I sat on my bed, thinking about how best to test the ring. There were so many options. I could try it on myself, or my mother, or some of my stuff. But I was nervous about trying it on myself, what if I broke the ring or accidentally wished myself out of existence?
Then I heard the normal ruckus from outside. One of the big downsides to row homes was the noisy neighbors. I got up and went to my window. The people next door had just gotten home. Chuck, his girlfriend, her kid, and chuck’s brother. Chuck’s beat up pick up was rattling and coughing. And Chuck and his girlfriend, Milli, were arguing loudly.
“I wish the truck was quieter,” I said. Immediately the clunking and coughing truck settled into a quiet hum. Chuck and Milli stopped arguing for a moment to stare at the truck. Sam, Chuck’s brother stopped leaning against the tree and went to take a look. Patrick, Milli’s kid, looked up from where he was sitting for a moment, but then went back to studying something in the grass.
“Ok,” I said to myself. “It can make things disappear and reappear, it can make people forget, and it can make a truck quiet. Let’s see what else.”
Chuck turned his attention back to Milli. Now that the truck wasn’t so noisy, I could hear what they were saying.
“Why isn’t my favorite shirt clean?” Chuck yelled. His sandy blond mullet shivering with anger.
“Because,” Milli screamed. “You spilled barbecue sauce on it yesterday!”
“Yeah, and why didn’t you clean it?” Chuck’s hands were curling into fists. Thanks to his t-shirt with cut off sleeves, I could see his biceps tensing.
“Because,” Millie said, her voice dripping with contempt. “You’re a grown man and I’m not your mama.” The continued to argue. I thought about Chuck. He and Sam were in their late twenties, I though I had heard that Chuck was two years older than Sam, and I knew Sam was 26. Neither of them was very nice. Always shouting and drunk half the time. They spent hours everyday shirtless, working on the truck.
“I wish you would act your age!” Milli shouted at Chuck.
I knew what to do. “I wish Chuck and his brother were the ages they acted.”
The changes came quick, it was hard to keep track of both brothers and they dropped in age quickly.
Chuck’s muscled arms and chest narrowed and his scruffy beard got thinner as he dropped through his twenties and neared his teens.
I glanced at Sam. His body had lost a lot of the definition that he had spent years working at. He had turned from a mass of muscles to an overweight teen. He still had a spiky black beard on his doughy chin. He was staring, dumbfounded, at his porky hands.
I turned back Chuck. He was a smooth faced, lanky teen. He was lifted up his shirt to star at his stomach. As an adult, he had the beginnings of abs, but now there was a slightly rounded tummy. He dropped a few inches in high, but his stomach puffed out just enough to keep his jeans from sliding to the ground. He dropped a few more inches as he slipped from a teen to a preteen. Chucks face started to round out. He looked up at Milli, holding his shirt and one hand and the other running over his rounding stomach.
“What’s happening?” Chuck asked, his voice quite a bit higher than it used to be. A moment later, he pants dropped to the ground, giving me a brief glimpse of his sagging and empty boxer briefs.
I felt my self grinning. I looked back at Sam. He was also a preteen now, and far less overweight than he had been as an older teen, though it was hard to see much of his body under the baggy clothes. He dropped another six inches and his face rounded out. His changes seemed to stop. His pants were laying on the ground and his adult shirt was hanging down to his mid-thigh. His boxers clung loosely to legs.
I turned back to see how Chuck had ended up, but was delighted to see he was still getting younger. Chuck dropped a few more inches and lost all traces of a square jaw, clearly younger that his brother Sam or Patrick. His face was so childish that I had trouble believing he had ever been an adult. His narrow shoulders were hidden under his makeshift tank top which was hanging down to his knees. His changes had stopped, leaving the angry 28 year old as a first grader who was trying to hide the fact that he had no pants or underwear on while wearing a grown man’s shirt with the sleeves cut off, leaving holes so big that I could see from his arms to his thighs.
Patrick got to his feet excitedly and ran over to Chuck. He was a head higher than the little boy.
“Awe man!” Patrick shouted. “Mom, can we give Chuck a spanking for yelling at you?”
“I think we should,” Milli said. She reached down and grabbed chuck’s arm and dragged him towards the house.
“NO!” Little Chuck screamed; his voice high pitched. But he was too small to break out of the woman’s grip. Patrick skipped after the couple and went inside.
Sam looked around, surprised that there was no one on the street to have witnessed the occurrence. He pulled to truck door open and climbed onto the seat, leaving his pants, socks, and shoes on the ground. He turned off the truck, hopped out and locked it, then went inside, ignoring the piles of discarded adult clothing on the ground.
“Ok,” I said. “That was interesting.”