The Other Side of Me – Part 9
by Limbo’s Mistress

Jackson and I both leapt up from the leather sofa so fast it probably looked like the errant inventor had made an ejector seat upgrade.

“Michelle!” I said, trying to figure out how the hell she’d known to come here. What she wanted, though, wasn’t any sort of mystery.

She wanted my ass.

Jackson glanced over at me; surprise written all over his face. Then he turned to the new arrival.

“Hey, Shells. What’s the matter?”

Shells? Did he know the furious young woman standing fifteen feet away glaring at me with the fires of Perdition roaring in her eyes?

“The matter? The matter, Jackson, is I’m going to kick the ever-living shit out of your tramp of a girlfriend.”

Okay. So he and the Terminator did know each other. Duh! Think about it, you doofus. It would only be logical that Charlene’s boyfriend would be well acquainted with her best friend. Well, probably ex-best friend if I was reading the room right.

Jackson nodded, then leaned over to me, his voice not much more than a whisper.

“What did you do?”

I whipped my head around, staring up at him with what I was sure was an expression of utter disbelief. Having to stare up at a guy I’d been taller than for all of my life would never feel right to me. No matter how much stuff drifted between my consciousness and Charlene’s. It just wasn’t natural.

Even more than having extra-wide hips and boobs.

I shook my head, then reached up and tapped myself on the temple.

“I,” I said, putting a ton of emphasis on the selected pronoun, “didn’t do anything.”

My voice had obviously carried further than Jackson’s because Shelly barked with a cry of sarcastic laughter.

“You didn’t do anything?” She stopped laughing and began to stalk toward me. “Caught in the fucking act, and you’re going to have the gall to say you didn’t do anything.” She glanced over at Jackson. “I’m sorry, dude. I really am. No one should have to find out their girlfriend is a scuzzy whore like this.”

Jackson’s mouth dropped open, though whether it was from Shelly’s reveal or the manner in which it was being delivered. Regardless, he turned to look at me again.

“What did she do?”

Looking up into his eyes, I felt my stomach do a flip-flop. Jackson, no matter the universe, was my oldest friend. I thought of him like the brother I never had. Most times, that is. You know, when he wasn’t zapping me back to infanthood or causing me to have “fly-vision” for a week. The thought of causing him pain, on purpose, seemed a completely unbelievable concept.

Especially the way things were now.

“Charlene’s been cheating on you,” I said, feeling like just saying the words aloud made my chest hurt.

He looked surprised, but only for a moment. Then he nodded solemnly. Like he had been expecting something along those lines.

“I see.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, turning my attention away from the image of my best friend’s pain.

Unfortunately, Shelly had finished her trip across the room and already had her hand on the move when I came back around to face her. The impact sounded like a shotgun blast, echoing around the lab.

My right cheek instantly caught fire, and my head snapped back from the blow. I staggered backward a couple of shaky steps. My legs collided with the sofa and folded, sending me landing on my ass on the floor with a teeth-rattling thud.

“Michelle!” Jackson yelled, spinning around to grab the other girl by the arms before she could lean in for a second slap. “Stop it!”

“You should be just as pissed as me, Jackson. I know you won’t hit her, but at least let me do it for you!”

I rubbed at my stinging cheek, trying to figure out what I could say to defuse the situation. How had she found out about Charlene and Danny? It had to have been sometime this evening since I don’t think she would have been as friendly to me in class this morning. Did Danny call and tell her? Hoping that the blame would get put on Charlene and not him? Of was it one of Danny’s frat brothers that spilled the beans. I’d already learned that people Charlene didn’t know herself knew about her. It wasn’t hard to guess Danny bragging to his buddies about his sexcapades with the pretty cheerleader.

“Shelly, listen to me,” Jackson said, still fighting to restrain the wildcat looking to rip me to shreds. “She didn’t do anything. It’s not her fault.”

The angry girl stopped struggling and turned her head to stare at him as if he’d just morphed into a lizardman.

“Not her fault? How could it not be her fault? Did you invent some type of … of … Slut Ray and accidentally turn her into a nympho?”

Well, that certainly got my attention. It would seem that Charlene wasn’t as secretive about Jackson’s whacky experiments as Charles. Sure, my family knew that sometimes weird things happened when I was with Jackson, but I didn’t share that information with anyone else.

“No, Shelly, no Slut Rays were used.”

“Then what? Am I supposed to believe that the tramp just slipped on a banana peel and impaled herself on Dan’s dick by accident?”

Jackson’s mouth dropped open again, something that was becoming a regular occurrence this evening. His attention wavered long enough that Shelly was able to break free and come at me, claw extended. Though they were really more like French-tips.

I reached up and grabbed both her wrists, keeping those pearly white razors away from my eyes.

“Shelly,” I said in what I hoped was a soothing voice. “Just calm down and let me explain.” Not that I expected her to believe me. Though, her questioning Jackson about using a ray-gun on me led me to think she just might.

You know, if I could keep her from tearing my face off.

“Dan?” Jackson said, now more preoccupied with the identity of the Other Man than keeping me intact. “Dan…ny Morris?”

“Focus!” I yelled at him over Michelle’s shoulder. “Dismay later. Help now!”

I might have actually had the advantage over my attacker if we’d been standing up. Charlene was a little taller and seemed slightly stronger. However, being down on my ass at a messed up angle was working against me.

“Dan for sure,” Shelly spat, glaring at me. “Probably others as well.”

Jackson looked at me, a pained expression on his face. Fortunately for me, he decided that mine was the more immediate need. He grabbed Shelly’s arms again, pulling her away from me. I let go of her wrists and took the momentary respite to scramble onto my feet and put the leather sofa between me and her.

“Shelly, listen. I swear it wasn’t.” I held up one hand. “I mean, it was me if you strictly count the body. But it wasn’t me doing the deed.”

She pushed hard against Jackson’s chest, sending him reeling backward and succeeding in breaking free again. Her eyes darted left, then right, then settled squarely on me. I think she was trying to decide if she was going to chase me around the furniture. Or just rely on her cheerleading acrobatics and fly over it.

Before she could decide, a beam of green energy hit her square in the back, enveloping her lithe form. I recognized it for what it was immediately.

The Time-Dilation Device.

Shelly stood there frozen, staring at me in preparation of launching herself over the sofa. I sighed loudly and walked around to stand next Jackson. He still had the unit aimed at the other girl. Prepared to blast her again the second she started moving.

“You know we can’t keep her out of synch forever,” I said, putting my hand on top of his to push the barrel of the invention toward the floor. “Even if I used it to get a head start, I’d still have to deal with her at school. Or practice.” I shrugged. “We should probably just go ahead and tell her everything.”

He turned to look at me. “Everything? As in what you … I mean Charlene was doing with Danny Morris?”

I shook my head, leaning back against the disassembled controller for the dimensional window. “No. Mostly because I showed up at the end of it.”

His brow furrowed. “At the end? Oh! Are you saying you swapped back after they were done?”

“More like right at the very end of the activity,” I said, reaching up to stick a finger into my mouth and make a gagging sound. “I’m m probably going to have nightmares about that for weeks.”

He nodded, still frowning. “So, Charlene and Danny? For a genius, I can be really stupid.”

I shook my head, reaching out to put my hand on his shoulder. “No, you’re not. Yes, from what I experienced, it seems that she and Danny have been, uh, hooking up for a little while now. How long? I don’t know.”

“And the others?”

“I don’t know if there are any others. Honestly, between cheering, exercise, and rushing a sorority, I can’t figure out when she had to time to have even one affair.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, glancing down at the device in his hands. There was a strange expression on his face. Something that seemed to be a mix of humor and anguish. “I’m standing here, trying to think about how much it hurts to know she never really loved me. And all I can think about is you leaping back into her body while she’s with Danny.”

I gasped, then punched him in the upper arm. “It was horrible. One second, I’m in the kitchen with my mom. Then I’m on all fours in Danny’s bed ….” I stopped, realizing that he probably didn’t want to have to hear the sordid details of what his girlfriend and his childhood enemy were doing.

A tiny bit of motion out of the corner of my eye drew my attention. Shelly’s arms were lowering slowly, dropping down in preparation of her springing over the back of the sofa to tackle me. I watched her for a second, then looked up at Jackson.

“Can she tell that I’m no longer standing there?”

He shrugged. “Not entirely sure. If I had to guess, I’d say no. She’s de-synchronized with our timestream. To us, she’s moving incredibly slow. From her point of view, however, she’s moving at normal pace. Though, it seems that she’s starting to catch up.” He nodded at the other girl.

Shelly’s legs were lowering as well, pushing a not unimpressive bottom outward. Granted, it wasn’t as great an ass as mine, but sort of attractive in its own right. Her arms were now angle down, moving a tiny bit faster than before. From what I could tell, she would be up to maybe one-tenth speed by the time she left the floor.

“Hey,” I said. “What happens if she’s still under the effect when she jumps?”

He reached up and scratched at the back of his head. “I have no idea. I mean, she’s still being affected by local gravity. Otherwise, she would have started sliding across the room as she tried to catch up to the Earth’s rotation.”

“So, once she jumps, she’s going to fall?”

He nodded. “Probably.”

I sighed and took the device from his hand. Turning it over, I saw the dial responsible for determining the degree of time lapse produced. It was currently set on 1000:1. I used my thumb to slide it up until the lever was in the center of the topmost setting. 1:1.

“Hopefully, we can get her to calm down long enough for me to tell her about the dimensional window,” I said to Jackson. Then I pulled the trigger.

A second stream of green energy slammed into Michelle, bringing her back into synch with the normal flow of time. She completed her pre-jump flight plan, then stopped when she noticed I wasn’t where she’d last seen me. She whirled around, eyes widening at the two of us.

And the device in my hand.

“What … how?”

I held up the machine. “Time Displacement Ray,” I said, still aiming the thing in her direction. “It slowed you down long enough for me to get away. Now, do you think you can chill for just a second while Jackson and I explain why what Charlene did is not my fault?”

Shelly narrowed her eyes at me, then glanced over at Jackson. After a few seconds, she huffed and threw her hands into the air.

“Fine! I’ll listen. But only because Jackson doesn’t seem as upset at you as he should be. Well, that, and the fact you just referred to yourself in the third person.”

Oops. Spoiler alert!

I waited a few seconds, just to make sure she wasn’t going to change her mind and attack me. When she sat down on the sofa, I relaxed enough to put the device in my hand down on the worktable.

“So, spill.”

I looked over at Jackson. He gave a wave of his hand, indicating that he decided this would be my show. Thanks for nothing.

“Okay, first of all, I’m not Charlene.”

Shelly nodded. “Okay. Why not? If you’re not Charlene, which is really freaky since you look just like her, who are you?”

“Charles,” I flashed what I hoped was a sincere smile. “I’m the male version of Charlene from a parallel universe.”

“You’re a guy from another universe? Do men have tits where you’re from?”

“What?!” I shook my head. “No, we don’t. We have … male parts.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. “Look, Jackson created a device that allows you to look into other universes. Parallel ones, where things are mostly the same, but other things are different. In my world, my parents have two kids. A sixteen year old girl named Katie and a nineteen year old boy named Charles.”

Shelly remained quiet, but the look on her face said she wasn’t completely buying my spiel.

“It’s true,” Jackson chimed in. Finally. “I found out that the other dimension had a male Charlie. I thought it would be funny to have my Charlene see her parallel double.”

“So that’s why you rushed off after practice yesterday? To come here?”

I shook my head. “That’s why Charlene rushed off.”

She twirled her finger around in the air. “Yeah, right. Continue.”

“There was an accident …”

Shelly interrupted with a snicker. “Isn’t there always?”

I glanced over at Jackson, noticing that his face had turned a bright shade of crimson. I suddenly got the feeling that part of the Shelly-Charlene friendship was a shared experience of the mishaps that often took place in this very room.

“Well, in this one, I was pulled over here. Into Charlene’s body. She got pulled back to my world in my body.”

Shelly blinked. Then started to grin. “Are you saying that Charlie is trapped in a guy’s body? Like, right now?”

I nodded. “Yes. Exactly.”

Then she made a face, looking at me like I was some kind of pervert.

“So … you’re gay? Guy you, I mean.”

“Huh? No! I’m totally straight.” I said, completely pushing away the odd feeling I got around the guy I’d nearly collided with that morning.

“But you had sex with Dan,” Shelly countered.

“Charlene had sex with Dan,” Jackson added in a monotone voice.

Shelly stood up. “Jesus, hold up. First you tell me that she,” she pointed at me, “is actually a guy trapped in a girl’s body. Then you tell me that he wasn’t the one who I saw getting drilled from behind through the frat house’s window?”

Yikes! I had wondered how Shelly knew about Dan and Charlene’s tryst. I just thought she might have more decorum than to blatantly blurt out the particulars. Right in front of Jackson.

“That wasn’t Charles,” Jackson said. “It was Charlene. Apparently the two of them spontaneously switch back due to being entangled on a quantum level.”

Shelly arched a brow and looked from him to me.

“The same process that caused us to swap bodies has some glitches. We keep swapping back and forth without warning.”

“And it was during the swap, when Charlene was back in her own body, that she went to, uh, Dan’s?”

I nodded.

“She came here first,” Jackson said. “She was angry. Started yelling at me about playing with people’s lives.”

I looked at Shelly, who responded with a shrug, then turned back to Jackson.

“Angry that she’d gotten stuck in my body? Or angry that she was back?”

“The latter, I think. When she came in, I thought she was you at first. Mostly because the first thing she started ranting about was the machine being in pieces.” He sighed. “I think … I think she prefers it, you know, over there.” He nodded his head at the mirror on the wall.

“What?” Shelly and I said in unison.

“Are you saying that she prefers being me?” I waved my hands around in the air in circles. “That she’d rather be a guy, in a world that’s not hers, than here in her own life?”

Jackson rubbed at his face. “I think it’s because of your mom, Charlie. On the other side, your mom is still alive.”

Shelly sighed. “Yeah, I can believe that.” She gave me a sympathetic look. “Josie and I met Charlie at an orientation retreat. The cheer coaches invited all the incoming freshmen to a long weekend social. You know, so we could all get to know each other before the craziness that comes with the first semester.”

I laughed. “The track team didn’t do anything like that. Not that I would have gone, if they had. Long distance running isn’t a team sport.”

Shelly nodded. “But cheerleading is. When you’re getting tossed ten or twelve feet into the air, you better trust the person who’s going to be catching you. Anyway, Josie and I thought Charlie was pretty cool, so we sort of all hung around together for most of the weekend. We started sharing things about ourselves, and when Josie asked about her folks, Charlie got really quiet.”

“That’s a touchy subject with her,” Jackson said. “I know she went through a ton of counseling and she’ll tell you that she’s gotten past it …”

“She hasn’t,” Shelly said. “She just keeps it hidden really well. I think she’s afraid her sister or her dad might worry if they knew.”

I sighed. “When she and I swapped lives, she got the one thing she misses more than anything.”

Shelly nodded. “Yes. If you were to ask me if Charlene could walk away from everything else in her life just to be with her mom again, I’d answer ‘yes’ without hesitation.”

I frowned. “All she’s really walking away from is her body. I mean if my Katie were dead. Or my dad. Then I’d say she was just trading one loss for another.”

“Now, she gets to have it all. The only cost was her gender.”

I turned back to Jackson. “When you told her that you hadn’t been the reason we swapped back, and you couldn’t send her back, she left?”

He nodded. “She wasn’t just angry, Chuck. She was absolutely furious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her that angry. She stormed off and left in her Jeep.”

“To go to see Danny,” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I think she’s been seeing him on the side for a while. It may have been innocent flirting or something at first. Tonight, though, she went there and … did what she did out of spite. You couldn’t give her what she wanted, so she gave what you want to someone else.”

Jackson’s eyes widened and he glanced from me to Shelly and back.

“I don’t know what …”

I fixed him with a look. “You’ve been dating her for a year and not had sex. You know she’s not a virgin.”

“There’s more to a relationship than sex, Chuck. I never wanted to push her into something she didn’t seem ready for.” He turned around and started picking up various parts from the table, flipping them over in his hands, then setting them back down to grab another. “I know she’s been with other guys. I’m not naïve. It just seemed like she was … waiting before going all the way with me.”

Shelly walked over and put her arm around Jackson’s shoulders. “Some of us on the squad used to tease her a little about you. Nothing vicious, though. Just playful. She always just sort of smiled and made really non-committal responses.”

“Because she didn’t want to go into too great a detail about a guy she wasn’t planning on sticking with,” he said.

I shook my head. “Actually, if I had to guess, I would say she didn’t want to share you with any of the other girls. I mean, who else has been here besides Shelly?”

“No one,” he replied. “Charlie talks about the other girls on the squad, and some of her friends from class. But Michelle is the only one she’s brought around.”

“Exactly,” I said. “No girl would bother introducing her best friend to her boyfriend if she weren’t planning on sticking with him. She wanted to get a trusted opinion about your relationship. Something you can only get from a best friend.”

Shelly blinked and looked at me, arching a brow. “Are you sure you’re not really Charlene? Because that was an amazing bit of insight into the female psyche.”

I laughed and shrugged. “Believe it or not, being Charlene has had a bit of an … impact on the way I see things.”

Jackson sighed. “Even if you two are right, that doesn’t change the fact that she wants to stay over there.”

“Not up to her,” I said. “We’re already bouncing back and forth, right? So the next time she’s here, how about you two talk about it. About dealing with her loss.” I glanced over at Shelly. “And her destructive behavior.”

Michelle’s butt began to ring. She jumped, then reached back and pulled out the phone tucked away in her back pocket. She glanced at the screen and her mouth dropped open. She looked back up at me.

“It’s Josie.”

My hear began to race. “Did … did you tell her? You know, what Dan and Charlene …”

She shook her head. “No. I wanted to confront you first. Charlene first, I mean. I was going to tell her after, depending on what sort of excused she tried to sell me.”

“Bet you never would have guessed inter-dimensional body swap.”

“No, but I should have.” She looked at the still-ringing phone. “Should I answer it?”

I looked at Jackson, who shrugged. Hell, he looked more worried than I felt. Did he think Josie might blame him as well? For not giving Charlene the “D”, leading her to look elsewhere.”

“Answer it,” I told Shelly.

She nodded, then swiped her thumb across the front of the phone as she put it to her ear.

“Hey, Jo-Jo. What’s up?” She listened to the girl on the other end of the connection for a moment, her eyes remaining locked onto me. “Uh, yeah. I’m with her now.”

Uh oh.

“Okay, yeah. Hold on.” Shelly looked like she’d just swallowed a lemon as she handed her phone to me. “She wants to talk to you.”

I took it from her and held it against my chest, steadying myself for the verbal assault I knew was coming.

Would she simply hate me, meaning Charlene, for the rest of our college existence? What if she got the rest of the squad to take her side and they all voted me off the island? Or maybe word would get out about my habit of screwing my friend’s boyfriend. Then Charlene could not only probably kiss her chances with the Kappas goodbye, but she’s probably become some kind of social pariah.

Charles really wouldn’t give a damn, but Charlene was a completely different person.

I brought the phone to my ear.

“Hey, Jo.”

“Oh Charlie,” the voice practically squealed into my ear. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

Okay … what?

“Uh, for what?”

There was a momentary pause. “For talking to Dan for me. Thank you!”

I looked at Jackson and Shelly, both of whom seemed to be so engrossed in the unfolding drama they couldn’t hear. All they needed was a bucket of popcorn and they’d be a meme. When Shelly and I made contact, she lifted her hands and waved them in a “keep talking” gesture.

“I … talked to Dan?”

“Yeah. I mean, he said you did. That you went to his house and told him that I was worried he was seeing someone else.”

“Oh. What else did I tell him? I mean, what else did he say?”

She laughed. “He claims you flipped out on him, wouldn’t give him a chance to talk. That you told him if you ever found out he was fucking some other girl behind my back; you’d kick both his and her ass.” She laughed again. “He promised me that there was no one else.”

Now, I know I said a lot of stuff to Danny while I was getting dressed and trying to get the hell out of his room, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t what Josie was claiming.

“Yeah,” I said. “I wanted him to know that I wasn’t, uh, going to stand for it. For, uh, him sleeping with anyone else.”

Now Jackson’s and Shelly’s eyes really did widen. They looked like they were doing their best anime expressions. Shelly’s mouth was hanging open.

“You’re the best friend I ever had,” Josie said. I could hear the tears in her voice. It drove a rusty spike right through my chest. “I love you, Charlie.”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, feeling like the floor of a movie theater. I couldn’t believe I was standing there, taking credit for something I hadn’t done. Worse than that, Charlene had done the very thing that Josie was thankful she had supposedly stopped. “Love you, too … girlfriend.”

“Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? I got to go show Dan why he doesn’t need any other girls. Thanks again! Bye!”

The line went dead and I stared at the phone in my hand for a while before Shelly reached over and retrieved it from me.

“What was that?” she asked, slipping the phone back into her pocket. “I didn’t hear Jo-Jo’s side of the conversation, but it didn’t sound like she was threatening to rip your tits off.”

“That’s a thing?” Jackson asked aloud, drawing a sarcastic glance from both Shelly and me.

I ignored him. “Apparently Danny went to see her after I left the frat house. He told her that I’d come to him and told him that he better not cheat on Josie or I’d kick his ass. Oh, and the ass of the girl he was screwing.”

“He did what?”

Jackson shook his head. “That guy. Always a jerk of the highest order. I really don’t know why Charlene felt the need to friend him in high school.” Then he looked at me quizzically. “You didn’t eventually become friends with him, did you?”

“Hell no!” I said, shaking my head. “Danny Morris and I avoided each other all the way to graduation.”

Shelly shook her head. “I don’t like it.”

“Me either. Josie was suspicious enough of him that she practically devoured his lie about me warning him to fly right. He didn’t need to say anything to her.”

“Maybe he thought you were going to tell her.”

I started to agree, then looked at her with a serious expression. “Would Charlene?”

“Maybe? Before I caught her and him this evening, I would have said there was no way she would do that to a friend.”

“Well, you two know her better than I do,” I said.

“For now,” Jackson mumbled under his breath.

I gave him a pointed look, then turned to Shelly.

“Okay, Shells. Now that you’re in on the secret, you’re responsible for helping me live Charlene’s life. Perhaps she’s not the person inside you all thought she was. Maybe she’s just still hurting about her mom. But, regardless, I’m not going to add more fuel to her dumpster fire. When she finally gets back for good, I want her to find her life exactly as she left it.” I held up a finger. “Minus the screwing Danny Morris part.”

Shelly nodded. “I can do that. Not just for her, but because I can see that there is a really damned decent guy in there. I’d have to be a total bitch to refuse to help him.”

I reached out and gave her a hug. “Thank you.”

“What are you going to do about Danny?” Jackson asked me. “As you said, he might be working some kind of trick.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him. It’s not like I’m going to sleep with him.”

“Definitely,” Shelly added. “Plus, now that I know what the deal is, I can keep an eye out for Charlene’s return. Make sure she doesn’t do anything.”

Shelly asked me to meet her at the campus café in the morning, then left. I told Jackson that I needed to go home and wash Jerky McJerkface off myself. He asked me to come back the next day after practice so he could run some scans to get more data on the entanglement. I told him that I was supposed to take Katie shopping after practice and then go to a stupid Kappa mixer after.

"Then we'll do it Saturday."

I offered to stay a little longer right then, but he waved me off.

“Go. Shower. Get some rest.” He laughed. “Besides, I can’t scan your quantum signature right now. I haven’t built the damned thing yet.”

When I stepped back into my own house, the place was eerily silent and dark. I grabbed my purse as I made my way through the living room to the stairs. I climbed them, already looking forward to the scaling spray that would blast off the remnants of a moment I’d just as soon forget ever happened.

Light peered out from under Katie’s door, so I knocked softly and waited for her to answer. After a few seconds, she poked her head out and looked at me.

“I told Dad you went over to Jackson’s. He said to tell you goodnight because he was going to bed. How’d it go?”

“Better than expected. Worse in some areas.” I nodded my head in the direction of the bathroom. “I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. I need to take a shower and go to bed myself.”

She giggled and rolled her eyes. “Two days and you’re already a natural at being my sister. Won’t be long before you’re matching your clothing to your mood and telling me how immature I am.”

I smiled, almost telling her that I was likely to become more and more like Charlene than I planned. However, I decided to just reach out and lightly pinch one of her rosy cheeks. It was something I did from time to time with my own Katie.

“Don’t get your hopes up, Katie-Kat. Night.”

I went down the hall and into the bathroom as the sound of Katie closing her door came from behind me. The hot water was a godsend, and I remained under the stream until I felt the temperature start to decline. Once I was out, with a towel wrapped around my middle, I brushed my teeth and ran a comb several times through my mostly-damp hair.

Back in Charlene’s room, I went to the closet and examined the plethora of clothing. After a few minutes of just standing there, I hazarded a guess that whatever traits or quirks were flowing from my duplicate to me didn’t include a keen fashion sense. Either that, or those particular skills still resided on the other side of the multiverse.

Sighing, I decided to go casual for my first girl Friday. Even though I knew Katie would probably have something to say about it. I found a pair of jeans that were slightly faded with factory-made rips in strategic spots. Along with that I paired a teal and gray jersey blouse with a U-shaped neckline and three-quarter length sleeves.

I carried the outfit to the chair at the desk, draping them over the back of it. Then I unwrapped myself from the towel, grabbed a pair of purple panties and an oversized Chicago Cubs t-shirt, and climbed into bed.

Just as I was reaching over to turn off the light, I heard my phone buzz. Grumbling about people and their complete lack of regard for a girl’s necessary beauty sleep, I threw back the covers and stomped over to my purse.

When I pulled out the phone and looked at the screen, I recognized the number. It was Danny.

“What the fuck now, asshole?” I mumbled as I unlocked the device and clicked on the message.

“I don’t know if you’re just crazy or playing games,” he’d written. “But before you even think about telling J about us, you might want to take a look.”

There was a file attached to the message. Despite every molecule in my body telling me to not click on it, I did anyway.

It was a short video file, only about two minutes long. From the angle of the camera, I could only assume it had been placed on the table beside his bed. The second it began playing, I was rewarded with a completely unobstructed view of my face, eyes closed and mouth open as cries of pleasure shot out from between my lips. The face of the person behind me, providing the stimulation driving the orgasmic pleas, wasn’t visible. Just a muscled torso and a pair of large hands holding onto my hip as they slammed back and forth into me. It wasn’t just moans and gasps that came out of my mouth, there were also very clearly defined words, too. Words that begged the person fucking me to do it harder. To make me come.

It was totally, and completely, pornographic.

After the way I’d behaved outside the Student Center, I guess Danny felt he needed to cover his ass by getting leverage on me.

I clenched the hand not holding the phone into a fist so tight it began to ache. Then I brought the message back up and sent my reply.

“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”

“It was your asshole that got fucked,” came the response.

“What do you want?”

“I haven’t decided. Right now, I want you to keep your fucking whore mouth shut. If you tell Josie or Shelly about us, this video is going to get out.”

I paused, thinking about the ramifications of that happening. Shelly, already aware of the situation, probably wouldn’t give a shit. Josie would most likely recognize Danny, no matter the fact that his face wasn’t visible in the video. My chances with the Kappas would be over. Rachel struck me as the kind of girl who didn’t care who fucked whom, so long as it didn’t make the sorority look bad.

However, what if Katie saw it? Or even Charlene’s dad?

My whole body trembled with barely-constrained fury. I wanted to throw the phone across the room and watch it shatter into a million pieces. Scratch that, I wanted to throw Danny Morris across the room and watch him shatter. While I was standing there, trying to get myself under control, the phone buzzed again.

“Deal? Or do I just hit Send?”

I think I actually snarled a bit as my thumbs tapped on the screen.

“I’ll keep our secret. But if you send that video out, I promise you that you’ll regret it.” Then I felt a malicious thought run through my brain and added, “Remember who I’m dating and all the wonderful toys he can build.”

I hoped the memory of this Danny’s experience at the danger that Jackson’s genius could bring would be enough to keep him mostly in line. At least until I could get rid of that video.

I turned the phone to silent and plugged it in. When I got back in bed and turned off the light, I expected that I would lay there all night due to the cacophony of thoughts running through my head.

Instead, I found myself quickly falling to sleep and dreamt of all the different ways I was going to make Danny Morris pay.