Chapter #16Two in One Day by: Seuzz   Your appendages are sitting in their separate classes eighth period, acting alert or sleepy or distracted according to their personalities, but you keep a part of your consciousness concentrated inside the mouthpiece of Mark Kinley's trumpet. The day was quiet, but now tiny, almost imperceptible vibrations tell you that the trumpet is out and that people are talking nearby. Your other bodies tense as you wonder if your worm will have to flee before it is discovered inside the booby trap you prepared for it.
But the vibrations cease after a time, and then the daylight that seeps into the mouthpiece is covered by darkness. A warm and humid exhalation enwreathes your worm, and with an anticipation that sets your four human hearts beating faster, it shoots itself out of the mouthpiece and into the wet, cavern-like orifice.
You are seeping into a rough but slimy surface even as you are still pulling yourself free of the metal tubing when you feel yourself jerked and almost snapped in half. In a Calculus class and a Physics class, two of your bodies bolt upright in surprise; in Orchestra, Eva-you fights to not lose her place or tempo on the viola; in one of the sound-proof individual practice rooms next door, Anne-you puts down her flute and rushes for the door.
She just has time to see Mark Kinley go running through the band room when you feel a now-familiar numbness and tingling spreading through your consciousness as your goop begins to grip a new body, and he weaves, stumbles, and falls to his knees with a drooping head. On the other side of the room, a small clutch of kids who are hanging out and goofing off turn to stare at him. But Anne-you runs forward and kneels beside him. "Are you okay?" she asks him.
The tingling brightens and then fades as a new pair of eyes open to you. You wriggle and feel your way along new nerves and muscles, like a hand worming its way up and into a sock puppet; Mark's jaw works and a stream of drool falls out of his mouth. "I'm fine," he croaks as the other kids now come crowding around. "Just got dizzy."
"Okay, back off, give him some air," Anne-you snaps at the other kids. She gently takes Mark under the armpit, and a little shudder runs through your bodies as an old hand touches new flesh. "Can you stand up?"
"Yes," you reply with his mouth, and slowly lift his head. His mind is still fighting your—it's like trying to get hold of a mad cat inside a sack—but you've got control of his body. "I need to get to a toilet is all."
"Jesus, man," Roy Booth mutters. "What's wrong with him?"
"He'll be okay. Just help him up." Together, and with help from Mark's own legs, Roy and Anne-you get him upright. "I'll help him from here. Come on, can you walk?"
You grip Mark's body harder and force him to put one foot in front of the other. You still can't get his mind to calm down—you're too weak for it—but with your-Anne's help, you get him out the door and steer him toward the main building. You're almost at the entrance when Roy comes running up. "Here," he says, and thrusts Mark's trumpet at you.
You take it with your free hand, and a little jolt runs up your arms, but you suppress it as you steer Mark inside for the nearest boys' restroom. Mark is very pale—almost chalky—a tremble is running through him as you fight to keep control of his body. But once you're in the restroom you're no longer worried; you shake the mouthpiece and a dollop of blue goo the size of a gumdrop falls into your-Anne's hand. "Here," you tell Mark, "swallow this down like a good boy." You pop it into his hanging mouth, and it oozes and dissolves into his tongue.
A shudder runs through his body as his mind is finally anesthetized. "Thanks, Anne," Mark-you says as he grins weakly at his reflection in the mirror; the color is flushing back into his cheeks. "I feel a lot better now."
* * * * *
Paris Morrow, who plays bass guitar in the jazz band, is loitering outside the restroom when Anne-you and Mark-you come out. They assure her that Mark is feeling alright—"Just a little shaky"—and together you all return to the band room. Anne-you resumes practicing with her flute, but Mark-you crouches in a corner of his practice room and soothes Mark's mind into unconsciousness so you can lap up as much of his memories and personality as you can in the time remaining before school ends. By the time the bell rings you have absorbed enough of him that you can thumb a text into his phone explaining to Danielle Davis and Fred Hildown that he is heading straight home after class because he doesn't feel well. In fact, you drive him out to the Garners' to hang out in their den with the girls. (Anne-you goes home, where she is soon joined by Cameron; Marc-you heads over to Hannah's.)
"Heard you were almost sick last period," Jessica-you tells Mark-you. "Was it low blood sugar or something?"
"Low something," Mark-you agrees. "I think I'm still a little—"
"We'll set you up. Eva?" Jessica-you turns to her sister, who obliging lets her head fall back and effectively unhinges her jaw. Her eyes roll back and she flushes hard as the limb of a blue pseudopod writhes up and out of her throat. With a faint smile Jessica-you pinches off a bit and holds it out to Mark-you. With a twinkling eye, he just opens his mouth so she can pop it in directly.
As he chews it down, you study him with both girls' eyes. Mark is good looking, with bright eyes and a cheerful grin. His golden-brown hair is trimmed into a buzz cut, and golden highlights play off it. He's dressed in a maroon sweater over a collared shirt, but he's wearing khaki shorts with white socks and sandals, which is an unfortunate combination with his hair style because it leaves him looking too much like a time traveler from the Fifties who didn't fully understand the memo about contemporary style. But that's Mark Kinley all over: handsome but too goofy to be really attractive.
Except he is attractive now, and so is Jessica-you. The two bodies grin at each other as she sits on his lap, straddling him with her knees. Delicately you set them exploring each other's mouths with their tongues as Eva-you taps in a text to Philippa Hosford on Mark's phone.
* * * * *
"Nngh," Philippa-you says as she raises herself up on the bed. "I feel like I've been asleep for a million years."
"Yeah, it does that to you," Eva-you drawls. "Check out Mark." Sprawling like a broken, discarded doll, Mark-you is wedged in a corner of the girls' bedroom with a hanging jaw and sightless eyes. You have put him under again and are pumping away furiously at his brain, trying to suck up as much of his native memories and personality as you can before you have to send him home for the night. He was supposed to meet up with Tim Ryan and Eric Murphy after supper, a fact that you missed in your first surge through him, and you don't want any more screw ups. You only grabbed Philippa now, when it is already late, because you are pretty sure of being able to get her home and into bed soon, so that you can fully absorb her during the night.
"You guys need to work on technique," Philippa-you continues as she rubs her pale, skinny biceps. "I might get bruises from where Mark grabbed me."
"We had some trouble with getting him," Eva-you says. "So we went for the tried-and-true with you."
"I know all about that," Philippa-you snaps. You tilt her head so that Eva-you can work on teasing out her hair. It's short and curly and brown, and she wears it piled up on one side of her head so that it partly covers half her face. It's this artfully tousled part that got smushed when Mark-you grabbed her shoulders from behind while Eva-you thrust a fat, slimy blue worm at her nose. "You should try putting the things into food. Fruit yogurt, maybe."
"Boba tea?" Jessica-you says as she enters the bedroom with a couple of bottled waters.
"Ooh, that'd work!" Philippa-you exclaims. "I know a lotta girls who like that shit, and some guys too, the ones who thinks it's gross and that's how come they drink it."
"Like who?"
You see Philippa's eyes glaze as you dig for a memory. Maybe it's because she was looking at Mark-you that she comes up with Tim Ryan's name.
"We could've added him tonight," Eva-you tells Jessica-you, "if bubble-brain in the corner there hadn't forgotten."
"I'm not a bubble-brain." Mark-you comes to sudden life as you raise him up and lift him onto his feet. "You know who is, though. Susie Pineapple." He grins at Philippa-you.
"She is in the band," Philippa-you muses. "And you guys were thinking big, about taking over the whole marching band and not just the jazz band."
"And no one'd suspect Susie of being part of a hive mind," Eva-you says. "She's barely got enough brain for herself." Mark-you would've said it, but he has drawn Jessica-you into a clinch and the two of them are sucking each other's mouths inside out.
Maybe it's on account of watching that that a memory goes off like a firework in Philippa's brain. A memory of the ardor she feels every time she looks at Fred Hildown—who Mark was supposed to meet up with after school—in his track shorts and jersey.
But adding him, like adding Tim Ryan, would be a complete change of plans. Tomorrow, though, Mark's illness would be a good gambit for drawing in Roy Booth or Paris Morrow, who are members of the jazz band.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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