Sam watched the football practice closely. Just in case, if Jen couldn't fix this, he figured he needed to know how to lead one of these. He couldn't keep pawning it off on Terry.
He found his eyes drifting down the field, though, towards the cheerleaders. He used to be friends with all of them. He used to be one of them. Now he had to make a conscious effort just to not ogle them. Even Biff and Karyn probably just considered him some generic authority figure at this point.
This thought set off alarm bells in his head. If he was no longer friends with Biff and Karyn, how could he possibly be friends with Jen? How was he going to turn himself back?
Not entirely sure of himself but driven by panic, Biff made his way down the bleachers and past the football team, shouting things like "Good work," and "Nice hustle" along the way, more to keep up appearances than because he knew what was good and what was bad.
On the other side of the field, Sam approached Coach Barry, former professional volleyball player, dedicated mentor, and if locker room rumors were accurate, total lesbian. "You mind if I speak to a couple of your athletes here for a moment? I'd like to have a word with Miss Black and Mr. Meadows."
"Go ahead, but don't take too long," she said before calling those two students over and handing them off to the boy's coach.
"Alright, guys," Sam started, "This might seem kinda weird, but it's very important that I have Jen Gibson's phone number."
"What," Biff joked, "You wanna put her on the football team?"
Sam's jaw went hard. He wasn't entirely sure how to deal with these two from a point of authority. "No, I just... need to contact her."
Karyn gasped, "Is this something inappropriate, Coach Barry?"
This caught Sam off-guard. 'Something inappropriate' had been locker room slang for teachers hitting on students among the cheerleaders. "N-no!" Sam broke down, "Look, strange things have been going on today. This may sound crazy, but it's like I've had a magic curse or something."
Biff looked skeptical, but Karyn's eyes shot open in recognition. "The stone!"
"You know about it?" asked Sam.
Biff was still incredulous. "What are you guys talking about?"
"Don't worry about it, Biff," Karyn said. "Here, coach, let me write the number down in your notebook. Jen leaves her gym at 6:00" The girl wrote down the number and handed the notebook back to a very relieved Sam Molyneux.
"Thanks, Karyn. You two can go back to practice."
Before making his way back to the football area of the field, Sam went over to the other coach again and said, remembering to be on first-name basis, "Thanks, Felicia," patting her on the shoulder as a headache ripped through his skull.
Coach Barry turned to him, "Are you alright, Sam?"
"Fine, fine. Just migraines," Sam shrugged it off.
As he walked back, though, he kept turning to see if he could figure out something wrong with any of the cheerleaders so he would know what was wrong with himself. After a moment, it occurred to him that he wasn't getting the same reaction out of himself he had from across the field, even though it seemed like the routine they were doing now was flirtier than the one they'd been doing before.
Upon closer inspection, this actually looked like the same routine, just with more exaggerated movements from certain areas of the girls' bodies. But yet Sam still didn't feel anything like he'd felt watching them a few minutes before.
It all clicked after he heard Coach Barry call out, "C'mon, girls! Give me more! You need to get those boys energized out there, don't you?"
It was subtle, and Sam felt almost like he was jumping the gun, but it seemed as though he had traded sexual orientations with Coach Barry. She'd never said things like that before to Sam's recollection, but it made sense that if a woman wasn't interested in men she might not approve of a team of girls displaying their bodies to a whole stadium of them as much as someone who herself flirted with men all the time.
After Sam made it back to his end of the bleachers and jotted down yet another change, he found that he didn't have any trouble at all now focusing on what the football team was doing.
