Zoe stared in shock at the girl standing next to her. She had spent an uncomfortable amount of her morning by now wearing the physiological aura of Biff Meadows; she had interacted with a dozen or so people, passed by a few dozen more, and not one of them had seen Zoe for who she really was. It's a rare person indeed who can gaze through the physiological into the spiritual aura like that. Even Zoe, for all her progress toward enlightenment, was not that far along yet. She couldn't believe that a mere cheerleader--a cheerleader of all people!--could have attained that level of enlightenment.
And even if this girl could see past the illusion of Biff that she was currently wearing, how did she know who Zoe was? Zoe had seen the other girl around school; cheerleaders were not exactly known for blending in with crowds. And as the only African-American on their school's painfully white cheerleading team, this girl stood out. But Zoe... Zoe was a nobody, wasn't she? Most of the cheerleaders wouldn't even look in the direction of Zoe and her fellow goths unless it was to make fun of them.
"How..." Zoe began, but words failed her. "How can you... how do you see... me? Instead of Biff? How do you know I'm Zoe?"
"Zoe," the girl said, "it's me. Mikey."
Zoe's eyebrows shot up. "Mikey? My brother Mikey?"
"Yup," the girl said. "In the flesh. Um, sort of."
Zoe stared in amazement at the gir--at Mikey. She tried to gaze past the glamour around Mikey, but all she could see when she looked at him was a teenage girl in a cheerleading uniform. That thought make Zoe snicker a little, as Zoe pictured her little brother dressed up like a cheerleader... which, of course, was what Mikey looked like on the other side of that stubborn illusion.
"So," Zoe said. "You too, huh?"
Mikey blinked. "Yeah, I guess so." He hesitated for a moment. "Zoe... do you know why this happened to us? Do you know why we've turned into... the people we've turned into?"
Zoe sighed and lowered herself into the grass. "No. I wish I did, but know. I've..." She paused a moment, trying to arrange her thoughts in a way Mikey would understand. "I've read about this kind of thing. There's supposedly a kind of magic that lets a person cast an illusion that makes everyone who looks at them see them as someone else. That kind of spell is called a glamour, but..." She let out a breath and shook her head. "I never really believed that kind of magic really existed. But here we are..." She gestured down at her body. "I don't know why this happened, or how it happened, or how it happened to us." She frowned. "I thought maybe one of my friends had gotten had and cast a curse on me, but that wouldn't explain how you managed to get a glamour cast over you as well." Looking up at Mikey, she said, "I'm going to figure it out. I'll talk to some people... let the people in my coven know what's happened to me, consult a few books. I'll find out what happened to us and then we'll figure out how to set it right. Until then..." She grinned up at Mikey. "I guess you get to shake your pom-poms with the cheerleaders."
Mikey scowled down at Zoe and punched her in the shoulder. She had to laugh; Mikey still hit like a girl now that he actually was a girl.
They were silent for a moment. Then Zoe said, "I wonder if it's just us."
Mikey shook his head, causing his ponytail to waggle wildly behind his head. "I don't think so. Right before I jumped into Janelle's body I saw Jon running down the hallway at home. He was crying, Zoe; I've never seen him cry before. And he looked at me like he didn't recognize me. And..." Mikey licked his lips. "I heard you scream this morning. Or someone who sounded like you, anyway. And I heard Mom and Jon talking to you. I think Biff is in your body, just like you're in his." He blinked. "And I guess that means Janelle is in mine, too. Freaky."
"Very," Zoe said. She'd been so busy dealing with Biff's life and trying to figure out what had happened to her that she hadn't even considered the possiblity that Biff had also jumped into her life. The thought of a boy wearing her clothes frankly creeped her out a little bit. And Biff Meadows was an idiot and a jerk with a capital B-A-S-T-A-R-D. She didn't want him screwing up her life.
Still. She'd had an unpleasant and a lonely morning. When she'd jumped into Biff, she'd found herself behind the wheel of Biff's car; that alone had been frightening enough, especially considering Zoe had never taken driving lessons. She'd gotten to school safely, though, and once she'd figured out who she was and what had happened to her, she had settled into living out Biff's life. She figured that was her best option until she could get some more information. She'd hated every second of it, though. She'd hated mingling with the other football players. She'd hated hanging out in the boy's locker room, whose air, she'd discovered to her disgust, reeked strongly of sweat, and whose walls and floors were stained with all manner of unidentifiable horrors. More than anything she'd hated undressing in front of the football players. She'd hesitated for a long, long time before she was able to work up the courage to take off Biff's shirt and let her bare breasts hang out in front of their eyes. At that point she'd been Biff long enough to know that the other players saw her as Biff, as one of the guys; that no right-minded football player would risk looking at another boy's chest, and even if one of them had looked, they wouldn't have seen Zoe's naked breasts but Biff's hairy, muscular chest. Still, she'd felt incredibly, unspeakably vulnerable at that moment.
She'd towed the line. She'd gotten changed in front of the other boys. She'd played along. She'd pretended to be a macho idiot like the other macho idiots on the football team. She'd laughed at their homophobic jokes, even though it had killed her to do so. She'd dressed up in the horrible, heavy armor that the rest of the players were wearing. But as she marched out toward the football field, she realized where she had to draw the line. She could pretend to be Biff, but there was no way she could pretend to play football. Even if she'd had the athletic ability, even if she'd known the rules to the game, even if the equipment she was wearing wasn't dragging her closer and closer to the ground with every step... she wasn't the six-foot-four, burly behemoth everyone saw when they looked her way. She was a girl. She was a small, skinny, muscleless wisp of a girl, and shew knew that if she stepped out onto that football field to practice with the team, we was going to get crushed. So at her first opportunity, she had ducked away from the rest of the team, returned to the locker room, and gotten dressed in Biff's street clothes again.
After that she'd taken a stroll around the deserted campus of her high school. The football players were on the field exercising, the cheerleaders were gathering on the soccer field in preparation for their own practice, but everyone else was at home. It was Saturday morning, and no teenager in their right mind would be at school unless they had to be. Zoe had enjoyed the walk; it had been good to have a few minutes to clear her head and figure out a plan. She'd just come around to the bleachers next to the soccer field when she'd heard Sarah McMillan's voice. And then she'd exploded in rage.
Sarah McMillan represented everything Zoe hated. Sarah was a spoiled, cruel, vapid bimbo who tortured everyone who wasn't part of the in-crowd. She had been particularly vicious to Zoe and her friends. Zoe had tried to be a good girl and play Biff all morning, but when she'd seen Sarah skipping up to her, she'd realized that she had in her hands a one-of-a-kind, once-in-a-lifetime (she hoped) opportunity to crush Sarah like the cockroach she was. Zoe had never felt so satisfied and so triumphant, and as Sarah had run away crying, she thought that perhaps her whole horrible morning as Biff Meadows had been worth it.
But then Mikey had spoken her name, and everything Zoe had managed to piece together up to that point had come falling apart.
Zoe felt good now. She felt better than she had all morning. Mikey was a creepy, oversexed brat, but he was still family. It was good to know that she was going through this with him. And it was good to know that somewhere out there Jon was in this with them, too. It was even comforting, in a weird way, to know that Biff was going through the same thing. If she had nothing else, at least Zoe knew now that she wasn't alone.
A cool morning breeze blew across the grass. Zoe stared out at the soccer field. The cheerleaders appeared to be in disarray; Sarah had run off crying, and a few of Sarah's friends had followed her, presumably to comfort her. "Janelle"--the name Mikey had been using for the girl he had jumped into--had disappeared. That left just half the squad on the field, and they appeared to be standing around in confusion.
"Zoe?" Mikey asked.
"Yeah?" Zoe said.
"Did you kiss me a few minutes ago?"
Zoe pursed her lips. "You're never to speak of that or think of that ever again. Ever. Understood?"
"Got it."
