Lunch ended, and Jon made his way over to the locker rooms for gym. He opened the locker room door, and froze. That itch from the morning returned, and went into over-drive. Before him, Jon saw young men in all states of undress, and it was sending him signals that he could not quite process.
The itch grew until it overflowed, shooting heat straight into Jon's face. He remained still, remained shocked, but his cheeks flushed an increasingly deep red color.
"Gibson!" Sarah's voice cut through Jon's paralysis. "Wrong locker room!"
Without his brain's conscious thought, Jon's legs turned around and followed Sarah down the hall. It felt good to follow Sarah down the hall, it felt right, even if it was just a short hall before they reached the door to the girl's locker room.
There were girls changing in this room, just as the boys were changing in their locker room, but Jon didn't feel that same itch. He felt normal. Relaxed. It felt natural to walk up to the wall of lockers and unbutton his pink jeans. And as he looked up, he saw that Sarah's hands were at the top of her now-open jeans, just in the same position as Jon's were. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband and pulled down her pants to reveal a pair of black hipster panties, just at the same time as Jon found his own thumbs doing to same to reveal the identical pair of panties he was wearing.
Like in the corridor, the rest of the room became fuzzy as Jon's focus centered on Sarah. Centered on undressing exactly in time with her. Mirroring her movements.
It was when he was wearing only that black pair of hipster panties and nothing else when Jon was snapped out of his reverie.
"Oh my god, why is Jon so hairy?" The voice came from somewhere else in the locker room. It wasn't aimed at him, but it was definitely deliberately loud enough for him to hear.
Jon looked down at his nearly-naked form. True, he had Sarah's smooth waist, and he had her hips and thighs, but below the knee he was, indeed, very hairy. His arms, as well. And sparse hair covered his chest.
"So flat, too," another voice replied to the first, again loud enough for Jon to hear.
Nearly naked, vulnerable, confused, and apparently under attack, Jon felt his heart rate quicken. He turned to face away from the source of the voices, down a row of lockers, and back around the next row, hoping he was out of sight of whoever was talking about him.
Where was his locker, anyway? Where had he put his clothes when he was undressing? His thoughts distracted, he inadvertently bumped up against another body. Karyn.
The unexpected contact made the both of them jump in opposite directions. Once Karyn got her bearings, she took a deep breath and said "I change back here so that the other girls don't make fun of me."
Jon nodded in understanding. For a brief moment, they were friends again. Comrades on the same side of a bitchy little fight. Then Jon felt a bubble rising up out of him.
"Sarah, can you come over here a sec?"
Betrayal splashed across Karyn's face as the cheerleader, still only in bra and panties, confidently strode around the wall of lockers like a 5'5" colossus.
"You're doing something to Jon," Karyn sputtered at Sarah's imposing figure.
Sarah only grinned. "What do you mean?"
"The stone," Karyn replied. "I don't know how you got it, but you're doing something with the wishing stone."
Jon wasn't sure he understood what Karyn was talking about and looked at her in confusion, until Sarah said:
"You mean this stone?" She produced a small reddish rock from somewhere, and memories flooded back into Jon's head.
That was his stone. The one he'd inherited from his grandfather. Sarah had invited herself over to study, and she must have...
"You know what," Sarah tossed the stone gently in her hand. "I'm feeling generous. Jon, I will let you have one wish." She caught the stone and held it out for Jon and Karyn to see. "But the wish you make is going to be what Karyn wants the most."
