The Photographer

Chapter 4
Subtracting from the Faculty

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Chapter Description: Marcus checks on his unrequited crushes and continues to change things at Kerry.

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Monday, 1:15 p.m.

Jenny McPhee blinked again at her reflection, as if it would change.

But it wasn’t: a 16-year-old cheerleader looked back at her, wide-eyed and innocent.

“This has to be some sort of dream,” she said to her teenage reflection.

She pinched herself: nothing. Didn’t that always work in the movies, she thought.

“My name is Jenny McPhee. I’m 27 years old. I’m the assistant principal at Kerry High School. This is a dream,” she told herself, as if a recitation of the facts would wake her up where the stereotypical ’pinch’ had not. “I am not a teenage cheerleader. I am NOT a teenage cheerleader.”

Her high-pitched voice, her bared teenage midriff, and her blonde ponytail presented a very different message, Marcus thought. He had witnessed his transformation working to perfection and had followed the fleeing teenage principal.

She saw the shadow behind her, screamed, and jumped about five feet in the air.

“Marcus! You scared me!” she yelled.

Marcus decided to play dumb.

“Do I know you?” he said, laying it on thick.

“Marcus! It’s me...Jenny McPhee. I’ve been....changed somehow!” she said, her already high-pitched voice raising a few notes.

“What?” Marcus said. “How?” He smiled inside.

“I don’t know! One second, I was standing next to George Tate, getting ready to introduce the cheer captain and start the pep rally, and the next, I...felt funny, and suddenly...George was talking to me like I was the head cheerleader!

Marcus couldn’t help but joke: “Yeah, I doubt that a cheerleading outfit is your normal work attire.”

Jenny smiled a little at that. “What a weird dream this is,” she said. “I mean, I WAS a cheerleader in high school...but I don’t remember having a body like THIS,” she said, pointing to her exposed flat stomach and thin, toned legs. “I wasn’t fat or anything...especially looking back with my 27-year-old metabolism...but wow. I have ABS now!”

“I’m calling the school office,” Marcus said, pulling out his phone. “Maybe the nurse can figure out what’s wrong with you.”

Marcus instead navigated to the Reality app, switched the ’photog input’ to ’suggestive’, and adjusting the ’personality’ setting to ’match age’, also selecting ’cheerleader’ from the sub-menu, then tapped the ’okay’ button.

Time to give her some instruction, he thought.

“Jenny, this is not a dream. You are a 16-year-old in 2012. You will notice nothing out of the ordinary about me being here, in this school, in this bathroom. You will answer any question I ask you truthfully for your new personality,” Marcus said.

Jenny’s expression changed from concerned to carefree.

Marcus smiled. “Who are you?” he asked simply.

“Like, my name is Jenny Taylor! I’m 16 years old, and I’m the junior captain of the Kerry High cheer squad! Gooo Cougars!” the suddenly-bubbly teen said, inadvertently reversing her previous statement in the mirror. She paused. “Like, why are you in the girls’ bathroom?”

“You mean you’re not an assistant principal at this school?” Marcus said.

Jenny looked confused for a half-second. That...sounded right. But she dismissed that thought as impossible and reverted to teen character.

“Eww. No. Why would you, like, say that?” Jenny said with disdain. “I mean, like, I’d like to be a teacher some day, but, like, I’m only in high school,” she said. Wait, was that a zit, she thought, turning her attention back to the bathroom mirror. Totally gross.

“Jenny,” he said. “Please go sit in the empty classroom down the hall, and remain there until I arrive.”

“Like, okay!” she said, skipping off, her skirt (and her perky breasts, Marcus noted) bouncing happily.

One down, one to go, he thought.

January 2010

Marcus knew this moment would come.

Yes, he’d done his best to avoid it. But he knew it would happen eventually. Perils of covering the public school beat.

Steve and Annie were walking towards him.

He tried his best to break the ice.

“Hard to believe Boreman’s retiring,” Marcus said, doing his best to ignore the wedding ring on Annie’s hand, as if not seeing it was not believing it. “I mean, he’s been around so long that he was OUR principal, Annie.”

She always brings out the ’lame’ in me, Marcus thought, mentally kicking himself.

“It’s just Anne now,” she said coolly. “Annie sounds so childish.”

On the positive side, when she acts like this, it makes it a little bit easier to see her with someone else, Marcus thought. Wait, no, it doesn’t.

“You know Steve, of course,” Annie said.

Marcus took stock of—well, he couldn’t really look it any other way—his nemesis. Steve was balding and had gained a good bit of weight, with his muscles turning into flab.

And, really, he had to admit that his Annie had put on a few pounds, too. Maybe 25 or so...he could never think that she was ugly, but...yeah, she had seen better days, too.

“How could I forget? I saw you got promoted to assistant mechanic,” Marcus said.

Anne gave Marcus a look, but the sarcasm sailed over Steve’s head.

“Yeah, man. It’s pretty wild,” Steve said.

“Not bad for 28,” said Marcus.

“Still not seeing anyone, Marcus?” Anne said. Ouch. Twist the knife, why don’t you, Marcus thought.

“No...the right ones seem to be taken,” said Marcus.

Speaking of which...Marcus looked towards the front of the school auditorium, at the reason for the evening’s festivities.

With the retirement of Hank Boreman as principal and the promotion of George Tate to principal, Jenny McPhee, who had been a huge hit as guidance counselor, was taking the vacant assistant principal slot.

And, of course, what better way for Jenny to start her term than by posing for a photo with the newly minted teacher of the year?

Marcus dutifully took the photo of the two loves of his life, who were posing with their second-rate husbands.

Monday, 1:20 p.m.

Anne Harris was still in a bit of a haze as she opened her eyes.

“Wha...what happened to me?” she asked the blur in the corner of her vision.

“You passed out,” said the blur. Anne recognized the voice. Betty Porter.

“Betty...I had the craziest dream. I was...young again. 16,” Anne said.

“Young lady...show some respect to your teachers,” Betty said sternly. “It’s Mrs. Porter. Your trig teacher.”

Betty’s attitude softened.

“Are you sure you’re okay. Do you need a drink of water?”

Anne was still confused.

She sat up, and felt a cool breeze on her stomach.

She looked down...and what happened in the gym started to come back to her.

The 40 pounds she had put on since high school—gone.

Instead, her stomach had been restored to its thin glory.

She continued her self-diagnosis: she was showing a lot of (once again toned) leg in a brief skirt and her breasts had firmed up quite a bit.

She was back to her best.

But how?

“I really need to get back to class,” Betty said. “Are you coming with me, Annie, or do you need to lie down a little longer?”

Anne—she still saw herself as Anne, even if she was dressed like a teenage bimbo—thought for a second. Let’s see how crazy this dream can be, she thought.

“I’ll come with you,” she decided.

Monday, 1:25 p.m.

Having used the camera to make everyone unaware of his presence as well as his changes, Marcus, who had followed the current (and, in Annie’s current state, future) math teachers through the hall, slid into the chair behind Betty Porter’s desk.

Betty didn’t need it—having tended to Annie, she was in front of her class, trying to make up for lost time.

“Who can solve this cosine function?” she asked.

Anne raised her hand politely.

Well, of course, Marcus thought. She teaches the subject! Math geek.

Marcus admired his handiwork up close for the first time.

Anne was once again Annie. She had always been brainy, which attracted Marcus, but starting early in high school, she had decided she wanted to get attention in a different way, and, for a lack of a better term, slutted it up a bit, both in dress and in actions.

In college, she had turned her back on that, and become a bit of a snobby prude, Marcus thought. But by making her look 16 again, Marcus had inadvertently brought back Sexy Annie. Not a bad side effect at all.

Annie was halfway through solving the problem, cruising through it with the ease of someone who’d been teaching the subject for years.

Time to even the odds some more, he decided.

Marcus selected Annie with his camera, then scrolled through his options, finally setting on ’mental age’, and going through the sub-settings until he found one for ’math’ (wow, this camera can do anything). He smiled, and scrolled it down to ’15’, leaving every other mental setting on ’27’ and making sure that ’instant’ was selected for the type of change.

Click.

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Annie paused. Suddenly, the problem seemed difficult—foreign to her.

She looked at it again. She saw her handwriting, but she didn’t remember writing the numbers on the board, or could make heads or tails out of what her next step should be.

Betty picked up on her indecision.

“Can anyone help Annie finish here?” she said. Someone in the back of the room raised his hand, and answered the question correctly.

“Annie, you can sit down,” Betty said.

That was so weird, Annie thought.

The next few minutes were more of the same: her notebook page had been blank before going to the board, but now Annie found herself taking frantic notes to keep up with the lesson.

Just like any other high school sophomore in the same situation.

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This is so cool!

Marcus couldn’t keep that thought from going through his head, over and over again.

That ’undo’ button is such a blessing, he thought. Guilt-free fun.

He turned his attention towards Betty Porter.

Betty had just crossed the line to 40 years old, but Marcus could easily remember the little crush he’d had on the then-28-year-old teacher when he was a freshman.

She’d put on a few pounds since then, and her face had gained some wrinkles, too. But she was still attractive for an older lady, her dark brown hair pulled up in a sensible bun and still showing no signs of gray

He programmed another set of changes.

Click.

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Betty felt a chill wash over her for a second.

She looked out at her class.

“So, you see, the sine is the opposite over the hypotenuse,” said the 35-year-old teacher, adjusting her glasses. They didn’t seem to work as well as they did before. She put them down.

“Another way to write this is a over c,” she said, speaking with a bit more energy, unconsciously adjusting the waistband of her skirt, which was starting to feel a bit loose.

“Now, the cosine is, like, b over c,” she continued, her voice a bit higher, her hair working its way out of the bun. “Does that makes sense?”

A boy in a football uniform in the back raised his hand, and Liz, as she now liked to be called, pointed at him, a bit nervously.

“Is this your last day with us, Miss Perry?” he asked.

Liz was confused for a second, but it quickly passed.

“Yes...this is it for my student teaching,” the 23-year-old said. “Thanks for being, like, so patient with me today! You can relax for the next 15 minutes until the bell for class change.”

Liz Perry was happy. She’d been working with this class for the past month, and as the final requirement for her teaching practicum, she’d had to teach the lesson by herself today, without the supervision of her mentor. Maybe next year, she’d have a teaching job of her own!

Wow, that’s a relief, she thought. I mean, I was so stressed these past few days I must have lost weight and didn’t even realize it, she thought, tugging at her loose skirt and blouse.

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Now, for the crescendo, Marcus thought, rising from the desk to move into the corner of the room, setting up a second set of changes, and putting them in motion with a click.

Betty’s transformation halted, while the football player in the back started to age.

Around them the students continued to chatter, oblivious to the magic happening around them.

The football player, who Marcus recognized as star quarterback Ryan Yates, quickly passed through the rest of high school, through college, finally stopping in his upper 20s.

Unlike the previous transformations Marcus had unleashed, there was no past template for the camera to follow, so it had just extrapolated forward.

Yates’ football muscle tone stayed with him as a man: he looked like a coach now instead of a player, although he was still wearing the exact same Kerry Football T-shirt.

And, Marcus noted in a strictly hetero way, a very attractive coach.

Time for part three: down went Betty again.

Within 30 seconds, teacher and student had switched roles.

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Lizzie Perry felt a flutter in her heart as she approached Mr. Yates’ desk. He was so hot!

“I, like, really enjoyed today’s lesson,” she said with a shy giggle.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Yates said. “You really did well on the last test, too.”

The rail-thin, brace-faced 17-year-old melted. “Math is sooo cool,” she said. “You, um, really make it come alive to me.”

Yates nodded. “Lizzie...did you have a question?”

“Oh, yeah!” Lizzie said, embarrassed. “I have to leave early tomorrow for debate team...is there any way you could let me know what the homework is going to be so I can work on it?”

Yates frowned. “Debate? You mean, cheerleading regionals?”

The change was instant. The braces went off, replaced by perfect white teeth. The ’Cherry Pi’ T-shirt with a picture of the pi symbol—gone too, replaced by a midriff-baring top just like the one that the teenaged Jenny Taylor was currently sporting, with the short matching pleated skirt to go with it, containing a curvier Lizzie Perry.

Her black hair picked up blonde highlights, while her upper body toned up, her legs slimmed, her general attitude went from shy and nerdy to...perky.

Click.

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The class started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Betty asked.

Ryan Yates, 17 again, couldn’t speak through the laughter, so he just pointed.

Betty looked down, and gasped.

The revealing cheerleading outfit looked ridiculous on a 40-year-old.

 

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