Chip


Some time after I bought DDRA, Electra started to ask to start coming to school with me, again.

She had mostly tried to avoid it. She was okay on babysitting jobs, as she had not known the kids or the parents before sylphing.

But at school, just like at dances, she knew people who had known her as the cheerleading captain, the debate team captain, the… Well, the star of the Cool Kids, popular with teachers and students.

They didn’t know how to deal with her, she didn’t know how to deal with their discomfort, and Conrad always made stupid comments to try to relieve the tension.

Well, Laughter IS the Best Medicine, but it’s a Schedule III Controlled Substance, meaning that while it isn’t addictive, there are chances for abuse.

I mostly shut up before Electra started to cry. Then I started leaving her home with the gym set up and the TV remote on the table.

But two days after the Jerk Chicken, we read in the paper that Chip Obrien had won a big scholarship.

Sounded like Chip. He was the Varsity quarterback, a math whiz, the Class President (he’d been Vice Pres until Jennifer became unable to fulfill her duties). He was the male Jennifer, really.

Oh, and he’d dated Jennifer for the last five years.

“Conrad?”

I looked up from the Sudoku puzzle and saw Electra paused on the page, her bare foot tracing a line under Chip’s name.

“Just a second,” I said. “I think I can actually solve this one.”

“That’s great,” she said, still looking down. At the name of a former boyfriend. She didn’t sound thrilled at my possible solution of the puzzle. She did the 5-star difficulty ones, in ink, whereas my possible win of a 1-star…

Well, I was a little miffed that she wasn’t paying me any attention. And then realized that was a horribly self-centered thing to think about my pet.

I put the paper and my pencil down and asked, “What’s up, Electra?”

“I wonder if I could tell Chip congratulations? For his scholarship?” I reached for the phone. She gave a little eep and I paused. “In person?”

I stared. Electra hadn’t spoken with Chip since she became a sylph. He and I didn’t move in the same cliques.

And she hadn’t been in my pocket the day Chip asked me about her ‘pretending’ to sylph over the PA.

When I and a few other witnesses convinced him that she really had shrunk down to 1/12th scale, his first question had been to ask if it was catching.

I thought she was well shut of him, but I didn’t think it was my place to say so.

More to the point, SHE thought so. She’d made it clear that her life before she became a pet was hers. Hers to decide to hold or share, to discuss or gloss over or to pretend it never happened.

So now I sat and thought about it. I really didn’t want to seek Chip out. I’m not even slightly athletic, so working my way into the crowd that centers around Chip could be uncomfortable, if not hazardous.

“I dunno,” I said. “And that’s not just a way of saying ‘I don’t want to,’ either. I don’t know how I’d approach him.”

“You walk up to him,” she said.

“So simple,” I muttered. “But since I’m not one of the jocks, walking up to the jock table at lunch is just asking for derision, mockery, cold shoulders and face-offs, long before I reached Chip at the center.”

“Oh,” she deflated in understanding.

“But,” I said, having a sudden idea, “I suddenly have an idea.”

She looked up at me skeptically. “Your sudden ideas tend to involve spitballs and slide whistles.”

“And… What’s your point?” I asked.



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Index

8. Victory

10. Congratulations