"Where is it!?" Eugene hissed as he dug through the bag and purse before unending their contents over the bleachers. Out tumbled a phone that cracked and broke as it hit the floor. Out came a load of cosmetics. Out came the rest of the clothing and the loose change that Eve had been keeping in her purse.
But there was no gemstone.
"No...NO! It was supposed to be right here!" Eugene spun around, tumbling backwards as he over-estimated his control over his new centers of gravity and was saved only by grabbing onto one of the nearby handrails. His green eyes were wide and his chest heaved as panic overtook the anger he had been feeling, and suddenly he realized that every single pair of eyes in the gym was locked on him, and plenty of phones were pointed in his direction, including Gloria's. And Joanna simply stood there, towering over all the other girls with a cold look on her face.
'Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no' Was all Eugene could think as he realized what had happened. The Stone was gone, it clearly hadn't come with him from the previous reality, if it still existed at all. It had abandoned him here as a cheerleader and now he'd ruined it with his tantrum. He inhaled sharply as Joanna took a step forward and pointed a finger towards the row of doors at the far end of the gym, Eugene following it and catching a blur of something curly ducking under one of the windows.
"Eve, I think you need to go. Clean up this mess and leave or I'll have someone go get Mr. Irons and he can walk you out" Joanna said in a very stern and icy cold voice that sent a chill running through Eugene's body. Suddenly the girl who had hugged him, had felt so soft and warm just minutes ago looked like a unyielding mountain of stone and steel as he blue eyes drilled into Eugene's soul.
"But-I...I just, I didn't mean to" He stammered, trying to find the words, some way to make it right, but it was too late.
"I don't want to hear it, Evelyn. You attacked a student, and now you have to leave. Pick up your shit and get the hell out of our gym. You're no longer welcome here" Joanna said, a murmur of approval running through the collected crowd of cheerleaders. "I'll be speaking to Mrs. Beck and Mr. Lonnigan about this. Don't plan on going to the game tomorrow"
Eugene could do nothing but stare in shock before Joanna snapped her fingers, the snap echoing across the otherwise silent gym, and Eugene quickly scrambled to life as he stuffed the mess of items back into the duffel bag and ran towards the door.
__________________________
Like all the days had been in the month following the incident in the gym, Eugene had had a rough day. He'd scrambled out of the gym into a blast of cold air, which had taken his breath away before he discovered that it was no longer April 2018. Instead the gemstone had changed more than just his gender and made him a cheerleader, it had shifted time itself! Instead of it being spring it had become mid-October 2018, and Eugene had nearly froze in the chilly night air as he wandered the parking lot, trying to find out which car belonged to Eve. Finding the cute little pink and white convertible Eugene had piled in and taken off, ending up at the home of Eve Kazinski through some weird form of autopilot. He'd pulled up in the driveway of a extremely expensive looking house in the white collar neighborhood of Shermer on the opposite side of town from the apartment he rented when he he had been a man and bolted inside.
Eve's parents, two strangers that Eugene didn't know, wanted to know why their daughter was home so early, why it looked like she had been crying, but Eugene had simply bolted up the stairs and into what he now knew as his bedroom, slamming the door and falling onto the large, soft pink bed and passing out.
The next day had been hell. He hadn't wanted to go to school, but Eve's parents, Karen and Howard, had forced him to. His lack of knowledge of makeup, how to do his hair and his eyes locked shut experience in the bathroom had left the apparently pristine looking Eve looking like a mess. And when he'd gotten to school, well, things just got worse. Everyone was pointing and whispering at him, crowds parting as he wandered down the main hallway before the school's PA system summoned him to the office. There Eugene was the unfortunate star of the first tongue-lashing that Eve had ever received, video evidence being presented to his horrified new mother, mumbling excuses through a mane of limp red hair before Eugene had been escorted out of the building by Mr. Irons, the school security officer. Eugene, or rather Eve as he resigned himself to be now, had received a week suspension for bullying, physical violence against another student, and erratic behavior. And he'd...she'd been removed from the cheerleading team, the academic decathalon team, the BETA Club and pretty much every extra-curricular that Eve had ever been involved in. At home she was stripped of all her privileges. Her keys were taken away, her computer, no TV. Her new parents were clearly so hurt and angry that they would barely look or even speak to her.
And Eve's reputation among the student populace? All the goodwill, the praise and admiration, it had all vanished like dust in the wind. What had taken the girl that Eugene now was a lifetime to build, he'd destroyed it literally overnight. And Eugene, Eve, found herself the target of the same bullying she had tried to save Willow from. Her locker, smack dab in the middle of the of the 'popular' hallway was vandalized, and she was ostracized by all the girls she shared classes with, including Emily, who wouldn't even look at Eve. Eventually Eve was re-assigned a locker away from everyone that she was 'causing conflicts' with, and eventually had her entire schedule re-arranged so that she would stop 'causing disruptions' in the classes with the cheerleaders.
And they stripped her name from her, in a way. Instead of being called Eve, everyone now, if they spoke to her without insulting her, simply called her Evelyn.
She was friendless, adrift, a shell of a person. Ironically it was almost second nature, given Eugene's former life and the social pariah he had been because of the same cruel rumors, caused by almost the exact same people. It was why Eve had rolled with it better than anyone had expected, and the target on her back had faded as it looked like the 'fallen angel' of Shermer High wasn't going to give anyone the satisfaction of being provoked into another tantrum. She was just a sad, quiet little loser now, and it was no fun for Gloria and her newly enlarged pack of sycophants if she wasn't going to play ball. Eventually Gloria had gone back to torturing her boyfriend and the constant abuse finally stopped. All that was seemingly left to play with was just a shell of a person, and that was boring.
But that was when a ray of light finally appeared in the most unlikely place. Three weeks after the shockwave had passed and Eve, Evelyn now found herself at the lowest rung of the Shermer High social ladder, two girls appeared at lunch, at the empty table near the back of the high school cafeteria where she'd found herself exiled to. She had quickly and quietly finished her meal and tried to focus on catching up on her homework, which was near impossible for her, given her previous life as a man who had originally barely graduated decades ago.
"How is this shit even math!?" She muttered to herself as she stared at the incomprehensible calculus in front of her. But then a shadow fell across her book and she closed her eyes, preparing for the assault.
"Hey...Eve?" Came a slightly nasally female voice. Eve's head shot up, sending her limp, faded red hair flying. There, standing in front of her table with lunch trays in hand, were Willow Strasserman, Paige Walters and some greasy haired boy that was staring a little too intently towards Eve's cleavage.
"Can, um, can we sit with you?" Willow asked shly, and Eve could see more than a few eyes glancing their way from the other tables. More gossip for the rumor mill.
Eve chuckled to hereself. "I don't know. Might damage your reps sitting with me"
"Well, we don't have any 'reps' so I think we'll be okay" The tubby Paige Walters said, "With how crazy everything has been, now that we share a locker block and classes..."
"I just wanted to thank you!" Willow blurted out, slamming her tray down on the table as emotion overtook her, "I know the story, you stood up for me! You kept me from making a fool out of myself! I..I can't believe would do something like that for me! I knew you were a good person! I just knew it!"
Eve just closed her eyes and shook her head. 'You have got to be kidding me' She thought to herself as the three other losers of Shermer High settled down at the table around her.