This choice: Take over a musical group • Go Back...Chapter #14Anne the Winner Is ... by: Seuzz   The next morning. "So, girls," Marc-you says as he slides on a cheap set of white-framed sunglasses. He grins into the minivan's rear-view mirror as Eva-you and Jessica-you settle into the middle seat. "Are we ready to make beautiful music?"
"Don't be so cheesy," Jessica-you snorts. Marc-you laughs, and starts the engine.
* * * * *
It's Eva-you who spots Anne Starkey pushing through the school corridor's between second and third, but she's off at the other end—recognizable only by the flaming red hair that drapes down her back—so you steer Jessica-you onto an intercept course. "Hey, Anne!" she exclaims on bumping into the girl. "I was gonna text you, see if you and Cameron wanted to get together with us after school." Cameron Huber, her boyfriend, is the school's quarterback. But it's Anne herself you're interested in.
"You and Eva?" she asks. She glances distractedly past your shoulder.
"Yeah, Eva said she was talking to you yesterday in the library, and we just had an idea about maybe getting together and doing something. Oh hey, Eve!" she greets Eva-you, who has finally arrived. "Where were you saying we should go hang out?"
"When?"
"After school!"
"Oh. I dunno. Maybe the Wilderness? It's supposed to rain this weekend—"
"Well, don't make plans," Jessica-you tells Anne. "We'll talk to you later."
"Sure," Anne says, and squirms her way back into the crowd.
With four pairs of eyes you watch her go. "We're going to have to come up with a great idea if we're gonna catch her," Eva-you murmurs to Jessica-you, who replies, "We will."
But it's Marc-you who sets things in motion by intercepting Cameron around lunchtime, and suggesting that he and Anne go out after school with him and Hannah. "We could hang out at Cluck-a-Buck," you say, naming a popular local fast-food place across from Eastman High. "Maybe run into some of Hannah's old friends." Cameron says that sounds like fun, but he and Anne might be late because he has to talk to Coach Porter about some things with the football team. Marc-you claps his ar, and says that'll be fine. Elsewhere in the school, Eva-you and Jessica-you shift slightly in their desks as you consider how to pry Anne away from Cameron.
* * * * *
You want Anne because you have decided to infiltrate and take over a group of musicians as part of your plan to "practice" your powers. It will be dangerous visiting Fort Suffolk, the site of your accident. You will probably need to possess a lot of bodies, and you might need to use them in a fight. So beyond practicing your "infiltration" and "pretending" skills, you should practice coordinating different bodies toward a common goal. It occurred to you yesterday while Eva-you was in orchestra practice that musicians, each playing their own individual lines but cooperating at a single harmonious goal, would be ideal practice for that.
So Anne, who is a good friend of the Garner girls, is in the marching band. But you don't want to take over a full marching band—too big—so it's her place in the Jazz Band that attracts you, and through her it should be pretty easy to capture others in that group. Others like Mark Kinley, the bright-eyed trumpet player whose heart (you suspect) Jessica broke when they went out on a date a couple of times early in their junior year, but which she ended after he tried planting a very sloppy kiss on her mouth. And Ashley Scott, the sweetly clumsy trombone player who may be a junior but who hangs out with most of the seniors in the marching band instead of her own peers. In fact, Mark and Ashley would look good together as a couple, you think to yourself as Jessica-you eats and chats excitedly about weekend plans with her friends Lin Pol and Yumi Saito, and as Marc-you listens intently to the lecture in AP Statistics. But it is with your-Eva's hand that you lazily twiddle a pen while only paying a glassy-eyed attention in AP Biology, as you imagine Mark and Ashley together.
You get maybe a preview of what Mark and Ashley might look like together at the start of eighth, through your-Eva's eyes, when you get to the Music annex. Nathan Cruz, the school orchestra's first violinist, is out front nuzzling his girlfriend, Madison Fortney. But addition to being the concert-master, and the first chair in both the school's chamber orchestra and a private string quartet he and some others have organized, Nathan is one of the stars of the swim team and also takes AP classes, so he is kind of an arrogant asshole, very full of himself. But what's relevant now is that he is pushing himself onto Madison, who is a very pretty but demure girl who used to play soccer but quit because she wasn't hard-charging enough. The Garners had heard from a number of sources that Nathan has been pressuring Madison to go all the way, and right now, as Eva-you approaches, he is getting handsy with her in a way that is more desperate than seductive, and Madison is trying to twist away without actually shoving him and telling him to stop. It brings back your-Jessica's memories of Mark.
A string quartet, you muse as Eva-you glides into the Music Annex. That might be an even better practice spot than the Jazz Band. Or maybe, now that you think about it, the Mixed Choir, which Madison sings in, would be better than the Jazz Band. But you are still fixed on making Anne the fourth in your multi-parted body.
* * * * *
"Hey, heard you and Cameron are hanging out with Marc and Hannah after class," Jessica-you says on catching up to Anne at her locker. "You got room for me and Eva to come along? We're still looking for something to do."
"No, that's great," Anne says. Her eyes sparkle with real warmth and welcome. "Cameron and I'll be a little late, 'cos—"
"We could give you a ride out," Jessica-you says, "and Cameron could catch up. Come on." You pluck invitingly at a button on Anne's fuzzy, forest-green sweater. "We don't wanna let you get away. We got plans for you!" you laugh.
Anne looks a little discomfited, but when Cameron materializes at her side, she tells him that she's going to go out early to Cluck-a-Buck with Jessica-you and Eva-you, who with a glistening smile has joined them. She and your two girls stop off in the restroom before heading out to the student parking lot, to freshen up. You put her between your girls, pinning her between your two pairs of shining eyes and laughing with her in stereo. From your-Marc's phone you send Eva-you a nasty text, demanding to know where she and Jessica are and what's taking so long, and Jessica-you and Eva-you exchange catty remarks about "our dear brother" and his lack of patience. Anne laughs along sympathetically.
Out in the parking lot, by the minivan, Marc-you lounges and studies his phone as the girls come sauntering over. "Oh, hey," he says in a clipped tone after looking up at them. "Turns out Hannah's doing something else." You put his phone away and glare off over the girls' heads.
"She's not coming?" Anne asks.
"Last minute thing. If it's okay, I'm gonna drop you all off at wherever and then I'll— I dunno."
"We can drop you off and take the car," Eva-you offers, but Marc-you brushes her aside, saying, "I'll need it to go someplace, and I'll come pick you up when you're ready. Or"—you look at Anne with three pairs of eyes before quickly averting the your-girls' gazes—"maybe Cameron can take Eve and Jess home?"
"Sure, maybe," Anne uncertainly agrees.
Marc-you nods vacantly, and trudges around to the minivan side door and pulls it open. You gesture Anne to climb in, which she does.
And once she's in, Marc-you hops in after and shoves her onto the middle bench. Jessica-you Jumps in too, while Eva-you slides the door shut with a bang.
Inside the van, Marc-you pins Anne down by the shoulders and lays a brawny knee across her lap. The vision in his eyes blackens as you force some of yourself to disgorge into the back of his throat, and you feel all of his body straining.
But Jessica-you gets a front row seat. It's horrifying and mesmerizing both. Your-Marc's eyes roll back in their sockets, turning white, and the blood vessels in his neck and face swell and pulse as he turns bright red with strain. His mouth opens wide, seeming almost to unhinge, and froth shows on his whitening lips. Anne is twisting in his grasp, but she doesn't yell until a massive blue pseudopod, the size of a child's arm, thrusts from your-Marc's mouth and waves itself in her face.
It's from the pseudopod's perspective that you see the back of Anne's throat as she screams: dark, warm, soft, slimy with wet, and inviting. You hurl yourself at it.
Jessica-you stares blankly at the blue pseudopod that connects your-Marc's mouth to Anne's; it writhes and pulses and twists. At the end, as you feel your control of Marc-you starting to waver, Marc-you arches his back and his jaw snaps shut, severing the pseudopod, which quickly wriggles its way down Anne's throat. She gurgles and froths, and her own eyes roll back in their sockets as your-Marc's reappear. Marc-you wipes his strong forearm over his streaming face, and gets up off of Anne.
Now it is her face that is flushed and twitching with pulsing blood vessels. Now it's her lips that froth. But the fit fades and calms as you feel her body tingling about you, and with a rush of warm power you slide yourself into her limbs and behind her face. A new set of eyes open to you as Anne's irises reappear, and with a thick and clumsy tongue you lick the saliva off your lips.
"Nngh," you-Anne grunt. "That was gross. We're going to have to figure out a new way of doing that for next time." Gingerly, you touch your new fingertips to your new lips, which are raw.
Marc-you and Jessica-you exchange a smirk, and a moment later Anne-you adds a smirk of her own. "I know," Anne-you gurgles. "Who?"   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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