Karyn Black woke up for the first time in over twelve hours, finding herself on a stranger’s patio, holding a plate with a half-eaten breakfast burrito, surrounded by cheerleaders and football players.
By now she was used to this transition, had figured out how to improvise based on the information at hand. It was morning, but not early morning. This must be a popular kid get-together. And even her normal self was friends with all the popular kids now, so she belonged. She didn’t have to panic.
But that much time being out of control of her own body left her with a lingering sense of disorientation, even if she could outwardly cover for herself.
Karyn’s eyes scanned the teenagers around her for information, and landed upon two in particular that were, in that moment, opening a sliding glass door to enter the patio: Tiffany Sanders, followed by a surprisingly-distraught Sarah McMillan.
In some other situation, perhaps Amber would have been the first to notice. Perhaps this version of Karyn, who had a lot more negative experiences with Sarah on the balance than positive ones, wouldn’t have cared. Perhaps the bitchy version of Karyn wouldn’t even have been able to muster up the empathy to really notice.
But the last thing Karyn could clearly remember was making a decision to make herself vulnerable in front of Sarah, standing in Jon’s driveway as the last embers of daylight faded on the horizon. And when, by chance, Karyn’s eyes were the first among the assembled to land upon Sarah’s own vulnerable face, Karyn couldn’t help but honor that vulnerability.
“Are you alright?” Karyn found herself pulling Sarah around the corner of the house and away from the crowd, as Tiffany peeled off of Sarah’s arm to join it.
“I’m fine.” Sarah breathed. “I’ll be fine. I just got hit with a little disappointment, and I need to process it.”
It struck Karyn in that moment that this version of Sarah thought that she was her best friend. And what would she say if she was talking to her best friend right now? “So process. With me. What’s bothering you?”
Sarah gave Karyn a pitying, sad little look. “Oh, Karyn,” she sighed. “You’re so different now. He’s been so good for you, but you’ve been so bad for him.”
“Who?”
“Jon.” Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. “I mean, I’m a big girl, I can take it. He just made me so hopeful. When I saw him trying, genuinely trying to be a better version of himself for you, and when I saw you genuinely falling in love with him, it gave me, I dunno, a new faith in humanity or something? But I was wrong. Deep down, he’s just like every other guy. Give him a little ego boost, and he just turns into the biggest jerk in the world.”
Karyn’s eyes narrowed. “What did Jon do?”
“He’s just lording it over me that he fucked you last night. Like, good for him, he got his dick wet, but it feels like he used me and then tossed me aside. It’s not a good feeling.”
Karyn only heard a part of that statement. Her brain had stopped processing things after the phrase “he fucked you last night.”
“He did what?”
“He just said I was jealous, and he was drooling all over Tiffany, and–”
“No, no,” Karyn interrupted, suddenly urgent. “You said he fucked me last night?”
Sarah paused, confused. “Yeah. I mean, you were there, you should know. Did he not fuck you? Karyn, you showed up to brunch smelling of sex without any panties on. If Jon didn’t fuck you, then who did?”
Karyn’s world froze. Critically, she did not know that Jon’s personality had changed. Those memories of Jon were locked away in her other persona. The dots that her mind was connecting, while trying to comfort Sarah, while still a little unstable from being out of control of her own body for so long, told her that Jon had taken her virginity, and that she wasn’t even there to consent to it. It wasn’t even with her, it was with that bitch.
Jon should have known better. He should have turned her down. He should have been his usual awkward self, barely able to even handle a girl kissing him.
A false picture began painting itself in Karyn’s head, of Jon enthusiastically returning every wanton advance her own other self had made, of Jon tossing away everything that their real relationship was in exchange for the promise of sex that their fake relationship delivered. Of Jon taking the trust that she had placed in his hand, and discarding it the moment that his dick told him to.
If Karyn had been in her right mind, she’d have taken a moment to think. If she’d been in her right mind, she might have texted Jon with some questions. If she’d been in her right mind, she may have even asked Sarah for more information.
But in her current state, this information was soul-crushingly triggering.
How dare he.
Karyn turned away from Sarah, even as the other girl called out to her. Sarah was secondary now. The only thought in Karyn’s head was anger. Anger at Jon. For deflowering her. For defiling her. For breaking her trust. She wasn’t thinking about the curse. She wasn’t thinking at all. Jon had betrayed her, and that big red light was flashing in her mind, consuming all of her brainspace, as she re-entered Amber’s house and made her way to the living room.
And when she took the step that brought her physically closer to Jon than she was to Sarah…
She embraced that anger all the more.
It had taken half a day, about a dozen transformations, for Karyn to “train” her other self into tolerating Jon. Because that had been against her nature. Karyn the Bitch needed several iterations of reinforcement just to give Jon a chance. But anger at Jon felt natural. It felt right. So as Karyn transitioned from her good self to her bad self, already seething with anger for Jon, that anger locked itself into place, and it grew.
The words that flowed out of Karyn were the cruelest she could think of. They were demeaning, they were spiteful, and they may or may not have been true. Karyn’s goal wasn’t the truth, it was cutting Jon down as far as she could get him. There were no pauses between her words, no pauses between her sentences, no opportunity for a very confused and suddenly defensive Jon to speak on his own behalf. Karyns’ face was red with rage as a crowd of teenagers formed in the living room.
And when she was finally done, every single one of them was on her side. And while this version of Jon may have been an asshole, he wasn’t stupid. He knew he wasn’t winning this. So when Amber finally, decisively told him to get out of her house, he scanned all of the eyes before him, spat out the word “fuckers,” and walked out the door.
And that was when he remembered that he’d driven here in Sarah’s car, which he no longer had keys for.
“Fuckers!” he shouted again, this time into the sky.
There was a large jacaranda tree in the middle of Amber’s front lawn, purple blossoms in full bloom, a trunk that split off into two sections about a foot and a half off the ground. Jon sat there, in the crook of that tree, sulking like a petulant King Lear on a throne as lavender petals floated around his head.
