Chapter 9

Class was weird, now. The whole school had started to revolve around the contest, and just taking geography felt inappropriate now. Even the teachers seemed to realize it. May knew the teacher, a lovely woman by the name of Tilda, was keeping tabs on her from the corner of her eye. Now, this was probably partly because of the whole dressing-like-a-girl thing, but it wasn’t out of frustration.

Not as far as she could tell, though. Most of the teachers had approached her to ask her for her name, and all of them had blinked in surprise when they found out she hadn’t been turned yet. Or rather, that she’d turned herself. But all of them had just taken note of it, and that had been that. While Drew had been hovering around nearby, he hadn’t had to step in once. May tried not to think of the fact that he looked like he was ready to tackle a teacher if it meant her safety, and tried to ignore the feeling in her chest, like a small nuclear reactor melting down, every time she looked at him because of it. 

The teacher was currently explaining something about the Nile Delta, but most of the class was barely paying attention. A constant murmur ran from person to person, very likely because two of the remaining ten students were in the class with them. May didn’t have to do her best to be seen. While the people who had been turned into girls had been adopted, in a sense, things around her were different. 

It was like they were all trying to see how far she was willing to go, and so she had been offered more clothes, shoes, makeup and hair-style types than any other girl in the school over a single year. And she was trying to take as many of them to heart as she could while still maintaining her naturalistic look. Sure, she now had eyeliner you could cut glass with, somehow her eyeshadow had acquired glitter, and her hair had a braid running through it despite the fact that she had been sure there would’ve been no way to make that work with its shoulder length. 

And there was the fact that people whispered extra hard whenever she was near Drew. She saw rumors forming in real-time, and she didn’t know if she was scared of it or wanted to encourage it. Sure, some people had been dickheads about it, but the pack of almost-lioness girls around her, sharpened nails at the ready — or Drew’s ability to look down at anyone, whether or not they were taller than him, with a glare that could level buildings — was enough to dissuade even the dickest of heads. 

But people were whispering. It was clear a lot of people thought the two of them had something going on, and while she knew Drew would protect her – because that’s just the kind of friend he was – she also didn’t know how he would react if he knew she…

Sure, there were gay kids in the school, but being okay with them and being one were two very different things. She didn’t want to risk their friendship, their relationship, by saying something stupid, and admitting that she wanted to hold his hand was definitely stupid. Well, not stupid, that was something she wanted to remove from her vocabulary. Ill-advised. 

Even the teachers had taken note. More than one had talked to Drew in private, and there had been meaningful glances thrown in her direction, but every single one of those conversations had ended with an equally meaningful nod May hadn’t been able to decipher. 

And then there was the new couple. Matthew had switched places with the kid next to Ryan, and the two of them kept passing notes back and forth. Interestingly, the teachers had not intervened at all there, either. The fifty from the board had become celebrities, in a sense, able to get away with what they wouldn’t have been able to normally. Even the girls who had already turned enjoyed a certain sense of protection from teachers and students alike. 

Throughout the day, Ryan had refined his technique. He wasn’t just trying to be athletic anymore. Sure, it had worked to a degree, but it wouldn’t get him the victory against Paxton. He had an advantage, however, that none of the others did. He had one of the girls from the other rounds hanging on his arm, and whether it was with or without Matthew’s advice, he had seemingly decided that, if he was to turn into a girl, the world would lose the perfect boyfriend. 

Now, May had some doubts about that. First was that she had her own ideas of who might be the perfect boyfriend. The second was that it meant that Ryan looked like a playboy half the time, even if Matthew seemed to be into that. He wasn’t wearing a shirt under his jersey anymore, showing off his abs and chest. May had even noticed he had something growing there, something that probably hoped to be called chest hair when it grew up. 

That said, it was clearly working. He was in the top five on the leaderboards, and all he was doing was, well, treating Matt like a princess. Pretty much everyone had expressed their surprise when Ryan had overcome his grump and had kissed Matthew in the middle of the schoolyard, leaning her backwards like he’d just come back from the war. 

There had been whooping and hollering. And his score had spiked. From then on, his strategy had been decided, and, well, it was working for him. And May, despite her popularity with the girls, was falling behind, just on the edge of the top five. 

She was going to have to do something by the end of the day, or she was going to be eliminated, and that wasn’t an option. Though she didn’t know what she was going to do with it yet, she was going to win that wish. Even if it was just to give to Drew. 

The bell rang in lunch break. Ordinarily, everyone scrambled to put away books and pencils, but today, everyone just turned to look at the last people standing. May took her time to pack up her stuff. There was no need to rush. She was going to take it easy during lunch, thinking of ways to win. They were down to four and a half hours before the timers ran out, but anything could happen in that time. 

All she had to do was prove to people that she was worth giving something like a wish to, that turning her into a girl was useless. A familiar silhouette showed up in the corner of her eye as she excavated her lunch box. She didn’t pay him any mind yet, despite the fact that Ryan’s bristles were already up. 

“May, right?” Paxton said. “That’s the name you’re going with?”

Drew slammed his lunchbox down on the table with more force than he had to, explicitly not looking up, and offered May one of the cookies he’d brought with him. 

“Thank you,” she said, and for a brief moment she forgot about the guy standing by her shoulder, overtaken by a mini-torrent of butterflies. But she couldn’t ignore him forever. Well… maybe she could? A part of her wanted to try it, but she worried that might lead to an all-out brawl in the classroom. “Sure seems like it. It’s not like I could do worse than Paxton.”

“Paxton is almost a thousand years old,” he said defensively. “It’s got a long and rich history that dates back to medieval Eng–”

“Googled that, did you?” Matt said. “Feeling a little bit inadequate because your name sounds like a laxative?”

“Don’t you fucking start,” Paxton said. “No, I’m just not ashamed of it. That’s all. But really? May? Why not ‘April’ or ‘June’? Did you consider ‘September’?” 

“Joke’s on you, dipshit,” May said, finally looking up at him. “All of those names rule.”

“I’m sure you didn’t come over here just to get owned. Going by your test scores, I thought you were too smart to show up to a verbal sparring match unarmed,” Matt said. “Was I wrong, or do you want something?”

“Just letting you know you’re going to lose,” Paxton said, his voice neutral, almost robotic. May recognized that tone of voice. He was barely keeping it together. “You’re going to get what’s coming to you, and wish or not, I’m going to wipe the floor with each and every one of you.”

“Sure you will, sweetie,” May said. “Who wrote that line for you, mom or dad? I always forget which one is the marketing exec and which one is the eldritch middle-management monstrosity?”

“Hey, f–” Paxton stopped himself, and took a deep breath. “My parents worked hard to get where they are,” he said. “Just because yours never achieved anything—” he leaned forward, his face too close to May’s for comfort “— doesn’t mean you have to drag others down to your level.”

“Okay,” May said. She turned her head slightly to the side, then smashed her forehead into his. Immediately, the class erupted in a cacophony of noise as Drew and Ryan immediately squared up, Paxton’s cronies stepped forward and a bunch of kids immediately formed a circle. Ryan had jumped up and was shouting something, but May didn’t hear it. She stood up, trying to ignore the fact that she was having trouble keeping steady. Apparently, smashing your skull into someone else’s had a tendency to rattle it. Who would have known? Still, she managed to look at Paxton, who had fallen over backwards in shock, without crossing her eyes. “Nobody gets to make fun of my parents but me.” 

Matt had both Drew and Ryan’s wrists in a grip that looked like it would have hurt anyone who wasn’t currently chomping at the bit to beat the shit out of a boy named Paxton.

Miss Tilda pushed the kids apart. “Okay, break it up,” she said. She looked at the boy on the ground, then at May, and then at the boy again. It was clear she was trying to quantify who should be punished for what. Paxton’s parents were school donors, so May standing over him was bad optics. On the other hand, a boy harassing someone at least dressed like a girl who might have just been standing up for herself was also not a good look. 

Her mouth opened and closed a few times, and May decided to put her out of her misery. She took a step forward and held a hand out to Paxton. “Just an accident, Miss,” she said. “I tried to get up and bumped my head into his.”

She looked down at Paxton, whose face showed no emotion and in doing so betrayed a whole bunch of them. He grabbed her hand and let her pull him up. “That’s right, Miss. With everything going on, we’re all a little bit on edge, and I didn’t mean to get so close when I came to congratulate May here.”

A blatant lie, but if nobody was accusing anyone of any wrongdoing, the school couldn’t either. May saw several people looking at their phones, tapping away, and she got the sense that this was either going to be very good or very bad for her score. 

Paxton rubbed his head and shot her a smile faker than a nutcracker. Still holding her hand, he shook it. “May the best man win. Literally, I think.” That got a chuckle from the students around them, and he turned on his heel. 

“What a bastard,” Ryan said. “Should’ve let me have a go at him.” Matthew patted him on the back. Her fingers were imprinted on his arm, and he didn’t even seem to feel it. 

“You would’ve been suspended,” Matt said. “Though I do think it’s very sweet of you to stand up for your friend like that.” She looked at Drew like she was about to say something, then thought better of it. Drew’s eye was twitching slightly, despite the fact that he’d barely moved. 

“You okay?” May asked Drew. The boy took a deep breath, then shook his head and stood up. 

“Can we talk?” He looked at her, and she nodded. The two of them got up and walked into the hall, closing the door behind them. They went outside, finding a bit of privacy in the shadow of the building. Drew stopped and turned to her. Before she could ask what was up, he raised a hand. “Can I touch you?” he asked, his hand hovering over her shoulder. May nodded, slightly confused. She was expecting a great many things, but his strong arms wrapping around her and lifting her up as he pulled her into the tightest hug she had ever received had not been one of them. Her feet left the floor. She had never felt this small before. He carefully put her back down, and she saw there was a tear in his eye. 

“What’s—” she said, and then he put his hands on either side of her face and pulled her into a kiss that popped her brain like a balloon.

Elamimax

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