Kim Harrison - Dates From Hell

“Wow,” Claire breathed as she stared at Brad Cruise’s reflection looking back at her. Rugged good looks, short, tousled light brown hair, and the same black suit the man had worn in the magazine photo. It was as if he’d stepped right out of the page and into the room. Only he hadn’t. It wasn’t Brad Cruise she was staring at, it was herself.

“Yeah.” Jill sighed, following her into the bathroom. “Wow.”

Claire’s gaze narrowed at the sudden spark in her friend’s eyes; a spark that was usually reserved for members of the opposite sex.

“Oh yeah.” Jill walked around Claire, her eyes sweeping over her body in the suit. “This is incredible. You look just like him.”

“Yeah,” Claire agreed dryly. “I look like him, but it’s still me in here.”

Jill stopped behind her and peered at their reflection in the mirror. “Oh, wow, look!! It’s me and Brad Cruise. I gotta get a picture of this. All those women at the reunion tonight would just eat their hearts out.”

“I thought you weren’t going,” Claire reminded, then shook her head as Jill started out of the room, but her friend had barely taken a step into the hall before stopping abruptly and whirling back.

“What?” Claire asked warily.

“I have an idea,” Jill said slowly.

Claire noted the mounting excitement on her face and began to shake her head. Excitement and ideas were a bad mix with Jill. “No.”

“You don’t even know what it is,” Jill protested.

“I don’t need to, Jill. I know that look. It’s the look that always got me in trouble when we were teenagers,” Claire said. Her mouth tightened when Jill’s shoulders drooped and her face took on a pathetic, dejected cast. It was the look that always got her. Knowing she would regret it, Claire sighed and asked, “What is it?”

Jill hesitated, then blurted, “Be my date for the reunion tonight?”

Claire blinked. “What?”

“Be my date. Like that,” Jill explained, gesturing to her Brad Cruise guise.

“Oh no, no, no, no, no,” Claire said, shaking her head.

“Oh yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” Jill countered quickly, then clapped her hands together as if in prayer and begged, “Please? Please Claire? It could be fun.”

“Fun?” she echoed with disbelief.

“Yes, fun. Just think about it,” Jill said. “Magda the bitch would eat her heart out. For once in life, we would have it over her.”

Claire grimaced at the idea of Magda the bitch. A Barbie doll look-alike with blond hair and boobs, she’d had everything…Except personality, compassion, and heart. Magda had been a devoted subscriber to the belief that when you looked as good as she did, you just didn’t have to be nice. More than that, she’d gone out of her way to be cutting and cruel to anyone she’d felt beneath her on the food chain…which had been everyone in the school who wasn’t male and on the football team. Claire seriously doubted the woman had improved with age. The idea of Magda’s distress if Jill walked into the reunion on the arm of Brad Cruise really had some charm to it.

“And then there’s Ted,” Jill said, adding to her argument. “He’d eat his heart out, too.”

“Ted?” Claire asked with confusion. “He didn’t even go to our high school. Why would he be there?”

“He’ll be there with Magda. It’s why he had to end it today rather than wait until the very last minute, like the day of the wedding…or maybe months after,” she added.

“ Magda won the ‘Ted’s wife lotto’?” Claire asked with horror. “ She was the other finalist?”

Jill nodded, stone-faced. “After he told me he was dumping me, I was foolish enough to ask if he couldn’t at least attend the reunion with me tonight and he told me about Magda.”

“I can’t believe he told you about Magda,” Claire gaped. “He’s got some balls, that guy. What if you tell her everything tonight?”

Jill snorted. “He knows I won’t. Magda would just sneer and point out that she—of course—won him from me and I was a loser… again. ”

Magda had made something of a hobby of stealing other girls’ boyfriends in school. She’d stolen Jill’s prom date a week before the prom, then gone on to steal Claire’s prom date on the actual night of the prom after he and Magda were crowned Prom King and Queen.

Claire pressed her lips together, then nodded. “Okay. We’ll do it. We’ll go to the reunion and rub Magda and Ted’s face in it. But only because I love you like a sister, and only this once.”

“Only this once,” Jill agreed, then squealed and hugged her. “Oh, you’re the greatest.”

Claire smiled wryly as she patted Jill’s back. “Yeah, yeah. Now, we have another problem.”

“What’s that?” Jill asked, pulling back to peer at her.

“How do I change back into myself?” Claire asked quietly.

Jill stared at her blankly, then frowned. “You…well…” She brightened suddenly. “I have tons of pictures of you. You can look at one and turn back.”

Jill rushed out of the room, leaving Claire to turn and survey herself in the mirror. In the picture of Brad Cruise, he’d had a serious case of five o’clock shadow going on. Claire now had that case herself. Curious, she lifted a hand and ran it over her cheek and chin, grimacing at the scrape of short hair against her fingers. Man, this was so weird…but kind of cool.

“Here.” Jill hurried back in and started to hold out a picture, then pulled it back. “Wait, first try to do it without the picture.”

“Without it?” Claire asked with surprise.

“Well, sure. I mean it is your body. Just close your eyes and concentrate on being you again. Just think ‘I want to be me,’” Jill suggested.

“Isn’t that a song?” Claire asked with amusement.

“Will you concentrate,” Jill said with irritation. “Just try to change.”

Sighing, Claire closed her eyes and concentrated on being herself. She didn’t have a picture to think of; she didn’t need one. She had lived with her face and body for years.

“Ooops.”

Claire blinked her eyes open as she felt a soft towel being wrapped around her.

“I guess the clothes you were wearing really were you,” Jill said with a shrug, holding the towel together until Claire reached up to take over the task.

Jill had wrapped a bath towel around her shoulders. Claire shifted it under her arms and wrapped it around herself sarong style. She was completely and utterly nude under the towel, which meant that the pink T-shirt and blue capri pants, the black satin dressy outfit, and the man’s black suit had been purely her. That seemed kind of weird.

Both women stiffened at the sound of the front door opening.

“I’m back! Claire? Jill?”

Claire was the first to break out of her surprise. Suddenly aware of her nudity, she quickly pushed the bathroom door closed.

“Hello?” Kyle apparently heard the door close, his voice now came from somewhere in the hall.

“Yes?” Claire called. “Hello.”

“Claire?” Kyle asked, his voice now right outside the door.

“Yes.”

“Are you okay? What are you doing?”

Hearing the worry in his voice, she said quickly, “I’m fine. I’m…I’m in the bath.”

When Jill’s eyebrows rose at her choice of activity, Claire gestured to her attire. She was in a towel and her clothes were in Jill’s bedroom, Claire could hardly tell Kyle she was just using the loo. He might wait in the hall until she came out so that he could see for himself that she was okay. He seemed terribly worried about her, and had every right to be. The destabilizer had affected her after all.