This choice: Grab someone at the party • Go Back...Chapter #15A Life at the Party by: Seuzz   "I'll look around, get you someone here," you say. "Where's the other masks?" Chelsea opens her shoulder bag and shows them to you. You pull them out, look around, and hide them in the cabinet over the toilet. "I'll do the same trick you did, get them in here."
"You need help?"
"Just stay in sight of me, and when you see me head in here, follow and linger outside. Have Gordon run interference." She nods and exits.
You spend a few minutes putting yourself back together, but even though the party will probably go for a few more hours, you feel yourself constrained by time if you're going to get someone here. Back in the house proper you look around. The party is being jointly thrown by the captains of the girls and boys soccer teams to celebrate a recent win by the girls, so it's heavily populated by the school's female athletes: Cindy Orson, Hannah Chamberlain, Amanda Conners, Tasha Brown, Elisabeth Pruit, among others. There are lots of male athletes too: Zach Vanderburg, Peter Robins, Timothy Johnson, Conor Nilsson, Kevin McIlroy, Mitch Kendall. And since it's Jenny and Kyle throwing the party, there's a strong mix of other types: Sammy Orson and Kristy Carlson are gossiping and laughing by the fireplace; debate people are talking earnestly by the dining room table; the pick up artists have their targets pinned in various corners. (You make a note to yourself to send Paul Zametti over to rescue Darcy Whitehead by distracting Adam Karter.)
"So what did short, blonde and horrible want?" a voice murmurs near your shoulder. You turn with a start to find the speaker staring past your head out at the back patio, where Chelsea and Gordon are holding each other.
A kind of double vision enfolds you, for you know the speaker in two different ways. Lisa Rickover, the girl you met briefly at Joshua Cheswick's party while you were being Kelsey Blankenship. And Lisa Rickover, one of Alyssa's associates, and one of the girls she uses to gather gossip and maintain social discipline. The sharp face under the dirty blonde hair has a hooded, cynical, and unpleasantly amused expression on her face. When you don't answer, she turns that face directly on you. "Alyssa?"
"Huh? Oh, I didn't know you'd spotted us. Yeah." You turn back to look at Chelsea. "A little psychological warfare, I think. She wanted to tell me all the things I was doing wrong with our squad. You know, all in the spirit of being 'friendly'."
"What a cliché," she snorts. "Blonde and perky and dating the captain of the basketball team. At least you're smart enough to steer clear of Ian." Something inside you tightens. "I wonder who invited them here."
"It's Jenny's party, so I assume she did."
"Who invites skunks to a lawn party?" Lisa snorts skeptically.
Chelsea turns, and her eyes graze over you. You're seized by a sudden intuition that you don't really understand. "Listen, I need to talk to you," you say, grasping Lisa by the arm and gently leading her back to the bedrooms. She raises an eyebrow, but you say nothing as you creep down the hallway. Lisa loves a good mystery, and follows you willingly into the bathroom. "Close the door, will you," you say, as you stand on the toilet and open the cabinet door. "This is about Jenny and Kyle."
Lisa's eyes gleam as you turn toward her with the blank mask in your hand. In fact, she doesn't even seem to notice it, and reacts far too late when you cram it onto her face. The door thumps loudly as she bumps off it, and slides to the floor. You lock the door, then drag her back over toward the bathtub. There'll be no need to loosen her clothes, as Chelsea is smaller than she is, so you just wait for the mask to reappear.
There's a knock. "Is everything okay in there?" Chelsea says through the door in a small voice.
"Yeah, just give me a moment. Is Gordon there? Have him menace anyone who gets too close." You hear muffled voices, and then the sounds of the party come to the fore again.
After the mask reappears on Lisa's face, you scoop it up, then drop Chelsea's mask onto her. The change is instantaneous, and the new Chelsea's eyes pop open. "What the--" she starts with a frown.
"Shhh. Hang on a moment." You open the door a crack, and usher your confederate in. There's a brief moment of electricity when the two Chelseas lock eyes, and then the fake one deflates.
"I get it," she grumbles at her original. "I guess I'm supposed to be your bitch."
"Oh, you two are going to have so much fun together," you snicker, and give Chelsea's arm a gentle squeeze. "I'll be outside waiting." You quickly exit, bumping past Gordon. He catches you a moment, ostentatiously gives you a look over, and smacks his lips hungrily. You pull away and mutter a bad word at him, then return to the living room.
Chelsea and Gordon--the fakes, obviously--appear a few minutes later. Chelsea smiles brightly at you, but her eyes are like twin icicles. "It was so nice running into you here, Alyssa," she says, and her fingers dig into your arm like iron spikes. "We should get together again real soon." She doesn't so much release you as push you away, and then takes off in another direction, dragging Gordon along in her wake.
You watch her go, mouth hanging open. Why is the fake being so unpleasant toward you? Is it a put on, an act? Or is the fake--freed of having to pretend anything to you--showing Chelsea's real emotions and attitude?
You look back toward the hallway, and a minute later Lisa Rickover appears. She glances around briefly, and her expression becomes amused when she locks onto you. She glides over. "Nice job," she murmurs. "What's this about Jenny and Kyle?"
"Huh? Nothing. Is Lisa going to be okay for you?" She shrugs. "It was kind of a quick thing."
"I knew I was gonna regret coming to this thing," she says with ill-disguised sarcasm. "We'll talk tomorrow. Now if you'll excuse me I'm gonna find someone to make out with. I won't be able to look at myself in the morning if I don't." She glides away, leaving you feeling dumbfounded.
* * * * *
"So was it because of what I-- Lisa-- said about Chelsea?" she asks. "Is that how come you picked her?"
You're sitting in Lisa's bedroom, on the corner of her bed. She herself is perched on the window sill, smoking, and looking at you with a cynical expression on her face.
"I'm not sure. It was instinct or something."
Lisa takes another drag and blows it sideways out of her mouth, through the open window. "What did I-- she-- say? 'Short, blonde and horrible'?" She laughs. "That's it in a nutshell, isn't it?"
"Are you pissed?"
She carefully taps some ash into a cup. "No. I don't think so. It's a funny thing, is all. It was kind of a shock, waking up and having-- myself-- looking down at me. Especially when I'm not quite myself."
"What did you say to her? What did she say to you?"
She shrugs. "I told her to just be herself. She said something about 'You get to have all the fun'. Then I told her to shut up and get out."
You give a short laugh. "Like, it's not fun being Chelsea Cooper."
"I told you, it gets tiring after awhile." Her gaze grows distant. "They're awfully realistic, those fakes," she says. "Gordon really was just like Gordon, except--" She shrugs again and grinds out the cigarette. "Well, here we are." She hops down from the window. "And what are we gonna do?"
"Be Alyssa Randal and Lisa Rickover, I guess. Do you wanna switch or something?"
"Do you?" she says with a short laugh. "No, I put you there because I thought it'd be funny if you got to be the head cheerleader for a change. And you put me here because you thought it'd be funny too, or something."
"I didn't, really," you protest. "What makes you think it's funny?"
"Oh, just--" She straddles the chair by her desk and leans her arms on its back. "You're so fucking popular, Alyssa. So fucking nice. I'm being honest, a lot more honest than the real Lisa is with the real Alyssa, you know." Her eyes glint. "Everyone loves you because you're such a good person."
You feel yourself turning pink. "And there's something wrong with that?"
"No. It's just a much different scene over here than at Westside, right? I mean, Jenny and Kyle. You. Ian. You're all so nice." She clucks her tongue. "Except maybe it's not so different. Still the jocks at the top, and everyone else scrambling around underneath, trying to stay on their good sides."
"It's not like that," you retort hotly. "If you were at the bottom at Westside, like I was, you'd know--" But she waves you silent.
"Yeah, I know what Gordon and Steve got up to. That was just hassling, to keep the lines of authority clear. The lines are just as clear over here. That's why there's so much sucking up. Not that it does anyone any good. Everyone has their place and they keep to it." She fixes you with a hard glance. "You see to that, don't you, Alyssa?"
This doesn't sound like Chelsea. (Or does it?) It doesn't sound like Lisa, either. "You sound like Chris Yves."
Amusement washes over her face. "Girl makes a lot of sense sometimes. In fact--" She peers at you. "Maybe we're in the wrong places. If you want a good view of things at Eastman, maybe you should move over into Chris. Or, I dunno, move into Lisa, and I'll move into Chris. That's the thing to do, if you really want shake things up over here."  | Members who added to this interactive story also contributed to these: |
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