Chapter #7Truth or Dare at the IHOP by: Seuzz   It isn't conscience, finally, that impels you to text your old number, but prudence. Prudence and fear that this mysterious "body swap" (or whatever it is) might undo itself after an angry and vengeful Beth has ruined your life.
As you wait for the person with your phone to reply to your text (Hey I think we should meet/talk after what happened last night), you text Monica, Alyx and Aurora back.
To Monica: Sorry so sick last night did I even make sense? Thx for taking care of me btw how u get home?
To Alyx: Got rly sick sudden had to leave. Ok now
To Aurora you are more delicate and evasive: Hopefully meeting Zack a little later fingers crossed!
The reply to your important text comes only about ten minutes after you sent it: sure where meet? You have to cock an eyebrow at how calm, almost casual, it is.
* * * * *
The IHOP up by the mall is a semi-regular hangout for kids from the high school, but you figure that there won't be too many—if any— acquaintances there at 11:00 on a Sunday morning. It will be packed with families, though, but that's a plus in your mind. It means that Beth—or whoever you're meeting—will be deterred from getting all dramatic.
Whoever I'm meeting. It was just a mental tic when you thought it, but as you put yourself together to leave, it comes back to you in a frightening way. Who else could it be if not Beth? Unless it's ... a demon? That gives you a hard shiver, and your head spins as a feeling of alienation—a crawly feeling that this is not my body, I'm wearing a synthetic skin, I'm trapped like a crab inside of a kind of foreign shell—sweeps over you. Only by giving yourself a good rub-down—a hugging of the torso, a squeezing of the tits, a massage of your buttocks, and a caressing of your face and neck—do you restore a sense normality. More: you actually turn yourself on a little.
The parking lot is overrun when you arrive, and the shallow waiting area is packed. You don't see Zack—and it gives you another weird turn when you think of the face you need to look for and recognize; it is your own—so you give the hostess your name and go outside to wait with your phone. Alyx and Aurora have only sent brief acknowledgements of your texts (though with hooks in them that you could catch and extend), but Monica's text seems to confirm the worst: U were pretty out of it but u said Zachary was sick all over u but u didn't look like he was. She adds that she got an Uber to pick her up at your house and take her back to the party.
There is a chance that that's all Beth said, that you were "sick all over her" and that she said nothing so horrifying as "he puked down my throat." But maybe Monica is just being very careful in her choice of words. You tap out a burst of short texts to try wrapping all that up:
Zack was sick and I thought it was in my car. But I checked it all clean whew!
I was wasted last night lol and overacted I guess sorry.
Thx so much for helping me I in no shape to drive gotta make it up to u. How much for uber so I pay u back.
There's time for her to reply, expressing her relief that things weren't so bad, and that you owe her $17. That seems pretty goddamned high, and you bridle also because it seems like Monica should just be generous and not ask for compensation. But you tell her that you'll give her the money on Monday. (And you also tell yourself that it's not your money but Beth's, and that you'll give her a twenty and tell her to keep the difference.)
There's another ten minutes you have to wait, and you are starting to wonder if Beth (or "whoever") is being spiteful, but you put it to good use scouring the social media sites (particularly x2z.com, where you would expect to see gossip about last night) for any hints about what happened to you and Beth. The worst, though, are only some catty comments about Beth getting "shitfaced" at Amanda Connors's party, and hinting that Amanda threw her out because she left early. (Like all such comments, it was posted anonymously.) It doesn't bother you, though, because it could have been infinitely worse.
So you are caught up by the time Zachary Dillon arrives, and you do a massive double-take when you see him approaching you from the parking lot. That's me! you think, and are overwhelmed again by that sense of displacement as someone with your face and your body comes sauntering up. Son of a bitch! comes the next, very resentful thought. He's actually acting like he's really me!
He's dressed in soft khaki trousers and a black Oxford shirt with the cuffs rolled up halfway to his elbows. His chin is high and his dark eyes are hooded and amused. His blonde hair, which is shot through with darker streaks, is neatly brushed over his forehead. His walk is loose and relaxed.
It comes to you, in a bitter flash, that Beth (or whoever) is putting on an impression of you.
"Hey," he says as he draws up. "We gotta long wait here?"
"I gave our names to the hostess," you reply, and give him a dark look up and down. "It's crowded in there."
He nods, and glances through the glass of the front door into the foyer. "So how are you doing?" he asks. "Last night was, uh, weird."
"Yeah. How was this morning?" You hold his eye. "As weird or weirder?"
He looks slightly puzzled by the question, then shrugs.
"I went to bed kind of early so I woke up kind of early. That was weird for me. What about you? You get home okay?"
You stare. Then because he gives no indication that there's a secondary meaning behind his reply, you say (for a lack of anything better), "I called Monica and got her to drive me home. I wasn't in any shape to drive."
He nods, then jerks the door open and goes inside. You follow. After checking with the waitress that there will be a five-minute wait still on the table, he says, "So you were hollering all kinds of stuff before you left."
"Yeah, I know," you reply, giving the nearby crowd a fishy-eyed side glance. "I was kind of, um, medicated."
He nods. "Did any of that actually happen? What you were saying?"
"I don't know what happened," you growl back. "Maybe we can talk about it after we're seated."
He nods and falls silent, and you've got several minutes to stew in frustration at how coolly the other person seems to be taking it.
* * * * *
You order a coffee after you're seated at a little two-top in the middle of the restaurant, with loud families on all sides of you. And because you have both eaten breakfast already, you content yourselves with getting a short stack of pancakes each. (Zack follows your lead each time you make a decision.) He is still very cool and relaxed, and though attentive to you his eye wanders over the restaurant. When you ask if he's looking for someone, though, he just shrugs and turns his full attention on to you.
You decide to take the matter with both hands.
"Look," you mutter as you lean across the table toward him, "I'm glad you're taking this so calmly. I'm trying to take it calmly too. But we have to talk. About last night. And this morning."
"Okay," he says, but his expression remains blank.
"Well, when I woke up this morning, I kind of freaked out. Didn't you?"
His eye turns inward, then he frowns.
"No," he says, "I wouldn't say I freaked out. I mean, I guess I feel bad about what happened last night. But I don't really know what happened."
"What about this morning?" you press. You are starting to get frustrated by this "innocent" act.
He thinks a moment, then shrugs again. "I thought about texting you," he says.
"Uh huh?"
"But then you texted me first."
His mouth twists slightly into a puzzled frown, and he blinks a couple of times at you.
You fall back in your chair, and as though mirroring you he falls back in his.
That's when it strikes you: The bitch is trying to play it like she's you!
* * * * *
Holy fuck!
It was an idea that you yourself had, to bluff Beth by pretending to be her with no inkling that there had been a "body swap," and to see what would happen next. And she apparently has had the same idea, and is acting on it!
What a bitch!
Well, maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. You were briefly confused as to who you were when you woke up; she probably was to. After you got it sorted out, you discovered that you could still "think" like you were her; certainly she would be able to do the same thing. And if you could have the thought I should just pretend to be her, then she, thinking as you, could have the same idea.
And (oh, but this is a grim and bitter realization) she probably thought that that's what you would do, inside her body, and so decided to hit you with it first!
What a fucking bitch!
All this passes like a flash through your head, and it leaves you determined not to let her win. It's clear that she's not going to "break" until you beg her to; or until you outlast her. And there's no way you're going to beg.
So you'll just have to act like her!
Then comes an even more wicked thought: of acting even more like her!   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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