Jon was sitting on top of her locker; this was her spot, a little refuge she'd cleaned up and made her own, for the times she wanted to be by herself. P.E. was one such time; not that she was particularily averse to exercise, but being in the locker room was unnerving for her. She was still trying not to think about sexuality if at all possible; after all, she'd only been like this for under a week, and while she'd have to open that can of worms eventually, she'd rather wait until she was somewhat adjusted to all the other aspects of her new life.
But being in a room full of naked girls and feeling no response made it hard to ignore. The obvious conclusion would be that she was now a heterosexual female, but Carrie the bunny-girl, whom she had talked to a couple times since their first meeting, had told her that non-straight sex-changees sometimes went through a sort of shell-shock period where they felt no responses from either sex. She probably could have resolved it by finding out whether she found guys attractive or not, but she was even more determined to not think about that.
So she simply skipped gym altogether. Luckily, the school officials were a bit more flexible now, so Ms. Tennenbaum had given her the okay to skip out, as long as she kept up with the exercise program they'd worked up for her. Jon figured that with so many different types of students to deal with, educators in the changed reality had to adhere less strictly to one-size-fits-all methods. Which was okay with her, if it let her handle her changes at her own pace.
As she sat there, spacing out and thinking about nothing, Jon heard a hum of wings approaching. There was only one other person in the school who made that sound, so she knew it must be Sarah. She also heard a thundering series of footsteps, which she expected was the six or seven jocks who had taken up a vendetta against the ex-school queen. They'd never actually gotten ahold of him yet, but this had become far too regular an occurance in the past couple days.
Sure enough, Sarah winged around the corner to the lockers, paused briefly, looking for one to hide inside but finding none, then zoomed up on top and squashed himself against the wall, trying to remain out of sight. Jon scooted back and also laid against the wall; she wasn't the one they were looking for, but she'd still rather avoid a run-in if possible. But it didn't really make a difference anyway; the jocks simply thundered past, assuming that since there were no open lockers, Sarah couldn't be hiding here.
After the footsteps had thundered off into the distance, Jon sat back up and straightened her clothes out. Sarah sat up as well, not bothering to neaten up. Jon found it interesting how different he looked now; while Sarah the human girl had constantly striven to be the most attractive girl in the school in every situation, Sarah the pixie-boy couldn't even be bothered to look less disheveled, and seemed to be making a conscious effort to not stand out in any way, with his average haircut and average clothing. Was he relieved to be rid of the work involved in being the school queen, or had he just given up on trying to look good in his new body? Jon had no idea.
"You didn't tell anybody, did you?" she asked. She'd all but told him, last time they'd talked, to report these incidents to the school officials, but Sarah had been less than enthusiastic about the idea.
"No," Sarah muttered. "And don't you tell them."
Jon sighed. "Why not? Even if you did 'deserve' it, it's still completely against school rules!"
Sarah unleashed a death glare at her. "Because I'm trying not to draw any goddamn attention to myself!" he hissed. "Do you have any idea what it's like to have everybody following everything that happens to you!? If they get in trouble for this, everybody's going to hear that it's because of me, and then I'll never be able to stay out of sight!"
Jon was a bit surprised. Maybe Sarah really was tired of the limelight. But if Farber and company ever actually caught him, who knew what they'd do? She half-felt that she should respect Sarah's wishes and half-felt that it would be better to get this addressed ASAP. Of course, it'd be easier if the jocks in question would just turn into friggin' mermaids, a sentiment that had rapidly turned from an incidental angry sotto voce to a notion she emraced for the sheer amusement of the idea to her actual preferred outcome; it would be so easy, and so funny, and it wasn't like they could be worse people as mermaids than the could as teenage guys.
The one really good thing about having lost the stone was that she no longer had to worry about accidentally making these kinds of impulsive notions a reality, or it would've happened already.
