A Bikini Beach Summer
by Daphne Xu

Part 20
Disaster

Thanks to ElrodW, Bikini Beach's creator, for invaluable comments on this story. The Bikini Beach universe and its principal characters are copyright 2001 by him.

Any comments about Bikini Beach, how it works, what it does, by characters other than Anya or Grandmother are potentially non-canonical and wrong. As this story is told from a particular point of view by the protagonist, this includes comments by the narrator. The protagonist, and thus the narrative, are what the protagonist believes or interprets from what he is experiencing. Thus some of the mechanics of BB are biased by the protagonist's view and experiences. Furthermore, because of the particular viewpoint of the story, those errors often won't be corrected. When the errors are corrected, the correction will often be disbelieved and rejected.

Sunday Evening, July 27

"Luke?" Vanessa was crying over the phone. "Tim's been murdered. Jen's out of her mind with grief. I'm with her now, but she needs all her friends. Please come."

"Ma, Pa," I lowered the phone, about to cry again. "Tim Anderson, the person released on bail in Jill's murder, he's been murdered. Jen, she's one of the girls, was his friend, and she needs all of us. I have to go." I was babbling in my own grief and confusion.

Ma, standing over a counter, was crying in distress. "It's all my fault!" Ma repeated. Then she said, "Luke, please go. Go help your friends. Please!"

"Ma's ordering me to go," I told Vanessa. "If I can get there, I will. But someone has to take me. Pa can't leave Ma. She's crying majorly."

"Mom'll get you," said Vanessa. "Ten minutes, she says."

Ruth, Daisy, and I hovered in the background, as Ma cried her eyes out, and Pa leaned over her, murmuring things I couldn't make out. Ma kept saying, "It's all my fault. It's all my fault."

I was relieved when the doorbell finally rang. It was Mrs. King, Vanessa's mom. "How are they?" I asked, as we dashed to her car.

"Everyone's distressed," she replied simply, saying nothing further as she drove off like a maniac.

We arrived in due time, ran up to the door and rang the bell. Mr. Lam, Jen's father, whom I'd never met, answered. "Come in, Mrs. King. And you must be Luke. Upstairs, both of you."

I followed Mrs. King up to Jen's room, scared of what I'd find.

The first thing I noticed upon entering the room was the distinct odor of vomit. Jen was in bed, not crying but frozen in the most sickening expression of shock I'd ever seen. She'd obviously been crying earlier.

Alice, Vanessa, Carol, and Jen's mom were all sitting on the bed next to her. Alice was leaning over her, crying, "I'm so very sorry!"

I had no idea what to say or do. I leaned over and tried to hug her, getting no response. "It's me, Luke." Jen's dad and Mrs. King remained in the background until the doorbell rang and Mr. Lam went to answer it.

Becky arrived, looking utterly devastated. "Alice, Jen! I'm so very sorry! I can't believe what happened. Tracy, my brother, was arrested today for Jill's murder. His DNA apparently matched the murderer's." She collapsed onto the foot of the bed in a new burst of tears.

Alice stared at Becky for a couple seconds, then burst into tears and collapsed on Jen. "Oh, Jen, Jen, Jen! Everything I said, everything I thought all this time, everything I believed about Jill's murder has been totally wrong."

I had to do something. I tried to hug Becky. She said through her tears, "That must be why I was suddenly sent to Aunt Yuko's for the summer. To get me out of the way, to keep me ignorant. My parents knew about Tracy."

Jen came out of her shock, and noticed the grief of Alice and Becky. We all got into a group hug.

There's no great loss without some small gain. We were all friends again, and nobody and nothing would tear us apart ever again.

We stayed until quite late, but eventually we separated and returned to our respective homes. Vanessa may have stayed for the night with Jen.

It took me forever to get to sleep. I kept thinking about the horror of what it's like to be murdered like Jill and Tim, the horror of being falsely accused like Peter and Tim. Perhaps Becky's brother was going to undergo a horror similar to Peter and Tim. Maybe he deserved it as the actual murderer. But with the DNA match, they didn't need his confession.

Monday, July 28

I woke up again crying about the girls' situation. Alice's cousin murdered. Jen's friend Tim framed for the murder, released on bail, then murdered himself. Becky learning that her brother Tracy was the murderer. And Ruth having been framed as Peter for the murder. I had all these memories of life with big brother Peter as well as baby sister Ruth.

I stayed in bed for the longest time, remembering and crying, then finally got up, got dressed, and went downstairs for breakfast. Ruth was already up, and she jumped up and hugged me, crying. "I'm so sorry about what happened!" Ma was apparently still in bed, refusing to get up.

"I'm taking the day off of work," said Pa. "Ma needs me here. I'm very sorry about what happened as well." He reheated my breakfast, and turned on the Mental Work. This was the first time in a number of days that I'd listened to the Mental Work. I felt strangely comforted by Great-Grandma's firm-sounding voice. Then after I finished eating, Pa insisted that he and I record the new Lesson-sermon for the week. "This is all the more important for the situation we are in. Luke, right now you are the only one who can record it with me."

Mr. Matsumoto stormed over here in the middle of our recording. "Tim Anderson's defense attorney called me, and informed me that he'd called the police and urged them to investigate Anderson's murder. Apparently, the officer who spoke with him said that justice had been done, the way it should have been done originally. The officer furthermore called him scum who got murderers and other criminals off scott-free, and apparently slammed the phone down before the attorney could point out that the murderer was a different person. The attorney's working to get the identity of the officer.

"Television commentators have been saying the same thing," he continued. "Even though a different person has actually been identified and arrested based on the DNA evidence. This is a new low for them, but unfortunately, since Tim has been murdered, there is no longer any defamation case against them. They're stupid; they're shameless. And we can't do a damn thing about it.

"The prosecutor, at least, sounded rational. He promised full investigation of Tim Anderson's murder, and denounced vigilante justice precisely because it goes after the wrong person. I mentioned the defense attorney's encounter with the police officer, and said that there was at least a faction in the police force who apparently favored vigilante justice, and who might have acted accordingly."

He departed shortly after, and we finished recording the lesson. I went back up and lay in bed, dozing off and on, crying off and on, fuming in anger off and on, until it was time to don my TKD uniform and go off to piano lesson.

My mood, the recent events, and my lack of practice the previous couple of days led to one of my worst piano lessons ever. I'd completely forgotten both pieces I was supposed to have memorized, and was scolded just about every other minute to the point that I was thinking of getting up and walking out. I didn't, though; I was too much of a coward.

Mrs. Prudence said something at the end of the lesson that surprised me. "Everyone has an occasional bad lesson or rehearsal. Did you have a bad week or something?"

"Absolutely. A dear friend of a friend of mine was murdered yesterday. After being cleared and released from a false murder accusation." I knew he was cleared, because of Becky's brother's arrest for the murder.

Mrs. Prudence said, "The case in the news? Oh my!"

"That's only part of it. Another friend's older brother was arrested for the murder, and he apparently did it. His DNA matched the murderer's. That's sufficiently unbelievable as it is, and you just won't believe the rest of it. But yes, a very bad week. And this lesson... well..." I didn't have a real sense of what I wanted to say, and was too much of a coward to say it anyway.

I packed up my piano books, and went out -- only to encounter outside the entire gang from Bikini Beach! Vanessa, Jen, Alice, Becky, and Carol, all arm-in-arm. "Guys!" I exclaimed, hugging them all. Vanessa had to briefly let go of Jen to hug me. Carol gave me a wonderful long kiss, and whispered in my ear, "I love you." By now, I was blushing but very happy, seeing them all.

"We still needed to be together," Vanessa explained. "Jen and Becky need the support, Alice needs it, and we think you do too. Jen needed to get out of the house." I'd mentioned Ma's breakdown of guilt and grief.

I joined them, sandwiched between Becky and Carol, and we all went to the mall for my Taekwondo class. Unlike my piano lesson, the TKD class went fine, which was fortunate because the girls were watching me. The exercise let me forget my problems for the moment.

Then we all went together to pick up Ruth at ballet. "My goodness!" she exclaimed upon emerging from the studio in her leotard and tights. "You all came with Luke, to pick me up! Carol!" she hugged her hard, and then me. "Luke! Hey Vanessa!"

I didn't want to let go of Carol or Becky, but I also wanted to hold onto Ruth. I resolved that conundrum by lifting Ruth up -- "Luke, what are you doing?" -- and sitting her on my shoulders, her legs on either side of my head -- the way Pa sometimes carried me when I was little. Oof, she was heavy! "You okay?" I asked, as I returned my arms around Carol and Becky.

"I'm fine, Luke. Just remember, if I fall, you're going down with me." She clenched her muscular legs hard about my head and shoulders to emphasize the point.

We started off home.

Ruth commented, "Pa carried me this way when I was just a toddler, and later carried Luke the same way. I never imagined I would be carried again this way, this time by my kid brother -- especially as a nine-year-old girl."

"It's hard keeping in mind that that's really you in there Peter," I said. "I'm so used to thinking of you as Ruth."

"When Pa took me to ballet today, he asked if I really wanted to go. Wouldn't I be embarrassed as Peter doing it? I told him I'd gotten over my embarrassment my first week as Ruth, and now I like the class. As Pa discovered the hard way, ballet complements Taekwondo nicely."

Carol said, "Ballet is supposed to be the ultimate humiliation for a manly man or boy, turned into a girl. That's probably why they do it so often. Humiliation is one tactic they use to control and convert you."

"Yaaaah," drawled Ruth. "I think that Ma and Bikini Beach meant it that way for me."

We walked some in silence, and then Ruth reached over and tapped Becky's shoulder and said, "You're Tracy's kid brother, Bruce, aren't you?"

Becky burst into tears. "Yes, I'm so sorry! I'm sorry about everything!"

"Please, please!" said Ruth. "I'm so very sorry for the situation you're in. I knew him a little in high school, and we got to talking with each other and becoming friends when we discovered that both of us would be going to Pacific Tech. I can't believe he'd do such a thing. And I also can't believe I would somehow be accused and blamed for the crime. It's not your fault, not in the least."

Becky was still crying, so I held her harder to me, hoping to comfort her. Alice leaned against her from her other side, and we wound up walking the rest of the way home pressed hard together, Becky sandwiched between the two of us.

By the time we got home, my shoulders were aching like crazy with the weight of Ruth. I crouched down, and she dismounted into a somersault, leaving me about to levitate into the air. I stood back up, awkward with dizziness, supported by Carol and Becky. Meanwhile, Ruth dashed inside, being the first as usual to shower.

As I entered, I couldn't see either Ma or Pa, so I called out, "Ma, Pa, I'm home. My friends came with me."

Pa called out from the distance, in their bedroom. "I can't come out, we have an emergency. Please make yourselves at home. I've called Mrs. P--, who's working for us." Mrs. P-- was our Christian Science Practitioner.

What was going on? I wondered, as I went into the kitchen to get soda and snacks for my friends. I screamed, my stomach heaved trying to vomit, and I almost fell from faintness -- at the blood in the kitchen.

My friends rushed in behind me, and suddenly there was chaos everywhere as everyone screamed, fainted. I felt myself being pulled back, and heard Vanessa shouting over the noise, "Everyone, back in the living room! NOW!" She was grabbing and yanking us all away. I only barely noticed now what I didn't notice first coming in, the blood spots leading from the kitchen to Ma and Pa's bedroom.

"Someone get a camera!" shouted Vanessa. "We need to photograph this before messing it all up; we may need it as evidence. Then we can find out what happened."

Pa came out, carrying a camera. "I'll do it, although it's really not necessary." He snapped a few pictures. "Ma tried to kill herself while I was taking Ruth to ballet class."

Oh my bloody cursed God! I was too much in shock to actually cry, but I felt like I was about to burst in tears. I pulled away from my friends trying to push me down into a chair. All the arguing about whether to call 911 or trust the Practitioner faded into the background. All I knew is that I had to do one thing.

I made my way to the telephone, found the number for Bikini Beach, and dialed. As soon as someone answered, "Bikini Beach, how may I help you?" I burst into tears and begged, "Please, let me speak with Anya or Grandmother. I'm Luke Cuttington. I was with--"

Grandmother's voice promptly came on the line. "Luke, I'm so sorry about young Anderson's murder and the arrest of your friend's older brother."

"Ma tried to kill herself! I don't know how bad. Please do something!"

"I'm so very sorry about your Ma," replied Grandmother. "We're going to do something. I can't tell you our plan, but things should be repaired."

"Thank you!" I dropped the phone and collapsed.

I wasn't totally out of it; I did barely notice being lifted and taken to the sofa. I also barely registered sirens in the background, but came suddenly alert when I realized they were stopping here.

Men entered, and went into Ma and Pa's bedroom. Something was happening in there; I heard soft talk. Eventually, Ma was carried out tied to a stretcher, to the ambulance outside.

"Luke, Ruth," Pa said. "I'm going with Ma to the hospital. I hope to return tonight, but if I don't, both of you are old enough to spend the night alone, or if you want, you can go to Daisy's house for the night." I noticed Ruth and Daisy off to the side, clinging to each other.

Jen came up in tears and hugged me. "Oh, Luke!" I cried again, reminded that her friend was dead. At least Ma was still alive. We had another round of hugs and tears, including Ruth and Daisy, hugging me together.

Vanessa said, "Girls, I think a couple of us should make ourselves useful, by cleaning things up." She went into the kitchen, and began cleaning up the bloody spots. I decided I couldn't let my friends do all the work.

I got up and went into the bedroom. I saw that the bedspread and the light blanket underneath had blood on them. A little had soaked through to the sheets as well, although none to the mattress pad and (thank goodness) to the mattress underneath.

When we took the blood-stained bedclothes to the washer, I asked, "Can the bedspread and blanket be washed?"

"Yes," answered Alice, "but on delicate settings."

"Blood has to be washed with cold water. Otherwise, it bakes in," added Carol. We started with the bedspread.

Meanwhile, others put on a new set of sheets, blanket, and bedspread. The kitchen floor was cleaned up, and someone found a carpet stain remover, and cleaned the blood from the carpet.

We didn't limit ourselves to removing the blood. Carol and I cleaned up my room which tended to be rather messy. Ruth and Daisy cleaned up Ruth's room. "Work is a good antidote to grief, when we can't actually do anything," said Vanessa. I also overheard her telling Jen, "Mom says that during my brief reappearances as Vernon, Vanessa's personally was beginning to stick to me. I'm not sure if that's a good thing."

"I hope you don't completely lose your carefree, cheerful attitude," I told her.

"I'll probably wind up with a mixture of both. It's all the better to be able to say and do things that I as Vernon was too scared to attempt. I hope I wind up with the best of both."

I sighed. "We haven't seen as much of your sister as before, ever since she discovered that girls-only water park a month ago."

"Tracy's made a bunch of new friends there," said Bruce, as we walked through the mall. It was about time to meet Peter to take me home for dinner, and we were headed to the meeting point. "I've met a few of them. They're very nice. Very hot, too. You know, Tracy keeps trying to get me to visit Bikini Beach. I think I managed to shut her up when I pointed out that Bikini Beach was a girls-only water park, and I didn't want to be a girl."

We both laughed together at his joke. Then I said, "That would be a nice idea for a fantasy TG Universe: a girls-only water park that admits boys but changes them to girls."

Bruce sighed. "Too bad it's impossible in real life."

We reached the entrance where Peter was going to pick me up. I said, "Peter wants me to join him in his babysitting job tonight. He thinks I might be able to take over for him when he heads off to Pacific Tech."

"It's tough, dude. You have my sympathies."

Shortly, Peter came to pick me up. "Bye, Bruce," I said as I got in the car.

"You don't seem very happy about joining me tonight, Kiddo," he said as he drove off. He was right there. "Honestly, Daisy's a great client. She's great, her parents are great, and they pay very well." My ears did perk up at that. Peter laughed. "I'd really have you rather than some random stranger take over for me, when I leave."

No doubt, Daisy was one of the young girls I'd seen playing around the neighborhood, one of the Asian ones, but what did a fourteen-year-old boy have to do with nine-year-old girls?

We arrived home shortly after Pa got home from work. Ma had dinner almost ready. The four of us chatted about random things over dinner, and then Peter and I left for Daisy's house.

It was just a short walk. Daisy lived a few houses down from us. Peter and I approached the door, Peter confidently, me nervously, and Peter rang the doorbell. Peter slipped his shoes off as we waited for someone to answer the door, and I followed his lead.

Mr. Matsumoto opened the door. "Hello, Peter, come--"

"Ooof!" A miniature bolt of lightning shot about Mr. Matsumoto and grabbed Peter around the waist.

"Peter!" exclaimed the nine-year-old girl wrapped around him, as Peter patted her back. Then the girl turned to me. "So you're Peter's kid brother." To my astonishment, she came and embraced me as well.

For some reason, I found it natural to lift her up to eye-level, and she put her hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye.

"Peter talks about you, Luke, and I feel like I know you very well. You'll make a great big brother." I was flattered and a bit embarrassed and flustered, and I liked her already. Not to mention that she was very, very pretty.

"As Daisy noticed, this is my kid brother, Luke," said Peter as I followed him inside, carrying Daisy. "I hope he takes over for me when I leave for college, perhaps sometimes even earlier -- and Daisy appears to approve. I'd like him and Daisy to get acquainted, so we're both working tonight. If you don't mind, that is."

"Sounds great. I'm happy to meet you, Luke."

Despite holding Daisy with both arms, I did manage to stretch one hand out for a handshake. "I'm pleased to meet you, too."

Mr. Matsumoto said, "Ellen will be down in a moment, and we'll be on our way."

Daisy slid down and grabbed my hand. "Let's go downstairs and play. The games are there." I let her lead me on.

******************************

A Bikini Beach Summer
by Daphne Xu

Part 21
Epilogue

Thanks to ElrodW, Bikini Beach's creator, for invaluable comments on this story. The Bikini Beach universe and its principal characters are copyright 2001 by him.

Any comments about Bikini Beach, how it works, what it does, by characters other than Anya or Grandmother are potentially non-canonical and wrong. As this story is told from a particular point of view by the protagonist, this includes comments by the narrator. The protagonist, and thus the narrative, are what the protagonist believes or interprets from what he is experiencing. Thus some of the mechanics of BB are biased by the protagonist's view and experiences. Furthermore, because of the particular viewpoint of the story, those errors often won't be corrected. When the errors are corrected, the correction will often be disbelieved and rejected.

Late Monday Afternoon, July 28

"How did it go?" asked Grandmother, when Anya returned from seeing the new fourteen-year-old girl Tracy off to enjoy Bikini Beach.

"Very well," answered Anya. "The reality-shift is complete. Tracy Miura is now Bruce's twin sister. Jill and Timothy have never been murdered, and Peter was never arrested for the murder, or sent here to become Ruth. Neither the eight-year membership nor the lifetime upgrade were purchased."

"Tracy's reaction to being transformed?" asked Grandmother.

"Tracy was remorseful, shocked, horrified, overwhelmed, even suicidal at what he'd done. His parents were keeping him on a tight leash before his arrest, not only to keep him from being caught, but also to prevent him from turning himself in voluntarily or killing himself in his distress. His only complaint was to ask why I didn't change him to a little baby or a 90-year-old woman.

"I was prepared to go the little baby route if he'd complained, or become defensive or self-justifying about his crime. But there was none of that. Just overwhelming remorse at what he'd done. She seemed skeptical of my explanation that seventeen-year-old male Tracy never existed, and the murder never happened. Jill Denison is still alive and well, as is Tim Anderson. Tracy's disbelief doesn't matter; she, like everyone else, remembers only the new reality, in which she was always Bruce's twin sister, and she never raped or murdered anyone."

"I'm seriously concerned that the magic may not react quite the right way," said Grandmother. "Supposedly, the reality-shift means that Ruth never existed, but magic is more complicated than that. Undoing a lifetime membership and reversing the change may not be that simple. The magic may recoil or rebel instead of vanishing, and we may not have seen the last of Ruth."

Anya said, "It would probably have been simpler to create a new reality with another pretext for getting Peter the lifetime membership as Ruth, but that would have been most unfair to Peter -- and ultimately, might have led to the same controversy all over again."

Grandmother replied, "Things would also have been simpler had they let young Jennifer visit Spells R Us. The Wizard was going to do something about Anderson and his false jailing. He saw Anderson being murdered, one way or the other, either in prison or outside upon being released."

"We don't know what that shifty old wizard would have done," replied Anya. "He has nobody but himself to blame for the reputation he's got. Also, that would still have left Jill murdered -- probably."

"That's the usual way with murders; they stand unchanged. We simply can't reality-shift away every murder that ever occurs."

"True. In a sense, Jill got lucky that we had to repair our own blunder. Another thing: we have to make triply sure that it never gets out that a lifetime membership's change can be reversed -- through selling another lifetime membership with a reality-shift in which the original lifetime membership was never purchased. Bikini Beach transformations are becoming an open secret, with rumors abounding. We mustn't let this ever approach that level.

"It's still sad. A clique of BFFs was destroyed, and romances nipped in the bud."

"But undoing the murders, and eliminating the rage and grief associated with them, was very much worth it," Grandmother pointed out. "Those involved will find new romances, new BFFs, or not as the fates may allow -- just like anyone else's fortune. It's even minutely possible that some will meet again and rekindle their friendships.

"I do sense that a clique of new BFFs has formed around the original two girls, and that the new Tracy is one of them."

"I had her join them retroactively," said Anya. "I thought she needed friends from the start."

The END ... and a New Beginning?