"Oh, hey, there you are, baby! Was starting to wonder aboutchu; you all good?" Biff asked, putting his arm around Kyla's shoulders.
"Oh, I'm feelin' better than ever, myself!" Kyla replied with a giggle and just a bit of a blush. One of the hottest guys in the school, cuddling up and close with her like it was the most natural thing in the world; Kyla could definitely get used to that! "I just happened to run into some dw-" Kyla caught herself. Some dweeb had almost passed through her lips as naturally as a breath out; she wasn't winning any bets if she let things like that slip by. "Uh, another girl, in the bathroom. She told me something, heh heh, pretty hilarious, actually! I actually had to fix my makeup after laughing so hard, you know?"
"Oh yeah? And what was that?"
"For me to know, Biff, for me to know..." Kyla giggled mysteriously.
"Oh, no no no, girl, that ain't gonna work and you know it!" piped up one of Sarah's (and now apparently Kyla's) female friends, Melissa Smith. She was with her own boyfriend (one Randy Goodman) and a couple other jock-cheerleader couples that had come with Sarah to the theaters; tonight was apparently a night their clique had set aside for movie dates en masse, Kyla figured. "Who was it? What'd she say?"
"Oh, I dunnooo~," Kyla teased. She was having much, much more fun playing dumb and teasing her friends than she ever would have before the Cloud, she realized. "Maaaybe I might have made a little deal with the dw-, the girl I met in there, and maaaybe I'm just itching to see exactly how it's going to blow up in her face, but maaaybe I shouldn't be spoiling any surprises for you guys and gals before it's ready!" Kyla giggled again, mischief written all over her face.
"Oh~?" Melissa's eyes glimmered excitement to echo Kyla's own. "My lips are sealed and my eyes are peeled, then!"
"You're soooo meeean, Kyla!" came the whine of one Amber Levine, hands down the most naïve member of the cheerleading squad and certainly not the brightest, from what Kyla had heard. She seemed genuine, if childlike and inarticulate, when pouting "Girls have gotta be nice to each other and stick together and, uh, and stuff, right?"
"They really should, shouldn't they, Amber?" Kyla replied, smile fading a bit. That was a big part of exactly why she'd made the bet -- incentive not to become the dreaded class-A bitch she'd always known Sarah to be, now that she was literally in her shoes -- but a huge part of her couldn't help but be thrilled at the idea of setting Sarah up for failure, no matter how much the other parts complained that that was liking the old Sarah setting up Kyla herself for failure.
As if she'd ever really have a chance! Kyla thought, stifling a chuckle to herself again. The old Kyla, and apparently the new Sarah, were among the biggest losers in all of VLHS! Dorky, unpopular nerds with stutters, little to no visible fashion sense, so little charisma they could barely hold a conversation with their own reflection, and not a snowball's chance in hell of ever so much as licking the heels of the popular clique! And somehow, despite all of that, Sarah actually thought that with a little makeup and an attitude adjustment, she could really challenge the-
"Hey, is that her?" Melissa pointed out, abruptly breaking Kyla's train of thought. "Was it Sarah you were in the bathroom with?"
Kyla turned to the bathroom doors. The smirk she'd been wearing constantly since leaving the bathroom vanished at once, and she could have sworn her heart had suddenly leapt out of her chest. She realized, with nauseatingly sudden clarity, just why it was Sarah had felt so threatened by her before.
In a lifetime's worth of makeup sessions -- once every morning, once before every date, once before every major public event, once every so often just for the hell of it, and with touchups in bathrooms, in cars, in waiting rooms, and even on buses -- Sarah McMillan had never felt so much as a fraction of the outright FEAR she felt today, rebuilding her and Kyla's "look" from the ground up. She hadn't even realized it was possible to feel this way when simply putting on makeup! With every little detail she'd add, she'd be near-paralyzed with irrational, almost phobiac fears that she was fucking it up somehow; that when she walked out there and had to confront Melissa, and Biff, and even emptyheaded little Amber out there, she'd just be laughed off and humiliated for so much as even attempting to look as good as she was used to, failing miserably and making a total laughingstock of herself! Her hands were literally shaking with fear as she applied the makeup; and that just made it even worse!
Okay, calm down, calm down, Sarah, calm down! she coached herself as the makeup came on. Nobody knows makeup better than you do! You still got it; just look at Kyla, a minute ago! Sarah thought as she took some deep breaths. I still have the basic body of the sexy Sarah McMillan, and I know what I'm doing!
Sarah still had all her old memories, and frankly too many of those had pondered Kyla's hidden potential charms. There was a girl-next-door's-ness to her, an innocent little-old-me look that a skilled hand could easily tease out of the nerdy glasses-and-ponytail thing she had going on. She knew full well there were many, many guys that went nuts for that kind of thing: the shy, pretty little damsel in distress that just needed a "hero" to tell them they were important and pretty, and if Kyla had known that, or how to lean into it through looks and act, like Sarah did, she very well could have been a force to undermine Sarah's iron grip on the school's social hierarchy. There were other hidden gems of girls like that -- the buxom and boyish Karyn Black came to mind, for instance -- but Sarah had personally seen to it that either none of them dared, or none of them cared, or both. But now, she was herself one of those hidden gems of girls, and she would have to be the one contesting the hierarchy she'd so carefully built herself. That thought terrified her on so many levels... Focus, Sarah! Makeup, just makeup! You know your makeup!
Eyeliner, in a light hand, to open her eyes up and make them look big and innocent and cute; eye shadow, also light, to make the eyeliner less obvious and open her eyes up even more; blush, nice and red, giving her a look of perpetual embarrassment as if she'd just been caught staring at the guy she liked; a sweetheart's pink lipstick, just heavy enough to be there but not enough to notice if you weren't looking; no unnatural colors; no unnatural shapes; nothing ostentatious, if she could help it. The hair, let it down, except for two modest braids to her shoulders from either side of her face. The glasses, she just built everything else around. A few buttons came off the top of the blouse, just to subconsciously suggest something. Sarah knew what she was doing, and she knew that she knew what she was doing; so why am I still so scared to go out with this look!? I've done everything right, with what I have on hand! She thought in frustration.
It felt like an eternity of just checking and double checking and triple checking every menial little thing about her look, over and over again, until she was convinced she was as perfect as she was possibly going to get that night, and yet somehow still not happy with it all. Still, that meant no more stalling; she was going to have to go out there by virtue of having literally nothing left to do. All there was now was to take a deep breath, turn to the bathroom doors, and head on out there.
Kyla was awestruck. Sarah was gorgeous! Not like she had been before; she was still the impossibly shy little nerd that Kyla had embodied before, that hadn't changed, but she had taken that look and somehow turned it into the modest version of a guy's wet dream! Kyla would never have believed it if she hadn't actually seen Sarah before and after, or didn't know what the Cloud had done.
"Oooooo, she's pretty!" Amber Levine commented dreamily, who had herself turned to see Sarah leaving the bathroom and looking all over the mall's food court with those impossibly big doe eyes. "We should invite her to hang out with us!" she said thoughtlessly, pulling away from Chris Morgan (her boyfriend) to go and say hi before Melissa stopped her.
"Hey, hey, uh, hang on, Amber, we shouldn't just invite people over to our group unless we're all okay with it!" Melissa explained only slightly condescendingly. She hadn't taken her eyes off Kyla ever since the color drained from her face when she'd seen Sarah, and she was swift in figuring out that whatever prank it was Kyla had devised, something had just gone very, very wrong. "I don't think we're all okay with it, are we?"
Kyla was torn. Her chest was all in knots at the sight of Sarah like that, and inexplicably she felt lots of... anger? No, no, that wasn't right... Jealousy, Kyla realized. This is what Jealousy feels like, and thanks to that magic or whatever it was, I'm now one hyperjealous motherfucker! The urge to lash back at Sarah was overwhelming; all she had to do was click a finger, and Melissa wouldn't just keep her out of their group, she could heckle Sarah with Kyla and company until she was running home and drowning the whole way there with her tears! And worse, she couldn't possibly have articulated why, but Kyla wanted that to happen much more deeply than she would've ever dared admit.
But that's not fair! It's everything I bet Sarah I wouldn't be! There was no part of the conscious mind of Kyla that thought doing that with Sarah would be the right thing to do, no matter what her newly acquired subconscious screamed at her. What ensued in Kyla's head was the exercise of just about every ounce of restraint she possessed. "I-it's okay, girls, she's cool," Kyla forced herself to say, with absolutely none of the confidence she'd had before. "Bring her on over, if you want."
"Okey dokey! I'll go talk to her!" Amber said, obliviously skipping off to go meet Sarah. Melissa's face was still all hard and disbelieving scrutiny while looking at Kyla, not once looking away. Biff's, too, though to a lesser degree than Melissa's. Kyla could only helplessly reply "A deal's a deal..." to those looks.
Sarah had been all but invisible to the rest of the mall, when she'd left before putting her makeup on. She wasn't used to that feeling at all, and she wasn't sure she'd liked it. But it turned out, now that she was most definitely not invisible and catching the gazes of the jocks and losers alike, her new personality was making her feel absolutely awful by comparison. It was like every stare was a headlight to her frozen deerlike terror! Somehow, despite all rational thought that should have indicated otherwise, she was sure that every one of those bystanders was thinking the worst of her, that none of the makeup had worked, and that any moment her old friends were going to start jeering and making fun of her and running her out of the mall! Hell, the old version of Sarah might even have done that to Kyla in her place just for the fun of it, no matter how good or how bad she actually looked! Kyla was sending someone over now, oh god, what was she thinking!? Should she run!? Should she head back to the bathroom, again!? What should she do!?
"Heya, there! I'm Amber Levine, what's your name?" Amber stuck a hand out to Sarah's to shake.
It took a little while for Sarah to come out of panic enough to figure out exactly what it was she was supposed to do. With extreme wariness, she reached out and took Amber's hand for a few quick shakes. "S-sarah, McMillan..." she said slowly. Of course, she knew perfectly well who Amber was and had no need for introduction, but Amber clearly didn't. Amber wasn't the person whose understanding of a thing one counted on, and even that made Sarah nervous; she was the one she'd have sent if she wanted to send someone who genuinely believed a thing the rest of the cheerleaders didn't, since she often hadn't realized as much, and of course there was the charm a pretty face had on top of that. Was this a scheme?
"Well, Sarah, I think you look really really cute! And you look all sad, being over here by yourself, so I thought, why don't why you join the rest of us cuties over there?" Amber gestured over to where the cheerleaders and the jocks were gathered. "Then you wouldn't be all alone and sad over here!"
Now Sarah definitely smelled a setup, and almost turned Amber down right then and there. But, wait... what was up with Kyla? Everyone else was giving her a very strange look, and she was in turn giving Sarah a look that seemed at once to say everything and nothing. Sarah couldn't place it well at all, but... maybe...?
"Y-yeah... I'll come over, b-but, please be nice... I'm too shy for my own good."
"Oh, that's okay! Everyone starts somewhere, you know? Now let's go!" Amber took Sarah by the hand and actually pulled her on over to the belly of the beast, the beast of Sarah's own creation.
