"You sure he's straight?" asked Angela nervously.
"YES!" replied Elizabeth irritably at having to reaffirm the same fact for the umpteenth time. "But his eyes are glued to his computer screen 24/7. It'll be your own problem to get him to like you."
"Never mind that."
The 2 childhood friends, Elizabeth and Angela, walked swiftly. Their strides were jumpy and nervous; anxiety clearly showed on their faces. Elizabeth pointed to the small carton box which Angela held tightly in her arms.
"Are you sure those wristbands will work? That they'll switch Elliot's and my bodies?"
"For the last time, they don't switch bodies, they only switch gender between 2 people!" Angela patiently explained to Elizabeth, the same way a professor would try to explain a difficult concept to a particularly dim-witted student. "They won't work if you and I put them on, cause we're both girls already. They'll also only work with members of the same family. When you and your cousin put them on, you'll both gain the physical attributes of each other, but as versions of your respective opposite genders."
Elizabeth had a blank look on her face: "So we'll switch bodies then?"
Angela groaned; Elizabeth wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed at times: "Yeah, you'll both switch bodies." she replied with sarcasm and rolling eyes.
"Does your grandmother know, you have the bracelets?" Angela's grandmother was a witch; it was from her secret stores they had skied the gender-bender bracelets.
"No!" Angela hissed. "If my grandma, found out what we're doing, she'll turn us both into toads. Or worse still, horse-flies! And she'll keep us that way for a week. We're screwing with serious magic right now!"
Elizabeth gulped. "So it all depends on Elliot then." she said as they halted in front of his house.
"Yes." confirmed Angela softly.
=======================
Elizabeth Marshall was a born sportswoman. She idolized the Olympics and revered all forms of physical activities. She drank all news form the Super-Sports broadcasts and could name almost all the players from her home teams of football, baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, tennis. Sport was her passion, her life. But most dear to her heart was Athletics. And in particular the 200m sprint, in which she had represented her school since the earliest of memories.
If she wasn't the ultimate tomboy, then she sure as hell wasn't effiminate. Oh, she was a very pretty girl to be sure, but she had an extreme masculine demeanor.
You see, she hated being a girl. Not because she hated being female, but because she loathed losing. While women had come far the previous century in being equal in society to men, the one boundary that have yet to be breached in equality was Sports. The fact of the matter was that girls were, in terms of physical biology, weaker, slower, inferior. On the laymen's individual basis girls and boys were relatively equal. But in terms of the best, the elite, the champions, men were superior.
While Elizabeth could outrun every single girl in her school, neighbourhood and district, she found herself fuming at being continually bested by boys whom themselves were never even League material. In the 200m, for the men, the international record holder was Usian Bolt at 19.19 seconds in the 2009 World Championships; for the woman, it was Florence Griffith at 21.34 at the 1988 Summer Olympics. 2 seconds may seem insignificant. But on the running track, it meant the universe apart between glory and defeat. Elizabeth's own times reflected this scenario, dismayingly closely.
Elizabeth didn't merely want to be the best girl athlete, she wanted the victor of all. Yet boys kept outrunning her. This frustration was painfully reinforced by the upcoming Unisex National Junior Olympics in the next 2 months. She trained hard and relentlessly, but whenever she compared her times to that of her male peers, it was clear her efforts were in vain, she would lose. Badly.
Elizabeth Marshall truly wished that she had been born a boy...
It was then that she had met Angela. The 2 were an unlikely pair, but grew to be great companions. Now Angela was a funny girl. She certainly wasn't normal. She dressed like a goth and acted in strange ways that would scare off most people.
Angela had made her greatest mistake when she had confessed her homosexual sexual orientation at school. Her class peers being as fickle and unforgiving as they were, immediately pouched on her. She was rejected, mocked and emotionally abused. She was bullied by other girls for being lesbian, while the rest of her shallow friends abandoned her for the same reason. Even the parents of her classmates persuaded their children to avoid a "heathen" such as she.
She quickly became an outcast and a loner; and had it not been for the support of Elizabeth, she would have been driven to suicide.
Hers became the sad, sad story of so many homosexuals of her time.
What depressed Angela most was not being classified as a weirdo, a freak or someone to be avoided. It was the loneliness. The town was small, backwards, still very orthodox and right-winged. It would appear she was the only lesbian within it...
She longed greatly for another girl to love her for whom she was. It wasn't that she disliked boys in general. She merely found the thoughts of their leathery skin and hairy arms to make her shudder in revolt. No, she was a lesbian through and through her marrow.
Elizabeth, though kind, wasn't much aid either; she had the emotional capacity of a teaspoon and was married to her athletics.
Angela was lonely. She wished simply she had a girlfriend...
In short, both girls were deeply unhappy with their lives. It was only understandable that they were both ecstatic when Angela had declared the discovery of the gender-bender wristbands she had raided from her grandmother's secret store-room.
Neither knew exactly how they had come up with their little idea. Only that they couldn't contain their excitement. The plan was very simplistic. They would find a straight athletic boy and switch bodies with him and Elizabeth using the wristbands. Elizabeth would be a boy as she had always desired and would be able to compete with her arch opponents fairly at the Junior Unisex Nationals in the 200m sprint. The boy having been straight as a male, would still retain his sexual orientation; and when gender flipped would be lesbian as a girl. He, then a she, would be the (possible) girlfriend which Angela never had the good fortune of meeting before.
They even had a prime and obvious target. His name was Elliot, a good friend of theirs. He was kind-hearted and aloof. Better still, he was a tall, skinny and athletic little bugger AND he had once asked Angela out. But Angela had refused him, since he had been a boy. Angela had regretted sending him off as he had a nice and sincere personality; she had often wished he was a girl; well now that could be remedied. He was perfect.
Yes! It all seemed so easy on paper. They were going to steal Elliot's body...
Angela had already been daydreaming of what they would call him as a girl. Elloise? Elly? Ellise? Yes, Ellise sounded nice!
Only, like all great plans, there was a tiny snag. It was Elliot himself.
They had so far not yet approached him with their request to turn him into a girl. They certainly didn't know how he would react; whether he would be willing even. Angela wasn't naive. If they forcefully tried to take his body from him, then he would more likely hate her very guts than want to he her girlfriend.
=======================
And this was the reason they were both so nervous and agitated as they stood at the entrance to Elliot's home. All their grand plans would be for naught if Elliot refused to give up his body. Not to mention they would face the wrath of Angela's witch grandmother if she caught them. Her grandmother wouldn't punish them if they used magic, but would most certainly have their backsides if they used magic on another person, without that person's consent. Not to mention they stole the bracelets.
As Elizabeth had said: it all depended on Elliot.
And as usual it was Elizabeth who took the lead: "Come on, we won't know unless we try."
She pressed the doorbell and the duo waited.
Now what?
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