Tim frowned. "You're tutori... Paul, I'm a better math student than you. I wouldn't need you to tutor me."
Paul scoffed. "Right, Tammy. Like you weren't about to fail math last semester."
Fail math? Tim had never even come close to failing a class in his life, and certainly not math. He was one of
the top math students in his school. Why would Tammy be failing math. Had the spell that had turned Tim into a
girl lowered his IQ as well? Tim didn't want to believe that. He was no sexist; he believed that girls were
just as smart as boys. And while there was some data that suggested that boys were better at math specifically
than girls, it wasn't nearly enough of a difference to turn a math prodigy into a failing math student.
Thinking that he had turned from a genius boy into a... a "bimbo" girl, for lack of a better, less offensive
term... it went against everything he knew and believed. So was it some aspect of the spell that had made Tim
into a poor math student as a girl? That seemed unlikely, especially since it had rendered his female
appearance so faithfully.
So maybe... maybe there was something cultural at work here. Tammy had been told that girls were bad at math,
so she'd believed it and her lack of confidence had caused her to struggle. Or she believed that pretty,
popular girls weren't supposed to be smart, so she had intentionally hidden her intelligence and botched her
classes. Or maybe it was simply a matter of focus... Tim was unpopular and unathletic, so he didn't have much
to distract him from his schoolwork, but a beautiful girl like Tammy would have had social opportunities that
would have taken up her time, and so perhaps her grades had suffered as a result. It was the only explanation
that seemed logical, because Paul refused to believe that Tammy was somehow less intelligent as a girl.
"Tammy," Paul said, when Tim had been silent just a little too long, "you had a D in math, and that was going
to make you ineligible to be on the cheerleading team, so you turned to me for help. You remember, right? That
spell I cast, it didn't mess with your memory, did it?"
Cheerleading? Tammy was pretty and she was a cheerleader? That blew Tim's mind... who would ever have imagined
that Tim, who had been the ultimate nerd as a boy, would have been a hot cheerleader as a girl? He was almost
too shocked to speak, but at last he said, "Paul... the spell... it didn't work the way it was supposed to. It
turned me into a girl."
"What?" Paul asked. "Tammy, you've always been a girl."
"No I haven't," Paul said. "I'm supposed to be a boy, but somehow your spell screwed up and turned me into a
girl instead. I still have my male body, but I'm dresed like a girl and I see a girl in the mirror and you
apparently believe I'm a girl... you have to change me back into a guy, man. I don't want to be a girl."
He didn't... did he? If someone had asked Tim an hour ago if he wanted to be a girl, Tim would have said no,
of course not, why would he? But Tim had been so unattractive and so unpopular as a boy. But as Tammy...
No. No, of course he didn't want to be a girl. Of course not. He was a boy, and however good Tammy's life
might have been, he had to turn himself back into a boy.
Didn't he?
"Paul?" Tim said. "Do you believe me?"