This choice: But it's too weird and scary • Go Back...Chapter #35An Exchange of Possibles by: Seuzz   "But you don't have to offer me that, you gasp out. "I mean, you already have," you quickly follow up, "but that's enough!" You pull her close, and feel the tension running all through Gary Chen's body. "I'll make you the same offer, if you want. I won't take your mask, but if you want to take mine—"
You've got your face so close to hers that you can't see her expression clearly. But she squeezes you gently. "I'll take it," she says softly, "if you take mine."
"I'd give it," you say, "but I don't want to take yours away from you."
She's silent, and so are you. Finally she sighs, but it doesn't sound like a sigh of disappointment, and when you pull back to peer at her, you see a faint smile on her face.
"I understand," she says. "Thanks for, you know, respecting my privacy."
Was that the reason you turned her down? Or did you turn it down because it was such an overwhelming offer you couldn't possibly accept? Whatever the reason, you suddenly blush and hang your head.
"You make it sound like I would have been doing you a favor."
"You want to do me a favor?" she asks suddenly, before you can follow up that very awkward blurt with anything better. "I'll tell you how."
You steel yourself against a request that you let her make herself another mask.
"Let me pick your second face for you."
Well, that's not quite as bad as you were expecting, but it's still a surprise. "You pick out my second face?" you ask with a sickly grin. "Uh, can you tell me who it is first?"
A mischievous smile comes onto her face. And since it's Gary Chen's face, it looks particularly devilish.
"Tell you what, how about we do it like this?" she says. "I'll give you four names, and you pick one of them."
"Are they on the list? For the tryout?"
"No."
"But I thought—"
She groans. "Oh, Will. Does it have to be one of them? Or maybe we could get you that second face, and you could try out as her?"
"Are any of them good enough?" you ask. You noticed that Chelsea said "her," meaning that they will be the faces of girls, but you'd kind of expected that anyway. "If they're gonna make it onto the squad, they have to be good."
Chelsea bites her lip.
You point to the list. "Who's the best bet her for getting onto the team? Of these girls, who's the best?"
"Well, we won't know that for sure," Chelsea protests, "until they try out." She stares at you, then wilts. "But if I had to guess, I'd say these two. Olivia and Sydney."
"Olivia" is Olivia Byrne, a friend of Kelsey Blankenship's. She's on the swim team, so it's interesting to see that she's willing to make a jump onto the cheerleader squad. And is she any good? Well, she was one of the eight semi-finalists at the start of the semester, and got cut only because her friend Kelsey quit the squad and forced Olivia to withdraw her application. As for the other one— "Who's Sydney McGlynn?" you ask, for you don't know the name.
"Don't you have her for any classes? She's new. Like Michelle." Chelsea makes a face. "But she had the good sense not to try out for the squad. Stupidest thing you could do," she mutters, "trying out for the cheerleader squad at a new school."
"So how do you know she's any good?"
"Because I've seen her videos. She was captain of the junior varsity squad at her last school, down in Florida or someplace. She's got videos online. She's good enough for us, if she's still as good as she was in those videos."
"So one of those two is for sure? Anybody else?"
Chelsea points to a few more names, none of which really mean anything to you.
"And the girls you want me to pick from," you say. "You don't even know if they're good enough to make it onto the squad? And they don't even want to try out?"
Instead of repeating her negative, Chelsea only makes a face and shrugs.
You have a sudden inspiration. "Okay, what if, instead of me picking from a list of girls you give me," you challenge her, "you pick from a list of girls that I give you? Ones that aren't on the tryout sheet," you add.
Chelsea studies you. "Is that the way you want to do it?" she says.
"Let me see your list, and I'll let you see mine," you reply.
So that's what you do. After borrowing a pen from Chen's aunt—who has been ostentatiously not watching you from behind the register—you and Chelsea each write down a list of four names, secretly. You fold them up before exchanging them. Your heart is beating as you unfold her piece of paper—not because you're nervous about the names you'll see, but because you're nervous about what she'll say about the names you wrote down: Bethany Lewis, Hope Bianucci, Kristy Suffolk, and Lacey Salter.
It was a quickly improvised list. Hope and Kristy are basketball players, while Bethany is an adorable swimmer with butter-colored hair that falls to her waist. Lacey is a volleyball player with platinum-colored hair and a blinding smile.
As you're still digesting Chelsea's list—Phoebe Beauchamp, who's a lithe soccer player with long, beautiful hair; Catherine Muskov, who's the captain of the track team and one of the stars of the school social scene; Sophie Van Den Berg, who comes from one of the oldest and most prestigious families in Saratoga Falls; and Andrea Varnsworth, the gorgeous captain of the swim team—Chelsea says, "Yeah, I'll pick a name on your list."
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