InsaneJournal

Jenna is just like me...
WHO: Elarry & Nora
WHAT: Manly mother-daughter bonding time, 13 Going on 30, manicures, glitter
WHEN: Bodyswap, backdated like whoa
WHERE: Mallory residence
WARNINGS: PG girly-girl stuff ostensibly performed by two manly men


Cora, in Nate’s body (who was starting to refer to herself and her counterpart as ‘Nora’ since they’d been flip-flopped), was curled up on the couch (as much as she could when pushing seven feet) with her ninja-pony pillowed under her head and a bag of frozen blueberries in her lap, watching 13 Going on 30. The freezer bag was sitting on a towel to catch the condensation as the berries thawed, her fingertips were stained blue with berry juice, and she may or may not have been sucking her thumb. She’d blame it on the berries, but Elaine would recognize Cora’s pensive look anywhere--even on the face of another mother’s child.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” she asked, leaning on the arm of the couch, and stroking Nathan’s short-cropped hair. Cora hadn’t sucked her thumb in years, but Elaine had caught her chewing her nails more than once since she had aged up--and again when she was put into Nate’s body. Usually, when Cora got like this, Elaine would braid her long locks into fishtails, or French braids; but for now, the best she could do was a scalp massage. “I thought you liked this movie.”

“I do,” Cora said. Her voice cracked a little, like she wasn’t used to using it, which she wasn’t--or maybe it was that she still wasn’t used to hearing this particular voice from her own throat--and she gave a little cough to clear said throat. “I’m just like Jenna, without the part where she turns into Mean Girls in the middle. And the part where she gets to go back and grow up the normal way. But…” She rolled her eyes up at her mom, and Elaine felt herself get all choked up with manly man-tears. “What if Jenna had gotten stuck thirty? It would have been really, really sad!”

“I know, baby girl,” Elaine murmured. She knew this wasn’t really about the movie. The movie was just bringing up...feels. Or whatever it was the iKiddos were calling their emotions these days. “But you’re not Jenna, you’re mi Corazon, and your sweetheart has eyes for only you. Just give yourself time, you’ll grow into each other again.”

“You think so?” Cora’s voice sounded soft and small, even in Nate’s deep baritone.

“I do,” Elaine said, grabbing Cora’s hand and giving it a little shake. “Now, enough of this nail-biting. What do you say I put the blueberries away and give you a manicure?”

“No!” Cora squeaked, clutching at the freezer bag, “I need these to cool Nate’s jets!”

“Wha--?” Elaine started to ask, but then she caught Cora’s furtive glance from her lap to her own, and the blush that crept across her cheeks. “Oh, don’t you worry about that. We’re going to be too busy getting gussied up and giggling to be thinking about man-reactions. Okay?”

“Okay,” Cora said. She put the blueberries in the fridge, and before long, there was spray-on body glitter in her hair, and she and Elaine were polishing each others’ nails. And she was so taking a picture to send to Nate.