This choice: Target the AP girls next • Go Back...Chapter #24Le Cameleon et Le Corbeau (1) by: Seuzz  Caleb seems more interested in molesting you than in sharing ideas about how to proceed, so you flee the scene before he can get even randier.
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"Kim!" Mrs. Goretsky claps her hands together excitedly and beams at you as you stick your head into her classroom at the start of fourth period.
This would normally be your art class, but you've skipped and gone looking for Kelsey instead. (Amanda told you that you could find her here.) And sure enough, she's in the corner of the mostly empty classroom, sitting at a table with her head bent over a stack of papers. She looks up only briefly at the sound of your name.
"Are you thinking of helping out with the creative writing journal too?" Mrs. Goretsky continues, and you have to turn back to her. You blink before you can get straight on her question. Oh, that's right--in addition to teaching sophomore English, Mrs. Goretsky teaches creative writing and oversees the creative writing anthology the school publishes every year. She's asked Kim to help out before ...
"Oh, er," you stammer. "I was looking for Kelsey--" At the sound of her own name, Kelsey looks up again, and there's no mistaking the darkly suspicious look in her eye. She hunches and shifts in a way that almost turns her back on you without quite being ostentatious about it. You do a quick calculation of the sort that Kim is good at, and deduce that she has heard about the photo making the rounds, and assumes you are here to be "supportive" of her.
"--because yeah, I was thinking of volunteering to help out," you say, quickly swerving your plans onto a parallel track. Although you feel the tug of Kim's native desire to snoop, really, you don't care much about Kelsey's tribulations. (Which, truthfully, you could make go away pretty easily just by giving Chelsea the word.) You just need an excuse to get close to her, and the journal is as good as any.
Mrs. Goretsky beams, and the heavily caked makeup she uses to try to make herself appear ten years younger cracks along her laugh lines.
"Oh, that is so good to hear," she says, and claps her hands again. "Kelsey also showed up today, saying she wanted to help. She was one of the editors last year, you know, and she can help set you up." Although the table is only a few yards away, Mrs. Goretsky takes your arm in hers and leads you to it. "We have another volunteer for you!"
Kelsey looks up yet a third time, and now forces a smile to her face. She listens patiently as Mrs. Goretsky describes the journal's operation and the sorts of things that have to be done; you shift uncomfortably on your feet. Finally, the teacher wraps things up with another impossible smile and the declaration that things are wonderful--just wonderful!--and breezes out of the room.
Kelsey's smile falls from her face, and with her foot she kicks out a chair for you to sit in. Your skin prickles at the nearly electric unfriendliness that surges off her, but you take the seat. "So this is what you do fourth period," you say.
"This is what I do fourth period today," she snorts. "Normally--" She shuts her mouth with a snap. Normally she'd be hanging out with her friends during a free period, but today she's hiding with shame and humiliation.
"So what do you want me to do?"
"You heard Mrs. Goretsky. Get to reading." She pulls a sheaf of papers from the bottom of her stack and hurls it in front of you. "These things. On the cover sheet put your initials in the 'yes', 'no', or 'maybe' columns. If you're feeling ambitious, put a few words in explaining why you vote the way you do."
"Okay. But--"
"Look, can you read without moving your lips? Try." Again, she turns in her chair, presenting a bare and frigid shoulder.
Well, this isn't going to work for getting close to Kelsey so you can copy and replace her. But you're stuck, now that you've volunteered, so dutifully you bend over your new assignments.
The first few are some rather garbagy lyrical poems about love or about God, and there's something that is either a prose poem describing a state of extreme drunkenness or an exercise in random typing, and you sink lower and lower in your chair. It would help if you had some idea of what the standards are for the journal, so you won't grade too high or too low, but you don't dare speak to Kelsey again.
And then you come to the short story. You can immediately tell it's going to be bad news for someone, and probably lots of someones, just from the first few lines. Surreptitiously you glance up at Kelsey, wondering if she's seen it; but then, if she had, she'd certainly have taken it off to burn. You bend over it and start to read:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Kelsey was the most stuck-up bitch in the high school, which was probably one reason she didn't have a boyfriend. Probably it was also because she wanted Gordon, the captain of the basketball team, for a boyfriend, but he was dating Chelsea, who was stupid but the head cheerleader, so she was a lot more popular than Kelsey. Kelsey hated Chelsea, but had to be nice to her because Chelsea basically ran the social scene, even though Kelsey thought she should be running it.
And then one day, while on her way to the school library, Kelsey saw Gordon walking toward her. "Looking good, Kelsey," he grinned at her. She blushed. He stopped in front of her and grabbed her hand. "You're looking really good."
"Oh, oh," she gasped.
He leaned in close. "Chelsea's in class but I'm skipping. Wanna hang out with me?"
"Sure, Gordon," she said.
He held her hand and pulled her to the gym, where there was a secret closet where he and his friends liked to hang out. "I've been watching you for a long time," he said as he stroked her shoulders. "I know you like me, and I like you too. I've been thinking about dumping Chelsea."
Kelsey gasped and squealed, and she started to shiver as Gordon unbuttoned her blouse and jeans. He kicked off his shoes and pulled off his t-shirt and shorts. "Oh my God, it's so big," Kelsey said as he penis rose to meet her. Gordon leaned back against the wall and fondled her hair as she dropped to her knees and began to suck him off. "It tastes so good, too," she said after he came, and she swallowed it.
"You're a lot better than Chelsea," Gordon said as they got dressed again. "I'll dump her tonight. Come talk to me tomorrow."
Kelsey nodded eagerly because she totally believed him. She then left and went on to the library.
But after she left Gordon began to change, and it was more than his clothes. He shrank until he was about average height, and he became very slim. His face blurred and shifted, and when it was solid again he looked a little bit like a guy but also a little bit like a girl. But he didn't look like Gordon anymore. In fact, he didn't look like anyone who went to school. The person who had looked like Gordon then put on some new clothes and followed Kelsey to the library, where he sat at a table close to her, where she was talking to her friend Amanda.
"That is so incredible," Amanda was saying. "But are you sure he's really serious about you? Maybe he just wanted a blow job, and you gave him what he wanted."
"He wouldn't have promised me if he wasn't serious," Kelsey said. "You know Gordon. He would have just laughed at me."
"I guess maybe you're right," Amanda said. "So what do you do now?"
"Keep it quiet," Kelsey says. "I'm only telling you for now. Tomorrow, after Gordon dumps Chelsea, then everyone can know."
While they kept talking, the person at the next table took out his iPhone and sent a text message. A second later, Kelsey's phone chimed, and she jumped when she read the message. "Oh wow, it turns out my dental appointment got moved up. I have to leave school early." She hugged Amanda and ran off.
After she had gone, the person at the next table also left, but he went into the girls' bathroom and locked himself in a stall. (Because he looked kind of like a girl anyway, it didn't look like a boy had crashed the bathroom.) From his bag he took out a top and some jeans shorts like Kelsey had been wearing and changed into them. Again, his face began to change, turning longer and bonier, and the eyes got narrow. His chest rose into a bust, but not a very big one, and his hips stayed narrow. His short, tightly curled hair loosed and lengthened and turned a mousy brown. When the changes had settled, the person who now looked like Kelsey stepped back into the bathroom and studied herself in the mirror. "Oh, Gordon," she moaned, "it tastes so good." Then she smiled, and stuck her chin out in a haughty way and went back into the school, where classes were beginning to let out for the change in period.
She ignored Gordon as he passed her, and he ignored her. Instead she went to find Amanda. "I had a thought before I took off," she said, leaning in close and whispering to Kelsey's best friend. "I think we should tell everyone, and start telling them now," she said. "That way we box Gordon in and he won't be able to change his mind."
"Are you sure," Amanda said.
"Absolutely," the girl who looked like Kelsey said.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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