The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Magdalena was tired. She’d been doing so many things lately and running her body so hard with her exercise that she found herself wanting to slack off.

Normally she would never have even thought of doing that. Part of being a good representative for her parents meant being a model student at school too. Though she didn’t seriously entertain the possibility of prestigious university attendance, she played along like she did, for them.

She didn’t want any Pine Ridge students or her friends to know her intelligence, but she didn’t mind if her parents knew. She didn’t even mind if they shared about with their own community of business colleagues and friends; didn’t mind being the thing they pulled out to brag over or take pride in in front of other people. She wanted to be the perfect cheerleader for them, wanted to be as much of a model student as she could be for them, without being ostracized.

But it was exhausting, constantly having to toe that tightrope. She knew her parents appreciated her doing it, and it was worth knowing that. At least they thanked her in all the little ways they had, the things they lavished on her, how they treated and cared for her, showed their appreciation... but still, the exhaustion had been catching up with her lately.

That really had been a new feeling; generally she was so well-energized and on top of everything at the same time, but for the past few weeks she hadn’t quite felt like herself. There had been a heaviness in her, and it had made her want to be a bit reckless. It had made her feel a little entitled to reckless behavior.

More than one morning, Magdalena had woken up and seriously considered going back to sleep immediately, even though it would have meant completely skipping school that day. There would have been consequences to her life if she had done that, but Magdalena simply hadn’t cared on those mornings.

That had probably been the reason she’d openly embraced the study group as her new friends, for all her other more popular friends to see. That was the kind of social risk-taking that she wouldn’t have ever even thought of engaging in one time in ten thousand years, before, but she had done it with a second thought. Simply asked them to join the other popular students at their table, and that had been that.

And she’d gone along with those new kissed greetings without a second thought; then watched Suzy and Autumn both make-out with Barry before making out with him herself, all without any second thought. She was definitely feeling unlike her usual self.

She wasn’t at all worried about that though, not remotely. As far as she was concerned, she had worked hard. She had been working hard since she was a kid. Even back then, she had done everything in her power to seem like the perfect daughter, to be there for her parents to trot out among their friends and colleagues. To wow them with her cuteness; not to mention the few modeling gigs she had done then. Those had been high pressure, but she had been a very collected and together kid.

For almost all of her nineteen years, she had been perfect, above reproach. She had run herself like a company, controlling everything, every little impulse, every formed image of her. It felt good now to let go of all that and not worry anymore, even if it meant taking stupid risks.

Of course, she had done some things for herself outside of attention’s spotlight. Namely, she had carried on a romantic life which she had managed to keep somewhat private in spite of that spotlight which constant popularity cast on her. She had, earlier in her dating career, been very interested in dating older teens; and she had paraded them around in public with her like arm candy. And yet, she had also spent time along with these boys in private frequently.

Those had been in the days in which she hadn’t had a car, and it had been uniquely comforting, not to mention satisfying, to have an older guy with a car at the ready, prepared to come pick her up and drive her off into the night. And then once they were off into the night, alone together, and both along together for the ride and its journey... sometimes they parked by the side of the road on a quite Californian street... Magdalena had always found the way to introduce true vulnerability and intimacy into these connections.

But these only ever came out in the moments of quiet privacy, despite the fact that with all of those guys there had also been plenty of moments of public flaunting, moments of being observed by everyone in their peer group.

In her alone time with her past paramours, what Magdalena had felt, and still felt to this day, was satisfaction; she had shared private, personal things that had meant something to her with them, no matter how jock-ish or seemingly vapid the guy in question had been.

She’d carved out the kind of support she needed or was otherwise missing, from each one of those guys. And to this day, nothing she had ever told any of them in confidence, in any of the moments they had spent together—whether in her room, the guy’s room, the guy’s car, or even on a street corner outside a club with a party going inside, when they had found just a moment to stand alone together—none of it had ever gotten out as gossip.

With those guys, and never with her friends, Magdalena had shared so much about the pressures of her life, the responsibilities she had to her reputation, the need for her to exercise constant control over herself, the need for her never-ending vigilance. And when those guys had listened, or sometimes embraced her and told her everything would be alright— or that she was beautiful or brilliant before they kissed her in moonlight, or in the moonlight which streamed through a windshield—it had made everything better for a while.

Magdalena had needed that kind of reassurance then, when she had been a younger teen. She was looking for other things in a man now. She had felt herself inclined to these other priorities even before these past few weeks, in which she’d been more tired, and a lifetime of behaving herself had seemed to catch-up to her.

She didn’t need an older man now—she had her own car. She could drive herself off into the moonlight, and sit by the side of a California road looking at the night and feeling the quiet.

The other thing about the relationships Magdalena had had with her exes was that those relationships had always been on her terms. She had enjoyed the way in which things quieted down when there was just two of them, two people together, outside the busyness of her regular social calendar, and all her social obligations as queen of the school.

But Magdalena also enjoyed having been with so many guys who had listened to her, followed her lead, let her direct the things the way she wanted them to happen, and set the conditions. She was used to calling the shots, both on the cheer team and with the rest of her friends and followers; that natural leadership was a fit for her, and in her relationships it had always been a present element. She wouldn’t have enjoyed any of them so much if it hadn’t been at play.

She really had had many boyfriends during the time she’d been in high school. She’d let some of her relationships progress to the point of overt sexuality, but not every one; that had always been her decision to make, too, and the boys she’d been with had followed that lead as well as all the others. She’d always been the one to decide if a relationship would progress to sex, and when, or if it would stop short and stay stopped there.

She liked the quiet moments of connection; but she was a multi-faceted person. She also liked receiving special attention, even or sometimes especially where it could be seen and envied by others; she liked being lavished, being cherished. Enjoyed finding boys who treated her like she was a Princess. Her preference for this was probably thanks to her father; he’d spoiled her for this kind of treatment, this kind of male attention, and now it was the standard she sought. She’d always managed to find boys who were willing to give it their best attempt.

If she thought about it, the reason she’d had so many relationships with those quiet moments of intimacy had been thanks to her natural leadership and drive. They had been something she’d wanted, and as with all other elements in her relationships, the guys she’d found had been more than happy to play along. And no matter how many guys she went through, no matter how many times she went out looking for another one, there was never any shortage of guys willing to step up and take their turn, take their chance.

The reason most of her relationships had broken down ranged anywhere from boredom to genuinely developing a dislike for the boy she was with, getting tired of him after a while and just wanting to discard him. She knew she had a bit of a reputation for this by now, but it never deterred any prospective romantic interest from her. The next guy was always ready in line for his turn. She thought they all liked to be seen with her; not just because of her social capital, but because of her impressive beauty, her inherent attractiveness.

She thought again of how she had used to prefer dating older guys; dating a year or two or three above her when she’d been in lower years of her high school career. But she had become older than she was then, and her taste in men had changed in these later years. She no longer preferred men who were something, who had some specific quality they all shared and which was the same every time. Now she was more interested in a man for his individual, specific identity; who he was, not his age. As a result she’d been looking at boys her own age, in her own year, more and more often.

What she really valued now was the idea of a younger guy; someone sweet, who would treat her well; she didn’t have any picky requirements in mind now, not entirely, but the most notable thing for her was simply that she had once valued age as a personality trait, a selection trait on the basis of which to choose a partner, and she didn’t do this anymore.

But as she’d just thought; that shift in priority had happened before everything that had been going on recently, the exhaustion catching up to her, and other things had changed since.

She wasn’t sure if she cared that much about finding this vaguely defined same-aged boy right now. She thought she was mostly interested in letting loose and enjoying herself; having fun, dancing hard, not looking behind herself. A serious boy... the last thing on her mind— a fling would be more her speed.

Autumn was feeling a bit like she was somebody else. Her mind had not only been on her studies, and that was where it usually stayed, what it was usually sitting with. It was where she had kept it all her life. Knowledge, learning... her only concern. She had viewed herself as a body which contained her brain and had always swamped herself in baggy clothing. She had never thought of her own sexuality, never thought of herself as a sexual creature; but she had noticed, in the past two weeks at least, she’d been feeling her body waking up a bit into this kind of noticing.

Before those two weeks, Autumn had never noticed boys really. They had left her uninterested... bored. The only boy who had ever made her feel anything had been Barry, and he had never given her a second look once in all of their lives, the entire duration of which they had both known each other for, to date.

There was something... about the way he made jokes... that just... tickled her, and made her feel warm in her heart. Even her feelings towards him had not been explicit attraction, because part of her had not let herself go there, knowing Barry didn’t feel the same.

Though she had secretly hoped that in the course of running the study group Barry would make a move on either Suzy or Magdalena, or both, and get rejected by each one of them, thus being sent into her arms... or even better, her bed, though she could only stand to think of that for brief seconds at a time before it was too overwhelming for her. Made her too ashamed—it wasn’t fair of her to think of him, fantasize of him in her bed when he’d made it clear he didn’t care to be there... he hadn’t agreed to be there, even if any fantasy was only being staged in her imagination.

But Autumn had always thought, the ticklish feeling... it was something to explore later, or something she hoped that someday she would get the chance to explore.. and then when she had seen Barry overlook her time and time again, it had been newly crushing.

Then to have watched, yesterday, Suzy and Magdalena both make-out with him. Sure, she had gotten her turn too, but all she’d been able to think while it had happened was that there was no way she could possibly compare to the two of them. She had hoped they would reject him—instead they had made out with him. It was opposite from the kind of rejection she needed him to undergo to realize that he should be with her.

But she had felt quite sexual in the moment she’d been kissing him. She had kissed before, a bit. Though boys had largely left her unmoved for as long as she could remember, she had had a boyfriend not that long ago who she had been fond of, at least. He had not tickled her the way Barry did... she had not felt so attracted to him... but he had treated her well, she had been fond of him, they had had fun together.

He’d been kind of a cool guy, the kind of guy she could boast about to Suzy and Barry... and part of her had always secretly hoped that Barry would get jealous if she boasted enough, but she had sadly never seen that happen. The guy had been a musician with his own band, of which he had been the lead singer... he and his band had played the local circuit, but in the summer before senior year the guy had moved out of state along with his parents and she’d never heard from him again.

Even now, Autumn wasn’t sure that what she had felt for that guy, what had been between them. He had been her boyfriend, their relationship had been real... he was the only boyfriend that she’d ever had. She let herself think about him a little more.

Autumn was still young, she knew that, she still had the majority of her life out ahead of her, but it still felt a bit sad to her sometimes that she really only ever had been in a relationship with one guy. Back in the day she’d used to pretend she had imaginary boyfriends; never with Barry, or Suzy, when she’d come, but just with anyone who mocked her for being alone; she’d daydreamed a guy with a lot of Barry’s qualities but he’d never seemed to notice the resemblance. He never had, though she had talked a lot about her imaginary boyfriends, who always had Barry’s qualities, to keep her stories straight.

Sometimes Barry had even been her corroborator when she had used to pull out her imaginary boyfriend of the day to deflect teasing. Barry would claim to have met him, would describe the qualities Autumn had decided her imaginary boyfriend should have. Barry had always been in on it.

But Keith had been real. And the days of pretending to have an imaginary boyfriend had come before him; they had only started going out in Autumn’s junior year, around the fall season of that year; then they had dated for the year’s duration. Autumn had really liked him.

It had felt strange to have someone paying special attention to her, it had felt strange to be one of the girls who had a boyfriend, to be one of the ones who went around the high school campus holding hands with their boyfriends, or who got kissed hello and goodbye, who got kissed in the hallway outside class, who got kissed in the cafeteria, in the library, standing outside the school. She had been used to watching everyone else around her experience young love; as with an unexpressed sexuality, she had always understood all of that to be something that was for other people, something that happened for them, and not for her.

But Keith had made it happen for her; he had treated her well, he had been a good boyfriend. He’d taken her to school dances she’d only gone to her friends with before; he’d given her little gifts for occasions (sometimes outright silly ones) that he made up. Her parents had liked him a lot; she had liked him, liked the way he’d treated her, liked the closeness of being in that kind of relationship.

But then Keith had moved away when his parents had relocated for work; he’d moved away last summer, before the start of senior year, and they’d had to break up. His parents were going East, to the opposite coast of the country; she and Keith hadn’t really had a choice.

Autumn thought sometimes that she still hadn’t recovered from their breakup. It wasn’t that she’d been in love with Keith, she kept returning to the same point... part of her had felt guilty all along that she’d still been loving Barry in the background of both her mind and heart, even when she’d been with another boy... but she had liked Keith, enjoyed being around him, enjoyed being A Girlfriend. She’d gotten used to him; and losing him had still been hard. She had not so far felt ready to put herself out there again.

Apart from Keith’s basic decency, he had also been a cool guy; he’d been the lead singer and guitarist of his own band, she let herself remember that again... A few other guys who’d been Keith’s friends had provided the other instrumentation to fill out Keith’s sound and vision.

Once they’d started dating, Keith had taken Autumn to every show; she’d used to like standing in the crowd, whether Keith’s band was playing at a house party or an all-ages venue. Had liked standing in the crowd and watching him play, for those moments his eyes would look up and catch hers—and then for the little wink and smile he would always give her when that happened... that had made her feel special, had given her a rushing, rising feeling, and she’d liked that too.

She’d also enjoyed how creative Keith was; hearing him work on a new song, listening to him talk about songwriting. Losing him had been a real loss even if it there hadn’t been love love between them. Or there hadn’t been love yet... maybe there could have been someday, but they had never had the chance to find out. They had been cut down before it could reach that point.

Autumn felt, still, that she wasn’t all that desperate to date; she definitely didn’t want to date just for the sake of dating, just to be with someone. She’d rather be alone than chase someone she didn’t really care about for the status. She’d liked being A Girlfriend, but not that much. Keith had been a special exception.

Autumn really didn’t have much of a taste in men, honestly.

Looking at them mostly left her disinterested; she was thinking of that again, of the tickle... Barry had always been her only exception... and she still felt tickled by the way he goofed around to this day... she was thinking about it again for the second or third time. Deep down, she still hoped she would be able to explore romance and attraction and all those things... that little tickle of response... with him. Because she’d loved him so long.

She hadn’t loved Keith, she thought again... she didn’t think she’d ever had love for anyone but Barry, and did love like that really count if it wasn’t reciprocal? All it did all the time was make her feel pathetic... she had fallen in love with someone who would never see her, someone she loved to be around, who she could never get enough of, and who she only wanted more the more time she spent around him just as a friend... it was all just sad, and though she was only eighteen, Autumn felt she would never be lucky enough to love someone who loved her back.

But, the thing was, the kind of sexual feelings she had been having lately didn’t entirely fit with her other feelings of love, and the melancholy associated with them. She had been noticing guys in the hall; complete strangers, checking them out... imagining pushing them back into lockers and kissing them on the mouth.

Or sometimes her fantasy went further—imagining getting felt up by the cute guy two tables over in the lunch room—or imagining the cute guy next to her in science class slipping his hand under her loose, long skirt, rucking it up, tracing over her tights, and teasing her with his fingers under there, from the other side of her underwear’s surface.

She’d done a lot of reading as a result of this new set of feelings... that was always her go-to when she was trying to solve anything. Or if not solve, at least understand a problem or a new data set.

Libido could have a pretty late onset, for reasons that ranged across a whole set of factors. Those were reasons in which she was afraid to find herself when she read, though she couldn’t help identifying herself by them at least a bit... and libido could sometimes take until early adulthood to onset. That was what she was now, an early adult, at her eighteen years... so it maybe wasn’t so strange all these erotic feelings were coming up in her now... something must have happened in her environment to trigger it... or her brain must have figured something out... she was just having a late onset of libido, and that was all. It did make sense... it did account for all the information she had...

It still just felt weird, though. Like an entirely other layer of existence had opened for her. She had been masturbating at night, trying to burn all that excess erotic energy. She felt less bad about it once she read up on the health benefits that masturbation presented.

She did feel as if she was being a little disloyal to her love for Barry, though. And she knew that was ridiculous, because he didn’t want her, but she still felt that way. She tried to embrace her new libidinous feelings anyway, though. She tried to roll with them and enjoy them for everything they offered, everything which they presented her with. She did a better job of it some days than others. But there was always a new day to try again. She felt different—she was getting used to it. She was growing up.

Barry thought he had been diverging a little from his usual behavior, lately. Normally he had a pretty one-track mind—food, and girls. And sometimes it was more about food than it was about girls. He liked checking out a pretty girl; her breasts, or, what he had never admitted to anybody, her ass. He was more of an ass-man than anything else but he didn’t like anyone to know that about him; didn’t mind them thinking he preferred breasts.

And he had his two long-time best friends. He had always pictured them as his two teen-acolytes, picture them as each other’s rivals. They were his two love-interests in a love triangle, and might fight or fawn over him, two-love interests, such as might be found in a teen comic that starred him as the central teenage boy.

Autumn, the reliable, long-time friend, sweet, kind, thoughtful, innocent... and Suzy, the new girl, still the new girl after three years, who was exotic and exciting and who he always found himself looking after, following with his eyes whenever she walked away from him... he had liked seeing himself this way, as the maybe a bit bumbling but generally good-natured guy with two girls who both really cared about him... who he liked to think might honestly want to fight over him... fight each other for him, like he could be their prize... Though he had never seen actual evidence that this was the case... the fantasy was a satisfying stroke to his teenage ego.

He always cast Suzy as the exotic, the exciting one because he was so attracted to her; because he liked her. He fantasized freely about her; but she wasn’t the only one he fantasized about, or the only one he ever had.

Barry had often found himself fantasizing sexually about Magdalena as well; he’d been thinking of her that way since freshman year, but over the course of the last year, his sexual fantasies had been more and more centered around Suzy. He liked her, he thought again; she really brought the funny side out of him, and seemed to make something in him want to show off. It thrilled him when she responded favorably to things he said, or jokes he made. Made him hope a little that she could someday see him as more. If only she would someday see him as more.

But for Barry, love and sex and romance were all mostly hypotheticals. He just had absolutely no charm, no skill at talking women up, no natural charisma that might have drawn them to him or made them see he was something special, someone worth getting with.

Barry tried to tell himself it was their loss—he didn’t have all that much to compare to, but he thought his physical equipment was better than average—maybe even much better than average. Maybe even impressive. He’d never had the chance to try it out with another person, but if any girl ever gave the chance, Barry had always felt pretty sure he would be able to make it a good experience for her. But no girl ever had.

Barry found that every time an attractive girl walked by his cock jumped to attention; and, especially when he was spending time with the three girls who were his friends, this problem was worse than ever. He was glad he always wore such baggy pants; that had been the reason he’d started dressing in them to begin with.

Yesterday, the French kissing had been hard to get through. Especially when Suzy had been kissing him. It had a been a good, pleasurable kiss, but Barry had been able to tell there was no deeper meaning attached to it. It had only been a kiss for the sake of fun. If only it could have been something more; if only Suzy would see him as something more, he thought again... he thought often.

Barry had had a few casual relationships with girls, but never anyone from his homefield territory of Pine Ridge high. He’d only ever gotten with girls who went to other schools, and all such relationships had been unsuccessful, by Barry’s assessment. They had been brief, lasting a few days to a few weeks at the very most, and they hadn’t been very close relationships. Kisses that were more like pecks, and nothing else; dates that were boring, had no spark, no excitement, or fun or romance.

He’d even had a few of these casual encounters with sorority girls from the nearby college; some of them had taken him to their various sorority functions, from time to time. He’d liked to imagine a scenario, after going to repeat functions, in which he was faced with all the sorority girls he’d been briefly intertwined with, where they all became jealous and hostile to each other, and especially to the girl who had brought him for the night.

But the truth was, all his encounters with these girls, sometimes across more than one sorority where multiple sororities happened to be partying or holding functions together, had ended so lifelessly, so passionlessly that once they were over, Barry was pretty sure none of the girls ever thought of him again, or even remembered him. Many of the girls at these parties he’d briefly dated just let their eyes skip over him, like a nobody. So it was just another fantasy.

He found sorority events confusing, even beyond finding himself faced by his failed dating history in human form. But Barry couldn’t turn down a pretty girl, or a girl he found himself attracted to. He was drawn to women by a power he could not resist, so went even to confusing places with them and put up with it.

Despite Barry’s relative lack of experience, he continued seeking out women who were out of his league; he persisted, even if better nature might have told him it was time to stop. Secretly, Barry wanted to get married, though he’d never told anyone that, and to get married young.

And when he did get married, Barry was determined that his wife would be someone he could proudly show off to others. He didn’t just mind if people thought he preferred a shapely pair of breasts. He always boasted about it like it was fact; wanted the reputation as a guy who had that as his primary preference. But he kept it to himself that he actually preferred a nice-looking, tight butt, that he went crazy for the way a skirt could curve around it, and then flare outwards. He was thinking about that... again... if he wasn’t careful he was going to get something to stir.

Even the sometime failures he had with girls were probably thanks to the fact that Barry could smile so disarmingly; he was able to fail because he was able to start things up. And he was able to start things up with these girls, though he lacked charm and skill, because of his disarming smile. His smile had probably been the thing that had gotten sorority girls to look at him twice; had probably been the thing that had gotten girls from other schools to give him the time of day, however briefly, even if ultimately each time it had all fallen apart and come to an end.

Lately things had been... off. Things had been new.

Barry had barely been thinking about girls... still appreciating them, but not gawking after them like he usually did. And he had been enjoying food, but he had found this new, strange fascination in himself. He had found himself thinking, quite a bit, about exercise, and sports. Had found himself becoming curious about application... actually applying himself instead of goofing off, and applying himself to fitness... not eating so much, so freely all the time... to have something central to work himself towards, to dedicate himself.

He’d been really curious about it, and he had found it growing in himself all the time, like shoots from a seed. It was... quite something, after a life of laziness and passivity, a life in which he had always simply waited around to see what would turn up, what would fall to him, what would be given... not what he could go out and get for himself.

He found himself running a little harder in gym class and not complaining after... he found himself looking in the mirror briefly in the mornings while he brushed his teeth and imagining what his body would look like if he became athletic. He’d never cared about that before. It was all... just... new... It was all... so new.

He’d been asking Suzy lots of questions about fitness at school. She was his only truly athletic friend. He knew Magdalena did a bit of fitness-type things herself, but he considered Suzy’s athletic engagement to be more valid. She was on a school sports team; in Barry’s mind, cheer team just wasn’t quite the same.

And he felt a bit more comfortable talking to Suzy anyway, not because he liked her better than Autumn, or because, romantically, she was his favorite person... but because he had known her at least longer than Magdalena, who was still something of an incredibly new friend, and who still openly gave him a hard time sometimes. And he had so many questions for Suzy, about how she’d gotten in such good shape, about how she maintained it so well. About how it felt for her.

Suzy was nonplussed at this questioning, but she was nice about it and gave Barry his answers. It didn’t do anything to assuage his curiosity. Or to step sooner away from a morning-side mirror in which he imagined himself fit.

So it was definitely strange he was no longer paying so much attention to girls. As he had thought before, he had not had any great romantic history; just three years of failures, and of imagining himself the teenage protagonist in a comic, torn between two options.

He’d never had that serious girlfriend, was still virginal, and it hadn’t seemed like he’d be getting any experience in that department any time soon.

But then all of his friends had made out with him just yesterday in study group, his mind wandered back there again... he’d gotten used to enjoying the company of the three lovely women he was lucky enough to call his friends, even when they were all drinking together, he had found them all so cute, sweet under the influence and liked the way they all dropped their defenses and became so open. He’d thought he would just have to content himself with basking that way, and he’d resigned himself to that.

He had never expected he would get kissed by all three of them, one after the other. Those kisses had been hot, and they made him hope that in the end he might get some romantic or sexual experience after all, even if not with any of them.

He had never admitted it to anyone, sometimes barely to himself, but Barry had always secretly hoped he could find the woman he wanted, a woman to fall in love, and marry her right out of high school. He’d thought before, shallowly, that he just wanted a pretty girl he could show off. But it was part self-deception. It was more than that. He wanted something real... that lifelong love.

It was what his parents had done, and it had worked out for them... it was what he wanted, too. He wasn’t going on to anything post-secondary which would have made it necessary for him to wait before marrying someone.

But he’d found no wifely candidate. He crushed on Suzy, he wanted her, but even he knew it wasn’t love. He also knew she didn’t see him that way even though he hoped sometimes. For Autumn he felt nothing romantic at all. And Magdalena was pretty to look at, but there was only so much to her. He didn’t see much past her incredible body. And he wanted a wife for the sake of love, not only a wife who was pretty, though he wanted that too; if Suzy had felt something other than friendship, or if he had felt anything other than friendship for Autumn, maybe he would have seriously considered them...

As it was, there was no one he was seriously considering, and as the senior year grew later, he was running out of time to find that girl who would marry him right after graduation as he’d always hoped...

But if he was being completely honest with himself, he was thinking less of this long-held goal these days, and was instead more fixated on his newfound fascination in all things fitness and athletics... he liked that he felt that way, though. He had never been so interested in anything... nothing had ever caught him like this had, and so he really enjoyed it.

Cameron James saw something that reminded her. She had slipped something into the back of her mind, and deliberately made herself forget it... she hadn’t wanted to remember, but when she saw, she’d no choice but to do it...

That new trend of everyone kissing each other hello, twice on each cheek then once on the mouth... she saw that, and felt something jangle in her memory... but she still didn’t want to remember, she forced it back down again... but then when saw this, the memory could not be suppressed. She remembered.

She happened to be passing by an empty classroom as she was getting ready to leave for home after that day’s schooling had ended, and through the corner of her eye, she glimpsed what was undeniably a kiss. She stopped her walking, and looked in through the little square window in the classroom door to get a better look. This was observation; and Cameron was an invisible observer, always, though usually she observed things less lewd than this... she wasn’t a peeping tom, and she wasn’t watching this for titillation.

It was Suzy Benton; she was quite graphically making out with Barry Pierce; then when at last she finished, the other two girls in the room took their turns... Autumn Schwartz next made out with Barry, at length, and then Magdalena Banks took her turn... none of the girls ever kissed each other, they just kissed Barry, one at a time, in order, and Barry kissed each one of them back.

That was the thing that reminded her. Magdalena had started the trend of greeting other people with five kisses; and that had jangled the deeper memory, because it had reminded Cameron. All of them—Suzy, Barry, Autumn and Magdalena had all been acting differently, unlike themselves... and just a few weeks ago Cameron had gone by that open door and heard someone describing exactly that... personality changes, transformation. That person had invented a liquid, and offered it to someone else, who Cameron had never heard talk, but who had clearly accepted the liquid on the condition they would give to all of their friends.

It all fit together in Cameron’s mind... couldn’t one member of this friend group have been the one to take the transformation liquid? Couldn’t one of them have been dosing all the others, and themselves, out of the twisted belief that they were helping the four of them become ideal versions of themselves, just as the liquid’s inventor had promised?

Cameron watched the four of them as Magdalena and Barry, the last pairing of the three, finally finished kissing, watched as the four of them sat down around their two shoved together tables to start studying— thoughtful.

She always observed, because no one ever saw her. There had never been such a clear mystery fallen before her for her to solve... the most likely possibility was that this was the group of friends to have been drugged into changing... but there was no way to know which of the four of them was the traitor. Cameron had never heard that one speak; it could have been any one of them, so she couldn’t approach just one of the friends about her concerns, because there was no way to guarantee that she’d be speaking to one of the three who were innocent, and avoiding the one who was guilty.

And if it was the guilty one she got, they’d lie to her face, promise to warn the rest of their friends and then keep it all to themselves... preventing the three innocents from ever receiving the warning.

No, just telling one of them wouldn’t do... the only way to make sure all three innocents were warned would be to tell all four friends at once. But to tell them right now seemed like a bad idea; she imagined they might be self-conscious if they knew she had just watched all three girls French Barry in rotation. It would be better to come back tomorrow afternoon, and tell them then. On a fresh day; they would probably be less defensive and more likely to listen to her; yes, she would come back tomorrow.

But she wouldn’t leave it any longer than that. Every day that went by, they were all getting dosed more, changing further... she had to stop it as soon as she could, as soon as tomorrow... tomorrow, when they would be more likely to listen to her, to really hear her.

Tomorrow, before it was too late... and she could only hope it wasn’t, already.

The next day, Suzy was in a good mood again. She seemed to be happier so much more often now. She liked that it had become a new constant for her; she felt herself shining golden again all day long, and this time, throughout the day, she particularly noticed the boys around her taking special notice when she shone like that. And that had Suzy thinking about boys.

She didn’t think about boys all that often; she wasn’t completely blind to them, like Autumn was; and Autumn often described to her how she felt nothing for most boys, only Barry, though oddly, of late this commentary seemed to have dried up.

Suzy had been graced with the experience of being in a relationship a few times. She always behaved the same way when she was in one: with loyalty, commitment, and in all ways be loving. But she really only had been in a relationship a handful of times, and she hadn’t had that much experience. She especially had not had much experience sexually; she had never ventured beyond anything vanilla; lacking in experience meant she had nowhere near the experience she would have needed to take on exploring kink in a relationship. She wasn’t opposed to the idea, but she’d just never had the opportunity before, it had never arisen with any partner she’d had.

But if she was in the right mood, in those cases where she was messing around with a guy, even if she had never gone all the way there with anyone, she could be very aggressive with him, when she wanted. A little of that side of her had come out in the way she’d kissed Barry the previous afternoon.

Suzy, she knew she preferred a tall man, despite her shortness in height; Barry was tall, but she still didn’t feel attracted to him. Even though height was where her taste naturally landed.

Suzy definitely also preferred a guy with a muscular physique, as athletics were so important to her; Barry didn’t have that quality, though he’d been asking about fitness lately.

In dating, Suzy had no preference of ethnicity. She’d date anyone if they met her first two criteria; but she needed both those criteria, plus that extra special something that couldn’t be explained. That chemistry that just worked; and even if Barry got fit, to impress her, they still wouldn’t have that.

Suzy was between guys right now anyway, and she honestly wasn’t looking for another one very hard.

She did appreciate the odd boy, now and then, if he was cute, but she had so many other things she was thinking of, currently, besides boys. Her athletics... what she’d be doing post-secondary... she’d dated a few guys here and there, but never really been in love, it had never really clicked. That chemistry was hard to find.

But Suzy was noticing almost every guy who walked by her now. If a guy who was too cute happened to be next to her in a class, it took her almost two times the concentration to get through that class.

Something was building up in her... she wasn’t sure what, but she’d have to do something about it... something she wasn’t sure of yet... something she’d have to, soon...

She made it through her day goldly happy, then settled into the familiar routine of study group. She gave everyone that five kiss greeting—and only when she was kissing Barry did she feel the impulse to turn it a French kiss again; she happily followed this kiss, and went golder; both Magdalena and Autumn, when greeting Barry, did the same; Suzy felt nothing but enjoyment; it was fun to kiss a boy so frivolously, to only take pleasure in it and not worry about assigning any meaning deeper than that... and then when they all got back to their books again, it felt like a comforting return to habit.

The routine was disrupted shortly after, when the door to the room—which they’d all come to think of as their own—opened. It had literally never happened since they’d started studying together over a month ago. The room had been theirs, their sanctuary, their space... This was the first thing to disrupt Suzy’s daylong cheery feeling... who could it be coming in? Who was intruding on their friend group?

It was evidently a short girl, with black hair, and dark clothes. Suzy felt like she was meeting her for the first time... couldn’t remember having seen her before, but the girl seemed to know the four of them; she came right to the table, and stood over it, looking between them from face to face.

“You’ve probably never noticed me. My name is Cameron James... no one ever really notices me, but I notice everything and everyone else.”

The words were sad, but Cameron said them grimly, as if she had long sense grown accustomed to the truth of them, and faced up to it.

“And I noticed something about a month ago that really concerned me... but I found it so disturbing that I did something I shouldn’t have... I buried it in my memory, and I didn’t remember until yesterday, when I saw something that brought it back to me.”

Autumn was looking at Cameron with deep empathy. Of the four of them, Autumn probably had the most in common with Cameron. Before Magdalena, she, Barry and Suzy had all been outcasts; but Suzy, with her changeable, engaging moods, and Barry with his class-clownery had always been able to win people over in a way Autumn never could, so she had always been the most outcasted of the three of them, and so it made sense to Suzy that she would be feeling more kindred to Cameron than the rest of them. Her experience of high-school had been the closest to Cameron’s out of everyone in this room. With genuine concern, Autumn asked: “What did you notice?”

Cameron seemed surprised that someone had taken an active interest in her, but she immediately launched into her answer. “I was passing by the basement access door—and I heard a conversation going on. Someone down there—a student, but no one’s voice I recognized—was telling someone else that they’d invented this new transformational drug, that would turn anyone dosed with it into the ideal version of themselves...”

As Cameron was speaking, she was looking between the faces of the four friends. No one looked obviously guilty, though she was watching with an eagle’s eye... if Cameron had been one to doubt her instincts, she would have assumed she’d chosen the wrong friend group.

But no one else’s behavior or demeanor had changed so much as that of these four people in the past month. She knew with rock-solid certainty that there was a traitor here at this table...

It seemed to Suzy that Cameron was watching them all suspiciously as she went on telling what happened.

“This druggist offered a dosage of their drug to the listener, who never spoke while I could hear... said they could have it only if they agreed that, in addition to taking it themselves, they also dosed their friends with it.”

Suzy understood now why Cameron was here, telling this; she felt a cold, clammy feeling in her stomach, a dropping; not so different than guilt, or fear.

Cameron saw this statement settle with each of the four members of her audience; each face reflected back unease—fear... the drugger was a good actor, whichever one of the four of them they were.

“I think one of the four of you is the one who accepted that dosage of the drug, and agreed to slip it to the other three of you... I think that’s why all four of you have been changing. I’ve noticed you all acting different, and then yesterday, I saw you three girls taking turns kissing Barry... I think that’s part of what the drug has done to you... but so far, the drugger, sitting at this table, hasn’t given themselves away yet. I want to find out which one of you it is... I’m going to figure it out and make sure you’re held responsible... even if it means I have to figure out who made the drug first... even if I have to get them to tell me which of you it was... it would be easier if the guilty one of you just told me—”

Suzy sat there too stunned to respond; Magdalena was the one to speak up first.

“Thank you, Cameron, for... avising us of this...”

Suzy noticed Magdalena choosing her words very carefully.

“But it seems like this is something between the four of us... so I think the four of us should be the ones to figure out who the traitor is, amongst ourselves. Why don’t you run off, and see about finding who made the drug, like you said?”

Cameron looked at Magdalena long, then spoke pointedly. “Spoken like someone who’d really like to get me out of here, for some reason.”

Suzy had been thinking the same thing; a quick glance to both Autumn and Barry confirmed they had thought so also.

“But I’ll go,” Cameron agreed. “I just wanted to make sure the innocent three of you were warned, and I wanted the guilty one to know they won’t get away with this forever. They’ll face the consequences of what they’ve done, if it’s the last thing I do.”

Cameron stated this last with determination; then she walked briskly from the room.

The closing of the door solemnly initiated a conversation none of them really wanted them to have.

Suzy, Barry and Autumn were all already looking at Magdalena.

“What?” Magdalena asked defensively, noticing their looks. “Just because I asked her to leave doesn’t mean I’m the one drugging everybody.”

“You are the newest one to the group,” Barry pointed out.

“And you’re trying to point the finger at someone!” Magdalena snapped back, flipping her textbook shut. “Exactly what the guilty person would do!”

“Well, now you’re pointing the finger at me, does that mean you’re guilty?” Barry turned it back around on her.

“Everyone,” Suzy said, holding a hand up. She wanted to try and restore some kind of balance or order if she could. “Just wait; there’s a better solution than becoming completely paranoid and suspicious of each other. Three of us are innocent; which means each one of us has a 75% chance of being one of those three... we should just approach this by means of the honor system. The guilty person should just come forward and confess right now. We’ll say that, if they do, we’ll keep this between us and just focus on getting the antidote to the drug. That’s all... we’ll make sure they aren’t punished, we’ll get Cameron to drop her suspicions, and make sure we all get the antidote, reverse whatever’s changed... and we’ll all just forget this ever happened. Confess right now. Admit it... and we’ll just put this all behind us,” Suzy finished; she looked hopefully around at her friends.

Nobody spoke.

“Well,” Magdalena said. “That means one of two things just happened. Either the drugger just kept their silence... or the drugger was the one who introduced the idea of confession.”

Now all eyes were on Suzy.

“It wasn’t me!” Suzy insisted. She blushed under the suspicious watch that had been turned on her.

“The guilty person isn’t going to confess just like that, clearly, given that they had the perfect opportunity to do it and then get away with what they’ve done. They didn’t confess then. Why would they do it now?” Barry questioned. “And if it is you, Sooze, then that offer just now was a redirect... just a distraction...”

Barry fisted his hand and slammed it on the table. That kind of drama would have seemed laughable, too over-the-top, before Cameron had come in. It didn’t seem like that now... one of the four of them was drugging the others, and that kind of response now seemed completely justified. “If only there was some way we could... get some kind of truth serum around, I don’t know... or read everyone’s minds, somehow...”

“That wouldn’t help,” Autumn said. It was the first time she had so far spoken up. “Even if we could see into the head of the one who did it, they wouldn’t necessarily be thinking about their own guilt... in fact, they might even be suppressing their memory of what they did.

Knowing they did it, but not thinking of it... maybe they can’t face what they’ve done to their own friends, so they’re avoiding facing it, pretending they’re innocent because now that the truth has come into the light of day, they see what it is they’ve really done. And they don’t want to think about it.”

It was a well-made point. But then again, Autumn was speaking with such empathy, such imagined knowledge of what the guilty one was feeling... that it almost made her seem like she was guilty...

Suzy hated the way this all felt. These were her favorite people in the world, she wanted to be able to trust them... but one of them had been drugging her.

(It couldn’t be her, she wasn’t the drugger... she told herself she couldn’t be, she couldn’t be...)

“Maybe the drugger doesn’t even know they did it,” Magdalena suggested. “I guess that’s a third explanation for what happened when Suzy gave the opening and nobody used it. If Cameron was able to bury a memory so well that she forgot all about it for a month... and if what Autumn said was true, maybe the drugger did what they thought they had to, or did something they thought was right, and then immediately stuffed it to the back of their mind... then they wouldn’t have known to speak up when Suzy invited them to... or maybe the drug itself made the drugger forget...” Magdalena frowned. “But unless we figure out some way to determine which one of us it was, I don’t think we’ll be able to look at each other the same... it could have been any one of us...”

Magdalena’s face paled. “It could even have been me... if the drug made me forget...”

All four of them looked at each other uneasily; each one of the four felt uncomfortable with themselves most of all. Could they have been the one to do it? How could they have done so, to people they cared about?

Suzy thought of how she’d been feeling in the past month, and saw it in a whole new light... that happiness, that glowing. She hadn’t been glowing, she’d been changing. She hadn’t been happy, she’d been drugged. The drugs were the thing that had changed her mindset, forcibly cheered her up whether she wanted to be cheered up or not... the thing that had been making her notice other boys more often... the thing that had made her start the five-kiss greeting, the thing that had made her French Barry. They were making her loose and good-time-happy, good-time inclined... it hadn’t been her choice, it had been decided for her... she felt so violated. She felt horrified.

Everyone looked similarly disturbed.

“My recklessness,” Magdalena said softly—and put her hand lightly to her mouth. “I haven’t been reckless just to let off steam, because it’s been a long lifetime of good behavior... it was because—”

“My noticing all the guys in school. Noticing them in a girly way.” Autumn echoed her. The childish way she described it would have been cute if Suzy’s trust in her best friend hadn’t been completely destabilized.

“My sudden interest in fitness,” Barry realized aloud. “My lack of interest in food...”

“The drugs have all changed us this much already,” Suzy said. She felt herself sweating her nerves. It could even be guilty sweat, if part of her unconscious knew something she didn’t. “Changed our behavior, changed our personalities, at least a little... It just makes me feel so dirty when I think of how happy I’ve been... and none of it was real...”

Autumn shook her head. “We definitely have to figure out who did it. But until we do, or until anyone of us has a case to make against someone, we shouldn’t be together. We’ve got to stop whoever the drugger is from drugging us any more... so we can’t be together. Could it really be possible that the drugger has been drugging us all this time... and not known they were doing it?”

It seemed doubtful to all of them; Suzy thought so too. But Cameron had said it was a new drug; none of them knew how it worked yet, what it did beyond how it had already changed them. So they couldn’t exactly rule that out, much as they might have wanted to... keeping it in made the drugger too sympathetic. Most importantly, it made it so that it really could be any of them, even someone who didn’t know they’d done it.

“I don’t want to think about this anymore,” Suzy said, upset. She gathered all her books and supplies up. “We’ll only meet up again when someone knows something; or thinks they know something... we can pass notes or check-in in the hallway or something; but I think I’ve seen enough of all of you for one day.”

No one looked too reluctant that Suzy had called an impromptu end to their meeting, and she left the study room without so much as a look back.

At least the next morning when Suzy woke up with that same happy feeling glowing inside of her, she knew how to handle it. She knew it was like she had feared at the beginning when she had started feeling so happy.

There had been a hiding identity inside of her, waiting to come out. Whatever “ideal version” the drug had sought to create from her... however the drug’s inventor had defined “ideal...” and that was a grim thing to consider...

So far it seemed her ideal had been to become bubbly, and loose with her affections; to hedonistically seek enjoyment, almost like what Magdalena had described about her own changing... to hedonistically seek enjoyment and fear no consequence... at least now that she knew it was happening, she could fight against it, remind herself it was not who she was, or who she had to be... it was not, it was not... and she could comfort herself that this new version of herself would not be strengthened.

No further drugs could be introduced into her system, however the betrayer had done it... because she was going to avoid all three of them; and if she noticed she was trying to drug herself then she would know it was her, and she could tell the others; and the suspicion could stop... and maybe they would forgive her...

She so hoped it wasn’t her.

It was strange, the first few days, sitting alone, or with random acquaintances; seeing her friends (former friends?) across of rooms, or halls; and if they made eye contact with her, seeing them nervously, abashedly looking away again as fast as they could, like they were either ashamed or afraid or both (or was she ascribing guilt to them by default, to each one of them, because of her own fear?)... it took some getting used to.

But by the second week, Suzy was getting used to being without them. None of them had come up to her in the halls... so no one had a more concrete suspicion yet, or a case against any of the others. Cameron hadn’t shown herself again, either, which meant there was no resolution to the issue yet from any source.

And Suzy’s mother’s questions about why she was home so early from school these days, what had happened to the study group with her friends, and what had happened to going over to said friends’ houses a couple nights a week... those questions were easily enough deflected. Suzy was almost getting back to a sense of normality after the aberrance that the drugging and its associated betrayal had denoted.

And then she thought of that other feeling... that feeling she’d had the morning Cameron had brought her suspicions before them all, and unfortunately poisoned the group against each other as a result.

Poisoned but not drugged... the way the traitor had done... That morning, she’d been feeling... frustration... and something else... building in her... like something else was about to happen that she’d have to respond to, though at the time she hadn’t known what that was...

That morning, as she got up, it was the Tuesday of the second week since fallout...

Suzy had a guess as to what that other, unknown approaching thing might be.

When she was dressing in front of her standing mirror that day, she stopped mid-task.

Were her breasts—a little bigger?

Barely noticeably bigger; probably only half a cupsize... she was a 34B, maybe now she was a 34.B A; but she’d long since stopped developing... her breasts shouldn’t be growing anymore, not at 18... she wasn’t imagining it. There was just a bit more filling each breast; but she knew her body well-enough, better than many other people probably knew their own.

Constantly sculpting it, and training it to meet athletic demands for her meant she knew every nuance of it, every variation in it from one day to the next, when she was training particularly hard. And her breasts had never swelled half a cupsize before. It just didn’t happen... subconsciously, her mind must have known... it must have sensed that something else had already been triggered in her body, even before her exposure to the drug had been cut off. It was too late; it had already changed her, past tense... and now her body was only catching up to that fact.

Oh please, she thought, standing there. Please let it only change her breasts this much, and no more! She didn’t know what changes to her body, with the goal of making it ideal, might have as their end result, and she didn’t really want to find out. She was already afraid of losing herself... she didn’t want to lose the body she knew and loved so well, also.

But the next day, she watched her breasts go up again, another cupsize... she was a 35B now... the rest of her body seemed to change to accommodate the growth. When her breasts got larger, however incrementally, the rest of her body shifted a little too, to stay in proportion with them. The only thing that didn’t change when this happened was her height. It did not shoot up when her shoulders widened a little; and her frame expanded just that much, to support the growth.

On Thursday she was between a 35B and a 36B; but after she hit that size, she seemed to be going up a full cupsize between days; she felt like she could sense her breasts expanding, when she was sitting there in class during the day. She had dreams about it at night; dreamed they got so much bigger they made her top-heavy. And then in her dream she would tilt forward until she lost her balance, and then she would fall flat onto her face. When she woke up, she was afraid it would happen.

Yet that glowing feeling wouldn’t go away, even now that she knew it came from an external source. When she wasn’t actively fighting it with all her strength, it was so easy to drift back into that careless, carefree feeling. So what if she was changing? Didn’t it feel nicer to be happy all the time?

And hadn’t she always, secretly, resented the fact that her breasts were a little small?

She’d done enough with her personality to make up for her small body in terms of attractiveness... but it would have been easier if she had been like Magdalena from the start. Part of that had been one of the reasons she’d used to wish she could get in with Magdalena. Part of her had thought: if only she could have been more like Magdalena. And because she couldn’t, the next best would have been getting closer to her...

So why not let her breasts grow? Then maybe all that resentment could be undone... that old frustration could be redeemed... it might be fun to have bigger breasts, anyway... she could just roll on with that kind of light frivolity she had been developing lately.

Then Suzy would try to suppress that new version of herself and dig her old self back up; but whether she approached from the new or old side, the solution had to be the same. There was no antidote yet, because Cameron hadn’t unmasked the drug’s inventor. So the only thing Suzy could do was go on changing, and watching it happening—waiting, and hoping there would be an antidote at the end of it...

(Even if, more and more, every day, part of Suzy wished she wouldn’t have to give this body back...)

After she’d gone from an B to a C, the growth went double time; it was a full-cupsize and a half, every day... then once she was in the C-cup series, two cupsizes every day. How long would she go on growing? When would her body stop? She wasn’t so petite anymore. She had stayed thin and athletic, but her body had spread itself out to deal with the accumulated weight.

Sometimes she caught herself unconsciously posing, and seeking out reflective surfaces to find images of her body in... her hips were wider to stay in line with her shoulders; she was still thin, but she was more filled out; there was more substance to her.

She actually felt physically stronger... and when she looked to herself from her body’s side profile, there was just such a wave there for her to observe... she was becoming more attractive as the days passed; it didn’t only have to be her personality drawing other people to her. With a body like this, some of the slack could fall to her basic appearance instead. If she wanted a guy, (which she still didn’t... not for anything serious...) she would not have to flirt so much to catch his attention in the first place.

Suzy almost thought it would be worth it, if she only knew who it was that had drugged them all—to confront them, to force them to look over her body and say to them, this. This is what your changes have made me into... she felt bitter about it some days. Between the spells that she was happy about it.

Suzy wasn’t the only one changing. Barry had noticed his muscles toning themselves up, with almost no intervention from him at all. If it kept up, he’d look like a regular jock; maybe the sports teams would start trying to recruit him, if he wasn’t careful.

Fitness was starting to sound fun to him, too. It was a constant act of defiance to keep himself from pushing harder in gym class, to see what his toning-body could do; or to stay after school and use the study group’s former hour to haunt the weight-room and try his strength there.

After some days of defying needlessly, Barry gave in. It was fun, it was interesting to him, he should let himself see what his body could do.

It was eminently more capable; and seemed to tone up more day by day. Barry couldn’t even pretend to be upset about it; he saw the girls looking at him. He was approached by the sports coaches, and turned them all down, but couldn’t keep himself completely unaffected by the venom of his fitness interest’s bite... he caved in so much as to join the community football league in Pine Ridge; the all-ages, just-for-fun league. Just because he was suddenly developing these new abilities didn’t mean he was going to let them change his whole life, his whole future. His love of food would come back, once he’d adjusted and his body had finished changing. It had to. He’d had loved it for his whole life.

Autumn found her changes more disturbing. Her body didn’t shift much at all, or at least, not outwardly; though when she had noticed both Suzy and Barry in the hall, from afar, it looked like their bodies were definitely where a substantial amount of their changing was happening... for her, her libido went on increasing, but that was not the change that was most disturbing to her.

She was losing her focus; or at least, that was what she told herself at first, because the alternative frightened her so much. She was just distracted, upset that she’d been drugged, that her friendships had all fallen apart.

But she was an empiricist. She couldn’t ignore or deny data that pointed towards a reality she didn’t want to accept, or a reality that challenged her pre-conceived notions. And the fact was, she wasn’t only losing focus, or finding her attention drifting in class. She was forgetting things; things she knew well, things she had known for years. Things which she could pinpoint back to the very moment she had learned them. She could still remember the moments, the stories about what she was forgetting. But the knowledge itself that was going... that seemed impossible to regain.

She tried; harder than she’d ever tried at anything, harder than she’d tried when she’d strived for her greatest academic achievements. She tried to relearn what was forgotten; whole sets of scientific data that had been memorized and remembered all these years—gone—and when she opened her science textbooks, and stared at the pages, reading the lines over and over until they stopped making sense to her, willing the information to get back inside, it simply hadn’t gone.

It was like her brain was rejecting it. She hated the implications of that. Because more and more, as the days passed, she couldn’t deny what seemed to become clearer with each one... the drugs were changing her intelligence, they had already had their catastrophic effect before their supply into her had been interrupted... they were reducing her intelligence, they were taking away her knowledge. Her favorite, most treasured thing, cultivated all the years of her life, the cornerstone of her identity! In what world was this ideal? What would she do about her future if Cameron couldn’t find the maker of the drug? (Maybe there would have been another word she would have used to describe them once... but her vocabulary seemed to be shrinking too...)

Or what if the maker could be found, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t make an antidote? What would she do if she was stuck like this forever?

She tried to distract herself from this potentiality, but would find herself even more frustrated when that worked. The constant turning of her head to follow every cute boy that went by was an annoyance to her. Sure, it woke her body up and made it pay attention... and then when her mind enjoyed those stirs of arousal, she forgot about everything that wasn’t daydreaming about boys... and she did kick into changing her style; dressing to highlight her body, in the hopes the boys would look at her like she looked at them. It wasn’t much to show off, but maybe it was something about her increase of libido.

Somehow, even with the same body she’d already had, just holding herself differently... just letting her internal arousal shine out outwardly, she did turn some heads... it went beyond just ‘at school.’ She found herself drawn to the mall, to keep looking for, trying on new clothes that made her body look sexier, or sexy period.

And people at the mall turned their heads to look at her too, and followed where she walked, as if she had some inherently irresistible, some inherently attractive quality... and then when other’s adoring eyes were on her, she couldn’t help but flush with a bit of pride and ego... and think how much she liked that... then become frustrated with herself all over again at the realization that, for that minute, she had cared more about that approval than she cared about losing her whole identity, and everything she knew.

It shouldn’t be alright with her, simply allowing herself to take her mind off the situation however she wanted, just to make herself feel better... but it kept happening, every time she mooned over a boy (who wasn’t Barry—but how could she love him the same if he had been the one responsible for the drugging? And until she could know for a certainty that he wasn’t, she couldn’t risk being around him... in case he was the drugger, and made it all worse...) and it kept happening, every time she admired her own quality of newfound sexual expression; every time she received positive sexual attention from another guy. She couldn’t stop herself.

Magdalena was changing too; not physically; only mentally; she had always been pretty free sexually when she decided she wanted to be, nothing much was changing there.

Where things were really going off the rails for her were with her sense of consequences... she was diving headfirst into risk-seeking behavior. She would have thought knowing the cause behind it would have made it easier to fight off the impulse off, but it didn’t.

When her followers mentioned a party to her, she was at every one; at every one, she could be found drinking more than her share of alcohol, not caring who saw her there, what it might do to her image. Or she could be found falling all over a guy; or taking the guy into an unused bedroom of the party house, and fooling around with him in a way that went farther and farther every time.

Still her taste for danger never seemed to be satisfied... One day, after a cheer practice, she and some of the other cheerleaders were getting changed again into their school clothes, and they offered her some recreational drugs; recreational drugs, not the transformational kind; Magdalena wanted that too, and she started using alongside them, chasing a next high in whatever form it came.

It was Suzy’s idea for all of them to meet up again. Assuming the traitor was not her, (and she kept repeating herself in her thoughts, she really, truly hoped it was not) she hoped that another meet-up, in which she could throw the ways she’d been changing into their face, might finally stir a guilty conscience and encourage a confession.

So one day, she kept an eye out for each of her sort-of-maybe-kind-of still friends; she stopped Autumn in the hall, and told her she wanted the study group to meet; and she felt so bad at the look of hope she noticed in Autumn’s eyes when she said this that she almost thought she should clarify she didn’t have any new information, or any new suspicions, or even a case to make. She couldn’t bear to make Autumn’s face fall, so she let her go on under her misapprehension. Autumn agreed she would be there.

When Suzy managed to track down Barry and Magdalena between classes, they agreed to meet up at study group too, thought it had been days, weeks, since that had last happened.

After class that day, there they all were. The calendar was still on the wall—October 1999, but no one had ever changed the month when it had needed changing. It had been their room and they had not been in it; no one else had either.

They had all made new and closer friendships with each other in here, and so much time had been spent laughing; those friendships had all gone so well and been so enjoyable that they had extended even beyond Pine Ridge; Suzy was thinking now of all the time the four of them had spent together out, at each other’s houses, or the times they had talked about going out to do things in Pine Ridge; things they had never quite gotten to.

It had all been so wonderful, and then all of it had gone so wrong. Suzy still didn’t understand how one of them could betray the others like they had done; and in her heart of hearts, she truly did not understand how the one who had done it could be herself. If she were letting herself think of this, all the way to the bottom of its total depth, she had to admit that she didn’t really believe it.

“So?” Magdalena pressed. “Did you find anything out? Who are you suspicious of?”

Suzy had let Magdalena and Barry believe she had information, too; she had not corrected them either.

“I’m not newly suspicious of anyone, and I haven’t learned anything,” Suzy started.

Magdalena stared at her. “You understand that that makes you look suspicious, don’t you? The drugger would draw us all together on false pretenses just to get us in the same room again, so they could give us more of the drug. Right now, this makes it look like you’re them.”

Autumn frowned; opening her mouth too slowly—as if she had meant to say something like this, but hadn’t quite been able to formulate it, or formulate it quickly enough to say it before Magdalena.

And Magdalena seemed a bit... off, too. Her hair was a bit frazzled and frizzy, as if she’d been cutting corners in her hair care; her pupils were a little wide and dilated, not to mention that Autumn was wearing a tight black shirt which hugged her chest, such as it was, and ended in capped short sleeves that left most of her arms bare; and a black jean-skirt with it, and knee-high silver boots—Barry’s body looked a bit more compact. He was also wearing more well-fitted clothes; that seemed to hug newly emerging muscles.

Maybe Suzy hadn’t been the only one changing, physically or otherwise.

“I know how it looks,” Suzy said. “But I think my motivation for calling us all together will prove I’m not the drugger. I wanted to tell them what they’ve done to me; I wanted to throw it in their face and make them feel so guilty that they confess. Now why would I want that, if I was the one drugging everyone?”

“Unless it’s a guilty conscience subconsciously driving you to do it,” Magdalena grumbled; but she looked a little placated.

“Listen, whoever thought it was a good idea to drug everyone and change us, it’s been an awful time for me,” Suzy launched into it without hesitation. “At first I started feeling really happy and carefree... I thought I was finally just getting over my parents’ divorce. But it was that drug... drugging me to be happy, to feel carefree and golden and glowing all the time whether I wanted it or not; that was bad enough, that was violating enough, but listen, drugger—” she addressed the statement generally, so it could apply to any one of her three listeners, whichever one of them had done the drugging to the rest. She really laid the guilt on thick, and hopefully sought a guilty expression of response— “it’s been changing my body physically too.”

Suzy shoved her chair back, propelled by her anger, and stood, with her hands on her hips. They could see her body now it was not hidden behind the books she carried, which were now on the table. She put her hands on her hips to make it even clearer.

Her hips had widened further; she had a curve to rest each hand on now, because her body had gone on shifting to accommodate the shifts that were happening up top, which Suzy knew they could now see.

Her breasts had gone from where they’d started to a 37 or a 38C; she wasn’t sure exactly which size it was, it had changed again from yesterday; her waist was only about a 25, she’d checked, but her hips had gone way out, to a 35; she was still small in stature, but she was wider, to the sides, even if looked at front to back, her tummy was still tucked in, athletic and compact.

But the weight of her breasts was unfamiliar to her, even though it had been incrementally coming up for some time by this point; it had been a headache to constantly be changing bras; they never fit her; one day they were too small, the next they were too tight, then they were really tight, then she had to get another that was too big and start it over; she’d had to keep buying new clothes, too, too big, too baggy, then she grew into them and they were too tight—all of it had been a source of stress, all of it had been a nightmare—and now she gestured at herself with an angry jerking of her hands.

“Look at this!” she snapped. “This isn’t my body, I don’t know this body; I’ve got a completely different shape now, I don’t even know myself physically anymore! And I don’t know if it’s done changing, either! Clearly we didn’t cut the drugs off in time, because all of this still happened to me, it wasn’t prevented! Look what you did to me.”

Her last words were seething; Suzy was sure that sincere rage had proven her innocence to her one-time friends, once and for all.

The three of them looked a little sheepish; perhaps for suspecting her, and Suzy, content that her point was made, sat roughly back down in her chair with a flop.

She waited for a confession that still didn’t come—all that guilting for nothing.

“You’re not the only one changing, you know,” Barry said stiffly. “My body started shifting on its own; I don’t feel physically like myself anymore, either,” he complained, leaning forward in his chair. “All my muscles have toned up, and gotten tighter. My strength has increased a lot, and I’m craving fitness and exercise these days like I used to crave food. And I loved food—and now I don’t care about it anymore. I was going to work in a restaurant, for fuck’s sake,” Barry snapped. Suzy couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard him swear; his frustration was evident.

Autumn snorted—how unlike her, too. “You think that’s so bad! I’m losing my smarts! I’m forgetting everything I know, I’m forgetting half my vocabulary, I was the smart girl, and now I’m failing all my tests and watching my grades drop! The only thing I seem to care about these days is staring after boys and hanging around the mall shopping and getting made up.”

“I’m sorry, I think I have it the hardest of everyone at this table,” Magdalena interjected. “My self-control is gone, that drug took it all away from me. I’m going out partying all over town every night, house party after house party; I started doing drugs with some of the other cheerleaders. I’m high right now, I have been all day. Do you know how many times the local paper has slipped in a picture of me, and done a little write-up about my latest scandalous action? Everyone in town is eating it up; my parents are beloved and respected, but everybody likes a good fall story, and I’m giving it to them, throwing shame on the family, their skills as parents, but I just can’t stop myself! I’m chasing the high of the danger and I can’t quit the recklessness, even though I should.

“I just like it too much, and unless I’m actively fighting my own thoughts every second, it becomes so easy to just not care about any of it. Consequences don’t even seem real to me now, anymore.

“And you want to complain about your future, Barry Pierce,” Magdalena said, turning on him. “What did you have to look forward to? Being a waiter or a line cook in your parent’s business? I was going to be somebody, I was going to be something, but now how can I be anything with this history of scandal behind me? It could stop me anywhere I go; you all think you have it so hard! I have it the worst of all of us,” Magdalena finished, grouchily, crossing her arms under her chest.

Suzy frowned; all three of them sounded upset; she didn’t agree that Magdalena had it worst, but it made sense that, Magdalena, self-centered as she could be, would fall back on that tendency at a time like this and make it all about her, imagine she was the most hard done by. Suzy was only left feeling more confused; if none of them were happy about the ways they were changing, then had someone outside the group drugged them? Had the drugger not known what would happen...? Or had they all been fed false information, by Cameron?

Suzy headshook. “This is getting us nowhere. We need concrete evidence, we need something that actually points us at a culprit. Clearly we’re all upset, and this has been hard on everyone... but we can’t keep yelling at each other and getting angry. We need to know who deserves our anger, who did this.”

Suzy looked by default to Autumn, expecting a brilliant suggestion.

Instead, Autumn burst into tears, and hid her face in her hands. “Don’t look at me, I can’t think of anything anymore!”

Magdalena sighed, drumming her fingers on the table. “It’s a long shot,” she said. “But assuming the drugger had to keep the drug on them, and assuming they haven’t cleaned out their bag since the study group broke up, we could search everyone’s bags together, one bag at a time, all four of us looking in the bag together so no one can take something and hide it from the others... and if the drugger was dumb or lazy enough to have left the drug in their bag, we’ll know who it is. But like I said. It’s a long shot. If it were me—”

Everyone looked at her.

“—and it’s not,” she bit back, “I never would have been so careless.”

“Oh, no,” Barry said, sarcastically. “You’ll only ruin your own reputation and your family’s reputation. You’ll only get high before class. You’d never do something so risky as leaving the evidence of a drugging in your bag!”

“Listen, nitwit—”

“Hey,” Suzy said, holding up her hands. It made her feel like a referee. “That’s a good suggestion, Magdalena.”

Autumn had stopped crying, but her face made a weird expression. As if she was unused to the idea of not being the one who suggested and was praised for it.

“So let’s do it,” Suzy concluded. “Let’s search.”

Each of them moved their books aside, onto the tops of other desks, and they put all four bags, bookbags, purses, backpacks—onto the surface of the table, and systematically, all four of them went through bag by bag, every fold, every pocket.

And in one of the bags, they found an empty vial. No argument could be made; clearly, this had once contained the drug, but all their worst fears were confirmed—the dosing had been complete before the disbanding of the study group.

Three sets of unbelieving— shocked, outraged, hurt eyes turned on the guilty party; and the guilty party shriveled under this looking, flushing red as the four friends sat in the silence of recognized betrayal for a moment... too upset to move on and say the necessary words of the conversation that would have to follow on the discovery, too upset to do it, at least not before a few more seconds of staring... a few more beats of silence... a few more...

A few.