Chapter #28Unfamiliar Skin by: Seuzz   The new girl intrigues you. You don't have her in any classes, and you're not conscious of having seen her in the halls—though there's no reason you would have recognized her as a "new senior" if you had; and, anyway, when you are scanning the faces in the crowded hallways its for the kind of guys who will slam you against the walls. But she was hanging out with the Garners, and you have the hazy impression that she ... plays on the soccer team? Or was that only because she was hanging out with Marc?
Before the impulse can alter, you hop backward onto Justin's bed, sweep your legs onto it, and lower the mask of Hannah Westrick onto your face. It's like a black anvil dropping into the front of your skull.
* * * * *
You wake with a grunt and a gentle throb of blood in your temples: not quite a headache on its own, but possibly a headache ready to spring into existence if you move. With infinite care you cover your face with one hand and draw in a deep breath. God, you didn't get hammered again last night, did you?
Wait, since when do you get hammered?
Your guts swirl in a sudden maelstrom, and a lightheaded feeling sweeps through your brainpan, lifting you into a sitting position. You recognize the bedroom instantly—it's that of Connor and Justin—but you don't recognize your own legs.
Or, you do, but a sense familiarity and unfamiliarity, of naturalness and deep unnaturalness, battle for possession of your instincts as you stare goggle-eyed at them, and at the bush of tangled hair between them when you let your knees drop apart.
Oh God!
You swallow. Your hand seems drawn magnetically toward it, and before you've decided to do it, you're scraping the tip of your middle finger over the gentle hump and hidden cleft. You suck in a sharp breath, and sweat springs out on your brow. This isn't the first time you've touched it like that—
You tremble hard. No, this finger and this pussy are not strangers to each other. You remember—
Pussy. You drop back onto the pillow. You've got a pussy.
More than that. Your hand goes up to the breast. It's a handful, very large and firm. The nipple hardens under the fingertip. You squirm. It is so easy to turn yourself on, you feel you could lay in bed and just play with yourself all afternoon and evening.
No wonder Justin warned you against getting distracted. Probably he and Connor spent all last night—
You gasp. Did they? Did they spend all last night in this mask, with this body—? What's the last thing you remember?
Well, that's easy to answer. The last thing you remember is coming into this bedroom and deciding to put on Hannah Westrick's mask. So what's the last thing Hannah Westrick remembers? That's more difficult. In the churn of excitement and adrenaline it's a little hard to get a grip on her mind.
The library, the municipal library, you remember that. You clutch your temples and clench your eyes shut as it comes back to you, from two points of view, simultaneously. Your own memories recede as you concentrate on Hannah's.
You were sitting in the back with Marc. He's so sexy, practically as sexy as Kyle but without that peroxided—
Wow, when the memories they come in high-definition with Surround Sound, both inside and outside!
Anyway, you were having some low level fun with Marc, and he had his arm around you, and you were talking about something that wasn't important, the important part was that you and he were talking with your faces close together, and then Geoff Mansfield came over.
Your lip curls at the recognition that Hannah isn't that fond of Mansfield either.
And Mansfield leaned over and put something blue to Marc's face, and while you were trying to figure that out he shoved something blue at your face. And after that—
Well, you woke up here.
Except it wasn't right now. You were ... over in the other bed.
You sit up and peer at Connor's bed. Some very long hair tumbles into your face, and you push it back.
That's right, you were over there, and you spent some time staring and thinking, but about what you don't remember. It must have been about clothes, though, because you had a notebook and you wrote down a list of clothes, of things you like to wear. It wasn't in your handwriting, though. You shiver a little to remember that detail.
Then you'd covered your face with your hands and that's all.
Clothes! They must have bought clothes for Hannah too, so with excitement—mixed a little with dread—you search the room. You find them in a large bag, and you know they must be for Hannah because they include a bra in her size. Very nice, you think as you pull out a dark blue jersey and some black running shorts. They also found some cheap running shoes.
You're just thinking about going in to check on Caleb when there's a tap at the door, and it opens. "Hey, Will, are you—? Oh God, I'm sorry I—"
The door starts to close again as you look around—you too had momentarily panicked—but then it opens again and Eva Garner looks in."Hey, you're not my sister!" she exclaims.
You grin broadly, and stretch your arms broadly. "You know me, Eva. Hannah Westrick."
"What happened to Jessica?"
"I decided to give Hannah a try. What do you think?"
She makes a face. "I'm wondering how come you're not dressed yet."
"It took me a minute to settle on a mask. You got dressed in a hurry." Caleb is in the clothes that Justin had Eva wearing.
"Yeah, I felt kind of funny without any— Hurry up, so we can talk." She starts to close the door.
"We can talk while I get dressed. Come on in. You can help me."
"With what?"
"The bra, I guess." You put your arms through the loops. "Hook me up?"
"Don't you know how to work these things?"
"Yes, but I'm trying to give you some fun."
"Oh God." Eva's fingers brush at your back. "Your hair is all over the place."
"Not surprised. You'll have to help me with that. Did those guys—?" You reach for the bag, but Caleb pulls you back and gets the bra fastened. "I need some hair ties for this stuff. And a brush."
"Get the rest of the clothes on. I'll look for a brush or a comb—"
"Not a comb. It's too thick for—" But Eva is already gone.
You pull on the very trim underpants and the running shorts, which hug the tops of your thighs. Very tan and muscular are your legs, because—yes—Hannah is a soccer player. She's got big plans for the Westside team, too, if she can get Anita Nuevo out of the way.
You pause. Ambition swells.
Hannah Westrick didn't have to move from Eastman High to Westside. Her parents bought a new house that put them in the other district, but such things don't lead to an automatic transfer. She could have stayed at Eastman if she had wanted to, and Westside's reputation is such that few Eastman students would care to make the transfer.
But Hannah wanted to. She had to get away from Jenny Taylor.
Oh, there's nothing wrong with Jenny Taylor, either personally or in her capacity as captain of the Eastman High girls' soccer team. She's smart and she knows what she's doing. But Hannah has opinions of her own, and Jenny never listened to them, and she and Hannah banged skulls way too often for either of them to be happy sharing a team. So when the chance to change schools—and hence teams—arose, Hannah grabbed at it. Westside has its own team captain, of course, the aforementioned Anita Nuevo, and she's not bad. But Westside's girls' team isn't all that it should be, and Hannah has already impressed Coach Puente enough that he's telling Anita to listen to the new girl. A few more hard pushes, and by Halloween Hannah figures to be team captain herself.
The door opens again. "Are you still feeling yourself up?" Eva demands.
"I'm just thinking." You pull the jersey over your head. "You get me a—? Thanks." You catch the brush that Eva tosses at you. "So, I need to finish making up a metal band. Think you can polish up the new mask while I work on the band? Justin says they keep the car buffer in that weird wooden tool box thing in the back yard."
"It's gonna look funny, Eva Garner working a car buffer."
"Oooh! We should hold a car wash while wearing these masks!"
Eva gives you a look and goes out the back door with the mask. A solid five minutes pass before you hear the car buffer start up.
Meanwhile, you comb out your new hair. Hannah's hair is a light chestnut, and it comes down to the small of her back. She likes to wear it in single, rope-like braid, and after you've got it untangled, you weave some thick strands loosely together and tie them together every couple of inches with some hair ties. While you're doing that, you ponder the strike on Kelsey. You can find no clear intuitions on Hannah's part on how to handle that kind of approach, since Hannah doesn't know Kelsey well, and only shares a single class with her: sixth-period French.
The car buffer whines nearby, and your own thought fall into a random, darting manner, like a housefly, moving through your own memories and Hannah's. It's in this way that you come up with an alternate plan: Hannah shares Zoology with Karl Hennepin. Might it be easier to approach and copy him instead of Kelsey?   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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