Another chilly, picturesque October morning began in Shermer.
Matt Harris couldn't remember the last time he had actually woken up early enough to watch the sun rise, or when he had been innocent enough to appreciate a gentle burst of wind tickle his face, but today was not a usual day. Not by a fucking long shot.
He listened from the front porch of Willow Strasserman's home as birds rose from their nests to sing their beautiful songs. He watched as squirrels and groundhogs scurried amongst the pastoral suburban landscape without a care, their rambunctious selves tossing fallen multicolored leaves to and fro. He drank hot cocoa and moaned in pleasure at the overwhelming taste of it, as if he had been a hot cocoa virgin up until that very moment. For the first time in years, he gave a smile that wasn't tainted by cynicism but was in fact totally earnest.
Maybe life wasn't so bad after all, surmised Matt.
After all, now that he knew that magic wishing gemstones existed, Matt didn't have to take shit from people he didn't respect anymore, not even his parents and especially not those knuckle dragging fucknuggets in Big Jon's gang. He didn't have to attend stupid classes that he hated and doubted the usefulness of anymore. He didn't have to live in this stupid shopping mall of a town anymore. In fact, he didn't have to do anything he didn't want to, because the normal rules didn't apply to him anymore. Now that magic that could warp the fabric of reality was in play, Matt felt like the entire world was his for the plunder. Now that he had access to forbidden knowledge, he could effortlessly become the richest person on Earth, or gain the powers of Superman, or ascend to godhood. He could create or wish away whatever or whoever he so desired. He could get revenge on everyone who ever wronged him. He could get any woman he wanted. He could do anything, anything his heart wanted now.
The opportunity of becoming a potential apex predator, like the main character in one of Matt's favorite movies Chronicle, felt really damn good.
Silently as the mist that was drifting throughout the neighborhood from last night's all too brief rain shower, Matt slipped back into Willow's home. Reluctant as he was reluctant to leave this peaceful place, the Strassermans would be waking up any second now, and he didn't want those lesser beings disturbing him.
After locking the front door, Matt floated up the stairs, tiptoeing as to not wake up Willow's parents or her little sister Kimberly. As quietly as a mouse, he drifted down the hallway and locked Willow's door, the front of which was bedecked by her artwork and photos of herself and Paige, behind him.
But he was getting ahead of himself. Before Matt could ascend to godhood, before he could inflict his twisted will on reality the way Thanos had in the MCU, Matt had to actually retrieve the damn occult artifact from whoever currently owned it. It was hard to tell who did at the moment. Everyone at the park last night had gotten their dirty little paws on it at one point or another once it had started glowing in Eve's hand. It could have been any one of those girls at the park.
All he remembered was the screaming followed by an explosion of green gold light. At some point, one of the five had made a wish. He couldn't totally rule out that it hadn't been him. He did, after all, have an anger problem, and according to Willow, the gemstone's magic was powered by anger.
Speaking of which, Matt was still trying to work out why the magic inside the stone had decided to transfer him here, in Willow Strasserman's home, instead of him waking up on a pile of grass in front of the statue of Shermer's founder.
Curiously, he was nonchalant about this whole Freaky Friday body swapping business. In his mind, it made sense that would happen, and it completely explained Willow and Eve's odd secretive behavior. The two must have swapped bodies themselves earlier in the day.
That was why Willow had ran away from him last night. Why she was so uncomfortable when he grabbed her ass. It may have looked like her on the outside, but on the inside it had been Eve Kazinski all along.
Stuck up bitch. She thinks too good for me. I'll make her pay...
All of that could wait. For now, he was learning to appreciate the little things.
Matt peered around. He was in his crush's bedroom. It felt like Mecca. He had imagined what this place looked like for years, and now here he was. He bent down in faux supplication and smelled the white shaggy rug.
The best part? Willow's parents would never kick him out, because as far as they knew, he was Willow Strasserman.
**
Eugene laid in an unmade bed, staring at a poster of internet meme Pepe the Frog praising something called Kek, which was hanging parallel to another poster of W.C Fields underneath a caption saying NEVER GIVE A SUCKER AN EVEN BREAK, as he mindlessly twirled around Matt Harris's penis like a helicopter rotor using Matt's index finger.
"At least I'm a man again" he sighed, giving himself false reassurance.
After the chaos of last night, the perpetually lonely janitor had woken up to find himself now trapped in the body and home of the juvenile delinquent who gave everyone the creeps.
Eugene was trying desperately to look for a bright side to this.
Being stuck as a member of the fairer sex for what felt like the better part of a day had just felt wrong to him. Especially entering in media res into the life of the most popular girl in school, even if said popular girl had been by all accounts a kind, wonderful person who was beloved by all and on her way to a bright future. A future that sounded significantly better than anything he could ever hope to achieve as a man.
Eugene didn't have the education to describe what he had been feeling, but it was called Gender Dysphoria. His brain, and his soul if we are being philosophical about things, was fundamentally wired to be a man. Even though he hated being stuck currently in the body of this emo little brat, at least he was in familiar territory once again.
It was like the difference between stuck in Rome and being stuck in the Shermer Fields trailer court.
Sure, Rome is beautiful, a fairy tale eternal city filled with the history of ancient emperors and scientists and popes, but Eugene didn't speak Italian. He didn't know the city or even the country. If Eugene suddenly found himself magically ferried away to Rome, which wasn't an impossibility anymore, he'd be lost in about five minutes and end up screaming in despair in front of the Trevi Fountain before being carted off to wherever troublesome tourists are disposed of.
The Shermer Fields trailer court, on the other hand, was something he knew. It sucked. It was run down and decrepit, and you were likely to get mugged (Or worse) if you didn't have a good reason to be there, which nine times out of ten was to buy meth, but at least there Eugene knew where he was and how to get out.
Which was better: Beautiful but totally foreign to you(Eve), or gritty but relatable(Matt)?
Which wasn't to say that Matt Harris was poor. Like most of the kids at Shermer High, his parents were upper middle class white collar professionals.
Come to think of it, that wasn't such a ringing endorsement for the American dream, was it? If it produced miserable spoiled brats like Matt, what was the point of all of this hustling and bustling?
Rob Bolstrum and Jules Harper were scum, but they never had a chance in life to be anything else. They didn't have money or parents who cared or positive role models. All they knew was shit. Like the Officer Krupke song from West Side Story, golly Moses naturally they're punks.
Matt by contrast had a chance, and he was blowing it. What was his excuse? Had it been Mr and Mrs Harris's fault, or was Matt predisposed to being a little shithead?
Eugene thought grimly about these existential questions as he wordlessly watched the utilitarian looking alarm clock sitting on Matt's lamp stand strike 7:00 A.M. A loud onerous beeping sound began to emit throughout the room, a sound not unlike Eugene's own alarm clock back in his apartment. Eugene tapped the middle button that turned it off.
He sighed again, resigning himself to the singular reality that he had no control. No control over anything, not even his body or his identity.
Another day. Another day trapped in a life not his own. Eugene Kazinski felt like he was a puppet, doomed to always be at the mercy of forces he couldn't understand.
Neither of Matthew's parents, George and Nadine, bothered to make sure that their son was getting prepped for school. Why bother? Neither one had any faith that he'd ever make something of himself.
**
Emily McLeod moaned in self pity as she stared at her new reflection in the mirror.
"No, no, no, no, no" she croaked in a husky voice she found exceedingly unpleasant. A voice that could shatter glass if it tried to sing or cause flowers to wilt, like in a cartoon.
Staring back at her was the lumpy, nearsighted, obese body of Paige Walters.
Emily felt the puffiness of Paige's face with her pudgy new hands. Then she felt up the cookie dough like consistency of Paige's stomach, and the vastness of her ass. She briefly removed Paige's glasses, and then put them back on as everything near and far blurred. And she was so short. Paige was truly a little toad girl, just like the demeaning nickname Gloria had given her.
Emily by contrast had always possessed a slender figure, to the point where some people like her mother wondered if she had an eating disorder. She didn't, though like the majority of teenage girls and young women, she did have body image issues.
Suddenly becoming severely overweight overnight was not helping those issues.
Neither did finding out that her BFF had been keeping secrets from her, especially one as big as possessing a fucking magic lamp.. Or gemstone. Whatever. That was the type of thing best friends told each other. She felt betrayed that Eve hadn't told her first.
Emily thought resentful, hateful things about Willow Strasserman as she shook her new head. Who did that plebeian little twerp think she was?
What was going on between Eve and Willow anyway? She didn't believe Willow's story for a second that the two were girlfriends, because Eve would have told her(Just as Paige had said last night that Willow would have told her) but if it wasn't that, what? Emily hadn't gotten a good answer over the cacophony of everyone's screams as they wrestled for the glowing thing in Eve's hand.
It was a pretty sketchy situation all together, and something that she needed to investigate. All she knew, all she could think about at the moment, was that the rest of the world now saw Emily as Paige Walters, the most unpopular girl at Shermer High, and among the most popular people there period.
The fat, nerdy, clumsy, unattractive, pimple ridden, pasty skinned, borderline socially retarded Paige Walters, who was so undesirable that the only boy who paid her any mind was the creepy kid everyone was afraid was going to shoot up the school one day.
This filled Emily's heart with terror because this meant that for all intents and purposes, she was now that very loser.
Emily's massive sense of insecurity had told her for years that the only reason for her high popularity at school and the perks that came with it was being besties with Eve Kazinski. She was afraid that at best, she was a sidekick who was riding off of the coattails of someone prettier, more talented, more charismatic, more everything than her. That if the two hadn't by total cosmic fluke grown up as next door neighbors, maybe Emily would have ended up hanging out with the Paiges and Willows and Matts of the world instead. She shuddered at the thought.
Realistically, she probably would never sink that low. She was still pretty enough to get by, enough of a social butterfly, and knew the right words to say to powerful people, but wouldn't being just another face in the crowd be equally as bad as being an outcast?
Today, Emily was going to find out if her insecurities were valid, or just paranoia. If she could somehow survive a day as Paige with her dignity intact(Since it was mucho clear that she wasn't attending the Highland Meadows game today), she would know that she could make it own her own, without Eve holding her hand. Then she would retrieve the Ahn'Ger Stone and end this madness once and for all.
She was a nervous wreck to discover the answer.
Emily nearly jumped in fright as Paige's father, Stephen, opened her bedroom door to check on his little princess.
If there was only one person in the world who doted on Paige and thought the world of her, it was him.
**
Bill was rolling with the punches slightly better than Emily was.
He smiled with feigned appreciation as Jen McLeod poured him a glass of orange juice at the kitchen table.
"Thanks, Mom" he said in Emily's exceedingly pleasant sounding voice.
The forty three year old brunette who Bill found himself attracted to despite his best efforts, she was essentially an older version of Emily(And honestly appeared more like a big sister to Emily than a matron), smiled back with a toothy grin at who she thought was her child.
The mother and daughter clearly had a close relationship. Much more than Bill had with either of his own parents.
"Two eggs, sunny side up" Jen announced merrily a few moments later, lowering the plate of eggs and bacon with one hand in front of Emily's nearly full glass of OJ.
"That'll be $10.50, sugar" Jen said sarcastically.
Bill scrunched Emily's cute girl next door face in mock disapproval.
"It's bad enough dealing with Dad jokes, and now there's Mom jokes? Where does the corniness end?"
Both women laughed in the knowing way that true family did with one another.
Mrs. McLeod sat down next to him and dug into her own breakfast, a simple bowl of oatmeal, as she scanned her Twitter and Instagram feeds. Bill meanwhile drank half of the glass of orange juice in one gulp. It was delicious, and he was glad that there wasn't any pulp in it.
Next, he tasted Jennifer's eggs, which were utterly delectable, the yolk lingering gold, oozing on his tongue. He gave an unladylike burp before finishing off the remainder.
It was the simple pleasures that helped keep Bill anchored to reality. He wondered how everyone else was doing after last night's chaos as he savored the party going on inside his mouth.
"I've never seen you eat so fast! You must be really excited about the game at Highland Meadows today" Jen asked, looking up from her phone.
Bill's eyes widened.
"Right! Highland Meadows!"
"Don't talk with your mouth full."
Bill swallowed the last of Jen's eggs.
"Sorry, Mom!"
"Are you OK, dear? You seem so nervous."
Bill was very nervous. He hadn't been in his own body in nearly an entire day now, and had no clue who had the stone.
"Yeah. I'm worried that the Salamanders aren't going to win today. The Highland Meadows Jaguars are tough competition. I don't know if our pep is going to be enough."
"Ooh" Jen cooed maternally, reaching over to rub Emily's shoulder, "Don't let Joanna hear that, I know she can be a rough taskmaster. Or Coach Lonnigan. A cheerleader with cold feet is the last thing he needs right now."
Bill was vaguely familiar with Frank Lonnigan, the manager of the school's basketball and football teams, only because Tom was always whining about how the neurotic older man was always on his case.
"I'll just try just to have fun."
"That's the spirit. You're going to be fine. How's Jake doing?"
"Um... he's good!"
"That's good. You two are so adorable together, oh my gosh."
Bill giggled in Emily's voice in attempt to hide his anxiety. He had no idea who "Jake" was. Time to change the subject.
"Hey Mom, want to hear a joke? What does Pac Man like to cook with? A wok a wok a wok a wok a wok."
Jen giggled, sounding just as innocent as Emily had. It was disturbing how similar their mannerisms were.
"So do you think you and Jake will be spending the day together after the game, maybe head down to Sidney's Dairy Barn or something?"
"We might! Who knows what the future holds!" he said before giggling in a way that he tried to sound affable but instead came off as high strung and a little bit scary.
Jen turned off her phone.
"Dear, are you sure you're O..."
Before Jen could complete her sentence, a honking sound erupted from the front entrance of the McLeod home.
"Oh, that must be Eve" Jen said airily.
"Saved by the bell!" Bill said as he jumped up, his dropped fork clanging loudly on the greasy ceramic plate, still holding a slice of bacon he hadn't gotten around to eating yet. He gave a half hearted hug to Emily's mother, and ran out of the kitchen. He was a hair's breadth away from unlocking the front door before...
"Hey!" Jen shouted. Bill spun Emily's lithe body around, her loose brown hair fanning around neatly in the air.
Jen kicked one of her white keds against a pink gym bag, the exact same color and brand that Eve owned.
"Don't forget your uniform, Emily."
Bill gave a wide disarming smile.
"Sorry Mom! I'm just so nervous today!"
**
Paige Walters, all dressed up in the radiant, flawless skin of Eve Kazinski, beeped the horn of Eve's cute pink convertible in order to summon Eve's bestie Emily.
Paige was over the moon, whispering showtunes to herself. Eve's slender fingers, under Paige's control, were rat a tat tatting on the driving wheel. She noticed that much like everything else Eve's body did, the beat was practically perfect in every way, in total harmony with Eve's melodious voice.
Popular!
You're gonna be popular!
I'll teach you the proper ploys
When you flirt with boys
Little ways to flirt and flounce.
Paige hadn't remembered when she had felt this jazzed before.
The most likely candidate was probably when her father had come home from work two years ago in the arms of another man, a friendly smiling black co-worker named Quentin, and announced that he was finally trying to get past his wife's(Paige's mother) untimely death five years before when Paige was nine. He had said that he was going to start experimenting with his sexuality, a thing he had always wanted to try.
But that had been a different kind of happiness. Selfless happiness. Paige had been ecstatic for her sweet father that he was finally starting to move on with his life after grieving for so long.
This happiness was a selfish happiness. For once, Paige wasn't burdening herself with the emotional labor of helping others. This joy that she felt was for her and her alone.
Once she had gotten over the initial shock of being in another body and another home and another life, the life of Evelyn freaking Kazinski no less, and the much more shocking acceptance that had come with learning that magic was real, she had spent close to an hour reveling in the joy of Eve's body and her immaculate bedroom.
She began to reminisce about the last few hours...
***
"Reveling in Eve's body" wasn't as pervy as it sounded. As much as she may have been curious to, Paige had decided that she would respect Eve's body by not masturbating in it or groping it while its owner was away.
Paige had, however, admired Eve's transcendently gorgeous form in Eve's full length closet mirror.
Paige wasn't gay in the slightest. She was firmly attracted to guys, but that didn't mean that she couldn't objectively appraise a beautiful woman when she saw one, and Eve was about as beautiful as they came.
It was almost unfair that Eve was the second prettiest girl at Shermer High, right after Joanna Ingerman. In any other school, Eve would easily place first. Paige wondered what the odds were of having so many perfect 10s in a tiny Midwestern town like Shermer. Maybe in a big city, sure, but here? It seemed pretty sus.
Offhand, Paige had giggled at how clearly jealous Gloria Vanapolous, who was quite beautiful herself and dating one of the school's top athletes, was of Eve and Joanna's almost supernatural beauty.
But this electric feeling Paige felt coursing through her wasn't just about Eve's looks. It was her body.
It was so flexible! Eve's practically perfect form could easily do the splits, and bend over backwards, and do backflips, and high kicks, and walk on her hands with almost zero effort. Undoubtedly to the real Eve this would have all been old hat, long ingrained into her muscle memory from years of gymnastics and cheerleading training. To Paige though, this easy dexterity, this easy agility, it was all new to her, and she never wanted it to end.
Paige's worst class by far was gym class. She often got winded doing just a single lap around the gym, sometimes even getting charley horses when she exerted herself too much, and never in her life had she been able to manage to correctly perform a single push up, not even those girl push ups.
This morning, by stark contrast, Paige had been doing cartwheels all around Eve's expansive bedroom!
It was amazing. She hadn't felt tired at all.
And Eve's clothes!
To Paige, opening Eve's walk in closet had been like Ali Baba discovering the den of the forty thieves and their cave of riches. She had felt like a fat kid at Randy's Candies, and she was a self admitted fatty, so she knew what she was talking about.
Paige pulled out outfit after outfit, from cute skater dresses, to ironically ugly Christmas sweaters, to a seemingly never-ending supply of socks, to trendy TikTok influencer inspired ensembles, to long sleeved fishnet tops, which Paige could only assume was for sex purposes. Was Eve sexually active? Paige wasn't sure. She must have been since all of the popular kids were, or at least they gave off the image that they were. Gloria certainly liked to make allusions about the size of Tom Ackerton's cock during free periods, causing Tom visible embarrassment that was clear to seemingly everyone but Gloria.
But the author digresses.
The heavyset nerd had always possessed somewhat of a girly girl taste when it came to fashion, but sadly she could never dress up the way that she wanted to in school because she'd be made fun of endlessly, so she had settled for wearing plain nondescript clothes in order to blend into the background as much as possible. She had encouraged Willow to do the same, to mixed results.
Paige might have gotten lost in her newfound ecstasy had Eve's mother Karen opened the door just as she was examining Eve's plaid V-neck pinafore dress.
"Am I interrupting your fashion show?" tittered the beautiful older woman as she stood in the door frame.
"No!" yelped Paige in Eve's voice, dropping the dress and letting it fall gently to the floor. "Well...yes. Sorry, I got carried away."
"Don't we all? It took me forever to get this together" Karen said glibly, her hand waving over her own well assembled professional wardrobe. She was clearly on her way to work. "I've got a big day too, hun. I have to drive all the way to Urbana because my client insists that I meet him in person."
Karen rolled her eyes in a practiced way.
"I just wanted to check in on you before you left."
"Oh! Thanks...Mom" Paige stuttered, unsure of how to proceed. She had never met Eve's parents before, and unlike Bill next door who was currently going through the exact same situation, she wasn't great at BSing her way out of tight spots.
"I'm sorry that your Dad and I can't make your game, honey, but you know how it goes. Mo money, mo problems. Try and record it for us, OK?"
"OK! How am I going to do that though?"
"Just have someone you know in the crowd borrow your phone."
"But I..."
Paige was about to say that she didn't know anyone who was going to be at the Highland Meadows game, much less one she'd trust to hold onto her phone for her, but the geek turned diva quickly corrected herself. She didn't know anyone because Paige Walters was a social outcast, but Eve was...Eve. Nobody would dare refuse a request from the Princess of Shermer.
"...Oh! Sure. You got it."
Paige gave her best daughterly smile, the kind that even in her own less than stunning body melted her real father's heart.
Karen smiled back and blew an air kiss at the person inhabiting the body of Eve.
"I knew I could count on you. Love you" she said sweetly, and walked away without an announcement.
"Love you too!" Paige yelled back, but Karen was already halfway down the staircase on her way out the door. Once again, Paige was all alone.
She turned around and walked over to Eve's canopy bed, grabbing the Ahn'Ger Stone from underneath the pink silk pillow case she had found it underneath earlier this morning.
She held it in her palm, examining it.
Paige felt how unnaturally cold it was. It felt like the touch of death, and she shivered in fear.
The nerd turned beauty would never want to abandon her father, but in literally every other way, living as Eve Kazinski was superior to her own existence as Paige. Would it really be so bad if things stayed this way for a while? If she knew anything from her years of playing D&D and other tabletop games, magic artifacts always came with its own vast set of risks.
To paraphrase what Mrs Kazinski said:
Mo power, mo problems.
So she locked the teardrop shaped curiosity away in Eve's safe.
***
Paige watched as Emily walked towards "her" car, pink gym bag in tow. The cute brunette girl sashayed down the cute little winding brick path that leads to the McLeod's front door, unceremoniously dumped the bag in the back seat, and sat next to Paige in the passenger's side seat.
"So...ready for the big game, girlfriend?" Paige asked with a thousand watt smile.
Bill gave a feigned smile back.
"Sure, but first, let's talk about last night."
**
"Kimmy, could you go check on Willow? She hasn't left her room all morning and it's getting late" Martha Strasserman asked of her twelve year old daughter at the breakfast table as she stressfully went over some paperwork she took home with her yesterday.
Greg Strasserman, the family patriarch, had already left for work, and Martha was getting prepped to drive to her own job.
This left the tween girl and youngest Strasserman to take the responsibility of making sure that her occasionally flighty older sibling wasn't still in bed having a crying fit or something.
"Sure, Mommy, no problem" she said in her attempt at a mature, grown up voice.
Kimmy ran upstairs, mentally shaking her head. Her nerdy sister could be such a weirdo sometimes. Kimmy just didn't get her.
The twelve year old opened the art bedecked door without knocking, gasped loudly and slammed the door behind her four seconds later.
Willow had been standing in front of her closet mirror...playing with herself. Kimmy saw Willow's right hand in her pajama pants and groping her breast with her left.
Kimmy began to breathe heavily.
"Whoa. I did not need to see that" she said quietly to herself.
Behind Willow's door, Matt Harris grumbled something about this room needing a lock.