This choice: Keep your date with Caleb • Go Back...Chapter #22The New Royals by: Seuzz   The urge to dump Caleb for Andrea is almost overpowering, but you know your friend is counting on you. (Or are you just terrified?) "Can I take a raincheck?" you squeak.
"I don't hand out rainchecks," she says.
"I'd like to get together with you," you stammer. "But I have a ... a prior commitment."
"The girl no one will talk to has a full social calendar?"
"It's family. Can you be, like, a little understanding?" Instantly you regret your tone.
"Sure I can," she replies. "I'm sure we'll bump into each other. You did a good job with the towel." She slips back into the pool, and vanishes under the surface without leaving a ripple.
* * * * *
"You let Andrea Varnsworth get away?!" Caleb's eyes nearly bug out of Jessica's face when you tell her after school.
"You and me had plans," you say, feeling miserable.
"Plans can always change. We have ultimate flexibility with these things. Improvise, you dickhead. Excuse me. Improvise, you cunt!"
His acting out aggravates you. "If we have 'ultimate flexibility' we can pick her up later," you retort.
"But we could have had her now," Caleb glares.
"If you're so hot for her, why didn't you think of taking her before, when we were making up a list?"
"Because she's not a power player. We were concentrating on power players. Now I can't concentrate on anything except her!"
"So get your focus back. Remember Chelsea. She's waiting for us, right?"
"And you say she and Andrea bumped boobies once."
"No! I just got the impression— Stop that!" you hiss as Caleb closes his eyes and groans with lust in his voice. "How can you be so hot for everyone?"
"Easily! Okay, maybe we don't want to be Chelsea and Gordon," he murmurs through unmoving lips. "We could be somebody else. Anybody else. I mentioned it before. Puppet masters pulling the strings from the shadows. Andrea Varnsworth, pulling the strings from the shadows."
"So how are we as puppet masters going to keep close to Chelsea and Gordon? We gotta think things through."
His lips disappear. "I fucking hate it when you're being the logical one. Okay, we still do the plan. Then we figure out some way we can get Chelsea and Andrea together"--You rub the bridge of your nose wearily--"so it's plausible they would hang out. You figure out who you can bring in to be Gordon's pal. Someone close to Andrea, obviously."
"But we'll have to get Andrea before we can figure that out."
"See how neatly it all locks together?" You resist the urge to punch your twin sister in the kisser. "Also, we plot out our key acquisitions."
You know when you're licked.
* * * * *
"No, I'm not comfortable back here," you snarl. "It stinks and something is jabbing me in the shoulder." You reach around and pull an old busted pen out of the place where the seat cushions meet. You toss it into the floorboard with the old fast food bags, plastic bottles, and wrappers.
"No dissing the Richardsmobile," Caleb says. He's wearing Jeremy's face now--the real Jeremy is back at the Garners' house, safely ensconced under Jessica Garner's face--and peers darkly at you from the driver's seat; you're in the back of Richards' cramped little two-door economy compact. "Pull the blanket over you."
"Why? It'll get Richards in good with Black if he sees you've got me hog-tied in your back seat." You are out of Eva's mask--completely naked, even--although it and her clothes are tucked inside your embrace.
"Never mind. Hand me Eva's stuff. I hope you didn't dribble cum on it."
"One question before you go, Jeremy," you ask as you hand up her mask and clothes. "Did you ever love me?"
"Don't ask fucked up questions." He tosses the blanket over your head, obscuring the middle finger you flip him. The car groans as he steps out, and the door slams shut.
Time passes slowly. The car clicks and pops and makes strange sounds. Something rustles down in the floorboard. Probably it's just paper crinkling, but it's filthy enough you can imagine roaches living in Jeremy's car. Or rats.
A car arrives--Gordon's?--and you hear voices; then a car starts and leaves. You hope it isn't Caleb and Gordon and Chelsea taking off on some errand that can't wait.
And then footsteps approach and the door opens. Caleb speaks in his regular voice. "Got the stuff," he says, and you flip the blanket off. Though evening is well and truly settled, you recognize Caleb, divested of all masks but wearing clothes that are several sizes too big for him. He tosses a bundle at you. "Chelsea's folks headed out for dinner but her brother's around. Better change out here." He climbs into the driver's side seat.
You let the clothes fall to the floorboards and study the mask. The ghostly reflection of Gordon Black's face is too dim to make out, but his name blazes quite clearly on the inner surface. You run your fingers along its inside. Even though you have been pretending to be another person for several days now already, what you're about to do seems very unreal ...
* * * * *
You wake with a grunt to find your frame, which as Will Prescott barely fit inside the back seat of Richards' car, now bent very badly, and you have to twist hard to sit up; when you do, you bang your head on the roof of the car. Caleb looks back at you out of the corner of his eye. With a spasm of irritation you grab him from behind, pinning him in the crook against the head rest. "Gimme one reason I shouldn't snap your neck, you little shit," you growl.
He gasps for air and then relaxes instead of fighting. "Because Chelsea won't give you head if I don't tell her to," he croaks.
"Pfaw!" You let him go and shove the back of his seat. "Truer than you fucking know. Where's my shit?" You pull it off the floorboards: purple athletic shorts, a sleeveless gray workout shirt, running shoes, and ball cap.
"You sure got in character in a hurry," Caleb says quietly. "That is you, isn't it?"
"You'd be dead now if it wasn't," you say as you pull on underwear. "I'm just pissed cuz I can't fucking move back here. God damn it!" You've bumped your head again.
Eventually you get the clothes sorted out, though you wait until you're out of the car before you pull on the cap. You turn it brim backwards and use the drivers' side mirror to check that you've got your short bangs pulled out through the back the way you--Gordon Black--like it. You give yourself a quick grin, then give Caleb a backhanded slap to the chest that almost knocks him over. The world looks very far away from your new elevation, and you put a little bow in your stride as you swagger up to the front door.
Caleb directs you to an upstairs bathroom where you find a naked Jeremy Richards--the transformed Gordon Black--squatting glumly in the tub. Caleb starts disrobing and handing his clothes over to Jeremy, and you wander into the bedroom. Eva Garner--the transformed Chelsea Cooper--sits on the edge of the bed. She starts to stand, but you smoothly push her back onto the bed, wedge her legs open with your knee and shove your tongue into her mouth. She grunts, but the implicit order from her master--you--is too strong, and she kisses back. When you're done you pull back and wipe away traces of saliva from your lower lip with your middle finger. "I'm fucking ashamed of you, Eva. I thought you were better than that. I thought I was better that when I was, you know--"
She folds her arms. "Is this what it's gonna be like? You taking me on the side when Chelsea doesn't put out?"
"Nah. Just wanted to see what it'd be like. B'sides, fightin' with Chelsea is half the fun. Speaking of which, where is her stuff?"
The answer comes a few minutes later, when a morose Jeremy Richards and a prim Chelsea Cooper enter the bedroom from the bathroom. "Who'd have guessed this morning that we'd all be standing here like this now?" Chelsea says with chipper glee. She grasps your arm in both of her small hands. "You have anything you wanna say, honey?" She looks up at you.
"Yeah, get the fuck outta here," you tell the two golems. They hang their heads and depart. Afterwards you snort a little laugh, and Chelsea gives you a querying glance. "Oh, I was just thinking. That's Black under Jeremy's face, and Chelsea under Eva's. And you know what happened this morning right? We told them they couldn't see each other any more."
* * * * *
You sit in the chair, foot on the bed, while Caleb massages your calf. Talk has been muted as you're lost in your own thoughts. Finally: "I could use a tutor," you grunt.
"I have to pick two new cheerleaders at tryouts," she answers. "That makes the most sense."
"We still have to puppetize some key people."
"I'll pick up mask supplies tomorrow," she replies.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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