Sarah started walking back down the hallway and beckoned Jon to follow her once again. And once again, Jon found that she was all that he could focus on, the the exclusion of any of their surroundings.
But this time, as his attention drew closer and closer to the girl who was leading him down a seemingly-endless set of corridors, a pit grew larger and larger in his stomach. Because the more he focused on the pink high-waisted skinny jeans that were plastered upon the behind in front of him, the more he could feel, the more he knew for an absolute certainty, that his own identical behind was moving in the exact same way. The more he could feel his legs matching Sarah's movements in front of him. The more he knew that every time one of her feet touched the ground, one of his feet did the so as well at precisely the same moment.
And it felt wrong. It felt wrong to swing his hips at all, let alone to do so in time with Sarah's motions. To have the motions of his legs seem dictated my the motions of hers. To follow along, not only in terms of the path that Sarah took, but, Jon soon realized, to literally follow along her footsteps. His feet were landing in precisely the same spots that Sarah's feet had landed only a few seconds before him.
It was as though Jon was a puppet, and Sarah's lower half was the strings.
But the farther they walked, and the more Jon followed Sarah, the further ingrained the muscle memory became. Slowly, the pit in Jon's stomach began to unwind as the movements of his lower half began to feel less forced and more practiced. Like this was simply how he had always walked. Like he had deliberately cultivated this walk for himself. After some time, it became hard for Jon to remember that he had ever walked any other way, that he had ever had any other legs.
The world around him continued to fade, darker and darker, until eventually the darkness overcame even Sarah herself, and Jon could see nothing at all. He continued, pulled forward by some force he could not see or hear, his hips swaying and his legs flowing in the same rhythm that by now they had learned as second nature.
Then he blinked.
The darkness was gone. Jon was in an empty hallway once again, walking forward, but completely alone. Sarah was nowhere to be seen.
But this hallway felt familiar. Jon had been here before. He continued between the white walls with blue and gold stripes, then turned down a corner and saw lockers. Another corner, and in this hallway there were lockers and posters. One more turn and he was back in the bustling hallway he'd started in, full of teenagers chatting amongst themselves and organizing their lockers.
Jon blinked again and shook his head to clear the cobwebs. Then he minced his way in his pink skinny jeans through the crowd, eventually reaching his own locker just in time for the warning bell to ring.
