# chapters

author_id: seuzz
title: A New Spokesmodel
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<div><div> <span>"Who's fucking Craig Wyatt?" you ask in answer to the suggestion. You're at home, on the phone, talking to Douglas Canfield. It's George Mendoza answering from under the mask, of course. You called to ask him who he knew down in the junior class that would be a good disguise to help expand the network in the eleventh grade.<br/>
<br/>
"Who is he, or who's he fucking?" Canfield replies. "No one, I think, except he's dating Bailey Keane, but she's not the type -- "<br/>
<br/>
"No, who is this asshole?"<br/>
<br/>
"He's Craig Wyatt. He's in the band. Plays clarinet."<br/>
<br/>
You try to put a face to the description. Something very hazy comes. A tall blonde kid, maybe? "Why him? Is he a stoner? Is he popular?"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, he's got a lot of friends, but he's not one of those Mr. Popularity fags. He's in a couple of AP classes, he's in band, he shows up at all the parties -- "<br/>
<br/>
"How's this help us move product?"<br/>
<br/>
"The same way Andrea does. He's this clean-cut kid, but it's not like he's a fucking Boy Scout or choir boy about it. That's what makes him perfect." Mendoza is clearly warming to his idea. "This guy, he belongs to all the right clubs, you know, and he's got all the right shit about him -- "<br/>
<br/>
"You're not convincing me, man."<br/>
<br/>
"He's like an advertisement for making it respectable. Like, if he starts smoking a little weed, everyone's gonna be all, like, 'Hey, if Craig's doing it, it must be okay, I'll do some too.' So he'll make smoking weed look totally boring and safe, and then lots of people will start doing it too. At least, that's the way it looks to me."<br/>
<br/>
This sounds promising. "Is he friends with Dougie Canfield? 'Cos I need someplace to put Evans, he's being a total pussy and I need someone who can manage him, which would be you."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, I talk to the Wyatt fag, it won't look funny if we become best friends."<br/>
<br/>
"Fantastic. I'm putting you in charge, then. Can you arrange to hang out with him after school on Monday? We'll do the switch then."<br/>
<br/>
He promises to let you know, and you hang up. That done, you return to working on a brain band to go with one of the new masks that Chen dropped off a little while ago.<br/>
<br/>
Four masks. You've got four masks either completed or in various stages of completion. One of them you're holding back against the time that Johansson decides that he has to get himself a copy of Steve Patterson. One you're going to use on this Craig Wyatt guy. One you'll use on Kelsey. And the last?<br/>
<br/>
You still think that Justin Roth would be a good recruit, but you're less and less enamored of that part of your program. You've already got things set up to move huge volumes through Westside and Eastman and at the Warehouse. You're gearing up a network in the local junior class. Really, instead of nailing down every angle in the Westside senior class, you ought to be pushing into the junior class at Eastman and finding new customers at the university, which is still where you sell most of your product.<br/>
<br/>
Trouble is, you haven't got any agents that you can put in those places.<br/>
<br/>
You sigh. No, what you really need to do is to get back inside the head of Aubrey Blackwell and start figuring out the grimoire. The deeper you get into it, the more toys you've discovered inside it. The long-term answers are there.<br/>
<br/>
But that's a job for tomorrow, when you can go hide somewhere after taking Kirkham's mask off.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
But you're solidly distracted the next day when Chen calls with a message: Douglas Canfield got himself an early play date with Craig Wyatt, and is going to have him over at his house that afternoon. You call Mendoza, get the details on the meeting, and scramble to get your shit together so you can be there. Evans sounds relieved when you call him and tell him he'll be working closely with Mendoza for the foreseeable future.<br/>
<br/>
The ambush is slated to go off at two o'clock, and the first thing you have to do is meet with Evans and Trantham. These two are inhabiting each other's form, of course, so it's an easy swap to make when you meet at one o'clock out back of Westside. The trickiest part is keeping them inside separate portables so that Evans won't see how docile his replacement is. When he asks how you're going to get masks off one victim and then onto the other, you tell him to shut up and trust you.<br/>
<br/>
The swap itself is just a matter of ordering each person, in their separate portables, to give you their clothes. You transfer each wardrobe to the other portable and have them put the other clothes back on. You get the mask off Evans first, wake him up, and send him back to the parking lot with directions to Douglas Canfield's house. Then in the other portable you take the mask of Evans off Chris Trantham and quietly steal away to follow your confederate.<br/>
<br/>
Canfield lives in the same general neighborhood as Chelsea Cooper, on the southeast part of town about a mile from Fort Suffolk. It's a ritzy section of the city, and the Canfields live on the very edge of town in the largest house in the development. Dougie -- looking dopey as ever in a sloppy gray pullover and baggy cargo pants, lets you in and introduces you to his parents before taking you upstairs.<br/>
<br/>
"Nice fucking bedroom," you observe when you're inside it. It's very large, with a king-size bed, a tall book case, a large desk with an executive chair, an entertainment center and two bean bags. You nod at Evans, already arrived earlier and sitting quietly in a bean bag in front of a flat-screen TV and game box. "Bed's big enough for a three-way. You ever have one of those up here?"<br/>
<br/>
"You asking to have one now?" Canfield retorts<br/>
<br/>
"Keep in character," you tell him sharply.<br/>
<br/>
"That is in character," he honks. "I'm kind of obnoxious."<br/>
<br/>
"Only 'kind of'?" You nod at Evans again. "You tell him where he's going, what he's doing?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah." Dougie's brow creases anxiously. "How's this going to work? I mean, if Craig wakes up here inside Tanner's body -- ?"<br/>
<br/>
"Leave that to me. Chen discovered a little trick that gives 'em a little bit of amnesia, just enough to cover things. Oh, that reminds me," you continue when the other two exchange an anxious glance. "This partnership that me and Chen are running. He's taking care of the product, so if you've got any questions about supply or sales, talk to him. The masks and the magic, and who pretends to be who, I'm in charge of that."<br/>
<br/>
They nod. "I heard you're doing something with Kelsey Blankenship," Canfield says.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, but don't worry about that. Where's this fucker Wyatt? Is he always late?" It's after two by now.<br/>
<br/>
It's another ten minutes before he shows. You recognize him once he's inside, though you don't know anything about him. He's not such an obvious dillweed as Canfield is, and your instant reaction is that Mendoza probably has him pegged correctly. He's a tall kid, skinny, with reddish-gold hair and dark eyebrows that slope down at the corners over sleepy eyes. Everything about his face is long -- long nose, long jaw, long chin -- but his looks are handsome enough without being very distinguishable. He's wearing tan slacks, a blue Oxford shirt and a red and blue tie, probably the leftovers from going to church. The impression of WASPy respectability is offset, though, but the way he's got the tie loosened, the sleeves rolled up over his elbows, and a Boston Red Sox ball cap perched brim backward on his head. "Hey," he says in a very casual tone. But the guarded look in his eye tells you that he recognizes David Kirkham, and recognizes him as bad news.<br/>
<br/>
So you don't waste time. "Grab him," you tell your confederates. Canfield immediately springs at him; Evans lumbers a little more slowly.<br/>
<br/>
"What the -- ?" Wyatt barely has time to twist inside the others' grasp before you smash a blank mask onto his face.<br/>
<br/>
"Get him undressed," you order. "And try not to give yourself a chubby while you do it."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"How long did it take you to get into character as Trantham?" you ask your newest imposter as he finishes getting dressed.<br/>
<br/>
"I dunno. A couple of hours?" Craig Wyatt cinches the knot of his tie, then loosens it. He sweeps the ball cap off the bed and sets it on his head. He blinks sleepily at you. "Like, six or seven?"<br/>
<br/>
"Then maybe you better call home, tell your folks you and Dougie here will be out sucking each other's cocks until eight or nine o'clock."<br/>
<br/>
"He's got a girlfriend," says Canfield.<br/>
<br/>
"I do?"<br/>
<br/>
"Doesn't matter," you tell Evans. "And steer clear of her until you get some idea of how to treat her."<br/>
<br/>
"I know how I'd treat her," says Canfield, and grabs his crotch.<br/>
<br/>
"Like that, huh?" Wyatt laughs. "Now I know what to aim for."<br/>
<br/>
"That ain't your job," you remind him. "Remember where you coulda been. I'm doing you a big favor, fucker. This cocksucker's a lot better looking than your last carcass, or your real one." You glance out the window in time to see the Evansbot getting into his car. "Me and Chen have a lot invested in you. Don't fuck us over. You're gonna smoke weed, and you're gonna get all your friends to start buying it too."<br/>
<br/>
"Sure. But can I start with my girlfriend?"<br/>
<br/>
"If that works for you."<br/>
<br/>
"I'll make it work," he smirks.<br/>
</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: The Mollycoddle
path:
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<div><div> <span>Molly Shaw is not an unhandsome girl, so it's no surprise there's a line around the block of guys willing to give her a reason to worry that she's come down with a baby. But there's room for improvement. And even if she wasn't quite so pudgy, or didn't wear her mousy brown hair in that unflattering flat drape, or showed a little less of her very tall forehead and showed a little more skin instead of wrapping herself in cheap and shapeless fabrics --<br/>
<br/>
Well, she'd be prettier even if she just carried herself with more poise and confidence.<br/>
<br/>
Kelsey Blankenship has poise and confidence to spare. <i>What Molly Shaw could do with those.</i><br/>
<br/>
"Why do you want to see me," she asks, her voice roughly edged with suspicion, when she answers your call.<br/>
<br/>
"Just to see you, girl. Well, that's not true. I got something special to show you."<br/>
<br/>
"I've seen your special thing before, David."<br/>
<br/>
"Not this special thing. It's awesome, trust me. My God, it'll change your life."<br/>
<br/>
"Where?" She's sulky, but at least she's willing.<br/>
<br/>
"How about up at the school, the portables back behind -- "<br/>
<br/>
"Oh God, <i>no!</i>" Her voice rises to a shriek. "I know what you want, David, you're not -- "<br/>
<br/>
"Alright, alright! Jesus! The library, then, the city library. Someplace public, because it's not <i>that.</i> It's something else, but I want it someplace people can't see us. Four o'clock. I'll buy you ice cream afterward," you add when she's silent. "If you don't like what I show you."<br/>
<br/>
"Is it just going to be you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Just me. Though a third person might show up." You hang up before she can ask what you mean by that.<br/>
<br/>
Next you call Andrea. She's busy socializing, but you don't have to threaten her to break off and meet you at Westside. Thomason can keep busy in a portable with Andrea's cell after you've divested him of the mask, and while he's unconscious you shave some of his hair off and save it in a small plastic baggie.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Molly is wearing clothes even more shapeless than usual when you meet her: baggy jeans and a fuzzy blue top that's a little like a sweater and little like a sweatshirt without managing to be either one. Her cheeks seem slightly swollen, and she looks at you from under her eyebrows with a hooded resentment. Brown hair hangs limply past her shoulders. She's tried something new, and tied a braid across the top of her forehead. It looks like a dead garter snake.<br/>
<br/>
"You're looking nice," you tell her, and stroke the side of her head. She jerks away. "Hey, what's the matter?"<br/>
<br/>
"Nothing," she says. "I'm just mad."<br/>
<br/>
"Who at? Maybe I could talk 'em into making it right for you." You cough into a clenched fist.<br/>
<br/>
"Never mind. What do you want?" She squints peevishly at you.<br/>
<br/>
"I got something to show you. Come on with me, we don't want anyone seeing."<br/>
<br/>
You lead her up into one of the wings and back behind the stacks, to a spot where you know of some sofas and comfy chairs. They turn out to be taken, but the second set, off in a distant corner, are empty, and you point Molly into one of them as you set your backpack down. She falls into it like an avalanche of old clothes.<br/>
<br/>
"My friend Chen made this," you tell her as you unzip your bag and take Andrea's mask out. "You know Chen. You sometimes buy from him." She makes a face at you. "Well, he found this kind of arts and crafts book, and it taught him how to make things like this." You display the mask.<br/>
<br/>
The curl of her lip tells you she's unimpressed. "Yeah, so? It looks dumb."<br/>
<br/>
"It's a mask. You put it on."<br/>
<br/>
She rolls her eyes. "Halloween was Friday."<br/>
<br/>
"Except this is a magical mask. Really and for true. Here, see?" You turn the mask around. "It's got Andrea Varnsworth's name in it."<br/>
<br/>
"So what?" Then she does a double take it, and stares. Her nostrils flare. She puts out her hands and takes the mask and tries to touch the letters that float over the attached metal strip. "I guess this is pretty cool," she says.<br/>
<br/>
"It's more than cool. It's magic. Look, let me show you." You take the mask back from her. "I'm going to put it on your face. Just press it right up close." You spread your palm over your own face to illustrate. "It's going to stick to your face. And then it's going to give you <i>Andrea's</i> face." You grin.<br/>
<br/>
Molly stares, then snorts. "I don't have time for bullshit, David." She starts to get up.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey, hey." You press her back down. "Just humor me. Just let me -- " You push the mask toward her, slowly and gently at first. But when she tries twisting away, you ram it home.<br/>
<br/>
Then you sit back with a heavy sigh. It wasn't likely she was going to sit still for the demonstration, but you would have rather talked her around. Either way, though, you get to stare for a couple of minutes at the severely beautiful face of Andrea Varnsworth as she slumps inside the clothes of Molly Shaw.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Jesus! Oh Jesus God!" Molly gasps and trembles and with quivering fingertips touches one cheek while staring at the picture on the screen of her iPhone. "Is that really -- ?" She blinks wet eyes.<br/>
<br/>
You had to hold her back when she woke up, and talk her gently through the discovery of the change. You started by assuring her that it was only temporary, that you could take the mask off her any time, and then had her look at her hands. Then you had her feel her breasts, which are much larger than they were before. Only then did you have her take out her cell phone and look at herself in it.<br/>
<br/>
"It's a perfect disguise," you tell her. "All the way down to your toes. There's no seams or buttons or zippers, and no way to get it off without using the magic words."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah?" Her tone and expression are both dazed.<br/>
<br/>
"And up here." You point to your temple. "There's even memories. It takes a couple of hours for them to come through. But if you spent the night inside that mask, then when you woke up tomorrow you'd remember everything Andrea remembers, know everything she knows. You'd have all her abilities, too. You could swim like her, dance like her, sing like her. Instincts, too. You'd be able to act just like her, if you concentrated. Walk around inside that thing, and tell yourself you're Andrea Varnsworth, and you'd be able to act just like her so perfectly that no one would ever guess you weren't."<br/>
<br/>
Her eyes are dilated, and she's been staring at the cell phone, so you're not sure she even heard you. "Molly?" you say.<br/>
<br/>
"Sorry? I mean, I heard what you said, but -- " She touches herself again. "I just can't believe this." She touches her teeth. "Wow, they're just like hers. I mean, they're not like mine!" She runs her tongue around inside her mouth. "It feels funny."<br/>
<br/>
"You'd get used to it."<br/>
<br/>
She lowers the cell phone, but still stares off distantly. "Why are you showing me this?" A flush begins to creep up her neck.<br/>
<br/>
"I want you to do a job for me."<br/>
<br/>
"What kind of job?" Her eyes harden.<br/>
<br/>
You smile. "I want you to replace someone. I want to turn you into another girl, and I want you to take over her life."<br/>
<br/>
Her eyes go very big. For a moment you're terrified that she's going to jump up and run screaming from the library. But in a very quiet voice she only says, "Who?"<br/>
<br/>
"Kelsey Blankenship."<br/>
<br/>
You hold each other's eyes. Molly doesn't move for the longest time, and when she finally does move, it's only to blink once. "Why?"<br/>
<br/>
"To help out some friends of mine. You barely have to do anything. See, Kelsey has these parties every week at her house, where she and her friends like to hang out and smoke a little weed."<br/>
<br/>
"I know about those," Molly says, which surprises you.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh. Well, I've got some friends that would like to start hanging out with her at those things. But you know what a snob Kelsey is. She doesn't want to hang out with them. But if <i>you</i> were Kelsey, you'd be nice and let my friends hang out at these parties. Right?"<br/>
<br/>
Her wariness deepens. "Who are these friends?"<br/>
<br/>
"Some juniors, maybe a few sophomores. Kelsey's type, they're AP students like she is. But she's a snot and only wants seniors and maybe only one or two juniors hanging out. It would just be a really nice thing if you opened her parties up a bit and didn't make her such a stuck up bitch."<br/>
<br/>
Deep skepticism shows in her eyes. "You don't care about people that way, David."<br/>
<br/>
"No I don't, but it would be useful. 'Cos my friend Chen, he's the one who sells Kelsey her weed. If she starts inviting more people to her parties, he sells her and her friends more weed."<br/>
<br/>
Molly blinks again. "Oh," she says, and with that you realize you've convinced her. Until her suspicion reappears with the question, "But happens to Kelsey? If I'm replacing her -- "<br/>
<br/>
So you explain about how you'd make a mask of Molly herself, and put Kelsey inside it, and how the new Molly would act just like the old Molly and would forget that she was Kelsey. "And you could stay Kelsey as long as you want. Rest of the year. Or after. Go to college, marry some rich fucker who works on Wall Street, become a fucking socialite." You shrug.<br/>
<br/>
Envy and morality fight for possession of Molly's face. But you judged your girl well, and the fight doesn't last long. She only surprises with one question, but it's a real bombshell: "Can Joe Ysleta come with me? I mean, as one of Kelsey's friends?"</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: A Friend in Need
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Ysleta?" you exclaim. "Why him?"<br/>
<br/>
Molly's expression turns hooded. And since she is wearing Andrea's face, it's a sexy and smoldering kind of hooded, the kind that makes you want to take her face in both hands and chew her lips off. You restrain yourself, though, and silently repeat the question to her.<br/>
<br/>
It's a weird request. First, because you don't see why Molly would want to bring a friend along if she makes a switch. Second, because you don't know why she'd want to bring Joe Ysleta along. He's not her boyfriend or anything. In fact, he's the boyfriend of --<br/>
<br/>
<i>Ah.</i> Maybe that's it. "Are you trying to steal him from -- ? Who's he going out with now? Victoria?"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm not stealing him," she snarls back. "He'd want to do this."<br/>
<br/>
"So you want Victoria to come along too?" You stare at her evenly when she doesn't answer. "The answer's 'no' unless you tell me what this is about."<br/>
<br/>
"Then don't do it," she says, and starts to get up. A bad move: Molly's baggy pants fall off Andrea's much slimmer frame, and she grabs them up and falls back into the chair.<br/>
<br/>
You'd rather have Molly happily on your team than unhappily on it. This isn't like with the fucketeers or with Call and his dipshits. You can't beat her or threaten her, not the way you can with them. This needs persuasion. So you grab Molly's hands between yours and look deeply into her eyes.<br/>
<br/>
"I'll do it for you, babe. I don't want you to be lonesome, and if showing this shit to Ysleta and giving him a mask will make you happy, I'll do it. But you gotta explain it to me so I know what to do and how to do it. To make you happy and make him happy. I mean, won't he want Victoria in a mask, so <i>he</i> doesn't get lonely?"<br/>
<br/>
Molly bites her lip and gets a very pinched look, which is just about the only expression that doesn't look good on Andrea's face. "It has to do with -- She doesn't understand him!"<br/>
<br/>
"What's not to understand? Ysleta's a good guy. He's not my kind of guy, but if you like marching bands and hot air balloons, then he's -- "<br/>
<br/>
"Look, he'd just like it, that's all. He'd like -- Well -- " She squirms. "These masks." She pales. "Wait. Can a girl wear a mask of a guy? Or a guy wear a mask of a girl?"<br/>
<br/>
"Sure. You can cross-dress that way if you want." You want to keep things compartmentalized, so you don't tell her that you've already got three guys pretending to be girls.<br/>
<br/>
"Don't laugh about it, David. Okay?"<br/>
<br/>
"Laugh about what?"<br/>
<br/>
She takes a couple of heavy breaths. "Joe, he -- Well, he likes -- " She turns very red. "He'd like it if he could put on Victoria's clothes. Or Kelsey's clothes. Skirts, I mean."<br/>
<br/>
It takes you an absurdly long time to realize what she's implying, and she turns even redder as she waits for you to make the connection. "You mean he's into cross-dressing?" you finally ask. You're still not sure what else might explain her statement.<br/>
<br/>
And she nods. "Victoria doesn't understand. Wouldn't understand. He's never told her. But -- "<br/>
<br/>
"How do you know all this?"<br/>
<br/>
She hangs her head and mumbles something. "Because I caught him once," she says when you ask her to repeat it. "There's a couple of guys at school that like it, and they get together, and I found out about it and caught them at it."<br/>
<br/>
"Who?"<br/>
<br/>
She flares. "I'm not going to tell you! I'm only telling you about Joe so you'll understand that he'd like this."<br/>
<br/>
"Okay, that's cool," you say, even while you're sniggering very hard inwardly. Joe Ysleta, despite his Hispanic genes, is one of the squarest and whitest guys you know at school. "So you want him along because it would make him happy to go all the way?" She nods. "And Victoria doesn't know, and he wouldn't want her to know?" She shakes her head. "And he'd give her up if he had a chance to turn himself into a girl?" She only turns even redder at that. "Look, unless I know for sure that he'd be into this -- "<br/>
<br/>
"He would," Molly says fiercely. "Because of what you said, about these robot people. Couldn't he switch back and forth, sometimes being himself and sometimes being, uh, the other girl? Who could he be?"<br/>
<br/>
"I'll have to think about it. Both things." You lean back and tug your lip. It doesn't take you long: you just have to look at Molly's face to realize that the only way to keep her happily on this team you're expanding is to do this for her. "Yeah, I guess it could work. But he has to do what I tell him. He has to be a team player," you say sharply. Molly nods. "And you have to tell me why you want him specially. It's not just 'cos he likes to dress up in girl's clothes. You're not that nice, just like I'm not that nice to those junior and sophomore cocksuckers I'm trying to get into Kelsey's parties."<br/>
<br/>
Molly twists some hair about her index finger -- a tic completely out of character for Andrea. "I'd like it better if he just left her," she says in a small voice. "But if I could get him away from her, even for just a little bit -- " She trails off.<br/>
<br/>
"You want him for yourself?"<br/>
<br/>
Her lower lip trembles. Then she shakes her head violently. "I just want <i>her</i> to lose him!"<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Well, really, do you give a shit what Molly's reasons are? You pull the mask off her, and then you have her call Ysleta. He cheerfully accepts her invitation to the library, though only after Molly says she's slowly getting people together for a social thing that evening.<br/>
<br/>
Ysleta doesn't swagger into the library, exactly, but he's the kind to walk with a loose swing in his hips and arms. He's not intimidated by you, either, and nods a cheerful greeting when he sees you. Without waiting for an invite, he throws himself into the third of the chairs in the corner and dangles a leg over the arm.<br/>
<br/>
Joe Ysleta is a shortish guy, which means he's about your height (whether as yourself or as Kirkham). His complexion is naturally dark, and his hair is almost jet black. He keeps it trimmed into a modified buzz cut -- long on top, with gel to help it stand on end, and shaved close above the ears. His grin is wide and easy and perpetual, and he has a habit of stroking the side of his jaw with his thumb with an air of faux-thoughtfulness.<br/>
<br/>
In short, he's a sociable twat who is only about 85% as cool as he thinks he is. <br/>
<br/>
But at least he keeps his cool while Molly in her halting way tells him about the masks, and he grins coolly when you show him Andrea's mask, and he actually does a really good job of keeping it in stride after he's woken up inside her mask. Like Molly, he spends a very long time staring at himself in the cell phone and stroking his cheeks and playing with his hair. "And what are you doing with this?" he asks in a low voice.<br/>
<br/>
"He's going to turn me into Kelsey Blankenship," says Molly. "I'm going to be Kelsey Blankenship," she repeats in faintly awestruck tones.<br/>
<br/>
"What for?" he asks. You thought you detected a little bit of horror in his voice when he spoke before. Now you definitely hear it.<br/>
<br/>
You explain things to him, and can tell it doesn't make him feel any better about the proposal. Thank goodness then that Molly puts her hand on his forearm and tells him that he can put on a mask too. A mask like Andrea's, she says.<br/>
<br/>
"Molly tells me you like to put on girls' clothes," you tell Ysleta bluntly, and he rears back. Molly gives you a dirty look. "Which is fine with me. I don't care. I can see the attraction. But Molly wants a friend with her, someone I guess she can talk to like herself." You pause. This is the first time you've really thought that maybe you don't like the idea of Molly having a confidante. That's the way conspiracies can form. But it's too late now. "So she wants you to come along, to be one of her friends." <i>To be her </i>pervy<i> friend,</i> you think but don't say aloud.<br/>
<br/>
Ysleta goes back to staring at himself in the cell phone, and stroking himself. Then he lowers the phone, and like Molly had, he stares at the far distance over your shoulder. A few times Molly starts to speak, but you motion her to silence. Ysleta's inner struggle takes longer than Molly's does, but when you quietly explain again how you would disguise the real girl, and how she could come back again with no harm done, he accedes. He does so with a very heavy sigh and gulp, though, and you're pretty sure that you need to bundle him into a mask quick before he changes his mind.<br/>
<br/>
But a mask of who? Someone who would hang out with Kelsey, and would be a help in moving product. Someone who does not have a boyfriend -- Ysleta might like to dress up like a girl, but you're pretty damn sure he doesn't want to fuck like one -- or who can dump her boyfriend without it looking weird. And probably someone who dresses up in nice things.<br/>
<br/>
No obvious candidates spring to mind, so you ask Ysleta who he would like to be. Now his eye turns inward. You glance at Molly, and she blurts out, "What about Olivia? Byrne, I mean."<br/>
<br/>
She's a swimmer and a part of the AP crowd, so that makes sense, if only as a holding spot. It also, by a chain of free association, suggests Catherine Muskov as a candidate to you.<br/>
<br/>
Then Ysleta himself upsets everything with the name "Cindy. Cindy Vredenburg."</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: The Mugging of Catherine Muskov
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Not Cindy," you tell Ysleta.<br/>
<br/>
"Why not?" he asks sharply.<br/>
<br/>
"Fine, Cindy it is. If you're willing to put out for me."<br/>
<br/>
Ysleta's eyes -- Andrea's eyes -- widen, and she flushes a little.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm trying to go out with her," you explain. "I had a date with her yesterday and I'm gonna have more. I'd rather do it with the real girl."<br/>
<br/>
Ysleta looks amused. "Really? You and Cindy?"<br/>
<br/>
"Something wrong with a picture of me and Cindy?" You raise your chin.<br/>
<br/>
He stifles a laugh. "No. Good luck to you, though." He gives you a sidelong look. "Olivia would be okay, I guess."<br/>
<br/>
"What about Catherine Muskov?"<br/>
<br/>
That name catches his attention, which surprises you. You'd expect him to instantly reject her on account of her boyfriend. Which would be disappointing, because now that you think about it you can imagine her opening up some new markets the way Andrea has.<br/>
<br/>
"That might be fun," he says. "Except she's dating Michael Allen."<br/>
<br/>
"So dump him. Dump him hard."<br/>
<br/>
His eyes widen at your brutality, and he looks away for a bit before leaning over to murmur at Molly. "Would that be okay with you? Catherine?"<br/>
<br/>
<i>What's it matter what she thinks,</i> you want to ask him. "Okay, Catherine," says Ysleta when Molly nods. "So how, uh -- ?"<br/>
<br/>
"Would it be funny if you called her, set up a place to meet and talk?" Ysleta seems like the kind of social butterfly who could pull off a direct approach, and sure enough, he nods. "We need to do it someplace super private, not like here. Clothes are going to have to be changed, you know."<br/>
<br/>
"We could do it at my place, I guess," Ysleta says, though he sounds a trifle unsure.<br/>
<br/>
"Mine," says Molly more firmly. "My mom's out of town."<br/>
<br/>
"You mean you're there by yourself?"<br/>
<br/>
"No one'll bust in on us."<br/>
<br/>
You and Ysleta exchange a glance. Then you shrug. "That's great then. I'll get this off of you -- " You stretch your hand to cover his face. "Then I'll go get the shit we need to do this."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's a tedious round of errands. First to the school to give Thomason the mask of Andrea back. Then to your house to pick up two mind bands. Then to the elementary school basement to fetch blank masks and sealant. You also have to make a fresh batch of the latter. After pulling the mask off Ysleta, you snipped off a chunk of his hair -- explaining to Molly it's part of the spell-casting process -- for use in the robo-paste. You can't use Prescott's hair anymore, and you've changed your mind about using Thomason's. You're just going to have to let Ysleta and Molly control their own 'bot replacements, since it sounds like they are going to want to switch out between identities. A huge part of you resents this diminished control. But you have recruited them solely because they can help you advertise product, not because you need any real positive help from them.<br/>
<br/>
While you're driving around, you get a text from Molly, giving you her address and telling you that Catherine will be at her house at six-thirty. You wind up cutting it close, but Catherine is late getting to Molly's anyway, and you beat her there.<br/>
<br/>
Molly lives a couple of blocks away from Andrea Varnsworth, in a house that is roughly the shape and dimensions of a trailer -- an ugly, square, utilitarian thing with a dead lawn and a chain link fence whose rusted "Beware of the Dog" sign long ago ceased to refer to any such beast. Ysleta is already there too, and he and Molly both look very pale and ill at ease -- on the very edge of backing out, you can tell. It was one thing, after all, to tease them with the idea of swapping identities with someone more alluring and with more advantages. It's quite another, surely, to carry out such a scheme so soon and on such short notice. If you didn't slap a little encouragement back into Ysleta by telling him about the awesome boobs he's about to acquire, you're sure he'd tell you that he wants to sleep on the idea first. Maybe for a couple of years.<br/>
<br/>
Around six forty-five there comes a sharp knock on the door, and some cheerful greetings when Molly opens it. "Is this where the party's supposed to be?" a low, thrilling female voice calls. Catherine Muskov comes in, and if her face falls a little at the sight of you, she still manages a smile.<br/>
<br/>
She's tall -- a little taller than you, actually -- and carries herself with confidence and poise. Her smile is calm, and there's just a trace of satire in her eyes. She wears her long, thick, brown hair loose, sweeping it up and over and behind her ears to pour down the back of her neck without the aid of any ties or pins or gel. You've always liked looking at her, and it's not just because her boobs are big enough to be an imagined handful without being overwhelming. You like the way she massages her neck when she gets a crick in it, and the way she pushes her hair around and gets it to stay in place. You especially like that she prefers wearing sports tops, even under short jackets.<br/>
<br/>
She's wearing a tight, sleeveless red top now, despite the cool evening air, and it complements her rose-and-earth complexion. It clings very tight to her, ending above her belly button, inviting you to peel it carefully off her. She's in hip-hugger jeans as well, and dark heels. You can't help wondering what Molly told her to get her over here dressed like this. And without her boyfriend, too.<br/>
<br/>
Well, there's not really time to speculate. You return her greeting with a nod, then march up to her and in one motion grab her about the waist and push a blank mask to her face. She sags into your arm, taking you to the floor with her. "Oh, Jesus. Guys, help me get her up," you call as Molly and Ysleta look on with stunned expressions.<br/>
<br/>
When she's off the ground, you lift her by the shoulders and Ysleta takes her feet as Molly frantically and uselessly guides you down a short hall to a dingy bedroom, where you toss her onto an unmade bed. Molly mutters "Oh Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" and covers her mouth with her hands as you unceremoniously pull off Catherine's shoes, her jeans, and her panties. Ysleta recovers from his paralysis in time to tug off her top.<br/>
<br/>
You've seen Catherine out jogging, so the sight of her strong, smooth thighs and calves is no surprise. Nor is her stomach, which is trim but soft with a padding of baby fat. You can't help staring at her breasts, though, which have the largest and rosiest nipples you've ever seen. It's all you can do to keep from cupping one and sucking on it right then and there.<br/>
<br/>
"Here, I need you to put this on," you tell Ysleta, and hand him the other blank mask. (You should have done that while you were waiting for Catherine.) You press up close on him when he hesitates. "Come on, man. This is what you asked for." He takes a huge breath, sinks to the carpet, and puts on the mask.<br/>
<br/>
"Stop that," you tell Molly roughly as she starts whimpering. "There's nothing hinky going on here. The masks just knock people out while they're copying them."<br/>
<br/>
"Okay. But what we're doing -- " She sniffles, and her eyes turn puffy.<br/>
<br/>
"You asked for it. Didn't you say you wanted it? It'll be Kelsey laying there tomorrow. It'll be a mask copying Kelsey. And when it's done copying her, you'll put it on, and then you'll be Kelsey Blankenship. You understand that? You'll have her stuff. You'll have her clothes and her jewelry and her friends. Her BMW. You'll have everything she's got. It'll be yours." You hold her by the arm and shake her. "People will look at you and they'll see and hear Kelsey Blankenship. When you look in the mirror, you'll see -- "<br/>
<br/>
"Okay, I get it," Molly shouts. Her expression has hardened, but something like horror still shows in it. "I just -- Seeing it, like this." She covers her mouth again.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey." You pull her into a hug. "I want what's good for you, baby. This is good for you. That's why I thought of you. And we had some fun in our time, right?" You put your mouth to hers, and kiss her, though she doesn't kiss you back. "This is to pay you back for it. There's no fucking reason Kelsey the Cunt should have all her shit. She's a spoiled snot, and we're just balancing things out. Right?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, I get it." She peers around your shoulder, and her eyes bulge a little. Then she buries her face in your chest. "I just want it to be over, so I don't have to -- "<br/>
<br/>
You pull her close, and squeeze her until the masks have come out of Catherine and Ysleta both.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"So, are you gonna be able to get together with Kelsey?" you ask the girl. A 'bot that looks like Joe Ysleta has dressed and gone already, but Catherine Muskov is still turning this way and that, looking at herself long and steadily in the mirror. Her expression is grave, and she pulls her tousled hair back with one hand, and strokes the side of her jaw with a thumb. "Hey! Guy with the rack! I'm -- "<br/>
<br/>
"I heard you. Jesus." Her voice is as throaty as it was when she came in. She catches your eye briefly in the mirror. "I don't know. I don't have any of her, like, memories and stuff." Her brow furrows.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, it'll be awhile before that comes. What I mean is, even if she's not friends with Kelsey, have you got the balls to phone her, set up a meeting?"<br/>
<br/>
"I haven't got <i>any</i> balls," she says. "But sure, I can do it." She drops her arms, and hugs herself with a groan. "I'll do anything you ask, man."</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: A Passing Pageantry
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You are suddenly very nervous. Fucking Ysleta is acting like a drunken toddler with a new toy. Your gut tells you there's no trusting him with Catherine Muskov's body, not as a long-term play, and not as part of any plan of yours. You deeply regret letting Molly talk you into showing him the masks, and you're starting to really regret showing them to Molly herself.<br/>
<br/>
But it's too late now. Damage control is the best you can do. "Just get dressed and have fun," you tell the new Catherine. "Help Molly out tomorrow. She's the one that got you this, remember." Catherine nods. "So tomorrow you set it up so that me and Molly can get Kelsey alone. That's all you gotta do for me."<br/>
<br/>
"Are you sure?" There's a twinkle in her eye.<br/>
<br/>
He's not serious. You're sure the fucker isn't serious, but you're sorely tempted by the body he's wearing, with its firm curves and soft padding. Catherine has a body you could work yourself down inside and rock yourself to sleep with. "Yeah," you say, and clear your throat of the frog that's crawled up inside it. "And don't do anything dumb until we can talk later." You allow yourself the briefest touch of her skin -- fingertips on her elbow -- as a farewell. To Molly you say, "You two try to figure out how you're going to handle things tomorrow."<br/>
<br/>
Molly looks bewildered. "Is that all? Are you going?"<br/>
<br/>
"You don't need me, and I have stuff I have to do to get ready for you tomorrow. So, you two just have a slumber party or some girl talk or whatever. You have my number? Text me if you have any problems, and when you know how you're going to handle tomorrow."<br/>
<br/>
Your mind is a whirl of desire and second-guessing as you leave.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You're very late getting home, because you have to stop by the elementary school first to make and polish a mask. Kirkham's mom yells at you for skipping out on dinner, and she doesn't believe you when you say that you were working on a school project. At least Tad has the sense to keep his mouth shut as he watches and listens to the volley of angry words you and she exchange. It only worsens your mood, but you gradually calm yourself as you chisel way at the memory band for the new mask.<br/>
<br/>
You also get a little perspective on your doubts about Ysleta. The problem, you decide after listening to your gut, is that the idiot probably thinks he's just having a lark -- that he's hijacking Catherine's body for a few days or maybe a week, and then he'll give it up. Unless you've seriously misjudged him, he's not really a transgender case, he's just a guy who likes to put on girl's clothes, in which case he'll soon get bored with putting Catherine's clothes onto Catherine's body. And what are you going to do when he tires of the charade?<br/>
<br/>
If Ysleta is part of a group that likes to cross-dress, then maybe he can point you to someone who'd like to go farther, and to go farther permanently. But that would mean trusting Ysleta and trusting the new person, whoever he is. Or maybe you could give the mask to Johansson. He probably wouldn't mind having a Catherinebot under his control. (Which reminds you that you still have that fucker to deal with.) <br/>
<br/>
Or maybe you can just worry about it when the time comes.<br/>
<br/>
You try putting it out of your head before going to sleep, but it's like a rash and just keeps biting at you until you fall into an exhausted doze.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You don't have any classes with your two newest collaborators, but you keep an eye for them in the hallways. You spot them, but they don't see you; you also spot whatsisname, the junior beanpole you shoved Evans inside. He nods a quick acknowledgement at you, but scurries away. You hope things are okay there, and that's the reason you haven't heard from him. But you make a note to yourself to check up on him. <br/>
<br/>
Among the usual pointless streams of texts that hit you during the day comes one from Seth Javits's number: <i>u owe me something?</i> And, a little later: <i>hows cindy?</i><br/>
<br/>
You ignore them until after seventh period, which is when you feel a gentle squeeze to your shoulder when you're at your locker. You turn. It's Catherine Muskov.<br/>
<br/>
She has that same grave twinkle in her eye as you saw yesterday, and she runs a quick tongue over her lower lip as she smiles at you. "What are you doing this afternoon?" she asks.<br/>
<br/>
"Whatever plans you got."<br/>
<br/>
She nods, and glances over her shoulder as someone jostles her. "Kelsey's giving me a ride home. Would that work for you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Is that all? Just a ride?"<br/>
<br/>
"I told her something came up with Michael. We're leaving at five, when she's done with tennis and I'm done with track."<br/>
<br/>
"I'll have to think about it. Text you after last period. How's your head?"<br/>
<br/>
"It's all there." She smiles broadly, gives you another twinkle, and edges back into the crowd.<br/>
<br/>
At least Ysleta sounds happy for the moment. But then, he's wearing a navy blue dress that hugs every curve, and is balancing himself expertly on some tall heels, so you guess he's got reason to be.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Johansson also lobbed a text at the Chenbot, asking about the mask he's owed, so after last period you trudge into the gym to watch the basketball team practice. There's always a small crowd there, and today is no exception. <br/>
<br/>
The surprise to you is how many girls are attending. The Chelseabot is there, for instance, which is a change from when you were running Chelsea. You didn't attend the practices when you were inside her mask. Probably it's a new thing that Johansson is having her do, since he got her turned into an obedient robot. Anger builds in you again as you think of the way he and Prescott caught and imprisoned you.<br/>
<br/>
She's surrounded by her cheerleader cronies, including the new members of the squad. Anger and regret burn harder in you now as you watch them. You were so looking forward to running those tryouts, the ones to replace Cindy and her friends after you kicked them off the squad. You were really salivating at the prospect of watching dozens of girls in their uniforms tumbling and twisting and showing off their bodies to you. But it was robo-Chelsea who made the calls. You don't even recognize most of the girls sitting with her now, except for Kendra Saunders and Maria Vasquez.<br/>
<br/>
But there are lots of other girls too, which makes the bleachers a much more interesting spectacle than the court. You bemuse yourself with them and their breasts and their hair, for most of them are pretty good looking. Probably they're preening for the guys on the court, declaring themselves interested. Probably they're auditioning for Patterson. The smug asshole must be getting so much pussy since Gordon disgraced himself and he took over as team captain.<br/>
<br/>
That's obviously why Johansson is now so frantic to get a mask of Patterson. He sees you from the floor of the gym, of course.<br/>
<br/>
But you leave before practice is over. You send him a text first, though. <i>making a mask ths aftnoon. ready by 9.</i> You weren't in the gym to talk to him, only to kill time until the real business of the day. You'd set that business up with Catherine right after eighth. It was a text from her -- the first signal -- that takes you out of the gym.<br/>
<br/>
Your heart is beating as you walk back into the main building -- now almost empty -- toward G wing, which is where the ambush is to take place. The timing is almost perfect. As you enter the sciences wing from one end, Kelsey and Catherine enter it from the other. Kelsey is talking in that loud, shrill voice of hers, and she pays no attention to you as you pass them going the other way. Both girls, coming in from exercise, are in shorts and skin-revealing tops, and they are flushed and sweaty -- delectable. You pause at a locker -- not your own -- and watch out of the corner of your eye as they disappear into the girls' restroom.<br/>
<br/>
A minute later Molly comes into the wing, and hurries up to you. "Is it ready?"<br/>
<br/>
"Just about. We just have to wait for -- " Your cell dings with a text from Catherine: <i>ok.</i> That means the two girls have it to themselves. "There it is."<br/>
<br/>
You swing your pack off your shoulder, unzip it, take out a blank mask. A quick trot takes you to the door to the restroom and you bust in hard. Catherine and Kelsey are at the sinks, and both swing around. Your victim hasn't time to react, and you don't even have to shout a signal, before Catherine throws her arms around Kelsey and holds her tight. In three quick bounds you're at her and smothering her belated shriek with the mask. You grab onto both girls and help Ysleta lower Kelsey to the floor. <br/>
<br/>
"Okay, you and Molly -- " You look over your shoulder. Molly is in the doorway, staring down at Kelsey with bulging eyes. "You two stand outside and make sure <i>no one</i> comes in. Tell 'em some girl's in here puking her guts up. Or she's having her period. Anorexia and period at the same time, I don't -- "<br/>
<br/>
"Don't be gross, man," Catherine says as she leaves. She has to pull Molly -- who is still staring at Kelsey with fascination -- after her.<br/>
<br/>
You straighten out Kelsey's limp form and pull the rest of your supplies out. You met up with Molly before heading to the gym, and you already have her imprinted in the other mask.<br/>
<br/>
While you're waiting for the mask to finish copying Kelsey, you get a reply from Johansson. <i>meet asap, help w mask.</i></span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: Kelsey-Related Conniptions
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You take one, two, four, seven, nine deep breaths before you master your temper. You are so tired of Johansson and his fucking interference. You would really like to settle his shit for once and all.<br/>
<br/>
But you haven't got the tools to do that. You need to get into the grimoire with Blackwell's brain band before you can do that.<br/>
<br/>
And before you can turn your attention to that, you have to get your new recruits in place.<br/>
<br/>
So you send Johansson a short but placating message: <i>cant, busy, working at home, call me at 9.</i> Your one concession to fury is the angry stab you give the screen as you send the reply. Then you wipe your forehead with another sigh and turn to prepping Kelsey.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
The girl is a fine specimen all the way around. To start with the invisible, there is her brain -- she's an AP student for a reason -- and her wealth. Her family owns Blankenship Motors, one of the largest car dealerships in the city, and she's reputed to live in an amazing house. She drives a fucking BMW and dresses in a stylishly bohemian way: lots of jeans skirts and denim tops when it isn't silk blouses or cotton shirts printed with Native American designs. In fact, the Southwest is a recurrent motif in her look, and she sports lots of silver and turquoise bracelets, necklaces, pendants and earrings, and is constantly prattling about the art that her family collects.<br/>
<br/>
Physically she isn't quite the knockout that she wants to be or pretends to be. She is in excellent shape, as she should be for someone who was on the cheerleading squad until the start of the year. Her arms and legs are lean but strong and are still brown from the summer. Her face is similarly lean. Her nose and her chin are a little too pointed for your taste, and in those resentful moments when you're hating her for her snobbery -- which is quite often -- you imagine that when she's old she'll acquire the conventional witch's face, with the nutcracker nose and chin. But at her present age it just gives her a bold appearance that she softens with long, straight brown hair that she controls with an array of pins, clasps and ties so that it falls about her ears in swooping lines.<br/>
<br/>
You start by stripping Kelsey of her jewelry -- two stud-like earrings, half a dozen bracelets, a ring on one hand -- and tennis shoes, then pull off the rest of her tennis clothes. Kelsey's breasts are disappointingly small, but she's toned all the way around. You pull her into one of the stalls so she'll be out of sight. You end by tidying up Kelsey's things, and that keeps you occupied until the mask finally finishes copying her. After that, it's just a minute of sealing up her mask, and then you gesture the two girls in.<br/>
<br/>
Catherine is very calm, but Molly is vibrating, and she looks like she might throw up. "Go sit in that stall," you tell her, pointing to the one next to where Kelsey is lying. "Take your clothes off and push 'em into the next stall. Sit on the floor, then put this on." You hold out the mask. <br/>
<br/>
Molly reaches out to take it, then draws her hands back a moment before darting out and snatching it. She turns it over, and her breath comes whistling out her nose as she reads Kelsey's name on its inner surface. She murmurs something, and with a kind of hopping walk goes into the empty stall. You manage not to roll your eyes.<br/>
<br/>
"We'll let her get started," you tell Catherine quietly, "then you can help me finish up. Tell me about how you're doing."<br/>
<br/>
"I'm doing great," she says with that wide, quiet smile. "It was an awesome day." She runs her palms down her sides. She's in a sports bra and thin, baggy running shorts. "I got up early to get all made up and dressed -- "<br/>
<br/>
"And the memories are okay? No one caught you making any mistakes?"<br/>
<br/>
"I got home later yesterday than Catherine was supposed to get home," she says. "I didn't know about that. But I wasn't in bad trouble. And by the time I woke up -- "<br/>
<br/>
"Everything okay with your friends?"<br/>
<br/>
"Sure." She's starting to look puzzled. "I had to push Michael off me a couple of times. Even with, you know -- " She rubs her temple with the heel of her hand. "I'm not into him. Not that way. Why are you asking?"<br/>
<br/>
"Just making sure things are okay with you. How long do you want to keep this up?"<br/>
<br/>
"I don't know. I haven't thought about it. Why?" Now puzzlement is shading into suspicion.<br/>
<br/>
You glance at Molly's stall, which is very quiet. "Think about how long this is going to go for you," you tell her in a very low voice. "Because Molly in there wants you to be a friend with her, and she's planning on making the Kelsey thing permanent, probably."<br/>
<br/>
Catherine's eyes widen, and she loses a tiny bit of her color as she looks over at the stall. "There might be a way of handling it," you continue, "if you decide you're getting bored with being Catherine. But try not to get bored. Hopefully it won't be a problem, because" -- You jab her in the breastbone -- "Catherine's about to become Kelsey's best friend."<br/>
<br/>
She nods gravely, as though the import of what is happening has just sunk in.<br/>
<br/>
"Okay, go into Kelsey's stall and put this on her face." You hand Ysleta the mask of Molly. "It's gonna turn her into Molly. Tell her to get dressed while I take care of your friend."<br/>
<br/>
You push inside the stall where Molly was huddling. But it's not Molly Shaw anymore. It's Kelsey Blankenship. Her mouth is hanging open and she's drooling.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
They threw you out after Molly was awake again. That was okay, you'd gotten enough of Kelsey's naked body. And you'd taken care of the Mollybot. You didn't have time to make up any of that robopaste using Molly's hair, so you used some of Ysleta's paste instead. It didn't matter. You don't think you're going to be using the Mollybot for anything, and if you do need it for something, you can probably get Ysleta to give the orders for you.<br/>
<br/>
That's how you handled the Mollybot in the restroom. He told it to get dressed while you hovered over Molly and pretended to work, and when Catherine shouted "What now?" you said, "Tell it to go home and act natural. You know. Tell it to act just like Molly would, and not to tell anyone about this."<br/>
<br/>
"Can't you tell her?"<br/>
<br/>
"You got to look her in the face and say it, otherwise it doesn't work," you lied. So you gave Ysleta the words and he passed them on to the 'bot. And he didn't question you about it.<br/>
<br/>
Now you're prowling about outside the restroom, up and down G wing. Mr. Gelding does a double take when he comes out and locks his classroom door. He demands to know what you're doing, and when you tell him you're waiting for some girls to finish in the restroom, he pushes open the door and yells inside for them to get done and get out. You're grateful for that.<br/>
<br/>
Ysleta has changed into a fresh pair of shorts and a t-shirt, and has resettled her hair in a tall thing that's halfway between a bun and a ponytail. Molly is much more disheveled and panicked looking, and looks ill at ease in Kelsey's clothes. Catherine puts an arm around her waist. "We'll go to my place," she says in a low voice. "Thanks for waiting for us, David," she says to you. You fall in next to them.<br/>
<br/>
"I don't think I can do this," Kelsey moans.<br/>
<br/>
"Sure you can," you say. "You get through the night, and when you wake up tomorrow you'll have her memories and everything."<br/>
<br/>
"But until then! I don't know what to do!"<br/>
<br/>
"Jesus. Go with Catherine. Use your phone to figure out where you live. Then read your texts. All the ones that need answers, tell them that you're suddenly sick and can't talk or see them. Text Kelsey's mom, tell you won't be home until late. Wait until the last minute to go home, then go home and go straight to bed. You'll be fine."<br/>
<br/>
But she keeps whimpering all the way out to the parking lot. You're filled with disgust long before she reaches her car, and even there she shrinks back from the BMW and moans that she'll get into a wreck with it.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
So when your cell chimes fifteen minutes later, as you're braking for a yellow light, and you glance over to see that it's Catherine calling, you almost ignore it. But it's a notoriously long light you'll have to wait for, and it's a phone call, not a text, so you pick it up. "Yeah?" you wearily demand.<br/>
<br/>
It's Kelsey's voice on the other end: "I've got a huge problem, David. Kelsey's mom! I found the texts from her, and I'm supposed to go out to some university thing with them! So I can't stay with Catherine, and I don't know what to do if I go out there and -- !"<br/>
<br/>
She's on the verge of hysterics. "Hey! Hey! Shut up!" You wish you could reach across the ether and slap her. "Give me a minute to think."<br/>
<br/>
Voices murmur, and Catherine comes on. "I can go with her, David," she says with blessed serenity. "I can help her out."<br/>
<br/>
That would be good. You could leave it to Ysleta to help Molly through the evening while you take care of that mask for Johansson. On the other hand, you could temporarily take over for Molly. Prescott's body has the weird ability to adapt fast to masks. You could spend the evening as Kelsey Blankenship.<br/>
<br/>
Then your cell dings, and you tell Catherine to hold on a minute. It's a text, and you almost drop it to see it's from Lucy Vredenburg. <i>wheres blackwell? emergency.</i></span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: Vanishing Assets
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Who's fucking Craig Wyatt?" you ask in answer to the suggestion. You're at home, on the phone, talking to Douglas Canfield. It's George Mendoza answering from under the mask, of course. You called to ask him who he knew down in the junior class that would be a good disguise to help expand the network in the eleventh grade.<br/>
<br/>
"Who is he, or who's he fucking?" Canfield replies. "No one, I think, except he's dating Bailey Keane, but she's not the type -- "<br/>
<br/>
"No, who is this asshole?"<br/>
<br/>
"He's Craig Wyatt. He's in the band. Plays clarinet."<br/>
<br/>
You try to put a face to the description. Something very hazy comes. A tall blonde kid, maybe? "Why him? Is he a stoner? Is he popular?"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, he's got a lot of friends, but he's not one of those Mr. Popularity fags. He's in a couple of AP classes, he's in band, he shows up at all the parties -- "<br/>
<br/>
"How's this help us move product?"<br/>
<br/>
"The same way Andrea does. He's this clean cut kid, but it's not like he's a fucking Boy Scout or choir boy about it. That's what makes him perfect." Mendoza is clearly warming to his idea. "This guy, he belongs to all the right clubs, you know, and he's got all the right shit about him -- "<br/>
<br/>
"Are you gay for him?"<br/>
<br/>
"Fuck you, no. What I mean is, it's like he's programmed to only do stuff that's respectable. So what if he starts smoking a little weed, you know, just totally casually like there's nothing wrong with it? Everyone's gonna think, 'Hey, Craig's into it, it must be okay, I'll do some too.' He's totally average, man, he sets a tone by being average and boring and safe."<br/>
<br/>
This doesn't sound obviously right. "I'll think about it," you tell Mendoza. "You think some more about it too, come up with a coupla more candidates. I need a place to put Evans." <br/>
<br/>
That done, you return to working on a brain band to go with one of the new masks that Chen dropped off a little while ago.<br/>
<br/>
Four masks. You've got four masks either completed or in various stages of completion. One of them you're holding back against the time that fucking Johansson decides that he has to get himself a copy of Steve Patterson. One you'll use on Kelsey. One you'll use for Evan's new location. And the last?<br/>
<br/>
You still think that Justin Roth would be a good recruit, but you're less and less enamored of that part of your program. You've already got things set up to move huge volumes through Westside and Eastman and at the Warehouse. You're gearing up a network in the local junior class. Really, instead of nailing down every angle in the Westside senior class, you ought to be pushing into the junior class at Eastside and finding new customers at the university, which is still where you sell most of your product.<br/>
<br/>
Trouble is, you haven't got any agents that you can put in those places.<br/>
<br/>
You sigh. No, what you really need to do is to get back inside the head of Aubrey Blackwell and start figuring out the grimoire. The deeper you get into it, the more toys you've discovered inside it. The long-term answers are inside it.<br/>
<br/>
But that's a job for tomorrow, when you can go hide somewhere after taking Kirkham's mask off.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You need another hiding place. <br/>
<br/>
That's what you decide as you're driving around Sunday afternoon. You're not thinking of the loathsome fact that you're stuck inside Will Prescott's body and having to pretend to be your best friend David Kirkham, though that's connected to it. What you need is someplace that isn't that elementary school basement and that isn't Aubrey Blackwell's old house. You're gonna get in caught eventually if you keep going out to the basement, and you really didn't like the feel of Blackwell's villa. But you need a private place where you can take off Kirkham's mask without the risk of being recognized as "Will Prescott." And right now the basement and the villa are the only two places you can do that.<br/>
<br/>
You started off at the basement, which is where you'd hauled the key texts from Blackwell's library. For two hours you hunched at an old desk, poring through half a dozen of his books with Kirkham's mask at your elbow and Blackwell's brain band inside your head. Then you thought of another book that you should probably consult, and changed back into the form of David Kirkham to drive out to the villa to get it. And that's when it really sank in that you needed a new place to hang out in.<br/>
<br/>
But there are no such places. No place that's big and secure with no danger of being interrupted by anyone who shouldn't see the fuckface you're currently forced to inhabit. Blackwell's is the only place that comes close to fitting that bill, but since you got rid of its owner, it's not a long-term secure place.<br/>
<br/>
It's not a short-term secure place either, as you discover after you arrive.<br/>
<br/>
You first sense that something has gone wrong when you walk into the foyer and are immediately assaulted by a sense of desolation. There's a hollow quality to the silence -- the silence of a house that has been abandoned. A house that is now a shell and not a home.<br/>
<br/>
The second shock comes when you step into the library. You remember well the oppressive sense of malign watchfulness that fell over you the first time you stepped into it -- the almost jarring sense of stepping into room that was out of alignment with the rest of reality. But now it just feels like an ordinary room. A big room, a room of dull echoes, an empty room --<br/>
<br/>
You whirl. <i>Empty.</i> The shelves are all empty!<br/>
<br/>
You turn and turn and turn again. Every shelf, every book case stands bare. Those grandfather clocks, the ones with the discordant ticks and tocks, are also missing. Your eye travels over the walls. The alcoves are also empty. The cyclops-monkey with the vicious fangs -- the house's guardian -- has also gone.<br/>
<br/>
With mounting chills you return to the body of the house and make a fast search up and down. The furniture is all in place -- sofas and electronics in the living room; chairs and table in the dining room; beds and dressers in the bedrooms. But Blackwell's clothes have all gone, along with any personal effects that you didn't carry off. The kitchen is still stocked with food, but the magic supplies are gone from the pantry. The upstairs workshop has been stripped.<br/>
<br/>
In short, everything magical and occult, and everything that could be connected to Blackwell's own person, has gone missing.<br/>
<br/>
You're in a numb haze as you descend the staircase. You can think of only one person who might know what's going on. You call Lucy Vredenburg.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey, I'm out at Professor Blackwell's. What's going on?"<br/>
<br/>
"I give up," she says coolly. "What's going on?"<br/>
<br/>
"I mean, have you been moving stuff out? Like, stuff from his library?"<br/>
<br/>
"No. Have you asked the professor what's going on?"<br/>
<br/>
"I haven't seen him." You're at the front door, heading outside to glance in the mausoleum where you left his remains. "So you haven't been moving stuff out, or he hasn't asked you to move stuff out?" You're really hoping the answer to that last question is "No."<br/>
<br/>
"Of course not. I haven't seen or heard from him since you gave me that letter."<br/>
<br/>
"You haven't been out to his place?"<br/>
<br/>
"Who put you in charge all of a sudden?"<br/>
<br/>
<i>I did,</i> you want to snap back at her. <i>Day before yesterday, when I took out your fucking warlock like a boss.</i> "I came out here to see if I could talk to him, and the place is cleaned out. Not totally, but of most of the stuff." You freeze in front of the mausoleum, for the door is ajar. "I haven't heard from him. Things are fucking weird out here, and I wanted to know what you know."<br/>
<br/>
"I don't know anything," she says in a voice that has grown increasingly waspish. "If I do hear something, maybe I'll let you know." She hangs up.<br/>
<br/>
You drop the phone into your pocket, and with your heart in your throat you push open the door to the mausoleum.<br/>
<br/>
It's empty. Of anything. The bier where you left the stone-like remains of Aubrey Blackwell, black magician, is bare.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Oh Jesus. Tell me he didn't get up and is coming after me!</i><br/>
<br/>
You bolt from the grounds.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You're halfway back home -- like it would do you any good to hide under your bed -- when it comes to you that there's one more place to check. You detour sharply to the elementary school, where you retrieve the keys you took with you when you were moving things out of his house. They are house keys, car keys -- but his car was still in front of his house when you stopped there -- and the keys to his university office. You drive up to Keyserling.<br/>
<br/>
It's Sunday, but the outside doors to the university's Anthropology building are unlocked, and you pass a couple of professors and graduate students as you prowl down the hall. You glance both ways when you come to Blackwell's door. The coast is clear, so you slip the lock open and dart inside. You close it, lock it, and look around.<br/>
<br/>
A desk, a chair, a file cabinet, and four empty bookcases. <br/>
<br/>
This is very odd. They were anthropology books only, nothing occult. But someone has swept them up just as they swept his house clear. The desk and file cabinets have also been cleaned out.<br/>
<br/>
A suspicion gradually takes hold of you. Was the Lucybot being honest with you? Worse: Was she really the golem Blackwell left behind, or was she someone else --something else, a lich-Blackwell -- under the mask?</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: Tanning Evans' Hide
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Fucker." You grab the phone away from Chen and are about to call Evans back when you stop. "What exactly did he say?"<br/>
<br/>
"That he's not gonna be a girl," Chen tells you. "He said he didn't care what I did to him, he wasn't going to do it."<br/>
<br/>
But you bet that between Gary Chen and David Kirkham you've got the persuasive muscle to convince Tanner Evans that he'd love to be Kelsey Blankenship. <br/>
<br/>
"Here." You hand Chen the mask you just finished casting. "Polish this up while I go straighten out his shit." <br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"I didn't know you were part of this," Chris Trantham -- really Tanner Evans -- says. He's looking fatter and pastier than the last time you saw him, and the weedy blonde moustache on his upper lip looks like a hairy caterpillar that's dying of mange.<br/>
<br/>
"That's right, you fucking puke," you retort. "Me and Chen are partners. Two heads, one brain. So what he tells you, I'm telling you too, and vice versa. So what's this fucking backtalk you're giving him about your new gig?"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm not playing a girl," he replies with quiet truculence. "You're not giving me a pussy."<br/>
<br/>
"Like you don't already got one. You'll do as you're fucking told, Evans." You grab him by the hair, and with a knee to the groin force him to kneel. "If I tell you to put on Kelsey's Blankenship's face and blow me, you do it. If I tell you to blow my man Chen, you'll do it. I tell you to blow fucking Walberg, you'll do it? You got it?" A bolus of fury nearly chokes you, and you knee him in the chest. "You got it?"<br/>
<br/>
Trantham gasps and snuffles. "Please," he whispers.<br/>
<br/>
You throw him back. "You're gonna do it, aren't you? <i>Aren't you?</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"Why? Can't you give me someone else?"<br/>
<br/>
"There is no one else! Not for you! The whole fucking point of this organization is that you do what you're told! And what's wrong with Kelsey? Your fucking brother Thomason's living the life of Andrea Varnsworth. You laughing at him? Are you laughing at him 'cos he's got himself a pussy to play with?"<br/>
<br/>
"No," Trantham whispers. "I just don't want -- "<br/>
<br/>
"You know it could be a lot worse, right? Me and Chen, we're actually taking care of you assholes. We're setting up a fucking beauty pageant for you! Andrea and Kelsey. Don't you want to be fucking rich? Fuck me, I'd squeeze myself up Kelsey's tailpipe if it meant getting to drive around in her BMW."<br/>
<br/>
"So why don't you -- ?"<br/>
<br/>
You put your foot on the side of his head. "What were you about to ask?"<br/>
<br/>
"Nothing."<br/>
<br/>
"That's right. You were about to do what I tell you. But I'll give you a choice instead. You know Keith Tilley, you know which ugly-ass loser he is?"<br/>
<br/>
Trantham thinks a moment, then nods.<br/>
<br/>
"You can be Tilley or you can be Kelsey. Which one do you want?"<br/>
<br/>
The face of Keith Tilley -- Prescott's other loser friend -- would do you no good in your plans. Fuck, if people heard that he'd taken up with the ganja it would kill the market. But it delights you to think of doing something to Prescott's friend, and it's a good threat to hang over Trantham.<br/>
<br/>
Trantham swallows a couple of times, and mumbles. "What's that?" you demand.<br/>
<br/>
"I'll take Kelsey."<br/>
<br/>
"That's right. You're not so dumb. Ugly as fuck, but only half as dumb." You lift your foot. "We're gonna put you in for Kelsey, and you're gonna queen it up. She's got half the school kissing her ass, which means they're gonna be kissing <i>your</i> ass, and why are you crying about that? Come on, get up." The way he's wallowing on the ground fills you with contempt.<br/>
<br/>
"Now, here's what we're gonna do," you tell him. "You're gonna meet me up at the school, in the student parking lot in an hour. I'm gonna be waiting for you and I'm gonna have your old car and some of your old clothes there. We're gonna get you outta this mask of Trantham, and you're gonna put on your old clothes and get in your old car, and you're gonna drive to -- " You think a bit. "Out to the Starbucks on Orlando. You're gonna wait there with your phone on for me to call you again. I'm gonna give you directions, and you're gonna meet me. And when we part company again, you're gonna drive off in Kelsey Blankenship's car, because you'll be carrying her driver's license inside her purse as part of your ensemble because you're going to be looking just like her. And you're going to have fucking fun doing it, asshole." You jab him in the shoulder with a hard finger. "Because anyone who doesn't know how to have fun with that body and that money is a fucking loser. Are you a fucking loser?"<br/>
<br/>
He actually hesitates before shaking his head. You snort. "Meet me at the school in an hour."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You're able to arrange all this because you gave it some good hard thought on your way out to meet Evans. It's going to be so easy it's embarrassing.<br/>
<br/>
You start by phoning the Evansbot and telling it to meet you at Westside. It arrives, and you accompany it back to the portables. The walk -- a silent one -- gives you some pause. Evans was pretty goddamn easy to push around, and you wonder if it isn't because Chris Trantham got too far into his head. This creature walking next to you -- Tanner Evans's doppelganger -- is much more erect and confident, with a "fuck you" look in his eye, and the swagger that the neutered Will Prescott you've got in your head remembers of a terrible bully. Certainly neither you nor Kirkham nor any of your friends would have given Evans any respect if he really was the marshmallow that you beat on mercilessly at the water towers not an hour ago.<br/>
<br/>
So if he got so deep inside Chris Trantham that he turned into a wuss, what will happen when he gets a good whiff of that arrogant cunt Kelsey Blankenship up his nose?<br/>
<br/>
Well, you'll worry about that later. Right now you're at the portables -- deserted on this Saturday afternoon -- and you lead the Evansbot into one. You order it to take its clothes off. With only the briefest glower, it complies, and you take the gear back out to the parking lot, where you suck on a toothpick meditatively until Trantham drives up.<br/>
<br/>
You order Evans into his old car and have him disrobe. "When you wake up, get dressed and drive out to Starbucks. You might be there awhile," you warn him. "Nurse your fucking macchiato." You rip the mask from him, shove it in your backpack, and leave him there to wake as you return to the portables. Back there, you order the Evansbot into Trantham's clothes, tell it to lay down, and remove the mask. Chris Trantham -- the original -- appears. You tiptoe out, then hustle at a hard run back to the parking lot. Evans is still passed out, but he wakes with a start when you lean in and honk his horn. "Get out of here," you tell him, and hop into your car.<br/>
<br/>
All that was tedious enough, but then comes the trip back to the elementary school basement, where the Chenbot is dutifully waiting. You tell him briefly of what you're going to do -- which leaves him chortling -- while swapping out materials from your bag, taking the mask for the Evansbot, the brain band of Professor Aubrey Blackwell, and the professor's house keys with you.<br/>
<br/>
Then it's off to the professor's villa.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
The plan is simplicity itself, assuming that Kelsey is as conceited as everyone assumes she is. From the professor's house will telephone her, pretending to be a professor who has heard rumors of her academic prowess and has the intense desire to see and talk with this most academically gifted girl. You will sprinkle hints of scholarships to attend Keyserling College and stories of college classes she can take in the spring for both university and high school credit. You will explain that she only has to stop by your -- the professor's -- house to discuss this, and that she should hurry over for a light tea and a short interview.<br/>
<br/>
How will she be able to resist?<br/>
<br/>
But though you have the professor's house keys, you park in the back behind the villa -- in case Kelsey should happen to recognize your car -- and enter it through the tunnel, the same way you did yesterday when you ambushed the professor.<br/>
<br/>
You're in the hallway when you stop short at the strange feeling in the air. At first you assume it must the <i>gwarcheidwad</i>, but it takes only a moment to realize it feels nothing like that monster. In fact, it's the opposite feeling you're getting: a sense of abandonment and desolation.<br/>
<br/>
Your frown of puzzlement turns into a gasp of shock when you step into the library. Almost all the books are off the shelves and stacked onto the desks next to half-filled book boxes. You look around, and after a shocked moment realize that the two grandfather clocks -- whose discordant ticking drove you nuts yesterday -- have gone. So have all the stuffed animals from their alcoves.<br/>
<br/>
Including the <i>gwarcheidwad</i>.<br/>
<br/>
No wonder the house feels empty. It actually is.<br/>
<br/>
You tiptoe around, exploring. The furniture is undisturbed, as is the kitchen, including its supply of knockout compounds. You arm yourself with some of these before heading upstairs to look around. There is nothing amiss in the bedrooms, but the workshop has been emptied of its tools.<br/>
<br/>
Is it the Lucybot? Has it been up to some kind of mischief? It's not under your control any more, and it probably knows everything the professor did.<br/>
<br/>
You're at the top of stairs, about to come down, when you hear the front door open. A voice shouts inarticulately from the foyer.</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: Another Body for Someone Else's Collection
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You put your hand in your pocket, and your fingers touch the brain band. But you hesitate to strike. Those bands are tedious to make, and you'd prefer not to waste one.<br/>
<br/>
In the moments that you hesitate, the professor turns on the lights and moves behind his desk -- and then it's too late for you to strike. So you resign yourself to questioning him before making any move against him. <br/>
<br/>
But he has the first question for you. "And what can I do for you, young man?" he asks as he sits behind his desk with a groaning sigh. That oily insincerity he used on you in the halls has evaporated, replaced an almost equally odious affability. There are spiders inside his smile.<br/>
<br/>
"It's this book I found in the used book store. Arnholm's." You stammer a little as you set the book on the desk in front of him, and you really wish now you'd used that brain band on him when you had the chance. "I was wondering what kind of book it is and what the symbols inside it mean."<br/>
<br/>
You're still talking even as he opens the book. He bends over to peer at the end pieces, then turns to the title page, then rapidly flips through more pages. You jump forward to lay your finger across one. "Those things especially," you say, pointing to a sigil. "What are -- ?"<br/>
<br/>
"Tch tch tch tch tch," he says, just like Dr. Steed had. Firmly he pushes you back. "You must give me a chance to examine the entire thing." He shoots a beady, hungry glance up at you, then bends back over the book. He flips a few more pages, then pauses. He gives you another brief glance, and turns back to the title page.<br/>
<br/>
"Well," he says slowly without raising his eyes. "Let us start with the title." He leans his elbow on the desk and rests his head on his hand; his other hand he waves lazily about in the air, his fingers fidgeting. "It is called the 'Libra personae'," he tells you, "which may be translated in a number of ways. As the Book of Persons, or the Book of Personaa, or the Book of Characters, or the Book of Faces. The Latin word 'personae' is much more difficult to translate than one might think." His fingers twine and waggle in a way that draws your attention. "It is best expressed in the phrase 'Dramatis Personae', which one sometimes finds at the front of playbills. The cast of characters in the story. The characters are, of course, fictional -- persons constructed for the purpose of the play. But that's rather the sense in which 'personae' is used in Latin. Each of us, you know -- all of us, in fact -- go through life as constructed personae -- characters that we play." <br/>
<br/>
His fingers seem to weave patterns in the air. There's a waviness, a haziness about them, that fascinates you. You can't drag your eyes from them.<br/>
<br/>
Then you forget that you ever wanted to look at anything else, ever, in the history of everything.<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, we play different characters in our lives. The son. The brother. The father. The faithful employee. The generous employer. The helpful neighbor. The ardent lover." His voice becomes distant and indistinct. You can still hear his words, though. "Those who know us under one persona may be surprised to see us when we are operating under a different persona. They may not be able to reconcile that both personas belong to us. They are like masks that we take off and put on as suits our needs and interests."<br/>
<br/>
And now, beneath and inside his words -- like the aural equivalent of an optical illusion -- you can hear other words. They seem to fit inside his droning and meaningless talk about masks and personas, but they are more forceful and direct, and they land like blows inside your head even as your mind is dulled into sleepy docility by his other talk: "Listen to me. Listen to me. Bend to me. Bend to me. Obey me. Obey me."<br/>
<br/>
Then even these words become indistinct, and you can only feel them as pounding blows inside your skull, mashing your brain into mush and reshaping it. You feel them as fingers inside your mind, and then inside your body, inserting themselves into your limbs.<br/>
<br/>
So when he stands, you stand; and when he puts his arm in yours and draws into the hall, you follow on numb feet. Still his words run through you, a murmuring brook that carries you down the hallway and the stairwell, out into the parking lot and into a sedan. His voice rocks and lulls you on a drive to the other side of town, then out of the car and up a walk and through the door of a large house. He guides you through shadowy rooms and through a door and down a spiral staircase. Only after you are seated on a cot do his words cease.<br/>
<br/>
For a moment you stare at him in a daze. You've just time to see him blow a powder into your face, and then you know no more.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You are very stiff and cold when you wake. You sit up and rub your face. <br/>
<br/>
That's when you notice that your glasses are gone.<br/>
<br/>
You blink and look around. Your eyesight is more or less perfect, and when you feel the whiskers on your chin and glance down, you confirm the loathsome suspicion. The mask of Kirkham that you'd been wearing has been removed, returning you to Prescott's body. Your clothes are gone too, and you snarl at your nakedness.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Fuck.</i> You really are in the shit now. That professor you found knows all about fucking magic, apparently. Enough to recognize the grimoire as something worth stealing, and enough that he was able to put some kind of a spell on you. A hypnotic one, at least.<br/>
<br/>
And where are you now?<br/>
<br/>
You're a in a very narrow room with a very high ceiling. The walls are of brick, and the floor -- which is stained a variety of nasty colors -- is concrete. There is one window, high up, in the wall opposite you, and it's the only source of light. You are sitting on a cot. When you move your foot it hits something. <i>Christ, worse and worse.</i> It's a porcelain chamber pot.<br/>
<br/>
Well, clothes or no clothes, you've got to get out of here. Luckily, there seems to be an exit. A wrought-iron spiral staircase leads up to a tiny landing. Grimly you ignore the chill of concrete and of metal on the soles of your bare feet, and ascend.<br/>
<br/>
You don't get far, though. About halfway up the air changes, becoming cold and foul, and a pit forms in your stomach. You pause to gather your strength, and take another step. The chill increases, and that pit turns into a fist pressing into your gut. One more step, and you falter, sinking to one knee with your head bowed.<br/>
<br/>
The cold is bad enough -- a polluted, nauseating chill that sucks all the strength from your joints and limbs and fills them with poison instead. But it's the sickness that gets you. It's a sickness like you recognize from several memories, those of yourself and those of Prescott. It's a fist shoved up inside your stomach and held there. Bullies used to do that to you -- to both of your remembered personalities -- holding their closed fists inside your solar plexus until you felt the shuddering need to vomit. It's like this now. Something cold and powerful is pushing you back.<br/>
<br/>
You raise your head, and almost faint as a wash of pain and intense dizziness floods your head. The thing on the next step, the one just above the rung you're standing on. You can't see it, and you can see no mark on the stair. But you know it's there. Or, if it's not a thing sitting there, it's the rung itself. Nothing -- no threat and no reward, no promise from heaven or terror from hell -- could get you to put your foot on it.<br/>
<br/>
Your knees buckle and you slide back down the staircase, banging your shins and knees and nearly cracking your skull on the railing. The weakness and sickness, though, rapidly subside once you're at the bottom, and when you stand again a minute later, it's as though you had suffered no attack.<br/>
<br/>
Still, you are not so foolhardy that you'll try mounting the stairs again.<br/>
<br/>
The landing above is out of reach, even after you drag the cot over and try jumping from it to grasp it with your fingers. That leaves the window as the only way out. <br/>
<br/>
Its lower sill is almost even with the bottom of the landing. But you discover that the brick wall beneath it is a lot rougher than the wall by the landing, such that when you lean the cot against it the legs rest fairly firmly against it. This gives you a makeshift ladder that lets you scramble up and onto the sill, where you are barely able to hang on with your toes and fingers.<br/>
<br/>
But it's locked. The only way through it is to break the glass and to try to crawl through. That sounds really dangerous. You've fantasized a lot about hurting Prescott's body, but as you're trapped in it for the present you're really not keen on slicing it to ribbons.<br/>
<br/>
On the other hand, who knows what horrors the man upstairs is preparing for you.</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: Another Change of Mind
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You study the window carefully. The panes are very large, certainly large enough that you could get through them if there were no glass. As for dealing with the glass -- <br/>
<br/>
You come real close to losing your patience and busting through it with your fist, but you keep your cool. You leap off the ledge and look around for a tool -- any tool -- to use. Your eye lights on the chamber pot.<br/>
<br/>
It's tricky, clambering back up the cot to the ledge with one hand because you're carrying the pot in the other. But you make it up. With gritted teeth, you strike the glass a hard blow, and it shatters outward. So far so good. Using the pot you clean out as much of the glass as you can from the frame, smoothing it down so that even if you accidentally brushed it on your way out, you probably would only nick yourself.<br/>
<br/>
But that leaves all the glass on the ground right outside the window. Stepping on that would be a bad idea. You get another idea, though, and congratulate yourself on its cleverness. You place the pot on the ground atop the glass, open-side up, and put one foot in it. Then, very carefully, you crouch and pull yourself through the window. You brush the top of the pane with your back, but feel no sharp cuts or scrapes. On the other side you straighten up, bracing yourself on the window as you balance on the foot you've got stuck in the pot. You stretch the other of Prescott's long legs, planting a foot far from the glass, and step onto it. You clear your other foot of the pot --<br/>
<br/>
--and then you're out.<br/>
<br/>
But you're not safe yet. You glance around.<br/>
<br/>
It's a big house, made of white-washed stone, rising at least two stories above you. To your left is a patio; to your right, the continuation of the house. Some yards away is a wall that looks too high to leap over. So you make your way around the house away from the patio. The ground is completely bare, composed of dirt and rock, and the stones bite your bare feet as you run. Though there is a watery warmth in the sunlight, the air is very cool, making you shiver. <br/>
<br/>
You choice takes you the long way around the house, for you have to turn three corners before you spy a gate in the wall. The yard all about the house seems dead, except for a single, rather forlorn tree growing up close to the side of the house. You sidle up the porch, making sure that the front door is closed, before turning back to the gate.<br/>
<br/>
This is the grim part. You are naked, in a body that is the double of someone else out there in the world. You appear to be out in the countryside, for there are no other houses visible. Your best chance of safety would seem to lie in getting picked up by the police. But what would you say to explain yourself or your identity?<br/>
<br/>
Still, you bet it's better than getting caught by that university professor.<br/>
<br/>
Then you pause. <i>Johansson.</i> That's who you could contact. If you could get Johansson to drive out here, and if you could meet him before he hit the front door, then you could get away with him in his car. But how to get to a phone to call him? If the cops picked you up, don't you get a phone call? You think it's supposed to work that way. Otherwise, your only real option is to go back inside this house and find one.<br/>
<br/>
You're still wavering over what to do when you hear a noise behind you. You whirl. The front door has opened, and you gasp at the sight. <br/>
<br/>
It's Will Prescott. And before you can react, he squirts you in the face with the spray bottle he's holding.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Your mind is a sloshing ocean of memories. It heaves and rushes and slopes upward into towering mountains of heavy memories before crashing in on itself. The bowl of your skull shudders and vibrates.<br/>
<br/>
But you've no memory of these things when you wake, only the bruises. All things considered, you are feeling remarkably calm and rested when you open your eyes, to glimpse a very familiar ceiling. You raise up on your elbows and look around.<br/>
<br/>
You are in a bedroom decorated in crimsons and ebonies with a slightly Chinese flavor. You are resting on a bed and you are quite naked.<br/>
<br/>
But you are not alone. The high school student David Kirkham is here, sucking on his toothpick and sneering maliciously at you. <br/>
<br/>
And standing beside him, eyeing you intently, is yourself.<br/>
<br/>
Well, it isn't really yourself. You know enough to realize <i>that.</i> But it's very hard not to think of him as yourself. <br/>
<br/>
For just as you were convinced up until this afternoon that you were really Gary Chen, high school student and drug dealer, so you are now convinced that you are really Aubrey Blackwell, anthropology professor and warlock.<br/>
<br/>
You can't help wincing as you look at yourself through the eyes and mind of Will Prescott. You are not so egotistical that you think yourself physically attractive, even at a minimum level. Still, it hurts to see a fat, bald man with greasy hair and a tangled moustache and goatee. Your belly strains against the pullover sweater, and your feet splay out awkwardly.<br/>
<br/>
"You seem to be in a ruminative state," says your alter ego after he has waited for you a bit. "Have you something to say?"<br/>
<br/>
"I've several things I should like to say," you retort. "But the phrase you're looking for, if I remember correctly, is -- " In perfect Greek you recite the first line from George Abney's book on sigils. "Now, if we have established my identity to your satisfaction -- "<br/>
<br/>
"Jesus, he talks like a fruit," sneers Kirkham.<br/>
<br/>
"That's quite enough from you," you and your other self snap in unison. "Yes, I suppose that demonstrates it to a redundancy," says your other self. He hands you a robe. "You understand what and where you are?"<br/>
<br/>
"Perfectly," you say as you wrap the seventeen-year-old body of Will Prescott in a dressing gown. "I suppose that, technically, I ought to apologize for breaking the window downstairs and thereby necessitating this hazardous experiment. However, it would be an insincerity, as I feel no identification with the person who broke it. That, I would say, admirably demonstrates the success of the <i>amphora anima</i> that you prepared." You bow. "I am you, my dear Aubrey."<br/>
<br/>
"As I am you," you politely returns with a bow of his own.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, Jesus," Kirkham groans, and rolls his eyes.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You are not, of course, Aubrey Blackwell. You are really Will Prescott. But you have a copy of Professor Blackwell's mind inside yours, guiding your thinking and your instincts. Prescott, the dear boy, had made great progress, but he fell into waters much too deep for himself. It's actually a mercy that he came and found you. He will lead a much longer and more productive life as a result.<br/>
<br/>
He just won't be himself anymore.<br/>
<br/>
It's all on account of that metal band he made the other night using the new sigil. He thought he was making a <i>tabula mentalia,</i> a thing like a book that allows its wearer to read the mind of another without feeling any force from it. But instead he fashioned an <i>amphora anima,</i> a thing that copies the actual will and mind of another person. With it, he foolishly filled himself with the <i>anima</i> of Gary Chen, giving himself the illusion that he actually was Gary Chen, and had somehow been swapped into the body of Will Prescott. <br/>
<br/>
So Aubrey Blackwell had gleaned after maneuvering the luckless Prescott/Chen hybrid into the secret chamber of his villa. Blackwell knew all about the <i>Libra personae,</i> as he himself was its former owner before a careless work-study student accidentally sent it off to Arnholm's in a load of books. But in the short time Blackwell had possessed it, he had made a number of masks, and even a golem -- one of those stone 'bots -- and still had some on hand. He had tried to put one onto Prescott -- onto <i>you,</i> as you must remind yourself with a sigh -- so as to copy your mind and body for investigation. That is how he found you were already wearing a mask -- a mask of Kirkham. He had removed that mask, made one of you, donned it himself, used some advanced memory techniques to quicken his mastery of your memories, and thereby come to learn your history. A few shrewd deductions, corroborated by a cursory examination of the pertinent sigil in the grimoire, had told him of your accident with the <i>anima</i> band.<br/>
<br/>
By chance he had happened to see you skulking around the front of the house. After recapturing you, he found how you escaped. And since he could find no other way to control you, he had hazarded the great risk: he had prepared an <i>amphora anima</i> of himself and placed it upon you.<br/>
<br/>
So here you are inside Prescott. Or, rather, that is what you can't help thinking. In fact, here Blackwell is inside you.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"And what do your instincts suggest we do now?" asks your partner. As hard as it is to not think of yourself as "Blackwell," it takes a wrench of willpower to think of him under that name.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, there's his friend, Mr. Johansson," you reflect aloud. "It would be well to neutralize him. Many of his classmates should be returned to normality, as they are no use to anyone in their present guises."<br/>
<br/>
"What of this one, and his drug-dealing friend?" Blackwell asks, indicating Kirkham.<br/>
<br/>
You're not sure. You have little interest in them or their enterprise. But they are available as receptacles. There is another and more pleasant receptacle, however. Lucy Vredenburg, an unlucky college girl, is also available for inhabiting.</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: Love in Multiple Guises
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"I think it would be best if we took this one in hand," you tell Blackwell, pointing to Kirkham. "I suspect there will be many opportunities to conduct experiments in the future, and their delinquent companions will make convenient subjects. I will resume the role of this one myself," you continue after a pause. "With Mr. Prescott's <i>essentia</i> and his memories I can manage things until we have a clearer idea of how we want to proceed."<br/>
<br/>
"Very good. I will accompany you," says Blackwell.<br/>
<br/>
"Accompany me?" you ask, puzzled. "Where?"<br/>
<br/>
"Out the door. As Miss Lucy. It's All Hallows' Eve," he reminds you, "which is a convenient excuse for spending the night elsewhere."<br/>
<br/>
<i>Ah. Of course.</i> The <i>gwarcheidwad</i> that guards the house will be at its most potent and active tonight. And though you trust the seals that keep it out of the bedrooms, it will likely be a very unpleasant -- at the very least a very noisy -- night.<br/>
<br/>
Blackwell orders David Kirkham to disrobe and then to lie upon a desk, and removes the mask from it, revealing the golem that he had made when he still had possession of the <i>Libra.</i> It was the last spell he studied and mastered. He then goes upstairs to change himself as you sit in a chair and return Kirkham's mask to your face.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It is most disorienting to wake with a third mind inside yours. They are all very discordant.<br/>
<br/>
There is, first of all, the mind of Will Prescott. It is actually your native mind, but it feels like an assumed personality -- an active but docile thing, easily cowed and subdued. Then there is mind of David Kirkham, which is a very different personality, but one that is also assumed though harder to control because of its native truculence. And over the other two is the mind of Aubrey Blackwell -- an invasive mind, but one that you cannot help but treat as your own. <br/>
<br/>
As you dress in the wardrobe of David Kirkham, you reflect on the war within you, and how different it felt from when it was the mind of Gary Chen inside you in place of Blackwell's. That felt more like a single personality, probably on account of the way Chen had Prescott so cowed, and because his personality and Kirkham's meshed so well. But now, as you put Kirkham's glasses on and remind yourself to slide a toothpick between cheek and gum, you are going to have to figure out a new balance.<br/>
<br/>
You're pulling together some books to take with you when another person comes into the library. It ought to be Aubrey Blackwell, and it actually is, but he's in a different guise. The girl has wide hips, large bosoms, and a pronounced hourglass curve to connect them; strong legs; long, platinum-colored hair; and a face colored like strawberries and cream. Her name is Lucy Vredenburg, and before she became a mask for the professor to wear she was a college student and cheerleader, and the older sister of the high school cheerleader Cindy Vredenburg.<br/>
<br/>
Three different saps rocket upward inside you as she enters. All three personalities you carry inside you want to grab her, hold her, and molest her. You have to force your throat to relax when she asks you, "Are you ready?"<br/>
<br/>
"I think so." You lift the books. "You gonna leave anyone in residence?"<br/>
<br/>
Her expression turns quizzical and amused. "You've gotten into character quickly, haven't you?"<br/>
<br/>
It takes you a moment to recognize her meaning, and to realize she is right. Your instinct was to reply in the manner and cadences of the mask you're wearing. That's something of a relief. You remember the Kirkham-golem's comment about your being a "fruit" when you spoke like Aubrey Blackwell. It would never do to speak like that among his friends while pretending to be David Kirkham. It must be a consequence of Will Prescott's peculiar affinity for masks and for the <i>Libra</i> itself. That's what you tell Blackwell, at least, and it takes a little effort to get past Kirkham's filters so as to express the thought.<br/>
<br/>
"Have you any insights into why that might be? You are inside him now, and if you know anything -- "<br/>
<br/>
"No, I don't," you reply, forcing yourself to answer in Blackwell's voice and manner. "I hope we don't have to take him apart -- or that we'll break if we do. But you haven't answered my question. Are you going to leave anyone in residence?"<br/>
<br/>
Lucy looks around with a frown. "I wasn't planning to, but perhaps it's for the best." She sighs, and starts to unbutton the top button of her sweater. "I suppose I'll have to briefly change, and re-charge the mask." <br/>
<br/>
You would love to see her in her ripe nudity, but you stop her by seizing her wrist. "You don't have to do that. It's just overnight, the golem doesn't need to know what's been going on in the past week."<br/>
<br/>
She smiles as you continue to hold her. "What a manly grip you have," she teases. You blush, and release her. "But I suppose you're right. I'll go get it."<br/>
<br/>
"I'll wait outside." Your brain is buzzing with a restless lust, and you need to cool it. <br/>
<br/>
So as she goes up to fetch a mask of Aubrey Blackwell, so as to leave a puppet occupying the villa and conducting the professor's business, you pace the ground outside the walls of the villa.<br/>
<br/>
The air, you discover, doesn't really calm you, not when Lucy Vredenburg's SUV is sitting right there. It's here because he called her out here: He had her mask riding around on his golem, and when he decided he needed the muscle of David Kirkham to handle the boy in his secret room, he called her out, swapped Kirkham's mask onto it, and took it downstairs to hold you while he switched Chen's <i>anima</i> out of Prescott and replaced it with his own. Now in her guise he'll have to drive you up to the university to get Kirkham's car, and you'll be riding across town next to her with her thigh only inches from your hand -- <br/>
<br/>
You have to wipe your palm on your jeans. Surely Blackwell would understand if you made a pass at him while he was wearing that mask. He kidnapped and replaced Lucy because he wanted a test subject, and because he himself recognized how luscious she was. He wanted that body for himself, to play with from both inside and outside, and he has taken it out almost every weekend and had lots of fun with it by letting boys insert themselves into him. You're just another boy, an alter ego, even. He wouldn't think it strange if you touched him in that body, and pulled him close. Would he? Why, he might even think it strange if you didn't.<br/>
<br/>
You flinch at the sound of a door closing. He's coming. Your pace quickens as his footsteps approach. You put your hand on the door handle of the SUV, but pause. "Was he confused," you ask as Lucy closes the gate behind her.<br/>
<br/>
"No more than usual. I told him he only had to keep the house warm until tomorrow afternoon."<br/>
<br/>
"Afternoon?"<br/>
<br/>
"I suppose you can come out early if you want. It's Friday night, and if I'm going to be out late, I'm not going to be up early." <br/>
<br/>
Jealousy erupts within you. As she passes, you dart a hand out, grabbing her by the elbow and pulling her up close. The predatory sexual instincts of David Kirkham explode, like beer out of a shaken bottle.<br/>
<br/>
She gasps a little as you grip her tightly about the waist with one strong arm. You take the toothpick from your mouth and fling it away. For a moment you savor the moment -- the moment just after you've declared yourself, and just before you go in to mark your prize with lips and teeth and tongue -- then put your mouth to hers.<br/>
<br/>
She grabs you by the back of the neck and head, and returns your hard kiss with an even harder one of her own.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Lucy screams like an enraged animal as you pound away inside her. Her nails rake your back, and her thighs squeeze you so tight you can hardly breath. It's four o'clock in the morning, and this is the third time you've done it since checking into the motel. The girl is both insatiable and inspirational. The first time you charged into her recklessly, and spent yourself so hard that you doubted you'd ever be able to fuck again. After that she sucked and kissed you all over, refreshing and lifting you into a second paroxysm as powerful as the first. You had both rested after that, but her discreet nibbles and bites had roused you, and after hovering over her and running your palms and tongue over every surface and crevice of her body you had found -- or been given -- a strength equal to the earlier frenzies. After the last thrusting discharge you almost black out, but rouse yourself enough to push and scrape more deeply into her, as though to grind your seed into her raw, soft flesh.<br/>
<br/>
She growls and chews your ear, and not gently either. "And I thought college boys knew what they were doing," she mutters. "God! If I'd known -- " She alternately gnaws and gasps at you. "What seventeen-year-old -- studs could do -- with their cocks and their stamina -- " She tries swallowing your tongue. "I'd have gone to bed with one -- every night -- from the time I was a high school freshman -- until now."<br/>
<br/>
"I can find you a place at the high school," you murmur. "Got lots of bitches there, not enough witches."<br/>
<br/>
"Mm. Cindy, maybe? But can any of them match Lucy?"</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: Academic Exercises
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"There are a lot of good places at the high school for you," you murmur as you kiss Lucy all over. "I like you here, too."<br/>
<br/>
"I won't give up Lucy," she groans. "She was my first, you know. But a part-time place somewhere else -- " She kisses and bites your mouth. "To be close to you? That's an idea."<br/>
<br/>
Your reserves are very low by now, and you soon leave off talking, and then you leave off kissing, and then you abandon consciousness completely.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's fairly late in the morning when you wake, late enough that you have to dress and go out to the front office to pay for another night so you can stay long enough to wake up.<br/>
<br/>
Besides, you think you can get some work done here at the motel. You brought the <i>Libra personae</i> with you, and a few more useful texts. While Lucy showers, you text Kirkham's mother and explain that you spent the night out with a friend and that you'll be hanging out with him all day. She is quite angry at your staying out, and says so. You truculently reply that it happened and that's all there is to it.<br/>
<br/>
So there will definitely be a downside to this high school alias business. Two of the personalities you carry inside of you are used to answering to parental figures. But your governing persona, Aubrey Blackwell, has been an adult for fifty years, and he set a stepfather on fire as a youth when he tired early of being ordered about.<br/>
<br/>
Nor will you have the pleasure of Lucy's company. Her kisses are more chaste after she out of the bathroom and dried off and dressed. "I have to put in a couple of personal appearances," she tells you. "And run some errands. I'll bring you back a treat when I'm done." You stare at her ass as she walks out the door.<br/>
<br/>
Then, after calming yourself with a shower, you sit down and open a couple of books.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You start with the <i>Libra personae,</i> the crown of the library that Blackwell has painstakingly put together. He had many incentives to covet it. As you have learned from experience, it can grant great power and bestow many advantages on its owner. Blackwell understands the attraction there, as well as the simple pride in his ownership of such a sought-after book -- it would be like owning the Mona Lisa.<br/>
<br/>
But it was also its technique that attracted him. It uses sigil magic, an intensely powerful and arcane form of magic, the pinnacle of occult practice. Blackwell himself -- as even he has to admit -- has only a tentative handle on it, and there are very few books that explain its finer points. The <i>Libra</i>, by repute and by confirmation after he had examined it, is the pinnacle of the science. Its sigils were composed by the greatest practitioner of the art, and a warlock would study them with the same awe and wonder and hunger as a musician would study the fugues of J. S. Bach.<br/>
<br/>
That is why Blackwell had hardly progressed into the book before the folly of a work-study student took it from him. His practice was to study the sigil of a spell intensely, to try to discern its purpose and practice before executing it. He had only just used it to make a golem when he lost it.<br/>
<br/>
It has been out of his hands for many months now, and his memories of it are crude and rough, so you start at the beginning with a refresher course, studying the spell that creates a <i>corpus</i>; the spell that seals it with a <i>membrana</i>; the spell that makes a <i>tabula mentalia</i>; the spell that makes ferrumen to bind <i>corpus</i> and <i>tabula mentalia</i> into a <i>persona</i> ...<br/>
<br/>
You are well pleased to see how easily it comes back to you.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
But you're not so absorbed in your work that you forget to give some thought to the affairs at the high school. It will all be very tiresome to manage the affairs of the cretinous Gary Chen and his collection of thugs and lowlifes. Yes, there are a few advantages to be had by taking his gang in hand. He has enslaved some muscle that could be useful and plausibly criminal in some circumstances -- the septet of Adam Karter, Joshua Call, Jeff Spencer, Jamie Rennerhoff, George Mendoza, Joe Thomason, and Tanner Evans -- but that is more than counterbalanced by the tedium of managing the originals. Not even the money to be made off Chen's network of trade is an enticement, for you -- that is to say, Aubrey Blackwell -- make a comfortable living from the university position.<br/>
<br/>
But there's no need to wind the gang up just yet. As you offhandedly remarked to Blackwell, the original thugs would be quite useful as subjects of experiments. The golem of Gary Chen can manage the actual drug distribution apparatus in the meantime.<br/>
<br/>
Yet you still give some thought to it in the back of your mind, because you're thinking that, if you are to give yourself a semi-permanent alias within the body of a high school, it would be pleasant to give your alter ego one there as well. He would, likely, spend a great deal of time in his own form -- like you, he would hardly want to occupy himself with mundane teenage matters -- but a golem in the high school would make a nice vacation spot for him, and a nice companion for yourself.<br/>
<br/>
It's the middle of the afternoon, and you're idly mulling over candidates when Kirkham's phone rings. It's Blackwell -- naturally, for from anyone else it would be a text. "Speaking," say when you pick it up. <br/>
<br/>
"Have you been to the villa?" Lucy asks. "Because someone has been moving books around," she says when you answer in the negative.<br/>
<br/>
"Are you out there now? What are you doing?"<br/>
<br/>
"Picking up some more material for us. I've been thinking about <i>essentia</i>." She stops herself before she can get sidetracked with metaphysical speculations. "Most of the books have been taken off the shelves and piled onto the tables. It looks like they're being sorted."<br/>
<br/>
"Not by me. I'm still at the motel, but I'm getting ready to leave."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh? Where?"<br/>
<br/>
"The Acheson elementary school basement. There are supplies there that can be added to our own." <i>And because I might make a mask while I'm there.</i> "Doesn't the professor know what's going on there? The placeholder, I mean."<br/>
<br/>
"He's not here, and he left my cell behind. I suppose it's him. He sometimes gets ideas, you know. Maybe he had a brainstorm. I can't imagine it's a thief."<br/>
<br/>
"Is the <i>gwarcheidwad</i> out?"<br/>
<br/>
"Of course. Given what day it is, it will be very weak, hardly a nuisance to -- " She trails off. "Well, I'm sure it's the placeholder, as you say. I can't stay long. I've got what I need. I just wanted to know if you'd been here and moved things around."<br/>
<br/>
She hangs up. And as she's successfully derailed your train of thought, you pack up too and check out of the motel. You take a cab out to the university, where you pick up David Kirkham's car and drive down to Acheson, to the elementary school.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
As you'd half intended, you spend the balance of the afternoon making a new persona. As you work, you ponder the possible identities for your other self.<br/>
<br/>
Cindy Vredenburg would be the most logical and natural. Through the character of her sister, Lucy, the professor could easily replace her. Lucy would also double as a convenient conduit when he wanted to shift from the high school to the university. The sister are very similar, though Cindy has a slightly greener quality to her body. The great disadvantage there is that Cindy has been through some turmoil recently, having been dumped by her erstwhile boyfriend, Seth Javits, when Prescott's friend Caleb Johansson moved in and moved on to Chelsea Cooper.<br/>
<br/>
Speaking of Johansson, there's someone else that needs managing.<br/>
<br/>
Kelsey Blankenship would be another attractive acquisition. She isn't lusciously beautiful in the manner of some of the cheerleaders, and her physical charms lean more toward the athletic and the aesthetical, for she likes to dress stylishly. She is also imperious -- a real queen bee -- which would suit Blackwell's temperament, and she is more than comfortably well off as well as academically ambitious. And your bully boys have been wanting to recruit her anyway; Blackwell could lend you a small finger of aid in that regard from her perch.<br/>
<br/>
There is one very good reason not to use anyone like Cindy or Kelsey, however. They are rather obviously out of David Kirkham's league, and you would like for your high school paramour to openly acknowledge a liaison with you for as long as you will be identifying with this role. That argues for a character from a different caste.<br/>
<br/>
You mull this possibility until you hit what you think is a fine inspiration: Rachel Bell. None of the minds jostling inside you know her well, and she is striking to behold rather than notably beautiful. But she is pretty enough in a non-classical way. Mostly she is notable for her brains. Unlike the AP students, who incline mostly toward the humanities and only suffer instruction in math and science, Miss Bell excels in the STEM areas, even to the point of being regarded as something of a prodigy, it is rumored. Blackwell likes brains, and -- consulting your governing <i>anima</i> -- you decide he would like that one as an identity.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
When you are finished, you telephone Lucy back and talk for some time. As you'd anticipated, Blackwell is agreeable to adopting a part-time high school guise for the duration of your own time at Westside, and after the two of you talk over the possibilities, you both light on the same preferred candidate:</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: The Surprising Place You Find Yourself
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"There are a lot of good places at the high school for you," you murmur as you kiss Lucy all over. "I like you here, too."<br/>
<br/>
"I won't give up Lucy," she groans. "She was my first, you know. But a part-time place somewhere else -- " She kisses and bites your mouth. "To be close to you? That's an idea."<br/>
<br/>
Your reserves are very low by now, and you soon leave off talking, and then you leave off kissing, and then you abandon consciousness completely.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's fairly late in the morning when you wake, late enough that you have to dress and go out to the front office to pay for another night so you can stay long enough to wake up.<br/>
<br/>
Besides, you think you can get some work done here at the motel. You brought the <i>Libra personae</i> with you, and a few more useful texts. While Lucy showers, you text Kirkham's mother and explain that you spent the night out with a friend and that you'll be hanging out with him all day. She is quite angry at your staying out. You truculently reply that it happened and that's all there is to it.<br/>
<br/>
So there will definitely be a downside to this high school alias business. Two of the personalities you carry inside of you are used to answering to parental figures. But your governing persona, Aubrey Blackwell, has been an adult for fifty years now, and he set a stepfather on fire as a youth when he tired early of being ordered about.<br/>
<br/>
Nor will you have the pleasure of Lucy's company. Her kisses are more chaste after she out of the bathroom and dried off and dressed. "I have to put in a couple of personal appearances," she tells you. "And I have to run some errands. I'll bring you back a treat when I'm done." You stare at her ass as she walks out the door.<br/>
<br/>
Then, after calming yourself with a shower, you sit down and open a couple of books.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You start with the <i>Libra personae,</i> the crown of the library that Blackwell has painstakingly put together. He had many incentives to covet it. As you have learned from experience, it can grant great power and bestow many advantages on its owner. Blackwell understands the attraction there, as well as the simple pride in his ownership of such a sought-after book -- it would be like owning the Mona Lisa.<br/>
<br/>
But it was also its technique that attracted him. It uses sigil magic, an intensely powerful and arcane form of magic, the pinnacle of occult practice. Blackwell himself -- as even he has to admit -- has only a tentative handle on it, and there are very few books that explain its finer points. The <i>Libra</i>, by repute and by confirmation after he had examined it, is the pinnacle of the science. Its sigils were composed by the greatest practitioner of the art, and a warlock would study them with the same awe and wonder and hunger as a musician would study the fugues of J. S. Bach.<br/>
<br/>
That is why Blackwell had hardly progressed into the book before the folly of a work-study student took it from him. His practice was to study the sigil of a spell intensely, to try to discern its purpose and practice before executing it. He had only just used it to make a golem when he lost it.<br/>
<br/>
It has been out of his hands for many months now, and his memories of it are crude and rough, so you start at the beginning with a refresher course, studying the spell that creates a <i>corpus</i>; the spell that seals it with a <i>membrana</i>; the spell that makes a <i>tabula mentalia</i>; the spell that makes ferrumen to bind <i>corpus</i> and <i>tabula mentalia</i> into a <i>persona</i> ...<br/>
<br/>
You are well pleased to see how easily it comes back to you.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
But you're not so absorbed in your work that you forget to give some thought to other, very interesting discoveries. There is, to take a very salient instance, Will Prescott.<br/>
<br/>
It continues to be hard to think of yourself as him. Aubrey Blackwell's is your governing intellect, and the <i>mentalia</i> of David Kirkham is also very strong. Prescott's body is also hidden beneath Kirkham's <i>corpus.</i> Mostly, though, it is hard to think io Prescott as yourself because it is easier to think of him as an object of study and potential experimentation. It has to do with the number of golems -- of 'bots, as he thought of them -- that he created.<br/>
<br/>
There are nine of them, if one counts up the various types. There is the golem that he created from the body of Gary Chen's grandfather. Then there are the eight masks that he filled with a <i>servus mobilia:</i> Gary Chen, Adam Karter, Tanner Evans, Joe Thomason, George Mendoza, Joshua Call, Jeff Spencer, and Jamie Rennerhoff. This is an extraordinary number of slaves.<br/>
<br/>
It is extraordinary because of the material out of which they must be fashioned. The spell -- as you confirm with a close study of the sigil -- calls for the use of <i>essentia</i> in their preparation. That is provided by the hair -- though it could equally be the blood or saliva or even the semen -- of the one who means to enslave the golem. <i>Essentia</i> is a vital metaphysical principle in a human being, or in anything else, and its presence in the golem is the reason that the golem must obey the person whose <i>essentia</i> is used: the golem is, at bottom, an extension of that person because they share the same <i>essentia</i>. And as the <i>essentia</i> of a person must obey that person's will, so the golem (which has no will of its own) must obey its master. <br/>
<br/>
But there is only so much <i>essentia</i> to go around. Those who have experimented with it -- and Blackwell has several books recording those experiments -- show that <i>essentia</i> can only be divided a small number of ways. Sometimes it can only be divided five ways; more usually six; in rare cases seven. There is no record anywhere of someone making an eightfold, or greater, distribution of their <i>essentia.</i><br/>
<br/>
Including the <i>essentia</i> still present in his body, Prescott made a ten-fold distribution.<br/>
<br/>
Then there is quite remarkable luck that he had in getting past that torn page, and in deciphering the spell that makes the <i>amphora anima.</i> It does look like luck, and if it were anyone else who had done it, you -- that is to say, Blackwell -- would have dismissed it as such. But in light of the just-mentioned prodigy, you have to wonder.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
In fact, you wonder so intently that you soon distract yourself entirely from the business of the sigils. None of the books you have at hand offer any guidance on the problem of Prescott and his <i>essentia,</i> and the frustration soon leaves you frustrated. You call Lucy's cell. "Where are you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Hanging out with friends," she says in her laziest college-girl manner. "Wanna come out?"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm preoccupied. I'm going to return to the villa, resume work there."<br/>
<br/>
"I was going by there in a bit," she says. "I can pick up what you need and bring it out to you instead."<br/>
<br/>
You hesitate. "No. I need to fetch Mr. Kirkham's automobile from the university anyway. I'll take a cab," you add when she doesn't offer to come pick you up.<br/>
<br/>
"I'll see you soon, try to distract you," she giggles.<br/>
<br/>
Feeling very irritated, you hang up. Of course, she was putting on the act only for the delectation of her friends, you realize. Still --<br/>
<br/>
Oh, but you can't stay mad at her, not when you think of her body and what Blackwell was able to do with it last night.<br/>
<br/>
You gather up your books, check out of the motel, and call a cab. It takes you to the university, where you collect Kirkham's car and drive back out to the villa.<br/>
<br/>
But you don't dismount, not right away, when you pull up in front of it. Blackwell's car is gone -- the golem must be out running errands -- but there is a strange truck parked in front. For a moment you think it must be the truck that belongs to Will Prescott, for it is the same color (white) and general size and shape as his. But this one has a strange bumper sticker on the back: "I Brake for Meteors."</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: The Prodigies of Will Prescott
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"I think that these can keep for now," you say, indicating Kirkham in your turn. "There will be opportunities to conduct experiments in the future, using their delinquent companions as subjects. But we have research to conduct first."<br/>
<br/>
"Indeed," Blackwell says, looking and sounding pleased.<br/>
<br/>
"So I will adopt the guise of Miss Lucy tonight," you continue.<br/>
<br/>
Blackwell's face falls. "I do not believe you have any right to claim priority there," he says stiffly.<br/>
<br/>
"I am not claiming priority. It is merely convenient. Mr. Kirkham here needs a golem to keep him in circulation, and we have him upon one now -- "<br/>
<br/>
"You know, I'm standing right here, you fuckers," Kirkham mutters.<br/>
<br/>
But you ignore him. "Someone needs to play Miss Lucy. She has plans for the evening, it being Halloween, you know."<br/>
<br/>
"Yes," says Blackwell. "I was rather hoping to get out of the house for that very reason."<br/>
<br/>
You understand quite well what he means. On this night waxes the power of the <i>gwachardweid,</i> the supernatural guardian who prowls the grounds between midnight and dawn, and though the seals on the doors have always proven potent to keep it at bay in the past, the night promises to be a noisy and unnerving one.<br/>
<br/>
"But I know how to earn my keep," you continue. "Before I leave I will make sketches of the new sigils that young Prescott uncovered, and study them over the weekend. We will thereby be able to cover twice as much ground in that time."<br/>
<br/>
This mollified Blackwell somewhat, and after directing the Kirkham golem to return home and resume the existence of its original, he fetches the mask and clothes of Lucy Vredenburg.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
But you don't change into her identity yet. It would be a distraction, and you should demonstrate your sincerity first by doing the promised work. You follow him into the library, to work even as he pulls down books in order to begin compiling his own notes on a related set of problems.<br/>
<br/>
Blackwell himself has long since grown used to the library, but it's a distraction for you, as you have Prescott's personality as well as Blackwell's. It's a shadowy and gloomy room, even with all the lights on. The ceiling vaults high above, and three of the walls are covered with bookshelves punctuated with alcoves containing impossible stuffed creatures. Two grandfather clocks tick discordantly in a corner, and a scythe-like pendulum suspended from the ceiling slices the floor between two shelves. Your eye frequently darts over to the French doors leading onto an outside patio. The <i>gwarcheidwad</i> will be prowling the grounds, and you keep thinking that you see movement without. Eventually you move to a new desk and turn your back to it, though this makes you nervous for other reasons, until you finally get your mind properly into the work.<br/>
<br/>
And what a joy it is to get into the work! With the <i>Libra</i> under one hand and a sketchpad under the other, you begin to copy in rough form the sigil that makes the <i>servus mobilia,</i> the paste that goes inside a mask to make a golem.<br/>
<br/>
The sketching of such sigils is often a tedious business. Sigils are the most difficult magic known to man. They are devices for creating and executing spells of astonishing complexity and power, and the secret of their construction and use is known to very few. You -- or, that is to say, Blackwell -- has only a shaky grasp on them, and depends upon a book compiled by the nineteenth century antiquarian/alchemist George Abney to understand them.<br/>
<br/>
That was one of the main reasons he was so eager and so pleased to acquire the <i>Libra.</i> Aside from the power it grants in the form of masks -- and the egotistical satisfaction that Blackwell got from owning this most rare and valuable grimoire -- were the sigils it contained, which were reputed to be the most masterful expression of the art and science of sigil-writing perhaps in the history of all the magical sciences. It would be like acquiring the sketchbooks of Leonardo da Vinci, or the notebooks of Johann Sebastian Bach -- a chance to study the mind and product of a genius of the first rank. Greedily he had begun to take them apart, only to find that they were of such complexity that he could only sketch them incompletely. It is your aim to prepare similar sketches of the <i>servus mobilia</i> sigil, and perhaps another, before the approach of midnight forces you to suspend your labors.<br/>
<br/>
Or, it <i>was</i> your aim. To your astonishment, you find that the job of sketching the sigil proceeds far more rapidly and with far more detail than your original had ever managed. Each element of the sigil forms quickly and perfectly under your pen, and your hand fairly flies as you only have to glance between the original sigil and the sketch pad for it to register in your mind and form on the paper. You are able to complete that most complicated sigil while still in the freshness of your labor.<br/>
<br/>
Back you go to the sigil before that, the one that encloses a living body inside the shell of a golem. That one too you finish quickly, and also the one that makes a golem. Blackwell completed sketches of the others, but you complete your own copies of them, reproducing them in perfect detail.<br/>
<br/>
Blackwell himself comes over to watch you work, and mutters in startled surprise. "Quite remarkable," he says. "And how are you managing this?"<br/>
<br/>
"I really don't know. It may be a synergy between the <i>anima</i> and this body, or it might be -- " You break off.<br/>
<br/>
"Or it might be Mr. Prescott," Blackwell finishes for you. "I am really beginning to suspect he is a remarkable find."<br/>
<br/>
"Have you found anything yet that could shed light on him?"<br/>
<br/>
"No. I would encourage you to lay this aside and help me, but the progress you are making -- " He shakes his head and returns to his own work.<br/>
<br/>
It is the matter of Prescott's -- that is to say, your -- <i>essentia</i> that has piqued his interest, and yours. One of the things he noticed while consulting the contents of the personas he made of you and of Kirkham was the quite extraordinary number of masks and golems that you were able to put under your control. In crafting golems, or the masks that contain golems as a shell on the inner surface, the mask-maker must put part of himself into them. That is why they must obey him -- they are extensions of him. But there is only so much of a man -- of his <i>essentia</i> -- to spread around. To the best of Blackwell's knowledge, it is possible only to spread oneself into five or six or seven places. But you put your <i>essentia</i> in ten different places, if one is to include your original body.<br/>
<br/>
That was the main reason Blackwell was willing to insert his <i>anima</i> into you, and thereby make you a partner of sorts. Anyone else he would have imprisoned and eventually killed, but he saw that you had at least one gift that he wished to study.<br/>
<br/>
And now you have followed that prodigy with this prodigy, that of being able to sketch the complex sigils with amazing speed, accuracy, detail, and dexterity.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
So you are yourself quite excited when you straighten up a little after eleven, pop a crick from your neck, and declare that you have finished copying the sigils. Blackwell studies them closely and with a little pallor in his face. "And what of this one," he asks, pulling out a loose sheet of paper that was tucked into the <i>Libra</i>.<br/>
<br/>
It's the paper with the sigil for the <i>amphora anima</i> -- the one that formed when you laid a blank piece of paper atop the spell under the light of the full moon. The spell itself consists simply of a lot of words arranged in nonsense patterns. You tell him it doesn't make any sense to you. "And this one?" He turns to the last unlocked spell, the one containing sigils inside of sigils. "I'd have to study it," you tell him.<br/>
<br/>
"Take it with you," he tells you quietly. "The <i>Libra</i> and the Abney." You're startled at his suggestion that you take this book, recovered so luckily and unexpectedly, from the safety of the house, and you tell him so. "Yes, but you are making such remarkable progress. I don't want to see you stop."<br/>
<br/>
"You just don't want me to go out and party," you retort. He gives you a pinched look, and starts to take the grimoire from you. But you pull it back. "You're right, I'm on a roll. I'll talk to you tomorrow. Or perhaps Sunday. It depends on how far I get before I'm exhausted." You gather up the <i>Libra,</i> the Abney, a few more books that might be of technical help, Lucy Vredenburg's mask and clothes, and leave him.<br/>
<br/>
Your desire to get into the body of Lucy Vredenburg notwithstanding, you are actually more interested in continuing the research that has so excited you. And since the house that she shares with her parents and sister would be a distraction, you leave the costume off and drive her SUV to the Layzee-Nites Motel on Highway 126 on the southern part of town. It's a cheap and rundown dump, but you're able to pay for a room using the cash in Lucy's billfold without putting a debt on her credit card. You set up a study area in the room, and are soon utterly absorbed in your work. You ignore the texts that come in on Lucy's cell, and don't go to bed until nearly four.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
The next morning you go to the office and add another day to your stay. Aside from three food runs, you don't set foot outside the room. The excitement you feel at your progress leaves you almost ill.<br/>
<br/>
Sunday passes as Saturday did. You wonder a little at not hearing from Blackwell.<br/>
<br/>
Monday comes, as do newspaper headlines describing the fire that destroyed Blackwell's villa on Sunday.</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: An Imprisonment, And a Release
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Time passes very slowly, and you restlessly pace the narrow confines of your cell. Several times you come close to making an attempt on the window, and once you even heft the chamber pot in your hands, gauging whether if thrown with enough force it would shatter the window. But each time the thought of the danger -- of the glass that would be stuck in the panes and which would litter the ground -- dissuades you.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
All light has failed, plunging the room into a gloomy darkness, when you hear a click high above, and you crane your neck to look up at that landing. A crack of light appears, and then a rectangle. A silhouette looms within it, and then a figure is gazing down at you. "Prescott," it hisses in a soft and menacing voice.<br/>
<br/>
It's the voice of your best friend, David Kirkham.<br/>
<br/>
But it won't be Kirkham. A chill of horror runs through you, fighting a hot flare of anger. "Who the fuck are you?" you yell back at it.<br/>
<br/>
It doesn't answer before stepping aside as a larger figure enters. You can't make out its features, but the general shape suggests it's the professor. The silhouettes move away from the door, and the metal staircase groans. You retreat into a corner and hunch, your fists balled up. You're naked and in a shit body, but you think you can make a fair account of yourself before you're overwhelmed. Kirkham will be the deadly one, but the professor with his great gut can probably make his weight felt. If you can dodge them and get up that staircase --<br/>
<br/>
But then you remember that thing on the middle rung.<br/>
<br/>
A circle of light flickers on, stabbing you in the eyes. It takes you by surprise, so that you're not prepared for the rush. Hard, strong limbs close around you, and you're thrust into the middle of the room. You kick and twist viciously, and bang your head against something yielding. Then an arm wraps about your head, locking it in place while a hand goes over your forehead. You grit your teeth and struggle to pull away, but then something yanks at your brain.<br/>
<br/>
It's like having your guts torn out.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You wake with the feeling of having been through an earthquake. You are groggy, and sick, and shaking all over. For awhile all you can do is lay in a pile and shudder and shiver all over.<br/>
<br/>
You eventually feel well enough to move; your bare skin scrapes across a cold, rough floor. <i>Ugh. Concrete.</i> You open an eye and sit up. It's very dark. High up in the wall, where that window would be, the darkness is a little paler, but it casts no light into the room.<br/>
<br/>
You feel about, and find the cot. A thick quilt has been dropped onto it, and you wrap yourself inside it and lay down. A depression, cold and nauseating, fills you.<br/>
<br/>
How did you get in this mess? You found a book of magic tricks, and started fooling around with it with Caleb. You made some masks of each other, had some fun.<br/>
<br/>
Then you lipped off to Chelsea Cooper. She sent her goon boyfriend after you. Caleb copied him into a mask, talked you into trapping Gordon inside a mask of yourself. From there is was just one  pratfall after another, until you wound up playing the part of Gary Chen --<br/>
<br/>
<i>Whoa.</i> You bolt upright, then lean over hard to keep from vomiting. <br/>
<br/>
<i>Chen!</i><br/>
<br/>
He's gone.<br/>
<br/>
All his memories and all his personality -- that angry, confident, strutting, seething personality -- have vanished. You don't even have the fake personality that you wore while wearing his mask. <br/>
<br/>
You are yourself again.<br/>
<br/>
You are Will Prescott.<br/>
<br/>
You loose one or two dry heaves at the floor, but nothing comes out. You snuggle back inside the quilt and shake all over with fear, wonder and confusion.<br/>
<br/>
What the <i>fuck</i> happened to you the other night, after you put that band onto your forehead? It was like --<br/>
<br/>
No, it wasn't just "like," it was <i>actual fact,</i> for you remember the thoughts of, the conviction of, the enraged horror of Gary Chen flowing out of that band and into your mind, displacing your soul with his. <br/>
<br/>
You were possessed by the spirit of that psychotic bully!<br/>
<br/>
And now he's gone? Gingerly you feel at your forehead, and pull. You recite mystic words and grapple with your own brow. Nothing comes away. You fall onto your back, a chill sweat trickling over you. It's like a fever has broken, leaving you weak and wrung out.<br/>
<br/>
Yes. He's gone. You remember everything you did as him, you remember even the thoughts and motives and desires and impulses as though they were your own. But they are gone now.<br/>
<br/>
You laugh weakly in relief. If the professor ripped Chen out of you, then he did you one favor at least.<br/>
<br/>
So maybe he's not all bad?<br/>
<br/>
Except for the fact that he's imprisoned you.<br/>
<br/>
Still, the realization that Chen is gone warms you, and the warmth and relief and the exhaustion of a very busy day send you into a slumber.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You wake with a start to the impression of an explosion. A dying echo is ringing through your heads and you stagger upright, grasping at consciousness. Was it a dream?<br/>
<br/>
No, you hear voices and running feet above you. Something falls over with a great bang, and there's a rumble like falling crockery.<br/>
<br/>
You sit up. Very pale daylight is showing in the window, and you hop across the icy concrete floor to peer up through it. You seen nothing but a soft blue sky. Cautiously you take a chance climbing the stairs, but even before you reach the fatal rung you feel its presence, and slink back down. After that flurry of noise upstairs, a silence has fallen. You wrap yourself again in the quilt, sit on the cot, and listen.<br/>
<br/>
Nothing happens for a very long time. Then ... voices? You strain your ears, but can't be sure.<br/>
<br/>
Then a much longer silence.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You jerk awake. How long were you asleep? The light in the window is a lot stronger.<br/>
<br/>
You yawn and shake yourself awake. You stretch. You wait.<br/>
<br/>
And you wait and you wait.<br/>
<br/>
You try napping, and maybe you fall asleep, but you're not sure.<br/>
<br/>
Then you hear muffled sounds from above. Thumps and thuds. <br/>
<br/>
You listen some more.<br/>
<br/>
An impatience borne of boredom nearly overwhelms you. It's impossible that your captor would have forgotten about you, and you're pretty sure you'll hate it when he starts paying serious attention to you. But maybe it would be worth it to annoy him a little by yelling.</span></div></div>


author_id: seuzz
title: The Fate of Foolish Little Boys
path:
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chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>It would be possible, but not at all entertaining, to describe the tedium that follows. Suffice it to say that you ignore the muffled noises from upstairs until they cease late in the afternoon.<br/>
<br/>
Neither the professor nor Kirkham ever come down again. You relieve yourself in the chamber pot, and try to forget the hunger that gnaws at you. You give some thought anew to breaking through that window, but can never nerve yourself to try, no more than you could yesterday, when you at least had Chen's guts to help you.<br/>
<br/>
Night comes, and you sleep. The next day you wake with a very empty feeling. Nothing happens, and you hear no noises. The day passes with no relief. Night comes again.<br/>
<br/>
It is a sleepless night. You weep several times out of fear and self-pity.<br/>
<br/>
Morning comes. You spend it in a daze.<br/>
<br/>
Relief of a sort finally comes when with a great cracking and rumbling the roof caves in. You are in terrible pain for some seconds, and that is all.</span></div></div>


path: 111211132112222212222221221213
author_id: seuzz
title: Unscrambling the Omelet
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Yeah, this new toy the book has given you would let you  become someone else. Anyone else! Someone far, far away from anything involved with Dane, Chen, hardcore drug dealers, any of it! You could become some other person, and then—<br/>
<br/>
You blink at the reflection in the mirror. The reflection of your best friend, Caleb Johansson.<br/>
<br/>
<i>I could become Caleb,</i> you think. <i>He hasn't got anything to do with Dane or Chen or anything like that. I'd be safe if I was him.<br/>
<br/>
But then </i>he'd<i> have to become Dane, because where else would he go?<br/>
<br/>
And then Chen would be after </i>him. He'd<i> be the one in danger, not me.<br/>
<br/>
Well, better him than me!</i> another part of you thinks. It's a very selfish part of you, but also a very small part, easy to overwhelm. You couldn't do that to Caleb.<br/>
<br/>
But if couldn't do that to Caleb, could you do it to anyone else?<br/>
<br/>
<i>Better them than me!</i> that selfish part of you squeaks again. But its voice is dwindling.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm just gonna stay here for the night," you tell Caleb. "I can't go back to Dane's."<br/>
<br/>
"You can't stay here forever," he replies. "People are gonna come looking for Dane if he doesn't show up after a few days."<br/>
<br/>
"People like Chen," you repeat.<br/>
<br/>
"You could always let Dane out," Caleb says. "Let him go back to being himself. Then you could go back to being Gordon."<br/>
<br/>
"Except—"<br/>
<br/>
Then you break off, and blink a couple of times. An idea is forming, but it hasn't come into focus yet. Not entirely.<br/>
<br/>
"What?" Caleb asks in a guarded tone.<br/>
<br/>
"What what?" you ask. You look at his reflection in the mirror—the face and form that is identical to the one you have borrowed from him.<br/>
<br/>
"I know the look you just got on your face," he says. "I get it myself when—"<br/>
<br/>
"Look, don't you have to get home?" You spin on him. "I know you do!"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb makes a face, and snaps his fingers in the face you've borrowed.<br/>
<br/>
"Then gimme my gear," he says. "Face and everything else. Last thing I want is for you taking them out and fucking something up for me."<br/>
<br/>
<i>Serve you right if I did,</i> you snarl to yourself.<br/>
<br/>
But you hurl yourself onto the dusty conference table and grapple with your face. Caleb pulls your hands away, though, and pulls the things off for you.<br/>
<br/>
He's gone when you awake.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Maybe it was one of Caleb's ideas you got while you were wearing that doohickey that copied his brain. But whether it was his idea or one of your own, you remember it, and you mull it over as you wait for night to fall outside the basement. <br/>
<br/>
<i>You can let Dane go back to being himself,</i> Caleb suggested. <i>And you can go back to being Gordon.</i><br/>
<br/>
<i>Except I don't know how to </i>be<i> Gordon,</i> you started to retort. That's how come you and Caleb both got out of Gordon's mask shortly after putting it on. You couldn't handle a basketball, and you couldn't handle his life.<br/>
<br/>
But if you used one of those thingummies to copy Gordon's brain, and paired it with the mask, then you could impersonate the captain of the basketball team—and Chelsea Cooper's boyfriend—exactly.<br/>
<br/>
That would still leave the real Gordon Black stuck impersonating <i>you,</i> of course, and you can imagine what Caleb would have to say to that: <i>If you can turn Dane back into himself, you can turn Gordon back into himself too.</i> Putting everybody back would be the simplest solution to this mess.<br/>
<br/>
Except if you did that, you'd be putting Dane in harm's way—something you just decided you couldn't do to anyone. Particularly Dane. Silly goofball that he is, he doesn't deserve to have Chen or his scary-ass cousin on his case, particularly for something that <i>you</i> fucked up for him. <br/>
<br/>
But what if you left Dane where he is—as Gordon—and you resumed your old identity, while sticking Gordon in for Dane? The objection—<i>Gordon doesn't deserve it</i>—doesn't have nearly same weight. After all, Gordon more or less tried to kill you; so maybe in a karmic sense he totally deserves to have someone trying to kill him. <br/>
<br/>
Besides, he's mean enough that, even in Dane's body, he could probably do a fair job of defending himself from Chen.<br/>
<br/>
Maybe they'd wind up killing each other.<br/>
<br/>
The thought makes you wince. <i>That's not funny, even as a joke,</i> you reprimand yourself.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Anyway, these are the thoughts that you entertain yourself with as you kill the balance of the afternoon. You also work diligently at carving runes into the metal strips that Caleb made, and when you've done two of them you turn to the grimoire and the next spell. Caleb had already set out the supplies for it, and by the dim light of his laptop you check them against the translation of the ingredients.<br/>
<br/>
It turns out not to be a hard spell, and it uses many of the same liquids and powders you'd gathered for the other spells, and after about twenty minutes you're able to set a bowl of the slurry-like liquid onto the sigil in the book. As directed by the instructions, you run your finger three times around the circle and set a flame to it. It flashes into a brief fire, then goes out. The page beneath turns when you lift the bowl.<br/>
<br/>
There is only a short paragraph on he other side, and the on-line Latin translator gives a straight-forward interpretation: It's a glue that lets you attach one of those metal strips to the inner surface of a mask.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Well, that's convenient,</i> you think. You'd be able to put the strip and the mask onto someone at the same time instead of in two separate steps, and onto yourself in one step as well.<br/>
<br/>
So it looks like the book is finally giving you some new tools that you can do to undo the mess you got yourself into with the first batch of things. You look ahead to the next spell, but put it aside when you see that it requires a lot of new stuff.<br/>
<br/>
Besides, you've got enough to think about for now.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Caleb's got coffee for you the next morning when he shows up, which helps you wake up after an uncomfortable night of sleep. He's also got a question for you: "Did you figure it out?"<br/>
<br/>
"Figure what out?" You grimace as you scald your throat with the bitter coffee.<br/>
<br/>
"Whatever you were thinking about when you threw me out of here."<br/>
<br/>
"I didn't throw you out of here, cocksucker. You <i>left</i> me while I was—"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah yeah." He waves an airy hand at you. "But I could tell you didn't want me around."<br/>
<br/>
You make a face at him.<br/>
<br/>
"Today's the day that Dane should show up," Caleb continues, "if his mom's not going to start worrying about him. And if you're going to skip going to school tomorrow—"<br/>
<br/>
"Dane can have his life back," you interrupt.<br/>
<br/>
Caleb looks startled. "Whaddaya mean?" he asks. "You mean you're thinking about taking him out of— And putting him back in for himself?"<br/>
<br/>
"You've only been pestering me about it forever."<br/>
<br/>
"And you've only been telling me to go fuck myself when I tell you that's what you should do. So what changed your mind?"<br/>
<br/>
But have you changed your mind? You mumble something about <i>I just finally figured you were right</i> while slurping thoughtfully at the hot coffee.<br/>
<br/>
<i>I could still throw Gordon in for Dane,</i> you think, <i>and go back to being myself. Or move everyone back to where they were. Or put Dane back and take over for Gordon.</i><br/>
<br/>
The latter is the most inviting, frankly. Gordon's the top dog at school, and you'd have Chelsea Cooper slurping at your cock.<br/>
<br/>
But that would put Dane back in harm's way. You try telling yourself he'll be okay. He's Dane Matthias, and no one can stay mad at him. He could talk his way out of the trouble you got him into.<br/>
<br/>
Then a radical thought occurs to you.<i>If I used one of the thingies to copy Dane's brain, </i>I<i> could talk my way out of this festering shit pile I've made of Dane's life. Then everything would be back to normal when we gave Dane his life back!</i><br/>
<br/>
It would also be a way of taking responsibility for what you've done.</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122222122222212212134
author_id: seuzz
title: Dane's Doom
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Wha'dju say?" Caleb asks.<br/>
<br/>
His voice brings you back to the present: to the grimy school basement you've been hiding out in, on account of the way you've fucked up so many lives. <i>I fucked them up and I've fucked myself up</i>. It's a thought as bitter as the coffee Caleb brought you. <i>I need to put things back.</i><br/>
<br/>
And that, you decide with a resolution that frightens <i>the fuck</i> out of you—<br/>
<br/>
That includes fixing things for Dane before returning him to normal.<br/>
<br/>
"We're going to put everyone back to the way they were," you tell Caleb. "But first I'm going fix things between Dane and Chen."<br/>
<br/>
Caleb's eyes bulge. "How the fuck're you gonna do that?"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, I figure Dane can fix things, 'cos, you know, he's <i>Dane,</i> and he— Um—"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, he what?" Caleb challenges you.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, he'd know how to smooth things over," you lamely conclude. "'Cos he's so, like, relaxed about—"<br/>
<br/>
"Okay, so where do <i>you</i> come into this equation? I thought you said that <i>you</i> were going to—"<br/>
<br/>
"I am! I'm gonna use one of those thingies you made!" You look around for the metal strip Caleb used to copy his brain, but he must have taken it home with him yesterday. "Sure," you continue. "We'll use it to copy Dane's brain, and then I'll put it on, and with his brain and his face—"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb closes his eyes and groans. "And how are you going to copy Dane's brain?" he asks.<br/>
<br/>
"We'll just get together with him. With, uh 'Gordon'." You crook your fingers around the name. "Sure, we'll get him baked and we'll take the mask off him and copy him. Then I'll put on it and Dane's mask and then— Oh!" You snap your fingers. "I read up on the next spell, and it makes this glue that—"<br/>
<br/>
"No, wait." Caleb waves you to shut up. "You're going to turn yourself into a copy of Dane on the inside <i>and</i> out? And that'll solve things because?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because I'll know what he'd tell Chen, how he'd smooth things over with him."<br/>
<br/>
"Why don't you let Dane solve his own shit?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because he doesn't know what's going on."<br/>
<br/>
"Dane <i>never</i> knows what's going on!"<br/>
<br/>
"Which is why I should fix it for him! It's the least I can do, man, since—"<br/>
<br/>
"Alright, alright!" Caleb raises his hands in surrender. "Since you're trying to be so goddamned noble, the least I can do is not try to talk you out of it. But you know you're going to fuck things up even worse."<br/>
<br/>
"What makes you say that?" you snarl.<br/>
<br/>
"Look at your track record."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Since you've got a number of those metal strips ready to go, there's nothing to stop you from moving right away. Caleb has to text Jenny Ashton, who has to text some of her other friends, before you can get some contact info for Gordon Black. Caleb grumbles that now Jenny is hot to know how come he wants to talk to Gordon, but you've no ideas for shutting Jenny up, and besides, you don't care. Caleb sends a text to Gordon Black's number, asking to hang out with him. <i>Luv too!</i> Gordon texts back, and follows it with a string of random emojis. You have to wonder if he's already baked.<br/>
<br/>
Caleb expects you to go along, but you decline at the last minute, saying that it would be too weird and dangerous if you met "Gordon" under Dane's face, and that you don't want any of this mess traced back to anyone with your own face. Caleb sarcastically retorts that you seem to be fine with having it traced back to <i>him,</i> but you stubbornly refuse to let yourself be moved. So he goes off alone for his playdate.<br/>
<br/>
He's grumpy when he returns some hours later, and flings the metal band at you. Your eyes almost pop from your head when you see the name on it.<br/>
<br/>
"Thor?" you exclaim. "Dane's first name is 'Thor'?"<br/>
<br/>
"That's what it says," Caleb replies.<br/>
<br/>
"How'd it go? You have any trouble?"<br/>
<br/>
"The fuck do you care? I got it, so shut up and put it on and let's get this farce over with."<br/>
<br/>
Now that it's come to the point, though, you hesitate. <i>What if it doesn't work?</i> you wonder. <i>What if there's no way out for Dane? And what if I find out too late that there's no way out for him? While I'm trying to </i>be<i> him?</i><br/>
<br/>
But when Caleb frowns hard at you, you climb onto the conference table and lay on your back. You close your eyes with a sigh and slap the metal band to your forehead.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
<i>Monday morning.</i> Your eyes dart nervously about the parking lot as you wait for Chen to show up.<br/>
<br/>
You passed a very bad Sunday afternoon and evening. <i>I'm so fucked, I'm so fucked, I'm so fucked,</i> you bleated to yourself.<br/>
<br/>
And it was with Dane's brain you were thinking it.<br/>
<br/>
<i>So much for my brilliant plan,</i> you decided shortly after Caleb dropped you off in front of Dane's trailer. There's no way Dane could face either Chen or his cousin Dwayne.<br/>
<br/>
You were okay at first, though a little confused on waking. The last thing you remember, with Dane's memories, is hanging out in the parking lot of King Kong Komics with ... uh ... whatever his name was that texted you. You had Gordon Black's body, which was the <i>wildest</i> trip you've ever taken.<br/>
<br/>
But after you got your head cleared, and figured out which memories went with which personality, you told Caleb to take you home. But the closer you got to Dane's place, the more freaked out you got. Because Dane is <i>terrified</i> of his cousin, and he avoids Chen as much as possible too. You thought <i>you</i> were scared of them? Well, Dane has <i>seen</i> them in action.<br/>
<br/>
So you spent the night in a state of nervous exhaustion. It didn't help that you got to watch Mrs. Matthias getting stoned while you so desperately wanted to get stoned alongside her, but you wanted more to be sober if either Dwayne or Chen showed up. This morning, your heart was pounding in your chest on the long drive out to school. Now you're regretting showing up so early—it's barely seven-thirty—but you wanted to catch Chen and get things over with as quickly as possible. You're hoping that the story you mean to give him, along with the busted metal suitcase, will dissuade him from murdering you.<br/>
<br/>
<i>I remembered where I put it, man, so here it is, is everything cool with us now?</i> you'll tell him. And after he's punched you in the guts so hard that you cough out your back molars, he'll ask how come the lock on the case is broken. <i>Because I was worried someone got into it, so I wanted to look inside to make sure everything was still there, but I didn't have the key, so I had to bust it open.</i> Then after Chen gets through kicking the rest of your teeth out ...<br/>
<br/>
Yeah, it's a stupid story, but maybe it's stupid enough that Chen will buy it while leaving you only <i>mostly</i> dead.<br/>
<br/>
"Dane!"<br/>
<br/>
You leap a foot in the air and whirl. But it's only Caleb, sauntering up to you with a grin. "You're up here early," he says.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, I'm waiting for Chen still." You squint down the street, both hoping and dreading the sight of the canvas-sided Jeep that Chen drives. "Wait, what're you doing here so early?"<br/>
<br/>
"Gonna try to catch up with Anthony Kirk."<br/>
<br/>
You flinch. "The fuck you wanna catch up with that smug asshole for?" Kirk is one of the rich AP fucks who hangs out with Kelsey Blankenship, Geoff Mansfield, and them.<br/>
<br/>
"I wanna pick his brain."<br/>
<br/>
"About what?"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb cocks an eyebrow at you. The penny drops.<br/>
<br/>
"Holy shit! You're gonna use one of those—!"<br/>
<br/>
"Shh! Shut up," he growls.<br/>
<br/>
"Why Kirk?"<br/>
<br/>
"Cocksucker's going to Harvard. Or Princeton. If I had a copy of his brain, I might could maybe get into one of them places too." Caleb looks you up down. "I'd offer to score a second copy off him for you, but I think Matthias is about your speed."<br/>
<br/>
You flip him off, but the unfeeling bastard saunters off with a chuckle.<br/>
<br/>
It's like fireworks are going off in your brain after he's gone. The asshole is grabbing advantages with the stuff you made, while you're stuck trying to dig yourself out of the shit pile you've got yourself up to your neck in. Your gut roils with the resentment and unfairness of it all.<br/>
<br/>
But that resentment acquires a new focus when you see Chelsea Cooper prancing across the lot toward the school, head and chin high. <i>She's the one that started all this!</i> you rage to yourself. <i>She sicced her boyfriend on me, and—</i><br/>
<br/>
It flashes back to you. That idea you had a couple of days ago, to trap her in Dane's life while you put on a copy of her face. That wouldn't have worked, back before you and Caleb figured out how to make those memory strips. But now, if you had her face, body, <i>and</i> her memories and personality to hide behind ...<br/>
<br/>
And she'd deserve to get stuck in Dane's life, too. She's the one who sent Gordon after you.<br/>
<br/>
You hop from foot to foot after she's vanished into the school. There are other people who would deserve equally to be trapped in Dane's body with a death sentence hanging over them. The Molester. Seth Javits. Some of the football players who made your life <i>hell</i> during P. E. back in your freshman year. Steve Patterson.<br/>
<br/>
The temptation is almost unbearable. You could skip school and race back to the club house, make a new mask, grab one of the memory strips, and use it to get a new identity.<br/>
<br/>
And when a car drives slowly past, and you glimpse the driver, you add another name to the list of possible victims: David Kirkham, another bully, and one of Chen's best friends.</span></div></div>


path: 11121113211222221222222122121341
author_id: seuzz
title: Looking for a Promotion
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You are so wound up that when at last Chen's Jeep comes rocketing toward the school, you throw the briefcase into the backseat of your car and hightail it into the school. <i>Gotta hide, gotta hide, gotta hide.</i> That's the only thing running through your head. <i>Gotta hide, gotta hide!</i><br/>
<br/>
You make a wide circuit of the school, scuttling from hiding spot to hiding spot, until you've circled back around to the parking lot. Once back at your car, you race back to the old elementary school, where you hide the briefcase with its bags and bags of weed behind a cluster of bookshelves. You curl up with your face to your knees, and try to stifle Dane's whimpers of despair.<br/>
<br/>
When you lift your eyes again, you see the pile of metal bands that Caleb made.<br/>
<br/>
That is how you change your mind again, and decide to find yourself a new hiding place.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You run through the possibilities as you carve runes into the last two metal strips, and settle on Chelsea as your target. She's the one who started everything by sending her psycho boyfriend after you. Besides, any of the others you were thinking of—Kirkham, the Molester, one of the football players—would probably come at you after you made the switch with them. But Chelsea, ho is nothing more than a cheerleader after all, would probably be too freaked out to try anything with you.<br/>
<br/>
And being <i>Chelsea Cooper, head cheerleader,</i> would be a pretty big promotion! You'd get a lot more from that than whatever Caleb thinks he's going to get by copying Anthony Kirk's brain!<br/>
<br/>
The only trouble—and it's a goddamned large obstacle—is getting close to Chelsea. She would have nothing to do with Will Prescott, but she would have even less to do with a stoner like Dane Matthias. Never mind her giving you the cold shoulder, she might be so offended by your approach that she sends her hulking boyfriend after you, like she did before!<br/>
<br/>
And that's when you see a way of maybe getting to her.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You return to the school a little before the final bell, and lurk at the corner of the theater wing, watching from afar the breezeway that runs in connects the school to the student parking lot. You're watching for three people.<br/>
<br/>
Will Prescott is the first, and when he appears he blows out of the double doors like he's running from a fire. You wonder how Gordon is holding up in your old life and old body, but you let him go. You're not interested in him. You just wanted him out of the way.<br/>
<br/>
Same for Gary, who comes storming out of the same doors a few minutes later. You jump back out of view, and after a count of ten, you peek back out, just in time to see him disappear toward the parking lot. So that means you can safely approach Chelsea without being intercepted.<br/>
<br/>
It's another five minutes, though, before she comes out, with her friends Kendra and Gloria. You scamper to intercept them, calling Chelsea's name. All three girls turn, and their eyes freeze when they see you.<br/>
<br/>
You can't help giggling fearfully at them—talking to Chelsea isn't as bad as talking to Chen, but it's damn similar in its own way. "Oh, wow, hey," you gasp at them. "Like—" You lock eyes onto Chelsea. "You, uh, gotta minute to chat"—you swallow, hard—"Chelsea?"<br/>
<br/>
She snorts softly at you, and turns while Kendra and Gloria shoot you dirty looks. "It's about Gordon!" you call out.<br/>
<br/>
Chelsea swings around again at the name, her eyes blazing. "You stay away from him, you freaking loser!" she hisses at you. "Or I'll talk to the administration and have you busted so hard and fast—!"<br/>
<br/>
You raise your hands. "Hey, I don't ever talk to the dude! Scout's honor!" You try to cross your heart, but only succeed in slashing an X over your belly and crotch. "But that's what I wanted to talk to you about! I know where he's gettin' his shit!"<br/>
<br/>
If anything, Chelsea's eyes blaze hotter.<br/>
<br/>
"I don't give a fuck!" she spits at you. "And why the fuck do you think I care where—?"<br/>
<br/>
"He's gettin' it from some Eastman cocksuckers! Yeah! They're all, like— It's a basketball thing! You know? Our rivals? It's, uh—"<br/>
<br/>
"Go tell it to Coach Brooks," Gloria sneers.<br/>
<br/>
"No! No, I wanna tell it to—" You point to Chelsea. "I mean, who's gonna believe me? But you come with me, we talk to the Eastman guys, you see it and then you tell, uh, Coach Whoever—"<br/>
<br/>
"What are you talking about?" a voice sounds behind you. You wheel to find Lin Pol, another cheerleader, frowning at you.<br/>
<br/>
"This doesn't concern you, Lin," Gloria says.<br/>
<br/>
Kendra jumps in. "Dane says some of your Eastman fuck-buddies are getting Gordon high to fuck with our squad!" she says. Her lip curls disdainfully.<br/>
<br/>
Lin's face curves into a hard scowl. "The fuck?" she growls at you.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey! It's just what I heard! I—! I'm just telling Chelsea, so she can, you know, maybe do something about it!"<br/>
<br/>
"You're high, Dane!" Chelsea declares, and wheels to march back into the parking lot, leaving you with Lin. You gulp.<br/>
<br/>
"Explain it all to Lin, Dane," Kendra jeers at you.<br/>
<br/>
"Explain what?" Lin demands.<br/>
<br/>
"He wants to go meet them," Gloria answers. She turns and hurries off after Chelsea, with Kendra chasing behind.<br/>
<br/>
"Uh—!" you stammer when Lin turns a hot glare on you.<br/>
<br/>
"Where and when?" she asks you.<br/>
<br/>
"Where and when do we meet them?"<br/>
<br/>
"I— Tonight?" you squeak. You're too panicked to turn your own mouth off. "Over at, um, Hochstetter Park? At eight? That's where they, uh—"<br/>
<br/>
Lin opens her mouth to reply, but is forestalled by a blaring voice. "Jeez, way to block the way out, guys!" Stephanie Wyatt, a hard-faced member of the girls' basketball team, comes bearing down on you. She does a slight double take at Lin. "Oh hey, Lin," she says in a softer voice, then brushes past you. Another girl, with long auburn hair, grins at you as she follows in Stephanie's wake.<br/>
<br/>
Lin grabs you by the ear and twists your face to hers. "Hochstetter Park? Eight o'clock?" she says. "I'll be there." She shows you her teeth, then marches off.<br/>
<br/>
You're in a daze as she goes, so you don't notice right away that the auburn-haired girl has stopped to grin widely at you. You stare at her. Her name is on the tip of your tongue ...<br/>
<br/>
Before you can place her, she puts her fingers to her lips in the universal smoking-a-toke gesture and asks, "You got any extra, Dane?" Her eyes twinkle.<br/>
<br/>
"Huh? Oh! Uh—" Instinctively you dip a hand into the pocket of your dirty sports coat, and your fingertips touch a couple of joints. Before you can take them out, though, Stephanie stops to glare at her friend. She sees, and backs away from you. But as she follows Stephanie she mouths at you over her shoulder: <i>I'll text you later!</i><br/>
<br/>
After they're gone, you run for your car.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
<i>Well, that was a clusterfuck,</i> is your dismal reflection after getting back to the elementary school. Not only did you fail to arrange a meeting with Chelsea, you managed to drop a couple of bombs in front of a couple of other people. Now Dane, when he gets his old life back, is going to have Chelsea, her friends, and Lin all mad at him for spreading rumors about Eastman students trying to sabotage Gordon.<br/>
<br/>
You're still moping about it when your phone—Dane's phone—dings from a text. It's from someone named Julia Paez. <i>Right!</i> That was the girl who was leaving with Stephanie! She's another basketball player. Dane has sometimes run into her at parties, and have the impression from Dane's haze-choked memories that she is very easygoing—even that she might have been flirting with him.<br/>
<br/>
Anyway, she wants to know what's up, and follows by asking if she can meet up with you someplace to buy a little "band candy" off you. You're not really concentrating, so you put her off by telling her to drop by your house any time after nine. <i>You busy now?</i> she asks.<br/>
<br/>
That's when you realize, with a shock, the opportunity that is being handed to you: If you can't get together with Chelsea to make a switch, you could make one with Julia.<br/>
<br/>
Like, any port in a storm, right?<br/>
<br/>
But for now you only reply with an ambiguous text—<i>Lol knida busy</i>—that you hope will keep that door open even as you open your mind to other possibilities.<br/>
<br/>
Because if you can't get Chelsea, there are other acquaintances of Dane's that you might make a lunge at. (By this point you're not thinking in terms of who might "deserve" to get stuck as Dane.) So Lin becomes a live possibility when she texts you to confirm you'll meet her at Hochstetter , and Brianna Gould (a party girl that Dane hangs out with) trails herself across your sights when she texts to see if you want to hang out with her and some other guys.<br/>
<br/>
But is it's as you're hesitating over these choices—Lin, Brianna, Julia—that the brass ring swings back into reach.<i>Where r u meeting these Eastman guys abt Gordon?</i> Chelsea texts you to ask. <i>Hochstetter?</i><br/>
<br/>
So she did take the bait! You dance around the school basement, whooping and punching the air.<br/>
<br/>
<i>No its potsdam park,</i> you type in with shaking fingers. (No reason to send her where you told Lin this "meeting" was going to be.) <i>Nine.</i><br/>
<br/>
But after you hit "send" you glance over her text again. That's when you notice that she didn't actually say she was going to meet you. She just asked where the meeting was.<br/>
<br/>
A dreadful thought occurs. Maybe she's not planning to come. Maybe she's planning to send some of Gordon's goon friends instead.</span></div></div>


path: 111211132112222212222221221213411
author_id: rugal
title: A Royal Coup
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>What if Chelsea is playing you for a fool, setting you up so the goon squad can pound you into dust? Or what if she does show up but it's with some of her own friends leaving you with no opportunity to make a switch? But this is what you were aiming for isn't it? This is what you were wanting. It's a risk to be sure but you decide that it's a risk you're willing to take because no matter how high the risk, the reward...<br/>
<br/>
You're back at Dane's home just so his mother doesn't get a little too worried (you tell her that you'd crashed with a friend) as you think about it. It's not just the beautiful face or full breasts or the waves of golden hair that entice you though of course that's a huge selling point. No, it's the personality. That imperious and commanding personality that's brought her to the top of the school's hierarchy. The attitude that tells people not to mess with her. The type of ruthless cunning that means that Yumi and Cindy and the others can't do anything but complain and plot toothlessly.<br/>
<br/>
Yes, if you were Chelsea Cooper you would be beautiful but more than that you would be at the top of the heap and you wouldn't have to worry about anyone coming after you again and that's a reward that's well worth the risk.<br/>
<br/>
So you pull off your phone and send a text off to Julia. <i>srry but sumthin came up,</i> you text her following it up with <i>sum1 got 2 me 1st lol.</i><br/>
<br/>
For her part she simply sends a sad face emoji and says she'll hit you up some other time then. For Brianna you respond by telling her you've got some other plans tonight but maybe some other time this week. And as for Lin? Well, do you really care? So what if she's pissy with Dane? You doubt he'd care too much and anyway it'd probably blow over by the end of the week.<br/>
<br/>
In the meantime, you carefully plot out the night to come.<br/>
<br/>
You already have a mask of Chelsea, which Caleb made while he was impersonating Gordon, and it's still in the school basement, where you last saw it, when you drive over to check. (Why Caleb left it there instead of taking it home, you don't know. You're just grateful he did.) So you only have to get one of these new memory-copying metal strips onto Chelsea in order to have complete disguise.<br/>
<br/>
But as you play out the night to come in your mind, you realize you will have to get out of Dane's things -- first the mask, and then the memory strip, which will knock <i>you</i> unconscious -- while the new doohickey is copying Chelsea's brain. It will knock her out too, but will there be time for you to make two removals while the strip is copying her? You ponder gluing Dane's memory strip into the mask, so that you'd only have to pull one thing off, but decide against it -- you don't want Chelsea remembering the things you've been doing while wearing the mask.<br/>
<br/>
After giving it more thought, you pull on a hoody, some sweat pants and an old pair of flip flops from Dane's closet and change into them. So dressed, and with an extra set of his clothes in a paper bag, you tell Dane's mom that you will be back later, then head out to the car. But before you start it, you raise your hands to your face.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Potsdam Park isn't the nicest park in town, but it's a damn sight better than Hochstetter, which is notorious as a spot where the shadier types like to do their transactions.<br/>
<br/>
You're sitting in Dane's car and impatiently drumming your fingers against the steering wheel. There's a couple of other cars here but none seem like the one that you've seen Chelsea drive. Impatiently you check your phone; it's nearly a quarter after nine. You start to think that you should just give up when you see bright lights from the corner of your eye. You turn just enough to see a car pull into the lot. It glides into a spot and the engine is killed. The door opens and you have to stifle a gasp.<br/>
<br/>
The soft, golden hair is almost as big of a giveaway as the irritated scowl you can make out by the car's dome light.<br/>
<br/>
It's her.<br/>
<br/>
And if that wasn't confirmation enough your phone dings with a message. <i>i'm here. where r u and these eastman jackasses?</i> <br/>
<br/>
You dig the metal band out of your paper bag of props and grip a clammy fist about it. "I'm right here!" you call as you climb out of the car. In the dark, and with the hood over your face, she shouldn't be able to tell it isn't Dane she's talking to.<br/>
<br/>
You ready the band in your grasp as you and the girl cross the lot to meet each other, and before she can speak you smack it onto her forehead. Her eyes go wide as her body goes limp and you try to grab her as best as you can. However she's heavier than you expected and a dead weight besides, so you stumble but thankfully don't drop her.<br/>
<br/>
It takes effort but you're able to scoop her up in something of a bridal carry that makes it hard to stop from blushing as you carry her back to Dane's car, where you slide her in behind the wheel. You try not to think about it as you peel off her clothing but as each piece comes off it's hard not to notice. More so than everything else, you notice how toned her body is. It's no mystery why she seemed heavier. She's much more muscular than you'd have ever expected from her size.<br/>
<br/>
It's as your about to start on the last pieces -- her underwear -- that the band reappears on her forehead. You snatch it up, then from your bag of tricks you take the mask of Dane and push it onto Chelsea's face.<br/>
<br/>
The beautiful head cheerleader is instantly replaced by a scuzzy stoner who reeks of marijuana. While she, or <i>he</i>, is now out you twitch off the bra and panties. You drop the extra clothes you brought into her lap, along with Dane's phone, then scoop her things into your bag.<br/>
<br/>
Inside the cabin of Chelsea's car, you search the pockets of Chelsea's shorts for her keys; her phone and purse are on the passenger seat. But it's only a small relief as you jump into the driver's seat, start the car and get out as quick as you can without even bothering to look back.<br/>
<br/>
You drive until you get to the safety of the community center, where you park in a dark corner. Once you've calmed down you dig into the bag to extract the mask you had collected earlier, and the metal strip you got onto Chelsea. You stare at it the name <i>CHELSEA COURTNEY COOPER</i> that's appeared on it much like Caleb's did.<br/>
<br/>
Readying yourself, you raise it to your own forehead.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"You're back already, Chelsea?" asks Chelsea's mother as she crosses you in the hall upon exiting Chelsea's room. She gets one look, and whiff, at you and her eyes go wide. "My lord, dear, what happened to you? You look a mess!"<br/>
<br/>
"I was out with," you stop for a split second to think, "with Yumi and some of the other girls. We needed to go over a routine and decided to go over to Starbucks to talk about it but the worker there he..." You pause for effect and put a whine in your voice. "He didn't put the cap on tight enough and I wound up getting coffee all over my clothes!"<br/>
<br/>
Kelly Cooper's eyes are still wide in surprise but with a light of sympathy for her baby girl's plight.<br/>
<br/>
"I went back to Yumi's and just dropped them off there because she offered to wash them for me and give them back tomorrow. She didn't have anything that fit me," you let a small smile form at the corners of your mouth at the dig, "so she grabbed something from her brother's room. But he's kind of, you know, so that's why it smells like this. I'm sorry Mom."<br/>
<br/>
"It's alright, dear," Mrs. Cooper coos sympathetically. "Just be sure you properly thank Yumi for helping you out of a tight spot like that. She's always been such a nice girl, you know."<br/>
<br/>
"Don't worry, I'll make sure to," you respond. "Anyway I'm gonna take a shower and then settle in. I don't have any homework and after what happened..."<br/>
<br/>
Chelsea's clothes are, in fact, in the bag that you're carrying. But after getting Chelsea's mask on you didn't want to go through the trouble of changing, so you wore Dane's hoody and sweat pants home. Naturally, they reek of marijuana.<br/>
<br/>
Chelsea's mother smiles and nods, wishing you a good night before heading back down the hall to the room she shares with her husband. For your part you head right into Chelsea's private bathroom, making sure to lock the door behind you. Now you've got her body to yourself!<br/>
<br/>
And what a body it is. You can feel the well honed physique and the way your every move conveys both gracefulness and strength. Your breasts, large and wonderful things and unrestrained by a bra, bounce with each step. You catch yourself in the mirror and are shocked by how, even in Dane's ratty clothes, Chelsea still manages to look like a million bucks. On instinct you take a length of blonde hair and twirl it and maybe it's everything hitting you at once but you laugh. A laugh that is soft, melodious and more than a little arrogant.<br/>
<br/>
Because you're Chelsea Cooper and just like that lock of golden hair you'll have the entire school wrapped around your finger.</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122222122222212212134111
author_id: rugal
title: The New Queen
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Good job out there, Yumi," you say with a friendly smile as you bounce up to her as everyone is leaving the locker room after cheerleader practice.<br/>
<br/>
"Uh, sure; thanks?" Yumi replies warily, likely expecting the other shoe to drop.<br/>
<br/>
It never does. "We should get together outside of school some time. Just the two of us, you know?" you tell her. "I feel like we've been on the wrong foot for a long time so we should work this out." She gapes at you.<br/>
<br/>
Gloria and Kendra catch up as you exit the gym. "The hell was all that?" Kendra asks as she falls in beside you.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, you were giving her and her crew all kinds of shit yesterday. So what changed?" chimes in Gloria.<br/>
<br/>
"Do you guys really think that low of me that I'd just act like a bitch, like, all the time?" you ask. "But okay, sure, something did change a little bit. After what that loser said to me yesterday, I got a little bothered."<br/>
<br/>
"You shouldn't listen to Dane," Kendra says. "The guy's so baked he can barely tell you the time much less what's going on with Gordon."<br/>
<br/>
"I know that but," you sniffle, "it stuck with me. Gordon's been acting so weird, you know, so I thought maybe... maybe there <i>was</i> something to it. So I called Gordon and said I wanted to meet and so we went up to the loft because... well, because it's private."<br/>
<br/>
Both of your underlings -- you have underlings! -- eye you though say nothing.<br/>
<br/>
"So we talked and," again you pause for dramatic effect. "Look, I want the team to do well but we all know how Gordon can be and it's just... he's so much <i>happier</i> right now and I want him to <i>be</i> happy and so we had this heart to heart and then we..." you mime taking a hit off of a joint. "Then we, you know, did it and, like, it was so euphoric! So I thought that if he can loosen up a little then maybe I don't need to be so tightly wound."<br/>
<br/>
"So, what, suddenly you're going to start being buddy buddy with Yumi and Cindy and all of them?" asks Gloria.<br/>
<br/>
You stop dead in your tracks and turn that disarming smile towards Gloria. "Cindy Vredenburg can get hit by a train for all I care," you say in a voice that's dripping both honey and venom. "But wouldn't it be good to try and make nice with the others? The squad could use more harmony and once we get rid of certain disruptive factors--"<br/>
<br/>
You don't get the chance to finish that thought.<br/>
<br/>
"Chelsea!" a voice roars, and you look up to see Dane Matthias actually looking angry as he beelines straight towards you.<br/>
<br/>
"What're you--" you squeak as he grabs you by the wrist.<br/>
<br/>
"You two can get lost," he sneers at both Kendra and and Gloria. "Chelsea and me have something to discuss."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Let go of m!" you yell as you thrash wildly although it's useless. For as in shape as Chelsea is she's still going to pale in comparison to a guy, even if that guy is Dane.<br/>
<br/>
With little difficulty he marches you off to the portables though thankfully none of the usual burnouts and other lowlifes seem to be around. Finally his grip loosens enough that you're able to break free and take a few steps back. You want to make a break for it but the look on his face tells you that might be a bad idea. Plus, influenced by Chelsea's mind, you can only feel anger and indignation at your current predicament.<br/>
<br/>
"What the hell do <i>you</i> want?" you snarl. "After that bullshit story about Gordon and Eastman guys you told me--"<br/>
<br/>
"Cut the shit, Dane!" he exclaims and while not shouting it's a level of fury you didn't know Dane was capable of. "Or whoever the fuck you are. Is that who you are? Dane Matthias?"<br/>
<br/>
"Am I...?" you ask skeptically but then your lips curl into a smirk as arrogant and self-assured as any Chelsea has ever worn. "Of course not; I'm Chelsea Cooper."<br/>
<br/>
That only seems piss him off more.<br/>
<br/>
"The hell you are! I'm--"<br/>
<br/>
"Dane Matthias, right?" you cut him off. "At least that's who you look like so it'd be really weird if <i>you</i> went around calling yourself Chelsea Cooper wouldn't it? People might think you've gone crazy."<br/>
<br/>
He can do nothing but narrow his eyes.<br/>
<br/>
"I mean, what are you going to tell people? That you're really Chelsea but somehow got body swapped with Dane? Or that whoever was Dane stole your body? Who would believe that?"<br/>
<br/>
"Just who in the hell are you?" is all he can ask in quiet fury.<br/>
<br/>
You toss your hair and thrust your chest out to emphasize Chelsea's most notable physical traits. "I'm exactly who I look like, same as you. You shouldn't think about it any more than that," you tell him.<br/>
<br/>
But expectedly it seems to piss him off even more and he takes a few menacing steps towards you. You try to maintain a confident expression but it starts to falter as you back up and feel yourself against one of the portables. Just what is the girl whose life you've taken going to do to you? Would you be able to get away? You know that you're going to need to make a decision fast but thankfully something makes that decision for you.<br/>
<br/>
Or rather someone does as a big, meaty paw grasps Dane by the shoulder causing him to lose his balance and fall to the ground. Your eyes go wide when you see your rescuer and immediately you break out into a warm smile.<br/>
<br/>
"Pookie!" you cry out as you take a few steps and practically leap into Gordon Black's arms.<br/>
<br/>
"Whoa! This is really trippy!" he exclaims as he looks at you and then past you and down at the person who looks just like him -- the real him.<br/>
<br/>
Said person can only stare in disbelief as you quickly grab Gordon by a wrist that you can't actually get your hand around and start pulling. He eventually relents however and follows you as you look behind you at the person with Dane Matthias' face and throw him another confident smirk.<br/>
<br/>
"So, like, what was I... uh, he? What was he doing?" asks Gordon once you've left the portables behind.<br/>
<br/>
"It was awful!" you wail. "He just grabbed me from Kendra and Gloria and dragged me out here, then got in my face and... and..." You sniffle and feel tears begin to well up in your eyes. "If you hadn't come along..."<br/>
<br/>
"Huh, wild," is all he manages to reply.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh and Gordon, honey," you say sweetly, "if anyone asks then we got together in the loft last night, had a really nice talk and then really great sex, okay?"<br/>
<br/>
"Whoa!" he exclaims in amazement. "But wait, we totally didn't! I never saw you after school yesterday!"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, Gordon, I know," you state as you realize that this is the time to turn on the charm. So you reach behind him and give his butt a nice, hard squeeze. "But keep your story straight," you say in a low and sultry voice, "and we'll do it for real."<br/>
<br/>
As you speed up and head to your second period class you can't help but to feel giddy and excited. Oh sure, you intend to be nicer to Yumi than the real Chelsea would because she's your friend and when you woke up you vowed to maybe cut down on the more unenviable behavior a bit. But still, now you know why Chelsea is such an arrogant bitch.<br/>
<br/>
It's really, really fun.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Even after that revelation though you make a point of keeping up that promise you'd made to yourself this morning morning before heading off to school. You don't try and pull a complete one-eighty lest anyone think that Chelsea's gone nuts. But you do repeat and stick to the story that you'd told Kendra and Gloria. To your surprise Gordon, really Dane, seems to stick to it as well.<br/>
<br/>
Though you get some skeptical looks from the usual suspects, they seem to at least tepidly accept it.<br/>
<br/>
At one point you also make sure to text Caleb to tell him about the move. He's a bit miffed that you took his Chelsea mask but mollified by the fact that he's now in good with the girl that runs the school. You ask if he's seen or talked to Dane yet and when he replies in the negative you tell him that's good and to just avoid him. When he asks if you can get together after school you tell him that's a negative because Chelsea does have appointments she needs to keep but, like with Yumi, you'll try to get to him at the first opportunity.<br/>
<br/>
Said appointments mostly just means going out to the mall with Kendra -- Gloria, pointedly, says she has other plans and takes off -- and Maria to browse the various stores for clothes. Then it's out to Starbucks to chat and gossip and figure out how you can really put the screws to Cindy. Then it's just you and Maria at her house for a bit where you moan about Gloria's snubbing and how it's obvious she must hate you and other little dramas that Chelsea likes unloading on her airheaded friend.<br/>
<br/>
After all that and then dinner after you get home you're ready to relax and really settle deeper into being the new Chelsea Cooper. But your phone chiming and a series of messages from an unknown number delay that.<br/>
<br/>
<i>its chelsea omg<br/>
i was at danes and this guy came<br/>
he was rly scary and said tmrrw morning<br/>
hes sending me 2 oregon<br/>
i dont care who u r help!!!!!</i><br/>
<br/>
That gives you pause. A scary guy threatening to ship Chelsea off to Oregon? The only person like that you can think of is Dwayne and as much as you talked up Chelsea deserve this... does she really? Maybe you should see what you can do to help her.</span></div></div>


path: 11121113211222221222222122121341111
author_id: seuzz
title: Dane in Distress
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You make a face as you study Dane's text. <i>What the hell is he babbling about?</i><br/>
<br/>
You should probably just ignore it, but you send a reply because you're curious about what's going on: <i>Wtf?</i><br/>
<br/>
Chelsea must have taken that as encouragement, because your phone rings a moment later. A raspy-voiced Dane Matthias is on the other end of the line. It sounds like he's been crying.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh my God," he sobs. "You've got to help me! You—! I don't—! Look, I don't care who—!  I'll do anything you want! But God! Please, if you could just <i>help me!</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"What's going on, Dane?" you demand in your sharpest tone.<br/>
<br/>
He catches his breath, and audibly gulps a couple of times. You smile to yourself. What a shock it must be to Chelsea! To hear someone speak to her in her own voice, in her own tone, while calling her by another name!<br/>
<br/>
He's got control of himself when he speaks again, but there's a deep quaver in his voice.<br/>
<br/>
"This scary guy came out to m-my house this evening," he stammers. "He t-told me to get packed, because he was— He was g-going to pick me up tomorrow m-morning! He's going to t-take me to the airport, and he's s-sending me to Oregon! To a m-m-m-military school!"<br/>
<br/>
<i>Really!</i> you think. <i>That's interesting! Convenient even!</i> "Did he tell you why?"<br/>
<br/>
Another pause. Then: "He told me it was because I was a fuck up!"<br/>
<br/>
You snicker. "Well, you are, Dane. You <i>are</i> a—"<br/>
<br/>
He interrupts you with a howl. "I'm not Dane!" he yells. "You know I'm not! You—! I'm—! What did you do to me? <i>What did I ever do to you?"</i><br/>
<br/>
<i>This is perfect,</i> you gloat. <i>Chelsea Cooper finally knows what it feels like to be on the pointy end of the stick!</i><br/>
<br/>
Almost that's what you say to him. But you have another thought first.<br/>
<br/>
Suppose you do rescue Chelsea, but you don't restore her. Chelsea Cooper is not very good at feeling or showing gratitude (you suspect), but if you promise to <i>eventually</i> restore her, she could be useful to you inside of some other identity.<br/>
<br/>
But first, you shake the stick in her face again<br/>
<br/>
"I think you should go to Oregon," you declare. "A military school would probably do you good, teach you to—!"<br/>
<br/>
He looses another howl. "No! Please! I don't—! I—! I'll do anything you want! Just—!"<br/>
<br/>
"Anything I want?"<br/>
<br/>
He catches his breath, and there's another audible gulp. "What?" he asks in a shaky whisper. "Wh-what do you—?"<br/>
<br/>
"What do I want? I don't know. I'll have to think about it. But I'll be out to your place in an hour, and we'll see what we can do. Go ahead and get packed while you're waiting."<br/>
<br/>
"But—"<br/>
<br/>
You close the line.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You and Caleb have one last mask, and a handful of those mind-copying thingies, out at the elementary school, and you drive out to collect them.<br/>
<br/>
The basics of your plan are simple: Swap Chelsea with someone else, and let that other person get shipped off to Oregon in Dane Matthias's body. <br/>
<br/>
The details, on the other hand ...<br/>
<br/>
For a start, you have to decide where to put Chelsea, and you don't have a lot of time to make a decision—not if Dwayne is going to be around in the morning to collect "Dane Matthias." So for now you might have to settle for switching Chelsea into a temporary identity, and wait to put her into a more permanent home later, after you've thought about it and made a new mask.<br/>
<br/>
And where to find that temporary identity? You consider the alternatives as you leave the old school and steer the car toward Dane's.<br/>
<br/>
He lives in a trailer park, and that would probably be the easiest place to look for an unwary donor. But if you were lucky, you might be able to lure someone from school out to Dane's, and switch Chelsea with <i>that</i> person. You give some long thought to who you might be able to entice into a meeting at such an unlikely location.<br/>
<br/>
So it's not until you're turning into the park itself that you think of the two most obvious places to temporarily park Chelsea: in the body of Dane's mother, and in the body of his "scary cousin."<br/>
<br/>
<i>Can't waste time,</i> you remind yourself as you get out of the car and stride through the darkened side yard to the door of Dane's trailer. Even as you mount the steps, you choose—</span></div></div>


path: 111211132112222212222221221213411114
author_id: rugal
title: Preparing the Patsy
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You're about to knock on the door but you stop and pull your hand away. Then you back down the steps and back into the car. You were still juggling options as you were at the door and that's not a good thing at all so you want at least a little safety as you decide your options.<br/>
<br/>
Probably the easiest thing to do would be to just slap a mask onto Mrs. Matthias, throw Dane's mask onto her and then let Chelsea be her for a day or two while you figure out a more viable place for her to hide. Well, you could always just keep her as Dane's mother but Chelsea would owe you -- she said she would do <i>anything</i> after all -- and you're not sure what use you'd have for her if she's stuck in the body of a mother in a trailer park. Plus you're trying to get her away from Dwayne and obviously putting her into a mask of Dane's mom doesn't really accomplish that. From your limited interactions, you don't doubt for a second that Dwayne might eventually do something to her.<br/>
<br/>
So Mrs. Matthias is out and so too is Dwayne. Having Chelsea play a hardcore drug dealer is a dangerous idea, both for herself and for you. She might get in over her head or piss off the wrong person. She might use her position to get back at <i>you</i>.. So that's a no go as is using someone from the trailer park because really, who would it even be? You don't know anyone here so you'd have no idea who to throw Chelsea into even as a temporary thing.<br/>
<br/>
That leaves getting someone from school out here but who would that even be? Chelsea's friends are the obvious choice but you can't imagine that any of them would be caught dead coming out here, even if it was to help Chelsea. So if you're going to get someone to come out it would have to be the type of person who would be desperate, or foolhardy, enough to want to come out and help Chelsea on short notice. It only takes a very brief moment of thought for you to recognize who would likely be the best candidates for that and barely longer to weigh the pros and cons.<br/>
<br/>
You narrow it down to a few options. One would certainly leave Chelsea in a weaker position than she'd otherwise be in but it might be a position that Chelsea would be none too happy about, even as a rest stop. Another would certainly mollify her and might even be a useful place to keep Chelsea herself since you intend on usurping her life for the foreseeable future... but that usefulness is also what makes it a potentially dangerous spot to put someone like Chelsea in. The third is thus probably a reasonable middle ground though not exactly an inspired or invigorating choice either.<br/>
<br/>
But you don't have time to think and so you go with your gut and quickly settle on one of them. You send them a couple of messages and exchange a few more explaining things and requesting them to come out to Dane's. Even then it takes a bit of cajoling before they agree and tell you that they'll be out ASAP.<br/>
<br/>
That done, you sigh with relief and send a message to Dane's phone.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Ur mom up?</i> you ask.<br/>
<br/>
<i>no</i><br/>
<br/>
<i>Perfect! Im coming in!</i><br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You sniff at the disgusting odor that seems to permeate through the shabby trailer. It wasn't inviting when you were Dane and as Chelsea it's even worse and you feel like you're going to need to take a nice, long shower when you get home in order to wash it all off.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm going to be so glad I don't have to smell this," says Dane, seemingly reading your thoughts, with relief as he guides you back to his room. When you're there he turns to you expectantly. "So you're going to give me my life back, right?"<br/>
<br/>
"Are you serious!?" you ask, caught off guard and trying to suppress a laugh. "Why would I give you <i>my</i> life?"<br/>
<br/>
"<i>Your</i> life!?" he explodes but you quickly quiet him down.  "Who are you anyway? Are you this disgusting pothead?" she asks indignantly.<br/>
<br/>
"No," you state, "and it doesn't really matter who I actually was, it only matters who I am <i>now</i>."<br/>
<br/>
"You're a phony," he responds. "A stupid, fake me."<br/>
<br/>
"Am I?" you ask with smug confidence. "Because I look like you, think you like, walk, talk and act like you. I can do all of your routines and everyone at school and your family? None of them think anything is wrong." You flash a taunting smirk. "I <i>am</i> Chelsea Cooper in every single way that counts. What about me is fake?"<br/>
<br/>
Dane holds your eye for a moment but seems to wilt. "So what happens to me, then?" he asks. "Did you come here just to throw it in my face and laugh at me before... before..."<br/>
<br/>
He can't even finish the thought so you figure it's best to pull back on being mean just a little bit. "I didn't come here to gloat if that's what you think," you tell him. "I came to get you out of here."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah? And how are you going to do that?" he asks incredulously. "This guy is still going to be looking for me unless you give me back my life."<br/>
<br/>
"Just because I'm not going to stop being Chelsea doesn't mean you need to keep being Dane," you state to his confusion.<br/>
<br/>
It's not something you want to do but if you're going to keep Chelsea even partially placated and show you're trustworthy then you'll have to tell at least a version of the truth as to how things ended up like this and how you're going to help her. So you reach into the bag and pull out both a mask and the brain thingamajig, laying them on the bed.<br/>
<br/>
"This is a mask," you say as you point to it. "You place it on someone's face, it knocks it out and copies them. You seal it up, put it on and you look like them. This," you then point to the band, "does the same thing but with someone's brain. You pop it on and then you have everything they do upstairs."<br/>
<br/>
He looks at you sternly, an odd thing coming from Dane. "So that's how you copied me," he says.<br/>
<br/>
"That's how we're going to get you out," you explain as you breeze right past what he said. "I've got a girl from school on her way out here right now. I gave her a story and asked for her to meet me here. She bought it hook, line and sinker so when she gets out here I'm going to use these," you grab both objects, "and copy her into them. You'll be her at least temporarily, she'll be in Dane's mask and be the one getting shipped off to Oregon."<br/>
<br/>
Dane is quiet for few moments as he tries to process everything. He keeps casting glances at you and you know that Chelsea likely would rather have her life back but keeps running into the wall that is her not having really anything she can do about it. The tense silence is broken up by the chime of your phone.<br/>
<br/>
"That's probably her, she's here," you say after checking the phone. You get up to answer the door and motion for Dane to come with you.<br/>
<br/>
"Ugh, fine!" he grouses as he stands up. "But who did you call out here?"</span></div></div>


path: 11121113211222221222222122121341112
author_id: seuzz
title: The Aristocrats
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Help Chelsea? You could.<br/>
<br/>
On the other hand, if Chelsea gets shipped out of state, there goes the only threat to your new identity—the original girl who you have now replaced.<br/>
<br/>
You could just ignore Chelsea's plea, but you can't resist replying with a series of gloating texts:<br/>
<br/>
<i>Lol sucks to b u. <br/>
Actully it's great to b u but that's me now lol.<br/>
Have fun where u go now n remeber maybe u shld of been nicer to people when u were u n not a stoner loser like u r now lol.</i><br/>
<br/>
Then, as a cherry on the shit sundae you're whipping up for her, you send her a selfie—the best, most smirkiest duck-face you can make!<br/>
<br/>
You do feel a little guilty afterward. But then you remember how she sent her brutish boyfriend after you. <i>Maybe after I graduate,</i> you think, <i>I'll go find her and give her  life back to her.</i><br/>
<br/>
Anyway, you don't hear back from her.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Tuesday was warm and sunny, but a cold front blows through during the night and you wake Wednesday morning to the rumble of thunder. You make a face at the lowering clouds and fumble with an umbrella as you walk out to your car. Luckily, it doesn't start raining before you get to school, so you arrive fresh and dry in the ensemble you carefully pieced together: a heavy jeans jacket and sweater atop a short skirt and ankle-length boots, all under by a sporty beret cocked at a jaunty angle.<br/>
<br/>
Yesterday, was like the first day of vacation, and you blew through it joyfully without paying much heed to what you were doing. Today you feel a more serious mood settling over you. There are things that need to be done. <br/>
<br/>
Cindy Vredenburg needs to be isolated on the squad, for a start. You made a careless start on it yesterday by trying to sweeten up Yumi. That was a mistake. You were being too sentimental there—Yumi was the only cheerleader you really liked back when you were, well, <i>yourself</i>—but she hates Chelsea too much to be easily seduced. No, the best way to start on Cindy is by weaning the Garner sisters away from her. If you can peel them away, then Lin and Yumi will eventually follow.<br/>
<br/>
And to work on the Garner sisters ... <i>There's Marc, their brother, I could maybe go to work on him,</i> you muse. <i>And to get to him there's his girlfriend, Hannah, that soccer player who moved over from Eastman this year. She's a one-girl avalanche, so </i>bleagh<i> on her ... But I hear she's gotten crossways with her new teammates, and ... Gyuh, I like Anita Nuevo even less than Hannah ... Yes, get Hannah on Team Chelsea by shivving Anita and her friends, then get Marc on board ...</i><br/>
<br/>
You're thus preoccupied as you enter the gym. Pre-class basketball practice is still going, and on instinct you glance around for your boyfriend, but he's nowhere to be seen on the court. You frown ...<br/>
<br/>
Steve Patterson is in the thick of things, though. He catches sight of you and straightens up with a hard look on his face. You make a face back at him. He stabs a forefinger at you, then points at the stairs to the gym loft, and flashes five fingers at you. You roll your eyes and turn toward the girls' locker room. A lot more than five minutes pass before you trudge up to the loft to see what Gordon's best friend wants.<br/>
<br/>
But by that time you've remembered that Gordon's body is now inhabited by Dane Matthias, so you can hazard a fair guess what Steve—who hates Chelsea as much as she hates him—would want to talk to her about in the privacy of the loft.<br/>
<br/>
He looks pissed off when you enter, and a pissed-off Steve Patterson is a scary thing indeed. He's six-foot-five of rangy muscle, with lean, strong limbs and eyes the color of the frozen fog that floats over an Arctic sea. He's one of the alpha bullies in the senior class—second only to Gordon—and you can hardly keep from shitting yourself when he brushes past you in the hallways. Now, viewed from inside Chelsea's body, he's even bigger and more threatening.<br/>
<br/>
But Chelsea Cooper despises him too much to fear him, so you just put a hand on your hip and ask him, in your most impatient tone, "Well?"<br/>
<br/>
He gives you a long, appreciative look up and down. Then he says, "The fuck is going on with Gordon?"<br/>
<br/>
"I don't know, Steve. What are you talking about?"<br/>
<br/>
"The fuck do you think I'm talking about? Did I hear that you and Gordon shared a blunt this weekend?"<br/>
<br/>
<i>Dammit, he must have been talking to Kendra! Or Gloria!</i> You make a mental note to stomp them hard the next time you see them. "I don't know, Steve, how would I know <i>what</i> you hear? I try not to pay any more attention to you than—"<br/>
<br/>
"Where the fuck did Gordon get a blunt?"<br/>
<br/>
"Where does anyone get a blunt in this school?"<br/>
<br/>
Steve's eyes seem to freeze. "How many does he have?"<br/>
<br/>
"Search me."<br/>
<br/>
His hands flex, and a cold smile pulls at his lips. "Maybe I should."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, fuck you, Steve, if you try anything—"<br/>
<br/>
He jabs a finger at you. "Then you find out where the fuck he's getting those things from, and you get them away from them."<br/>
<br/>
"What fucking business is it of yours?"<br/>
<br/>
"I heard he busted out a couple of blunts the last time you and him were up here. Now, maybe it's all fun for you, you silly cunt of a cow—"<br/>
<br/>
"You guys drink beer all the time, what's it matter if there's a little weed too? The football team—"<br/>
<br/>
Patterson advances two long steps at you, and jump back. Your heart is beating hard as he looms over you. The light in his eyes would would put frost on a burning match.<br/>
<br/>
"Did <i>you</i> give it to him, Chelsea?" he demands. "Were <i>you</i> the one that brought it up here, told him you—?"<br/>
<br/>
"No! I don't know where—! Have you talked to Dane Matthias about it? He—"<br/>
<br/>
"I talked to Matthias on Friday, and there's no fucking way he'd have passed any more to Gordon after what I said to him." You remember Patterson's warning—you were "Dane" that day, and you'd have to agree with Patterson's assessment of the threat he gave you. "So either Gordon picked up a fat stash, or someone else is slipping him some. He missed practice Monday and yesterday, and he missed it this morning." His eyes narrow. "The fuck is going on with him?"<br/>
<br/>
"Talk to him if you want to know, Steve."<br/>
<br/>
"What has he said to you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Nothing, and I don't badger him about his private life."<br/>
<br/>
Out of Chelsea's mouth that is a lie, and an obvious one, and you can tell that Patterson wants to belt you for saying it.<br/>
<br/>
He bends over you, and you glare hotly back at him—a blowtorch repulsing his looming iceberg.<br/>
<br/>
"He needs to get his shit back together, Chelsea," Patterson growls at you. "For the team's sake, for his sake, and for your sake."<br/>
<br/>
"I—"<br/>
<br/>
"You know what his dad will do to him if he keeps on this way. His dad doesn't tolerate <i>any</i> kind of shit from him. And as for you—" He straightens up. "What's the line you use against girls who date potheads? Well, if Gordon doesn't fix his shit, you're gonna find out what it's like to have that line used against <i>you.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
With one last freezing glance, he stalks from the loft. The stairs outside creak like thunder under his heavy tread.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"God, you look fine from here," Caleb says. You're in the elementary school basement, and he's reclining behind one of the desks with his feet up, and ogling you with open lust.<br/>
<br/>
"Is that you or Kirk talking?" you demand. Caleb texted you to say he scored his goal last night—a copy of the brain of Anthony Kirk, AP shit heel.<br/>
<br/>
He ignores you. "Yeah, I'd love to turn you over, peel your clothes off one at a time like the petals off a rosebud, and—"<br/>
<br/>
You give him a dirty look. Maybe you should take the mask off while hanging out solo with him.<br/>
<br/>
Yeah, and maybe you could shove your face into a spinning fan blade while you're at it, too. Chelsea's body feels too good to crawl out of.<br/>
<br/>
Instead, you turn his lust against him. Convenient for your purpose that he should be so openly horny. "How about you give it another go as Gordon?" you suggest. "Be my boyfriend?"<br/>
<br/>
He only grunts. "Why would I want that? I couldn't hack it last time—"<br/>
<br/>
"We'll get a copy of Gordon's brain for you, dumbass. That way you can— I got no problems doing back flips as Chelsea, you know—"<br/>
<br/>
"I bet you don't!"<br/>
<br/>
"—so you wouldn't have any problems on the court if you had Gordon's brain along with his body."<br/>
<br/>
But Caleb shakes his head. "I already got a look at what his life is like. Besides, you wouldn't put out for me, would you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Um—"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, that's a no from both of us. Besides, who would cover for <i>me?</i> I'd have to leave someone behind to be me, and it'd have to be someone smart enough to handle my classes without my brain. I mean, with what I know about this shit, I'm not sharing it with—"<br/>
<br/>
"Come <i>on,</i> man," you plead. "I need help!" You tell him what Patterson told you up in the loft.<br/>
<br/>
But he draws the wrong lesson from it.<br/>
<br/>
"Patterson," he muses. "He could cover for me, he's smart enough. And the cocksucker would deserve the demotion."</span></div></div>


path: 111211132112222212222221221213411122
author_id: rugal
title: Improperly Paranoid
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"How would switching you and Patterson help <i>me</i>?" you ask as you cross your arms under your ample bosom.<br/>
<br/>
"Gee, I don't know, probably by getting him off your back?" asks Caleb with the usual sarcasm that you've come to expect but has been lacking for the last day. You almost want to smack him upside the head for that and you're unsure if it's because of Chelsea's own distaste at the idea of being condescended to, especially by some bird-beaked dweeb, or your own.<br/>
<br/>
"Think, Caleb," you say forcefully, "Patterson got on my case because of Gordon acting weird. He thinks it's because someone's been supplying him with weed and he thinks that because of a stupid story that I told yesterday to try and head things off. But somehow that story got back to him and now he thinks that <i>I'm</i> responsible."<br/>
<br/>
"That's because you <i>are</i> responsible," he points out rather pedantically. "You said yourself that you're the one who made up and spread that story. You're also the one who put Dane in Gordon's mask."<br/>
<br/>
"That's not... shut <i>up</i>!" you bark while stomping a foot in a huff. "Patterson suspects that I -- that Chelsea -- did something to Gordon like supplying him with the weed in the first place. If he finds himself waking up as you after having threatened me while already thinking I may have something to do with Gordon acting all stoney baloney then he'll probably have more reason to have me in his crosshairs."<br/>
<br/>
"And if he made a move on either of us I'd pound his face in."<br/>
<br/>
"What if he meets 'Will Prescott' and finds out that he's really Gordon?" you ask. "Then the two of them go to 'Gordon Black' and find out that <i>he's</i> really Dane? They start asking around and realize that Dane tried talking to Chelsea on Monday, then the next day Chelsea's telling people that she was getting high with Gordon while Dane got shipped halfway across the country?"<br/>
<br/>
You pause to see if Caleb is going to jump in but he doesn't seem to and so you continue.<br/>
<br/>
"Well they take all that, then Gordon remembers that Chelsea sent him to deal with Will Prescott. Then Gordon and Patterson realize that they woke up in the bodies of Prescott and his friend. They'd put two and two together eventually, especially that bastard Patterson."<br/>
<br/>
"So what?" asks Caleb. "Again, they wouldn't be able to touch us."<br/>
<br/>
"What if they somehow find out about the masks?"<br/>
<br/>
"How? They wouldn't know about this place."<br/>
<br/>
"I don't--" you stop and try to compose yourself. "I don't know. But if they could piece all of that together then maybe they could stumble on that element of everything too. Then we'd really be fucked."<br/>
<br/>
"You want my honest opinion? I think you're being way too paranoid and you need to calm the fuck down," says Caleb as he moves to leave.<br/>
<br/>
"The hell is that for!?" you demand. "You weren't acting like this ten minutes ago!"<br/>
<br/>
"That's because ten minutes ago you weren't acting like... well, like you," he states all too bluntly. "Chelsea may be an overbearing bitch but she's way easier to deal with. At least she's not all jumpy about everything."<br/>
<br/>
You stare at him as he walks up the stairs of the basement and eventually march up after him. "Wait!" you call out. He stops to look back at you. "Don't just walk out on me!"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm not walking out on you. I'm going out to get some fresh air."<br/>
<br/>
You make a face at his retreating back. <i>He would so make a perfect Gordon,</i> you think. <i>Gordon's also always going out for "fresh air" in the middle of a discussion.</i><br/>
<br/>
Which reminds you that you've got to do something about Gordon, too.<br/>
<br/>
As much as you hate to admit it, Caleb's right as well. You're too twitchy and solving problems like Patterson and Gordon is going to require a little less Will Prescott and a little more Chelsea Cooper.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Pookie, is everything alright with you?"<br/>
<br/>
You ask this while curled up in the loft with Gordon, your head resting on his broad chest. Personally you find it more than a little distasteful but at this point you're allowing yourself to sink deeper into Chelsea's personality. Thinking like her, having her likes and dislikes, her way of approaching a complicated situation, these are what will get you through this. Chelsea may be a lot of things and chief among them is confident and cunning and you'll need every ounce of both of those things to come out ahead.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, I'm totally fine," he says with a lazy drawl.<br/>
<br/>
"Well Steve doesn't seem to think so," you tell him. "He says that you've been missing practice all week."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah? Well that's 'cause, like, I just haven't been wanting to go," he replies with a laugh.<br/>
<br/>
At that you sit up sharply. "Gordon!" you gasp in surprise before looking him square in the eyes. "Steve's right, you are being weird. I remember on Thursday too... oh, but I already apologized for that. But, if your dad finds out..."<br/>
<br/>
You let the thought linger for a moment and affect a downcast gaze. "He hasn't found out, has he?" you ask in a quiet voice. "He hasn't, you know..."<br/>
<br/>
"Heh, nah, not that I've seen," he answers. "At least he hasn't said anything about it."<br/>
<br/>
That's a small relief at least; you certainly don't want Dane dealing with Gordon's father when he's in a mood. "Then you need to start showing up to practice again and you have to start taking it seriously again too. Not just for yourself or Steve or the team," you glance back up, your eyes wide and your face steeped in concern, "but for me as well."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes, Gordon!" you exclaim desperately. "I really like you but you acting like this is putting me under so much stress and if it keeps up..."<br/>
<br/>
You pause for effect to see if Gordon will react but when he doesn't you decide to take drastic action. Burying yourself even more in Chelsea's persona, you twist around and position yourself on Gordon's lap facing him. You then wrap your arms around his head, pull him in close and kiss him deeply while at the same time grinding on his crotch as his dick springs to life.<br/>
<br/>
<i>God, I kind of just want to take him right here</i>, comes a stray Chelsea thought as you let out some small whimpers, <i>but he hasn't earned it. Maybe if he fixes his shit...</i><br/>
<br/>
Thankfully you're able to clamp down on that thought and instead end the kiss and pull away from him. He has a stupefied look on his face while you simply give an innocent, doe-eyed and even shy smile in return.<br/>
<br/>
"I don't want to break up with you Pookie," you say softly, "but if you don't get it together then I don't know if I'd have a choice. So please get it together and start going to practice again. For me?"<br/>
<br/>
Not much else is said. Gordon simply grunts and nods and eventually you urge him to get back home before he gets into anymore trouble while you'll lock up here. When he does you stand up and stretch and can't keep the self-satisfied grin off of your face. Sure that meant having to shove your tongue down Gordon's throat but Chelsea will use every weapon in her arsenal to ensure that she always gets her way.<br/>
<br/>
So that's the Gordon problem hopefully dealt with for now but that still leaves Patterson and his wanting to know where he's been getting his weed. Thankfully you thought of that even before calling Gordon out here and all you have to do is grab something from your car to put that plan into motion.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You come into school early while the boys are still practicing and are relieved to see that Gordon showed up today. Sure he still looks like he's never held a basketball in his life but at least he's actually here. Steve catches sight of you and glowers, however from this distance he can't intimidate you and so you simply roll your eyes at him. Still, it does reinforce that what you did last night is only a quick fix and you'll need something a little more permanent.<br/>
<br/>
You should work on that eventually but as you climb the stairs to the loft you know that you have more important business first.<br/>
<br/>
Inside, you pull out the briefcase containing Chen's stash. You'd brought it with you yesterday as you'd left the basement and after your talk with Gordon hid it up here in a back corner behind some junk, relieved that nobody seems to have touched it because you'll need it to get Patterson off of your back.<br/>
<br/>
Your plan is to call him out here at lunch bring him up to the loft where you'll show him the briefcase. You'll feed him a story about finding it when you were here with Gordon last night and theorize that he'd gotten it from under a portable and stashed it up here. You'll tell Patterson that it likely belongs to Gary Chen and give it to him, telling him to do whatever he wants with it. Your real hope is that Patterson, in anger, confronts Chen and that the problem of both works itself out for you.<br/>
<br/>
But second thoughts start to hit you. Why get rid of it right now? Why not hang onto it instead and see if you can find a use for all this weed; maybe see if there's a way to use it against Cindy. Or -- and this is a truly devilish idea that you've just had -- why not skim a little of the content, sell it back to Chen on the cheap and net yourself a little extra income?</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122222122222212212134111222
author_id: seuzz
title: The Backpedal
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You hate the idea of giving up tens of thousands of dollars worth of weed and getting nothing in return. But you don't know how to move it yourself. Only one person in the school would know how to do that, and that's the person whose weed it is: Gary Chen.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Fuck it,</i> you mutter to yourself. <i>I'll just bring Steve up here at lunch, like I was planning to, and—</i><br/>
<br/>
But when lunch comes, you find you've changed your mind. You take your meal at the central table of the cafeteria, prattling and giggling with Gordon (who, uncharacteristically for the lunkhead, giggles and prattles back). You only glance at Patterson once, to return his sour look with a scowl of your own.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's Thursday, and the weekend is coming up fast, and weekend plans are the first order of business for discussion when you glide into the library last period for study hall with your two most loyal lieutenants.<br/>
<br/>
That would be Kendra Saunders and Gloria Rea. Though calling them your "two most loyal lieutenants" is like claiming a pair of cobras as "pets."<br/>
<br/>
Chelsea has known them since middle school. Kendra is a haughty black girl ("Kenyan-American," not "African-American," she snaps when the whole hyphenated thing comes up) whose slim physique would better suit the track-and-field team than the cheerleader squad, while Gloria is a buxom Hispanic girl with luscious tits and a butt like two small melons wrapped tightly in plastic. Chelsea was constantly crossways with each of them during late middle school and early high school, when all three were maneuvering to be the "alpha queen" of the class, but Chelsea not only beat them out, she cast them into the outer darkness by turning most of the other girls in their class against them. (It didn't hurt that Kendra is transparently insincere, a natural-born sneak, while Gloria veils her sense of inferiority and trailer-trash background with a snobbish disdain toward anyone and everyone else.) Both girls not only hated Chelsea for what she did to them, but hated each other, for it was a three-cornered fight between them.<br/>
<br/>
But after winning the battle, Chelsea swooped in and made both of them her friends, and hauled them up to the pinnacle of the social hierarchy alongside her, so that they, along with her, are now two of the "popular" girls at Westside. There was a price to be paid, however, even though it was never spoken. Chelsea gives them orders ... and they carry those orders out, no matter how odious. For both of them know what would happen if either of them betrayed or disappointed Chelsea—she would cast the loser out, and sic the other on her fallen enemy.<br/>
<br/>
So although Kendra and Gloria transparently hate and loathe Chelsea, they fear her more, and claw at each other to maintain their favor with the head cheerleader, and they pay her in the coin of gossip and intelligence: snooping for news, and spreading the kind of malicious gossip that raises or lowers the social standing of her competitors.<br/>
<br/>
Prominent on today's agenda, for instance, is the matter of Meghan Farris and the party she is planning. Meghan is a desperate wannabe, a girl whose ambition to be a mover and shaker in the senior class is barely hobbled by her complete lack of charisma. Chelsea has been closely tracking the invites and RSVPs to Meghan's party, and to a competing party being planned by Maggie Crenshaw, the captain of the girls' softball team, and giving careful thought as to which way to throw her own considerable influence.<br/>
<br/>
"Tch, you know, I think I'd rather cut out my own appendix than go to either of these parties," you groan as you slump at the table in the center of the library. You are studying the two lists of attendees, revised with the latest intelligence from your agents. There are plenty of names common to both, a sure sign that most of the school feels as indifferent between Maggie and Meghan as you. "You know, if there was something else going on that night—" You cut the thought off with a sigh.<br/>
<br/>
You're answered by a careful silence from the other two girls. Then Gloria says, "There's always the Warehouse."<br/>
<br/>
You make a face at her. "That's <i>every</i> weekend, Gloria. And, like, <i>you're</i> out there every weekend, aren't you?" you spitefully add. The Warehouse is the kind of place kids go to get passed-out drunk on whiskey and weed, and to have grotty sex upstairs on filthy mattresses rented by the hour from the underage criminal gang that runs the place. <i>Perfect party spot for Gloria!</i><br/>
<br/>
"Quick, think fast, Kendra," you say. "Which one do you want to go to? One two three go!"<br/>
<br/>
Kendra starts. "Huh?"<br/>
<br/>
"Huh"? you mimic her. "Gloria, what about you. Maggie or Meghan's? One two three go!"<br/>
<br/>
"Uh— Maggie's!" Gloria pales a little, and pushes aside a lock of hair that has popped out of place.<br/>
<br/>
You roll your eyes. "Of course you would. Another bull dyke. But that's okay. Kendra, you'd look better out at Meghan's anyway. Okay, that's where each of you going next Friday," you declare, and lean over your notebook to add their names to the respective lists in Chelsea's loopy script. "Be sure to tell everyone which one you're going to be at. Make 'em think your party's the only place to be." <i>That'll fuck both girls up,</i> you think.<br/>
<br/>
"What about you?" Kendra asks. "Which—?"<br/>
<br/>
"I dunno. Probably neither. Me and Gordon, you know, we need some quality time together."<br/>
<br/>
Neither one says anything. Both, you have noticed over the last few days, have been very careful not to say anything about Gordon and the change in his personality. "Okay, as for tomorrow night," you muse as you turn the page in your notebook, "there's a new movie opening. If we went around tomorrow and talked about how all we were thinking of going slumming to see it with our boyfriends—" You cast a sidelong glance at the other two girls. "Do you think you two'd be able to scare up a couple of dates at short notice?"<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Steve is coming out of the changing room with the rest of the squad as you walk into the gym after school. He gives you a hard look and lifts an eyebrow, but you ignore him and head for the loft. You're fitting the key into the lock when you hear footsteps running up the stairs behind. You steel yourself for another confrontation with Patterson, but it's Jason Lynch who dashes up to join you.<br/>
<br/>
Which is almost as bad.<br/>
<br/>
Lynch is a sniggering little psychopath, the captain of the baseball team, and a suck-up to Gordon. Seriously, there are times when you—well, when <i>Chelsea</i>—has half expected him to offer to carry Gordon's books home for him. He's a little fireplug of a guy, shorter even than some of the girls at the school, but bulging all over with well-toned muscles. His blue eyes flash beneath a neat pile of sandy hair, and his musk—a mix of body wash and sweat—engulfs you as he joins you on the landing. "Hey Chels," he says with a grin.<br/>
<br/>
"Hi," you snap back, and fold your arms over your bosom.<br/>
<br/>
"Ain'tcha goin' in?" He jerks his chin at the door.<br/>
<br/>
"Are you going to wait out here for me?"<br/>
<br/>
"Well ... no." His smile cracks a little. "I was gonna follow you in an'—"<br/>
<br/>
"Do you have a <i>key?</i>" you demand. It's a sore spot with you—well, with <i>Chelsea</i>—that Gordon lets Jason hang out in the loft even though Jason wasn't given a key to the place.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, come off it, Chels," Jason whines. "I was gonna hang out, talk with you—"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm just stopping here for a minute to pick something up." You turn back to the door and twist the key in the lock. "Then I'm going down to watch practice."<br/>
<br/>
"Is Gordon gonna be practicing th'saf'rnoon?"<br/>
<br/>
You can't keep from flinching at the question. You cover it by trying to dart into the loft, but Jason jams himself into the doorway before you can fling the door shut on him.<br/>
<br/>
"Come on, Chels," he says. "I know you and me don't got a lot to say to each other—"<br/>
<br/>
He's got that right. He and Chelsea hate each other.<br/>
<br/>
"—but we both got— You know, we both care about Gordon. What's goin' on with him?"<br/>
<br/>
You grind the door against his shoulder. "Talk to Steve about it."<br/>
<br/>
"Me and that beanpole see eye to eye even less'n you an' me do. Just tell me what <i>you</i> know's goin' on with Gordon."<br/>
<br/>
You relent and let the door fall open. "You got me," you sigh. "He's just being a big dope."<br/>
<br/>
"You mean doin' a lot of dope."<br/>
<br/>
You shoot him a spiteful glance. "That's not <i>my</i> fault!"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, I heard that you and him—"<br/>
<br/>
"And you and him and Steve kill dozens of six packs between you! And even if he and I did, you know, it was just the one time!" You glare at him. "Do <i>you</i> know where he's been getting the stuff?"<br/>
<br/>
"From some of the guys. You know." Jason shrugs.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah. Because you hang out with him even when he's— Jesus, Jason!" You aim a vicious kick at his shin, but he jumps aside. "Why do you let him, if you're there when he's—"<br/>
<br/>
"No one can't tell Gordon what to do. You know that. Lord knows how you try, though."<br/>
<br/>
"Get out!" you snarl. "You wanted to talk and now we've talked and look how much fucking good it did!"<br/>
<br/>
Jason makes a dirty face at you, but slinks out, muttering curses. You slam the door behind and lock it.<br/>
<br/>
But he's given you pause for thought, and you do a lot of thinking as you dump the books and papers from your backpack and shove the briefcase into it. (No way you want Chen spotting it as you carry it to your car.) Gordon's changed personality is attracting too much comment. Maybe you should switch his mask onto another person—one of his teammates, perhaps, so that "Gordon" can return to practice.</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122222122222212212134111223
author_id: seuzz
title: Into the Weeds
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You hate the idea of giving up tens of thousands of dollars worth of weed and getting nothing in return. But you don't know how to move it yourself. Only one person in the school would know how to do that, and that's the person the weed came from: Gary Chen.<br/>
<br/>
<i>What if I could sell it back to him?</i> you wonder. <i>I could pretend to have found it—<br/>
<br/>
No! I could have pretended to find a bag of it! I could sell it to him. Then, a few weeks later, I could pretend to have found another bag. Oh!</i> You grin to yourself at the gleeful ingenuity of it. If you even sold it back to him at a tenth of actual value, one bag at a time over the course of the school year, that would be thousands of dollars!<br/>
<br/>
The trouble is, Chelsea Cooper can <i>never</i> be spotted talking to a lowlife like Gary Chen. You'll have to send one of your acolytes, Kendra or Gloria—<br/>
<br/>
Except if that even if one of them was seen with Chen, it could be linked back to you. You ponder and ponder ...<br/>
<br/>
Then after cheerleading practice, you pull aside Gloria (who comes from the gutter; she's only a step above "trailer park trash") and tell her what you need and how to arrange it ...<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Who did you set it up through again?" you ask Gloria later that evening. You're parked back up at the school, in a distant corner. It's well after sunset, and your cars are almost invisible in the gloom of night.<br/>
<br/>
"Lori Sherman," replies Gloria, who is seated with you in the passenger-side seat of your car. Her own car is parked in the next space over.<br/>
<br/>
"I don't know who she is."<br/>
<br/>
"She's—"<br/>
<br/>
"Never mind, I don't need to know."<br/>
<br/>
"I set it up exactly like you asked me to, Chelsea. I told Lori to tell Gary that a couple of the basketball players wanted to meet up with him here at eight o'clock to—"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah yeah yeah. I know what I told you to tell her!"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm just telling you that's how I set it up. If something goes wrong—"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm not going to blame <i>you,</i> Gloria! And thank you <i>so</i> much again for setting this up for me! I'll never forget it, I promise!"<br/>
<br/>
You wait for her to ask why you want to meet with Gary Chen, the school's major dealer in weed. When she doesn't, you volunteer the bare minimum of the story you cooked up for her. <br/>
<br/>
"Steve is <i>so</i> pissed off about the marijuana that Gordon got hold of," you say. "He's talking about getting some of the guys together to 'straighten Gary's shit out'. Not that I give a rat's patootie what happens to Gary. Only if they do something like that, and it gets out, it could bounce back against the team. So I want to let him know what's up so he can maybe calm Steve down."<br/>
<br/>
"Uh huh," Gloria says, dryly.<br/>
<br/>
You crane your neck, watching for any sign of headlights turning into the parking lot. "God, I hope he comes. I don't want to have to ask you to set up another meeting!"<br/>
<br/>
"I'd do it for you if you asked me to," Gloria replies in a dull voice.<br/>
<br/>
Fifteen more anxious minutes pass before head lamps swing into the parking lot. You turn on your car, flash your headlights at the other car. When it swings in your direction, you shove Gloria. "Get out! Go home! You don't want to be here!"<br/>
<br/>
"Are you sure <i>you</i> want to be here?" she asks. "I mean, alone with—"<br/>
<br/>
"I'll be fine! Gary knows what Gordon and Steve'll do to him if he tries to get handsy with me!"<br/>
<br/>
Gloria seems doubtful, but she climbs out one side of your car as a red Jeep pulls up next to you on the other side. A minute later, she's driving away.<br/>
<br/>
Chen is out of his Jeep and staring at you doubtfully when you emerge from your car. "Hi Gary," you pant at him. "Thanks for coming out here to meet me!"<br/>
<br/>
He stares at you, his face a mask of suspicion. Then he says, "I didn't know I was meeting <i>you.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, there was a last-minute change in plans. Anyway, I need to talk to you about, um, the stuff you sell in school?"<br/>
<br/>
It's hard to read his reaction in the dark. The most you can tell is that he doesn't flinch.<br/>
<br/>
"Are you talking about band candy?" he asks after a moment's silence. "Shit, I don't sell fuckin' band candy, you need to talk to—"<br/>
<br/>
"No, I'm not talking about band candy! I'm talking about, you know!" You sigh when he doesn't answer. "Mari-whana!" you carefully enunciate.<br/>
<br/>
Even in the dark you can see him roll his eyes.<br/>
<br/>
"Okay. Jesus. How much do you want?" he asks.<br/>
<br/>
"What I want to know is, how much it is?"<br/>
<br/>
"Eight per."<br/>
<br/>
"Eight dollars an ounce?" you squeal.<br/>
<br/>
"No, you—!" He catches himself. "Eight dollars for an artisanal, hand-rolled joint."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh. Well, how much per ounce?"<br/>
<br/>
"Four hundred."<br/>
<br/>
"<i>Dollars?</i>"<br/>
<br/>
He rolls his eyes again. "Christ!"<br/>
<br/>
"I mean, well, see, the thing is— I don't want to <i>buy</i> any from you, Gary," you tell him as you open a door to the back seat of your car and duck inside. "I want to <i>sell</i> you some."<br/>
<br/>
"You <i>what?</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"Look, don't ask me how I got ahold of it," you say as you reemerge with a baggy. It holds two ounces, carefully transferred from one of the baggies in Chen's briefcase. "Okay, no, I will tell you. I found it up in the gym loft, where, um, me and my friends—"<br/>
<br/>
"You've got a stash?"<br/>
<br/>
"No! I don't—! Gary!" You gasp at him. "I'm telling you, I found it up in the loft and I don't know whose it is! Maybe it's leftover from last year! Or maybe—" You bite your lip and pretend to stifle tears. "You're not selling to Gordon, are you?" you yell.<br/>
<br/>
Chen actually takes a step back. <br/>
<br/>
"No," he says. "Not personally. But if that's your boyfriend's stash—"<br/>
<br/>
"Gordon doesn't smoke this stuff!"<br/>
<br/>
"Then how's he gettin' it, in brownie form?"<br/>
<br/>
"Never mind! Let's just say that I don't want it up in the loft!" You dangle the bag in front of him.<br/>
<br/>
He grunts. Then he snatches it from you. "Okay," he says, "long as you're trying to get rid of it."<br/>
<br/>
"So how much will you give me for it?"<br/>
<br/>
"What? Nothing."<br/>
<br/>
You gape at him. "Nothing? I'm not giving it to you for— If I wanted to just get rid of it I'd've put it in the trash!"<br/>
<br/>
"So why didn't you?"<br/>
<br/>
Your face feels hot. "Because I figured maybe I could sell it to you for, you know—"<br/>
<br/>
He laughs—a harsh-sounding bark.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, fuck me, you silly bint!" he chortles. "You think I sold it to your boyfriend and now you want a fucking refund?"<br/>
<br/>
"You said you didn't sell it to him!"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, I don't know that," he says. "One of my guys might've— So where do you think Gordon got it?"<br/>
<br/>
"Beats me! But if—" You make a grab for the baggie, but Chen holds it up high, out of your reach. "I don't wanna just throw it away! So I figured if you could use it—"<br/>
<br/>
"Alright, alright! You wanna make a dime offa something you found! So lemme think about this a minute."<br/>
<br/>
In the silence that follows, you can hear the grumble of distant traffic and the hiss of a breeze blowing over the grass in the nearby practice fields.<br/>
<br/>
"I'll give you fifteen an ounce," he finally says.<br/>
<br/>
"<i>Fifteen?</i>" you exclaim, outraged. "You said it sells in school for four hundred!"<br/>
<br/>
"That's gross. Profit per ounce is a lot less."<br/>
<br/>
"But if I can sell it in the school for—"<br/>
<br/>
"You?" He laughs again. "Sell it in the school? You really wanna try? Fuck you, bitch, you won't even meet up with me 'cept at night, next to the school dumpsters, after everyone's gone home! But <i>you're</i> gonna start dealin' weed inside? You'd suck me off first!"<br/>
<br/>
"But what if—?" You cut yourself off.<br/>
<br/>
But what if what? What if you helped him sell his stuff into places he doesn't normally sell it? As Chelsea you'll be hanging out at lots of parties—parties where one isn't likely to find weed. But where some could be found if you discreetly opened some doors for someone like Chen.</span></div></div>


path: 11121113211222221222222122121341112231
author_id: seuzz
title: Chelsea Cooper, Marijuana Marketeer
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"Okay, but what if I <i>helped</i> you sell it?" you ask Chen before you can change your mind.<br/>
<br/>
"You? <i>Pfah!</i> How would <i>that</i> work, you ditzy—?"<br/>
<br/>
"Don't call me that! If you do I won't tell you my idea!"<br/>
<br/>
Chen shuts up, but his expression remains skeptical and amused.<br/>
<br/>
"You know," you tell him after you've recovered your own temper, "you don't sell nearly as much of that stuff as you could."<br/>
<br/>
"I do okay," he growls.<br/>
<br/>
"Don't you want to do better? You know, I'm hitting parties almost every weekend, and the number of them where anyone smokes any weed is— Well, there aren't any! Not hardly!"<br/>
<br/>
Chen's eyes narrow. "So are you trying to suggest that you could—"<br/>
<br/>
"Bet you I could!"<br/>
<br/>
"How?"<br/>
<br/>
You don't see right away how. But you don't let that stop you, now that you're on a roll.<br/>
<br/>
"Lots of ways. By talking it up! By telling people they should get some! By getting people together to buy some for their parties!"<br/>
<br/>
Chen makes a face. "And what would you want for acting as my ... 'marketing department'?" he scornfully demands.<br/>
<br/>
"A percentage?"<br/>
<br/>
"Fuck you."<br/>
<br/>
"Listen, I'll do it myself!" you flare at him. "Give me—" He's lowered his hand, so you are able to snatch the baggie back. "There's two ounces in here! I measured! That's eight hundred dollars of this stuff!" You suppress a hiccup of surprise at how much that two ounces has come to. "How many joints could you roll with this stuff?"<br/>
<br/>
"Two ounces? I could get eighty out of it."<br/>
<br/>
You twinge all over. "Well, I'll send someone to buy eighty joints off you!"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, fuck!" He laughs. "Who?"<br/>
<br/>
"I don't know! When I find them! Maybe it'll be a couple of people! But I'll send them, and I'll tell you beforehand who they'll be, and that way you'll know I sent them!"<br/>
<br/>
He cocks his head. "Then what?"<br/>
<br/>
"You sell it to them! Here!" You thrust the baggie back at him. "You roll that into eighty joints, and you sell it to the people I send to you! I'll tell them how much to buy, you sell it to them, and you give me half!"<br/>
<br/>
"Half of what I sell it to them for?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes!"<br/>
<br/>
"Okay, deal."<br/>
<br/>
"What?" His quick acceptance totally blindsides you.<br/>
<br/>
"I said it's a deal." He thrusts the baggie into his pocket. "You tell me who's going to come buying from me, and if it's someone I never bought from before, and they buy more than—" He thinks a moment. "More than ten joints off me, I'll give half the gross to you."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh. Okay. That sounds fair." You blink rapidly. <i>Did I fuck up somewhere?</i> you wonder. <i>He shouldn't be nearly this quick to accept my deal.</i><br/>
<br/>
Then you spot what you think is the flaw. "Hang on," you call as he turns back to his Jeep. "I want something in advance!"<br/>
<br/>
"You don't need an advance," he retorts, "not if you can really pull off what you say you can." He swings up inside his Jeep. "And if you can't, then you don't deserve an advance."<br/>
<br/>
He starts his Jeep and roars off before you can catch him.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You console yourself with the thought that, although you didn't get anything from him for the weed, you might have succeeded in setting something up to make you even more money than you'd hoped, providing that you can follow through on what you boasted of. And you think you probably can.<br/>
<br/>
You're given an even greater incentive when you talk to Caleb later that night. His text asking you to call was among a cluster of texts you got while waiting for Chen, and you were quick to delete it before Gloria could see it. "Jesus, there's no way I want your fucking phone number in my call list," you snarl at him. "I don't even want your texts in my—"<br/>
<br/>
"Do I suddenly have cooties, Will?" he honks at you.<br/>
<br/>
"It's just not good for my new image, you know," you tell him, "and it wouldn't be good if Kendra or Gloria or one of them spotted it there." Though you're alone in your bedroom, you toss your hair imperiously.<br/>
<br/>
"Then get me Patterson's identity so you and me can—"<br/>
<br/>
"That wouldn't do you any good either. Me and Steve despise each other."<br/>
<br/>
"Christ. Then is there anyone—? And make it someone with some money, because if I'm going to talk to—"<br/>
<br/>
"Why does it have to be someone with some money?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because I like money? Money is good? Money's what makes the world go around? But more particularly"—here he clears his throat; it sounds like he's gargling with sandpaper—"we need a lot of money for the next spell."<br/>
<br/>
"What spell? I mean," you correct yourself before he can honk at you again. "Have you been looking at the next one?"<br/>
<br/>
"Of course I have. What else have I got to do while you're sucking off the captain of the basketball team?"<br/>
<br/>
You lower the phone long enough to make a face at the screen.<br/>
<br/>
"—and it's going to cost us a few hundred," he is saying when you raise the phone to your ear again. "Assuming," he continues in a very acidic tone, "you're still interested in our research project after your recent elevation to <i>head cheerleader.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, sure I'm interested! I've just got some— Oh, and by the way, tonight I wasn't sucking Gordon's off, I was—"<br/>
<br/>
"Not an update I wanted to hear, Will."<br/>
<br/>
"—turning that briefcase of weed we got off Chen into cash."<br/>
<br/>
"Say what now? How?"<br/>
<br/>
"By selling it back to Chen. Yeah!" You gurgle with delight. "I met up with him tonight, and I think I've got a deal that'll give us half its street value! It'll take awhile to sell off, but—"<br/>
<br/>
"Can you get us four hundred dollars right away?"<br/>
<br/>
Your face falls. "Well ... No, not right away. In a couple of weeks, maybe—"<br/>
<br/>
"Then do you think you could get Anthony Kirk's debit card off him?"<br/>
<br/>
"What?"<br/>
<br/>
"I've got a copy of his brain, you know. I'm wearing it now and scoping out some college possibilities. Yeesh. If I had his money it'd be— But what I was saying, I know his PIN number, so if we got ahold of his card—"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh my God! You're talking about <i>stealing</i> from Anthony's bank account?"<br/>
<br/>
There's a pause. "Well, you're talking about dealing drugs, so—"<br/>
<br/>
"That's not—! Okay, but stealing his card— You know, we'd have to steal it and then get it back to him. That'd be twice as dangerous as—"<br/>
<br/>
It's a tedious argument that goes around and around without arriving anyplace, and it doesn't end until there's a hard banging on your bedroom door. You open it to find your—that is to say, Chelsea's—older brother, Jordan, glaring at you from the other side. "Can you keep it down?" he growls at you. "You got a voice like a drill cutting sheet metal." You make a face back at him and slam the door. But it's a good excuse to close down a phone conversation that is giving you a headache.<br/>
<br/>
You spend the balance of the night combing carefully through all the social media sites you know of, looking for candidates you can coax and bully into buying weed for their parties.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
The next day is Friday—yay! your first Friday as Chelsea Cooper!—and you get a start on your plans by targeting Eva and Jessica Garner with an invite to a <i>very small and intimate social gathering</i> (as you describe it to them) at your house. It's actually a two-fer plot. You want to go through them to get to their brother Marc, who in addition to being the captain of the boys' varsity soccer team is also a major (but high-functioning) pothead. If you could get them to throw a party into which you could sell some of Chen's weed, and also make a friendly connection to Marc's girlfriend, Hannah, so that all of you could start being friends ...<br/>
<br/>
Your plans are derailed, though, when Patterson intercepts you and Gordon as you're wandering toward the cafeteria for lunch. "Someone left the loft door open," he coldly informs the pair of you.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, shit," Gordon giggles. (He's clearly still getting weed from somewhere.) "Did the horse bolt?"<br/>
<br/>
Patterson ignores the weak attempted jape. "Just letting you know. I closed it up." He turns away as Gordon giggles again.<br/>
<br/>
A chill runs through you. "Pookie," you tell Gordon. "Let's eat up in the loft today." Gordon guffaws with pleasure.<br/>
<br/>
You have to bat him away once you're in the loft, and you ignore him when he asks what you're doing. Which is, you're searching for the stash of weed you left up here. It's gone from where you left it, and it's nowhere else you can find.<br/>
<br/>
There aren't many suspects, so it wouldn't be too hard to confront and find the thief. <br/>
<br/>
That is, if you want to be direct. It occurs to you that those mind-copying thingies might also prove useful in tracking down the culprit.</span></div></div>


path: 111211132112222212222221221213411122311
author_id: rugal
title: The Master Planner
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You desperately need to find out who took that briefcase. But Gordon, naturally, has other ideas. "Hey, so like, if we're up here, are we gonna--"<br/>
<br/>
"Gordon, please, be quiet," you interrupt. "I've got a lot on my mind right now."<br/>
<br/>
"Alright then," he responds as he grunts and lifts himself to his feet.<br/>
<br/>
"Wait, where are you going?" you demand.<br/>
<br/>
Gordon simply shrugs his broad shoulders. "I mean if we're not gonna do anything and you're busy then I don't wanna bother you or anything," he says as leaves.<br/>
<br/>
You want to be angry but realize that having him around would be more trouble than it's worth. You flop onto the floor to have a good think.<br/>
<br/>
There are only three people with a key to the loft: yourself (a.k.a., "Chelsea Cooper"), Gordon and Steve. And everyone else at school is too smart to mess with any of you three.<br/>
<br/>
So was it really a break-in? Patterson is implying that it was, by saying he found the door open. But did it really happen that way? Or did Steve find and move the stash, and is trying to throw suspicion off himself by pretending someone busted in?<br/>
<br/>
It could also be Jason Lynch, a friend of Gordon's, who also hangs out in the loft. He hasn't got a key, but maybe he lifted Gordon's from him. Or—Jason is such a sneak—maybe he's made a copy for himself.<br/>
<br/>
If it was a break-in, though—<br/>
<br/>
The thought chills you. Chen is the only person bold enough (you suspect) to break into the loft. Maybe he figured out that you're selling his own supply back to him, and he went looking?<br/>
<br/>
No way you can confront him if he's the thief. So that's a good argument for using one of those metal thingies on him to find out.<br/>
<br/>
"The fuck is going on?" Patterson's voice thunders as he walks through the door.<br/>
<br/>
"Steve? What--"<br/>
<br/>
"Don't you 'what' me," he says as he marches over to you. "I just saw Gordon leaving and saying you were up here and..." He's angry but he stops to compose himself and you take the opportunity to jump in.<br/>
<br/>
"Okay, sure, we were both up here but..." You yourself pause. What are you going to tell him? About the briefcase? An idea begins to form in your head. "Okay, fine, I'll be complete honest with you."<br/>
<br/>
"For once," he mutters.<br/>
<br/>
"The two of us were here a few nights ago. I wanted to have words with Gordon myself to try and talk some sense into him," you explain. "And I thought I did; he was even at practice the last two days. But last night I came here to just... have some time to myself and think and that's when I found a stash of weed."<br/>
<br/>
"You found what!?" Patterson demands.<br/>
<br/>
"I don't know how it got there but it has to be Gordon's!" you exclaim defensively. "That must have been what he offered me earlier in the week when we... but I was going to confront him about it today and when I brought him up here it was gone! He must have, I don't know, gotten spooked and moved it somewhere or..."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh fuck me, Chelsea," he groans. "You thought you were gonna--" He stops, however, when he hears your sniffling and whimpering. "Stop with the crocodile tears."<br/>
<br/>
"They're not... <i>you</i> stop!" you demand angrily. "You think you're the only person being put under so much stress? Well fuck you, Steve! You accuse me of, I don't know, sabotaging my own boyfriend and... and..."<br/>
<br/>
To your surprise, a pair of strong hands grasps your shoulders. You look up and your eyes, now undoubtedly red and ugly, are staring up into a pair of cold frost-colored ones.<br/>
<br/>
"Look, I'm sorry, Chelsea, okay?" he says to your astonishment. "We're all stressed out because of what's going on so I'll talk to him and try to get him to come clean. Then I'll find Chen and--"<br/>
<br/>
"Wait, Gary Chen? You think it's him?"<br/>
<br/>
"Who else could it be?"<br/>
<br/>
"Steve, don't!" you wail. "We don't know that it's him and I'm sure he's dangerous so if you try anything... I know we're not on the best terms but that doesn't mean I want you getting hurt. Just talk to Gordon first and then we'll figure something out."<br/>
<br/>
He holds your eye and you hold his, neither giving up an inch. Finally, though, he cracks. "Yeah, okay; don't worry," he says.<br/>
<br/>
You watch him turn and leave and you lock the door behind him. You flop down on one of the mats, look at the ceiling and laugh. He bought those tears hook, line and sinker; an acting performance worthy of an award.<br/>
<br/>
If nothing else, you've put Patterson and Chen on a collision course.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's not until sixth period, though, that a plan starts to come to you. You were going to get Eva and Jessica Garner out to your house tonight, but when you make the invitation to Eva, she turns you down with the excuse that she and Jessica have a little party of their own. You play on her good nature, though, to finagle an invitation out to their house instead.<br/>
<br/>
That was an improvisation. But as you turn the situation over in your mind, you see a way to turn it to your advantage ...<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"It's just... I don't know what to think!" you cry. "I want to accommodate Gordon because he seems so much happier now, you know? So much more relaxed compared to... well, you know how he is normally."<br/>
<br/>
"A powder keg with a lit fuse?" asks Eva's sister Jessica.<br/>
<br/>
"Right! So in a way this is better for everyone else but at the same time..." you sigh and slump in the chair you're sitting in on the Garners' back porch. "All it's doing is making Steve mad and then Steve... he keeps cornering me, getting in my face, madder and madder every time and I worry. I worry he might do something to me! He's already tried to blame me once for what's happening! He even did it today! He acts like he's the real victim but... fuck the basketball team! What about Gordon's own girlfriend!?"<br/>
<br/>
That causes a few glances between the assembled girls and as you sniff you take a few minutes to excuse yourself as you grab your purse. Yumi gets up and follows you.<br/>
<br/>
"Look, Chelsea, I know that we're not..." she trails off once you're in the kitchen. "But we can all see what this is doing to you and if," she pauses and sighs, "if you want a sympathetic ear... Look, what you said a few days ago? About hanging out? If you want to de-stress..."<br/>
<br/>
"Just the two of us, remember?" you respond while dabbing at your eyes. "But sure, that sounds good. Maybe we can get together for lunch tomorrow?"<br/>
<br/>
Yumi's silent for a moment and you know that she's probably having to swallow a lot of pride. But eventually she seems to have forced all of it down. "Look, I don't have anything going on tomorrow so if you want to meet up for lunch then I could do that," she says. "Maybe we can start hashing things out too."<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, that sounds good. I might have some other stuff going on but if not then I'll message you to set something up," you smile at her. "Anyway, you should get back to the others. I'm gonna reapply my makeup because I look ugly now. I'll be back in a few minutes."<br/>
<br/>
In the bathroom you steel your nerves for part three of your plan: Make a copy of someone in the house.<br/>
<br/>
In your purse you are carrying the last of your magical items: the last mask, and the last two metal bands. If you are going to make any more doohickies, you are going to have to buy some more supplies. With luck, though, these will help you nail the thief who stole the stash.<br/>
<br/>
With the mask (into which you've glued one of the metal bands) you will copy someone here at the Garners', and disguised as them—so the assault can't be traced back to "Chelsea Cooper"—you will approach one of your suspects and hit them with the last mind-copying strip.<br/>
<br/>
You wish Marc was here—he'd be the best choice to copy—but he's out with his girlfriend someplace. That leaves Eva and Jessica and Yumi as the easiest guests to copy. More intriguing are Anita Nuevo and Stephanie Wyatt. These are tough, no-nonsense girls (the captain of the girls' soccer team and the star player on the girls' varsity basketball team, respectively), making them exactly the sort to go up against the suspects you mean to confront.<br/>
<br/>
Then, as you step from the bathroom you almost run into Mrs. Garner, who has been acting as a hands-off hostess. It suddenly occurs to her that a parental figure might be the safest choice of all to use. <i>Go up to the school in her face, you muse to yourself, call Steve or Jason or whoever over ... Introduce yourself as the Garners' mother ... get them into a car alone with you ... hit them with the brain thing ...</i> Who would they complain to afterward?</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122222122222212212134111223113
author_id: seuzz
title: Mugging a MILF
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"I'm sorry Mrs. Garner!" you exclaim as you leap back. "I wasn't watching where I was going and—"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, Chelsea, don't worry about it," Mrs. Garner interrupts you with a warm smile. "I was in a bit of a rush myself so I'm sure I could've been paying better attention to my own surroundings. How are you enjoying the evening, by the way?"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm really enjoying myself, thanks!" you chirp.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, it's nice to see. I don't think you've been around since the beginning of the school year."<br/>
<br/>
"You know how it is," you say with a bit of a forlorn edge to your voice. "Our schedules rarely line up. I didn't really expect that we'd be so busy as seniors."<br/>
<br/>
Mrs. Garner offers you a sympathetic look. "It can be tough but I do hope we're able to see you a little more," she states before laughing. "Oh look at me, getting wistful and holding you up. You should be downstairs with the other girls."<br/>
<br/>
"Actually, before you go," you say, and snatch at Mrs. Garner's elbow before she can turn away, "I have a question about something in your bathroom?" You hate the way your voice goes up in a questioning lilt at the end. It makes it sound like you're improvising a line of shit. (Which, to be fair, is exactly what you are doing.) "Um, it's about the tile?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes?" If Mrs. Garner is puzzled by your question, she doesn't show it.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, I'm talking with my mom about redoing my bathroom at home, and I was wondering if—"<br/>
<br/>
Gently but persistently you pull your hostess into the bathroom. "Um, I like the pattern on your tile, and I was wondering if you could tell me, um—" You point to the floor with one hand, while with the other you dip into your purse to finger one of the mind-copying strips you are carrying there.<br/>
<br/>
"I really can't tell you anything about the tile, Chelsea," Mrs. Garner says. "It was here when we bought the house."<br/>
<br/>
"Oh. Well, I was giving it a closer look a minute ago, and—" You sink onto your knees and trace a finger over one of the tiles. It's plain white, with no design that you can see. But you pretend to trace loops and whorls and spirals with your fingertip. "I'm trying to see if there's a pattern," you say, "and I was wondering if it's actually there or—"<br/>
<br/>
With beating heart you wait for Mrs. Garner to join you on the floor. But she doesn't kneel beside you, but only looks down at you with an amused but puzzled smile.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, well," you say, and with a reddening face you get back onto your feet. "I guess it isn't important."<br/>
<br/>
"Well, I like I say," says your hostess, "it was already installed when we bought the house. Now, if you wanted to know about the deck out back—!" She laughs.<br/>
<br/>
You return her smile with a tight grimace of your own. <i>Stupid cow. Why couldn't she play along?</i> you fume to yourself.<br/>
<br/>
So when she turns toward the door, you spring on her with a <i>Fuck it!</i> You reach around her from behind and slap the metal band onto her forehead. She stumbles and falls against the door with a bang, and drags you down as you grab onto her. You wallow on the floor, your limbs tangled up with hers.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Oh Jesus, I am so dumb!</i> you chide yourself as you haul yourself back to your feet. Your heart is trying to explode from your chest, and you break out all over in a sweat as you put your head into the hall. Thank God it's empty. You turn back and shove the unconscious woman into the bathroom, then close and lock the door behind you. You slide to the floor (of unpatterned tile!) and try to catch your runaway breath and runaway heart.<br/>
<br/>
It's ten minutes before the strip reappears on her forehead, and then you have to put the mask onto her. So you have nearly half an hour to contemplate the face and form of Mrs. Garner.<br/>
<br/>
And every thought during that time is some variation on <i>God, what a MILF!</i><br/>
<br/>
It's easy to see where Eva and Jessica get their looks, and to guess where they and their brother, Marc, get at least some of their athleticism. Subtract twenty to twenty-five years from her current age, and Mrs. Garner would fit right in on the cheerleading squad or the girls' varsity soccer team.<br/>
<br/>
She's blonde, like her kids, and she wears her hair long, like Jessica—a mop of loose, golden curls spills over the bathroom floor. She has slate-blue eyes, which are open and staring, and pink lips. Has she had work done? You can't be sure one way or the other, but she has very strong cheekbones that give her face a slightly gopher-ish cast. Her boobs are very large, too, and you have to fight the temptation to pull the top of her dress down and pop them out for comparison with the pair that you're wearing. She has wide, bowl-like hips and strong thighs and calves. As for her waist— Well, she's got curves in the right places, but that's mostly because her bust and hips are so wide. In fact, you can't shake the suspicion that she might be cinched up inside a corset or waist trainer. Still, she looks healthy, and judging by her legs she probably hits the gym a couple of times a week. You hope that you look good when you're that age!<br/>
<br/>
(And, inwardly, you wince a little at the thought. Do you really plan on being Chelsea Cooper for the next twenty years? If not, when will you move out or back to being yourself?)<br/>
<br/>
Nearly thirty minutes have passed—and you've heard a half-dozen footsteps pass the bathroom door—before the stuff has finished copying Mrs. Garner and you've got your magical gear packed away again. You would love nothing more than to run away, but you steel yourself to see things through to the other side. You chafe Mrs. Garner back to conscious and squeak sympathetically at her when she wakes to a woozy consciousness: "Oh my goodness! You did a real headbanger into that towel rack!" you tell her. (Okay, it's hardly believable, but it's the best you can come up with.)<br/>
<br/>
Mrs. Garner has a sour and confused expression as you help her up, but she doesn't argue with you, and she doesn't accuse you of anything either. She just gingerly explores her scalp with her fingertips and wonders at not finding a bruise or a cut. "Well, I don't think it hurt you," you try comforting her. "Just gave you a little tap that was a little too hard!"<br/>
<br/>
"Uh huh," she says. "Maybe I should go sit down someplace for a little while."<br/>
<br/>
You don't want to give her a chance to start questioning you, so after seeing her off into the hallway, you gather your stuff to make a quick getaway. But as you turn back into the hallway, you glance down and see the corner of a bedroom through a half-open door. Prompted by some sixth sense, you creep down to peep inside. Judging by the decor, you guess it to be the master bedroom.<br/>
<br/>
And as you glance around you find yourself asking, <i>If I was Mrs. Garner's billfold, where would I be?</i><br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Score, man!" Caleb exclaims. "Eva and Jessica's mom <i>and</i> her ATM card! Now we don't have to use Kirk's! Oh, by the way, how are you going to get it back to her?"<br/>
<br/>
You give him a withering look. "Jesus, man! Can't you say something nice without immediately shitting all over it?"<br/>
<br/>
It's Saturday morning, and you're meeting with Caleb at the elementary school. It surprises you that he's actually happy with you for once for something that you've done with the magical gear—it seems like every other time you've done something with it, he's yelled at you. <br/>
<br/>
So it pisses you off that he won't give you more than three seconds of good will before immediately asking how you're going to get out of the hole you dug yourself. Maybe it's because his question has been bothering you too. You've got Mrs. Garner's ATM card—how are you going to get it back to her without her missing it?<br/>
<br/>
But Caleb shrugs your retort off. "We'll think of something," he says with a careless twitch of his shoulders. "The important thing is that we get the cash out of her account before she notices the card's gone." He picks up the mask with one hand, and the metal band with the other. (JULIE ELAINE MCCLOSKEY GARNER; that's the name that floats above the surface of the metal.) "You tried either of them on?"<br/>
<br/>
"No! Like I want my mom busting in and finding Eva and Jessica's mom in my bedroom!"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb shoots you a shrewd glance. "Whose mom, Will? Or should I say, Whose mom, Chelsea?"<br/>
<br/>
You make a face at him.<br/>
<br/>
"But you had to get close to her to get these," he continues. "So tell me, what's she like? How much did Eva and Jessica get from her? Please don't tell me it's Marc who got her looks!"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, she's hot," you assure him, but you feel a twinge of jealousy as you say it. "Definitely something you'd tap."<br/>
<br/>
"Sweet!" Caleb runs a pale tongue over his lower lip. "You got anything for me to wear?"<br/>
<br/>
"Wear?" you ask. "You?"<br/>
<br/>
"Sure. I'm not going to the bank naked, Will! No matter how fuckable—"<br/>
<br/>
But <i>you</i> were planning to wear Mrs. Garner's mask today, first to meet up with one of the guys you suspect of stealing the weed, then to get the cash you need to do the next spell. You weren't counting on Caleb being so keen to get into the mask.<br/>
<br/>
Yet maybe you should let him carry the burden of getting the money from the ATM. It would keep him happy, and you could use the mask later for the other appointment.</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122222122222212212134111223114
author_id: rugal
title: The Toughest Girl Around
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"I'm sorry Mrs. Garner! I wasn't watching where I was going and--"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, Chelsea, don't worry about it," Mrs. Garner interrupts you with a warm smile. "I was in a bit of a rush myself so I'm sure I could've been paying better attention to my own surroundings. How are you enjoying the evening, by the way?"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm really enjoying myself, thanks!" you chirp.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, it's nice to see. I don't think you've been around since the beginning of the school year."<br/>
<br/>
"You know how it is," you say with a bit of a forlorn edge to your voice. "Our schedules rarely line up. I didn't really expect that we'd be so busy as seniors."<br/>
<br/>
Mrs. Garner offers you a sympathetic look. "It can be tough but I do hope we're able to see you a little more," she states before laughing. "Oh look at me, getting wistful and holding you up. You should be downstairs with the other girls."<br/>
<br/>
"It's fine, I definitely hope to try and find some time to come around in the future," you reply sweetly. "Thanks for hosting us."<br/>
<br/>
You turn as you hear the bathroom door opening and closing behind you. You have the blank mask in your purse and you consider using it on the Garners' mother but you quickly dismiss that thought. From Chelsea's few interactions with her, Mrs. Garner is a pleasant woman who's very charming and easy to like. For the first time in a few days you're able to separate your personality from Chelsea's just enough to be shocked: would she actually feel bad about victimizing Mrs. Garner like this?<br/>
<br/>
Well maybe a bit but really it's more logistical. You'd have to wait for her come back out and then wait for the mask to copy her. It'd take too long and leave everyone wondering where you went or what youre doing so it'd just be way too much of a hassle.<br/>
<br/>
So you head back down to the where everyone is gathered to rejoin the group. There is a bit of tepid sympathy directed your way and you give weak smiles and responses that eventually become livelier as the evening wears on. Talk eventually shifts from you and Gordon however to Hannah.<br/>
<br/>
Very quickly you learn that Anita and Stephanie do <i>not</i> like Hannah. You'd known Anita had been having issues with her but knew nothing about Stephanie's. She doesn't go into the reasoning and while Chelsea is pretty observant Stephanie is guarded enough that you have trouble picking up just what her issue is. Anita, by contrast, is much easier to read: it's Hannah's attitude she doesn't like, specifically the way she's come in like a bulldozer.<br/>
<br/>
Though you don't care too much the petty dramas of the soccer team it is a small fire that has the potential to spread so you'll need to address it down the road, probably once all of this business with "Gordon" and the marijuana is dealt with. It's that bit of future planning, in addition to them being tough athletes, that plays a part in your narrowing it down to the two of them. Both are also close to the Garners and so their identities might be useful down the road in winning them over to your side.<br/>
<br/>
From there you quickly zero in on your target.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Your opportunity to grab Anita presents itself when things have died down a bit. The twins and Stephanie went off to their room for a bit to talk about something a little more privately leaving just yourself, Anita and Yumi. Then Yumi decided that she needed to use the bathroom so now it's down to the two of you. Even if you hadn't already made up your mind on her then it seems as if fate, if you wanted to believe in it, has.<br/>
<br/>
"I didn't realize that Hannah was such a problem for you guys," you tell her in an attempt to break the ice. Not that you truly care to any large degree but you'll need to get her comfortable. Any attempt to spring the mask on her otherwise could be as disastrous as if you tried it on Patterson or Chen.<br/>
<br/>
"I don't even know if she's trying to be," Anita replies. "She was battling for the captain position with Jenny Taylor last year and... do you know Jenny?"<br/>
<br/>
"I know of her," you answer which is true. Anyone of any importance at Westside knows Jenny and her soccer captain boyfriend Kyle Lakewood. They're a power couple to match even Chlesea and Gordon which is why Chelsea, naturally, is glad that they go to different schools.<br/>
<br/>
"Mhm, well Jenny's real good and Hannah's just about as good," she continues. "So she's already coming here with an ego a tnd then she lands Marc as a boyfriend and it's like... that's what's so frustrating with her. All the talent in the world and--"<br/>
<br/>
She's cut off by a mask being jammed in her face. Thankfully she was absorbed enough in what she was saying, plus the fact you're hidden by the low lighting and heavy shadows of dusk, to never see it coming. You wait impatiately as the mask does its thing checking for any sign of any of the other girls coming back. Thankfully, however, by the time they have made it back the mask is back in your purse, a fresh copy of Anita Nuevo's face and mind copied directly onto it.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You're jolted awake by cold tile and quickly, though groggily, push yourself up to your feet. You're in a bathroom and... this isn't the Garners' bathroom. It's certainly not your bathroom either. This bathroom is big, bright and fancy. It's a bathroom that belongs to... you think hard and only one name comes to mind.<br/>
<br/>
Chelsea Cooper.<br/>
<br/>
You were talking to her about Hannah and then you passed out. Now you're waking up here. But why would you be in Chelsea's bathroom, of all places? You barely even know the girl so it's not like she'd invite you to her house. So what happened?<br/>
<br/>
Then it starts to come back to you, your head beginning to clear from the fog. It's because you're not really Anita Ines Nuevo Ruiz (you can't help to think that the name is a mouthful), but you're really... Chelsea Cooper? No, of course not. But even without her mind thingamajig, you feel that you can draw on her personality easy enough; like a method actor who's mastered a role.<br/>
<br/>
However you didn't put on Anita's mask to pontificate about things like that but rather to get used to the idea of being Anita. You don't intend to be her for long, merely long enough to do what you need to do, but Anita's body is not Chelsea's. It's shaped different. It feels different. You'll need to thus be comfortable inside of it if you want to do what you plan on doing without screwing up.<br/>
<br/>
So what is Anita Nuevo's body like? In a word, strong. You look to the mirror above the sink and study yourself. Your skin is very tan, your eyes squint with an intense hardness. Your hair, a deep chocolate color, is thick and wavy and falls past your shoulders. Anita is not an unattractive girl, not even close, but she's certainly not one of the great beauties of Westside like Chelsea is.<br/>
<br/>
She's only a smidge taller but is much stockier and brawnier. Her shoulders are broad, her arms and legs strong. Could you fight off someone like Chen if things went south? You're not sure but with Anita's body you certainly feel like you'd at least stand a chance.<br/>
<br/>
And with her personality? You close your eyes and allow yourself to sink into it.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Fucking Hannah,</i> is the first thought that comes to your mind. <i>If she learned to take a step back then everything would be fine. But she has to start trouble, has to start saying how she should be captain and rallying support. That's why I want to wring her neck even if Stephanie thinks humiliating her would be better.</i><br/>
<br/>
Her thoughts come fast and hard. No nonsense and no minced words. If Anita could get away with it she'd kick Hannah off the team in a heartbeat but she's too good so it'd likely just cause problems with the rest of her clique and that'd be a real problem.<br/>
<br/>
Tara Weston, her biggest toadie, is probably the best goalie in the county. Then there's Gabriela Costa who's never gotten along with Anita and has probably been looking for any excuse to dump her. As for Katrina Schwarz... Anita can at least respect her for doing it out of a belief in Hannah giving a stronger chance to win than out of crass self-interest. Katrina also does a lot of work with the JV team of which Anita's cousin is co-captain.<br/>
<br/>
That said, she's not one to allow herself to be pushed around and if this goofy shit Stephanie's cooking up actually <i>can</i> scare off Hannah...<br/>
<br/>
You brace yourself against the sink as you allow Anita's thoughts to wash over you. Yeah, you made the right choice because she doesn't play around and she's strong enough to back it up. You now feel much better about your chances of being successful in your ambush.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's late morning and you're standing by the entrance of gym dressed in a loose t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants. Right now, you've got three main suspects regarding the theft: Steve Patterson, Jason Lynch and Gary Chen. The one at the top of your list is who you intend to use the band on. From Chelsea's phone you'll send a message saying Anita told her last night that she wants to talk to them and that you're setting up a meeting at the school gym.<br/>
<br/>
So now you've got a decision to make. You nor Chelsea nor Anita are gamblers by nature but you'll have to take a risk all the same. The question is, who do you take that risk on?</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122222122222212212134111223115
author_id: rugal
title: The Girl Who Could Be More
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>"I'm sorry Mrs. Garner! I wasn't watching where I was going and--"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, Chelsea, don't worry about it," Mrs. Garner interrupts you with a warm smile. "I was in a bit of a rush myself so I'm sure I could've been paying better attention to my own surroundings. How are you enjoying the evening, by the way?"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm really enjoying myself, thanks!" you chirp.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, it's nice to see. I don't think you've been around since the beginning of the school year."<br/>
<br/>
"You know how it is," you say with a bit of a forlorn edge to your voice. "Our schedules rarely line up. I didn't really expect that we'd be so busy as seniors."<br/>
<br/>
Mrs. Garner offers you a sympathetic look. "It can be tough but I do hope we're able to see you a little more," she states before laughing. "Oh look at me, getting wistful and holding you up. You should be downstairs with the other girls."<br/>
<br/>
"It's fine, I definitely hope to try and find some time to come around in the future," you reply sweetly. "Thanks for hosting us."<br/>
<br/>
You turn as you hear the bathroom door opening and closing behind you. You have the blank mask in your purse and you consider using it on the Garners' mother but you quickly dismiss that thought. From Chelsea's few interactions with her, Mrs. Garner is a pleasant woman who's very charming and easy to like. For the first time in a few days you're able to separate your personality from Chelsea's just enough to be shocked: would she actually feel bad about victimizing Mrs. Garner like this?<br/>
<br/>
Well maybe a bit but really it's more logistical. You'd have to wait for her come back out and then wait for the mask to copy her. It'd take too long and leave everyone wondering where you went or what youre doing so it'd just be way too much of a hassle.<br/>
<br/>
So you head back down to the where everyone is gathered to rejoin the group. There is a bit of tepid sympathy directed your way and you give weak smiles and responses that eventually become livelier as the evening wears on. Talk eventually shifts from you and Gordon however to Hannah.<br/>
<br/>
Very quickly you learn that Anita and Stephanie do <i>not</i> like Hannah. You'd known Anita had been having issues with her but knew nothing about Stephanie's. She doesn't go into the reasoning and while Chelsea is pretty observant Stephanie is guarded enough that you have trouble picking up just what her issue is. Anita, by contrast, is much easier to read: it's Hannah's attitude she doesn't like, specifically the way she's come in like a bulldozer.<br/>
<br/>
Though you don't care too much the petty dramas of the soccer team it is a small fire that has the potential to spread so you'll need to address it down the road, probably once all of this business with "Gordon" and the marijuana is dealt with. It's that bit of future planning, in addition to them being tough athletes, that plays a part in your narrowing it down to the two of them. Both are also close to the Garners and so their identities might be useful down the road in winning them over to your side.<br/>
<br/>
From there you quickly zero in on your target.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Stephanie!" you call out as you exit the Garners' house.<br/>
<br/>
Stephanie stops and turns to you. "Yeah?" she says and even with Chelsea's confidence you pause.<br/>
<br/>
But this is why Stephanie Wyatt is who you've decided to target. She is powerful, no nonsense and intense. She's as intimidating as you remember from when you knew her back in elementary school... which is another reason you've chosen her. You've always born a bit of a grudge against her for it so if she gets in trouble for your actions, well, what do you care?<br/>
<br/>
But you throw those feelings aside as you flash her a smile. "You know, I think this is the first time we've been around each other, isn't it?" you ask.<br/>
<br/>
"I guess," she answers with disinterest.<br/>
<br/>
"Well I was wondering if we could go somewhere and talk a little more," you tell her which causes her to look at you skeptically.<br/>
<br/>
"What would the two of <i>us</i> even have to talk about?" she asks dismissively.<br/>
<br/>
"About the basketball team for one, seeing what the squad might be able to do to support you guys." When that doesn't entice her you decide to sweeten the pot. "Maybe to see if I can help you out with Hannah."<br/>
<br/>
She holds your eye for a moment contemplating it until Anita comes over and taps her on the shoulder.<br/>
<br/>
"We heading out?" she asks.<br/>
<br/>
Stephanie, however, waves her off. "I'll get a ride back with Chelsea," Stephanie tells her. "We've got some things we need to talk about."<br/>
<br/>
Anita makes a face but seems to accept that while you pile into your car with Stephanie. You decide to head over to Starbucks where you offer to buy pay for her coffee while she finds a seat. Once you've gotten your drinks you hand hers to her while sliding in across from her.<br/>
<br/>
"So tell me what's been going on with Hannah," you say as you take a sip of your latte.<br/>
<br/>
"You were there," she says brusquely.<br/>
<br/>
"I know but it's not like I'm privy to everything. All I got is that you guys don't like her all that much."<br/>
<br/>
"Pfft!" she replies. "Yeah, we have our issues. I don't know why I really need to tell you everything though."<br/>
<br/>
"You don't need to tell me everything," you tell her, "but I'd like to know all the same since maybe I could help--"<br/>
<br/>
"What are you going to do?" she asks.<br/>
<br/>
You're taken aback. "I'm not trying to brag or anything but if Hannah is causing problems then I'd like to think that I could do quite a bit," you answer her. "If you need to, I don't know, put her in her place..."<br/>
<br/>
Stephanie grunts but relents a bit and starts to go into an explanation. It's not all that different from anything that you'd heard back at the Garners' though you do take note of the way there's a bit of spiciness from her whenever the subject of Hannah and Marc comes up and you make a curious note of that as it might be useful to have later. As the talk begins to taper off you take the opportunity to excuse yourself to the bathroom.<br/>
<br/>
Inside you pull the mask out of the your purse. You take a look in the mirror above the sink at the face you've been wearing for most of the week. It's a face you've gotten very used to seeing and a face you've grown to like, a face that you're increasingly beginning to think of as yours. You're reluctant to give it up, even temporarily, but if the last week has taught you anything it's that desperate times call for desperate measures.<br/>
<br/>
Readying yourself, you head out of the bathroom. Stephanie is engaged with her phone so from behind, where she can't see you, you reach around and push the mask onto her face. Her phone drops out of her hand and clatters on the table though she herself merely slumps forward without falling. It takes about fifteen minutes but the mask eventually reappears and you quickly scoop it up. Once Stephanie comes to you say that she seems tired and call it a night.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You feel strong and agile, like you could take on anyone. Certainly you have the attitude to not make you scared of anyone. Out of curiosity you prepare yourself and do a perfect front walkover. It's something that Stephanie Wyatt has never in her life done but Chelsea Cooper has done plenty and with her knowledge and Stephanie's athleticism it's easy. Not as easy as if you were still in Chelsea's mask -- Stephanie is bulkier -- but nothing difficult at all.<br/>
<br/>
In amazement you run a hand over strong, smooth thighs barely covered by the short running shorts you'd purchased and run a hand over a smooth stomach covered by a loose fitting t-shirt. Just based on athleticism alone Stephanie would fit wonderfully on the squad but her attitude...<br/>
<br/>
She's as intense in your head as she is in real life. She has little real love for the squad -- especially for stealing the Garners from the soccer team -- or the petty bullshit that seems to perpetuate it. If she thought that dealing with Hannah was bad then she feels like she'd rip her hail out dealing with cheerleader drama. In fact she'd only agreed to go talk with you as a way to humor you, she doesn't think Chelsea can or truly wants to do anything to help her.<br/>
<br/>
Unless she could somehow peel Hannah away from Marc Garner. Oh yes, your instinct back at Starbucks was correct: Stephanie is deeply, maddeningly in love with the third of the Garner siblings and loathes Hannah for landing him before she could.<br/>
<br/>
"It's a shame you're wasting yourself so much," you say in a voice that is her's but a tone that is far more Chelsea's. Even with her memories beginning to fade. mimicking her personality is like second nature. "You could go so much farther as a cheerleader and get nearly any guy you wanted."<br/>
<br/>
A guy like Patterson for instance. If Stephanie approached him and wanted to get a little hot and heavy he'd take her in an instant. Hell any guy would; you would if you were still yourself. But foolishly she's saving herself, pining for a boy that seems increasingly out of her reach leading her to be more irritable than normal.<br/>
<br/>
Thankfully, though, you're only Stephanie Wyatt in appearance and not attitude. Right now you've got three suspects for the person who stole the briefcase and that combination -- sexiness and athleticism in equal measure -- is what will allow you to do what you need to do. The question is, then, who do you target?</span></div></div>


path: 11121113211222221222222122121341112231151
author_id: rugal
title: A Notch in the Belt
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You begin to mull over and weigh your options. None of them, you feel, will be easy even for someone like Stephanie. Sure she's bigger than Chelsea, stronger than Chelsea, more hardnosed and intense than Chelsea. Unlike Chelsea she's not someone who would be manhandled by Dane Matthias and dragged halfway across the school. But that doesn't mean she'd give you one hundred percent odds against any of your intended targets, merely a fighting chance.<br/>
<br/>
Take Jason Lynch, a sniggering little goblin-man who seems to want to join himself at the hip to Gordon. Yet despite his attitude and his height -- Stephanie is likely taller than him -- he's still a high level baseball player and in top shape. Stephanie's fast and numble but should you mess up and should he then catch you... well, there's not really anything you could do about it.<br/>
<br/>
Then there's Chen. Again, small in stature but far and away the most dangerous. You'd bet that he's the kind of guy who'd carry a knife on him and would definitely know how to use it. He's also probably the kind of guy who'd have no qualms about getting violent with a girl who managed to get on his bad side. To be frank, even with Chelsea's own high confidence and bravado seemingly embedded into your brain you have to admit that he scares you and that you'd rather not risk finding out just what he'd do.<br/>
<br/>
So that leaves Steve Patterson, the one that Chelsea (and thus you) is most familiar with and the most obvious suspect for the theft after Chen. He's cold and intense in a way that gives even Stephanie pause you realize, yet your experience with him so far also pins him as the least likely to get rough with you should things go south. For as bad as he is, he at least tries to maintain a level of respectability that the other two lack.<br/>
<br/>
Plus he seems like the easiest one to get. He's a guy who's as guided by the head in his pants as he is the one atop his shoulders and you imagine that you could quite easily use Stephanie's body plus Chelsea's charm to get him into a position where you could use the band on him with little complication. It would just mean having to be willing to be a little intimate with him but if you could do it with the boy disguised as Gordon then you sure as hell can do the same with Patterson.<br/>
<br/>
Besides, it's not like it'd be <i>your</i> body. No, the body you've increasingly come to regard as your own is sealed up in another mask laying on Chelsea's bed. What do you care what happens to Stephanie Wyatt's body... or Stephanie Wyatt herself?<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's late Saturday morning; you're dressed out as Stephanie and standing impatiently in the school parking lot. You'd sent (and deleted) a text from Chelsea's phone last night telling Steve that someone wanted you to relay a message to meet him up at the school at the given time to discuss some things. You didn't really receive a response so you can only hope that he didn't just ignore it and cause your entire plan to crash and burn.<br/>
<br/>
However, any of those fears are removed when you see a car pull up into an empty space and a figure exit. Patterson spots you and begins making his way over to you, his expression cold until he gets closer and seems to get a good look at who you are. Then it changes, softening but also becoming hungry. You ready yourself for what you may have to do.<br/>
<br/>
"So you're who I'm supposed to meet?" he asks as he pulls up to you.<br/>
<br/>
"Maybe," you say trying to pull in every ounce of Stephanie you can.<br/>
<br/>
"Chelsea's text, right?" he asks and you nod. "Don't know what you'd want with me."<br/>
<br/>
You shift a bit, ostensibly to show that you're not scared of him and are willing to hold your ground. But it also has the effect of pushing your chest out. "I can think of a few things," you say as you catch sight of Patterson's eyes scanning you, "but I don't want to talk out here. You and your guys have that little hideaway above the gym don't you?"<br/>
<br/>
Patterson smirks at that. "Yeah, but it's not the kind of place for someone like you, unless--"<br/>
<br/>
"Unless what?" you interrupt, taking a step forward. On the one hand, you're showing him that Stephanie Wyatt won't be afraid to get in his face. On the other hand, Stephanie Wyatt is in now right in his face. "I want to talk about what's going on with your friend and what we can do to stomp that shit out so it doesn't filter back to my girls."<br/>
<br/>
You want to laugh at that line since Julia, Stephanie's teammate, makes little secret of the fact she enjoys getting blazed. But whether Patterson believes you or not he at least pretends to, smiling and walking by you while telling you to come with him. You do as you walk you feel his hand on the small of your back. You jump but this is what you knew you might have to deal with so you bear it and do so again when you stop at the gym and feel that hand on your ass.<br/>
<br/>
The real Stephanie would've killed him by now.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You follow Patterson into the gym, reaching into your pocket and grasping the band as you ascend the stairs. You wait while he unlocks the door and then follow him into the loft. You're about halfway in when he turns to you. When you're both a nice ways into the room he stops and you do as well, he turns to you ready to speak but you quickly jam the band onto his head while making no effort to catch him as he collapses... not that you could if you wanted to. You instead close and lock the door behind you before crouching down next to him.<br/>
<br/>
While he's out, you study him.<br/>
<br/>
He's tall and thin yet still well muscled you can tell from the tone of his arms. His face is handsome, even a bit youthful, but serious and even unconscious his icy blue eyes feel like they're piercing to the most inner reaches of your person. For all of his negative qualities he's a nice looking guy and it's easy to see why he has little problem getting girls. Even Stephanie, who's no great fan of his and only has eyes for Marc Garner, wouldn't deny that physically at least he's a definite catch.<br/>
<br/>
It's his personality that's the problem. Intense, arrogant, an all around asshole who walks around like he's owed something. You could feel it from her mind when you were in Chelsea's mask. She hates how Patterson won't be swayed by her, how he stands up to her and treats her with little respect. And yet, deep down, maybe just a tiny bit... it kind of turns her on. Chelsea likes control of course but she also likes it when a guy has backbone too.<br/>
<br/>
After your first encounter with him in her mask, a thought that Chelsea has occasionally had cropped into your mind.<br/>
<br/>
<i>If I wasn't with Gordon, could I wind up becoming another notch on Steve Patterson's belt?</i><br/>
<br/>
You're still thinking and studying when you notice the band appear, grab it and shove it in your pocket. You're about to leave when he begins to stir and you stop. On instinct you help rouse him and pull him up to a sitting position. You're feeling worked up, your body is aching and with little thought you pounce on him, your mouth on his and your tongue jammed into it.<br/>
<br/>
That's how Stephanie Wyatt nearly became another notch in Steve Patterson's belt.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Seriously, what the fuck have you been doing!?" Caleb demands after lunch. You're in the basement of the elementary school though still in Stephanie's mask, having not had the opportunity to remove it.<br/>
<br/>
"I had to know if Patterson had taken the stash somehow!" you protest.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, by fucking him?" he asks sarcastically. "Great job Mata Hari."<br/>
<br/>
"I didn't... we just made out, okay!?" you exclaim in embarassed frustration more characteristic of Chelsea than Stephanie. "The worst part is that it's all useless and all I've done now is made a mess for the real Stephanie."<br/>
<br/>
It's true. You'd given the band to Caleb upon meeting him and Patterson, it turns, out, had nothing at all to do with the theft only knowing what you've told him. And it only now hits you that, though you don't care a whit for Stephanie, this could be a complication that could mess things up for you if Patterson goes after her some more and it spirals out of control; a fear that you voice to Caleb.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, if you want to deal with it then just make up a new mask, get it on him and I can switch with him," he says.<br/>
<br/>
You roll your eyes at that; of course he'd suggest it. However, this time it might actually help you so you can't discount it, especially if you could convince him to tryin going out with the real Stephanie. But that'd mean having to make another mask so how else could you solve this problem?<br/>
<br/>
The thought hits you of trying to convince Caleb to switch with Stephanie instead. You could just tell him to ignore Patterson while also telling him to be more friendly with you, or have him hook up with Patterson; whichever. Either way -- Patterson or Stephanie -- it could save you a lot of headache and bring Stephanie into your orbit which means an easier time of splitting off the Garners from Cindy. <br/>
<br/>
But to be honest it seems like a lot of work and a giant pain in the ass. It probably wouldn't be that big of a deal if you just let it slide. Plus it's not like switching Caleb with either of them would bring you any closer to finding out who took the briefcase.</span></div></div>


path: 11121113211222221222222122121341112231153
author_id: seuzz
title: Hand Off, Face Off
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You picked Stephanie as your disguise because you thought you could use her swagger for the next part of the plan. But even with Stephanie's sports-hardened body and her don't-fuck-with-me confidence, you flinch at the thought of approaching any of your suspects.<br/>
<br/>
Steve Patterson would probably be the easiest to tackle. Horn dog that he is, he would certainly love to nail Stephanie to the fuck mattress up in the gym loft, and brag about it afterward. You coldly smile at the thought of the scandal that would ensue—Patterson boasting and Stephanie hotly denying—and the trouble it would cause two people you don't much like. But even Stephanie feels daunted by Patterson's frosty self-regard.<br/>
<br/>
You could probably tempt Lynch into a hook up too, but you quail at the thought. Lynch is a loathsome, giggling psychopath whose touch you don't think you could abide. True, you wouldn't have to actually do anything with him—or with Patterson, for that matter—and there'd be a lot of trouble if Lynch tried to follow up with the real Stephanie. But the less you have to do Lynch, the happier you would be.<br/>
<br/>
As for Gary Chen ... Well, even Stephanie is afraid of him. He is quick with his fists, and he is such a degenerate that she would put nothing past him.<br/>
<br/>
So Patterson would be your first choice if you wanted to play it as safe as you could. But you're not trying to play it safe. You have only one of those mind-copying things left, and though you can use Chelsea's credit card to buy more supplies, you don't want to waste magical items. And that means you want to get this one onto the likeliest suspect.<br/>
<br/>
You're not sure that Chen that's Chen, but after thinking it over, you decide that his brain would be the most useful to copy. If you're going to partner with him, knowing how he thinks—would be invaluable.<br/>
<br/>
You text Chen from Chelsea's phone (quickly erasing the message afterward), telling him to meet a "buyer" at the Acheson Community Center tomorrow (a Saturday) at noon.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Your first clue that things aren't going to go the way you plan comes when you are woken the next morning by a text from Caleb. Your first grumpy thought as you blink at the screen is, <i>Why is that loser texting me, Chelsea Cooper?</i> Your second thought is a slightly panicked <i>Shit!</i> after you read the actual text: <i>What happnd to all the stuff n the basemnt?</i> He must be out there now, looking for the last mask and the last few mind-thingies.<br/>
<br/>
<i>I need them,</i> you text back. To his <i>Y</i> you reply, <i>Lets meet and talk.</i> After some quick thinking, you tell him to meet you up at La Patisserie, a frou-frou pastry shop behind the mall, on the opposite side of town from Acheson, at twelve-fifteen. That will get him as far from the old school as possible at the hour you (as Stephanie) will be meeting with Chen.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
The old school looks abandoned when you arrive at around eleven-thirty, and you waste no time diving into the basement to change masks and clothes. Even with the head start, the time on your phone reads nearly noon when—groggy from passing out twice during the changeover—you finally stagger out of the basement in Stephanie Wyatt's face, form and imitation uniform. You shake yourself out all over. Then, with nothing else to do as you wait for Chen, you settle onto the grass in front of the basement to do some stretching and warm-up routines.<br/>
<br/>
You're still in the middle of those when with an insolent roar of the motor, Chen's red Jeep skids up. You get up and shake yourself out again, and wait for Chen to make a move. It's some minutes before he dismounts, though, wearing an expression of anger and skepticism. "Hey!" you call out to him.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, hey yourself," he retorts, then glances around without coming any closer. "You live around here?"<br/>
<br/>
"Down by the river, thataways." You point. (Which is true enough, Stephanie doesn't live far from you, though her memories tell you she never comes out to the community center.) "I guess you got Chelsea's text."<br/>
<br/>
Chen shies at your statement. "You're who I'm supposed to meet?" he asks. You nod. "Fuck."<br/>
<br/>
"What's wrong?"<br/>
<br/>
His eyes glitter as he studies you, and he sucks in a cheek. Then—still not relaxing—he says, "Okay, what are we talking about?"<br/>
<br/>
"Ten." You splay your palms, showing ten fingers. "I hear that's, what, eighty dollars?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah." Chen squints and glances around. "You have that with you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes," you lie. "You have ten joi—?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, but I can tell you where you can maybe pick some up."<br/>
<br/>
"What? From who?"<br/>
<br/>
He holds your eye. Then, without answering, he opens his Jeep door and leans in to take out a back pack, which he swings up onto his shoulder.<br/>
<br/>
"Not who," he says. "Where. Like, where there's a rock where someone might, you know, have lost something. Like, a baggie or something." His eyes continue to dart about, and he even glances behind him, as though afraid someone or something might be creeping up behind.<br/>
<br/>
"Look, I didn't come out here to play hide and seek or—"<br/>
<br/>
"And I don't want anything from you, either," he interrupts, and stops you with a single raised finger as you take two steps toward him. "But if there's, you know, like, four twenties that you saw laying around somewhere that you didn't pick up because—"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Your fear is giving away to annoyance. "I don't have time to—!"<br/>
<br/>
"You don't have time for me?" he retorts. "'S'fine. I'm not sure I got time for you!"<br/>
<br/>
You make a face. But as you glance around with exasperation, your eye falls on the basement door. It gives you a bright idea.<br/>
<br/>
"Wait here," you tell Chen, and march back and down into the basement. You glance around the dim and dusty space, and open and shut a couple of desk drawers. You did take the precaution of bringing a hundred dollars with you—drawn from Chelsea's savings—and you drop four twenties into one of the drawers.<br/>
<br/>
Outside, Chen face seems to have lost some of its tan, and he eyes you warily as you point to the basement.<br/>
<br/>
"Down there," you tell him. "I think somebody left some money down there."<br/>
<br/>
He approaches like a dog shy of being hit—or one that's thinking of biting first. You draw back to give him room to pass. He gives you one last baleful glance before creeping down the stairs and into the basement.<br/>
<br/>
Your heart is beating hard as you follow him down and inside. Your palm is slick with sweat, and you have to wipe it on your shorts before reaching into your pocket and pulling out the metal band.<br/>
<br/>
But he hunches under his backpack and keeps a shoulder to you as he edges down the inner stairs to the floor below. "The fuck is this place?" he asks.<br/>
<br/>
"Old school basement. Dur."<br/>
<br/>
"And they keep it open?"<br/>
<br/>
"I guess."<br/>
<br/>
"How do you know about it?"<br/>
<br/>
"I sometimes come out here."<br/>
<br/>
Chen grunts. With the stealth—and jumpiness—of a nervous cat, he glides around the basement, touching surfaces but not opening any of the drawers. You grit your teeth, willing him to turn his back on you so you can get up behind him. But no matter which way he turns, he always twists around to put a shoulder to you so he can watch you from the corner of his eye.<br/>
<br/>
So intent are you on looking for an opening that you don't even notice when he stops next to the old conference table that you and Caleb have turned into a makeshift work table. "Someone's been coming down here," he says. "You?"<br/>
<br/>
"No, not me. Must be the custodians."<br/>
<br/>
"I guess they like to do their reading down here."<br/>
<br/>
That's when you notice that he's laid his hand on the red leather cover of the book that's sitting on the table. Your heart goes into your throat with an audible <i>click.</i><br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, hey, that money I was telling you about," you say in a quavering voice. "I saw it in this desk back here." <i>Please come away from there,</i> you silently plead with him.<br/>
<br/>
"Huh," he says, sounding uninterested. His eyes continue to rove over the basement. "How about you wait outside?"<br/>
<br/>
"What? How come?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because that's the way we do it. Or we <i>don't</i> do it."<br/>
<br/>
"Jesus!" But with an elaborate sigh you turn and stalk back outside.<br/>
<br/>
Then you position yourself above the stairs, so that you can drop on him when he comes out.<br/>
<br/>
It's a long minute before he shows himself, and you waste no time, dropping in front of him like a ninja (you flatter yourself.) You slap the metal band to his forehead. His eyes, wide with surprise and anger, lose their focus, and he crumples in a heap inside the open basement doorway.<br/>
<br/>
You push him inside, then change your mind and—straining all your back muscles—pull him back out and drape him over the stairs. You hunch over him, waiting for the metal band to appear on his forehead. As you wait, you pull the door shut and lock it again, to keep him from getting back inside.<br/>
<br/>
When the band pops out, you pocket it and drive off without waiting for him to wake.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Naturally, Caleb is pissed when you text him to say you want to meet at the elementary school instead of La Patisserie, and at one-thirty instead of now. You're back in Chelsea's mask by then, so you don't care, though you do try to mollify him by promising to pay for replacement supplies.<br/>
<br/>
He sounds unimpressed, though, as he glances around the basement. "Where'd you put the book?" he asks.<br/>
<br/>
That's when you realize that it's gone.</span></div></div>


path: 111211132112222212222221221213411122311531
author_id: seuzz
title: The Book, Mobile
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You stare at the work table, where you last saw the book. It's gone.<br/>
<br/>
"I dunno," you stammer, playing for time. "You're the last one that had it, weren't you?"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb gives you a look. "Yes, and I left it right here." He taps the table top. <br/>
<br/>
"Well, don't look at me!" you exclaim. "I didn't touch it! You must have moved it somewhere else and forgot!"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb sighs, starts peering around the basement. You pretend to help him, looking inside desk drawers and under stacks of furniture.<br/>
<br/>
You make sure to check the drawer where you left the four twenty-dollar bills. They're gone as well.<br/>
<br/>
And Chen didn't leave anything in their place.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Son of a bitch!</i> you fume to yourself. <i>That slimy, double-crossing, cock-sucking son of a bitch!</i><br/>
<br/>
He must have taken the book, too, though how he got it out of the basement you don't understand. You locked the door after he came out, and he wasn't carrying it when you ambushed him.<br/>
<br/>
But though you and Caleb make a very systematic search, you can't find it. Caleb grows more and more angry. It's not until you catch him shooting dirty looks, though—looks that say, <i>I know you carried it off, cocksucker, what are you up to?</i>—that you break down and come clean.<br/>
<br/>
"Chen must have carried it off with  him," you finally admit.<br/>
<br/>
"What?" Caleb says. "What are you talking about?"<br/>
<br/>
"Gary Chen. I met him out here. We came down into the basement." You swallow hard as Caleb's eyes narrow. "Yeah, the book was down here, we saw it. He even touched it, said something about it. He must have—"<br/>
<br/>
"God <i>damn</i> it, Will!" Caleb explodes. "The fuck were you even <i>doing</i> down here with—? I mean, what the fuck?"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, we weren't down here fucking, if that's what you're thinking!" you scream back. That tactic—a blistering counterassault—almost always works on Gordon, but it doesn't work on Caleb, and he just glowers back at you. "I had some business to talk over with him, is all!" You hiccup. "The weed. I was trying to sell it back to him. Part of it. We came out here to make a deal—"<br/>
<br/>
"Why <i>here</i>, of all fucking places?" Caleb demands.<br/>
<br/>
You squirm. "Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time! It was—"<br/>
<br/>
You suddenly remember the mind-strip that you got off Chen, and pull it from your pocket. Caleb asks, "What's that?"<br/>
<br/>
"It's the reason I asked him out here. It's a copy of his brain." You show him the strip.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, <i>fuck!</i>" Caleb looks like he's going to vomit. "Why the hell would you want to—?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because his stash disappeared on me." You stare at the metal band, over which floats not a name but an ornate cluster of Chinese characters. "I moved it up into the loft—the fuck room, you know—and now it's gone. I was wondering if Chen broke in and took it and, so I thought if I copied his memories—"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb turns purple. <br/>
<br/>
<i>"How much goddamn ass-fuckery have you been getting up to behind my back?"</i><br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You explain it to him as best you can—your plot to sell the weed back to Chen a bit at a time while collecting a 50% commission on sales by steering new customers to him; and how you copied Stephanie Wyatt as a disguise to ambush Chen when you suspected him of stealing the stash from the gym loft; and of meeting him earlier. Your story leaves Caleb clutching his head with horror.<br/>
<br/>
When you're done, he snatches the metal strip from you and slaps it onto his own forehead. The sequel would have been even more horrifying if it hadn't also been ludicrous: Caleb woke and, after getting himself centered, tried channeling Gary Chen at you. You told him he was being ridiculous when he started talking at you like a bad-ass gangbanger, you finally put a stop to his nonsense by forcing him to look at himself in the mirror. He shriveled right up, and with a sour expression on his face sat down to tear the mind-strip off himself. He shuddered all over when he woke again, and told you that having Chen in his head was like being zipped up inside a sleeping bag with a hundred tarantulas.<br/>
<br/>
But at least you learn that Chen <i>did</i> take the book from the basement, and that he <i>didn't</i> break into the fuck room to steal the weed back. So why did he steal a book that was just sitting out randomly in the middle of an old school basement? <i>Because he's a fucking sociopath,</i> Caleb snarled when you asked.<br/>
<br/>
And now he's a sociopath with your book of magical disguises. And you don't have any blank masks you can use to trick it away from him, and no way to make more.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"God, this is such a bad idea," you mutter.<br/>
<br/>
"It better work, Will," Stephanie hisses back. "Or I'm going to kick your ass so hard you'll have to shit through your ears."<br/>
<br/>
It's not Stephanie, of course. It's Caleb, wearing the mask you made of the basketball player. Something's gone wrong with it, he complained after getting it on, because he can't get the memories that should be in it. <i>Maybe you're just a retard,</i> you shot back, because you had them fine when you wore the mask this morning.<br/>
<br/>
But Caleb isn't the only one disguised for this visit. So are you. Sort of: You've taken off Chelsea's mask and have put on Caleb's clothes, so that you're approaching Chen under your own face. You shrilly argued against the idea when Caleb suggested that you go as yourself, but had to give up when he pointed out (so logical is he!) that there's someone else now sleeping in your house and taking your classes, so that if "Will Prescott" gets in trouble with Chen, it will be that other "Will Prescott" who'll take the brunt of it, not you. "You're totally safe, Will," he honked at you. "You're Chelsea Cooper now, so your real face <i>is</i> a disguise!"<br/>
<br/>
And you're both in "disguise" because you're striding up the walk to the small but neatly kept house where Gary Chen lives.<br/>
<br/>
You got a cluster of texts from him while you and Caleb were talking. The first—<i>Wats with ur crazy bitch frend steaphnie u tell her I don't fuckin play her stupid cunt games or fuck her</i>—was alarming enough because it implied that Chen had talked to Stephanie already. The last was even more terrifying because because of rage that that blazed out from behind its froth of gibberish: <i>Ur cunt fend Stephanie says no deal so duck her n fuck u n eat shit bitch I not playing fucknw u blow me f I u want something I will fuck u up if u screw me.</i><br/>
<br/>
The door is answered by a small woman who looks like Chen to the extent that she too is Chinese, and when you ask for "Gary" she shouts back into the house. Chen appears behind her. His expression goes blank when he sees you, but it darkens when it latches onto Stephanie.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey," she says to him, "me and Will were driving by and wanted to stop and see if you wanted to hang out."<br/>
<br/>
One of his eyelids flickers. Then, calmly and politely, he says, "Yeah, sure, let's take a walk, I'll show you around the neighborhood." He slides past his mom, pulls the door shut, and leads you back down to the street. "I ain't apologizing for anything I said to you over the phone," he mutters under his breath.<br/>
<br/>
"That's alright," Stephanie says. "It's probably better to talk like this. Sorry about what happened at the old school, by the way."<br/>
<br/>
Chen mutters something under his breath.<br/>
<br/>
"So I saw that you got the money I left there for you," the girl continues.<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, did you leave some money there, Stephanie?" Chen says in a tone of mock surprise. "You know, I found some but I didn't know it was yours. Do you want it back?"<br/>
<br/>
"Uh—"<br/>
<br/>
"'Cos I don't take things that don't belong to me, you know, but I saw those bills and I thought maybe I should pick them up and keep them safe until I find out who they belong to and—"<br/>
<br/>
"Cut the crap, man," Stephanie snaps. "If you wanna give it back, I'll take it back. But there was something else down in that basement, you know. A book."<br/>
<br/>
"A book?" Chen echoes. "I didn't know you could read, Stephanie. I thought you just held guys down and punched them until they did your homework for them."<br/>
<br/>
"That sounds more like <i>your</i>—" Stephanie catches herself. "There was a book down there, and now it's gone. You remember the book."<br/>
<br/>
"Nope! Can't say I do!"<br/>
<br/>
"It doesn't belong to <i>me,</i>" Stephanie says. "It belongs to Will here. So if you think you're getting back at <i>me</i> by taking it, you're wrong."<br/>
<br/>
Chen turns to give you a very long and steady look. You almost shit yourself. <i>I would not want to be my replacement come Monday,</i> you think.<br/>
<br/>
But no matter how Stephanie argues and cajoles him—you keep silent—Chen refuses to admit to taking anything but some twenty-dollar bills from the basement.<br/>
<br/>
And you don't even get those back before giving up and leaving.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
That evening, back inside Chelsea's mask and in her bedroom, you send Chen a text. It's a last, desperate throw when you tell him that you talked to Stephanie, and that you'd do Chen "a solid" if he gave that book back to its owner.<br/>
<br/>
You shiver when he replies, <i>What kind of solid?</i><br/>
<br/>
Before you can come to grips with his implied meaning, you get a second text from him, asking to meet up at Westside.<br/>
<br/>
Now.</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122222122222212212134111223115311
author_id: seuzz
title: Ambushed and Bushwhacked
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span><i>Meet me up at school.<br/>
Now.</i><br/>
<br/>
Your hands freeze around the phone as you study Chen's text. Your brain seems to freeze as well.<br/>
<br/>
He has the book, and as a last resort you texted him, pleading with him to give it back to "Will Prescott," the guy it belongs to.<br/>
<br/>
And, almost without thinking, you promised to do him "a solid" if he did that.<br/>
<br/>
Now your bluff has been called.<br/>
<br/>
What kind of a "solid" are you willing to do for Chen to get the book back?<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It is dark and cold and drizzly as you huddle in your car, shivering inside a cheap windbreaker. It's nine-thirty at night, and you're parked in the Westside lot, waiting for Chen. The glow of the city reflects dimly off the lowering clouds, and the rain drops on the windshield shatter the lights of the passing cars into kaleidoscopic blobs. One of those blobs, eventually, will be Chen.<br/>
<br/>
Coming out to meet him this way has got to be the bravest thing you've ever done. Your earlier meetings were straightforward transactions—money for weed. But behind this appointment there is a different, though unspoken, kind of transaction promised. But you know it's one that Chen will try to hold you to, regardless of whether you pretend not to have meant or understood it.<br/>
<br/>
But you brought protection with you. <br/>
<br/>
Not Gordon, who is the kind of protection that Chelsea would usually bring to a situation like this. But the real Gordon would never let her come out to this kind of meeting, and the new one, you sense, would be useless in spite of his physical size. <br/>
<br/>
Nor is it your best friend, Caleb Johansson, who drove out with you and is who presently hiding under your car. Caleb would be even more useless in a fight than Gordon, but from that hiding place, he might have the element of surprise on his side if it comes to a fight.<br/>
<br/>
But the real protection you're banking on comes in the form of a mask. It's a mask in the form of an expressionless human face, but it glows from within with a soft, bluish light. Caleb brought it with him when you picked him up. It contains a copy of his face and body.<br/>
<br/>
Your plan is to get close enough to Chen that you can push the mask onto him. Then, while he's knocked out, you'll get the book from him, rip the mask off him, and escape.<br/>
<br/>
Your phone lights up with a text. <i>See him yet,</i> Caleb wants to know.<br/>
<br/>
<i>No keep phone off so he dont see the lite,</i> you warn him.<br/>
<br/>
<i>He won't dude got it chielded.<br/>
<br/>
Just be careful.<br/>
<br/>
Don't burst your hymen.</i><br/>
<br/>
You make a face and toss the phone aside. <i>He can be so annoying,</i> you think to yourself.<br/>
<br/>
Some five minutes later, headlamps pull into the lot. They sweep around, then twist to aim right at you. Chen's Jeep roars up, swerves, and parks in front in front of you. The motor idles.<br/>
<br/>
Another text, this one from Chen: <i>Cm get in.</i><br/>
<br/>
You blink at it, then reply, <i>Get in my car.</i><br/>
<br/>
The Jeep swerves around to park next to you. Braving the rain, you hop out to meet and delay him. <i>Keep him close to the car,</i> you remind yourself, <i>so Caleb can grab him by the ankle after we start talking.</i><br/>
<br/>
But Chen remains in the Jeep with the motor running. The handle to the passenger-side door jiggles, and flops open.  Then Chen is beckoning to you from inside the dark cab of the Jeep.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Fuck.</i> You wanted him to get out, so Caleb could get at him, but it looks like you blew plan that by getting out first. With gritted teeth you climb into the Jeep and pull the door closed.<br/>
<br/>
So now it's just you and the mask. It's in your hand, tucked by your hip. In the dark of the cabin, maybe you'll still stand a good shot at surprising him with it.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey," you sigh. "Thanks for meeting up like this—"<br/>
<br/>
"No, thank <i>you!</i>" You can hear the leer in his voice, and pull a face.<br/>
<br/>
"Did you bring that book like I asked?" He grunts. "Can I see it?"<br/>
<br/>
"How come? What's the big deal about it?"<br/>
<br/>
"No big deal. It's just a favor I owe to, um—"<br/>
<br/>
"You mean like a solid? You owe that fucking little twerp a solid?" He sniggers.<br/>
<br/>
You wince. "Sort of. So if you could give it to me—"<br/>
<br/>
"Tell me about the solid you're going to do for me. With <i>details.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
You shudder. "I want to see the book first." Then, in a rush: "I want to see the book first, Gary! I don't want you thinking you can, you know, take advantage of me!"<br/>
<br/>
"Jesus, you're paranoid," he says. "Maybe I can be paranoid, too."<br/>
<br/>
He doesn't explain his meaning, and you let out a tiny sigh of relief as he unzips the book bag sitting between you and rummages inside it. You bring the mask up into your lap, trying to shield it from his gaze.<br/>
<br/>
You must not have succeeded. For, quick as a cobra, his hand shoots out and grabs at you. You squeal and drop the mask.<br/>
<br/>
"Gary!" you simper. "What are you—?<i>Yyymgghmmphhh!</i>" A strong hand closes over your mouth.<br/>
<br/>
Then another one seizes you by the forehead. You grab at his forearm and pull. But he's too strong—or too desperate. At any rate, he's too quick. Chen mutters under his breath and pulls at your face. The world reels and goes out of focus. Then, like a TV losing its signal, the world goes dark.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's the pain in your feet that wakes you. They are in an agony, as though jammed inside a far too-tight pair of shoes. It's dark, and your head is reeling, and you have no idea what is going on. But the pain—! You fall onto your side and reach for your feet. Ripples like lightning shoot up your calves.<br/>
<br/>
You gasp and fumble at your feet. You are in fact wearing a pair of shoes, you realize, but in the cramped, enclosed space you've woken in, you can't reach them easily. You fight to get your hands somewhere—anywhere!—near your feet, and at last succeed by folding yourself up and twisting your legs up beside you. You suppress a yelp as you tear at tight, recalcitrant shoelaces. At last you pop one shoe off—it feels as though someone has tried to fold your foot in half, and you nurse the pain as you fight the other shoe. After you get it off, you lay on your side, panting.<br/>
<br/>
Voices are sounding nearby—a mix of words and howls—but you're too winded to care. <i>Where am I?</i> you wonder. The last you remember was sitting in the school parking lot, waiting for Chen. No, wait, now you remember him arriving. And you got in his Jeep. You were going to— But then he—<br/>
<br/>
You bolt upright and look around. You're still in Chen's Jeep, but he's gone, though his backpack remains. In something like panic you paw through it, yanking items out and peering at them through the darkness, until finally—<br/>
<br/>
Yes! You pull the book free.<br/>
<br/>
You're turning to hop out when you notice how twisted up you are inside your clothes. They are too small for you. <i>These are Chelsea's clothes,</i> you think. Then: <i>Why are Chelsea's clothes too small for me?</i><br/>
<br/>
You freeze as, with dawning horror, you remember the way Chen grabbed at your face.<br/>
<br/>
With a gulp of fear, you hop out of the Jeep. Two figures are huddled nearby, one bending over the other. They're shouting and blubbering at each other.<br/>
<br/>
You just have time to take in the sight when the standing figure turns toward you. It's Chen. Before you can duck, he swings a hard fist, knocking you to the stony blacktop.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's an hour before he lets you go, an hour during which he takes turns pounding first you and then Caleb. Your resistance snaps pretty quickly, but he doesn't leave off smacking and gut-punching and kicking you even as you bleat and blurt out the answers to questions before he even asks them. And Caleb is just as eager as you to tell Chen everything about the book and the masks.<br/>
<br/>
Afterward, after he's gone, as you and Caleb huddle in Chelsea's car, you piece together what it all means. After you met with Chen at his house, you deduce, he must have taken a much closer look at the book and read what it claimed to be able to do. Maybe he was paranoid or maybe he was just very quick about doing the math, but he must have figured there was something to what it said—and he must have prepared himself for your meeting by memorizing the spell for removing a mask. It's the only way to explain how he got you out of Chelsea's.<br/>
<br/>
You put that mask back on and take Caleb home, then return to your house, where you pass a very restless night of waking nightmares. Chen may left you Chelsea's mask, but he took everything else, including the book and your key to the basement. What he could do with the book, you shudder to think.<br/>
<br/>
And what will he do with you?<br/>
<br/>
You have a chance to find out the next morning when he sends a flurry of texts:<br/>
<br/>
<i>Cm out to that old school at ten so we can talk<br/>
Or don't makes no duck to me<br/>
But I could maybe use u n maybe u still want some kind of deal</i></span></div></div>


path: 11121113211222221222222122121341112231153111
author_id: rugal
title: A Dangerous Alliance
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Chen wants to talk and he wants to make a deal with you. You wonder what it could be but that phrase, that "maybe he could use you", gives you pause and leaves you feeling cold. The thought enters your head that a lowlife like Chen could have all kinds of "uses" for someone a pretty girl like Chelsea and that you might be putting yourself in danger by agreeing to meet him. You decide to send him a text hoping you can get a little bit of insurance.<br/>
<br/>
<i>sure if caleb can come too,</i> you send.<br/>
<br/>
It's a tense few moments before your phone buzzes and another set of texts from Chen comes in.<br/>
<br/>
<i>No<br/>
U cm by urself or dont cm at all<br/>
Ur call I dont giv a shit</i><br/>
<br/>
Well fuck. You know that neither you nor Caleb, even together, could actually beat up Gary Chen; yesterday evening made that abundantly clear. However, if he did try to do something to you while you were in Chelsea's mask then you'd kind of hoped that Caleb would be a decent enough friend to not allow that to happen. It's a mean thought, hoping that Caleb would sacrifice himself for you, but the pounding he'd get would certainly be preferable to the <i>other</i> kind of pounding that Chen could give to Chelsea.<br/>
<br/>
Still, in spite of the danger, you can't help but to be curious about what Chen is saying. Sure he beat the tar out of you but if he's messaging you, offering to still work out some kind of deal then maybe you're not in as much danger as you think. Maybe that beating got everything out of his system. So it's with some trepidation that you decide to message him back.<br/>
<br/>
<i>I can be there<br/>
do u want me out of chelsea's mask?</i><br/>
<br/>
<i>do wuteva,</i> comes the reply, <i>but b there @ ten</i><br/>
<br/>
You make a face and you don't even need to think twice about whether or not you'll wear Chelsea's mask to the meeting. After all, you'll need all of her bravado and confidence if you have even a hope of getting through a meeting with psychotic drug dealer now armed with a book of magic. You're nervous enough even with her mask, without it you'd piss yourself before the meeting was done and then Chen would probably kick your ass again.<br/>
<br/>
Besides, it's almost been close to a week since you got this mask and with each day you're feeling less and less like you're simply playing a role. Sure, you can remember being Will Prescott and you still think with his thoughts but yesterday, Caleb's joke about you being "in disguise" when you were out of Chelsea's mask perhaps rung a little too true.<br/>
<br/>
You have no idea when the real Chelsea will return. Hell, you have no idea <i>if</i> she'll ever return. For all you know her time as Dane at military school could change you as much as your time being her is changing you. She might adapt fully to her new identity. She might just join the military and never actually return to Saratoga Falls. So where would that leave you then? Because the more time you spend as Chelsea, the harder it becomes to head back to your old life.<br/>
<br/>
But why would you want to do that? Being Will Prescott sucked. Why be that easily bullied loser when you can be the type of confident person that few would dare cross?<br/>
<br/>
<i>Yeah,</i> you think as you use a dainty and manicured hand to tuck a strand of luscious blonde hair behind your ear, <i>this is my life now. I</i> am <i>Chelsea flippin' Cooper!</i><br/>
<br/>
Yes, you're Chelsea Cooper and not even Gary Chen can take that away from you. Not without a lot of questions popping up that someone as paranoid as him wouldn't want being asked. For the first time since you noticed the book was missing, your pretty, Kewpie doll lips curl into a confident smile. Now you wonder what you were so scared of Chen for. He's the one coming to you now about cutting deals because even without the book you've got something he doesn't.<br/>
<br/>
You've got your new life as Chelsea and you can't help but feel as if that's all the leverage you'll need.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
The autumn air is cool and crisp and you're dressed to match as you pull into the parking lot of the old school. You see Chen's Jeep but see no sign of him in the parking lot as you impatiently look around. You head over to the door that leads to the basement and for a brief moment nervousness flashes through your mind when you're able to open it. The door being unlocked means that Chen is down there. Understandable that he'd want to talk away from prying eyes but that means you're now alone with him in a dank basement.<br/>
<br/>
But as quickly as that nervousness comes, it also goes and you head in. <i>I have no reason to be nervous</i>, you think. <i>He needs me.</i><br/>
<br/>
"Gary?" you call out as you approach the bottom of the stairs. You catch sight of him eyeing you impatiently.<br/>
<br/>
"The fuck took you so long?" he asks.<br/>
<br/>
"It's five minutes till ten," you tell him.<br/>
<br/>
"And ten minutes late."<br/>
<br/>
You glare at him. "You said you needed my help so if you're just going to fuck around--"<br/>
<br/>
"Didn't know you'd let those kinds of words slip out of that pretty mouth of yours, Prescott," he says. You suppress the urge to shudder at the leer he gives you but you can't help but take a surprised step back when he pounces on you. He's in your face and you expect him to hit you or rip the mask of of your face but he instead continues to leer. "You got dressed up real nice too," he says. His nostrils flare, "You even smell nice. All this work for me?"<br/>
<br/>
"I have a life, you know," you shoot back with defiance. "Cheerleading, and trying to juggle so many commitments--"<br/>
<br/>
"Getting Black's cock jammed down your throat," Chen guffaws.<br/>
<br/>
"--dealing with you. I'm a busy girl."<br/>
<br/>
Chen takes a step back himself and nearly busts a gut. "This is fucking rich! You actually think you're Chelsea, Prescott?" he says as he tries to stop himself from doubling over.<br/>
<br/>
"It's like I told you yesterday when you were..." you wince. "Look, if I'm the one being Chelsea then I <i>am</i> Chelsea as far as you or anyone else is concerned."<br/>
<br/>
Your heart is racing and you can't believe that even with all of Chelsea's confidence you're not giving an inch to Chen in spite of everything. It's to your even greater surprise when he walks off more.<br/>
<br/>
"Fucking hell, Prescott. I always figured you for the biggest pussy at Westside." He turns back briefly to give you another unnerving grin. "But I guess it took <i>getting</i> a pussy for you to grow a set of balls."<br/>
<br/>
"I'm leaving," you say getting ready to turn around "You said it didn't matter to you anyway so if you don't want my help--"<br/>
<br/>
"You keep sayin' that but I never said I wanted your help, Prescott or Chelsea or whatever you wanna call yourself." You stop before you can even take a step towards the stairs. "I said that I could use you if you still want some kinda deal."<br/>
<br/>
"What kind of deal could we even still have?" you ask as you spin around to face him once more.<br/>
<br/>
Chen, instead, simply points to the book sitting on a work table. "You're the one who came to me about sellin' into more places right? Back when I still thought you were just Chelsea." He lets out an amused, smug laugh. "You were too clever by half but maybe you had the right idea."<br/>
<br/>
"What's that supposed to mean?" you ask as you cross your arms.<br/>
<br/>
"You use these things to copy people and turn into 'em, like you did with Chelsea, right?" he responds. "So I was thinkin' why don't I do that? Get the right person and I can start dealin' in places that would be off limits to me, ya know? But seein' as my reputation proceeds me, I figure you'd be good for settin' me up."<br/>
<br/>
"Why would I want to help you?"<br/>
<br/>
Chen once more gets in your face though his leer is much more sinister. "You like where you are, don't you Prescott? Bein' popular's better'n bein' a loser, even if it means you gotta be a chick," he says. "You wanna stay where you are, then you'll wanna help me."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
So you're stuck and for most of the rest of the morning Chen "insists" on you walking him through the spells up until the one you've gotten to involving the graveyard dirt. He goes back to the masks and bands and when you tell him about the buffer trick Caleb discovered he insists on making some so he himself will know how to do it. He says that he'll get the stuff himself and you can stay here and for good measure forces you to hand over your keys so you can't go anywhere.<br/>
<br/>
You're thus left to look around the basement until he returns. Likely he's going to want to make up some masks so he can quickly get into a new identity. He's tasked you with finding him a good one saying that he didn't care who, only that it was one who'd be useful to him. But as you wait for him to come back you realize that someone being useful to him doesn't mean they can't be useful to you as well.<br/>
<br/>
You'd noticed that all of your stuff is still here in the basement and that includes the mask of Stephanie you'd made on Friday. The star of the girl's basketball team would certainly be a good place for Chen and maybe you could convince him to help you finesse the Garners in exchange for that and keeping to the original bargain too.<br/>
<br/>
But she's not the only option either as you'd set up a lunch for this afternoon with Yumi before leaving. Your brain rattles off a few other possibilities too: Kelsey Blankenship, the AP snob whose weed parties are as poorly kept a secret as her relationship with Karl Hennepin, and Kim Walsh, the busybody student council president. They'd be beneficial for both Chen and yourself as well.<br/>
<br/>
So would Patterson, who's continued snooping and questioning of you has become a real sore point.</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122222122222212212134111223115312
author_id: seuzz
title: The Song of Yourself
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span><i>Meet me up at school.<br/>
Now.</i><br/>
<br/>
Your hands freeze around the phone as you study Chen's text. Your brain seems to freeze as well.<br/>
<br/>
He has the book, and as a last resort you texted him, pleading with him to give it back to "Will Prescott," the guy it belongs to.<br/>
<br/>
And, almost without thinking, you promised to do him "a solid" if he did that.<br/>
<br/>
Now your bluff has been called.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Christ, Will, why didn't you take him up on it?" Caleb fumes when you tell him how you chickened out.<br/>
<br/>
It's Sunday afternoon, the soonest you and he could get together. You're at the old elementary school because it's a private spot where he and "Chelsea Cooper" are unlikely to be seen together. There's no other reason to meet there. You used up the last of your supplies for making masks, so you couldn't make any more even if you still had the book (which you don't), and you used up the last of your magical gear to make a copy of Stephanie Wyatt and to copy Gary Chen's mind.<br/>
<br/>
The situation is desperate, which is probably why you are snapping at each other.<br/>
<br/>
"You want to know why I didn't I take him up on it?" you retort. "Do you <i>really fucking</i> have to ask that question? Here!" You mime tearing your own face off. "If <i>you</i> are so hot to suck Gary Chen off, or to let him jam his sausage up your gyny, <i>you</i> can put on the mask and give him a call!" Caleb makes a face and turns away. "Yeah, that's what I thought!" you yell at him.<br/>
<br/>
"You didn't have to put out, Will! You could have just found out what he wanted."<br/>
<br/>
"I <i>know</i> what he wanted!"<br/>
<br/>
"We should'a taken Chelsea up to meet him, not Stephanie," Caleb mutters. "That's where—"<br/>
<br/>
"I didn't want him knowing I was connected to this mess!"<br/>
<br/>
"Well, he knows now, God damn it!" Caleb roars. "So if <i>you're</i> already in all the way, you might as well have let <i>him</i> in all the way!" He thrusts his crotch at you.<br/>
<br/>
"Fuck you!" You look around for something to throw at him, but the smallest item within reach is a six-foot bookcase. "Fuck you fuck you fu—!"<br/>
<br/>
And all at once, you're bawling your head off. Caleb grimaces with embarrassment. When you can't take it anymore, you rush up the stairs and out to your car. Between the tears and the hiccups, you can hardly see as you race away from the school. <i>That goddamned asshole! That cocksucker! That motherfucking—!</i><br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You wind up at the college library of all places, probably because that's the only place that Chelsea can be sure of not running into anyone she knows. You hide in the back stacks, at a study table, with your head under your arms. It all seems so hopeless!<br/>
<br/>
Losing the book is bad enough, but the worst part is that your phone is completely silent. Surely Caleb would text or call you to apologize! Or at least to gruffly insist that you talk! Even with him, the situation would be daunting—Chen in possession of the book, and you without any kind of tool or disguise you can use to get it away from him—but alone, by yourself, what hope have you got? You are overwhelmed with a sense of desolation and loneliness. <i>Just me against the world!</i><br/>
<br/>
Eventually, after you've cried yourself out and rubbed the wetness from your face—<i>God, I'm probably a mess!</i> you think—you discover that the reason you haven't heard from anyone is that your phone is off. <i>Right,</i> you remind yourself, <i>I turned it off when I got to the old school, so Caleb and me wouldn't be interrupted.</i> You feel feel a pale but palpable sense of hope when you turn it back on, and see the screen light up with alerts. Your heart sinks, though, as you run through them and find they are all solely from the usual suspects: Kendra and Gloria, Meghan Farris and Deanna Showalter, various girls on various sites trying to suck up to you by tagging you into their conversations. It leaves you feeling very tired.<br/>
<br/>
Mechanical habit asserts itself, though, and with numb fingers and a distracted attention, you start working your way through the list, replying with curt directives and queries; likes and emojis; searches of related posts and threads and texts. Gradually you warm to the job, and when you come up for air after a lot of intense thread- and text-management, you find that nearly ninety minutes have passed.<br/>
<br/>
You also find that your mood has improved.<br/>
<br/>
Oh, you're still cheesed off at Caleb. But you know what? <i>Fuck him!</i> He's a dweeby loser floundering somewhere in the lowest, muckiest percentile of the senior class. And without the book he has no way of improving his position, the way you have. Meanwhile, even without the book, you're <i>Chelsea Flippin' Cooper, head cheerleader, at Westside High School!</i><br/>
<br/>
In fact, the more you think about it, the more you wonder why the ever-loving fuck you were upset to begin with. So you lost the book. <i>So flipping what?</i> Was there someone else you would have preferred to become? Are there any better positions out there? <i>I don't think so!</i> As for Chen getting ahold of it— Well, is there anything to really worry about there? He's a psycho and a criminal, but that's because he's too dumb to be any better, and why should you worry about a dumbass like him getting ahold of the book? If he's even looked at it, he'll have noticed it's in Latin and will have probably already thrown it away!<br/>
<br/>
It's not long before you've plumped yourself back into a very cheerful mood, and "Cheerful" elevates to "Imperious" after you've retreated to the nearest restroom and put yourself back together. A clean face, repaired makeup, brushed-out hair, straightened lines on your blouse and jacket and skirt and leggings ... Your tits are swinging like the guns on a battleship when, with chin up and shoulders back, you march back out.<br/>
<br/>
And when you get a text from Gordon asking you to meet him up in the gym loft, you smirk hard to yourself. It's not the real Gordon, but it's a passable facsimile. And if there's nothing else that <i>Chelsea Flippin' Cooper</i> is proud of—aside from her hair, her nose, her bust, her waist, her hips, her legs, her adorable little feet, and the skill with which she can execute a flawless triple backflip—it's that she's dating the <i>hot, mean captain of the basketball squad!<br/>
<br/>
Be rite thre pookie!</i> you text back, and double-quick-time it for the library parking lot.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Oh, Gordon," you moan as you suck and nibble at his lips. "You are making me so hot. And so <i>wet!</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"You know what you're making me?" he grunts back.<br/>
<br/>
You giggle. "You don't have to tell <i>me!</i>" It is indeed impossible not to feel the straining boner through your boyfriend's gym shorts.<br/>
<br/>
You're up at the school, in the gym loft, on one of the crummy gym mats that's the only padding for the hard-wood floor. Gordon is sitting with his back to one of the support beams, and you are straddling his lap. You are clasping his shoulder while he wraps brawny arms around your waist. You were happy to see him—so drunk are you with relief at realizing that as <i>Chelsea Flippin' Cooper</i> you have no reason to be upset with recent turns of fortune—but now, after twenty minutes of poking, teasing, tickling, squeezing, and chewing on him and having him chew on you ... Well, God damn it, you are almost horny. <i>I've got Chelsea Cooper's pussy,</i> you pant silently to yourself. <i>How long am I going to go without using it?</i><br/>
<br/>
"Wait here, Pookie," you say as you push yourself off him. "I'm going to go change."<br/>
<br/>
"What do you need to change for?" he grunts. "You look fine to me."<br/>
<br/>
"Well, you're in your uniform. I wanna go get into mine!"<br/>
<br/>
A hard, sharp gleam comes into his eye, and the corner of his mouth twists up into a leer with just a shadow of cruelty in it.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Oh my God,</i> you think as you stumble down the stairs from the loft. <i>I can't believe I'm doing this! Am I really—?</i> You gulp. <i>Oh Jesus, I think I really am!</i><br/>
<br/>
It's not just your own behavior that surprises you as you numbly pull the cheerleader uniform from your locker. What happened to Goofball Gordon, who last you saw on Friday? That one could hardly look you in the face, and cracks himself up each time he tries talking to you. As for trying to make out with you— Well, the only move he has made is to try putting his arm around you, and even then he acts like he's touching a porcupine.<br/>
<br/>
Today, though, he was waiting for you in the loft with a hard and undaunted eye, and when he saw you he reached for you as though you were a ripe grapefruit he was thinking of tearing open with his bare fingers. He doesn't giggle, either, and when he talks, he talks dirty to you.<br/>
<br/>
It's almost like he's the real Gordon again.<br/>
<br/>
Which is impossible. <i>Dane must be trying to live up to the role,</i> you decide. <i>Finally.</i><br/>
<br/>
But these reflections, you find as you finish changing into your cheerleader uniform, have caused a cold shadow to fall across your heart.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Maybe,</i> you think, <i>I should pretend I got a text summoning me home. I don't really want to fuck him, do I?</i></span></div></div>


path: 111211132112222212222221221213411122311532
author_id: seuzz
title: Gone, Book, Gone
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You stare at the work table, where you last saw the book. It's gone.<br/>
<br/>
"I dunno," you stammer, playing for time. "You're the last one that had it, weren't you?"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb gives you a look. "Yes, and I left it right here." He taps the table top. <br/>
<br/>
"Well, don't look at me!" you exclaim. "I didn't touch it! You must have moved it somewhere else and forgot!"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb sighs, and starts peering around the basement. You pretend to help, looking inside desk drawers and under stacks of furniture.<br/>
<br/>
First, though, you check the drawer where you left the five twenty-dollar bills. It's empty, and Chen didn't leave anything in their place.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Son of a bitch!</i> you fume to yourself. <i>That slimy, double-crossing, cock-sucking son of a bitch!</i><br/>
<br/>
He must have taken the book, too, though how he got it out of the basement you don't understand. You locked the door after he came out, and he wasn't carrying it when you ambushed him.<br/>
<br/>
And why would he carry off an old book that he "found" inside a smelly old school basement?<br/>
<br/>
If you're lucky, it'll turn out that Chen <i>didn't</i> carry it off, that just for spite he hid it somewhere while looking for the money you left him. But though you and Caleb make a very systematic search—and you make a second search on your own when he goes home to see if he left it in his house—you don't turn it up. Caleb is furious when he gets back, and takes it out on you. You're also pretty sure, from the looks he's shooting you, that he suspects <i>you</i> of carrying it off and hiding it for some secret purpose of your own.<br/>
<br/>
Texts come in while you're working—from your mom, from Kendra and Gloria, from Meghan Farris and some other suck-ups—but you ignore them until one pops up from Gary Chen. After reading it, you decide to wrap up the afternoon. "Maybe it'll turn up tomorrow," you tell him. He replies with silent, beady-eyed glare. "But I have to get home. Chelsea has a life, you know."<br/>
<br/>
Caleb looks like he's going to say something cutting. But after another long glare, he shrugs and turns his back on you.<br/>
<br/>
<i>How the hell am I going to explain this to him?</i> you wonder as you drive off.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Chen badgers you with two more angry outbursts (<i>Don't idgnorw me bitch</i> and <i>U don't want to talk the hope deals off</i>) before you find a spot at The Flying Saucer, one of the city's many kooky coffee shops, where you can catch a quiet moment wherein to deal with him.<br/>
<br/>
His first text was alarming enough: <i>Wats with ur crazy bitch frend steaphnie u tell her I don't fuckin play her stupid cunt games or fuck her.</i> But while you're figuring out how to reply, he hurls another one at you: <i>Ur cunt fend Stephanie says no deal so duck her n fuck u n eat shit bitch I not playing fucknw u blow me f I u want something I will fuck u up if u screw me.</i> Yes, it's near gibberish, but the intent is clear enough. The most alarming bit, though, is the implication that he texted or went and talked to the real Stephanie Wyatt.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Gary can we please get together at talk?</i> you plead with him, but he only replies with a string of curses. Maybe it's just as well. Because after you've given up trying to entice him to meet you, you realize you don't know what you would say to him. How could "Chelsea Cooper" possibly ask him whether he lifted a book from inside the basement of the abandoned elementary school down in Acheson?<br/>
<br/>
And after all that, the final payoff comes almost as an anticlimax. You drive back out to Westside, where let yourself into the gym and hide in the very back of the girls' changing room. There you take off your clothes and Chelsea's mask long enough to slap a newly minted strip of metal to your forehead. It contains all of Gary Chen's garbagey thoughts and memories and personality, and it leaves you feeling like you're sealed up inside a sleeping bag that's crawling with snakes and cockroaches. And what do you learn? <br/>
<br/>
First, that Chen did <i>not</i>break into the loft and take the briefcase, even though he did case the place and fiddled with the handle to the door. Second, that he most definitely <i>did</i> take the book. After finding the money you left him, he glanced around, and out of a spiteful sense of curiosity he jammed it inside the backpack he was carrying. You groan at the now-obvious solution to <i>that</i> puzzle.<br/>
<br/>
But what is he likely to do with it? Based on what you find inside his head, your best guess is that he'll throw it into a corner of his house and forget about it.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"Pookie," you say in a small, careful tone of voice, "are you thinking of quitting the basketball team?"<br/>
<br/>
It's Sunday afternoon, and you're up at the school again, in the loft. Chelsea is rarely up there on Sundays, but you arranged a meeting with Gordon today. It's a cool day, with temperatures in the fifties, and the sun is playing hide and seek among broken layers of heavy clouds. You're dressed warmly, in skin tight legging under your skirt, and a jeans jacket over your long-sleeve blouse. Even Gordon is dressed in long jeans. You're glad of the layers, because even though you're cuddling in his lap, with your arms around each other, you don't want things to go any further.<br/>
<br/>
And you're only letting them go this far because you're trying to keep your contingencies open.<br/>
<br/>
"Pookie?" you ask again when Gordon doesn't answer. You look up to find that he's been concentrating on your breasts. "Huh?" he says.<br/>
<br/>
You sigh. "I'm not kissing you again until you promise to start paying attention to me."<br/>
<br/>
He giggles. "I'm always paying attention to you."<br/>
<br/>
"Not like <i>that!</i> I mean to what I say."<br/>
<br/>
"Sure," he says, and pushes in for a kiss.<br/>
<br/>
"Mmph! Gordon! This is serious! Are you thinking of quitting the basketball team?"<br/>
<br/>
"Huh? How come?"<br/>
<br/>
"That's for <i>you</i> to tell me! When was the last time you were at practice?"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, gosh!" he says. "Um ... Yesterday?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yesterday was Saturday!"<br/>
<br/>
"Day before yesterday?" His breath is coming in quick gasps.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, are you going to keep going? Isn't Steve mad at you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Uh ... Yeah? I guess so?"<br/>
<br/>
"Gordon!" You clasp his face between your hands."I thought basketball was important to you!"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, sure." He shifts beneath you, and his stiffened member pings off the bottom of your thigh. "But you know—" He squeezes your hips. "There's other things I like more!"<br/>
<br/>
"Like weed?"<br/>
<br/>
"Huh?" He stares at you, then breaks into an uncontrollable giggle.<br/>
<br/>
"Gordon, what's gotten <i>into</i> you lately? You're skipping your classes, you're skipping practice, Steve is—"<br/>
<br/>
"You want some now?"<br/>
<br/>
"Some what?"<br/>
<br/>
Gordon mimes taking a hit off a blunt, and waggles his eyebrows at you. "I know where—"<br/>
<br/>
"Pookie! Concentrate! You know what happened to that stoner, right! What's his name? Dane?" You snap your fingers, pretending to remember. "Dane Matthias!"<br/>
<br/>
The color drains from Gordon's face. "Yeah?" he says, and all the mirth has evaporated from his voice.<br/>
<br/>
"Well, you know what happened to him, right? Did you hear?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah."<br/>
<br/>
"He got shipped off to boot camp! You hear that? <i>Boot camp!</i> Because he was always stoned! Even his own family couldn't take it any more, even after years and years of—!"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh, why are you telling me this, Chelsea?" Gordon groans. "I don't—! I wanna have fun!"<br/>
<br/>
"You're having <i>too much</i> fun! Gordon! If Dane's family finally had enough and shipped him off to boot camp, what do you think <i>your</i> dad'll do to you?" Gordon's father is a cop, and a borderline-abusive asshole to his son. "I don't want you going away from me, Pookie!" You pout at him. "I couldn't bear to lose my snoogie-woogie Pookie-Ookums!"<br/>
<br/>
Gordon's head wobbles on his neck, and he almost capsizes as his boner pokes at you through his jeans.<br/>
<br/>
"So I just want you to think about Dane, and what happened to him," you say as you resettle yourself on his lap. You straddle him and push your breast against his, and take his rough, unshaven face between your hands. "I don't want to lose you, Pookie!" You push in, pressing a hard, questing tongue into his mouth. "You have to promise me that you won't do anything stupid, that you'll always be here for me," you groan when you break away. "That <i>every time</i> I come up here looking for you, you'll be here, waiting!"<br/>
<br/>
"Oh God, yes!" Gordon pants. His face is turning purple with pent-up desire, and a sweat has broken out all over him. <i>It must have been torture for him,</i> you think, <i>pressing up close to Chelsea and not being able to close the deal.</i> All you have to do now is say the word, and he will rip all his clothes off.<br/>
<br/>
After which, you can take the mask off him.<br/>
<br/>
That's the secret purpose you had in meeting and teasing him here like this. <i>Get him alone and get his mask off.</i> Then scare him into waiting for you here at school, in the gym, in the loft, while you drive out to Chen's house under Gordon Black's mask, to see if you can get the book back that way.<br/>
<br/>
But even here, even now, as you have "Gordon" puddling in your hands, you still aren't sure this is the way you want to do it. As Gordon you can only threaten and bully Chen. From inside Stephanie's mask you can maybe seduce and cajole him—unless he is so pissed at the real girl that he just tries punching you.</span></div></div>


path: 111211132112222212222221221213413
author_id: rugal
title: The Port in the Storm
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>It's a thought you can't get out of your mind: that you're being set up by Chelsea. You'll arrive there and instead it'll be some guys like Lynch and God knows who else ready to lay a beating on you. A beating that may be as bad as anything Chen could do, too, because Chelsea doesn't mess around and she'd want a message sent: make sure that someone like Dane Matthias never even considers talking to someone like Chelsea Cooper ever again.<br/>
<br/>
<i>So that's a bust</i>, you think as you manage to successfully talk yourself out of going out to Potsdam Park. But if you wanted to make things difficult for Chelsea you still have another option in Lin. Your dick springs to life at the thought of having her body, especially her glorious breasts, all for yourself. But that turns out to be another false start you realize because Hochstetter Park is a dangerous place once the sun goes down and it'd be foolish to try and make a swap there.<br/>
<br/>
Well okay then, what about Brianna? She's not a bad looking girl (even if she's gaudy with her makeup and clothes), certainly someone you wouldn't mind being. However from Dane's mind you can tell that she has a bit of a reputation and it's certainly not a good one. Currently she's involved in some bit of drama involving a guy named Eric Murphy and a girl named Melanie Saxon, a neighbor of Dane's as it turns out.<br/>
<br/>
Even ignoring that drama and reputation however, you question just how possible it'd be to grab Brianna. A party will likely have a good amount of people and if you're unable to get her alone then you can forget about making any kind of switch which would just make the whole night a wasted one.<br/>
<br/>
So you look at your phone, past Chelsea's text and instead at Julia's.<br/>
<br/>
<i>You busy now?</i><br/>
<br/>
You yourself don't know Julia Paez. You can't even say that she looks familiar. You might've had some classes with her in the previous years but if you did then she never stood out or interacted with you enough to leave an impression and Dane's weed clouded memories are only slightly less hazy. But if she's asking if you're busy then that means she isn't. That means that she's available and just as importantly that means that she's willing to come over to Dane's. You don't have to worry about anyone spotting you when you can just do it right in the bedroom.<br/>
<br/>
That's enough to make up your mind and so you shoot off a series of texts. The first is to Brianna for who you say that something's come up and you won't be able to make it out to any parties tonight. The next is to Chelsea with much the same message only without being able to make it out to Potsdam instead. That one returns a flurry of angry and expletive-laden messages.<br/>
<br/>
<i>were good u can com over n e time,</i> you send to Julia.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Cool! Right now?</i><br/>
<br/>
<i>yea,</i> you answer before sending the address.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Sweet! Seeya soon!</i><br/>
<br/>
You want to wait patiently but after five minutes you can't help but to feel anxious and so decide to instead get some air and wait out front. Even then, though, you can still hardly contain yourself as the seconds pass by.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You're still fidgeting anxiously when you see an older Tahoe come pulling up next to Dane's car. You wonder if Julia could really be driving something like that and get confirmation a moment later when the door opens and a girl with long auburn hair hops out, flashing you a bright but lazy smile as she walks up to you.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey! I got your stuff, free of charge 'n all 'cause I like you."<br/>
<br/>
Julia's expression is at first happy but soon turns expectant. "So, where is it?" she asks trying to disguise any impatience.<br/>
<br/>
"Whoa, right! It's in my room! We can just go back there," you say as you open the door and step inside.<br/>
<br/>
"Hey Mrs. Matthias," Julia says to Dane's mother while she follows you.<br/>
<br/>
Mrs. Matthias looks up at her with a mixture of friendliness and skepticism. "Hey yourself," she says before turning to you. "So my Dane went and got himself a girlfriend, did he?"<br/>
<br/>
Both you and Julia break out into laughs. "It's not like that, ma'am. We just know each other from school, that's all," Julia explains. "We're just friends, right?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, she just, like, came by to grab something from me," you add which only causes another odd look from Dane's mother who gets up from the couch.<br/>
<br/>
"You got your keys?" she asks and you point over to the kitchen counter. "Alright, well I think I'm going to grab us some dinner. Do you want anything, Dane?"<br/>
<br/>
"Uh, anything's fine I guess."<br/>
<br/>
"What about you?" she asks Julia.<br/>
<br/>
Julia, in turn, simply shakes her head. "I'm fine, don't worry about it."<br/>
<br/>
You then lead Julia back into Dane's room, closing and locking the door behind you as she goes to take a seat on your bed. "So, like, I got the stuff but you wanna smoke one before heading out?" you ask.<br/>
<br/>
She simply giggles a bit at that. "That's fine," she says. "But, like, is that all? You wanna go hit up a party or something?"<br/>
<br/>
You're not really sure what she means by that but that does mean you now have an easy opening. "Well, there was something I kinda wanted to show you actually, 'sides the joints I mean" you say as you dig through the stuff you'd gotten from the basement earlier today. Finding the blank mask you make sure to grab it and head over to Julia.<br/>
<br/>
"What's this?" she asks with curiosly.<br/>
<br/>
You don't answer and instead press the mask to her face. She goes limp and, eyes open and expression frozen, falls backwards onto the bed. "It's something really cool," you finally say to yourself.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You're sitting in the community center basement, out of Dane's mask but still in his clothes. In a bag next to you sits Julia's belongings. On the ground in front of you is a mask that contains everything you'll need to perfectly copy her physically. In your left hand is a metal strip, the name <i>JULIA CRISTINA PAEZ</i> emblazoned on it, that will allow you to perfectly copy her mentally.<br/>
<br/>
In your right is a brush that you're using to apply a glue that'll allow you to attach the band to the mask and therefore complete the next spell. When it's successfully attached, you go over to the table where the book is open to the current spell and place the mask and band combo onto the page. It successfully turns and you take a few minutes to look at the next spell. You're not really able -- or willing -- to translate the whole thing right now but one of the bits you do catches your attention and fills you with dread.<br/>
<br/>
Four hundred pounds of dirt. Not just any dirt either; graveyard dirt. You groan. That's going to be a pain in the ass but what's done is done and you head back over to where you were sitting and remove your clothes. Then you take the mask and raise it to your face.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
Julia lives north of Acheson in the same neighborhood as your friend Keith. It's not necessarily one of the nice neighborhoods but neither is it one of the bad ones. It's simple and unassuming and you pull her SUV into the driveway of an equally simple and unassuming house alongside a white sedan. As you walk through the front door your nose is greeted by the smell of the meat and vegetables that have been simmering in a slow cooker all day.<br/>
<br/>
"You're back already?" asks Julia's mother -- step-mother actually but she's been married to Julia's dad for so long that she can only think of her as "Mom" -- as she pokes her head out from the kitchen.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, just a friend who needed me to run 'em something," you tell her.<br/>
<br/>
"That's good, then, because your dad should be home soon and dinner's just about ready."<br/>
<br/>
"Cool, I'll get ready then," you say as you head off to the bathroom.<br/>
<br/>
Inside you get a good look at the girl whose identity you're now borrowing. She's not a knockout but neither is she unattractive. You like her smile, which you practice in the mirror, as it reflects her own relatively warm and laid back demeanor. You can't help but note that for a girl with the name Paez she's incredibly light with striking auburn hair. Most remarkably though is that Julia's a strong girl; built like someone who's been taught to use hand tools by a blue collar father.<br/>
<br/>
You finish washing up and then head to Julia's room pulling her phone out to check her social media feeds and kill some time before dinner. You immediately hit on a message from Katy Conlee asking you if you're in for a study session with Stephanie and some others. You roll your eyes and don't immediately respond and instead move on to something else.<br/>
<br/>
Julia knows well enough that Stephanie has problems with Hannah Westrick, a new girl on the soccer team who's been gunning to unseat Anita Nuevo as captain. Julia's been to a few of these get togethers and knows that they're really just a thin excuse to bitch about -- and plot against -- Hannah.<br/>
<br/>
But where Julia's unenthused, you're intrigued. You remember Stephanie from when you were younger and you remember the way she used to, in your eyes at least, pick on you. As a kid you'd wanted to get back at her somehow and of course you never could. Now under the guise of a teammate and friend, however, you could easily find some way to attack her.<br/>
<br/>
But then why throw yourself into another potential fire? You became Julia to escape fires after all so why not just hang back, work on the book and enjoy things? After all, you muse as you flex a toned bicep, she seems like the kind of girl who'd be comfortable with a shovel.</span></div></div>


path: 111211132112223
author_id: seuzz
title: Dodging Out of Dodge
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You must not have heard right. "What are you talking about, us being him, him being us?"<br/>
<br/>
But Caleb only points at the portable behind you. "Let's move him there," he says, and lifts Gordon by the arms. <br/>
<br/>
"No, tell me what you're thinking!"<br/>
<br/>
"I'm thinking we need to move this fucker before someone finds him like this, and before that mask comes out of him," Caleb hisses. He tries pulling Gordon, but he might as well be pulling at a diesel locomotive.<br/>
<br/>
You gape. "You slapped one of those masks on him?"<br/>
<br/>
"That's what I said, now help me move him!"<br/>
<br/>
It strains every fiber in your arms, back and heart, but you manage to move Gordon Black's massive frame into the portable. "Why the fuck did you jam a mask onto him?" you grunt as you shift him.<br/>
<br/>
"To knock him out, you dope! And now, when it comes out of him, one of us needs to put it on. We need to switch bodies with him so he doesn't kill you."<br/>
<br/>
You can't have heard right. "What are you saying, switch bodies with him?"<br/>
<br/>
"Don't you sprachen zie English? Switch bodies with him, like we've been switching with each other! One of us becomes him, and he becomes one of us. That way he can't kill you!" Caleb cocks his head. "It better be you who makes the switch, then," he mutters.<br/>
<br/>
"Jesus! I can't pretend to be Gordon!"<br/>
<br/>
"Sure you can! Just put on the mask! What's so hard about that?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because I don't know how to be him, I don't know where he lives or how he acts, or -- And what do we do with him?" You nudge Gordon with your foot.<br/>
<br/>
"Put him in your mask, obviously. There can't be two of him running around, and you don't want yourself to disappear. How would we explain it to your folks?"<br/>
<br/>
You feel like you're about to fall into a fit of hysterics. "You mean we're going to show Gordon these masks and tell him has to pretend to be me?"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb grabs you by the shoulders. "Calm down, Will. We'll just slap <i>your</i> mask onto him and run. He'll figure it out on his own."<br/>
<br/>
Your voice is a shriek. "He'll figure out what?"<br/>
<br/>
Caleb shakes you hard. "He'll find himself in your body, and we won't be around, so he'll have no choice but to pretend to be you!"<br/>
<br/>
You feel like you're going to faint. "This isn't a plan, Caleb, it's a suicide attempt!"<br/>
<br/>
"It'll only be for a couple of days!"<br/>
<br/>
"We're not doing it!"<br/>
<br/>
"But -- "<br/>
<br/>
"We're not doing it! It's too weird and too dangerous!"<br/>
<br/>
"It's too dangerous to leave him loose! Will, he's after you, he'll break your face!"<br/>
<br/>
"He'll break everything else if we do you plan! No! We'll wait here until that mask comes out of him, and then we'll bust out of here. If he wants to find me later -- "<br/>
<br/>
You gulp. Gordon Black has a long-standing reputation as the biggest and worst bully in school. Actually, he's worse than a bully, because with a regular bully like the Molester you at least know it's personal. Gordon is just a force of nature.<br/>
<br/>
Caleb stares bug-eyed at you, then shrugs elaborately. <br/>
<br/>
"When you're dead I'll send flowers to your funeral," he says. "Better make it a cremation, though, 'cos when Gordon catches up to you, he's not going to leave enough of you to fill even a baby's coffin."<br/>
<br/>
You can't suppress a shudder, but his warning doesn't change your mind.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
You spend the rest of the school day under your own face, which leaves you feeling dreadfully exposed. In those classes without a seating chart, you sit in the back with your face toward the door so no one can sneak up on you; in the hallways between classes you dart through the crowds with your head down but on the alert for Gordon. You catch sight of him only once, at a distance turning into another wing, and you can't tell if his glower -- a common look on his face -- is deeper or uglier than usual. After the final bell rings, you stay late in the library until you're sure the path by the gym to the student parking lot is empty, so that you won't risk running into Gordon on his way into or out of post-class basketball practice.<br/>
<br/>
"I see you made it out alive," Caleb says when you rendezvous with him at the elementary school. "I almost texted to see what the hold up was."<br/>
<br/>
"Really." You're in no mood for badinage. <br/>
<br/>
"Yeah. But I figured if you were healthy enough to answer you'd show up eventually, and if you didn't show up it would be because you were in the hospital. Or the morgue."<br/>
<br/>
"Funny." You unlock the basement door. "It's your fault anyway."<br/>
<br/>
"No it isn't, I tried to save you. I did, too. At least until tomorrow, when Gordon -- "<br/>
<br/>
"You and me are switching places again tomorrow, right?"<br/>
<br/>
"Pah! Until all this gets sorted out, you're playing yourself, buddy!"<br/>
<br/>
"Except for tonight," you remind him. "You're supposed to play me at the library, and I play you to get that mask of Lisa."<br/>
<br/>
"You can play yourself there, too. No reason we have to switch to do that."<br/>
<br/>
"But -- "<br/>
<br/>
"Don't you want to go on a date with her?"<br/>
<br/>
Yes you do, and after thinking it over you have to admit that he has the better of the argument. "But wait until we're almost done, okay," you tell him. "I want to have the full date before you come busting in on us."<br/>
<br/>
"Sure thing," he says, and continues in the same nonchalant tone: "So where's that mask we made today? Of Gordon."<br/>
<br/>
You freeze. "In my backpack. Why?"<br/>
<br/>
"Then let's get it out and seal it up."<br/>
<br/>
You can't believe this. "I told you, we're not gonna do a face swap with Gordon!"<br/>
<br/>
"Who said anything about a face swap? I'll be wearing it tonight when I get the mask of Lisa."<br/>
<br/>
He regards you with amused impatience as your brain catches up with his, and when you prove too slow he deigns to explain. "It'll be perfect. It'll look like it's Gordon who knocks her out at the library, and it'll be totally in character for him. So come on, let's get it sealed up."<br/>
<br/>
"You know, it'd be totally in character if you did it under your own face."<br/>
<br/>
Caleb returns you a sour smile, and only snaps his fingers in reply. So you pull the mask from your bag. "What are you going to do for clothes?" Gordon is at least head taller than you or Caleb, and far broader of torso, hip, and leg.<br/>
<br/>
"I'll swing by a thrift shop on my way back home. Pick up a cheap set of shorts, t-shirt and shoes."<br/>
<br/>
Just then you get a text from you mom: she needs you to pick up some things from the store. Caleb -- with more grace than is his wont -- lets you take off and agrees to handle the rest of the mask chores for you. "Wait until I text you that I'm ready for you to bust in on me and Lisa," you tell him. "Show up around nine, and wait for my signal in the stacks."<br/>
<br/>
"I think I know how to do this, Will," he says. You're not so sure that either of you know how to do things, and with a sinking stomach you mount the steps out of the basement.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
It's only a study date that planned with Lisa, but you dress up for it anyway. You can't forget what Eva said during one of your talks with her when you were pretending to be Caleb: <i>If only Will didn't dress like he was still in the fifth grade.</i><br/>
<br/>
So you put on a pair of clean slacks -- and not cargo pants, either -- and a long-sleeve dress shirt and loafers. You also make a point of shaving. When you're done you study yourself in the mirror.<br/>
<br/>
And you wince, which makes it worse. You force yourself to relax.<br/>
<br/>
You don't think you're bad looking. Your smile is a little tight and it seems to get tangled up with your teeth. Your eyes fall too easily into a squint. But you still look like -- <br/>
<br/>
You sigh. You don't look like you're dressed for the fifth grade. You look like you're in fifth grade and have tried to dress up.<br/>
<br/>
It's the hair, mostly. It's stiff and wiry and doesn't like to lay down when you brush it, and when you wet it down it looks like it's been plastered into place atop your skull. Idly, you wonder what you'd look like with a buzz cut --<br/>
<br/>
And then you have to relax your face again because it's bunched up into an even worse wince than before. Impulsively you jam your white ball cap onto your head, and that instantly ruins the "grown up" effect you tried to achieve by dressing up.<br/>
<br/>
<i>Fuck it.</i> With a reddening face you stalk from the bathroom with your pack on your shoulder, and mumble to your parents that you'll be at the library.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"What are <i>you</i> doing here," you bluntly demand of the person you almost collided with. You were just stepping through the front doors of the municipal library when he came out of the men's restroom.<br/>
<br/>
"I'm here studying with Lisa," Geoff Mansfield coolly replies. "What are <i>you</i> doing here?"<br/>
<br/>
"The same. She made the date with <i>me.</i>"<br/>
<br/>
"She didn't make a 'date' with you, Prescott."<br/>
<br/>
"Fine," you snarl. "Let's talk to her and find out what she thinks is going on."<br/>
<br/>
And the upshot, you discover, is that this is to be a group project: you and Lisa and Geoff working on your papers for Walberg at the same table. You have to get a drink of water to cool down.<br/>
<br/>
And on your way back you notice that Caleb has already stationed himself in the stacks. And he's already inside Gordon's mask, which means you have the chance to end this nightmare before it begins.</span></div></div>


path: 1112111321122231
author_id: seuzz
title: The Right Plan with the Wrong Guy
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>Geoff and Lisa are around the corner, so you're able to slip down into the stacks without them seeing you. But instead of approaching Caleb directly, you trot along the other side of the shelf until you glimpse his torso between the books. "Tsst! Caleb!" you hiss.<br/>
<br/>
He doesn't respond, so you push over a wad of books and slide your hand through to waggle your fingers at him. "Caleb!" you hiss again. "Over here!"<br/>
<br/>
There's a pause, then a flurry of motion on the other side. A half dozen books disappear, and Gordon Black's dumb, flat face appears in the hole to stare at you. You grin at him. "Hey, fancy meeting you here."<br/>
<br/>
He says nothing, but stares back with a slack jaw.<br/>
<br/>
"Couldn't wait to get into the mask, huh? Jesus, you look just like him." You shiver a little. "But listen, we got a problem. Lisa's not here alone. Mansfield showed up too. The son of a bitch is -- I don't want this to turn into a repeat of the weekend, with people making jokes about how I was on a date with <i>him.</i> So anyway, how about we get this over with. Go hit 'em now, that way I don't have to spend the evening with that fucker."<br/>
<br/>
Caleb doesn't move. "Hit them?" he says in Gordon's dull voice.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah. You got the mask, right? Look, this is perfect," you continue, and feel your eyes light up. "You can fuck Mansfield up too while you're at it. Haul him out by the scruff of his stupid neck, then go back for -- " The scene as you're imagining plays out in your mind's eye, and it isn't pretty. "Okay, no, maybe not. Let's do it like this. I'll go get Mansfield, take him off privately to talk or something." You have to suppress your gag reflex at the thought. "Then you go take care of Lisa. But, you know, be gentle with her, okay, not like when you hit Gordon this afternoon."<br/>
<br/>
Right as you say that, you get a feeling like a hot needle in the back of your head. <i>Caleb was going to disguise himself as Gordon, and here's someone who looks just like Gordon, but that doesn't mean ...</i><br/>
<br/>
"Yeah," the other guy says slowly. "I can't really understand you through these shelves. Let's go talk out front."<br/>
<br/>
"What's to understand? Caleb!" But he's already loping away.<br/>
<br/>
You shove the books back into position and hustle down to meet him. He is enormous when he comes fully into view. He's found clothes -- long, red athletic shorts and a sleeveless t-shirt -- that are dead ringers for what Gordon wears. Only the fact that he hasn't punched you across the library keeps you from running the other way.<br/>
<br/>
But you get that horrible feeling in the back of your skull again when he claps a strong hand on the base of your neck and steers you out of the stacks. "You're really getting into this, aren't you," you say as you squirm.<br/>
<br/>
"So tell me again what's going on?" he says.<br/>
<br/>
"Mansfield is here. Lisa called him, asked him to come along too." You try pulling from his grip, but he just tightens his hold on you. "There's no freaking way I'm going to sit at a table with them while trying to write that paper. Ten to one Mansfield puts his lips on her just to try making me sick."<br/>
<br/>
"And what do you want me to do about it?"<br/>
<br/>
You thought you were heading for the front door, but he steers you up into the other wing. "Wait for me to get Mansfield away," you tell him. "Then you get the mask onto Lisa." You shiver. "We went over this! I wanna get this thing over with, because I don't want to -- Why are we going out here?" <br/>
<br/>
He's led you to a set of double-doors leading out onto a second-floor balcony/patio where people can read in the daytime. Only a low metal railing separates you from a hard twenty-foot drop onto a sidewalk below. You gasp as meaty hands hoist you up by the belt and set you atop that railing. You overbalance the wrong way, and a second later only your friend's very strong arm is keeping you from that horrible plunge. You grab onto his wrist with both hands.<br/>
<br/>
"All you gotta do is scream," says the guy who's holding you in place, "and I'll let you go."<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
At first you try convincing Gordon Black -- because, as your subconscious has been yelling at you all this time, that's who it really is -- that your conversation was all just a weird, elaborate, Dadaist joke. "Then explain it to me," he says, and lets you fall back a little farther off the railing. <br/>
<br/>
You gabble and stammer. "I thought you were my friend Caleb!"<br/>
<br/>
"And how the fuck did you make a mistake like that?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because he looks just like you?" You shriek again as he lets you fall a little further. "It's true! He's all done up to look like you! We were going to prank someone!"<br/>
<br/>
"Who?"<br/>
<br/>
"Geoff Mansfield! And Lisa Yarborough! We were gonna make them think he was you! Caleb, I mean! He was going to pretend to be you, give 'em a scare!"<br/>
<br/>
"I don't know anyone who looks even a little like me," Gordon says. "This friend of yours, was he the one who sacked me from behind at the portables this afternoon?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yes. I mean, no! I mean -- " You grab for the railing as Gordon lets you out a little more. "I was the one who sacked you from behind, because that wasn't me, that was Caleb you were about to beat the crap out of!" <br/>
<br/>
You are desperately trying to find some way to shift the blame for this mess onto your friend. Or maybe you're trying to convince Gordon that you're just crazypants. But really, you have no idea what you're saying and why you're saying it.<br/>
<br/>
"Me and Caleb, we have these disguises, you see? And we went to school today as each other? And Caleb, he was done up like me and he went to the library and he mouthed off at your girlfriend, so it was really him who she was mad at, and you grabbed him, and I got you from behind and we ran off? But we switched back -- I mean, we took off our disguises tonight, so I'm really, uh -- "<br/>
<br/>
<i>I'm the guy who mouthed off to your girlfriend.</i> Or <i>I'm the guy who knocked you on your ass at the portables.</i> Neither is a good thing to confess to, even if either one made sense.<br/>
<br/>
Gordon is staring at you with cool contempt. "You are one fucked up little shit," he says, and he almost sounds amused.<br/>
<br/>
"That's me," you eagerly agree. "A totally weird, dumbass little -- "<br/>
<br/>
To your immense relief he pulls you off the railing and onto your feet. But he still keeps hold of your belt. "So are we okay now?" you ask him.<br/>
<br/>
"No. Not even close. You know why I'm here? Because my girlfriend kicked my sorry ass to the curb, and she did that because -- "<br/>
<br/>
You gasp. "Chelsea broke up with you?"<br/>
<br/>
Gordon hocks up a loogie, and for one horrifying second you think he's going to spit into your face. But he calmly spits to the side. "No, just for tonight. But that's bad enough. And it's all on account of because I didn't fuck you up like I promised her I would at lunch. So you and me, we're going to -- "<br/>
<br/>
He stops and does a double take. You tear your eyes from his face to see what he's looking at.<br/>
<br/>
Down below you, a figure that looks just like Gordon Black is loping toward the front door of the library. Your sphincter liquefies.<br/>
<br/>
You can feel the tremble that runs through Gordon. When the doppelganger disappears inside, Gordon turns to you with a very queer look on his face. "Hey," you say with a nervous laugh. "I thought you said there wasn't anyone in town who looks like you."<br/>
<br/>
He sucks on his upper lip, and jerks you over to the staircase leading down to the sidewalk below. His grip is unbreakable, so there's no use struggling as he hauls you over to his VW Bug. He opens the hood, throws you into the dark and smelly trunk, and slams it shut on you. A minute later, the engine roars to life and the car jerks into motion. <br/>
<br/>
He makes lots of sudden starts and stops on the subsequent drive, and lots of sharp turns, so that you're hurled about violently. When the car finally stops and he lets you out, you are bruised all over.<br/>
<br/>
You are also ready to tell him everything. Just the threat of what he might do to you in a private setting is enough to destroy your will to resist. So he only has to say, "Let's start over again," and you spill it all. He doesn't even have to touch you.<br/>
<br/>
<div align="center">* * * * *</div><br/>
"So, which one of you dipshits wants to go home as me?" Gordon asks.<br/>
<br/>
You and Caleb -- your friend is divested of the mask -- shift uncomfortably. There's got to be a trick to it.<br/>
<br/>
But Gordon Black is offering to let one of you wear his mask home, and to school tomorrow.<br/>
<br/>
He has even said you can lose your virginity to Chelsea, if you can convince her to forgive Gordon for his failure to beat the shit out of Will Prescott.</span></div></div>


path: 11121113211222312
author_id: seuzz
title: An Offer You Should and Do Refuse
chapter_content:
<div><div> <span>You're sitting in the elementary school basement: you and Caleb leaning uneasily against a work table, and Gordon Black sitting cross-legged on an old desk. He's holding a mask in his hands -- the one you put onto and got off of him. It's almost nine o'clock on a Wednesday night.<br/>
<br/>
You and Gordon wound up at the old school after you told him about the magic book and the masks and what you could do with them. He was skeptical, and calmly explained all the things that he would do to you for the rest of your school career if you did not show him the book and your tools and convince him of the truth of what you'd told him. So you called Caleb and told him to take the mask off and come out to the elementary school. Gordon had surprised him outside the basement door and hustled him down. At least Caleb was quick to grasp exactly what was going on, and how you and he came to be in this mess.<br/>
<br/>
What's remarkable -- and more than a little scary -- is how serenely Gordon has taken all of this. He hasn't yelled or hit anyone. He hasn't called anyone names. He hasn't freaked out over the magic. He has just questioned you closely and looked at the book, the masks, and the ingredients.<br/>
<br/>
Maybe it's because you didn't force him to threaten you, and just volunteered everything as quickly as you could. The fact is that Gordon has never given you any trouble at school: It's not like he is with Carson Ioeger and James Lamont, who he regularly hustles off for abuse. In fact, it's pretty clear that he knows nothing about you, and you even have to remind him twice what your and Caleb's names are.<br/>
<br/>
That doesn't mean he's friendly. A couple of times, when you'd fallen into a stammer, he'd bent his head toward you in a threatening manner, and you have the definite impression that he's put aside all his contempt and antipathy for you only because he wants you to explain this stuff to him with a minimum of confusion.<br/>
<br/>
And all of this has led up to a jaw-dropping challenge. "So which of you little pricks wants to go home as me tonight?" he said.<br/>
<br/>
"Beg pardon?" you gasped. Gordon snorted. "What do you mean?" Caleb asked.<br/>
<br/>
"Just what I said. You got this thing." Gordon lightly brushed the mask. "You were wearing it earlier, you looked just like me. Could fool anyone. Anyone at my house, anyone at school. You could fool my dad, my teachers. Fuck, you could even fool -- "<br/>
<br/>
He stopped. All three of you knew what was going through his mind.<br/>
<br/>
He leaned back with a wide smile under hooded eyes.<br/>
<br/>
"You could fool my girlfriend," he said. "Fool her, fool around with her?" He sucked a tooth, and with an ape-like paw mimed squeezing a breast. (Or maybe it was an ass cheek.) "Hell, you could get her out of her clothes, get out of your clothes. I'd let you, too," he added with a smirk. "If you managed to get her in the mood. The only way to do that, though -- " He chucked a finger at you. "She's pissed at me because I didn't use your face to paint the side of a portable. But you get her to forgive me for that, and I'll let you collect the reward. Up to and including blow jobs and doggie style."<br/>
<br/>
You stiffened. Caleb did too. You don't know how much he stiffened, but you stiffened <i>all over.</i><br/>
<br/>
"So, which one of you dipshits wants to go home as me?"<br/>
<br/>
Now you shift uneasily on your feet. There's got to be a trick. Especially given that cock-swelling offer he's included. Maybe he's just waiting for one of you lunge at it so he'll have an excuse to murder you with a clear conscience.<br/>
<br/>
So you look at your feet and let your head sink. Your heart thumps. No one says anything.<br/>
<br/>
Then Caleb speaks. "Yeah, I'll do it." He even says it in that insolent, honking voice he uses when he's being extra pushy. "I already tried it out this evening, you know, so I'm already kind of used to it."<br/>
<br/>
You watch him and Gordon out of the corner of your eye, ready to dive out of the way if a fist come flying in his direction. But Gordon just hands him the mask. "Are those your clothes," he asks Caleb. Caleb is still in the clothes he bought at the thrift shop, and only the fact that he's sitting on a table keeps the big shorts from sliding off his skinny ass. "You got some others around here? More your style?"<br/>
<br/>
"Out in my car. Why?"<br/>
<br/>
"Because if you go home as me, who goes home as you? Right?" Gordon grins. "Or can you stay out all night?"<br/>
<br/>
"Uh, I can call my mom, tell her I'm spending the night at Will's."<br/>
<br/>
"No, turnabout's fair play," Gordon says. "It is turnabout, right?"<br/>
<br/>
You can sense it: Caleb is about to backpedal. But Gordon reaches across the narrow space to grasp and pull him to his feet; the shorts fall down around his ankles, and only the dangling hem of the over-long shirt keeps Caleb's nethermost regions from showing. "Let's go get them," says Gordon.<br/>
<br/>
You remain in the basement, shivering in the dark, as the other two go upstairs and outside. You hear car doors open and close, and then there's a very long silence. That gives you plenty of time to construct dark fantasies about what might come next.<br/>
<br/>
You've not given a lot of thought to what you could do with the masks. You can't get memories in them, which restricts the kind of mischief you can get up to, but you've already gotten in trouble by trying to "double" someone. You dread what Gordon Black -- arch-alpha, arch-bully, arch-captain of the basketball squad -- could do with the masks. And yet now you're on the cusp of discovering exactly what he is capable of.<br/>
<br/>
Right now, for instance, it sounds like he's getting ready to go home as Caleb. Maybe that's the horrible thing he's planning to do. Instead of punishing you by beating you up, he'll punish you -- or Caleb, in this case -- by fucking things up for him at home or school.<br/>
<br/>
Well, it'll be Caleb who suffers the brunt of it, at least at first. Maybe tomorrow, when Caleb shows up in Gordon's body and Gordon is in Caleb's, things will be more even.<br/>
<br/>
Oh, who are you fooling? If Caleb tried to even things up, Gordon would just return it all with interest once he was back in his own body.<br/>
<br/>
You're trying to see a way around or out of this predicament when you hear a car engine start: the Bug, it sounds like. The motor revs, and pulls away from the school. When it's mostly silent again outside, you cautiously mount the steps to the door. And you've just about reached it when it suddenly slams in your face. While you're gaping at this you hear a scrape of metal. With a shout you tackle the door and find it locked. "Gordon! Caleb!" You bang on the door, but it doesn't budge. "I'm in here!"<br/>
<br/>
But there's no reply.<br/>
<br/>
You hop down to the floor below and clamber onto a desk to peer out one of the ground-level window. Through it you can make out Caleb's car but nothing else. You call a few more times, but only get silence in return. Where did Gordon go?<br/>
<br/>
You take out your phone and call Caleb. Instantly you hear his ringtone coming from outside the school. You curse but let it ring. No one picks up.<br/>
<br/>
Well, this is a fine pickle. Gordon has trapped you in the basement and gone off who knows where. Caleb hasn't got his phone, and you haven't got Gordon's number so you can call him. No one else knows where you are, and you'd have a hell of a time explaining yourself to anyone that you could get to come and let you out -- after they brought a locksmith. You slump onto the floor and spend a couple of minutes giving in to despair.<br/>
<br/>
You still haven't come back out of the black mood when you hear a scratching from above, and the creak of the door opening. You look up. "Yo, Prescott," a familiar voice calls.<br/>
<br/>
"Caleb?"<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah, sure," he says. "Where are you?"<br/>
<br/>
"Down -- " You cut yourself off. <i>Is that really Caleb?</i><br/>
<br/>
Cautiously you get up and go to the foot of the stairs. A figure stands at the top. By its size and general height it looks like your best friend, Caleb Johansson. "Who do we have first period?" you ask him.<br/>
<br/>
"What are you asking me that for? Come on up so we can talk. You need to explain some stuff to me anyway."<br/>
<br/>
After a moment's hesitation, you mount the stairs.<br/>
<br/>
There's enough light outside that you can make him out pretty clearly. It's Caleb all right -- physically, at least. The short, tightly curled hair. The strong and slightly hooked nose. The protuberant lower lip. The gangly frame. He's even got the slightly uncertain stance of your friend, the tendency to shift from foot to foot. He peers at you sidelong. "What?" he says.<br/>
<br/>
"Nothing. It's just -- " You decide it must really be Gordon, and plunge ahead. "Well, you're pretty convincing, I guess."<br/>
<br/>
"Good. Your friend says I can stay out late, till midnight, at least. How about you?"<br/>
<br/>
"My dad yells if I'm not home by eleven."<br/>
<br/>
He checks a cell phone. "Then let's go hit someplace, and you fill me in on Johansson so I don't fuck anything up. Where's your car?"<br/>
<br/>
His words so shock you that you don't answer, not until after he's struck you hard across the face. "Back at the library," you gasp while nursing your cheek, for the action was completely out of character for the person he looks like.<br/>
<br/>
"Then let's go camp out there. Come on."<br/>
</span></div></div>


