Sarah couldn't figure out why she was wearing the clothes she was. She didn't even recognize them. But she had to stay in front. Had to hold on to what was hers. She shut out Coach Burlington and focused on getting one leg out as far as she could, and then getting the other leg even farther. After a little while, it seemed to get easier. There was less resistance to each step. Sarah looked down at her legs and saw that the skirt was now around her knees and pleated, with her black tights sticking out underneath. She could work with this. Sarah pulled a bit farther ahead from the boys behind her.
But then the soft pad-pad from her running shoes turned into a sharp tap-tap. Sarah looked down again, and saw her feet encased in a shiny black pair of Mary Janes, her black tights turned into white stockings. Still, she could deal with this. Sarah just pushed herself harder.
But as she watched her white-encased legs shoot out in front of her over and over again, something happened. Were they getting thicker?
Evan Ross pulled up past Sarah, but when she looked at him, she was only as tall as his shoulders. Evan was taller than her, but not by that much. Sarah wasn't getting thicker, she was just getting shorter.
Sarah felt something heavy hanging from her neck and bouncing on her chest. After a few more steps, it bounced high enough to enter her line of vision: it was a large, gold crucifix. Another two boys passed Sarah, and she noticed that her skirt had changed from denim to tartan. Now students were passing her left and right. No matter what she did, how hard she ran, she kept getting passed, even by mediocre athletes. And nobody seemed to so much as look at her.
Sarah finally got back into her stride about halfway through the pack. She looked around to see who she'd ended up with. Amber Wellington, Alan Sumner, and Jon Gibson?
Jon! Sarah didn't know why, but there was something about Jon. She looked at him, running, staring straight ahead, not even noticing her, and she started to get mad. But the three started pulling ahead of her again.
Sarah's skirt started tightening around her thighs, and soon she could only move her legs from below the knee. She fell further behind the crowd of runners, and as the diminutive Alistair Simms trotted past her, Sarah gave up. She fell down to her knees and started to cry as Coach Burlington came up to her, lecturing on the importance of wearing the right gym clothes, and then slowly the world blurred around her, and disappeared.
