Not too far away from Zoe and Athena, Jillian was having to work out a few questions of her own. How did everything go so wrong? Was there any way to turn the current situation to her advantage? Should she have worn pants instead of the sweater dress? Zoe's former brother, her older brother and one she had no memory of at that, was between a rock and hard place, quite literally. Moose had picked Jillian up at seven o'clock sharp and whisked her away as fast as his beat up old Ford could go, which turned out to be pretty fast in spite of its ragged appearance. Before she knew it, Jillian was on the other side of Lake Farson, having dinner at the Burger Barn.
This wasn't such a bad thing, mostly because it got her on the right side of the lake. Jillian didn't forsee any trouble getting Moose to do a quick drive-by of her old house, her real home, after dinner. After all, they both wanted the stone back. No, the problem was Moose was way too into treating this as an actual date, opening doors, pulling out chairs, ordering for her, and the whole nine yards. Worse, something inside Jillian seemed bent on humoring him. It wasn't that her words or actions were being controlled by the stone, not exactly anyway. She just kind of liked the way he was treating her.
It wasn't until after dinner things started to go haywire. Moose insisted on paying for everything and Jillian felt no need to stop him. If she was going to be compelled into going out with him because of that damned wish, Jillian had resolved there was no way in hell she was going to be forced to put out anything for it, money or otherwise. They were on the way out of the door when they bumped into another couple coming out of the bathrooms. It was Biff Meadows and Sarah McMillan. Sarah was the first to notice them, calling out in her sing-song voice. Realizing who it was, Jillian tried to pull Moose out the door to the parking lot. Unfortunately, when you held hands with a guy Moose's size, and Jillian was, Moose was the one who decided what direction you were headed. Jillian was almost pulled off her feet before she realized her date was taking them both back inside.
Biff and Moose exchanged a quick knuckle pound and thwacked each other on the back once or twice, murmurring low remarks about the appearance of their dates and their likelihood of putting out. Jillian couldn't exactly hear what they were saying, but she could imagine, which was probably worse. Of course, while Moose and the other football jock had their little guy-talk that left Jillian to the tender mercies of Sarah McMillan. Oddly, things turned out better than the former Jon could had ever believed possible. The infamous, spoiled princess of Lake Point High eyed her cooly, a small smile on her glossy pink lips. She didn't seem particularly hostile, but you never knew with Sarah. A few words from her were enough to eviscerate most people's status at school. Jon knew that from prior experience in her old life, so it seemed wise to try to get on her good side. The problem was she had no more idea how to do that now than back when she was Jon. Jillian quickly grew more and more nervous under Sarah's aloof scrutiny.
Unable to continue meeting the other girl's stare, Jillian's eyes dropped to Sarah's feet, and she inwardly cursed the lack of confidence such a submission revealed. It did provide lucky inspiration, however. Sarah had on a pair of white sandals, giving her an extra few inches in height, but what caught Jillian's eye was the graceful, fairy-like webwork of straps that held them to Sarah's dainty foot, the polish on her toenails a spotless white to match the sandals. On impulse, having no real idea why, Jillian breathed an appreciative murmur and said, "Oh, I love your shoes!"
Sarah's expression melted a little and after that it got easier, well, as easy as this kind of thing gets. Over the next hour or so, when Jillian would have much rather been scouting the lay of the land at the Gibson house, Sarah seemed to warm up to Jillian and was soon talking with her as if they were old friends. Of course, drinking a few beers had helped things along. They were somewhere in Lakeside Park and Jillian had remembered being nervous when Biff produced a car trunk full of beer. It was Biff, Sarah, Moose, and Jillian, with several more people to arrive to the impromptu party over the course of the hour. Initially, Jillian had refused to drink, but when Sarah seemed confused and mentioned seeing her drink at a party Jillian herself had no memory of, the new girl decided it might be best to play along.
Several beers later and the party was in full swing. Amber Levine and Isaac Harper showed up on Ike's motorcycle. Tiffany Sanders arrived on the arm of a former non-entity named Chase Conrad, but all she did most of the night was give Moose evil looks. Chase had formerly dwelled in Steve Farber's shadow, but with his former rival wished away Chase was now the star of the basketball team and the latest in Tiffany's round of regular lays. He seemed at ease amongst the other the high school elite's heavy hitters and Jillian was disturbed to notice him giving her a long, appraising look when he thought she wasn't looking. Worse, when she caught him he didn't look away, just gave her a meaningful smile!
The rest of the evening had gone in a similar vein. Pretending to remember events her new self and these people had shared in the past. Forcing herself to drink more beer in order to both relax and artificially bolster her courage to pull of this whole charade. At one point, Jillian realized she was gleefully laughing and cheering along with everyone else at Biff and Ike's drunken contests of strength. She was actually getting along with these people! All it took was for Moose to turn me into a female Steve Farber. Jillian grimaced and took another pull on her beer. This crowd of meatheads and drama queens would have never treated him as an equal if he were still good old Jon. Jillian frowned, tried to drown her resentment with another beer.
Beer. Jon had never really drank that much of it in his old life. He wasn't pure as the driven snow by any means, but his mother never really kept alcohol in the house, and getting it by other means sometimes ran risks Jon hadn't always been comfortable with. Once he had stolen a bottle of wine during his brief stint working at a local grocery, but paranoia dogged him constantly afterward and he never did it again, quitting shortly thereafter. Sometimes, they drank beer over at Leonard's house, but only when his parents weren't around, usually while conducting marathon videogame sessions. Jon never drank too much because he didn't want to dull his competitive edge. That was about the extent of Jon's experience with alcohol and beer in particular.
All of which went a long way to explain Jillian's current predicament, which consisted of having her ass mashed up against one of the old granite boulders littering the park, a proverbial rock, and Moose getting a little too close for comfort from the front, the very literal hard place.
Moose had been giving her a playful squeeze here and there all night, sneaking a quick kiss from her lips, stuff like that. It had been pissing her off a little and when she called him out on it, Moose told her he had discovered from his talk with Biff that everyone already assumed they were sort of an item, and figured it was best to just play along. Jillian had wanted to assume the big guy was lying, but Sarah took her aside after one of their several trips to go pee together and confided that she was "so super glad Moose finally has a classy girl like you to take care of him! He needs somebody, y'know? He's a tough guy, but he has a heart of gold!"
Jillian didn't know about any heart of gold, but Moose was certainly going for the gold. Maybe it was the alcohol dulling her outrage at everything that had happened to her thus far, because Jillian found herself more amused than angered by Moose's relentless attempts to mack on her. He obviously thought of himself as something of a ladies man, yet had failed to take into account that while Jillian might like the big lug, the Jon inside Jillian hated him. Obviously not enough to actually stop him from nuzzling her neck and resting his hand on the swell of her hip, but as the low-grade mauling went on, and she had to knock his hands away from her breasts twice inside of two minutes, the hate blossomed enough for Jillian to be seriously considering kneeing him in his crotch and seeing how rock hard it was then.
Suprisingly, it was Sarah who came to her rescue. Mike was leaning in for another slightly sloppy smooch and Jillian was already turning to take it on the cheek yet again when unsteady footsteps and a tipsy, yet imperious voice crept up behind them, "Moooooose, stop! Moose, stop humping all over my new best friend! No one has actually had sex in this park since, what, the sixties?"
"God, fuck off, Sarah, we're having a private conversation," Moose grumbled. Jillian reflected that it had started as a private conversation, mostly her bitching him out for bringing her here for this instead of going to scout her old place, and quickly deteriorated from there. She hoped it was just the alcohol and not the wish, but something made it hard for Jillian to stay mad at Moose for any appreciable length of time.
"No, you aren't, you're trying to get Jillian drunk enough to go all the way on your first official date and she is better than that," Sarah stamped one little foot and put her fists on her hips as if ready to fight, "Now give her a break and let her get some air!"
"Alright, jeez, it's crazy how you chicks all stick together," Moose threw up his hands in defeat and stepped away, leaving Jillian suddenly a little off balance. Sarah smoothly stepped in and caught her new girlfriend to keep her from taking an embarassing tumble to the grass.
"We have to stick together when the best this town has to offer are guys like all of you," Sarah said with more than a little trace of drunken sarcasm, punctuated by a disdainful sniff. Some of the other guys groaned or made token protests, hearing this, but no one really took offense. Muttering obscenities under his breath, Moose just slouched away to grab another beer from the trunk of Biff's sportscar. Sarah took her hand and gave a reassuring squeeze, "C'mon, Jillian, let's get you cleaned up."
Sarah tugged her new friend over to a concrete table and bench set the girls had sort of staked out as their staging area. Jillian realized with shocked delight that Sarah McMillan was rubbing her butt! Even if it was only to dust off and straighten the backside of her sweater dress, the former Jon experienced a certain lesbian-tinged thrill from the brief contact. Jillian tried to calm herself by rembering girls were pretty open and familiar with one another's bodies. Once tonight already, Sarah had playfully honked Jillian's boobs while rhapsodizing about how absolutely perfect they were and wishing her own weren't quite so large.
Tiffany and Amber were both already there at the table, seated next to each other, smoking and gossiping, Tiffany closely watching their approach with hooded eyes. Jillian's warning sensors went off, remembering that in her old life, and probably this one too, Moose was known to regularly plow Tiffany's field. The bitchy looks she had been getting from Tiff were probably due to some form of paradoxical slut jealousy. Tiffany might fuck the rest of the team too, but somehow Moose was exclusively hers. Sarah, completely unconcerned with such factors, fearlessly sat Jillian across from Tiffany and began fixing Jillian's makeup.
"Ooh, Moose wrecks everything," Sarah growled in mock frustration as she went through her purse looking for a napkin, "I just loved your makeup earlier tonight and now he's got it all smudged!"
Jillian wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that she had done her own makeup for tonight and, wonder of wonders, it actually passed the Sarah McMillan seal of approval. She must have looked like a total slut. Maybe that was why Moose had been coming on so hard. Jillian hadn't meant anything by it. She did genuinely like Moose and had just wanted to look nice for their - - for their, oh hell, might as well admit it - - their date. There had been some makeup on the vanity and Jillian had used a few photos of herself with friends tucked into the edge of the big mirror as a guide. Dark almost burgundy lipstick, some smoky eyeshadow, a touch of mascara.
"He comes on pretty strong," Tiffany said in an offhand way, blowing out a plume of smoke, "Not every girl can take it."
"No one can take it quite like you, Tiffany," Sarah said with just the airiest hint of malice, "Jilly Bean here is new to our group. Be nice."
"Jilly Bean, huh?" Tiffany rolled her eyes, "You mean like refried beans? I never knew Moose was into latinos is all."
"It's latinas, Tiff! Try staying awake in class sometime," Sarah said in as patient a tone as Jillian had ever heard from her, "Jillian's latina, not latino. Right?"
"Um, actually, my mom's Italian," Jillian offered somewhat awkwardly.
Sarah gave "Jilly Bean" a cool look that made the other girl cringe inside, but instead chose to turn things around and vent on Tiffany, "See? Farber's an Italian name. Just like I said. Like from Jersey Shore."
"But you," Tiffany never got to finish. Jillian blurted out, "Exactly!" in the hopes that she could stay on Sarah's good side by backing her up now, though it sickened her to be identifying herself with those tramps on TV, and around the same time Amber warmed to the topic and gushed, "I loooove that show. It's my guilty pleasure!"
The next several minutes were spent feigning greater familiarity with the reality show than Jillian actually possessed and sitting still while Sarah retooled her makeup, but that was easy enough. She just assumed the people on the show acted as vapid and self-obsessed as the people around her. Sarah ruled the roost and as long as Jillian let her unexpected patroness fuss over her and confide in her and go to the bathroom with her Sarah would protect her position from the other females in the group, especially Tiffany. Jillian briefly wondered, is every woman's life so occupied with social politics as this? A lit cigarette was passed to her and Jillian was suprrised to find herself smoking it. She was sobering up some and the nicotine helped give her a little lift of some kind.
Some time passed in this way, Jillian and Sarah chatting, occasionally acknowledging the two lesser girls at the table, Amber trying to distance herself from Tiffany's sulking and get in good with Queen Sarah. The party looked to be breaking up. Biff was clsoing the now empty trunk of his car. Ike was kick starting his bike and whistling for Amber to "get her ass on and let's go!" Tiffany was stalking away, a slight drunken stagger to her steps, calling for Chase to come take her home. Moose came walking over and by now Jillian was almost as grateful for his rescue of her from Sarah as she had been for Sarah saving her from him.
"Hey, Jillian, everyone is getting ready to jet, so," Moose trailed off with a questioning look, "Did you still want to go to that place we talked about?"
"Yes!" Jillian seized on the opportunity. He had to be talking about her old house, "I'd like that, Mike."
"Mike? Ohhh, you and Moose are so cute, Jilly-Bean," Sarah laughed, "Well, I got her all fixed up for you, Mike. Try to not mess it up this time!"
"Sarah, thank you so much," Jillian began, but how to do the next part? She really hated that nickname Sarah was trying to lay on her, "All my best friends call me, Jill. I hope you will too!"
"Sure," Sarah hesitated a second before giving her new friend a close hug and a parting kiss on the ear, "Sure I will, Jill. Love you. Bye."
"Thanks," Jillian let out a breath she didn't know she was holding. Moose was pulling her away so she threw over her shoulder, "See you guys later!"
"You know it!" Sarah waved.
Once the couple were out of earshot Amber giggled, "Know what? That you made her look like an uber-slut?"
"Amber! Hurry your ass up or I'm leaving you!" Ike yelled again.
Amber flashed Sarah an apologetic look, grabbed her things, and hurried her ass up.
"Hush, Amber. Be nice," a predatory smile pursed Sarah's voluptuous lips, speaking more to herself than to her departing friend, "I was just getting her ready for Moose."
