The next morning, Jon's phone was buzzing and the house was loud with the sound of his parents laughing and his siblings yelling.
"I have Athena's closet!" Zoe was crowing. "This is as good as it'll get all month!"
"I have normal boy clothes!" Mikey was shrieking.
Hooray for both of them, Jon thought, bringing a hand up to his face to wipe the sleep out of his eyes, needing to take an extra swipe or two to get all the hair out of his face first.
He froze. "Wait," he slowly muttered, the sound leaking out of him like a slow-moving car crash.
With that thought, he quickly leapt out of bed and stared at himself in the mirror. His body looked normal - if you accounted for the fact that he seemed slightly more athletic now because of soccer. Still about six-feet tall, thankfully, still with a male body, still with a male face. His voice had been the same. But on top of his head, his hair now hung down well past his shoulders. His forehead was covered with bangs as well. He was Jon - but with hair matching whoever the six-year-old whose closet he had borrowed from the previous day.
"Ok. This... could actually be a whole lot worse."
He grabbed his phone. Texts to the group chats were coming in. Beyond the usual complaining about tough closet assignments, requests for help with make-up and styling, and laughter at more ridiculous attire, a few kids from school were sharing the results of the physical penalties they'd been hit with. One senior had missed that he needed to put on a necklace yesterday, and now he said his voice was coming out as a melodic soprano. One girl was saying her dad had needed to take off the leather jacket while meeting with a client yesterday, and now he had an intricate rose tattoo on his arm. Jon sighed, and dialed Karyn.
"How bad is it?" Karyn immediately launched in without saying hello.
Jon let out another breath. "I have pigtails. And bangs."
"... it could be a whole lot worse," Karyn offered.
"That's what I was thinking." Jon pulled at one of the pigtails. Yup, definitely my hair. "Am I allowed to get it cut or am I stuck with it?"
"I mean, you could get it cut, but if you trim it down to what you normally have, the curse generally interprets that as you rejecting the physical penalty, and you'll not only wake up with the hair back the next day, but something else will be added on."
"Great. Fantastic. Crabsolutely fantastic." Jon scrunched his face up in frustration. "You did this to me, you know."
"You did this to the entire town, Jon." Karyn sounded sympathetic but didn't give him space to blame her.
"Yeah, I know." He went over to the closet and opened it. "At least my closet is pretty basic today. I mean, it's feminine - again, thanks to you - but it looks like it's from a girl our age." Hanging from the rods were a number of cozy sweaters in a range of colors and styles. A shelf held an absurd amount of black leggings. Boots and shoes lined the floor. Over on top of his dresser was relatively simple jewelry and basic makeup. "A sweater and leggings don't sound bad, especially after the last two days. What did you end up with?"
"Hah! My closet sounds a lot like yours, actually! Do you want to match today?" Karyn sounded amused.
"I really don't. I'm... I'm going to wear a white sweater. You better pick a different color. See you soon enough," Jon rapped his fist against his forehead in annoyance.
"It'll be fine, Jon. Physical penalties happen. No one will make fun of you. Just wear it well." With that, Karyn hung up.
Jon quickly pulled out a white sweater and pulled it on. Oh, I see, it's a sweater dress, actually. How wonderful. Sighing, he grabbed a pair of leggings and pulled them up, before stepping into a pair of brown boots. He went over to the dresser, added the gold bracelets that were there, and then went through the process of applying as basic he felt he could with the makeup and make it sure to the 'curse' that he wasn't rejecting it.
With that, he looked in the mirror once again. It's just hair. It's just hair! It's just... doing a lot more to make me look like a girl than I was hoping. The overall effect was a bit of a shock. And Karyn made it so I'm going to get a number of these physical penalties this month?... This is going to be a long, long month.
