Torey sighed. “That went well.”

“Yeah, she didn't do a ritual murder on any of us,” agreed Alicia, wiping sweat off her forehead. “Oh wait, you were being sarcastic.”

“It fine, Tor. She mad now, but not be mad next day. You can still friends with Max and other spook kids,” assured Chase.

The corner of Torey's mouth lifted in skepticism. “I dunno, she's pretty good at holding a grudge.” She'd made a hobby of it, in fact. It wasn't like she had anything better to do.

With a parting wave, Torey initiated a round of goodbyes, then broke off from the group to go start getting the drive-in ready for the student council's makeover. Once the cheerleaders were alone, Alicia looked relieved. “Well, that's that! All systems go, ladies! The dance is back on!”

“Yeah, for everybody but me,” moped Lindsey. She sighed and sank into a bench. Elbows resting on her knees, she propped up her chin in her hands. Her voice was weary and defeated. “It's over, you guys. It's over. There's nothing more I can do. I've exhausted every option. It's time to face the facts, I'm not gonna have a date to Harvest.”

“There all ways next year,” comforted Chase.

“Yeah! You can win Lady of the Harvest in your senior year! Is there anything more romantic?” posited Alicia.

“I was really aiming for both junior year AND senior year,” complained Lindsey.

“You are truly hopeless,” replied Caitlin.

They were not as alone as they thought. “Wait, really? You don't have a date for Harvest?” asked a voice from behind them, astonished. They looked over. Standing in the entrance to the park, holding some kind of remote controlled car, was Lawrence.

“Hey, you're that one guy,” said Caitlin. “What are you doing here?”

“Were you stalking us?” accused Alicia.

“Oh, uh, no,” he replied. He held up the car. “Actually, I was just waiting for those scary kids to leave so I could test out my new R/C unit. I'm SURE I don't have to tell you this, but taking a bot for a spin in your backyard can hardly be called a thorough test of its capabilities. Even accounting for a wide array of terrain types, there is performance data you can only collect when observing how a bot handles inclines and declines. Thus, the skate park is an ideal place to gather vital information.”

“You're right, you didn't have to tell us that,” agreed Caitlin.

He put the robot down and straightened his bow tie, casting Lindsey a dashing look. “So, is it true you don't have a date to Harvest yet? Neither do I, you'll be happy to know.”

“Actually, those words bring me neither joy nor sadness,” she replied, standing up and dusting her knees off. “Also, no.”

“No what?”

“What do you think? No, I'm not going with you,” she said. “I might be desperate, but I'm not THAT desperate.”

“Yes you are,” Caitlin reminded her.

“Oh yeah,” Lindsey remembered. Keeping her desperation at the forefront of her mind, she took a moment to look at the boy in this new light. After a moment's consideration, she wrinkled her nose, then gestured explosively at him. “I can't! I mean, Jesus, look at him! I can't go with him! He's a NERD! That's even worse than going with a scary kid! I may be desperate, sure...but I still have my dignity!”

Alicia actually laughed out loud at this, then covered her mouth. “Oh, er, sorry. Of course, you do, Lindsey.”

There was no hiding from a platitude that empty. “Okay, so I'm extremely desperate and I also threw away all my dignity,” she conceded. “HOWEVER...”

They waited. “There's really no way I can build on that, is there?” she realized.

Caitlin held out her hand, palm up. It was a rational gesture, as though she was holding her next question in it and presenting it to Lindsey. “Believe me Lindsey, I get why you don't wanna go with him...but look at it this way, what's going to look worse? You going to Harvest with a nerd, or you going to Harvest by yourself?”

The blonde hesitated, examining the situation from every angle, scrabbling for a means of escape. Finally, she hung her head in defeat. Unable to look at Lawrence, she bit off: “Ugh...fine...”

Lawrence was shocked. “Whoa, seriously?! I was just joking! What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“Yes, seriously,” Lindsey cringed. “But you have to go get me anything I want from the snack bar whenever I want it, and we're just gonna dance. No funny stuff.”

“And you have to give me ten bucks,” added Caitlin.

“Deal!” said Lawrence, pulling out his wallet and handing Caitlin a Hamilton. He pumped a fist in the air. “Holy moley! This is gonna be awesome! Me, at the Harvest Dance with THE Lindsey Ericson! Who'd have thunk it? I'm gonna go rent my tux right now!” He ran off, robot tucked under his arm, performance data forgotten.

Lindsey looked very depressed. “Good God, what did I just do?”

With no reason to stay, they started to leave. Passing through the skate park's chain-link gate and closing it behind them, they started to discuss whether they should go to the mall or go get coffee. It was at this point that they got their next visitor.

“So, you're having the dance anyway, eh?” asked Melissa C., landing in front of them. The girls cried out and recoiled in surprise. “Good. I'd hate to think I was responsible for ruining your fun.”

Chase felt actual panic as she assumed a fighting stance. “Go! Get safe!” she shouted to her squadmates.

Melissa C. laughed at this. “Oh, there's no need for that. I'm not here to fight.” She looked at Chase's arm and smiled. “You don't look like you could fight your way out of a paper bag right now anyway. I like the cast. Can I write something on it?” One of her fingers disappeared and was replaced with a permanent marker.

“Can try,” Chase challenged.

Before Melissa C. could try, though, Alicia, Caitlin, and Lindsey jumped in between them.

“If you want to write on her, you're going to have to write on us first!” stated Alicia. “We're not going to stand back anymore and let cheerleader fight cheerleader!”

Melissa C. smiled. “Aw, how cute. Standing by your squadmate through thick and thin. I remember when I used to think you cared about ME like that. Guess I was wrong.”

“We're protecting both you and Chase,” said Caitlin. “Chase from getting another broken arm...and you from doing something you won't be able to take back later.”

“So dramatic,” Melissa C. commented. “All I was gonna do was write a sweet little message. Get well soon, you die tomorrow, something like that.”

A sense of dread descended on them. “Tomorrow?” asked Lindsey.

Melissa C. stowed the marker away once again, resheathing it somewhere within her powerful body. “I thought about it, and I think the dance sounds like the perfect place to destroy you. I'll hang out, have a couple dances, and then I'm going to end your dark, twisted life in front of all the friends and classmates you deceived. I want an audience for this.”

“Us fight at Harv?” asked Chase, a bit concerned. She didn't want the dance to be ruined on her account.

“Yup. One last time,” Melissa C. specified. “So get your affairs in order. If there's anything you want to do before you die, get it done now.” With alarm, she checked the time on her phone, then fired up her jets, illuminating her former squadmates' stunned faces. “Jeez, that reminds me! I can't stand around chatting, I still have to go pick up my dress! Guess I'll see you tomorrow, Chase!”

…

Agent Stevens experienced a range of emotions during Melissa C.'s story, from amusement to annoyance, interest to impatience, and finally settling on compromised contentment. “So, tomorrow's the day, then.”

Melissa C. concluded her story by confirming this. Sitting on the edge of her bed with her hand docked in a large tube-shaped device to recharge her energy cells, she had nothing better to do than relate the details of her latest encounter with Chase.

The black-suited man stood up from his chair and walked across the basement in thought. “Well, it's about time. I can't say I understand why you've dragged this out for so long. You could have killed that girl the first time you saw her. I suppose it's your revenge, so you can do what you want with it, but...”

The former cheerleader thought about this. “Well, at first, I just wanted to make her suffer. Make her scared. Now, though...I don't know.”

One of Stevens' eyebrows cocked. “Oh?”

Melissa C. looked at her free hand, opening it, closing it into a fist, then opening it again in futility. “Now...it's almost like I'm waiting to see if she's going to get serious. I think she's been holding back. She doesn't get mad when I fight her, she doesn't lose control. She doesn't want to kill me, even though she knows I can kill her.” Her eyes flicked up at Agent Stevens. “Are you SURE this is the same girl?”

“Of course, it is,” he answered. “You know better than I do. You told me yourself you'd never forget that face.”

Melissa C.'s lips tightened. “You're right...I wouldn't. But she's not the same person I remember. She seems...different now, somehow.”

“She's just trying to confuse you.”

The dock pinged to inform them that the charging process was complete, then hissed and snapped open. Her hand free, Melissa C. stared at it for a moment, then raised it to pinch the bridge of her nose. Her eyes closed in concentration. “Well, she's succeeding. I feel confused a lot these days. My head...more and more it just feels so...clouded. So hard to think. Especially when I see her. When I see her, I just get...I wanna say mad, but that just seems like such an understatement. I get obsessed with killing her, everything else disappears. I become a different person.”

“That's understandable, after what she did to—”

“No!” she roared, leaping out of her seat. The noise and movement were so loud and fast that Stevens almost fell over backwards. “Aren't you listening to a word I'm saying? It ALL disappears! That includes my reason for doing this! My motive! What my priorities are, what my goal is! When I'm fighting her, all I want to do is kill, that's it! Don't you understand how terrifying that is?!”

The man said nothing, cowering in fear. Somehow, in that moment, Melissa C. hated him. Seeing his weakness infuriated her. She wanted to grab him and scream at him, make him understand with force. But instead, she grunted with frustration and sat back down. “Yesterday, when I fought her in the gym...” the anger in her voice had ebbed, “As I was leaving, I told Alicia, Caitlin, and Lindsey that if they tried to stop me from killing Chase, I'd kill them, too. Three of my squadmates! Three of my best friends! Does this revenge really mean that much to me? Am I really that selfish? If this is so understandable to you, then please explain it to me!”

Agent Stevens had slowly recovered over the course of this last confession. Summoning his courage for a show of understanding, he walked over to her and put a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. “Of course, you don't want to hurt your friends. That's perfectly normal,” he explained evenly. “But deep down you realize that if they're willing to protect this...this 'Chase,' then there is a very good chance they are working with her. It is probable that they are aiding and abetting her cannibal ways, and perhaps even partaking themselves. That's why you said what you did. Even if you didn't want to believe it...you could not ignore that it was the most likely possibility.”

Melissa C. looked uncertain. She brought a hand to her head again, this time to her temple, and closed her eyes in what almost looked like pain. “Is...is that right? Does that sound like me?”

“You would know better than me, Melissa, although I do believe that is how you feel. I believe you'd hurt anyone helping that monster if it meant your REAL friends, the ones you lost in the woods, could finally rest in peace.”

“I...I suppose...but...”

A knock on the basement window interrupted her already ailing thought process. The two of them glanced up to see Lawrence swing the window open and drop into the room. He looked overjoyed. “You guys, you guys! Great news!”

“Not now, dork,” ached Melissa C., continuing to clutch her head as she waved him away with her free hand.

Ignoring her, Lawrence jerked a proud thumb at himself. “Guess who just got a date to Harvest?”

Melissa C. looked over his shoulder, as though perhaps he was pointing at someone behind him. “I give up.”

“It's me! I did!”

Stevens swapped a skeptical glance with Melissa C., before looking back at him. “Lawrence, if you want time off tomorrow night, you can just tell me. You don't need to make up outrageous stories.”