Eugene lifted the magic hunk of green malachite high above his head, the mystical gemstone immediately flaring to life in his clasped hands. Joanna Bolstrum gasped in astonishment at the dramatic sight.
"I'm not Eve fucking Kazinski, you bimbo!" spat out the former male custodian of Shermer High. "My name is Eugene, I'm fifty five years old, and I'm not this teenage girl you all think I am! I'm a grown man, and I'm sick and tired of putting up with you awful bitches!"
The other cheerleaders on the team, who had been busy gossiping amongst themselves, all began to pay attention to their angry captain, who seemed to be undergoing a mental breakdown of some kind.
"Eve, what's gotten into you!?" yelled Joanna. "Are you fucking insane?!"
"Why is Eve doing this!?" asked Emily McLeod through a shaky, quivering voice, still in shocked confusion over her best friend's sudden betrayal.
"No. YOU'RE insane, Ingerman! This whole entire school is insane!" screeched Eugene, upsetting Emily even further, fresh tears running down her face.
"I guess the pressure has finally gotten to Little Miss Perfect" snapped Gloria, which only earned a mean glare from the betrayed friend.
The dark haired beauty was secretly very surprised by Eve's erratic behavior. She had viewed Eve as the most calm and composed person ever. Eve was practically a saint, never holding a grudge against anybody and having even managed to talk down Rob Bolstrum of all people from harassing a poor freshman boy earlier in the year. She was as close to being universally beloved as a person could be.
If Gloria was being honest with herself, she had been more than a little bit jealous at the redhead's seemingly flawless existence. Gloria knew that she could be a huge cunt sometimes. She felt that she had the right to be, as she didn't have the best life at home with her mother. At best, Ariadne Vanapoulous could be described as cold and calculating, raising Gloria almost at arm's length. On the other hand, Gloria had seen Eve and her own parents together at various football games, and they were always affectionate and visibly very proud of their daughter. It just wasn't fair! But if Eve had truly finally lost it, maybe her seemingly immaculate life wasn't so immaculate after all? Gloria would feel a little bit better about herself if that was the case, knowing that she wasn't suffering alone.
Meanwhile, Eugene continued to rant and rave about how much he hated the spoiled brats of this school, how sadistic and cruel they could be, how they were the definition of privileged, that while they moaned and groaned about their petty first world problems, there were people out there who were homeless, or didn't have safe drinking water, or didn't have access to proper health care, or were discriminated against for being different. All of Eugene's anxieties and insecurities about his bad luck in life came pouring out in an explosion of Jacobin resentment and righteous anger.
Joanna stared at her now former co-captain with rolling impatient eyes, hiding the fact that she was secretly enjoying this. There was no way in hell that Eve was surviving this little outburst of hers, especially after assaulting another student. Knowing that she could use this bizarre scene as an excuse to knock her main competition down a few pegs, the buxom blonde could afford to put up with a few sexist comments about her appearance.
However, the blonde rich girl was still rather puzzled. What exactly was causing Eve to act this way now? Sure, Eve was into that whole social justice scene and tried to use her popularity to help others, so some of her ranting made sense from that point of view, but why was she acting like she wasn't part of the popular crowd herself? Eve had always seemed to enjoy her charmed life, and had always gotten along with her fellow cheerleaders and upperclassmen even if she was also generous enough to speak to losers like Paige Walters.
It was completely out of character for the crimson haired cutie to make enemies so brazenly like the way she was doing now. And what the hell was that part about being a man named Eugene about?
Maybe Eve is using drugs now?
"OK honey, this isn't the drama club!" Joanna shouted patronizingly from the bottom of the bleachers, clapping at Eve as if she were a disobedient dog. "I'm impressed by your little Che Guevara/Howard Beale act, but it's getting a little old right now! So how about you just come down now, stop acting silly, and apologize to Emily?"
Meanwhile, poor Willow Strasserman watched Eve's breakdown unfold behind closed doors, a lump forming in her throat. What the hell was going on? The geeky aspiring artist had no idea, but she worried that it was she who had inspired all this chaos, all this fighting and yelling, which made Willow's anxiety flare up. She could hear her heartbeat raise a tick, her breath starting to become rapid and shallow.
*Maybe the other girls didn't want me to join, and Eve is sticking up for me!* thought Willow to herself, hoping against hope that was the case, and as she repeated that positive affirmation to herself like a mantra, her phone pinged with a text message from Paige.
"I'm not apologizing to anybody! I'm sick of all of you! I deserve better than this!"
Below him, the two dozen cheerleaders all looked at the formerly inspirational leader with a mix of confusion and...pity.
Eugene's "coming out" speech had sounded far less intimidating than he had meant it to be, as the words were coming out of Eve's mouth instead of his own. Instead of a booming, authoritative voice of righteous indignation, like something out of Braveheart, Eve's voice was shrill and hysterical, and, admittedly, rather crazy sounding.
He thought back to earlier today, and that angry, desperate wish he had made. He had wished for a better life than the one he had as Eugene.
The gemstone that had held high above his head, like King Arthur or Conan the Barbarian lifting some huge sword as they prepared to vanquish an enemy, had indeed given him a better life. But it was better in the way a gilded cage was better. Eugene could never live like this. He simply wasn't a teenage girl, and he found the culture Eve lived in to be absolutely unbearable.
He saw Joanna's austere expression, almost dating her to make a move. Her smug, fake, bitchy little smirk had given Eugene the push to finally make the wish that he needed to make.
"I wish I was back to my own self!!!" he screamed as loudly as he could in Eve's light soprano voice.
Like that, the Ahn'Ger Stone erupted into a green fire, consuming everything in sight...
**
When the mysterious green light vanished, Eugene saw that he was now...exactly where he was before. He was still in the Shermer High Gym, staring down Joanna Ingerman and the two dozen other cheerleaders.
"Damn it!" Eugene screeched. "Did I fail again?!"
He looked down at his body, and got his answer.
"Oh no!" he shouted. "Oh no, oh no, oh no!" repeated the janitor, in a voice he still recognized as not his own, and still recognizably feminine, albeit huskier.
He was still a girl. No. He was a woman.
He was still clad in Eve's cheerleading uniform, but it was now much too small for him, for his body had grown up. Big time. His top was pressed tightly against his now far larger chest, and his skirt was threatening to burst under the pressure of his now child bearing hips and thicker thighs. His pretty legs now bore the telltale signs of varicose veins.
Eugene looked down once more at the gaggle of cheerleaders. Every single one, Joanna included, had her jaw hanging as low to the ground as their mouths would allow.
"Did..did Eve just age forty years?" asked one girl, Lindsey Moon, not believing her eyes.
"E-Eve...is that you?" asked Emily McLeod, honestly not sure if the middle aged woman standing on top of the bleachers was her once upon a time BFF. She looked almost, but not quite, like Eve's mother Karen.
Eugene could even make out the bugged out eyes of Willow Strasserman as she watched his transformation from behind the double doors of the gym.
He ran down the stairs of the bleachers as quickly as this new body could carry him, past the throng of teenage girls, out the double doors, and into the first bathroom he could find, which coincidentally, was the ladies room.