Earlier though, just after Kyle had left study hall, Rachael shivered. She didn’t notice it at the time, but all the hair on her arms, legs and underarms disappeared. Having talked to Kyle, she felt a lot better and he seemed like a really nice guy. She’d never really fit in with the seniors in her classes and they often picked on her because of her looks or for always reading a book. She’d been accelerated two years ahead because she was unusually smart and that made her an outsider. The seniors never accepted her because she was younger, while people her own age shunned her because they thought she was stuck up being in all senior classes. That wasn’t true, but nobody knew that because nobody asked her.
“Nobody except Kyle.” She murmured. Even though he was a year below her in age, he was still the only one who’d shown any kindness to her, any interest in her at all. Feeling better at last, she got up and went to her next class as the bell rang for the end of lunch.
Every hour for the rest of the day, she shivered. She didn’t know why and she didn’t think to link the events, but every time, something changed. She barely noticed any of it, the changes were so small. One time all her freckles vanished, another time her skin tanned a little, another time she lost weight and got a bit slimmer. By the time she arrived home, she was just a little more attractive overall. A little less plain, a little less overweight and feeling better than she had in a long time.
She said hi to her Mom, grabbed a snack and went upstairs to do her homework. Feeling unusually energetic she breezed through her work in two hours, too busy to notice the shivers every hour. What she did notice, however, was her pants falling down when she got up to go watch TV. While she had been working, her waist had narrowed and her hips had lost some fat so her jeans now had nothing to keep them up. She’d never needed a belt before, for obvious reasons but she could see the need for one now. Lifting the jeans back up around her waist, she held them there, marvelling at the inches of difference between her figure and the waistband and wondering how she ever fit into them.
Rachael was a smart girl, she knew that between wearing the jeans all day at school and wearing them for a couple of hours at home, they hadn’t changed, so it must have been her. Excited, she got up to check her measurements. This was the first time she’d ever been too small to fit into something, it had always been the other way around. She pulled out a tape measure and started at her waist, then moved on to the rest of her body. As she measured, she started to smile, and with each new number, the smile got wider. Her waist was narrower, her thighs were less flabby, her arms and legs were thinner, her stomach was flatter and she was a little taller. She’d always been a bit short at 5’2” but she’d grown two inches to a respectable 5’4” and she felt great. The only number that dimmed her smile a bit was her bust.
“Still an A cup, oh well, you can’t have everything.” To cheer herself up a bit, she got on the scales. Normally, weighing herself and cheerfulness were two concepts that Rachael never ever put together, but this time was different: She’d lost almost 20 pounds in about 8 hours, once again, her smile lit up the room. She went and had a shower to fill in time before dinner and luxuriated as the hot water poured down her new body. She stepped out, dried off and put on her pyjamas and a robe.
At that moment, her Mom called up from downstairs that she and Rachael’s Dad were going out and that dinner was in the oven.
“Okay,” she yelled back “have a nice time.” That was one of the great things about being an only child, when her parents weren’t home, Rachael had the house to herself. When she heard the car drive away, she went downstairs, grabbed her dinner and sat down on the couch to watch a movie. She was there for three hours but was too engrossed in the film to notice the shivers melting fat away and making her taller again. When it was over, she drowsily went back up to her room and fell asleep, still smiling…