Jon sighed as he entered the combination for his locker, and pulled the door open. He grabbed his clothes out and quickly headed for one of the stalls.
"Hey Gibson, why you headed in there? Afraid you don't measure up?" Mike "The Moose" Matthews said as he did so.
"Why you so concerned, Mike? Hoping to get a look?" Jon responded, heading into the stall and locking the door behind him.
"Hey, fuck you Gibson." Mike yelled across the locker room.
"No thanks." Jon replied, quickly getting dressed. He could hear a few of the other guys in the room laughing, but Mike and the other football players quickly headed out to the gym, slamming the locker room door as they did.
"You shouldn't have done that Jon." Pete Hill, a friend of Jon and Karyn, said. "You're just making yourself a target for them."
"I'm a target anyway, I might as well fight back once in a while, you know?" Jon said, unlocking the stall and exiting. "Besides, Mike isn't nearly as bad as Steve, or even Biff on his bad days."
"Fair enough, but you still shouldn't go looking for trouble." Pete said. He then sighed and went over to his locker.
"Hey, is there something wrong?" Jon asked, heading over to his own locker to put his clothes away.
"Oh, you know. It's just..."
"Let me guess, Lisa?" Jon asked. Lisa Andrews was another friend of theirs, and Pete had been pining after her for months.
"Yeah..." Pete said, tossing his clothes into his locker. "I just don't know how to go about asking her out. I don't want to ruin our friendship or anything."
Jon was closing his locker when he noticed the ring on his finger giving off a faint pink glow, and suddenly, his mind was filled with some new information.
"Well, Pete. I think that she likes you too. I mean, the way she looks at you sometimes..."
"You really think so?" Pete asked, closing his locker and turning toward Jon.
"Yeah, and I'll help you out a bit. Her favorite band is playing in the city in about a week. I bet if you got some tickets and asked her to go, she'd say yes."
"Oh man, Jon, you're the best." Pete said. "I'll check that out as soon as I get home, thanks man." He added. With that, Pete left the locker room, leaving Jon alone.
Alone to contemplate. He had noticed a few glances that Lisa had cast at Pete, but had never put any real stock in it. And he had, prior to that conversation, not known about Lisa's favorite band playing anywhere near his town.
He looked down at the ring. "What are you?" he asked. He went to leave the locker room, when he caught his reflection in a mirror that was hanging on the wall. He could see that his hair was a bit longer, maybe an inch or so, and his face was slightly softer.
"Oh shit..." he said. "Hope no one notices that..."
