Aaron needed a distraction to get into the assembly without being scolded and when an idea popped into his head he just went with it not thinking to hard about it. The edited sentence now read “Senior Class President, Jennifer Tanaka, gives her speech to clowned peers and teachers of St. Paul High School”. His idea was that if some of the students and faculty suddenly found themselves dressed as clowns there would be enough of an uproar for him to sneak in. Aaron accepted the edit in the app then waited for his planned uproar to begin but the only uproar that happened was from his side of the door. When he put his phone down to take another peek into the auditorium he was shocked to find that his own clothes had changed—now he wore baggy yellow and orange checkered pants two sizes too big, as well as pancake-toed size seventeen clown shoes with yellow saddles and red wing tips. He still wore his blue school blazer but again two sizes too big, as well as an oversized yellow shirt and a puffy blue bow tie. On his hands were immaculate white gloves.
Aaron became aware of a touch of red at the bottom of his field of vison. Gingerly he touched his nose; it was a perfect sphere, and nearly as big as a tennis ball. He gave it a squeeze.
HONK!
Forgetting where he was Aaron out loud panicked saying “no no no” in a deep, goofy voice. The noise of him panicking made it into the auditorium and before Aaron could react the doors opened and a teacher dressed as a clown spotted him alone in the hallway. Aaron was then scolded for being late and escorted into the auditorium and lead to a seat. His phone was also confiscated to be picked up later in the principal’s office.
Now that Aaron was sitting next to his fellow students he weren’t the only ones changed. This was his first day at this private high school and he only knew his fried Rita here, so the other students were not familiar; now they all were clowns of various types-neat whitefaces with simple, elegant ‘makeup,’ comedy whitefaces with more bold and garish facial markings, augustes with pink or orange complexions and white ovals around their eyes and muzzles around their mouths, hobos and bag-ladies in shabbier uniforms covered with patches here and there. He noticed that even the teachers, administrators, and Principal were clowns. Their hair was in various colors of blue, red, green, purple and a montage of styles; some wore silly hats others were bare headed. Nearly half of the boys and a surprising handful of girls-mostly bag ladies-were at least partially bald. And one feature they all had in common was a bulbous red clown nose that Aaron knew would honk when squeezed like his own did.
And like Aaron, they each wore a clownified variaton of the school uniform.
Aaron had the advantage of knowing that something had changed but it was inconceivable that nobody else had realized something was different so long after it happened. With dawning realization Aaron concluded that only the app user could notice the changes and for everybody else it would be normal. And that they weren't simply dressed as clowns, they WERE clowns, physically at least. Sadly for Aaron he didn’t have his phone and the app to change himself back and he was stuck as a clown until after school.
With nothing else he could do Aaron began to listen to the speech being given as he had been ignoring until that point. She was a neat whiteface clown with pink-silver hair done in anime-style twintails and had a golf ball sized red nose covered with sparkling red glitter. Her elegant ‘makeup’ seemed to emphasize her Asian features.
“These last three years have been quite the experience for St. Paul High School. After the implementation of the school wide clownification process, heheyaha, we have all been learning about acceptance and what it means to be true to oneself.” She honked her nose, as if to emphasize her point. “At first it was hard, heheyaha, too many of us felt embarressed to be dressed and acting without inhibtion, heheyaha.” HONK! “But now we are all stronger and more joyful, able to accept ourselves, realize our potential, and accept our limitations, heheyaha, in a humane and realistic manner. On top of that we have shown how resilient we have become by eliminating the rampant cases of bullying we had before the policy, hehehyaha.” Honk! “We also have been improving our academic scores significantly over these last three years. With this in mind, heheyaha, the school has given me the great pleasure to announce that the clownification policy will become permanent, heheyaha, and St. Paul High School will be a school for those to embrace their inner clown.” HONK! HONK!
Aaron was dumbstruck as the rest of the students honked their noses in applause when Jennifer finished her speech. If she was to be believed every student and teacher was a clown in mind as well as body.
After Jennifer the principal came, a comedy whiteface with up and welcomed everyone to the beginning of the school year and everyone was dismissed to go back to their classes.
Aaron waddled out to the hallway. He saw a long mirror and took at his reflection....