After no more than a minute, Karyn spun her subject around and pointed her at a full-length mirror.
Athena's jaw dropped.
Karyn had put her into Sarah McMillan's cheerleading uniform.
This was a mistake. This was a horrible mistake. Athena had let herself be lead into a trap, and now she was definitely caught. No matter what she did, no matter how long she lived, she would always know what she'd look like in a cheerleader's uniform. And not just any cheerleader's uniform, she realized as her eyes fell upon the pink-stitched "C" above the left breast, it was a cheerleading captain's uniform.
Maybe it wasn't too late. Maybe, so long as Athena hadn't actually spoken to Miss Fine, she could extricate herself from the process that had consumed Karyn. Had consumed Zoe.
Athena spun in a fury, dodged around Karyn, and picked her black clothes up from off the floor before darting out of the closet, out of the bedroom, and down the hallway to the staircase.
As she scrambled down the stairs, she heard the voice of Susan McMillan calling from below: "Oh, Athena, are you heading out?" It was a sickeningly saccharine contrast to the disdain that Athena had been greeted with just a few minutes earlier. "Well, thank you for stopping by!"
Athena barely paid the older woman any attention as she ran to the front door, leapt off the porch, and ran all the way back to her house without stopping to catch her breath.
It was only then, as she dropped the pile of black clothes she'd been carrying with her, that she realized something was wrong: this wasn't Athena's gothic dress. It was a black cocktail dress. Probably Sarah's.
Had Karyn planted it on purpose?
