Coach Felicia Barry called roll as the girls, now changed, shuffled out of the locker room and into the gym, inadvertently announcing and cementing the new Jenny Gibson as a student at Lake Point High School.
Coach Barry announced that the girls were going to be doing yoga today, and instructed them to each collect a yoga mat from the equipment closet. The boys were going to be outside in the field.
Only now did a sniffling, sniveling Karyn shove her weight against the gym door to open it up.
"You've got get out here faster, Ms. Black," the coach said with little sympathy. "I already marked you absent, but I'll have to go and change that to tardy."
Tears welled up anew as Karyn got in line at the equipment closet, and ended up with the very last yoga mat: the one colored vomit-green that rats had definitely taken more than a few bites out of. She set herself up in the very back row, at the very back corner.
Jenny, on the other hand, was in the second row, right in the middle. Right behind Sarah McMillan, who was obviously front-and-center. Coach Barry began giving instructions and demonstrating positions, but Jenny was not listening to Coach Barry. Sarah was her model. Sarah was her teacher.
Once again, the world began to fade as everything but Sarah fell to the wayside. It was just like the hallway, except that every part of Sarah's body seemed to hold a string that could pull at its corresponding point on Jenny's body.
The two girls weren't identical, of course. Sarah was now a bit taller. Certainly prettier. Sarah had more delicate arms, and a more generous bust. Her calves were more muscular.
But their cores were identical, and their gym outfits were identical, and Jenny found herself descending into a meditative state, allowing Sarah's body to train hers. Releasing control. Becoming Sarah's shadow in almost every conceivable way.
The world went completely dark about halfway through the session. Coach Barry's voice slipping away into silence. Then the silence gave way to Sarah's voice, instructing Jenny on how to complete every position. Telling her how much time was left. Congratulating her after a tricky pose. Sarah's mouth wasn't moving. But it was Sarah's voice that was instructing. And when that voice said "good girl," Jenny felt the same itch she'd felt when Biff had looked at her, but now it was suffused throughout her entire body, an equal pressure pulsating against every inch of her skin.
She would have shivered if her movements weren't being dictated completely by Sarah's.
Slowly, color returned to the world. No, not the whole world. Just the space above Sarah's contorting body. The image of a disembodied head faded into existence. Sarah's head, her face beaming down at Jenny, her lips moving in time with the commands, with the words of praise that Sarah's voice was delivering. The face took up more and more of the space, overtaking even Sarah's body, until it surrounded Jenny completely. There was no gym. There was no darkness. There was only Sarah, speaking words directly into Jenny's core and manifesting them into reality.
At some point, Jenny realized that the instructions she heard were no longer in the form of yoga poses, but rather were instructions on what taunting gestures to make, what snide comments to give. When had the change happened? It didn't matter. Jenny had given herself up to them. Jenny was following them. She was a good girl.
"Ms. Gibson!" A rough tug on Jenny's shoulder by Coach Barry pulled her back to the reality of the gym, and everything was light once again.
And before Jenny, rather than Sarah McMillan, was a pitiful form blubbering loudly in the fetal position with her face in her palms. Jenny felt no shame when she realized that the prone figure on the vomit-green yoga mat before her was Karyn Black. Why should she feel shame? She was being a good girl.
Jenny got the sense that Coach Barry was about to lay into her, but she was interrupted as the doors to the field burst open and a waterfall of sweaty boys poured into the gym, disrupting all thought.
Sarah ran up to Biff and gave him a hug, and that stirred something within Jenny. Biff may already be taken, but she soon found herself running away from the girls and into the crash of boys to embrace Timmy Robinson, the receiver from Biff's story that morning.
"Meet me after class?" Jenny whispered into Timmy's ear, in a seductive tone that Sarah would have been proud of.
And Mark Burlington, the boy's coach, called for everyone to go back to the locker room. And they all did. And Jenny changed into her pink skinny jeans, matching it with a black over-the-shoulder sweater to contrast with Sarah's white blouse. And after class, Jenny did, in fact, meet with Timmy Robinson, and they both enjoyed one another's company very much.
And Karyn Black wept through the rest of her classes that afternoon. And she wept the entire way while walking home.
