And then Lawrence's hopes were dashed, because in an alcove he came across a group of skater, stoner types, lounging around and, to his horror, passing around a blunt. They all turned to look at him. One of them, clearly the highest member of the group, giggled madly at him, and another, seeming to be the youngest, actually looked afraid to be found. But the rest just regarded him with contempt, as if daring him to stop them. For his part, Lawrence looked back at them paralyzed with fear. This sort of situation was exactly what he was most afraid of as a hall monitor. But he figured he should at least try to say something, so after a few moments of the standoff he finally worked up enough courage to meekly suggest, “Um, I think you guys shouldn’t be doing that in school…”
Lawrence struggled to come up with something else to say, but was soon distracted by a sudden, searing pain around his finger. The ring was burning him! He gasped in pain and tried to pull it off but it wouldn’t budge, and looked to the other students for help but they just stared at him, unsympathetic, unblinking, unmoving. Wait, what? It was as though time had frozen; even the smoke from the joint was standing still in the air. Lawrence gasped again, and the smoke unfroze and flew into his lungs.
Now the painful heat was coming from inside his lungs, inside his body, and things got really weird. Lawrence felt a dripping sensation and looked down to see his clothes (with the exception of his damn hall monitor sash) melting into a pool at his feet, and then his newly naked body seemed to melt as well, fat and flab boiling away to leave an unfamiliar body, lean and covered in toned muscle. What the hell?! Despite the pain and confusion, Lawrence managed to notice other sudden changes--the floor seemed farther away, like he was taller, his skin was tanner and covered in more hair, which itself seemed lighter, and his dick was more than twice as long as it had been (not that it had been very long before, but it certainly was now), and still soft! As hot as it had become, Lawrence didn’t have much time to admire his naked new body before the pool at his feet that had been his clothes crawled back up his body and reformed, leaving him wearing skate shoes, board shorts, boxers, a T-shirt with the logo of a band he had never heard of, and a very out-of-place looking hall monitor sash.
Another wave of heat from inside Lawrence’s chest and the sash melted too, but instead of dripping down it crept up and split, part of it snaking around his neck and settling into a hemp choker but the rest crawling up his face, leaving him coughing and sputtering. He couldn’t see it, but the goop had carved his face and head into something very different: no fat, handsomer features, ginger-blonde hair reaching almost to his shoulders and a scruffy beard of his color, studs piercing his ears and nose, and light blue eyes that were as striking as they were dull and bloodshot. Metal studs pierced his ears and nose. His new look was rounded out by the remnants of his sash reaching the top of his head and solidifying into a black wool beanie.
Through the pain, Lawrence realized that he looked just like the skaters around him. Then, as the heat suddenly left his chest and shot up into his brain, he realized that it was because he *was* one of them. That felt wrong, somehow, but he felt a strange pressure from the beanie around his head like it was molding his brain, his thoughts, and it felt more right. He was used to worrying and stressing about everything but now he felt like letting go and being laid back and carefree, and he let the changes reshape him. The body and the clothes he saw were right, weren’t they? How could he have been a fat nerd when he was clearly a hot, toned skater, like the ones he saw around him?
Awkwardness gave way to charm and an easy way with people. Memories of studying, playing video games, and masturbating alone were reshaped into memories of skating, getting high, and fucking around with his fellow skater friends. Memories of acing honors classes were reshaped into memories of flunking remedial classes. Lawrence’s old personality tried to rebel one last time at that, priding itself on its intelligence if nothing else, but the pressure from the beanie was insistent. He felt it pressing down on his brain, making it impossible to think, and even when it let up the heaviness in his head remained. Thoughts were slow and dull and hard. Larry knew that he was dumb and always had been (and being constantly high certainly didn’t help), but even if he wasn’t he still wouldn’t try hard. Worrying about school wasn’t in his nature. He just cared about having a good time--skating, smoking, fucking, hanging out. He only needed to worry about the good things in life, and life was good.
Time unfroze. Larry, unaware, grinned at the skaters and stoners who as far as any of them knew had always been his friends. The skaters and stoners that he had always been one of. “Yo, gimme a hit of that,” he said, nodding at the joint. It was passed to him and he took a hit, not caring at all that he was at school (what, was the fuckin’ hall monitor gonna catch him?), and grinned even bigger as he felt the familiar rush. This was the fuckin’ life.