The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

It was a sunny day in the coastal town of Pine Ridge California, and the school day for Pine Ridge High School was just due to get started. It was well into first semester of the year, and the hot sweltering days of the summer had given way to the more temperate, cooler days of late fall and coming winter that the western coast was inclined to. Weather in Pine Ridge was seasonable at all times of the year, and even in late fall hot days came around, but this was one of the more pleasant mornings they’d had recently. It was pleasant enough that sitting out in front of the high school, either on the lawn or the stone benches was a positive experience for those students that were doing that.

Magdalena Banks was one of these students; a senior that year, and she and her posse had asked some of the boys on the football to lift a couple of the stone benches for them and move them together, so there was room enough for all of them to sit together without having worry about sitting on the grass and getting grass stains on their expensive clothes. She was on campus early that day; every day; because the cheer team practiced in the gym before school, instead of after it; and only on the weekends when their performance was dropping in quality. Magdalena was cheer captain, and she ran a pretty tight ship; in regional cheer competitions, Pine Ridge High one fairly frequently. So weekend practices were few and far between; usually only to help a girl catch-up if she was struggling. That is, if she could catch-up. If she couldn’t, pretty soon after that she’d be cut from the team and try-outs would be held for her replacement.

Cheer practice wasn’t too long either, since it was every morning. Just a half-hour, forty-five minutes if they really needed it, before first period. Since they did it every day, they didn’t have to rehearse as long; it wore the routines into them until they all knew them backwards and forwards. And then they were all free to leave as soon as the school day ended.

Magdalena was probably one of the prettiest girls in the school, if not the prettiest. It was, in no small part, the reason she had supreme social power at her school. That, and her incredible predisposition for manipulation, and deviousness; her cunning, and her ambition.

But she was beautiful, and she knew it. She had turned nineteen just a few weeks prior, and even for a nineteen-year-old, she looked incredible for her age. Womanly, but youthful. Her face was truly gorgeous, so gorgeous that students of lesser confidence sometimes found themselves unable to speak when they were faced with her, and she turned her dark, deep, bottomless brown eyes on them. She’d seen both girls and boys her own age splutter to be faced with such gorgeousness. Sometimes, with a fierce enough look, she was able to get the same effect from adults; teachers, shop clerks.

Magdalena’s cheekbones were high, and her complexion was always perfectly clear, thanks to the dedicated skin regimen she followed, but whose secrets she never revealed to anyone, no matter how close they got to her; and she never really did let anyone close to her, though she was surrounded by people all the time. They were all pawns for her to use if needed; not to be considered friends in their own right.

She kept her brunette hair to a shoulder length, and it had a magazine advertisement glossiness to it; it shone and bounced with her every step when she walked forward.

Magdalena knew she had been blessed with incredible genetics, but she didn’t take her beauty for granted. She went beyond just coasting on her looks; she did everything in her power to preserve her looks, to improve them. She was in and out of her favorite salon routinely to have her hair styled, and her nails done; she had them done and redone frequently enough that she was never seen with so much as a chipped nail; she went frequently enough to catch any nail before it chipped, to have the next set on before the last set could crack.

Despite having her hair and nails done, though, she didn’t tend to wear a lot of makeup; her face was beautiful enough that, with the proper maintenance that was provided by her skin care regimen, her looks were impressive enough they didn’t need highlighting by makeup. She always looked glamorous; her skin always shining, glowing with youth and good health.

This didn’t mean she didn’t know how to use makeup when it was warranted. She knew exactly how to apply it, so that her natural good looks were ideally enhanced. But Magdalena never forgot that she had been blessed with natural good looks, ideal genetic. Her body was basically perfect— her breasts were a 36 C-cup, her waist was a slim 24 inches, and her hips were a wider 34 inches, giving her an ideal hourglass shape.

Magdalena knew other women willingly put themselves under the plastic surgeon’s knife to get dimensions like hers; and because of the wealth of her parents, and in particular, her mother’s penchant for gossip, she’d met and knew of plenty of women who had gone under the knife to get a body that looked more like hers. But hers was all natural; and she knew it made her the envy of most women when she was around them.

Her full, firm bust was an asset she proudly displayed; her next best asset after this was her long legs; since she stood at a height of five foot eight, her legs were quite long; and as the head cheerleader of Pine Ridge High School’s Cheer Team, her legs were incredibly well-toned, and when she wore heels, which she did, nearly every day—they highlighted her legs even more, elevating them for simply impressive to absolutely stunning in their shapeliness.

Because she was so active in cheer, Magdalena was a healthy one hundred and thirty-five pound weight; she’d been on the cheer team for her entire high school career, and before that, when she was younger, she had done gymnastics, which had given her a lifelong flexibility that had made the head cheerleader position a cinch to acquire.

The rest of Magdalena’s frame was well-toned as well, not just her shapely legs; cheerleading had toned her even further, and when she was dressed in her cheerleading uniform, on the way to or from cheer practice, she turned the heads of everyone she passed in Pine Ridge High’s hallways, whether they were a student or a teacher—though the teachers usually tended to be at least a bit abashed about it; and whether they were female or male.

Magdalena didn’t take her level of fitness for granted any more than she did her beauty; just as she actively took steps to maintain her looks, she actively took steps to maintain her figure, exercising regularly, and with dedication. Her parents had a pool at the house; she could often be found swimming laps in it. They also had a workout room, and among other things, it contained a series of light weights which Magdalena could also frequently be found lifting, to help and tone the parts of her body that were not exercised by either her cheerleading or her swimming.

So because of all this, Magdalena Banks was quite impressively attractive; and as she was sitting on one of the stone benches with her clique, she was aware of the students crossing the lawn towards the school looking at her. She was wearing a designer dress that day; she wore designer clothing every day, if it was not designer, she would not wear it. So she knew her choice of clothing for that day, like on most days, was enhancing her appearance that much further, and knew that that couldn’t help but draw attention to her. She was used to it. She tuned it out.

Magdalena and her group were sitting together, laughing and chattering away, on the benches that had been placed together on the school lawn. Magdalena was only half paying attention, instead mostly tuning them out as well as the glances that naturally drifted to her. Her friends all flocked around her, but each one of them knew that Magdalena was just a little more powerful than they were. She held all the social power, she was the true queen and she reigned over the whole school, and none of them ever forgot it.

So if she wanted to sit there in silence on a breezy Pine Ridge morning, half-listening as the rest of her clingers-on mocked and laughed at what the various other Pine Ridge High School girls were wearing that day, she would not be questioned; or even directly addressed, in case it would be an inconvenience to her. It would have been; and Magdalena was always quick to snap anyone’s head off who irritated her or otherwise interfered or inconvenienced her. The members of her clique knew this, and knew better than to wake a sleeping predator while she slept.

Magdalena was only half paying attention because she had a problem, and she was trying to think of a solution. She was a very quick-witted girl when she had to be, and as the reigning queen of a high school full of social competitors jockeying for the top spot, jockeying to usurp her position as supreme royalty of the school, she had to be quick-witted all the time to stay ahead.

The problem was, Magdalena was just too smart. If any of the clique around her now, sitting around her and not really seeing or knowing her—if any of them knew how well she was doing in all her classes so far this semester, she would be effectively dethroned. Then the rest of them, these other four around her, would fight over the carcass of her power without a moment’s hesitation.

So far she’d been lucky; no teacher had ever exposed her academic skill. But her days were numbered, and she needed a cover story. Something to make people think she was actually dumber than she was; and then something, after that, to make them think that something external was responsible for her grades. But her mind had been working on this for the past few days and weeks, and it hadn’t fell on the solution yet.

“Look over there,” one of Magdalena’s girls snickered. “It’s those three losers!”

The chittering started up again, as Magdalena’s clique turned their attention over to the further part of the lawn; Magdalena’s eyes went too.

Sure enough, there they were. Suzy Benton, Autumn Schwartz, and Barry. Clearly, none of them had been worried about grass stains, because they had sat right down on the lawn; Autumn was sitting cross-legged, Suzy was sitting with her legs curled around and tucked under her body with her knees together, and Barry had stretched out lying on his side.

Magdalena let herself look at them for a moment; she knew everyone in the school, and through the gossip mill knew almost everything about them. It was necessary to keep control of her position at the top; it was impossible to know which information would come in handy at the crucial moment, so it was necessary to know the information available as well as it was possible to know it.

So Magdalena knew when Suzy’s birthday was, as well as some of the less pleasant details of her life. She’d been eighteen for some time, now; the largest scandal in her young life was that her parents were in the process of divorcing—if the gossip was to be believed—some of it even came from in town, Magdalena’s sources weren’t restricted to the high school—the divorce had just recently gone final, but one would never have known it from watching Suzy. She was chipper at all times; she never let a crack show in that façade. If it was a façade, and not just her way of being. Sometimes Magdalena thought Suzy was a bit vapid—maybe even brain-dead, and that was the cause of her constant perkiness. She didn’t always bother to say her judgements of others out loud, but even when she didn’t, she was usually still making them in her head.

Suzy almost always wore her blonde hair up in a ponytail; she was wearing it in a ponytail today; sometimes she wore it in a loose bun, where she started it as a ponytail and then pulled the tail back through the elastic so that it curled under the bun, in towards her neck; on occasions, Suzy put the effort into tying her hair in a proper bun, tightly, on the top of her head.

She was not gorgeous like Magdalena—Magdalena knew there were few people who were gorgeous like her, and her face was not cute exactly. It was pleasant to look at, but it had a bit of mystery about it, like if you got closer to her, there would be some potentially salacious secret for you to find it. And Suzy had the kind of face that invited you to get closer, to try and get near enough to know the secret, whatever it was.

Magdalena turned heads because of the matter of fact appearance of her body; but Suzy had a quality Magdalena had always privately been jealous of. Her face was expressive; it was her personality that was appealing. People looked at Magdalena because of the external state of her body; people looked at Suzy because of the spirit which animated hers, and Suzy seemed to have the ability to sway most people to her side. She could smile in a way that made everyone in a room feel happier; she could pout in a way that made everyone ache for her, and this empathizable quality seemed particularly effective when used on the boys of Pine Ridge High, at those times that Suzy directly targeted them. But above all, Suzy’s expressions were mercurial. They could shift on the spin of a dime; and were equally effective no matter how often they changed. Even Magdalena herself sometimes felt affected by what Suzy’s face expressed, even when she was on the other side of a room from her, though Magdalena would never had admitted it.

Suzy was average height; Magdalena knew a lot of other women and girls both who shared Suzy’s height of five feet four inches. She knew her own height was a bit of an anomaly. Suzy was fairly slender, too; and she was probably slimmer than Magdalena. If Magdalena had to guess—and she had a pretty good eye for weight—she would have guessed Suzy weighed around one hundred and twenty pounds. From what Magdalena knew about her, Suzy had spent years playing sports, so it was no mystery where she’d gotten a body like that. She was probably fitter than Magdalena, with a more athletic build; but her body was not so impressive as Magdalena’s. She would have estimated her at about a 34 B-cup, maybe a 22 inch waist and 33 inch hips.

The one way in which Suzy’s body was possibly superior to Magdalena’s was that she seemed to naturally tan better than Magdalena did; every summer, Suzy’s natural golden brown tan came back like clockwork with seemingly no effort at all. Her skin just did that. She probably spent more time outdoors, if Magdalena had to guess; but even so, her skin seemed genetically predisposed in a way that Magdalena’s wasn’t.

Suzy always tended to dress in loose, flowing clothes; Magdalena thought it was to swamp her lack of bosom, and cover that up—she was dressed in this typical style today, also. She also liked a lot of sheer, but wasn’t wearing any today.

Magdalena looked over to Autumn, sitting cross-legged next to Suzy. She’d been eighteen for a while, too... if Magdalena remembered, Autumn’s birthday was just a month or two after Suzy’s. Her hair was red, and her complexion fair—unlike Suzy, it could easily be said that Autumn’s face was cute. There was really no other word for it; and her short hairstyle framed it to make it even cuter. Probably Autumn’s best quality was her lips, if Magdalena was judging objectively: they were... a quirk. Something about them just naturally drew the eye; no matter who it was that was looking, and Autumn seemed to know this, because the only kind of makeup Magdalena ever saw Autumn wearing was a touch a lipstick to highlight her lips and draw attention there even more.

She was taller than Suzy, at five foot six, and seemed just a touch heavier—though still a touch lighter than Magdalena herself, probably weighing around at about one hundred and thirty pounds, if Magdalena had to guess. She had about the same bust size as Suzy, probably about a 34 B-cup also, but Autumn’s body was slightly larger than her friend’s. Her waist was probably a 26-inch; her hips, probably 36. Not surprising; Autumn was probably the smartest person in the whole school, and from what Magdalena knew, she hardly ever exercised, preferring to spend all her time on her studies and her reading. She mostly hid her body anyway, even more than Suzy did, swamping not just her bust but every part of her in baggy material and layers. Still—Magdalena had seen her in tighter clothes on disparate equations—enough to accurately estimate her size even on a day like today, when she was hiding herself all away again.

Magdalena’s attention fell on the last in that group of three, and the group’s only boy: Barry Pierce. He was a gangly nineteen-year-old, and he hadn’t been nineteen much longer than Magdalena herself had been. His hair was dark; and it was always shaggy and unkempt. He must have liked it that way, or else he would have eventually done something to groom it.

He was the tallest of his little group; he was just about a full six feet in height, though he seemed to be just a few fractions of an inch less than it. He seemed to go up by a fraction of an inch every now and then, though; it seemed like he was still growing taller, he wasn’t finished yet.

He was also heavier than his friends; by Magdalena’s guess, probably around a hundred and seventy pounds; his weight seemed to keep growing too. Everything about his body still looked immature. No one would have ever mistaken him for an adult, even though he legally was one, and with a full year beyond the minimum age to his credit, too.

The three of them, Suzy, Autumn and Barry were laughing together, but Magdalena knew that they weren’t laughing at the people around them, the students of the school, the way her clique members did. The way she did, when she felt like joining them.

They were laughing at being in each other’s company; Magdalena wondered idly what that might be like. To laugh with friends in enjoyment, not mockery. She’d been at the top so long, and it was isolating.

She didn’t think this with regret or particular sadness, just a kind of matter-of-fact curiosity. In her role as queen of the school, she took part in her fair share of mocking too, just because she wasn’t doing it right now didn’t mean she never did. But she was still tuning out her friends as they laughed at the three of those students, three of the most outcasted outcasts on campus. The mocking didn’t bother Magdalena, except that it reminded her she herself would be mocked; as soon as any of them found out about her smarts, it was over for her. They’d disparage her as a nerd, and she’d become an outcast too. She had to find her solution soon, before anyone did happen to find out her grades by chance. At any time she could be exposed, and when it came to her crown for the school, she wouldn’t leave it to chance. She needed a plan, and soon.

The bell rang, and Magdalena’s clique all got up off the benches to move inside, on the way to their first class of the day. Magdalena didn’t turn to look behind, but she knew everyone else out on the lawn was doing the same. Suzy, Autumn, and Barry too.

Between first and second period, there was about a fifteen-minute break. So Suzy, Autumn and Barry were all sitting together at one of the tables in the high school halls. Autumn was reading a book; Suzy was painting her nails a light green color to go with the loose light green tank-top she’d worn under that day’s soft sweater, and Barry was opening the wrapper a snack cake he’d bought at the nearby vending machine for a few coins.

First period had been math; and everybody except autumn felt glum about this. Suzy in particular. She only really ever did well in biology, when it came to official school classes. She also did well in gym, but that was thanks to all her sporty extra-curriculars. She’d run track for years, even in elementary school, though that had been several towns removed from Pine Ridge, where she and her mother had only moved when she was in tenth grade, following her parent’s separation. Their divorce had only recently become final, and Suzy felt that getting her down sometimes when she let it; there, she had let her mind wander to it again when she shouldn’t. She’d meant to be thinking about school.

She did well in biology, she did well in gym (she found making lists helped keep her thoughts moving in a good direction); she was quite athletic after participating in so many kinds of sports all her life-long, but outside of these two areas, she struggled. All her other grades were barely passing, and though her best friend Autumn always gave her pep talks, Suzy just couldn’t seem to get her grades up; she wasn’t sure if it was a matter of lack of motivation, or just plain confusion, but it was the state of things... and that day in math had been particularly bleak.

There was another test coming up at the end of the week; the whole class had known, for a few weeks previous, that this particular test was coming up, and Suzy had been studying hard, but after that day’s review session, she felt more certain than ever that she was going to fail the test on Friday, and she was going to get very bad marks on the homework they’d been assigned to take home and finish that night.

Barry was still eating his snack cake, but he reached back into his backpack, and took out his math notebook. Autumn had her book open, spine resting against the surface of the table, and Barry set his empty notebook down in front of her, then moved his textbook closer to Autumn, still chewing his snack cake.

With his notebook resting on her book’s pages, she couldn’t keep reading, but she’d been so concentrated on the words her eyes had been scanning that it took her a minute to register there had been an interruption, and she couldn’t actually see the words anymore.

Suzy only had one of her hand’s fingernailpainted, but she watched to see what Barry would do.

He pushed the rest of the snack cake into his mouth with one finger, and spoke around a full mouth. “Can you do these problems for me? I don’t have a clue where to start.”

Autumn looked up at Barry, and she looked at him a little too long, like she’d gotten caught while she was staring and couldn’t get out of the trap yet. Privately, Suzy though Autumn should tell Barry no, even though she wouldn’t. Suzy thought Autumn let Barry walk all over her too much; she was too accommodating to him, did anything he asked whenever. She was already in the habit of doing Barry’s homework for him, but she usually made a pretense of getting him to at least attempt the problems first.

Suzy knew that Autumn liked Barry; liked Barry like that, that it was hard for her that he was oblivious to this and had always been. It was especially harder for Autumn because she’d known Barry her entire life; longer than Suzy had known either of them, because both Autumn and Barry had been born in Pine Ridge, into houses that were literally right beside each other on the same street; the parents had brought them around each other when they were toddlers, they had been friends since before memory. (Literally—Autumn had explained this to Suzy once, that the child’s developing brain didn’t start actually logging long-term memory until after the point that Autumn and Barry had started playing with blocks together. Autumn knew things like that.)

And Suzy knew, from various girl’s night only sleepovers, that Autumn had been in love with Barry ever since they were five years old. She’d confessed to Suzy, late at night in the glow of a tv screen, over a bowl of popcorn. When she was five, she’d known that she wanted to marry Barry when they were old enough; she had constantly told her dolls all about it, had even chosen proxy dolls, an Autumn doll and a Barry doll, and married them over and over again.

Obviously, her love had only deepened over time; Autumn loved Barry now like a girl who was on the cusp of adulthood, and Suzy knew that Autumn was so crazy for him that if he had ever showed any interest in her at all, she would have been completely bowled over. If Barry had been up for it, Autumn would have married him fresh out of high school, as soon as they graduated. She was technically eighteen, and Barry was nineteen, legally, either one could get married if they wanted. But Barry was as oblivious to Autumn’s love for him as he had been ever since Autumn had decided she wanted to marry him at 5 years old. He’d never so much as flirted with her.

So sure, Barry could ask Autumn for more than was fair; and Autumn could love him a whole lot, with her entire heart... but Suzy still didn’t think that meant Autumn should say yes to Barry every time he ever asked for anything; still thought that, when Autumn was feeling particularly lovesick, she should pull back and keep her distance from Barry to protect herself, get her head on straight, put the proper boundaries in place.

Autumn talked Suzy up about her smarts, talked up her ability to pull off a turn-around in her grades; and Suzy talked Autumn up about her insecurities, reminded her that there was so much about her that was special; that her value was not determined by the one boy who couldn’t see her and took her for granted. The friends always talked past each other when talking up, though. Suzy never quite believed Autumn when Autumn told her she was smart and she could turn her grades around. And Autumn never quite believed Suzy when she told her that Barry was not the sole judge of Autumn’s worth as a person.

Autumn finally reminded herself she needed to stop staring Barry in the face; finally remembered that she wasn’t reading the book that was underneath Barry’s open notebook, anymore. “Why don’t you give the first few problems a try, Bar, and then if you’re still having trouble...”

“Oh, come on, Aut,” Barry whined. “Today’s class made no sense at all; I’m just hopeless with this stuff, you know that. I’m never gonna get it. All I got out of today’s lesson was a headache, and I don’t have a hope of getting even one of these problems right. So can you just do them for me, like you always do when I get stuck?”

Autumn chewed her lower lip in a way that was distinctly cute; Suzy felt even more protective of her friend than usual. When she enacted her little mannerisms like that, it made her seem even more innocent than she always did. “Bar, if you just tried it first—”

“I don’t need to try to know I won’t be able to do it,” Barry protested. “I’m telling you, this stuff is so confusing, I’m already stuck even though I haven’t started yet. I don’t need to start to know I’ll still be stuck when I do. If you were the one teaching me, Aut, I might have a chance, but until you yourself get up in front of the class and teach me these problem subjects yourself, can you just do the problems for me and save us all a lot of time?”

Autumn was on the point of breaking down and taking up her pencil to start filling in Barry’s notebook page; Suzy knew firsthand, because she’d looked over at her friend’s notebook during class, that Autumn had completed all the homework while the class-period had still been going on, so she knew the right answers to put down on Barry’s paper. She hadn’t had to pay attention to the review session, and the math teacher had never called on her. Everyone in class, including Autumn, knew that she was going to be scoring a ninety-five percent on Friday’s test that week, if not higher.

But Suzy had been looking for an in to come to Autumn’s defense against Barry’s request; to help shore up her uncertainty, and help her stand up for herself and say no to Barry. She loved Barry too—not in the way Autumn did, just as a very dear best friend, and knew he had no malicious intentions, but he was as oblivious to his extra influence over Autumn as he was to her other feelings for him, and sometimes he needed a little checking.

And Barry himself had given Suzy the opportunity to stand up for Autumn that she’d been looking for. When he’d said, ‘until you yourself get up in front of the class and teach me yourself,’ Suzy had known exactly what to say.

Autumn was opening her mouth to say, “okay,” in her restrained, diminutive way, the way she always did when she capitulated to someone else, the way some of the meaner popular kids did now and then when they wanted to put Autumn in her place or extract some favor from her; but before Autumn could finish agreeing, Suzy interrupted and spoke over her; out of the corner of her eye, she saw Magdalena Banks and her clique sit down at the hall table that was across from theirs.

“Aut,” Suzy interrupted. “Why don’t you really do it? Teach us, I mean.”

This interrupted what Autumn had been in the middle of saying. Both Barry and Autumn turned to look at Suzy in confusion, so Suzy took the opportunity to keep talking.

“I mean it,” Suzy said. “You’re smart, you’re patient, you’re understanding, but in most cases you don’t let people slack off—you push them to do what you know they need to for them to reach their potential.” Suzy said, ‘most,’ because Barry was the one exception to this rule. For most other people, even Suzy, when Autumn was helping her with her homework, Autumn was firm, which made her a good teacher—but Barry was always let off the hook with no pressing at all.

“That makes you teacherly,” Suzy went on. “And both Barry and I have low grades—I honestly think mine might be a little worse than Barry’s; we both need a teacher who gives us more hands-on attention, and you’re always so kind to us... why don’t you run a study group for us? We can meet regularly, and bring all our problem subjects to you; and you can help us... and finally maybe I can turn my grades around, and Barry can finally start understanding math.”

Autumn blushed bright pink. “You guys really think I’m that smart? You want to learn from me?”

“Sure we do, Aut,” Suzy encouraged, giving her friend a rub on the arm. Then she let her eyes drift to Barry, and said, with a bit of a deadpan edge to her tone. “Don’t we, Bar?”

Barry’s eyes widened. “Yeah—yeah, yeah we do,” he fumbled over his words. “I never would have come up with—I never even considered— That’s... actually a really good idea, Suz.”

“Those do happen to me sometimes,” Suzy joked. But she let her hand fall back to the table, and looked back to Suzy. “What do you say, Aut? Will you lead our study group?”

Autumn’s blush had only turned pinker. If it kept going it would pretty soon catch up to the shade of her red hair. “I’m just... so flattered, you guys. And—ooh, it’s exciting when I think about it!”

Autumn flapped her hands, getting agitated with excitement, shifting up and down on the table bench like she was hopping up and down while sitting; bounce, bounce—both Suzy and Barry watched in amusement.

“I just—you’re my best friend, Suzy, so I’ll get to see even more of you, and I always love when I get to see more of you—and Barry, you’re—”

Autumn swallowed; and Suzy understood exactly what she was saying in that lapsed silence. More time around Barry wasn’t only a simple source of excitement for Autumn, like more time with Suzy was. More time around Barry meant more time for him, her secret and longest crush, to notice her; to realize how she felt about him, to decide he felt something for her too. Autumn couldn’t come right out and say this; but Suzy knew her best friend well enough to hear this unspoken idea loudly and clearly.

“And Barry, you’re my best friend too,” Autumn was back to bouncing in her seat, but it seemed a little more affected now, as if she were forcing it now and not feeling it genuinely, instead feeling a little sad about the things she wasn’t able to say but still hoped for. “So it’ll be so great for all three of us to hang out together and do all our homework together; and I can help, and I can teach—” she looked genuinely excited again; her love of knowledge had superseded her sadness, and Suzy was glad to see it.

“You don’t only have to teach,” Suzy reminded her. “I know you’ve been working on some special credit projects,” she added. “We won’t need you explaining and helping literally every second that we’re meeting; so you can work on your own stuff too... and if there’s ever a day where you haven’t finished your homework in class as soon as it was assigned, then you can do that in study group, too.”

“I think we both know hell with freeze over before that happens,” Barry laughed. “But hey, you know, maybe some time you’ll need help with your homework at study group, and we can help you.”

Suzy burst out in laughter at the thought; and soon all three friends were laughing together, as they often did. The chances of Autumn needing help with homework were lower than zero, given she was probably the smartest kid in the school; and the chances of Autumn not finishing her homework in class were probably almost at zero as well; she was quite good at multi-tasking, and even when she was voraciously asking questions or raising her hand to answer them, she was often able to keep her other hand scribbling in right answers, filling in the homework in her notebook with the other; fully participating in class and getting her homework down with exceptional marks every time.

But if Autumn hadn’t already decided to help them out, the offer of extra special credit worktime would have been the thing to sway her; on top of spending extra time with her friends, enjoying herself with them, she would never have been able to turn down the chance for extra research and study time on those passion research and writing projects of her own. Before the three of them had fallen into laughter, Suzy had been sure she’d distinctly seen a look of hunger in Autumn’s eyes at the thought of being able to also work on her own extra-credit stuff.

But the three of them were still laughing; that is, they were still laughing until all three of them, at the same time, realized there was somebody else standing over their table. And all three of them looked up at the same time, mid-laughter, to see that that person was Magdalena Banks.

“The three of you dorks can stop laughing now,” Magdalena interrupted. “Because I’ve got something to say.”

The laughter died off; Autumn looked shaky even though she was just sitting. Magdalena had been known to treat Autumn pretty badly in the past; open mocking, sometimes very cruel, and mean-spirited mocking, so any time she saw the queen of Pine Ridge High School, she was always a bit cowed by fear.

Barry was staring in a more dumbfounded way; more like he was realizing he was being faced with a very beautiful girl, in Magdalena, and he didn’t know quite what to do with that.

Suzy didn’t mind speaking for the two of them; it usually fell to her anyway, and she had very little trouble with public speaking in general. This wasn’t quite so public, but it was the kind of speaking that would make more nervous people—well, nervous, but she wasn’t afraid at all. She put her hand on Autumn’s hand in reassurance, and stared Magdalena Banks right in the face, without flinching.

“Say what you have to say,” Suzy said. “Queen Magdalena,” she added—this caught Barry’s attention enough to draw a chuckle from him; though he kept staring at Magdalena after he was done laughing.

“My grades aren’t looking so hot right now,” Magdalena started. “Though everything else about me is. And I overheard you three losers say you were starting a study group. I could really use the help, if you’ll let me slum it with you guys.”

“Well, Queen Magdalena,” Barry started, reusing Suzy’s jeer. “The first tip for convincing people to do something you want is not to insult them, so I don’t think any of us are feeling like being all that welcoming.”

“Well, I want in. And the last time I heard, no one appointed you the leader of study group; Autumn’s the leader, so I think she’s the one who gets to say whether I’m allowed in or not.”

Magdalena had put her hands on the table, and was now leaning over it. She looked at Autumn; so did everyone else; Autumn had turned as white as a bedsheet. “Well, Autumn?” Magdalena prompted. “What do you say. Can I join your study group?”

Suzy was trying everything she could to catch Autumn’s eye, to silently, telepathically send the message with a glance, you don’t have to do this, you can stand up to her; and she imagined Barry might have been trying to do the same, but Autumn was forcing herself to meet Magdalena’s eyes as she leaned over the table. “You’ll be there at every meeting of the study group, right Suzy?”

Suzy was startled by the question, but didn’t hesitate. “Of course I will, Aut,” she assured her.

Autumn nodded to herself, as if she had needed to hear it out loud for reassurance; but also as though she had never really doubted for a second what the answer would be. Suzy was glad their friendship was so rock-solid that Autumn could trust in it like that.

Autumn exhaled. “Then I think it could be an interesting challenge. Okay, Magdalena. You can join our study group.”

Magdalena smiled the smile of a queen, leaving no doubt of her social status relative to theirs. “Perfect,” she said. “If I hadn’t done something about my grades soon, I would have been in real trouble. So when’s the first meeting of this thing?”

Autumn, Barry and Suzy all exchanged glances with each other. “What about right after school, today?” Autumn asked, looking back to Magdalena. “We can get started right away; and just hang out on campus; we can meet every day after school, if we need to; then when people’s grades start coming up, we can cut the frequency back to only a few times in a week.”

Magdalena stood up, opened her compact mirror, took out her lipstick, and adjusted the shade of her lips. “I guess I’ve got to sacrifice if I want better grades; what is it they always say, no pain no gain? It’s sure as shit going to be a pain seeing you all every day, but if I gain what I’m hoping to, it might just be tolerable.” She snapped her compact shut, and dropped her lipstick in her purse. “I’ll see you losers here at last bell,” she said, and turned and stalked back in the direction of her friends.

“There goes Magdalena Banks, queen of the school,” Barry said, deadpan—but also like he was a little awed by her. Or at least by the way she was walking.

Suzy turned back to Autumn; Barry was still staring after Magdalena as she walked away, watching her hips sway from side to side as she walked. His eyes were definitely fixed on the lower half of her body. Suzy would have given Barry a hard time about it if she hadn’t been in the middle of saying something to Autumn.

“Did Magdalena just set the location for our study group meeting?” Suzy asked. It had happened so fast, so deftly, she’d almost missed it happening.

“I think she just did,” Autumn agreed.

Suzy shook her head. “We’ll have to watch that; stop her the next time she tries to make another power grab. You can stop staring now, Barry.”

Barry startled; it was his turn to flush, but his mouth flapped, and he was unable to make any comment in defense.

And before Autumn or Suzy could say anything to each other, the bell rang, signaling the start of second period.

They, and the rest of the students in the hallway, scrambled to get their things together, and Suzy headed off for second period with her friends, with only one of her hands fingernailpainted the light green of her loose shirt. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could sneak the bottle out of her purse next class... and get the other hand painted without the teacher noticing. She knew Autumn would shake her head when she saw her do it; but she also knew Autumn would forgive her; and after school, Autumn could start out helping them get their grades all back on the right track.

That first meeting of the study group was rocky; Magdalena constantly made snipes at them all, and Suzy had to keep coming to Autumn’s defense, and pushing back on Magdalena’s catty cruelness. But in the end it was a productive first meeting; they found an unused classroom, with no sign of a teacher anywhere near by, and they pushed the desks around so they could make a circle of four desks in the center to dump all their books onto, and then start working from.

It got a little uncomfortable sitting in desks after the first half-hour, since they’d already been doing it all day, so they moved the center desks back, and pulled two tables from along the wall and put them in the center. As they were trying to get a good grip on the table, Suzy couldn’t help but knock the calendar that was stuck to the corkboard above the table, making it swing on its pushpin, the current month’s date of October 1993 spinning around and around and around. The calendar was forgotten once she and Barry got a good grip on the first table, and successfully moved it to the center of the room. After that the second table moved more easily.

Then the four of them sat in some regular chairs around the two tables which had been pushed together, and that was much more comfortable; they spent the second half-hour like this, and it seemed to help all their concentration.

Suzy, in particular, found she was able to make sense of a concept that had been eluding her all semester once Autumn had explained it in just exactly the right way; and Barry turned out to be able to complete his math homework after all, once he got a little guidance from Autumn about it. Secretly, Suzy was glad to see Barry doing the work himself for once, and to see Autumn holding him to account, making him keep going even when he tried to give up and hand it back to her.

Autumn stood over Magdalena’s chair to help her with her math homework too, for a bit, but she frowned. “Where did you get this number?” She pointed down at Magdalena’s page.

“What do you mean, where did I get it?” Magdalena asked, snippy. “I solved for it.”

“But you got the wrong answer—” Autumn started.

“And that’s why I’m here! Or did you forget? You’re the one who’s supposed to be helping me with this stuff!”

Suzy opened her mouth to stand up for her friend again, but Autumn spoke up first, using her patient “teaching-mode” voice. She seemed to have stepped into the role of instructor, knowledge dispenser, and the affectation seemed to give her added bravery to be able to match up with Magdalena.

“I know, but you interrupted me. If you’d have let me finish speaking, I was going to say, ‘You got the wrong answer,’ but I don’t see how you got there. You did the entire equation right; all the steps are in the right order; then suddenly you’ve come up with this random number out of nowhere.”

Magdalena gave Autumn a steely stare, trying to stare her down into compliance. “I just got the wrong answer,” Magdalena said.

Autumn’s brow furrowed in confusion; this was a cute expression too, every expression Autumn ever wore on her face was cute, but her newfound courage deserted her. “Right, okay, sorry. Next time, remember when you’re calculating these numbers...” And Autumn launched into a lesson for even Magdalena. Then Magdalena tried some of her math problems again, keeping in mind the tweaks Autumn had suggested to her, with grudging acceptance, and that time, solved her problems for the right answer, and boasted about it to them afterwards. “You’re not half bad, Autumn,” Magdalena told her, Suzy imagined because she’d seen such fast results.

All of them had, really. Autumn was just that good.

After an hour and a half, all four of them were feeling like it was time to call it a day, so they said their goodbyes; Suzy, Autumn and Barry had all been planning to walk home, like they did every day. Pine Ridge was a small enough town that it was never far to get anywhere from anywhere else, and walking home didn’t take long.

There was always inevitably a point, in each walk home, when Suzy and Autumn and Barry came to a crossroad; Suzy would go down one road to head into the next neighborhood over, where her house was, and Autumn and Barry would go the other way, to head down the street that led to their own homes, which sat side by side. They were in the process of getting their things together and saying goodbye to Magdalena when she surprised them all by offering the three of them a ride home in her car.

Her car; none of them knew her well, but they knew she loved that thing. She’d made a big deal of it, loud enough for everyone to hear, when she’d gotten it back in sophomore year. It had been a special present specifically from Magdalena’s father, who was fairly well-to-do. To actually be allowed, accepted, invited into Magdalena’s car was a much bigger deal than simply being in Magdalena’s company on school grounds. Clearly, the three of them had passed some sort of invisible test. Suzy still found it surprising, though.

Ultimately, the three friends decided they’d prefer being spared a walk, so they took Magdalena up on her offer. She dropped Autumn and Barry off together first, since they lived right next to each other; when they first got into her car, she was snippy with them about scuffing the seats or damaging the upholstery, but for most of the drive after that, she was silent, letting her radio play the pop station, and this kept up even when it was only Suzy and Magdalena alone in the car.

When Magdalena dropped Suzy off, and Suzy got out, the only thing she said was, “See you in class tomorrow,” and then she sped off without waiting for Suzy to say anything in reply.

Suzy shook her head as she went inside. It wasn’t her first time thinking it and it wouldn’t be her last. Magdalena Banks was an impatient girl.

Study group over the course of the next few weeks got easier; it had taken some getting used to, for Magdalena, but even though she hadn’t needed the academic help, she was still getting plenty in return for the minor inconvenience of meeting up with that gang of outcasts every day after school.

She had a cover now, which was the most important thing; if anyone found out about her good grades, now, she could tell them that she’d had bad grades; and Autumn had seen her fumbling her answers these last few weeks, she could vouch for her; and then explain that she’d fixed them because her parents had put on the pressure. She could manipulate and scare-tactic her way to any accuser’s or exposer’s acceptance. The important thing was that she had an excuse now, and she hadn’t before. They couldn’t label her a nerd now; they couldn’t take her crown.

It was a new afternoon; a new study group meeting; at first, Magdalena had tolerated these, but it was starting to be less of a nuisance, and more of something that she could enjoy. She’d gotten less snippy with all of them; found herself thinking of them less and less as inferiors, and more and more as people it was okay to be around—even fun. Especially the way Barry and Suzy joked around; when Autumn laughed with them too, it was easy to get pulled into the laughter. It felt different to laugh when it wasn’t laughter dedicated to the mockery of others.

The study group meetings were helping everyone’s grades improve. Well, not her own, they hadn’t actually needed improvement... but she was pretending to improve along with the others. And as the work had gotten easier for both Suzy and Barry, the study group sessions had morphed more into homework hangouts—or even just general hangouts, when Autumn would let them slack off for a while to just sit there and chat or laugh about things of no importance. Autumn always got them back on track pretty quickly; but Magdalena found she enjoyed these delays more than the work itself, or the satisfaction of knowing she had a cover; or even more than just about any other interaction she’d had at any point that day.

But soon enough Autumn prompted them to get back to work, saying she was hoping to finally start work on her extra-credit projects now that they were all doing better in their classes. No one had breathed a word about the idea of cutting the frequency of study group meetings back. Magdalena, at least, knew she wasn’t interested in seeing that happen.

But before any of them started working in earnest, Autumn got up and came over to where Magdalena was sitting on her side of the table. They’d found that same abandoned classroom to be abandoned at the same time every day, so it had become their hangout spot; it never seemed to be used during the day, either—probably this classroom hadn’t had any schedules scheduled in it this semester, Magdalena thought—and when Magdalena looked up at Autumn standing above her, Autumn gave her a smile that even Magdalena had to admit was endearing because of the way it quirked.

“Hey, Magdalena,” Autumn said. “I just wanted to ask you something about the way you’re solving the homework problems you have today, but I don’t want to disturb the others while they’re focusing. Do you wanna step into the hallway for a second so I can ask you?”

It sounded plausible to Magdalena; she always looked for the ulterior motive in everything, but around these three people, she was finding more and more she didn’t have to. None of them had, so far, tried to backstab or otherwise take advantage of her. Magdalena nodded, pushed her chair back, and followed Autumn out into the hall.

It was after school today, like it was every time the study group met; there was no one else left around in this end of the school, and with the door to the study group’s room shut, Magdalena and Autumn had virtually complete privacy out in the hall outside it.

Autumn twisted her hands together, but she came out with what she meant to say a lot faster than she would have done three weeks ago; as the study group’s meetings had gone on, and Autumn had gotten used to the feeling of her authority being respected, not to mention that she’d seen herself be proven trustworthy time and again when the methods she advised to her study group members actually ended up working, as this had happened, she’d become a little more confident in herself, a little quicker to speak up. This meant little to Magdalena, except it did cause her a small amount of adoration; grudgingly, she had to respect Autumn a little. She hadn’t thought the redheaded girl had it in her; had assumed she would never show confidence at all, and was admiring that she had thought wrong. Magdalena rarely misjudged a person, or more accurately, very rarely inaccurately predicated what they were or weren’t capable of, but she’d been wrong about Autumn, and that was, honestly, a little novel too.

Autumn twisted her hands together one more time, and then finally seemed ready to speak. “I know you’re lying about having bad grades.”

Magdalena started, had to do a double take. It was the last thing she’d expected to hear—apparently she’d completely been wrong about Autumn. This seemed like it was going to be blackmail and ulterior motive after all.

“What about it?” Magdalena asked, in her steeliest tone, squaring her chin; taking on a regal composure that she had rarely used in the company of the three of them.

Autumn blanched. “I-I just mean I know you’re smarter than you let on. Smarter than you want anybody to know; you couldn’t hide it in your answers, you know the right way to solve every problem, answer every question, and you go through the logical process, and then at the end you just make up nonsense so it will still come out wrong, even though you know what you’re doing.”

Magdalena stared—okay, she had been wrong about Autumn, but not like she’d thought. Autumn was more perceptive, cleverer than she thought. She was used to outsmarting everyone around her; but she’d undervalued Autumn’s intelligence. Her grudging respect for the other girl grew a little more.

“So I already had my suspicions, but I—I stopped by the office and offered to help out, volunteer a little bit, and then when the secretary had her back turned, when she’d stepped out of the room for a bit, I took the keys and let myself into filing cabinets—and I saw all your grades for this semester. A after A in every class...”

Magdalena stood there. It was the worst-case scenario she’d tried so hard to prepare for; her smarts exposed, and found by the person who was supposed to be Magdalena’s alibi and back her up when she made excuses for her good grades, if they ever came up. She hadn’t thought she’d be exposed by Autumn herself; Autumn was the one she was supposed to be using. Not the one who was supposed to be finding her out.

“What do you want? Are you trying to get something out of me?” Magdalena snapped. She hadn’t quite broken into a full snarl, yet, but she was ready to go there if necessary. She could hold her own against this wisp; she’d gone nose to nose with the other would-be queens of the school she’d all beaten out. She’d go right there with Autumn, too.

“Nothing!” Autumn squeaked. “I just... wanted you to know I know... that you’re smart... you don’t have to pretend to be bad at the work you’re doing. You don’t have to hide anything like that from me, or worry about me spilling to anyone else. I’m a great secret keeper—ask Suzy! I just thought I’d save you the trouble of thinking you had to pretend for me.”

This surprised Magdalena—something so unselfish, even kind. Autumn was willing to keep a secret for her, even when she had, in the past so often been rude to her.

“Did you tell Suzy and Barry?” Magdalena asked, still quite not used to the feeling of trusting another person, especially someone her own age she would have otherwise considered an enemy, or at least a rival. She thought of most of the girls in her school as rivals, even when they were much further down the social hierarchy than she was.

“It’s your secret to tell,” Autumn said. “I won’t tell them if you don’t want me to.”

Magdalena opened her mouth. She wasn’t very good at saying thank you or being gracious, because she rarely saw any reason to, but in this situation she very much wanted to be gracious, entirely of her own volition. “Autumn, I—”

Autumn gave her a goofy smile. “You don’t have to say anything! I’m just excited to see what your brain will come up with, what it will do now that you don’t have to waste your time pretending to be stupider than you are.”

Magdalena didn’t know what else to say, so she just nodded once, and she and Autumn both went back into the study group to keep going with their work, and to keep participating in the meeting.

The following Friday, as the study group was packing up their things Magdalena surprised them all by speaking up. “We should do something tonight,” she said, decisively, as she piled her books up on top of each other. “We should try to get into a club, or something—get something to drink.”

This was the first time that Magdalena had ever invited the three of them to do anything social. Suzy had thought the four of them were getting along pretty well; but hanging out after school in study group wasn’t the same as being seen together around their peers. During the day, Magdalena went back to her group of friends, and pretended like she didn’t know they existed. It was better than when she’d used to insult them and take shots at them even when she was just walking by, but to try to sneak into a club together; if anyone else from the school had snuck into the same club, they would see Magdalena with them, and them with Magdalena—but clearly Magdalena wasn’t worried about this—didn’t mind the idea of being seen with them out in public.

“I’m willing to go,” Suzy said. She’d never admitted it, sometimes not even to herself, but part of her had always half-longingly wished that she could be in Magdalena’s clique, that she could run with her and follow along on her adventures. She loved her own friends, she’d never seriously acted on the half-longing, and she would never have ditched Autumn or Barry to try to get in with Magdalena, but if Magdalena was openly offering an ‘in’ to them all... Suzy was definitely on board.

“What about you, Autumn?” Magdalena asked.

Before Autumn could answer, Barry spoke up, as he slipped his things into a backpack. “You’d never catch Aut there, in a million years. She’s too good for something like that, wouldn’t want to get in trouble.”

And before Autumn could answer that, Magdalena bandied back an answer. “I don’t know, I think she might have a devious streak you’re not seeing;” and Magdalena gave Autumn a wink. Suzy couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened between the two. “What do you say, Autumn?”

Autumn let out a nervous giggle as if she couldn’t believe she were about to say the words. “Let’s try to sneak into a club tonight! Let’s get drunk!”

“If everybody else is in, I’m in too,” Barry said—but he was looking at Autumn like he didn’t quite recognize her.

They all went out to the school parking lot, to where Magdalena’s car was parked in the best, most convenient space. Her parents even had pull with the school board; so it had been easy for them to pull the strings and get that space for her when it had been time for the student parking assignments. Magdalena had told the whole story one day during study group, like she was proud of it. She had been the only sophomore student to get a parking space; they were usually only for juniors and seniors, and they’d given her the best one, just as soon as she’d gotten her car for her sixteenth birthday, and kicked out the senior girl who’d had the space before—and she’d had the space ever since, and still did.

The three of them had gotten used to riding around in Magdalena’s car, because she was in the habit by now, after four weeks, of driving them all home every day when study group was over. But this time, when all four of them threw their bags and books in Magdalena’s trunk, and got in the car; Suzy in the passenger seat, Barry and Autumn in the back; this time, they weren’t going home, they were going into Pine Ridge’s downtown.

Study group had run late, and the days were getting shorter anyway as the fall marched forward to winter. There were more breezy days than really hot ones, but it was still always comfortable to be outside, one of the benefits of California living, especially when the backdrop was not California’s sweltering summer heat. As they pulled up downtown, outside the club that Magdalena thought gave them the best chance, it was dark out, and the club in particular was clearly open and with a fair number of people inside, if the noise that was escaping the entrance was any indicator.

Magdalena had told them in the car that the key was confidence; and that was what she was walking with as they walked up the sidewalk towards the club’s bouncer.

He gave them an unamused look. “Alright, miss, that’s enough. The four of you can stop there.”

Magdalena batted her eyes at him. “What’s the problem, sir?”

“You’re clearly over 21, so you can go in no problem, but the three of them are obviously teens. Shame on you for trying to sneak your brother in just so he can impress his two girlfriends.”

Magdalena spluttered. “My brother?” She echoed, incredulously.

There really wasn’t much resemblance between Magdalena and Barry, apart from the fact that they were both brunettes, but the bouncer had made a quick judgement, was seeking an explanation for the situation he found himself confronted with: a 21-year-old brunette, a mid-to-late brunette teen, and to other teens beside. Suzy could see how he’d arrived at the conclusion he’d found, but Magdalena was clearly unpleased with the association.

“That’s okay, Magdalena,” Autumn spoke up. “You go into the club and have a good time without us—we can all just go back to Barry’s place and hang out, that’s usually what we do on Friday nights anyway.”

Magdalena’s mind was clearly processing this statement from the look that was in behind her eyes.

“Yeah, fair try, Magdalena, but we’ll just get going. It shouldn’t be too long a walk from here—nothing in Pine Ridge is, and we’re walking in a group,” Barry said, turning as if he were ready to start walking.

But Magdalena wasn’t moving—looking torn—Suzy watched with real surprise. She would have figured Magdalena would have just gone into the club alone without a moment’s hesitation. What Magdalena Banks wanted she got, and she never let anyone get in her way. At least, the Magdalena Banks that Suzy had thought she knew these past three years she’d lived in Pine Ridge.

But this looked like it might a slightly different Magdalena Banks, now. She was clearly reluctant to ditch them for the night; and was considering what to do instead. Again, the three of them had passed some invisible test again; something that had made Magdalena like them all well enough that she was willing to pass up an experience she wanted in favor of being with them. Maybe. That hadn’t been decided; but Suzy was watching closely, to see what Magdalena was ultimately going to decide.

“Forget this place,” Magdalena said. “My parents have a pretty good liquor cabinet at home; why don’t we all just go back and hang at my house?”

This surprised all three of them; but speaking for herself, Suzy knew she wasn’t eager to ditch Magdalena for the night either, and she didn’t imagine that Autumn or Barry wanted that either.

“Sounds good to me,” Suzy said, definitively, and when no one else spoke up, the four of them left the bouncer at the door, and walked back to Magdalena’s car where they got in and rode again as she drove them to her house.

The lights were off when they got to Magdalena’s home, and she had to let them in through the large foyer, and then turn the light-switches on which were accessible from there, once she crossed the threshold. “I think Mom and Dad said something about going out for a date together tonight; I didn’t see Dad’s car in the driveway, so I think we have the place to ourselves for the night.”

She’d left all their stuff in the trunk, including her own, so once they were all in the house, she closed the door and dropped her keys on the table next to it. “Just follow me, you guys, the liquor cabinet is this way.”

She walked them through a house much richer than the ones that belonged to any of their parents, finally getting them to a tucked away study in the back corner of the first floor.

“Daddy’s office,” she explained as they moved into it. She headed straight to the back, left corner, and sure enough there was a liquor cabinet standing there, ornately carved. “You guys can sit on the carpet; it’s shag, it’s pretty soft. It should be, with how much Mom spent on it when she was redecorating in here.”

Magdalena kneeled down on the floor and opened the cabinet, then began rooting through it. Suzy thought of her mother’s own cabinet of alcohol at home—she felt for a moment as if she shared something in common with Magdalena; clearly, Magdalena freely borrowed from this cabinet just as Suzy sometimes borrowed from her mother’s own. But this cabinet was clearly an antique; probably worth many thousands of dollars, and if memory served, Suzy’s mother had picked up her cabinet curbside, taking something that someone else had left out to be picked up by the garbage collectors. In that way, she and Magdalena couldn’t have been more different.

“I’m assuming you’ve all drunk before,” Magdalena said, still busying herself looking between bottles.

Suzy spoke up. “Now and then. I borrow from my parent’s liquor cabinet too.” Magdalena smiled at that, as she kept looking. “I like vodka or wine just fine,” Suzy finished.

“Yeah, but she can’t handle it,” snickered Barry. “She gets drunk basically right away.”

Suzy leaned over and swatted Barry playfully, but he took it in good humor.

“I’ve only tried beer,” Autumn confessed in a sudden burst. “Not light-beer, the real stuff; it’s the only kind my parents ever have in the house.”

“None of that stuff is for me,” Barry interjected, leaning his weight back onto his hands where they rested on the carpet. “I only like drinking hard liquor.”

“Something different for everyone,” Magdalena said. “I can accommodate that.” She gathered several bottles into her arms, then took hold of four crystal glasses in one free hand, clutching them together by fingers gripping inside, and she shifted herself over to where the three of them were sitting, somehow still managing to look graceful even as she walked herself forward in her knees. She was coordinated, too. She didn’t drop either a single bottle, or a vase.

When she reached the group, she settled into a comfortable seated position, and put the bottles in the middle of all of them, then set the glasses on the carpet next to them.

“Wine, Vodka, Beer,” she named, gesturing to each bottle in turn. “Since Suzy said she was already familiar with vodka—I figured two birds with the same stone. Is vodka hard enough for you, Barry?”

Barry flashed a smile, and nodded eagerly.

Magdalena opened the bottle, and poured some vodka into a glass, then passed it to him. “What are you in the mood for tonight, Suzy? Vodka or wine?”

Suzy pondered this choice for a minute, then ultimately decided, “Wine.”

Magdalena smiled. “That’s what I’m in the mood for myself tonight. I think this is supposed to be a pretty good vintage,” she added, as she poured from the same bottle into two different glasses; she passed one, once it was full, to Suzy, and kept the other for herself.

Then she opened the last bottle; and started pouring it into the last glass. “It’s a good lager, I think,” she said, and passed the final glass to Autumn.

Autumn frowned at the glass; Suzy wondered if she’d lost the nerve to drink tonight after the club plan had fallen through. “Maybe I shouldn’t drink tonight after all—” she started.

“Come on, Autumn,” Magdalena cajoled. “We’re all drinking. Drink with us; I’ve already poured it for you.”

“Yeah, Autumn,” Barry echoed. “We’re just having a good time together.”

Autumn chewed her lip only briefly; Suzy knew her friend well enough to know— “Okay,” Autumn said, and took a generous sip at the same time as all the rest of them. Suzy had known Autumn would fold at the first application of pressure. She had been showing budding confidence as their study group leader; but that confidence was new and untested, and hear Autumn was reverting to typical patterns of behavior. At the first sign of conflict, she gave in. This time had been no different.

“So,” Magdalena said, sipping her wine. “Have any of us tried other substances beside alcohol?” She looked around the group, waiting to see who would answer.

Suzy had only taken one sip, but she was already feeling it. Barry hadn’t been kidding about her lack of tolerance. And Magdalena had filled her glass pretty full; she’d be pretty drunk by the time it was empty, but she had no intention of pacing herself. Even just the small buzz she was already feeling made her want to spill; share anything information she was asked about.

“I’ve done some minor drugs,” Suzy burst out. “I didn’t like it, though. They interfered with my athletic performance, and that’s just about the most important thing to me, so I quit it with the partaking.”

Autumn had drunk pretty fast; her glass of beer was half-empty already, she seemed to feel similarly inclined to overshare. “I’ve done pot,” she piped up. “I didn’t like it either. It made me so hungry... I’ve had weight issues in the past, and I really have to watch... I didn’t need a source of bottomless hunger to complicate things; starting up with uncontrollable eating is the last thing I want, so trying pot once was enough for me.”

Magdalena was nodding; really attentively listening to each one of them as the spoke.

“I’ve tried pot, too; a lot of the other cheerleaders like it, so I tried it with them. I didn’t enjoy the experience either; seems like we’ve all got that in common. I still have some friends who still like to get high from time to time; I judge people for a lot of things, but I never judge them for that.”

Magdalena downed another sip of her wine, finishing it, and then refilled her cup, and started drinking her second one. “I’ll tell you guys something,” she said; and all three of them inclined to hear. Suzy imagined they were feeling like her; surprised that Magdalena was opening up to them, when she was notoriously closed off and self-controlled with everyone she knew. “I feel jealous of my other friends sometimes. How they can just let themselves go... just get high, follow their impulses. I’ve got an image to maintain. I can’t let loose like that... I can’t forget my responsibilities, and be that carefree. Not just as Pine Ridge High Queen but... my parents... they’re pillars in this town, and if I ever really lost control, it would reflect so badly on them.” Magdalena looked a little sad as she admitted this. Then she took another drink of her wine, and the expression passed.

Suzy stared at Magdalena—for the second time, identifying with her. She felt responsible; for her friends, for herself, sometimes even for her mother... it seemed like Magdalena thought of her roles in life, as queen, as daughter, like responsibilities too... like Suzy.

“So mostly I just drink,” Magdalena spoke, her voice light and breezy again. “My parents know; they’re generally okay with it, though I do it more than they know sometimes. They give me alcohol themselves when we’re having a dinner party here at the house.”

Suzy looked down at her cup, and saw it was empty—something about that seemed funny to her suddenly, and she let out a giggle.

“Uh oh,” Barry teased. “I think Suzy’s getting drunk already, guys. Giggling is the first warning sign.”

Magdalena poured herself a third glass of wine. “I’m assuming the three of you always partake together, whether it’s alcohol or drugs.”

“We do everything together,” Autumn said, her voice confessional; her beer was gone but she hadn’t poured a second glass yet.

“Barry,” Suzy giggled, laughing harder. “You’re so tall and... boy-like,” she reached over to touch him, but even though she was sitting, she managed to lose her balance, and fell towards Barry, clinging to him by the arms to keep herself from fully falling onto the floor. “Guys, we should play... a drinking game...” she hiccupped between words—she’d drank too fast. “Every time that Barry looks like a cute... tall... boy-like... boy... we should drink!” She lost herself into a fit of giggling entirely.

She was really feeling the alcohol, now, so it was hard to focus her eyes, Barry was smiling in a good-natured way, something about his expression looking charmed, enchanted even, by Suzy’s silly flirtation; that made her feel even a little more buzzed, even a little warmer than the wine had made her.

“She’s definitely drunk,” Barry assessed, helping Suzy to sit up straight again, then taking an ambitious sip of his vodka. It must have burned to drink so much, but he didn’t even react. Clearly, he could handle it. “She gets flirty when she drinks too.”

“Hey, it’s all good,” Magdalena said. Even dizzy, with confused thoughts, Suzy was able to notice that Magdalena’s glass was once again empty, and Suzy wondered if she was starting to feel her alcohol, too. She’d been speaking in a more casual way since she’d started drinking, but now she seemed positively mellow; approaching the carefree-ness she’d said that she envied. “We can all get... as drunk as we want.” She tried to move her glass over near the bottle of wine to pour more into it, but nearly dropped the glass when she tried this. This was surprising to Suzy, too. Magdalena was usually so coordinated. To be a cheerleader, she had to be; but she could barely keep a grip on a glass, now.

She managed to get the glass in place without breaking it, but had to try three times to pour the wine because she kept missing her glass’s rim, and slopping the wine into the carpet of her father’s study. It seemed that drinking made her more than a bit clumsy.

“Magdalena!” Autumn let out. “You spilled—three times! —on the carpet. Isn’t—won’t your father—?”

Magdalena waved her off in that same casual, breezy way. “It’s no big deal—consequences... we don’t need to worry about consequences... everything will be fine...” She smiled a dazed, happy smile. “I don’t even need to clean this up. It will all just... be fine...” she smiled again.

In the short time, over the past few weeks, that Suzy had known Magdalena better, she’d known her as a strategist who only thought about consequences and potential outcomes. So to see this carefree, even reckless version of the girl was certainly a change.

Maybe after all, Magdalena could afford to be reckless. Maybe they all could—they were shut in behind closed doors; no one would have to know they’d been drinking. They could get away with it... maybe there really wouldn’t be consequences. Magdalena’s reputation, at least, was safe, as long as she kept all her letting loose behind her house door. If she’d smoked pot with her friends like she’d mentioned, she would have been seen, would have been in public, with peers at least; but as long as she was drinking alcohol at home, with her friends... were the three of them her friends now, Suzy wondered, dazedly?—no damage to her reputation could be done. Though she was sure letting her guard down to let them all see her like this; trusting they wouldn’t talk it up to the other people they knew. Suzy hadn’t started out in the study group thinking they were all going to bond with Magdalena, but it seemed to be happening.

They drank, and laughed, and the night slipped away from them. It got too late, and Magdalena got too drunk; for the first time in a long time she couldn’t drive them home at the end of a hangout. Instead, she offered them each one of the guest rooms in the house, so they could stay over till the next morning and sleep that night’s fun off, and Autumn, who was the least drunk of them all and still sounding normal when she spoke, called everyone’s parents on their behalf and told them the sleepover plan, so no one would worry unnecessarily. All the parents trusted Autumn when she called; she had that innocent quality about her, and Suzy couldn’t help but think, even somewhat drunkenly, that that quality of innocence came in handy at times like this. So once the arrangements had been made, and the night was over, and there was nothing more that was tolerable to drink, Magdalena stumblingly showed them to each of the guest rooms, and each of them sleeping in their own, very luxurious, very comfy beds, slept the rest of the night away.

Cameron James was basically a nobody at Pine Ridge High School; her hair was black, and she was short, and she just tended to fade into the background that surrounded her. As a result, no one ever paid much attention to her; this gave her plenty of opportunity to observe, without anyone noticing that she was observing, or even worse, that they were the ones being observed. So Cameron always kept her eyes and ears open, even when she was just walking the hallways between classes. And today, as she went down the west hallway, her eyes immediately latched on the fact that the door which gave basement access was ajar, when it was usually shut tight.

Curious—and curiosity was one of Cameron’s primary motivators—Cameron moved closer to the door, and angled her ear into the gap between it and the doorjamb. She strained to hear what was at first only silence—maybe the door had eased open on its own, old doorjambs could do things like that sometimes. But when she heard speech, it was clear and audible, and she didn’t have to strain to hear at all. The voices—or, rather, it was just the one voice, but it seemed to be talking to somebody—drifted up to meet her, and she could listen in easily.

“—you saw me mixing it during free period in the chemistry lab, and I didn’t want to tell you what it was—I wouldn’t have told you, if you hadn’t threatened to turn me into the principal. The kind of thing I was mixing would get me in a lot of trouble—I invented the formula myself—”

Clearly Cameron had stumbled on a conversation already in progress; it sounded that it nearly bordered blackmail; at the very least it all sounded very shady, and she was more curious to keep listening than ever.

The people in the hallway were overlooking her as they walked past—none of them were paying attention to her, just like none of them ever did. They didn’t care she was standing and listening at a doorgap, so she could keep listening without worry.

“I know you thought it would be a good thing to turn me in; but what I’m mixing... people would judge it, but they’d be wrong to do so... they’d be misunderstanding. What I’m making is actually good. It can change you into a more ideal version of yourself, you just have to keep taking it in regular doses until the changes are complete. Wouldn’t you like to become a more ideal version of yourself? Who wouldn’t want that?”

Cameron frowned—trying to place the voice she could hear. It sounded like a student; but she didn’t talk to many of the students, and she couldn’t place the person, no matter how hard she listened. Now that the first voice had prompted the second, she wondered if she’d be able to place the second person—or maybe, at least, place their gender—but however the second person replied, it was either nonverbal or inaudible so it was impossible to tell which student the first student was talking too, or even if they were a boy or a girl.

“I thought so,” the first voice said. “I’ll let you take it yourself, but only on the condition you give some to your friends too. I haven’t had a lot of chances to test it out... the more people I can try it on, the more people I can see change, the better idea I’ll have of how well it works. Anyway, you yourself just admitted that you’d like to become the ideal version of yourself. Why wouldn’t your friends want that too? They’ll probably thank you, once you’re all finished changing.”

There was another interval, in which the second voice was either silent or indistinct—still impossible to make out, or even note any characteristics of.

“Here,” the first voice said. “Just take that... there should be enough for all of you. You only need to make sure that everyone who’s taking it gets three drops of it once every three days; you’ll know when the changes have finished taking effect; there should be enough in their for all of you to fully transform, and by the time you’re out, if you’ve been following the dosage I just told you, you’ll all be fully changed.”

Cameron decided she didn’t want to hear anymore—and didn’t want to be caught by either of the two who had been talking down there, though she didn’t know who they were. She’d stumbled on something she didn’t want to know, something that, really, was none of her business, and she decided the best thing to do would be to forget all about it. She was pretty good at putting memories out of her head deliberately, putting them out so they could never come back in again, and for the rest of the day she concentrated on doing that. It hadn’t been the first time, during one of her observances, that she’d seen something she later decided was something she didn’t want to know.

By the end of the afternoon, Cameron had completely forgot she’d heard anything, and she passed the rest of her day in happy peace, unbothered by the now forgotten exchange she had listened in on as an eavesdropper.

The next week, it was Autumn’s idea for all four of them to spend Friday night at Magdalena’s house again. This time, Magdalena’s parents were going to a charity benefit, so the house would be empty on the night of this second at-home hangout.

This time, the four of them planned from the beginning to get drunk and then sleepover; so this time, all four of them squared it with their parents first before going over, so Autumn wouldn’t have to call around and make arrangements for them on their behalf after the drinking had already started.

They sat on the floor of the study again; Magdalena had been right, she hadn’t needed to clean the wine she’d spilled, the carpet had just been replaced like it was nothing, and had never been stained; so as they drank, they drank without fear of sloshing over glass rims or spilling again.

Unbeknownst to three of them, the fourth in their company was waiting for a moment to administer the right dose to each of them, waiting to administer from the bottle they had hid on their person.

A distraction happened at a felicitous moment: a loud sound was heard outside, and the other three, buzzed though they were at that point, looked in its direction—and the fourth put three drops into each drink; at the sound of the noise, all four glasses had been set on the carpet as the other three had looked away. The fourth friend finally added three doses to their own drink; and when the other three turned back, moving on from the distracting noise they’d heard, they went back to drinking their drinks none the wiser, and the fourth of them drank knowingly, then paid close attention to the behavior of the others—and themselves too.

But there was nothing noticeably different; they were all a little laughy, a little slow, a little clumsy; the fourth felt this same way too; when they fell into each other, they were a little cuddly, a little huggy, falling over each other and trying to keep each other upright. But it really wasn’t noticeably different from getting drunk regularly, and there seemed to be no effects from the dosage at all.

The fourth thought of what they’d been told when they’d accepted the newly invented drug from its part-time chemist creator. That patience was the key... the effects of the change would be beyond impressive. All it took was patience... and three drops, every three days. Still, the fourth couldn’t help but wonder if they all really would change... they hoped so. They were curious what everyone would change into—eager to become “ideal” themselves.

Still for the rest of the night, that fourth one watched—themselves, their other friends, for any sign, any clue that something was different. They didn’t notice anything, because no immediate change had happened, and as things went on, it looked like no immediate change was going to. But they were going to change—the chemist had said so. It was just that the other three had no idea yet just how much they were about to.

At the end of the night, they were all as drunk as they were going to get. Helping each other into bed, the friends still might all have been slightly more huggy than usual, fawning on each other, but whether that was the alcohol, or the dosage of the transformative drug, the drugger couldn’t know for sure.

All four of them fell asleep thinking what a fun night it had been... just like the night two weeks before they’d first all been together in Magdalena’s house. They all fell asleep, feeling things were just as they should be, perfectly normal. Feeling that everything was just fine, and bound to stay that way.

But the drugger was just a little more excited than their other three friends were. They knew things would be changing, and changing soon. They had set the process in motion tonight, and as they fell asleep, they couldn’t help but think how excited they were to see everything play out.