By the end of homeroom, Mackenzie had all three girl's numbers in her phone, and a promise to go to the mall with Vivian and Elizabeth on Friday. Melissa might join them as well, but it depended on hoe many practices Sarah scheduled for the cheerleaders. Mackenzie was on cloud nine from the whole experience; sure, based on her core Mackenzie memories, it wasn't that remarkable. She'd never had trouble making friends, and while a brand new school was a little daunting, in her experience most people responded to a friendly attitude in kind. However, she also had memories of being Jon, memories of a time when it felt as though popular people like Vivian and Elizabeth wouldn't give her the time of day. To be fair, it wasn't like Jon had ever been confident to just strike up a conversation with the two pretty, well liked girls, like Mackenzie was, but that fact didn't diminish the joy she felt in the moment.
Vivian even turned out to be in her next class, AP Lit, and Mackenzie cheerfully let the other girl lead her to the classroom even though, due to her Jon memories, she actually knew where she was going. The whole way she could feel eyes on her and it made her cocky smile grow even wider. Sure, part of it was that she was new, but a bigger part was that Mackenzie Choi was someone who turned heads. She was a frankly beautiful girl, dressed in tight stylish clothes that showed of her figure, and walking with a sauntering confidence that drew people to her. 'Okay, maybe Roger and Taylor did make me a little vain, but can you blame me? I'm exquisite.
Zoe was having the strangest dream, and even though it kept dragging on and on, she wasn't waking up. It had started with her waking up to discover she was in a bunk bed in Lexi Starr, her nemesis's room. Instead of being surrounded by her den of Gothdom, she was thrust into the preppy, sporty domain of that irritating ball of sunshine that was Lexi. In fact, as she got out of bed and frantically looked around, eventually stumbling on a mirror, she discovered she WAS Lexi Starr, from her hair down to her toes. Only, the instant she was about to start screaming about whatever Freaky Friday shit she'd gotten caught in, Lexi herself hopped down from the top bunk, hugged her, called her sister, and went to take a shower.
From there Zoe had continued in a bit of a daze, eventually determining this had to be a dream, because the logic of it was so messed up. She was apparently Lexi's twin, but not her twin in the way actual twin's work, who looked very similar but had small minor differences from their lived experience, and of course independent lives and personalities. It was more like she was a literal copy paste of Lexi, and the original was still there.
The weirdest part of the dream was that if Zoe didn't focus, her body sort of went on auto pilot, living this bizarro Lexi girl's life, getting ready for school. Apparently she was back at the start of the year for some reason she couldn't fathom. Maybe she ate something weird before bed and it was really messing with her head? Lexi's parents treated the two like a singular unit, and both of them were apparently taking the exact same classes, and participating in Volleyball.
'Oh this must be a nightmare, Zoe thought through the fuzz as Mrs. Starr drove them to school, 'I've literally turned into what I hate. I'll have to try and remember this for the dream journal, Athena will go apeshit over something with this much symbolism.'
That was her mindset when she got to Lakeview Academy, just kind of floating along after Lexi and waiting to wake up. Only, it was third period now and she was still sleeping. Surely she'd wake up, any minute now.
It was third period when Mackenzie laid eyes on the person she'd been hoping to see all day. It wasn't Sarah, who the programmers were hoping she'd be a rival for; she wasn't expecting to make first contact with the queen bee until lunch. It also wasn't Karyn; as much as Mackenzie would like to rekindle their friendship in her new identity, she wasn't going to rush it. She wanted to really get immersed in being Mackenzie before she got to close with Jon's best friend, trying to avoid old patterns and all that. No, the person she'd been dying to run into, who turned out to sit in front of her in her new psychology class was Karyn's older sister, Kimberly Black.
Jon had had a crush on the lovely elder Black sister nearly as long as he'd known Karyn, and it hadn't gone away after she'd become Mackenzie. In the new girl's defense, she thought it would be hard not to have a crush on Kim if you met her. There was the obvious fact that Kimberly was really, REALLY hot. She had long strawberry blonde hair, the cutest light dusting of freckles below her Disney-big green eyes, and incredible curves Kenzie just wanted to run her tongue over. Unlike Karyn, who was fairly petite, Kimberly had mammoth mammaries, at least a whole cup size up from Mackenzie's own enticing 34 Cs, and larger lovely hips. She stood around 5'8, which had been shorter than Jon, but was now the perfect height for Mackenzie to potentially snuggle up to.
It wasn't just her looks though that drew Mackenzie to the other Black sister, it was everything about her. Kimberly was kind, funny, passionate about the things she cared about and playful in a way that had made Jon nervous, but excited Mackenzie. As Jon she hadn't interacted much one on one with Kimberly, but Jon had of course frequently seen and briefly spoken to her countless times over the course of his friendship with Karyn, and everytime he was just a little more charmed. Not to bad mouth Karyn, but while the sisters were similar, there were a few qualities to the older one that made her more appealing as a potential girlfriend than the younger Karyn. Kim was a bit softer around the edges for lack of a better phrase, more emotionally open and nurturing in nature. She also didn't have Karyn's strident dislike of certain cliques, the jocks and the cheerleaders especially, although both of those traits of Karyn were probably fallout from her issues with Sarah.
Of course Jon had never done anything about his crush. For one, Karyn had been the first really close friend he'd ever had and he didn't want to mess that up by trying to date her older sister and make things awkward. He had also been fairly certain that, while Kimberly would have let him down gently, he would have been turned down due to the older girl being way out of his league. The same lack of confidence that meant Karyn was one of his only friends, largely because she had initiated their early conversations, had held Jon back from asking anybody out, much less Kimberly. Those were the reasons Jon had kept his crush to himself the first two years he'd known Karyn, and by extension Kimberly, but they were all dwarfed by a new one that arose the summer between freshman and sophomore years; Kimberly came out as gay.
That had been the end of even the idle hope something could ever happen between them, until her revamp into Mackenzie brought it roaring back to life. Now, even though she doubted it was the intention of the programmers when making her new life, everything had lined up for Mackenzie. There was no longer any baggage surrounding asking out the sister of her best friend since Mackenzie hadn't even met Karyn yet. Unlike Jon, Mackenzie was perfectly self assured in making the first move, and, most importantly, their genders and orientations now aligned properly.
All of this was why Mackenzie Choi bit her lower lip in nervous excitement when she saw Kimberly, wearing ripped jean shorts, a lilac low cut cami top, with a crescent moon pendant necklace dancing between her breasts, walked into the room. When she took the seat in front of Mackenzie she got even more excited and impulsively, or spontaneously depending on how you saw it, she tapped the girl on the shoulder.
Kimberly turned around and asked, "yes, can I help you with something?"
"Are you sure you want to sit there?" Mackenzie asked leaning forward and not so subtly angling her cleavage for Kimberly to see.
A look of confusion crossed Kimberly's face, "I'm sorry, do you have a friend who wanted to sit here?"
Light dancing in her eyes Mackenzie replied, "No, I'm new, so I haven't met too many people yet. I'm just worried about trying to pay attention all semester, with such a beautiful girl sitting in front of me."
It took Kimberly a moment to realize what Mackenzie was saying, and she then flushed red to nearly match her hair in hue. Too her credit, Kimberly Black was prepared to give as good as she got. She turned more fully around and ran one hand through her strawberry locks, "Oh? You're saying I'm not pretty enough to distract you if I was sitting somewhere else?"
Mackenzie grinned like the cat who'd caught the canary, "Oh, you're pretty enough to distract me even if you're not in the room. I'm Mackenzie by the way, Mackenzie Choi."
Kimberly twirled a strand of her hair, "I'm Kimberly Black, and tell me, Mackenzie, do you talk like this to all the pretty girls?" The older girl was a little charmed despite herself, by this charismatic, and honestly gorgeous new student who was suddenly hitting on her. Kimberly hadn't had a girlfriend since she broke up with her first one, Tanya, a year ago, and while she wouldn't say she was on the prowl for a new one, she wasn't going to ignore someone so intriguing being dropped in her lap. Of course she'd have to get to know the Asian or perhaps Biracial girl a little better; smooth lines were all well and good to start, but Kimberly had no interest in a hook-up. Call her old fashioned, but she was looking for a relationship, not to be another notch on some player's record.
"Only the one's who make me feel like my heart stopped beating," Mackenzie shot back smoothly. She then reigned it in a little bit, they were at school, not a night club after all. She leaned back and nervously bit her lip, "Sorry if I came on a little strong; it's just, I saw you and I couldn't not say something. And now I'm a little worried I've creeped you out and you're not going to want to talk to me." Internally Mackenzie was starting to panic a little bit; her new life and personality had her on a bit of a high, and she was suddenly worried it had made her overconfident and spoiled her chances with the girl of her dreams. Even though Mackenzie was pretty charismatic and social, on some level, deep down, she was as insecure as any teenager might be. If she'd ruined things with Kimberly out of the gate just because she was feeling cocky today, she'd hate herself for it.
Kimberly laughed, but her defenses softened a bit at the otherwise smooth girl's nervous babble at the end. "I'm not opposed to talking to a little more. Hell, you can come on as strong as you want, as long as it's just for me," Kimberly said with a wink, though her own attempt at a smooth line was undercut by all the blushing she did as she said it. She grabbed a pen and quickly jotted down her number on the edge of Mackenzie's notebook, saying "Why don't you call me sometime and we can see if there's more to you than some pretty good lines?" just as the bell rang for class to begin.
Kimberly's Top:
