopping trip to get some new clothes. I’d much rather be doing that than sitting around in a locker room messing around with Sarah’s hair. Come on, get going!”

They knew better than to debate with her and before Sarah knew it, she was in her outfit. Everything was so snug on her body compared to when she was a guy, but it felt so much better too. She slipped on a pink pair of sneakers and flung her bag over her shoulder.

“Don’t you think pink would look really well on Sarah?” asked Bree.

“What?” she asked.

“You always wear black and white clothes. Why don’t we add some color in your life? You’re not living in a monochrome world, you know.”

And then it dawned on her. In the past, everything to her was black and white. She lived in agony because she wasn’t living in bliss. But she was pulled out of that world. She was able to enjoy the colors of the world, and the colors of life.

Ally pushed open the door. “Come on, let’s get shopping!”

The girls cheered and left the locker room, preparing for the next stage of their lives.