Rob stared harshly into Jules’ eyes, but years of extortion and threats had trained his ‘lie detector’ to only work on people in the midst of cowering. Jules’ face — without any twitch of a frightened lip or any eye widened by terror — might have well been a brick wall.
The bully huffed, flipped a lock of mayonnaise-encrusted hair over his shoulder, and crossed his arms underneath his heavy chest, all the while trying not to think about how damn girly that all must look. It may well be true that Jules was a lying piece of shit, but if so… what could he do about it?
A tiny seed of impotence-laden fear settled into the pit of his stomach, but he compartmentalized it as quickly as it came.
Jules, meanwhile, was trying to keep his poker face. The list of people he’d trust with a wishing stone was, unsurprisingly, quite short. It started and ended with him — and maybe his dad, on the rare occasion that he wasn’t piss-ass-drunk. Rob Bolstrum wasn’t anywhere near that list, and if he was, Jules would probably go check himself into some kinda institution.
Oh god, it had to be in his bedroom, right? It couldn’t still be in the bathroom?
He tried his best to look innocent-yet-relaxed and not at all like he was freaking out about how his one chance at being someone might be resting on piss-stained linoleum. Rob shot him some serious side-eye and he tried his best to twist his face into the light annoyance of the unjustl accused
That’s what innocent people looked like, right?
To his relief, Rob heaved another sigh and, after grimacing at how his tits jostled, finally faced Jules.
“Alright, J. So, I believe you, or whatever.”
Jules felt muscles that he didn’t know that he had relax. “Yeah, I told you —”
“So, what’re we gonna do about this?”
Jules blinked owlishly. “Wha…?”
Rob took a step closer to Jules, who couldn’t help but retreat. “You heard me. What’re we gonna do? You’re not —” A quick, manic giggle spilled out of Rob’s lips, his eyes darting from every object in the trailer except Jules. “You’re not gonna let me stay like this, right?”
Jules took another step back, but Rob matched his pace. “Uh, I—” Shit, were those tears in Rob’s eyes?
“Like, uh, -hic- you know I’m not gay, right, J?” Rob continued, words spilling faster and faster with every second, small hiccupy sobs interspersed throughout. “That hic girl earlier, she’s the one who -hic- said all that bullshit and it wasn’t me you believe me right?”
Jules blinked again. Rob was really close and really weepy, putting a lot of guilt into his half-chub. This was just like, hormones or something, right? And oh shit was Rob not wearing a bra
Jules closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to muster up the feeble dregs of good that hadn’t been stomped out of him. Slowly, he put his hands on Rob’s shoulders and moved the redhead to a safe, non-boner-encouraging distance.
“Yeah, Rob, I believe you,” Jules said, opening to his eyes to a relieved grin he could almost describe as cute if his former boss wasn’t behind it. “But, uh, what do you want to do about it?”
Rob’s smile vanished, but Jules kept plugging on. “I mean, we could go see a priest or something, but after we egged St. Laurence’s, I don’t think any of ‘em would see us.” He refrained from adding an if in there to refrain from freaking out the fiery redhead. Well, uh freak him out more “There’s also, uh…”
He stopped talking when he took in Rob’s newly-affixed expression; all screwed up into an angry pout, tears starting to leak out of his emerald eyes. “Fine then, -hic- asshole! You’ve always -hic- been a piece of ungrateful shit, and, and…” He swiped a thin wrist underneath his nose, leaving a thin trail of slime underneath it. ”I hope you DIE!”
Rob turned on a dime and slammed open the trailer’s cheap plastic door, wiggling out the opening as fast as his long legs could carry him.
Jules scratched the back of his head. That… wasn’t really what he was expecting. Nor was it… the ideal outcome. Sure, he got Rob out of the house, but he didn’t really feel great about it: he had done a lotta shit in Rob’s little bully-clique, but never anything to chicks.
“Ugggghhhh,” Jules groaned, massaging the bridge of his nose. Fuck, was this what those scrawny nerds felt like all the time? All guilty n’ stuff about shit? And, fuck, was he feeling bad for Rob?! Would Rob even spare him a second thought if he were the babe?
A phlegmy cough sounded from the other side of the trailer. Jules leveled his gaze at his dad’s bloodshot one, who was peeking out the door.
“I didn’t really get what you two were shcaying,” he began, before pausing to take a swig out of a brown-glass bottle. “But, uh, Jules.” His head poked out of the door like a balding thumb. “Ya schouldn’t let a girl that loves ya that musch go.”
The rickety door slapped shut before Jules could get a word in edgewise. Fuck, was his life some fuckin’ romcom chick flick now? Was the entire fuckin’ universe conspirin’ to have him meet Rob at some location, where they’d run into each other’s arms and wait what if he found the stone at the school
And so only half-motivated by his withered conscience, Jules sprinted out the door, searching desperately for a glint of red hair.
~~~
Rob, in the meantime, was learning the frustrating minutiae of running in the body of a teenage wet dream.
The first was that his fuckin’ hair was more of a nightmare than he ever could’a imagined. If he didn’t have it tucked firmly underneath a soft bicep, it flew behind him like a sprinter’s parachute, stymieing any attempt at speed.
The second was that boobs fucking hurt. Two masses of flesh slamming into his ribs with the kinetic force of a beanbag-shotgun, occupying his other arm with what felt like twenty-fuckin’ pounds of tit-flesh. Also, he wasn’t even wearing a goddamn bra! Er, well, he’d never wear one: he wasn’t some swishy faggot, but the girl renting out his headspace apparently thought it was a good idea to wear pink heart stickers — what were they called, pastries? — instead of, like, an undershirt or something. Go fucking figure.
The third was that tears in your eyes made it incredibly hard to navigate a trailer park at dusk; he nearly broke his fuckin’ ankle in these heeled sandals.
He slammed a fist into the mud. It was this fuckin’ body! He was Rob goddamn Bolstrum, and he didn’t cry just ‘cuz the only person who might have an idea of what he was going through didn’t want to…
Another hiccupy sob wracked Rob’s body, but he shook it off. Just, well, without shaking, because any more jiggling might make him cr… HICCUP again.
First, he needed to actually learn how to get outta here. Fuckin’ Jules and his fuckin’ trailer. Rob trotted up to a small building — the only one without wheels in a square mile — and peeked in the lit window.
A rather rotund lady who looked like she was pushing her fifties sat at a desk, occasionally scribbling something into a sudoku puzzle. Rob clenched his hand into a fist, long fingernails leaving crescent-moons in the soft flesh.
Just go in, go out, and don't let that fuckin’ bimbo take control.
He could do this.
Rob swung the screen door open, and....