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Switching Streams

Today's chapter—

* Interactive: "Minding Jessica's Business" 
* Public: "Minding Jessica's Business" 

—brings the current line to a close. There's a commentary thread on it in the forum: "Commentary: "The Third Time a Charm?""  

Tomorrow I initiate another commission, and return to the Clover Mystery storyline. The story thus far:

After showing the book to his dad, Will decided to get rid of it, but instead of putting it into the school time capsule he sold it to Jack Li; then, when his dad asked for another look at it, Will was told it had been sold to Christian Padilla as a prop for the drama department. There the trail petered out, as it could not be found.

But while searching for the book he became reacquainted with Laura MacGregor, a drama student who was friends with him earlier in high school. Through Laura he becomes better acquainted with Jack's group of friends, including a bunch of girls who take turns flirting with him: not only Laura but Elle Moore and Leah Simmons; and Will even hangs out with Maria Vasquez (the cheerleader) at a dance club. Confusion sets in, however, as the various girls deny meeting up with Will, and he quickly gets a reputation as a fantasist who makes up stories about girls being interested in him.

Worse, he is being taunted via text by a person calling themselves "Clover Mystery." This person took a video of Will and Caleb digging up the time capsule so that Caleb could retrieve his contribution. These texts have a teasing, but undeniably threatening, air to them.

Things reach a pitch when Will is invited by Chelsea Cooper, of all people, to meet her after school. The upshot is that Will finds himself violently switching bodies with Jack Li, and the two are forced to impersonate each other.

Of course, they know that Chelsea must be responsible—and Will now has good grounds to believe that she is "Clover Mystery"—but she denies it, and even sends her goon boyfriend to beat them up. That leaves them stuck for a way to force her into confessing her guilt, and forcing her to switch them back.

The story will pick up—

But wait a minute, I hear you interrupt: Didn't the story continue beyond that point?

Yes it did, but it's been going in a straight line for forty-five chapters without so much as a glance to the left or to the right. I've been asked to write twenty chapters, and after some consultation with the commissioner, I'm going to divide them between a couple of new branches, so that there will be some variations.

The story will pick up tomorrow with what happens after "A Message from Chelsea" , when Will goes with Jack to meet Chelsea ...