Chapter #45The Girl Where Kelsey Used to Be by: Seuzz   You are stiff when you awake, but refreshed, as though you've had a long, deep and serious sleep. You are chilly, though. That's no surprise, as you are lying naked atop the bed. With a grimace and a sigh, you sit up on one elbow. A long hank of hair falls forward over one eye.
Whoa! you think. Then, with a grin: Yes!
You sit all the way up, grabbing your flopping hair and throwing it back behind your shoulder. Breasts hang heavily off your chest, and you catch your breath as you look down at them: lightly tanned things, and slightly pointed, like fat, luscious pears.
You stretch your legs out and spread them. There it is, blushing in the open air. You touch it with a long, slim forefinger, drawing your fingertip over the skin. It gives you a flushing tingle to think that you are touching—
That you are touching Kelsey Blankenship's cooch.
You scramble from the bed and hurry across the floor to the double-doors. You pull them open, disclosing one large mirror hanging on the wall, and two angled mirrors on the doors' interiors. Kelsey Blankenship's reflection, multiplied from three, five, twelve angles and more, stands within them: the slim, naked girl herself, smiling with an open mouth, shocked and delighted.
Your mental vision blurs, so that you have an impression both of looking at yourself with your own eyes, and looking at yourself with some other pair of eyes: eyes with a cooler and more objective gaze. You see yourself, but you also see the girl you have become, someone separate from yourself. That is me, but it is also her, someone else, you marvel.
And what do you see?
A girl who is taller than most other girls, and slim, and a little boyish with narrow hips and breasts that are smaller and more awkward in shape than she would wish. Thighs and calves and biceps that have muscle and definition from working out, but which have shape from exercise, not gross mass. Long, narrow buttocks that tingle warmly when you palm them. The lightening remnants of a summertime tan that itself was always light, so that the tan lines at the tips of your boobs, and around your crotch and waist, are faint. A full head of brunette hair that falls just past your shoulders in a flat, cascading waterfall. Deep-set gray-green eyes narrowly separated by the nose. A rigid but very white smile.
You pull at and play with your hair as, beguiled, you study yourself with twinkling eyes.
So here we are, Kelsey, you bitch, you laugh to yourself. Bet you never thought we'd wind up together like this!
* * * * *
How long you would have spent ogling and taunting yourself this way, you don't know. But you are snapped from the spell by a buzz from your phone. But your first thought isn't, I need to answer that, but Shit, I should get dressed! You hurry over to the dresser where your clothes are rudely folded, and sort through them as the phone—lodged in the pocket of the jeans—continues to buzz.
You don't glut in the act of dressing, but you do notice the feel as they go on. Tight, silky panties; a padded bra that you hook together then twist around to tuck your breasts into. The curve-fitting form of the soft, light-brown linen shirt with the open collar and the short-short sleeves. The bell-bottom blue jeans whose flared cuffs cover your feet, and buttons tightly around your waist. Last, the sleeveless leather vest. Then you fluff your hair out behind your head and sit at the vanity table, snapping on the light and settling your phone by your wrist as you give your face a good, hard look.
Shit. You see now clearly what you glossed past at the other mirror. The copying process has preserved the makeup in place, but has blurred it slightly. You touch your cheek and the corner of your eye as you twist your face this way and that. Touching things up won't work, you decide. You'll have to do some reconstruction.
Before that, you glance at the message that just came through on your phone. It's from Amanda, Kelsey's best friend. Icy bitch, you think as you read the text.
There's not much: She just wants to know if Kelsey has heard back from Chelsea. (Kelsey had been texting Amanda to tell her of the texts Chelsea was bothering her with.) No I told her to go fuck herself, you type back, and I think she took the hint. At least (to your relief) Kelsey told her nothing about Yumi coming over.
You push yourself up from the vanity table and go into the bathroom to get to work.
* * * * *
As you work in the bathroom—wiping away foundation, mascara, and the rest with cotton pads and makeup removers—you marvel at the revelation of how much bile and resentment you have built up against Kelsey, so that you glut and glory in stealing her body and taking her place.
It doesn't seem like you think about Kelsey all that much. She has only been in a handful of classes with you, and has hardly ever talked to you. Even when you got better acquainted with her, while you were going out with Lisa, you didn't see much of her, and she hardly paid attention to you.
And though you could feel her condescension and contempt, it didn't seem like it bothered you much. Oh, sure, you think as you rinse your face with lukewarm water, and pat it dry, I didn't like her. She was a rich, country-club snob taking a lot of AP classes so she could get a scholarship to an Ivy League university that she would drive out to in her luxury car. But there's worse people.
At the vanity table, as you arrange your makeup kits in front of you, you catch your reflected face in the mirror, and pause to give yourself a narrow look. Your lips curl back, like a cat ready to hiss. Then with a glower you start applying a moisturizer to your cheeks and forehead.
Because apparently all those little slights Kelsey directed at you—the little sighs and clucks of the tongue; the looking away with a roll of the eyes; the habit of talking to the person you were with without giving a single glance at you or acknowledgement of your presence— All of these must have built up. How else to explain the release and relief you felt after picking Kelsey to get a mask? It was like punching Lester the Molester in the face, you grimly smile to yourself as you dust your forehead and nose with powder, and seeing him fall flat on his ass.
But it's more than that. What the fuck did Kelsey have to feel so snobby about anyway? So she's rich. Except she's not, it's her dad that's rich, she just gets to enjoy it. So she's taking hard classes: so is Carson Ioeger, and if he's got an attitude it's because he's good at the stuff, not because he's in an AP class. So Kelsey has style—
Okay, she's got that, she knows how to make herself look good, you concede as you touch up your eyebrows with a little gel, and shape the curl of individual hairs. And maybe I never did, you further concede with a wince as you remember how you looked (to Kelsey) while hanging out with Lisa. A gangly scarecrow who wouldn't brush his hair or shave, who dressed like a middle-school twerp. How fucking hard is it to try to look good? you grumble as you lean into the mirror, drawing a thin dark line across the edge of an eyelid with an eyeliner. Especially when you're a guy and all you have to do is keep your hair controlled, your cheeks shaved, and your clothes neat.
It's the way she put herself on a pedestal, you finally decide as you are applying the blush to your cheeks. You can have money, and brains, and style, and popularity, and privilege, and all the rest. But if you act like you're better than everyone else— And especially if you do an "ick" reaction to anyone who tries climbing onto the pedestal with you— Well, people are going to want to knock you off, and will enjoy knocking you off. Even if they don't otherwise give a shit about you one way or the other.
You brush your hair out, and comb it into segments that you snap into place with some strategically hidden hairpins. Then you finish by drawing a shiny lip gloss over your lips. When you are done, you sit back to draw in the full effect. Kelsey Blankenship, freshly made up with the natural look she prefers, grins rigidly back at you.
Well, I forgive you, Kelsey, you smugly tell yourself as you start putting the makeup away. Because now I'm on your pedestal. How can I blame you for having wanted it for yourself?
Back at the wall-length mirrors, you tug your blouse down and straighten your vest and britches, and settle yourself even more comfortably into your clothes.
Anyone would want me, you tell yourself with a mounting excitement that makes you breath come in short, deep bursts. Because I would want myself.
But there is already one guy waiting for you.
Chelsea texted while you were repairing your makeup, to confirm that the switch went off and to ask about getting together to talk. You had put her off with an Everything ok will chat later. But you also got a text from Kim Walsh, class president, asking to meet up for an "important talk," then only said, Let's meet, when you asked what about.
You'd really like get with Seth—it would be so much fun to arrange a "casual" way of bumping into him, to get things started between you. But maybe you should meet with Kim, in case it's something Chelsea needs to know about.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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