Joyce and Judy walked out the door after their parents and down the sidewalk towards the bus stop. Judy had long ago decided backpacks were lame and instead carried her textbooks pressed against her breasts. Unlike Joyce all her clothes were new and sported the latest fashionable trends. A skirt combined with a sleeveless top with a high collar, one of those fashion trends that Joyce referred to as “Zombie Fashion.” Some marketing executive had decided to make designs from forty or fifty years ago hip again and combine them with modern audiences and tastes. Suddenly all the outdated and seemingly random clothing in Joyce’s drawers made sense and though Judy only seemed to want to talk about her new outfit Joyce found herself listening to her sister. She picked at her teeth while doing so but paid attention nonetheless. Suddenly this was routine on the way to the bus stop and Judy didn’t stop at clothing.
“The only thing I dislike about it is that Ben will no doubt have a hard time taking it off,” Judy lamented as they reached the bus stop and stood there in the hot morning air.
“Then wear something easy to take off when you plan to bang,” Joyce replied in a rathe blunt manner while her sister sighed. Normally her reaction would have been to hit her brother but her sister wasn’t the same person and she instead seriously considered her advice.
“Yeah but Ben likes to spring it on me, you know?! We don’t exactly plan every time we end up fucking,” Judy sighed before further conversation on the topic was cut off by a plethora of kids arriving and standing around them. They immediately felt like oak trees in a forest while kids blabbered about cartoons, comic books, and other things little kids are into. A few gave Joyce weird looks at first like they’d never seen her before but Joyce had overheard so many conversations at this bus stop that she practically knew every kid near her personally even if she wouldn’t socialize with them in a million years.
The odd looks vanished for a while as all the kids blinked and seemed to drop their confused looks. The odd looks returned when the girls got into the bus however.
“Who are you?” The driver demanded while grabbing her arm. Joyce stared at the woman in disbelief before they both blinked and the conversation continued like normal, “Sucks that you girls don’t get scouted like the guys. You’d definitely have a scholarship if that were the case.”
“Are you going to attend tonight?” Joyce asked now recognizing the woman as the mother of the captain of the boys soccer team, Joey.
“Nah gotta drive some brats to a junior high game. But hey they all start somewhere, you started somewhere,” she laughed and Joyce felt herself giggle at the thought of how bad she was in junior high and being driven around by drivers like Joey’s mom. She sat down again and turned grinning at Joyce once more, “If you’re attending make sure to cheer for me.”
“Sure,” Joyce replied before walking trough the bus as the confused stares drifted away and whispers about the new girl turned into greetings and waves from classmates she’d never spoken to and girls she’d drooled over when she was a man. Billy’s existence was being overwritten and by the time Joyce slipped into her seat next to Judy the entire bus knew her as Joyce and nothing else.
Judy talked about how much she was going to hate math and how hard it was while Joyce listened and chattered with her about random subjects including the game after school and whether Coach Jacobs was banging Penny Holst or not. The bus bumped along the road and continued all the way until it ground to a halt at the school occasionally picking up a person who stared at her in confusion for a few seconds before either ignoring or greeting her.
The door opened and everyone filed out quickly and onto the front steps of M. Bastion High School with a variety of teenagers from grade six to twelve. They passed the giant stone Possum outside the school with the logo for the sports team under it that matched Joyce’s jersey. They stepped through the front doors and departed. Judy heading for the grade twelve lockers and Joyce for the grade eleven ones. She walked down the halls getting weird looks and having everyone talk about her.
“Whoa, you are smokin,” one of the big jocks laughed while shutting his locker and approaching her. He loomed over her with a grin and smoothed back his hair while eyeing her chest, “What’s your name?!”
“We’ve known each other since kindergarten Harold,” Joyce lamented and a look of confusion came over his face before reality shifted and people stopped talking about her and staring. He shook his head and put that smile back on.
“So you coming to the game Joyce?” He asked while slicking back his hair.
“Yeah, seeing you fail to kick a ball across a field is worth it,” she smirked before punching his shoulder. He punched her back and walked off laughing. Joyce continued to her locker with new memories of the confrontation filling her mind and opened it wide finding a complete disarrayed mess with random pictures and posters she didn’t recognize. She turned around to glare at Harold and demanded, “Okay so which joker decided to fill my locker with pictures of women?!”
Everyone looked at her in confusion before that confusion came over her own face. Everyone in the hall turned back to what they were doing and Joyce turned back to her locker without memory of just shouting. The pictures began to morph. A hot redhead was replaced by a photo of actor David Pace in pale lighting. A picture of the guys football team was replaced by a picture of her basketball team with her jersey number shifting to twenty four. A class schedule morphed to accommodate her new practice times and the magnets holding it up turned into butterflies and flowers. Finally lots of empty space began to fill up with pictures of the hottest celebrities and Logos for bands she liked. Joyce didn’t even notice the changes and just lazily grabbed her textbooks for the first two periods and stowed her backpack on one of the hooks. The door was slammed shut and she walked to first period. As she walked she passed the trophy case and a few medals changed colour and a solitary trophy vanished while another appeared. Pictures of the teams glossed over and any photographic evidence of Billy vanished as the boys team adjusted itself and Joyce appeared on photos of the girls teams with the number twenty four on her chest in each of them.