"Well, uh, that's great, I guess, but... isn't figuring out what happened here kinda more important?" Sarah asked, stumbling over her words much more than she was used to.
"Look Sarah, if I knew how to give you this body back, you'd have it already," Kyla retorted without looking up from her phone. "I don't wanna be the school's prissiest fucking bitch queen, like you always were." Her expression hadn't even changed as she said it.
Sarah's jaw dropped. "Ex-excuse me!?" Kyla never talked like that, especially not to Sarah of all people! But now she had, and Sarah felt like she'd just been slapped in the face.
Kyla looked up, at Sarah's suddenly terrified expression, and for a moment didn't understand. When it finally registered what she had just said, her face turned to one of surprise too. "Oh... I just said that, didn't I?" Kyla muttered in wonder.
"Y-yeah!" C'mon, Sarah, don't let her get away with that! Say something; sting her back! "Th-that was... (gulp) really mean!" was all Sarah could manage.
"Yeah..." Kyla nodded. "I guess, I'm sorry?" The scary thing to her was that it kinda felt good. This was Sarah McMillan after all, and now she was finally getting back at her! At the same time, another part of her had made that face way too many times to be okay with seeing it on Sarah's dorky head. "But that's exactly what I'm talking about, Sarah: I don't wanna be saying things like that!"
"Then, uh, then don't! Just... uh, just..." Sarah looked like she could cry. Why aren't the right words coming to me!? she thought in frustration. "Just be who you were before!"
"Tch, as if you'd be okay with that," Kyla said with an eyeroll. "You hated me before, remember?"
"What? No, I didn't!" Sarah said in surprise.
"Could've fooled me," Kyla said dismissively.
"No, Kyla, look, I...!" Sarah was stammering, and for a moment she found herself actually trying hard to put a simple sentence together. "You were nice, but... you... didn't try, you know? You, would've been c-cuter, than you thought, if you had just, y'know, tried? But you didn't!"
Kyla gave her a look, evidently not following. "So, what, that made you better than me or something?"
"W-well... um..." Sarah looked down at the floor and meekly squeaked "...k-kinda?"
"Wait!" a thought occurred to Kyla, and the moment it did a massive grin spread across her face, accompanied by the most absurd rush of glee she'd felt in a very long time. "Did you feel threatened by me!?"
Sarah didn't have to answer; all she had to do was blush, do the blubbering thing she'd been doing, and look away, and all of sudden Kyla burst out in a loud, hysterical laughing fit.
"HA, HA HA HA! OHMIGAWD, HA HA HA! THAT'S HILARIOUS!" Sarah McMillan, the untouchable head of the cheerleaders, prettiest and most popular girl in the school by a country mile, felt threatened by her! Kyla Leeson, the shyest, dorkiest, most invisible girl in the school! Kyla was tearing up, and couldn't breathe; she was going so red in the face in her laughing fit Sarah thought she might actually collapse.
"S-stop! I-it's not funny! Please, you aren't acting like yourself!" Sarah protested, blushing red as a tomato.
Kyla was going to choke on her laughter before she gained even a modicum of control back. Sarah was right, Kyla doubted that before she'd get such a euphoric surge from the idea that someone might've felt threatened by her, but at the moment, she didn't care.
"HA ha... (cough) hee hee hee!... (cough) I'm (cough) I'm sorry!... it's just, (cough) hahaha!... You, (cough) of all people!" Kyla was evidently fighting hard for control back, now, trying to contain her fit, and only just barely doing so.
"Breathe! J-just, just breathe, girl! Okay? Don't die on me!" Sarah's expression was one of genuine worry at this point.
The next minute was spent just watching Kyla pant and try to take breaths as deep as she could, the teary grin still plastered to her face. When she finally had enough composure back to speak properly, she broke the silence with "We're betting!"
"What?" Sarah said, unsure she'd heard properly.
"We're making a bet! A gamble! We're doing it, that's happening!" Kyla said excitedly.
"What bet?" Sarah asked in confusion.
"You, you know makeup and popularity and how to win friends and influence people and all that stuff, or you did, right? Well, put that knowledge to good use! Take the, the version of you, that looks like me, doll it up, make it look and act as much like the old you as possible, cause that's something I have to seeeeheeheehee!" Kyla started laughing again; her fit was still not fully over. When at last she had choked back the laughter again, she continued "I'll, I'll take the version of me, that's like you, and I'll try my best to revert it back to my little old, mousy nerd self, and especially get rid of all your bitchiness. 'Just be who you were before,' right? Whoever does it worse, they're the loser, and they gotta be the one to explain to the rest of the school what's happened to us, en masse. It'll be great!" Kyla said, and then started to laugh again, though thankfully her fit was at last beginning to subside.
"Wait, would they not know?" Sarah asked curiously.
Kyla just handed her phone to Sarah and kept giggling; on it was a text from Biff, clearly addressing Kyla as his girlfriend and saying something about grabbing something from the food court while he was waiting for her. Nope, they wouldn't know.
Sarah took a moment and considered it. On the one hand, Kyla was obviously not entirely right in the head at the moment. On the other, it was true that more or less regardless of what Kyla did, if Sarah was going to win her old social status back, she'd have to make a serious effort to makeover the person she'd become, and it was also probably true that the school was going to have to find out about what had happened either way. Something told her the old Kyla as well as the new Sarah might die of embarrassment if she were to get up in front of a crowd to tell them something so ridiculous, though, and this was possibly a golden opportunity to make Kyla do it. The only real downside was an increased risk that Kyla might make her do it, but if she was being honest with herself, the old her might've pulled something like that anyway, bet or not. Slowly, she started to nod. "It's a good idea," she said as she handed Kyla's phone back to her, "but how do we decide that? There's not really a judge here..."
"I'm thinking we can probably just check if there's a clear winner or loser at the end of the day tomorrow." Kyla had finally stopped all traces of hysterics and talked rationally again. "If there isn't, we keep the bet going another day. If there isn't by then, we go another day, and so on until the end of the week. Sound good?" Kyla extended a hand to Sarah, asking for a handshake confirmation of the deal.
"Y-yeah..." Still uncertain, Sarah meekly took Kyla's hand gave it a shake. "It's a deal."
"Great! Now if you'll excuse me, I need to figure out how to touch up your mascara," Kyla said, turning to the mirror. Mascara had run down her cheeks and dripped down her chin, absolutely ruining her makeup.
