Obviously no longer in the Shermer High gymnasium, Eugene whipped his head around and saw that he was now inside an unfamiliar auditorium, standing on top of a stage alongside about two dozen elementary school aged kids, with an unknown number of adults watching them from below in the audience.
Did that mean...
Eugene grabbed a fistful of long silky red hair hanging from his scalp and stared at the tiny hand and scrawny little girl hand that was holding onto it.
He was still Eve!
"Oh no. Oh no no no!" he cried out in dismay. The stone had screwed him again!
"Goddamn it!" he whispered to himself, biting his inner desire to scream and cause another scene. Hearing his new voice for the first time gave the former janitor pause. It wasn't even the lilting, beautiful voice of teenage Eve anymore. It was the high pitched, almost lispy sounding voice of a child.
He still felt the gemstone in his hand. He raised the stone to his face, stared at the reflection of his new self, and sighed. This magic shit was getting worse every time.
Eugene had turned himself into a goddamn third grader!
Just as teenage Eve had been irrefutably stunning, eight year old Eve was irrefutably cute. She looked like just the sweetest little girl, like the quintessential image one would have of a darling childhood crush, and Eugene would wish her all the luck in the world if the little girl wasn't, well, him.
Did that mean that everyone else who was inside the gym tonight was a child too?
Eugene looked around fearfully.
He noticed an angelic looking girl with straight blonde hair, adorned with a bright blue bow headband, standing close to the edge of the stage. This girl was sandwiched in between two boys, and she was noticeably taller than all of the other girls present, Eve included. She looked no older than eight years old, but her facial characteristics certainly bore a good resemblance to a young Joanna Ingerman.
It had to be her.
It was damn eerie to Eugene seeing Joanna as a child, innocent and untainted, long before she had developed into the gorgeous but fearsome amazon she would one day become.
Eugene gazed around at the other girls on stage. Not all of the cheerleaders from Shermer High seemed to be here. Did some of them turn into the boys who were now present? If so, did they even remember who they were before? Eugene doubted it. Nobody besides him seemed to recognize the chaos caused by the gemstone he gripped in his tiny hand.
Of the girls who were here, he was able to recognize some of them as younger analogues of the teenagers that they'd grow into, but maybe he was imagining things. He was pretty sure he recognized Vanessa Chapman about five kids down. Her insufferably smug smirk was impossible to miss. Emily was noticeable too. She was the one on the far end of the stage.
Most of the kids were chatting excitedly amongst themselves.
What the hell was going on here? Was this another play? Eugene hoped to God that it wasn't. He couldn't take any more embarrassment from his shitty dancing and singing.
From back stage, two more children walked out in front of the other kids. Both of them were holding what looked like scripts.
Eugene gasped as he recognized both of them.
The dark haired girl was clearly Gloria Vanapolous.
The boy, a cute blonde haired young man with a sad, withdrawn expression on his face, was Tom Ackerton, the sports MVP of the entire school.
Eugene generally tried to mind his own business, but he couldn't help but eavesdrop sometimes on the hot goss. Shermer High was positively dripping with rumors and innuendo about everyone and everything 24/7, it was just hardwired into the culture, even the adults took part in it.
The things he had heard about Tom Ackerton, the rumors, had broken Eugene's heart.
He had a pretty good ear for which rumors were true and which ones were not, being the victim of slander himself, and the ones about Tom Ackerton seemed screamed like the vindictive BS that Gloria Vanapolous was so good at spinning.
Eugene glared at eight year old Gloria as she stared nervously at the script in her hands.
An adult woman somewhere in her fifties rose from the front row of the audience and stepped towards the front of the stage.
"OK, Gloria and Tom, we'll be going over the highlighted scenes from page three. Tommy, honey, whenever you're ready."
Young Tom stared at the director, actually one of his teachers Mrs Gerhardt, and nodded.
Eugene couldn't see it because he was facing Tom's back, but Tom was nervous. Tom turned sideways to face Gloria, who just looked annoyed.
"Hey! I got an invitation to a Halloween party! Charlie Brown dances" Tom said stiffly.
Gloria began to speak her own lines of dialogue, stiffly as well, before she was interrupted by Gerhardt.
"Gloria, sweetie, please stop. Tom, you aren't supposed to speak the words that are in the brackets. That's called stage direction. It means you're supposed to act out whatever is being described."
"So you want me to dance?"
"Yes, Tom, exactly! Don't be nervous. You don't have to be Gene Kelly, just do a silly little dance."
"Who's Gene Kelly?" Tom asked.
"An old actor from my day, honey, it doesn't matter. The point of the scene you're doing is that Charlie Brown is happy that he got an invitation to a Halloween party, and he expresses that joy by dancing."
"Oh, OK" Tom said shyly.
"And" Gerhardt added, "it would help if you drew on your own personal experiences. Have you ever felt lonely, Tom?"
There was a long pause.
"No" Tom said, unconvincingly in a surprisingly high pitched voice.
"We all feel lonely or sad sometimes, even the most successful among us. Every lawyer. Every doctor. Every sports hero and scientist and actor and writer and teacher and astronaut. Are you sure you have nothing to draw on, Tom?"
"Um, maybe I get sad when my parents fight."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Tom. For this scene, remember an occasion where your parents were fighting. Remember how sad you were. Then I want you to remember how you felt when they made up. You were overjoyed, yes?"
"Yes" Tom squeaked out.
"Very good. Use that."
Tom and Gloria redid the scene.
"Hey! I got an invitation to a Halloween party!" eight year old Tom said, still stiffly but with more enthusiasm this time.
Tom started stamping his feet awkwardly on the stage in a little improvisational dance. It had no rhythm to it, but it was adorable. There were a few bouts of mirthful laughter from the audience, particularly from Tom's parents Elaine and Thomas Sr.
Gloria pouted, not happy that Tom was receiving attention from all of the parents and not her. She looked to see if either of her parents were there. They were both sitting in the second row, which made her feel a little bit better.
"Is the invitation to Violet's party, Charlie Brown?" she asked icily, somewhat aggressively turning Tom's body around to face her.
"Yes! It's the first time that I've ever been invited to a party!"
Tom continued his cute little haphazard dance in front of Gloria, who he had a slight crush on.
"Charlie Brown, if you got an invitation, there was a mistake! There were two lists, Charlie Brown! One to invite, and one not to invite! You must've been put on the wrong list!"
Tom frowned.
Gloria gave a grin of satisfaction that she had brought her acting partner back down to earth, no matter how slight his ascension had been.
"Gloria, that was perfect!" beamed Mrs. Gerhardt from the bottom of the stage. "I think we don't need to see any more Lucy's, you are just the right person for the role."
"Really?!"
"Yes, really! We'll talk about it more after rehearsal. You can go join your parents now."
"Yay!" Gloria clapped and squealed like the little girl she was. She turned around and blew raspberries at who she perceived to be her main rivals for the role, which were Joanna, Eve, and Vanessa, and ran down the stage stairs to greet her mom and dad.
**
The rest of the auditions for JFK Elementary's production of "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!" went off without a hitch.
Since the role of Lucy Van Pelt had already been guaranteed to Gloria, Eugene only had to embarrass himself by reading for the role of Charlie Brown's precocious little sister Sally. It didn't go well, and the part ultimately went to Vanessa Chapman, who was the daughter of Andrew Chapman, the superintendent of the entire school district. This left Eugene stuck with the role of Charlie Brown's unrequited love, the unnamed Little Red Haired Girl. Who notably wasn't in the original Peanuts cartoon from 1966, but was thrown in because Eve Kazinski was just that beloved.
Eugene had been too stunned by the results of his latest wish.
He wasn't stuck in the oppressive high school world of cutthroat social politics and constant anxiety anymore. Now he was a little kid with absolutely zero power over his life.
Eugene's new parents congratulated their daughter on her virtually speechless role, corralling her outside the small auditorium into the parking lot.
What made this worse for Eugene was when he overhead his new father ask another father whether he was voting for Obama or McCain in November.
"Howard, we're a stone's throw away from Chicago. Who do you think? Besides, I don't want that old man keeping us trapped in Afghanistan for another thousand years. Or that bimbo VP gaining the office if the fucker gets brain cancer or something."
It was 2008! Eugene had travelled backwards in time!