Sarah and Diamond quickly found the rest of the cheerleading team inside the mall, milling about in front of several different clothing stores. Sarah clapped for their attention. "Okay, focus up! It's time for Worst Skirt. You all know the rules - whoever wins leads the cheer after halftime, whoever loses has to wear the worst skirt to the after-party tonight. You've got fifteen minutes. Oh, and don't leave a mess - we don't want anyone to be banned from any of these stores, okay? And... go!"
The girls split off into the different stores, some hurrying and giggling together, some moving like sharks with determined looks to win or at the very least make sure that they aren't anywhere near the running for losing. Sarah and Diamond let them splinter, then made their way into one of the larger boutiques, filtering through the skirts on the racks.
"What usually wins? Sequins?" Diamond asked, as happily and perky as Sarah had ordered.
"Sometimes it's just a simple awful color," Sarah remarked. She pulled out a brown knee-length skirt with a black diagonal stripe, and held it up, making a face. "Well, found my entry, that was easy. This won't win but it certainly won't lose. Find anything yet, Diamond?"
Diamond kept shifting through options. "Don't call me that," she said cheerily.
"It's your name. Relax," Sarah smirked.
"How does it work that even my last name is different now?" Diamond bubbled.
Sarah shrugged. "Good question. Maybe your parents now let you choose your own name when you were six or something. Guess you'll find out later."
Diamond held up a rainbow-sequin skirt. "Found my entry!"
Sarah stared. "Are you sure? That's really not that bad."
"If we're going beyond just looks, this feels like a series of needles on my skin. Don't judge a book by its cover!" Diamond bounced over to Sarah. "Now what?"
Sarah checked the time. "There's still seven minutes left. Maybe we can start working on fixing that face of yours." She looked around the boutique. "I don't want you to become a twin of anyone on the team, so we're going to have to do this piece by piece, and that's going to take a while."
"Please don't. You don't have to do this." Diamond's voice was still cheerful but had dropped to a whisper. "Please."
"It's happening, so suck it up," Sarah snapped.
"Please..." Diamond was pleading through her glued-on smile.
"What's the matter?" Just then Amber Levine came around the corner. She was holding a garish plaid skirt. "Is something wrong?"
Sarah started to roll her eyes, then stopped and smiled. "You know how it is. Diamond is stressing out about the cheers and routines for the game."
Amber grinned. "Diamond! Why are you stressing? You always do such a great job! The whole team always does!"
Sarah chuckled. "You say that, Amber, because you always think everything is sunshine and unicorns. You don't have a deep thought in your head."
"Nope, I don't! Life's more fun this way!" Amber beamed, then went over and gave Diamond a huge hug. "Diamond, I know everyone at school thinks I'm just a big bimbo, but so what? I'm always happy and fun to be around. The life of every party! Don't let the big things stress you out! Come on! You need to just relax and focus on enjoying the simple things more, like me!"
The small space that Jon still had carved out inside Diamond's head went ice-cold. No.
"Here, copy off me!" Amber continued to give Diamond a hug, but a wave of pink fluff rose from the top of her head, and came crashing down on Diamond before disappearing. Amber gave Diamond one last squeeze, then headed off to find where the other cheerleaders were beginning to gather with their entries.
Inside, the voices remained cacophonous as ever, but now the walls closed in on Jon. Pressure mounted from all sides that enveloped his remaining true self. He tried to put deeper thoughts together, think about how he could get out of this situation... and he just couldn't. The pink fluff was a cocoon, swaddling, burying, suffocating, and pretty quickly Jon just found it easier to stop trying. On the inside, he closed his eyes, and let himself just... sit it all out. There was no need for him to try to direct things. There was no point in trying to fight back against it. Maybe it was better to take a nap until it was all over. And just like that, the last remaining voice of Jon stopped speaking up.
On the outside, the light shifted in Diamond's eyes. The smile on her face now reached her eyes. An invisible weight was off her shoulders. It was a simple shift in many ways, but Sarah caught it.
"Diamond? Are you okay?" she tentatively asked, another smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth.
Diamond turned to Sarah. There was a pause, and then her smile grew, joyful and genuine. "Yeah, Sarah, I feel great!" She let out a little laugh. "I feel really good!"
"Tell me honestly," Sarah persisted.
"No, I really do! I'm having fun. And I know you've done a lot to me today, but it's okay! I feel... really nice right now!"
"So my plans to fix your face?" Sarah was grinning too, Diamond's new attitude was infectious.
Diamond shrugged. "That'll be fun too!"
Sarah peered into Diamond and didn't see Jon anywhere inside. She saw the opportunity and went for the kill. "So you feel like you need to not care anymore about getting Karyn's help, and just trust me as your friend, instead?" A pause. "Here, copy off me." And she watched herself pull a few prismatic strands, add it to Diamond's head, and saw them wrap around the pink fluff and hold it in place.
And after a beat... "Why should I care what Karyn thinks? I'm here with you and she's not on the team, right?" She giggled, and Diamond threaded her arm through Sarah's. "Speaking of, don't we need to meet with the rest of the team?"
"Absolutely we do," Sarah led their way to the front of the store, where other cheerleaders were already comparing their skirt entries and shouting from different entrances about the worst and best choices from each store. "I think we're just about done here, and now it's just going to be fun all the way."
Diamond beamed. Fun was fun, and that made her very happy.
