Whatever Happened to Irwin Lars? - TG
By ThatGuy

It wasn't any small occasion to bring most of the boys of Tanner’s Gorge High together, all at once. Like any high school, most of the student body didn’t get along. It was a small enough school that everyone knew each other, but they had their cliques and clubs, their friends and enemies. It was hard to imagine a large group of them working together for any good length of time.

But this group, with as many of the male student body as they could find, still came together in times of crisis. Their meeting hall was a dilapidated old warehouse that a small bunch of them used to explore when they were kids. As they got older more of them started to go there, and now it was home base. The girls supposedly had their own meet up just like this. And when things really got bad, every teenager in the high school met at once. The students could only remember maybe one situation where that was necessary.

To be fair, the Beauty Contest Incident was pretty awful.

Corey Kringle was the only one left of the first group to call one of these meetings, back when he was a freshman. When the older members left school, he was given the reins. Now he was a very jaded senior.

He sat at an old desk at the front of the room. Fritz Brenner, Corey’s friend and one of the smartest kids in the school, sat next to him looking at a notepad. The rest of the boys sat at tables all around the room.

It looked like a double-sized homeroom, which ironically made him the teacher. He hated the comparison.

“Okay guys,” he said with a groan. “You all know why we’re here, right?”

Most of the assembled boys glared at him. Someone in the back quietly said “seriously?” Corey sighed and palmed his face. They were getting off to a great start already.

“Fine.” He grunted. “We’re here to determine whether or not the new girl in class, Winifred Lars, is actually our classmate Irwin Lars. We need to know for sure if Irwin was transformed, and if so how it might have happened.”

“We really have to suss that out still?” Said Otto Nightly, a rude senior sitting close to Corey’s desk. “It’s obvious! Can’t we skip the ‘what’ and go straight to the ‘how?’”

The room murmured in agreement. Corey rolled his eyes.

Tanner’s Gorge - a small tourist hub in the center of the vast Tanner’s Forest - seemed like a perfectly normal place, but every once in a while it reminded people that it wasn’t. This wasn’t an every day thing, it didn’t happen often at all really. But it was still the kind of town where an Irwin would inexplicably become a Winifred overnight, along with other weird things. Most people from out of town were blissfully oblivious until they encountered it themselves, and the people from the Gorge were too busy with their own lives to waste time worrying.

Irwin had a proud reputation both in and out of school, so everyone knew him. He was the basketball star, a cool loner who half the girls swooned over. He also had a habit of walking out of school, and around this time the week before he had ditched to go to the arcade and hadn’t been seen since.

In a regular town, there would be no possible way someone in their right mind could mistake a girl like the new student Winifred for a boy, let alone a beanpole like Irwin. Not from her figure, for sure. It wasn’t often a guy had curves like that, or could lose that much height in a day. Not from her pretty face either, though there were some familiar features to it. And there was nothing in her personality that was out of the ordinary for a normal teenage girl.

But this wasn’t a regular town. People going through strange physical changes like this weren’t that common, especially not something so extreme as having their very identities shuffled around, but it was still almost normal enough that even boys their age were desensitized to it. But then, it was also just weird enough that one of their own possbily being changed deserved an emergency meeting.

Once someone was turned into someone else it was usually a lost cause to keep treating them like who they were, instead of the person they had become. Unless there was some interesting reason to change them back to normal, the boys usually just accepted it and moved on. But the “how” was way more important. Whenever someone they knew got transformed into someone or something else, every student feared the possibility that it might be catching. If not forewarned, they could have changes spreading like the flu.

This included the literal Girl/Guy Flu. That one was always awkward.

“We have to do this properly,” Corey said testily. “So just be patient.”

“We’ve done this a million times before!” Otto whined. “Can’t we just cut to the chase?”

The room murmured again, this time a little louder. A few people shouted “get on with it, already!” A few others disagreed, mostly those who wanted to ask Winifred out and needed confirmation that they weren’t breaking some kind of guy code.

“It does seem rather superfluous,” Fritz said to Corey quietly.

Corey took a deep breath. “Let me put it this way. How many of you here has ever been turned into a girl before? At least, that you can remember?”

Of the entire room only eight of them - including Corey - raised their hands, one or two with some reluctance. A couple others looked confused as friends raised their hands for them.

“And how would you feel if instead of doing what we could to figure out what happened to you, the rest of us just assumed you moved away and immediately tried to get into your pants?”

Most of the guys who raised their hands flinched.

Otto, who didn't raise his hand, shrugged. “I dunno. If we didn’t remember being us, it probably wouldn’t matter to…“ he trailed off, as he saw the look on Corey’s face and the desperate head shaking of the other seniors in the room.

Corey’s eye twitched. “It’s! The principle! Of! The thing!”

Now everyone flinched. Seeing that this wasn’t going to lead anywhere, Corey calmed himself down. “Look, changes are nuts.” He said. ”And I’ve seen way more than any of you, so I know better. You guys ever wonder why my cousin Jeanette ‘left town?’ Here’s a hint, we got our dog Spot around the same time.”

Some of the boys, who made fun of Corey behind his back for dropping everything to walk his dog twice a day whenever his parents told him to, looked nervously at each other.

“Or maybe you remember Sheila Lang?” Corey continued. “Tall? Svelte? Dyes her hair and loves death metal? She’s my biology tutor. Wants to be a dentist. We’ve known her since grade school. Except not, because she used to be Xia Wang. Small, but I guess she had a nice figure. Straight-laced, into classical, loved politics. From the next town over. I know since I met her when she was here on some Model UN trip, and the only reason I remember her is because was there when she stepped on a fairy of all things. Now we literally all remember someone else instead.”

The boys all shared a shocked look. Vernon Wilson most of all, as he was currently dating Shiela.

“I know we usually decide to just let these things slide, and we still might, but I say it at least deserves some respect, okay?”

It was a perfect speech, full of importance and heartfelt connections. Surely, everyone who heard it would have no choice but to understand what Corey was trying to say and start taking the meeting seriously.

Or… maybe not. “Yeah, but-“ A single voice said, before the others could shush him.

“We’re doing this first!” Corey shouted, losing his temper. “Period! Now, facts!” He suddenly pointed to Fritz, who jumped and nearly dropped his notepad.

“R-right!” Fritz said, flipping through the pages. “Let’s see… Winifred first arrived in class within days of Irwin’s last known appearance. She claims to be his sister, though nobody here has ever known him to have one - including Manuel.” He waved to Manuel Garica, a Hispanic junior who was sitting close to the door and nodding. “Manny met him in kindergarten and knows him better than anyone. His parents claim she used to go to boarding school, but that’s flimsy. She’s living in his room, has his locker, everything. His brother Devon refuses to say anything about any of this, and the topic clearly makes him nervous. There’s the name connection too, though it’s less standard: Irwin, Winifred. Usually it would be something same-letter and obvious like Irene or Ivonne, but that’s not a point against.”

Manuel spoke up. “Plus she knows things. Way too much. She’s gotta be him.”

The other boys nodded amongst themselves. Winifred’s sudden appearance wouldn’t have been so weird if it wasn’t for the fact that she knew everyone, even though none of them had ever seen her before. Sure, she did act like one of the girls, but she knew things that the guys only ever told each other - nicknames, memories, in-jokes. She could walk up to Irwin’s old friends and have a conversation as though they’d known each other for years, and when they asked about it she would get all confused.

“Noted.” Corey said. “So we’re like ninety percent sure that Winifred is Irwin. That’s good enough for me. But now we have the question of 'how' to deal with.” He looked around the room. “Any ideas, gentlemen?”

“Maybe he stepped on a fairy!” One of the younger guys joked, only to shut up when Corey glared at him.

Another one took the stage. "Maybe he got too close to those jerks from Tanner's Gorge Prep!" He said, earning a laugh.

Tanner's Gorge Prep was their the private high school across town, and Tanner's Gorge High's main rivals. The students there were complete snobs, but none of them cared. After all, everyone knew the school was cursed.

When the laughter died down a third student, a senior sitting a bit closer to the desk, raised his hand. “You know, it could just be the old ‘pissed off the ex, turned into a girl’ routine. Who hasn’t had to deal with that?”

“That would make sense.” Fritz noted. “Especially given the exaggerations in her figure.”

“Huh?” Said a freshman in the far corner.

An older student sitting nearby slapped in on the back of the head. “He means her tits, moron,” he barked, cupping his hands out in front of his chest to demonstrate.

The boys all sighed in understanding. Winifred was, to put it mildly, quite attractive. She had a bust of a size not unusual for an adult woman while still in high school, and the rest of her - while not as extreme - was nothing to sneeze at. Most of the boys there were drooling over her within hours of her first day in class.

“Er… yes,” Fritz stammered. “Usually speaking, an exaggerated figure is a definite sign of a transformation dealt out intentionally - especially one made by an ex. They always know how to go straight for one’s sense of… er… machismo.”

Manuel shook his head. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Have you guys met Irwin’s mom? I have. And lots of his cousins,” He paused, and a goofy grin came over his face just thinking about it. “No way, that figure of hers is definitely genetic.”

“Plus, last I checked he and Karen split without fuss.” Corey added. “And even if she did turn him into some hyper-exaggerated bombshell as payback, why give him such a normal personality? Winifred might not remember being Irwin, but she’s still like a normal girl. No crazy urges or anything. It doesn’t track as a punishment.”

“So… what, he’s just a naturally busty girl?” Otto Nightly added.

Corey shrugged. “Why not?”

“I don’t like thinking that any of us are just one crossed chromosome away from looking like Pamela Anderson.”

“Think of it this way,” said one of the guys sitting next to him. “Your girlfriend could be one chromosome away from looking like Brad Pitt.”

“That doesn’t help.”

Corey sighed and looked to Fritz for input, but the bookworm seemed to be taking a break to read something on his phone. “As we were saying…” Corey grumbled. “It’s also possible now that you mention it. But that would mean that whatever did this simply changed his gender - and his mind of course. But we’ve got no way of proving exactly what happened.”

“Not if something were to change his younger brother as well,” Fritz said without thinking, as he was still reading. Apparently the urge to correct was too strong to be distracted. “If Manuel’s theory is true, it stands to reason that the resulting girl would look similar.”

The group shared a confused look. “Huh?” Said someone on the far end.

“He means if we got Devon to get himself zapped,” Otto replied, grinning. “He’d turn out just as hot.”

The sophomores, who were in the younger Lars’ brother’s class, all shot to attention looking all too excited. One of them could be heard whispering “write that down!” to another, while his friend scribbled furiously in a notepad. Corey groaned.

“I wonder if guys in other towns have to deal with these problems?” he muttered under his breath, before shouting to the rest of the room. “So it’s not something specific. What could it be?”

Fritz looked up from his phone. “I asked Ray Horston to do some snooping - yes, the kid who dresses up like a ninja in his spare time.” He added quickly, before anyone could interrupt. “It was a risky mission, but luckily he seems to have gotten out of it with his nether regions intact. He just sent me what he found.”

Everyone in the room sat up straight. For once, to Corey’s joy, there wasn’t a single bit of murmuring to be heard. “Well,” he said to Fritz. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”

“Right.” Fritz cleared his throat and began to leave. “Translating his texting slang, it says: ‘heard Irwin’s parents talking with someone on the phone. They were behind it.’” He frowned. “Well, that isn’t good.”

The boys all grimaced, looking back and forth at each other. “Go on!” Corey urged.

’Right. Ray says ‘they were angry that Irwin was rude to them and kept cutting school to play ball, so they decided they preferred a, quote, ‘sweet little princess to a layabout son.’ They gave him one last change, and when he kept acting out they hired someone from upstate to transform him into Winifred.’” Fritz looked up. He was paler than usual. “He says that’s all he could get, before they almost caught him. He’s patting himself down just in case he has any undue curves as we speak.”

Corey ran his hands through his hair, trying not to freak out. “Upstate” meant Merrylane University - otherwise known by basically everyone as Merlin Academy. It was actually only a few dozen miles out of town, just past the forest. It was supposedly a completely normal institute of higher learning (it even said so on the website) but everyone knew it was a school for wizards. For real this time.

The news sent the whole room into a frenzy. People were shouting out everything that popped into their heads, all over one another without break.

“So, what, he gets a little wild and they turn him into a chick?! That’s crazy!”

“This is so bad, guys. What if they tell everyone’s parents about it. We’re all going to be on thin ice!”

“Aw, man! My folks just caught me swiping one of my dad’s smokes! I don’t wanna be a girl!”

“So what’s the basketball team supposed to do now? We just lost our center!”

“Why do people always think that being a girl will make guys all nice and well-behaved, anyway? It’s ridiculous!”

“I don’t know.” Said Hubert Philips, a heavyset junior. “I think it’s just a ‘shock to the system’ thing. Like a personality reboot. I know parents will sometimes turn unruly daughters into sons when they get at wits end with them, too.”

“Really?” One of the boys at his table said skeptically. “Like when?”

Hubert flinched. “I… er… don’t think I should say any more about it here…” he said, looking around nervously at everyone but the guys he was sitting with, “but it's safe to say I know at least one.”

Hubert’s closest friends, all of whom were sitting right next to him him, shared an alarmed look.

“So what’s the solution?” The same boy said loudly, trying to get his mind off of Herbert’s comment. “We stay on the straight and narrow and hope our parents don’t use a bad report card as an excuse to put us in skirts?”

“And more importantly, what’s the verdict on whether it’s okay to hit that?” Otto said.

“Hey!” Manuel growled, rising to his feet with one fist raised. “Watch your mouth cabron, or I’ll watch it for you!”

“Oho!” Otto grinned nastily. “Someone’s got a crush on their old friend, eh?” He laughed, as one of Manuel’s other friends had to hold him back.

“Hey, hey!” Corey shouted, and everyone instantly calmed down. “I think it’s safe to say as long as we don’t start cutting school or making asses of ourselves, we should be fine. Which means we should expect Otto to show up with tits any day now.”

Otto frowned as the whole room laughed, and Manuel sent him a smug look.

“For now, just stay on the straight and narrow and spread the word.” Corey concluded. “Most of our folks are reasonable. Even if they are thinking of turning us into girls, we can probably talk it out. So if you suspect they’re leaning that way, just ask one of us to vouch for you before they trade in your boxers for bras.”

“Actually, the underwear would probably change by themselves,” Fritz noted. “And either way they would be trading in the boxers for panti-“

“Who cares, Fritz?” Corey said, but he was smiling. “Are we good? Is that it?”

“Seems that way.” Fritz replied.

Corey sighed in relief. It was good to actually have a problem that, if not fixed itself, could at least to be resolved without complications. That never happened at one of these meetings. All that was left was to wrap up, and he could get out of here. His college applications weren’t going to fill out themselves, and he still had to walk Spot.

The rest of the guys seemed to feel the same way, as they were all already rushing to get out of their seats.

“Now that that’s settled,” he said quickly, standing up. “Any more business before we split?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “No? Well then, meeting adj-“

“Actually…”

Corey cursed under his breath. Everyone in the room turned to Jake Ito-Warner, a third generation sophomore of Japanese descent. He was known to be a pretty nice and helpful guy, so they all felt obligated to pay him back by sticking around even if they really didn't want to.

“Um… y-yeah,” Jake stammered. “I might have a problem.”

Corey leaned back into his chair, pinching his nose. “Okay, fine. Get on with it.”

Jake stood up. “A little while back my sister - you guys all know Sue, right?” The rest of the group looked a little bored, but they all nodded. “She went to visit some second cousins or something in Japan for a few weeks. When she came back, she was… different. Now she says her name is Sachiko, and that she was born in Japan. Plus she’s, you know…” He turned red as he gestured a small size at his chest with his hands, and a larger size lower down. “…a little less chesty, a little more hippy. And now she acts like one of those dutiful, submissive wife types you see in anime and stuff. It’s so unlike her, it’s freaky. My parents have been keeping her home for a while to figure this out.”

The boys all looked at each other, thinking it over. It was a little disturbing to hear about, especially the ones that knew Jake’s family, but on the whole they didn’t seem to eager to stick around talking about it. Some were already on their way to the door.

“That’s not good," Corey said, "but I don’t know why you think it’s something we need to deal with. Sounds like your folks already have it handled.”

Fritz shook his head. “With that information, it might not even be a transformation at all. Maybe someone from Japan came in her place, and they just want you to think she’s been changed.” The rest of the room - at least, the ones not getting ready to leave - all stared at him. “What? It’s happened before! Remember that false ‘substitute’ that wanted us to think he was actually Principal Farin?”

There was more murmuring as the boys talked it over. That was how the Beauty Contest Incident started. So it was possible, if not all that likely.

“No!” Jake shouted, a little too loud. He winced as everyone looked at him again. “I mean, I know it’s a transformation. Because… I think it might be contagious.” He muttered the last part almost too quietly for the room to hear, but everybody heard the word “contagious.” The ones on the way out froze. The boys sitting closest to Jake immediately started inching away.

Jake sighed, but he continued on anyway. “Since she came home, I’ve noticed my hair growing faster. Sachiko’s hair is ridiculously long. And… other stuff too. I don’t think my face has gotten any girlier though… has it?”

A couple of his friends who had just backed off reluctantly leaned in closer to take a better look, but couldn’t see any difference.

“You’re still sure?” Corey said.

“Yes! I’ve also noticed it in my parents,” Jake continued, getting louder. “They’ve been going through the same stuff - their hair is getting longer hair, and my dad is losing weight. Plus they sometimes act the same way she does, all prim and polite. But they won’t believe me! Even with… with this…”

He was redder than ever, but tried to look determined as he zipped open his jacket and pulled on his shirt: one of his favorites, which was now at least a size too small thanks to two small but growing weights pushing out of his chest.

Having already sidled off at the word “contagious,” every single guy at his table - especially the ones who had been leaning in close - screamed like they were the ones turning into girls and threw themselves onto the floor like he was on fire. Jake groaned and dropped his head into his hands.

“Um… okay then…” Corey said slowly, as he watched the others pick themselves off the floor and scramble clear to the other side of the room. “I think that’s worth another emergency session.”

This led to the loudest murmur yet, mostly composed of “no, really?”s and a single, loud “aw, man. Not again!”

“Gentlemen…” He said, calling the chaotic assemblage to order. “Any ideas..?”