Jack told Tony and Mark that he'd been wheelchair bound for 18 months now, that his neck had been broken in a car accident. They didn't argue with him, but insisted that he wheel over to their house right away. That was fine with Jack who readily agreed and got a pat on the head from Tony's giant hand.
Once at the St. Martin house, Tony and Mark had to carry Jack into the house and then up the stairs to Tony's room. Tony called both Jeff and Eric and they promised to come over right away. When they arrived, they were shocked and angry. It was one thing to make Mark fat or to exaggerate Tony's slenderness to the point of absurdity, but Jack had been shattered.
First they showed Jack his real self and told him what had happened to him. Jack quickly recovered his memories. He amazed his friends by keeping his happy go lucky perspective and not being depressed. There was the prospect of a quick return to his old body, but Jack was absolutely immobile and unfeeling below his neck. The others shuddered at considering his fate, no matter how temporary.
But the bigger issue was to find who had done this to them. Mark had been the first target and Tony and Jack had only gotten zapped after being seen with Mark. What's more, they had only gotten zapped after they had seen Mark outside the junior high and assured him things would be okay. They had both gotten zapped in almost the same location at almost the same time of day.
They began making lists and seeing who showed up on all of them. They quizzed Mark for the names of all the girls and boys in his ballet class. They asked for the names of any kids who showed up at the ballet studio. Mark knew every kid in the class and was able to supply the names of a few others who were often there.
They made more lists, lists of kids in Mark's honors classes, lists of girls and boys who were outcasts in Mark's class, lists of every girl Mark could ever remember talking to.
But this wasn't enough. Jeff wanted to see if any other kids had been transformed. "Whoever did this to you guys has a taste for the extreme. There may be some more super fat or thin or whatever kids. If there are, how are they similar to you, Mark? Who would want to hurt both of you? And, of those people, who leaves the school at the time and in the direction that would allow them to zap Tony and Jack"
Their next move was to watch everyone going into the junior high the next morning. Everyone agreed to ride to the junior high in Jeff's family's van and watch from there the next morning. Jeff and Eric left and Mark went downstairs to the kitchen leaving Tony alone with Jack. Tony hugged Jack about the shoulders and rubbed his cheek against his friend's. "You're sure you can handle this for a while?"
"I think so. It's weird not feeling most of my body but for a few more days? Yeah, I can handle it."
Tony looked down and noticed that the crotch of Jack's pants were tented. "Happy to see me?" Tony laughed, nodding toward it.
"Oh, that's beyond my control. Remember having erections for no reason when you were, like 12, 13 and 14? That's me, like this. Hell, my johnson's the only part of me south of my neck that does anything" laughed Jack. "Hey, what about you?"
"Oh, my . . " Tony laughed. "I get 18 inches long but never more than an inch thick" Jack laughed heartily.
"What can I say? I get hard and then it telescopes out and out and out but never thicker. I-I guess it fits with this body I have. I-I'm barely any more athletic than you. I can't run. I can't jump. I'm weak. I can't defend myself. I'm just tall. But . . but Claire still wants me. She still does! Even like this" Tony said holding his arms out to gesture to himself, "even like this. I-I'd do anything for her. She so beautiful and intelligent and . . and she can deal with me like this. How amazing is that?"
"Good for you man"
Tony and Jack shared a few more words but Claire was the unspoken topic still in the air. Jack motioned with his head for Tony to approach and when he did, rubbed his temple against Tony's.
"It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't listened to you and stayed like this" said Tony. "She and I . . we . . " Tony chuckled. "Even with me being a weak freak like this. She-she sees the real me even with this rubber band body. It-it made me so happy to give her pleasure. I . ." Tony's voice trailed off into a sigh.
He got Mark to help him bring Jack downstairs and then out to the street. Tony walked beside Jack back to his house where a ramp was now in place at the front door and said goodnight. Back at the St. Martin house, Tony found Mark up in his room finishing off a bag of potato chips with the remains of a piece of cake on a plate on his nightstand.
"Jeez. You're gonna be four bills if you have to stay this way another week. Aren't you gonna at least try and maintain some discipline?" Tony admonished him.
"You don't know how bad my appetite is. Jeff said it was reset to the 99th percentile. I'm always going to be a lardassed blimp until I get back to my real body. What should I care if I'm 312 right now instead of the 297 I was when I thought this was really me? Are you trying to add weight? Are you trying to be able to do SOMEthing athletically? Why should I have to work if you don't?"
"Fair enough. Just give your all to solving this"
The next morning, they all trooped into Jeff's family's van. It had an extra large interior and a curtain could be drawn behind the driver and passenger seats to hide them all from view. On top of this, the van had two extremely dark windows on each side from which to view things. Every kid that went by, they made Mark identify him or her. There seemed to be an unusual number of very fat boys. There were also a couple boys whose faces were covered with an amazing amount of acne. There was a boy whose body was stretched as ridiculously as Tony's. There didn't seem to be any girls who'd suffered any of these fates.
Mark got out of the van and walked into school. He watched everything very closely. He looked for the slightest sign. Did anyone seem to especially revel in his new corpulence? Was there any pattern to which classes the unusually fat boys or amazingly acne ridden boys were in? He made notes about who was in which class?
Finally, Mark left the school and waddled the agreed upon route, the same as he'd traveled with Tony and Jack. Inside the van, Jeff was taping everyone who went by with a digital camera while fatso Mark sat at the curb and watched every kid who went by, every bus that went by. And in the course of doing so, absorbed a half dozen fat taunts.
The entire group convened in Tony's room. Mark shared his observations from school and Jeff ran the digital footage on his laptop screen. By the end of it, they had felt it was narrowed down to 3 main suspects.
First was Patty Hughes. Mark thought that all the transformed boys had been her antagonist at some point in time. Jeff's footage showed her walking by with a bag that could have contained a laptop at about the right time to have been there to zap Tony and Jack.
Second was Olivia Kapler. A disproportionate number of the fat, stretched or acne covered boys were in the honors class. Olivia was obsessed with her ranking in the class. She took the same ballet class as Mark, had a laptop computer and rode one of the school buses that passed by around the time that Tony and Jack were stretched and shattered respectively. Mark recalled her being very angry with him, recently, for Mark recommending another girl to the teacher for a recital pas de deux.
Third was Trevor Hughes. He was in the 8th grade, a grade ahead of Mark. He was in Mark's ballet class and resented Mark's ability. He'd also repeatedly came onto Mark, both subtly and overtly, always to no avail. He rode the same bus as Olivia Kapler and also had a laptop computer. Mark vaguely suspected that he'd come on to some of the other transformed boys as well.
"What do all of you think?" asked Jeff
"How will we narrow it down?" wondered Tony. "What if whoever's doing this decides to get cautious and play it close to the vest? We can't just break into their homes, can we?"
"Actually, we can if the person we're after is unawares. But whoever this is may have stretched Tony and broken Jack just because they implied that they were going to get him out of his fat body. He or she might turn any of us into a fly if he or she even saw us approaching their house. We've got to be really careful how we go about this."
How important that was was made clear that night. Jeff and Eric walked Jack home to his house. On the way, they stopped at the convenience store on the corner of Main and Elm. Jeff went inside and brought Jack with him. When they came out, Eric's face was covered with acne like no face they'd ever seen before. They could see more acne on his neck and shoulders. Eric had his hands in his pockets and was looking down, refusing to make eye contact with anyone who passed by.
"We don't have any time at all" remarked Jeff somberly. "It's like whoever did this is stalking us, now"