She began to cry.
"Oh Jimmy, I'm so sorry! Your mom was always more popular than me in school, then when she dropped out her last year of college to have you I was so pleased that her careful career path had fallen apart that I just, I just started saying stuff to make her feel worse because I could! A little at first, not often, but, well, it's been years now and I just got so used to dissing her whenever I could with her string of crappy jobs and lousy boyfriends--"
"Wait!" I said, my mind reeling "My mom went to college? But she's just a secretary--then it hit me how much sense that made; Mom'd always surprised me with how much she knew about stuff, and it explained why she was so set on me attending college. I couldn't ague about the boyfriends, some of them had been real jerks! But She'd lucked into a decent job, even if it meant dating her boss, and we had an okay rental unit... But she'd never told me how much she'd given up for me. My mind was awash with might-have-beens, primarily if she'd decided to have an abortion!
Cathy was wiping tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand and digging through her pockets. "Do you *snerk* have a hankie?" She looked up at me, a young girl dressed in her older sister's clothes with snot covering her upper lip, puffy red eyes, and tear stains on her cheeks.
I was still wearing my store uniform, so I hauled the all-purpose rag out of my back pocket and grinned as I handed it to her.
"Ew! Gross!" She held it at arm's length and pouted at me.
"Hey, not as gross as your face right now!" I told her.
*humph* she snorted, then daintily began wiping at herself with the cleanest bits of rag she could find. Honestly, she was damned cute! freckles, pouty mouth, big eyes, long shiny hair--okay maybe her boobs were a bit small, and she had no hips to speak of, but she'd still turn heads at my school. I wondered what my mom must have been like, to be more popular than Cathy, and decided that if this ring was good for anything, maybe I'd be able to make her sacrifices up to her.
"You 'bout done?" I asked Cathy
"Ugh, here. You'd better burn that thing before it evolves and comes crawling to get you some night!" I laughed and she grinned, happy that I'd enjoyed her joke. It struck me that even though she could remember her entire life Aunt Cathy was behaving an awful lot like a girl my own age now.
"So, what's it like? Being young again?" I asked her.
Cathy screwed up her face and fidgeted a bit. "Well, it's like, I can remember that I was a grownup, had a job and all that, but at the same time it's hard to remember any details; I mean, I've kept the books for your uncle's business since he got it off the ground, but trying to remember how all the accounting and taxes and stuff work makes my head hurt." She frowned and stuck her hands into her front pockets. "Maybe if you hadn't made me so young I wouldn't have forgotten most of my college courses n' stuff."
I stared at her for a moment as she stood with her shoulders hunched before I realized that the way she was standing, if she had more to work with she'd be flashing her cleavage at me. Hah! The lost IQ points might make it hard for her to think about some things, but she apparently hadn't forgotten how to manipulate men; first tears, then a joke, now sex appeal. I thought for a minute before stating me next wish.