Lorraine kept her head down and scurried through the halls, dodging bodies and practicing a tactic of not being seen. It’s how she made it through almost four years of high school without being bullied, but also without friends. That was ok; she would always have her dolls.
She spent her days, in school and out, drawing and sewing outfits for her toys, a hobby that was definitely not on the list of acceptable hobbies. Even other girls would make fun of her if they knew.
Lost in thought, dreaming of a new dress for a doll, Lorraine didn’t realize she barrelled toward Adam Perkins, QB1. She bounced off him so forcefully that she tumbled to the marble ground, her binder exploding as it hit the floor. And all her art was there for the school to see.
“You dropped your stuff,” Adam said, pointing at the pile of papers that spread out over the school crest, as if he was helping.
“I’ll get those for you,” Chris Barton said. Where the quarterback went, his backup followed. He pushed Lorraine away from her own drawings and scooped them into his hands.
“Wait, no...” Lorraine said weakly, trying to at least cover up some of her art. But Chris moved fast, haphazardly, and he mashed fistfuls of her drawings together before presenting the pile to her.
“Here, take ‘em,” he said.
Lorraine reached for her things, but Chris tossed the papers into the air, wide enough to cover most of the atrium in her drawings. Students snatched pages from the air or off the ground. They took a moment to understand what they were looking at, and then began to give surprised, mocking laughs, permission granted by the bullies to insult her. Lorraine’s neck and cheeks burned and her stomach churned while she heard their mocking giggles.
“Hey, what’s this?” Adam asked, “Aren’t you old to be playing with dolls?” His voice pulled Lorraine back to him, and her eyes bugged out her head. He held her latest project, a half finished rag doll without a top and a skirt still held by pins.
Lorraine launched herself at the QB as his gorilla hands squeezed the stuffing out of Penelope Peaches. “Give her back!” She shouted. It was trivially easy for Adam to hold the doll above his head and out of her five foot height. She was practically a doll herself compared to the boy.
“Why is she half naked? What did you do with her clothes?” Adam taunted.
“I haven’t made them yet!”
Chris laughed before he even made his joke, “I bet she likes taking the tops of her dolls.”
Lorraine wanted to crawl in a hole and die, but had to get her things back in her hands first. She leaped again in a new rescue attempt, hoping to catch the quarterback by surprise while he was distracted and laughing at her. Chris, though, grabbed her at her waist and yanked her back like she was a rag doll herself.
“Not so fast,” he said.
It was Lorraine’s limit. She had no idea what to do, or even what she could do to fix all this. She had never been so humiliated, and was either going to run from the school and never come back, or go catatonic. Her body made the choice for her when Chris set her down and she collapsed like a marionette. All her work was scattered, crushed, and torn, and all the school would soon know her as the girl who played with dolls.
“That’s enough! Leave her alone!” A new voice boomed over the atrium, not just above the riotous laughter, but silencing it. Zenia Williams, of all people, came to her rescue.
Watching everyone go silent, Lorraine had to wonder if the orange haired girl really was a witch.
“Everyone give back her art, and leave. And there better not be one drawing missing.” Her voice crashed like a wave over the atrium, and the students all did what Zenia told them to. One by one, they walked by and handed Lorraine another of her drawings. Each page was some new art of a doll in pretty clothes, many with fabric samples pinned to the pages. And when they were all done, and the last page returned to her, Adam dropped Lorraine’s newest doll into her lap.
Through it all, Lorraine didn’t look up as her mind put itself back together.
“Now leave,” Zenia said, and it was like a spell released. Students scattered, especially the two bullies. Through all this, the witch’s voice had boomed over the atrium, but when she kneeled to Lorraine, her voice was as soft as plush. “Are you ok?”
“I just want this to be over.”
Zenia leaned in, a wicked grin spreading on her face, “Can I interest you in getting some payback?”
-------------------------
Two days later, Adam walked through the hall of students that parted before him. As they should. He had taken the football team to championships two years in a row. No one could touch him, not even the teachers. Coach would end their careers if they put him on academic suspension. And he already had offers to multiple universities for college ball. Life was pretty good, and the events with Lorraine the Doll Girl was just a memory he would never think about again.
Or he wouldn’t have, until he saw her in the atrium. While every other student got out of his way, this pint-sized girl stood in his path, her feet rooted on the marble floor and her eyes locked on his.
Next to him, Chris laughed. “I guess she’s looking to get embarrassed again,” he said, then turned his attention to Lorraine. “You into that sort of thing? Getting embarrassed?”
“Not at all. I just need a couple of models for my newest clothes,” she said, “and I thought about you two first.”
Chris stepped ahead of Adam, as if to say that she wasn’t worth the quarterback’s time. “Modeling, huh? I could do some nude modeling for you.”
“She said clothes, dumbass,” Zenia the Witch said, standing to the side of the atrium, leaning on a trophy case, and watching everything. There went any fun Adam and Chris were about to have. She always ruined their day just by being around.
“Hey, Chris,” Adam said, “let’s keep going. Doll Girl isn’t worth our time.”
“No,” Lorraine said, “stay. Play.”
She was quicker than she should be. Her small, thin hand whipped out and she pushed a toy costume into Chris’s chest. That was it. That was all.
Impossibly, a red leotard and tutu wove into existence around the backup. He was, in a moment, trapped in a ballerina’s outfit, down to pink tights and pointe shoes. Everyone looked on in stunned silence before breaking out in pointing, shouting, and laughter.
“Shut up! It’s not funny!” Chris bellowed, his voice undercut by his cute ballerina costume. But the changes didn’t end with his clothes, as his body melted into one that suited the tutu; an athletic, but womanly body with slender legs and her hair in a bun. Chris squealed and one hand went to her new leavened chest and the other to her newly formed hole. She spun -- nearly pirouetted -- hoping her friend would know what to do. “Adam...” she started, but fell silent.
Plastic overtook the ballerina’s skin, granting her smooth molded skin, articulated joints, and warm pink circles on her cheeks. Her raised eyebrows and rounded mouth gave Chris the look of perpetual surprise, if a little on the happy side. Her blue eyes continued to move and worry, the only sign she was still alive.
Then, Lorraine turned to him, and the quarterback didn’t have time to dwell on his backup.
“Your turn,” she said.
Should he run? Should he beg her to stop? Should he hit her? The quarterback, so used to picking on others, had no plays when it came to the reverse. He had to decide fast; Lorraine already had his dress in her hand. She was already bringing it toward him.
Vaguely, Adam knew not to let her touch him and he recoiled, but the skirts grazed him, shocking him with buzzing energy. He gasped, watching in slow motion as his shirt, his jeans, his shoes, transmogrified. White tights knitted around his legs, and he recognized the skirt from Lorraine’s doll: a yellow peasant dress that fell past his knees. His letterman jacket became something like a barmaid’s top, with an ample bosom of ruffles.
The magic that gave him the dress soon gave him the form to wear it, dissolving the muscles that made him QB1, as well as his barrel chest and his manhood, all while giving him the gift of pigtailed hair and breasts.
As those changes completed, the finale began in earnest. Where Chris turned to plastic, Adam turned to plush. Thread and cloth overtook skin and took away all his strength. Adam’s arms fell to his side and he flopped to the ground at everyone’s legs, his head lolling to the side, his body no longer his to move. The doll didn’t even look surprised, or happy. She was just...confused. This kind of thing didn’t happen to QB1.
Phones came out, pictures taken, and texts sent. He wouldn’t ever be Adam, school hero of two championship runs, again. Sitting on the floor, she heard the whispers from the crowd who once cheered her on every fall Friday night. They talked about how adorable she was, how much they wanted to hug her, and whether they even wanted her to be changed back. Even if she was turned back, even if she regained her title, she wouldn’t ever escape being Lorraine’s fashion doll.