If I Were Beautiful (If I Were... #1)

by Devon Hartford

“Relax, George. I’m not going to kill you. Jane told me you might come by.”

  George nibbled his lip. “Uhhh… maybe I’ll come back later.” George wasn’t the bravest guy in town, but he knew how to stay out of trouble. Running always worked for rabbits. They did it all the time when they sensed danger.

  “Come in, George.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. He stumbled through the door and I closed it behind him before he could escape. Normally, at 5’5”, George was the tall one. Now I was. So weird. “Can I get you something to drink?”

  “No thanks.” He just stood by the door, slightly confused.

  “Nice hoodie,” I said.

  Like me, George had a budget wardrobe that consisted of hoodies, T-shirts, jeans, and whatever shoes he could find at Payless ShoeSource for under $14.99. The one place where he splurged was on his hoodies. The one he wore now was bright sky blue with a silkscreen of Rainbow Dash’s butt tattoo over the breast pocket. The tattoo was a cartoon cloud with a rainbow lightning bolt coming out. The hood wasn’t up, but I knew it had pony ears sewn on top, a rainbow mane sewn along the seem of the hood, and little wings sewn to the back shoulders. It looked ridiculous, but George loved it and wore it all the time. He may not have been brave when it came to danger, but when it came to his wardrobe, he had no fear.

  “George, I need to tell you something.”

  He put his hands in his hoodie pockets and stared at me. “Do you know where Jane is?”

  “Please, sit down.” I led him to the couch and pulled a chair over from my kitchen table and sat facing him.

  “Um, who are you? And what are you doing in Jane’s apartment?”

  “Uhhh…” I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it.

  His eyes suddenly widened. “Is this some kind of ransom thing? Did you kidnap Jane?”

  “No, George. This isn’t a ransom thing. Jane is fine. Nobody kidnapped her.”

  George stood up, agitated. “Well where is she? I haven’t heard from her since Sunday. Is something wrong? She better be okay, or I swear I’ll…” He ran his eyes over me, trying to make sense of the situation.

  I was touched that he cared so much. I mean, we’d been close for nine years, but George rarely showed this much emotion when it came to me. “Relax, George. Jane is okay. I promise.” I took a deep breath. “George, this is going to sound crazy. Maybe you better sit down.”

  “Is she dead?” He looked horrified.

  “No! She’s not dead! She’s… Please sit, George.”

  He didn’t. “Just tell me already. Who are you anyway?”

  I heaved a sigh. “George, I’m Jane.”

  He broke into laughter, shaking his head. “What?!”

  “George. It’s me. Jane. Your friend for nine years.”

  He snorted denial.

  “George, I’m telling you the truth. I’m Jane. The vampire, but not really a vampire. I work the night shift at the 95 Cent Store. The other day I told you I was at a blood rave last Saturday night, dressed like Blade and Buffy. But I was at speed dating with Chelsea and you said I should’ve gone speed skating. The last time Chelsea was in town and I was hanging out with her, I told you afterward that she and I drove to Washington so we could find the town of Forks and kill that stupid Bella from Twilight. Then I was going to marry Edward because I’m already a vampire, and Chelsea would marry Jacob because she likes werewolves and Taylor Lautner, even though he’s way younger than her.” Considering I’d never told anyone that stuff, not even Chelsea (she hated Twilight and Taylor Lautner), George had to realize I was Jane. Who else would know such specific details about our private conversations?

  George looked at me thoughtfully. “Did Jane tell you all that?”

  “No, George. I’m Jane. I’m the girl who goes to Brony conventions with you and to San Diego Comic Con. We met in college nine years ago. I don’t know how to explain it, but this is me. Something weird happened. I was sick all week. I couldn’t get out of bed. When I woke up today, I looked like this.”

  George scowled. Was he considering it?

  I rolled my eyes. “Would it help any if I told you I was abducted by aliens and they did this to me with advanced alien medical technology?”

  George frowned, “Uh, no?”

  “Okay, see this ring on my finger?” I pointed to it. “It’s cursed. Or blessed, or I don’t know what. Anyway, I think it may have turned me into this.” I gestured at myself with both hands.

  He shook his head slowly. “What’s your name again?”

  “Jane. It’s Jane!”

  He chewed his lower lip. “Um, are you high on something?”

  “George! It’s me! Jane Johnson!”

  “Okay, okay. Calm down.” He looked around thoughtfully. “Okay, if you’re Jane, then tell me what the Love Jug is.”

  I immediately broke out in cackling laughter. It felt so good to laugh so freely. The Love Jug was a secret I’d never told anyone except George. Not even Chelsea. It was too embarrassing and I’d made George swear he would never tell a soul.

  Smiling, I locked eyes with George. “Have you ever told anyone about the Love Jug?”

  “Nope. Never told anyone.” He smirked confidently, like he’d just posed an impossible riddle that could never be solved.

  Laughing, I said, “The Love Jug is…” I was blushing like crazy. The mere thought of it made me want to hide my head under a pile of blankets. Shame, shame, shame! “Can I start by describing it?”

  “Sure.”

  I took a deep breath, trying not to laugh. “Okay, the Love Jug is this old bottle my parents keep on a bookcase in their guest bedroom. You’ve seen it.” He nodded. He had. “They still have it. It looks like a genie’s bottle, like in Aladdin. It’s about this wide at the bottom,” I held my hands apart, “and about this tall. The neck is shaped kind of like a dick. The entire thing is covered in leather, it has some brass ornaments on the base, and a bulbous leather stopper.” Just describing it made my face burn. I searched his eyes. “Well?”

  He arched an eyebrow, “That is the Love Jug. But why is it called that?”

  I grabbed a magazine off my coffee table and threw it at him. The pages fluttered open and it landed on the couch cushions. “I’m not going to say it out loud, George! Telling you once was enough!”

  George’s smile faded and his knee started to bounce and he put his fists in his hoodie pockets. “Did Jane tell you that story?”

  I started to panic.

  He wasn’t believing I was me.

  It was entirely possible that no one would ever believe I was me. No matter how many secrets I told them, who would possibly believe I had turned into somebody else while I was sleeping? It was crazy. UFOs were one thing. People all over the world, reputable people, had UFO sitings.

  But how many people believed that shapeshifters really existed?

  Not even George believed in those conspiracies.

  Fear swept over me. I sensed my closest friend was on the verge of disowning me. I grabbed him by the wrist. “No, George! It’s me! Jane Johnson! I know you hate Domino’s Pizza because you think their cheese tastes like plastic. I know you hate spiders, and every time you have to kill one, you play Seek & Destroy by Metallica. I know you’re still obsessed with your LEGO collection. I know you tried LSD once in college, but you never did it again because it scares you too much. I know you blame your mom for giving you asthma because she smoked when you were a baby. I know your dad is an alcoholic but your mom insists he’s not. I know he was drunk the first time he taught you how to drive, and he smashed the car into a cement trash can in the parking lot at the mall where he took you to practice, and he broke the headlight and made you tell your mom you did it. And you hated him for it, but you told her anyway.” My voice had gone from agitated to quiet as I revealed darker and darker secrets. My hands were folded in my lap and I stared at them.

  When I next spoke, my voice was barely a whisper, “I also know you wanted to kill yourself four years ago
. When I found the bottle of sedatives you stole from your mom in your medicine cabinet, I flushed them down the toilet.”

  I was crying when I looked up at him and said, “Please, George. It’s me, Jane. I need you to believe me. You’re the only one who knows.”

  His eyes were starting to water.

  I felt bad for bringing up so much of his personal pain.

  “You’re a liar.” He stood up and walked to my door.

  “George!” I threw myself in front of my door, blocking his way. “George, please! It’s really me! Jane Abigail Johnson!” Seeing his tears start to flow made me lose it and I started sobbing. I grabbed the sleeves of his hoodie and held onto them like a life preserver. “I don’t know what happened, George! But this is me! You have to believe me!”

  He stared at me, his face red as tears dribbled down his cheeks. “Let go of me,” he grunted.

  Defeated, I dropped my hands and stood aside.

  He grabbed the doorknob.

  In a small voice I pleaded, “Please, George. Please don’t go. It’s me. I promise it’s me.”

  He tore the door open and stepped outside.

  “Please,” I whispered, “I can’t do this alone…”

  Chapter 14

  “You are such a LOSER, Jane!” George shouted in my face an hour later.

  I laughed, “No I’m not! I won the last three races!”

  “Like that matters,” he chuckled. “I won eleven straight before that.”

  We sat side by side on my couch, both of us holding game controllers attached to the dusty old Super Nintendo console I’d had since I was a girl. We were busy playing Super Mario Kart, something we often did when we talked. It was mindless fun and I think it helped both of us feel more grounded about everything.

  While we’d been playing, we’d also been talking.

  I explained everything to George, from waking up this way to losing my job. We’d also gone into microscopic detail about every little thing George and I had done together or knew about each other. Finally, it seemed like he believed me.

  It was a tremendous relief.

  “You know,” he said, “if being someone else is such a pain in the A, maybe you should just take the ring off.”

  “It’s not the One Ring, Samwise,” I snarked. “If it was, I’d be invisible right now.”

  “I’m not saying it is, Frodo,” he winked at me. “But maybe if you take it off, you’ll go back to normal.”

  “How does that make any sense? The ring has nothing to do with it.”

  “So take it off and see what happens.”

  A sense of excitement washed over me. “Maybe you’re right.” I slid it off without a second thought. Looked at George. “Am I any different?”

  “Not yet. Maybe it takes a while?”

  “Maybe.” I flashed back to all the pain I’d gone through during my swansformation. I wasn’t in a hurry to go through that again. After another thirty seconds, I put the ring back on and smiled at George.

  He said, “I guess this means you want to stay beautiful?”

  “No.” Maybe. “It just means I’m not ready to go through another five days of torture. You weren’t here for all the fun, George.” I said it sarcastically. “I felt like I was dying. And if turning beautiful nearly killed me, turning back might actually kill me.”

  “Good point. Maybe wait a few weeks. Or months.”

  “Yeah.”

  I realized then that I had no idea what toll the swansformation might have taken on my body. Pain was a signal to your body that something was wrong, and I’d swum through an ocean of pain to get here. The idea that this ring might have the potential to kill me if I wasn’t careful with it was enough for me to leave it right where it was. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Since I didn’t have a manual for the ring, maybe it was best to leave it where it was.

  For now.

  (forever)

  Maybe I’d try again in a few weeks like George suggested.

  After finishing another Mario Kart race, he looked over at me, his face illuminated by the blue glow of the TV. “You know what I keep thinking, Jay?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t hate me for saying this.”

  “I won’t hate you.” I was desperate for him to accept me. Hating was the last thing on my mind. “The next race is starting.”

  He turned back to the TV. While working his controller, he said, “I keep thinking you look exactly like Sailor Moon.” The Japanese anime Sailor Moon was a guilty pleasure for both of us.

  “A cartoon?”

  “No, I mean in general.”

  I shook my head, snickering. “I do not look like Sailor Moon. My hair isn’t down to my toes and I don’t wear a Japanese School Girl outfit twenty-four seven.”

  “True,” he smiled. “But you have the blonde hair. How about a real life Barbie?”

  “I don’t look like Barbie either!”

  “You kinda do,” he chuckled, eyes focused on the game. “We need to find you a Ken doll.”

  “Shut up!” I nudged my knee against his. An image of Brodie popped into my mind. Brodie was better than a Ken doll. He was the bad boy version. And he was real. And he lived next door and he… I didn’t want to think about it. Brodie was an arrogant, shallow, self-centered jerk.

  George tilted his head while examining my face. “You’re hot, Jane. I mean, really hot. You could be one of those hot cosplay models like Violette Threatt.”

  I knew the model he was talking about. We’d seen Violette Threatt in person at the last San Diego Comic Con. As always, she’d looked gorgeous and had been surrounded by a crowd of fans wherever she went. I remembered being jealous of her confidence and regal air. She had no problem strutting around like a queen while wearing practically nothing. Thousands of comic book nerds had drooled over her and begged her to pose with them for photos, which she’d done with grace and good humor. I wasn’t like her. Not even close. I chuckled, “Thanks, George. But somehow I don’t think that’s my career path.”

  “Why not? Top cosplay models make serious bank. I would do it if I had those boobs.” He was staring right at my chest. Unlike Brodie, who saw me as a sex object, I knew George was probably imagining me in a Sailor Moon costume. George was safe. He continued, “Violette Threatt is like the Lady Gaga of cosplay right now. She’s worth almost two million dollars and she’s only been doing cosplay seriously for five years. How is that not a career path?”

  “Wait, are you serious?”

  He shrugged. “That’s what I read online.”

  Sarcastically, “And because you read it on the internet, it must be true.”

  “Just saying. Violette Threatt does paid appearances at tons of cons, has videos on YouTube and makes ad money from that, and has a Patreon which brings her like $25K a month.”

  “A month?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s like three hundred grand a year!”

  “I know, right? And guess what? You’re way hotter than her. I’m sure you could make double what she does, if you tried. You’re already a fan. Now you just need the costumes. And a manager.”

  “Why do I need a manager?”

  He winked, “You need someone you can trust.”

  “Who, you?”

  “Durp. Yeah me. Who else?”

  I stared at him, mulling it over. I’d been to enough fan conventions with George to know how hot cosplay was. I’d always thought it would be fun to dress up, but I never had, probably because of my insecurities. And I knew George was right. Women like Violette Threatt (or whatever her real name was) made a living off of it. But I was pretty sure it wasn’t any easier to be a top cosplay model than it was to be a rich rockstar. It wasn’t a real option. I needed a steady paycheck.

  I said, “Let’s table the cosplay discussion for now. How are you doing? We haven’t talked in a week.” I wanted to return our conversation to something vaguely normal, something that would ground me, not put my head back in the clou
ds. I needed a break from the clouds.

  “A lot better than you,” he snorted. “What are you gonna do about your job?”

  “Look for a new one, I guess. I’m going to be late on rent if I don’t find something quick.”

  “Maybe you should try stripping. They make a ton of money. A lot more than a night manager at a 95 Cent Store.”

  “Uhhhh… No. I can’t be a stripper.”

  “Why not?”

  “First, because I don’t know how to dance. Second, because it’s just not me.”

  “It could be you.”

  “Are you trying to pimp me out, George?”

  He laughed. “No. I’m just trying to help you think of options. I mean, if this is really you,” he gestured at me, “I mean really really you, you don’t look like your ID anymore, right?”

  “You’re right,” I sighed.

  “So you need a job that pays under the table. Stripping is all cash, right?”

  “I don’t know. Do you? Or is that something you read on the internet?”

  “I’m pretty sure they work for tips. And I’m guessing strippers don’t need background checks.”

  “They need ass-ground checks,” I smirked.

  “And boob-ground checks,” he grinned. “So go be a stripper. You’re stripper name can be Sailor.” He winked.

  I elbowed his arm. “No, George.”

  “How about Moon?”

  “That’s worse!” I scowled.

  “Barbie? That actually sounds like a stripper name.”

  “I hate you, George. I hope you wake up one morning looking like a supermodel. No! I know! In an alternate universe where video games and cartoons don’t exist! How would you like that, George? Huh? Doesn’t sound like fun, does it?”

  He smiled at me and searched my face, “You really are J-Chan, aren’t you?” Chan was a Japanese honorific used for best friends. George didn’t call me J-Chan often. I think it was his way of saying he loved me. Or liked me. Or whatever. Whatever he meant, it was as close as he got to expressing affection toward me. From him, now, it meant a lot.

  “Yes, George. It’s me.” I sighed. It felt so good to have him believe me. “Promise me one thing, George.”