This choice: Pick girls, but starting with someone else • Go Back...Chapter #40The Freshman Candidate. by: imaj   Girls! It'd be perfect!
You grin to yourself. You've used girl disguises to get close to other girls; it would be shorter to just have girls as operatives. Homely girls, girls who are jealous of other girls and want their boyfriends. Girls who will react well when Joe Durras smiles at them and takes them aside and shows them how they can get what they want, if only they do what he asks—and will thrill at the thought that Joe Durras might give them more.
But not Ursula, you decide. Ursula is merely credulous. Someone actively gullible would be a much better choice. If you were able to throw in envious, petty and small minded into the mix too, you’d have the perfect candidate: Someone that you could gently guide into making the decisions you wanted them to make without them realising.
It’s difficult though, as Joe doesn’t know anyone that fits the bill. The problem consumes you, and you spend the day thinking about it. Thinking about it so intensely, in fact, that you wouldn’t notice if the right candidate was standing right in front of you.
As it happens, you walk straight into her.
“Why don’t you watch where you’re going,” snarls the little blonde freshman girl as you jostle her lunch tray, sending salad skittering across the floor. As she looks up at you, the angry expression fades. She smiles dazzlingly and, amazingly, finds a free hand to twirl her hair with. “Oh, Hi Joe.”
“Aw gee,” you reply, returning her smile with interest. “I’m sorry about your lunch. Maybe I could get you some more.”
The girl laughs, as if you’d just said the funniest thing ever. “Don’t worry about. I’m on a diet right now anyway,” she says, flirting obviously. “You know, if you want to make it up to me, what you could do… Come have lunch with me.”
You regard her carefully for a moment. She reminds you a little of Chelsea Cooper, the head cheerleader back at Westside – same basic body shape, just needing a couple more years to fill out fully. She probably needs a couple more years to polish her attempts to manipulate you too. Still, nipping her in the bud before she completes her development into a fully fledged Chelsea-clone probably counts as a good deed.
“Sure,” you say warmly. You find an empty table and sit down across from her. “Hi, I’m Joe Durras,” you say, offering you hand.
“I know who you are, silly,” she says, batting your hand away. “I said your name earlier, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” you say, trying to look a little crestfallen. You’ve got Joe’s reputation to live down to after all. “I forgot.”
“Do you know who I am,” she asks keenly as you shovel food in your mouth. She hasn’t touched her own meal at all. “Maybe Shawn or Jon have mentioned me?”
Now why would they mention her, you think before remembering that both Shawn Gregory and Jonathan Straussler, Joe’s teammates on the basketball squad, have freshmen girlfriends. You can guess that in the mind of the little Chelsea-in-training in front of you, that means she has to have one too.
“Um,” you say goofily. “I think I forgot that too.”
The freshman girl laughs again. “Oh Joe, you’re so funny. I’m Carrie, by the way. Carrie Carmichael.”
“Oh yeah,” you reply. “Yeah, they told me all about you.”
“Really,” asks Carrie anxiously. “What did they say?”
“Er… That your name was Carrie and that you were a freshman,” you reply, nonplussed. Carrie laughs loudly again. “That was it really.”
“So, so funny. So Joe, are you doing anything after school,” she asks, inexpertly trying to hook you. It’s almost amusing, watching her fumbling attempts to flirt with you. If Joe was really as dumb as he makes himself out to be, it might work. Instead, you think you should turn the tables – bait her into becoming part of your new group.
“Carrie,” you say, becoming more serious. “You’re a nice girl and all, but I only date girls my own age.”
You watch as her face falls. Carrie has yet to master the art of looking so wretched that people can’t help but feel sympathetic towards her, but she is getting close.
“Oh,” is all she says, in a small voice. She makes to get up, so you grab hold of her hands across the table. “What,” she asks.
“What,” you say in a very quiet voice. “If I could make it so you were my age?”
You watch the rush of emotions flickering in her eyes. Confusion, disbelief and finally hunger. You’ve judged Carrie well – She’s a proto-Chelsea, but why wait for two years to grow up if she can jump there in an instant.
“Tell me more,” she says firmly.
*****
You’re feeling a little satisfied as you make your way to your afternoon classes. Carrie was a lucky find. Your sure that with Joe’s, admittedly well hidden, brains to help you, you can nudge her in the right direction. She’s agreed to come to the Durras house after school for a ‘demonstration’ and the only question still to resolve is who’s face you want to let her try.
Someone pretty and popular is the obvious choice. One of the cheerleaders, something like that. They’d be exactly the kind of person Carrie would want to be. Exactly the kind of person Carrie think she is herself, just a little older.
But then, one of the cheerleaders wouldn’t be of much use to you. Except, perhaps, Alyssa, but it wouldn’t be a good idea to propel Carrie direct to the top of Eastman’s A-crowd. One of her hangers on might be an idea – the little group they call the Rumouratti. Some of them are pretty enough that Carrie wouldn’t mind swapping, and you could always lead her on with promises of taking control of the group.
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