You slip Michelle's persona back on as easily as you slipped on her shirt and then you take a look in the mirror and can't help but scoff. "She could have at least grabbed the purse too so I could touch up my makeup," you think. Not that Michelle wears a ton of makeup—certainly less than Chelsea or Cindy or even Yumi—but she still wears some, even if it's light, and you can't help but feel the desire to make it look a little better. But you put the thought out of your head and make your way out of the bathroom over towards Yumi's room. You knock on the door and then at her insistence let yourself in.
You pause when you see him and he double takes when he sees you. He looks somewhat gangly and... immature, is the word that comes to mind. His sense of style just isn't there and those clothes hang off of a thin frame. His hair isn't long but... well, shaggy isn't the right word because there's a straw-like quality to it, like the straw stuffed into a scarecrow. "Is this him?" you ask to the confusion of both he and Yumi. "The guy you wanted me to meet," you address her.
"Oh, uh, yeah," Yumi replies with slight confusion. "This is, uh, Will."
Will says nothing but just quietly stares at you wide-eyed. You give him another good look, continuing to view him not through your eyes but through Michelle's. "He's not unattractive but he looks so jumpy and immature. People like that are exhausting to deal with, it'd be like trying to go on a date with a middle schooler," you think.
"Sorry, Yumi, but I don't think I'm interested."
Both she and Will look surprised and Will especially looks too confused to even speak. So it's Yumi who does. "Um, yeah, okay," she says as she takes his arm. "Sorry for, uh, dragging you out here Will," she tells him as she leads him out of the room. To you she turns back. "I'll be back in a minute so just, you know, wait I guess."
So you do, scrolling through Michelle's phone to reaffirm that she's supposed to be meeting up with some friends at Balducci's soon. Then the door opens and Yumi makes her way back in. "Will, what was all that?" she asks.
"Michelle," you correct her which earns you a confused utterance. "If I'm done up like this, then call me Michelle since it'd be less confusing. That's who you want me to be, right?"
"Alright, fine, Michelle. What was that about?" she asks.
"I wanted to have a little bit of fun," you state. "But mostly if I'm going to be Michelle then I needed to be her. You gave her that bullshit story about wanting to set us up so I figured I'd just do a little bit of roleplaying and approach it as if you were actually serious about it." You laugh a little bit. "Her judgment of me was pretty brutal but I guess looking at myself from an outsider's perspective, I can see where she's coming from."
"You don't need to be that hard on yourself, and anyway what Michelle thinks about you isn't important," states Yumi. "We're not doing this so you can date yourself or whatever. There's a plan, remember?"
"Right, the plan," you say and a lightbulb goes off. "You said you'd owe me when it's finished, didn't you?"
Yumi's face bunches up; she seems a little annoyed wants to know where this is going. "Yeah, I guess I did. What does that have to do with how Michelle views you, though?"
"Well, Michelle is a girl obviously and I am concerned with what a girl thinks about me," you say. "So I'm thinking I need to be less nervous, less immature, and to do that I need to just bite the bullet. Aim high and shoot my shot."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that once this is done, once I've helped you all deal with Chelsea and I'm out of this mask and back to being myself, then how about we go on a date? You," you point a finger at her and then at yourself, "and me."
"What!?" Yumi exclaims, taken aback. "Are you serious!?"
"One hundred percent," you respond. "It's fair compensation for helping you get rid of someone you hate, right?"
"This isn't a game, Will!" she exclaims, "This is fucking serious and you need to take it seriously!"
"I am taking this seriously, all of it!" you shoot back. "I'm taking it so seriously that I'm looking at the world with Michelle's eyes, not mine. I didn't see myself when I came in here, you know. I saw that guy that you claimed you were trying to introduce Michelle to. I looked at everything as her. Not as someone pretending to be her but as her with all of her feelings and thoughts and everything. I am being so fucking serious about this that I'm dedicating myself into adapting Michelle's life, her very identity, and give up days of my own life to be her and see this through."
"You don't—" Yumi starts in shock. "It's just a job, Will. You don't need to go that far. Pretending is good enough."
"Is it, Yumi? Because if I pretended to be Michelle do you know what would happen when that vote came? I'd vote against you." She looks at you in stunned silence. "Oh, don't act surprised. You've got me acting as a spoiler because you know that's what would happen."
"Because Chelsea would just browbeat Michelle," Yumi states.
"Is that what you think?" you ask. "Then you're wrong, Chelsea wouldn't have to do anything. Because yeah, Michelle doesn't like Chelsea but she doesn't like any of you either. You're all the same to her so if push came to shove, then she'd choose the devil she knows over the one she doesn't."
"We're not anything like Chelsea!" Yumi angrily protests. "How the hell could she even... you're just spouting a bunch of... of bullshit!"
"Think whatever you want, but think about it from her perspective because I sure am," you respond. "You're the ones who froze her out because she voted for Chelsea. You could have tried reaching out to her and winning her over from the start but you didn't. You all acted like she was a lackey and treated her like one and do you know how miserable that is for her?"
"No, we didn't," Yumi says. "We never—"
"Bothered to learn? No, of course not. You could have just talked to her but you never did," you say and you can't help but channel Michelle's own feelings.
"She was good enough for the squad. She was a cheerleader back at her old school," you explain. "She had friends, she had a boyfriend and they even... but that's not important. What's important is that Michelle had to give up a lot when she moved here only to get nothing back. Just used as a prop in a dumb civil war she wants nothing to do with. Something you and Cindy are throwing me into and I could totally fuck you all over if I wanted to because that's what Michelle would want to do. But I won't because I like you and the others and I want to help. Hell I'm giving up a lot to help you. Michelle might completely upend my life by the time I'm back but I'm doing it because I want to help and because... because I want to change. I want to show people, people like you and Kelsey and Lisa and everyone that I'm not some pussy and that I'm not some nobody."
Yumi is quiet for a moment and she looks both surprised and emotional. You even see her tremble, as if she's about to start crying. But if she is then it's something that quickly passes as she looks at you seriously and somberly. "You're right," she finally says, "we made mistakes with Michelle and now we're asking a lot of you and you're doing it. You could have just told us to... to fuck off but you didn't." She breathes in and out quite deeply a few times. "It's a fair tradeoff, I guess. Once this is done, whether we succeed or fail, I'll go on a date with you. A serious one."
"A serious one," you repeat.
"We'll get food and have fun and if it goes well," she pauses. "Look, this isn't going to be some kind of pity thing. If we go on a date then I'm going to treat it like it's a real one because it will be a real one, understand?"
"That's a big one-eighty from how you were acting a few minutes ago."
"I thought you were just messing around. I didn't realize you were so..." she pauses and then gives you a small, almost shy smile. "It's nice seeing you actually push back instead of just crumbling. Having a backbone is attractive."
"That was... I was simply telling you how Michelle felt and I guess I just got caught up in it," you say.
But Yumi holds up a hand and shakes her head, motioning for you to shut up. "Just take the W, okay? Don't make me want to change my mind."
* * * * *
You hop into the driver's seat of Michelle's Corolla. It's a simple car, unpretentious, honest and reliable. The kind of car she likes... similar to the kind of people she likes. The kind that she hung around with back when she lived in Ames and the kind of people who seem to be in short supply at Westside.
The kind of person Michelle likes to think of herself as and that that she—by necessity—is going to have to not be while you're her. Not to say you'll be a cheat or a terrible person but there's an element of dishonesty in what you're doing and truthfully... it's exciting. Because Michelle would never do something like this; she'd never have the nerve to. Oh you talked a big game to Yumi and you were speaking Michelle's real feelings but if Michelle was going to switch sides, she'd make it known. She wouldn't keep everything close to the vest and scheme like you're doing. That's something that Cindy and Yumi would do.
That's also an exciting thought, that you now share something in common with them, something that's brought you closer to them, and now you're even more motivated because it's led to you having something to look forward to: a date with Yumi Saito. But to get to that means getting through this and doing that means meeting up with Michelle's friends as a first test. Maybe. Because you also want to check in on Caleb and see how things are going with that new spell.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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