Maxine attacked her lighter with her thumb. “Come on, you stupid god damn thing... light!” Too angry for finesse, her approach consisted of brute strength and intimidation tactics. Standing behind the concession stand, she turned what just happened over and over in her head, and wished futilely for a smoke.

How could she be so stupid? Of course, it was a trick. Of course, they just wanted to make fun of her. That cheer Nazi got bored of dancing so she decided to drag Maxine out there to poke fun at her.

Well, she'd regret it. Nobody pushed her around like that anymore. She'd get that Alicia for this. The next time she saw her, she'd rearrange that cute face of hers.

“Er, Maxine?” asked a voice.

She looked. Speak of the devil! It was her! “You!” she uttered, rounding on her. She skated closer, raising a fist. “I hope you got a good laugh out of that, pom poms! You're going to be paying for it in hospital bills!”

Alicia shrieked and raised her arms to block. “Eek, no! Don't put a spell on me, please!”

This request made Maxine do a double take. She stopped, her fist still cocked. “Uh...what?”

The redhead looked like she was close to tears. “I don't know why you're so mad, but d-don't turn me into a frog, put me to sleep for a hundred years, anything like that! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!”

Maxine lowered her fist, still vexed. “For crying out...I'm not a witch! Magic isn't real! How stupid are you? And what do you mean, you don't know why I'm mad? You know perfectly well why I'm mad!”

“I dooo?” asked Alicia, putting on her most innocently clueless expression. “All I know is that I saw you dancing with Kirk, my date. I mean, if anybody should be mad, it should be me, you know?”

Alicia sort of thought that playing dumb would be an effective strategy (especially considering Maxine already thought she was) but the black-haired girl just rolled her eyes. “Nice try. He told me you made him ask me to dance. I know the whole story.”

“Oh,” said Alicia, deflated. “Well, I'm sorry. You weren't supposed to find out about that. But I wasn't trying to get a laugh out of you. I just wanted to cheer you up.”

With a scoff, Maxine tried her lighter again. This time, she got her cigarette lit on the first attempt. She was calming down. “Why would you want to cheer me up?”

“I mean, I know it seems strange. You guys and us cheerleaders haven't exactly gotten along so well in the past,” conceded Alicia. “But I felt bad for taking over your drive-in. I put myself in your shoes. How would I feel if you guys came to the football field and summoned a demon there? It really opened my eyes.”

“I told you, that isn't real!” Maxine stiffened, her voice growing terse again. “Magic and demons aren't real and we don't do stuff like that!”

Alicia dearly wanted to believe her. “Are, are you sure?” she trembled.

“Yes!”

Alicia wavered for a moment, then relaxed with a sigh. “Whew, that's a load off my mind!” She considered the ramifications. “Well, jeez. If that stuff isn't real, that changes everything! I don't have any reason to be scared of you!” She extended a hand and a neighborly smile. Maxine eyed both of these with suspicion. “I guess I didn't understand what you guys were all about. I'm sorry I misjudged you. Friends?”

It was pretty clear to Maxine that Alicia's sentiment was genuine. There was something so open and bighearted about the cheer captain that it seemed almost silly not to believe her. Maxine felt herself defrosting, but she turned determinedly away from the hand as if to fight this process. “Yeah, right. As if I'm stupid enough to believe such an empty gesture. You don't have any interest in getting along with me and you know it.”

Alicia was confused by this reaction, but did not approach her. “What makes you say that? I want to be able to get along with everybody. I think all of Sunnycrest High should be united. My dream is to see a pep rally with one-hundred percent attendance. I think if you knew me better, you'd see that.”

The last sentence was not accusatory. On the contrary, the tone of it was inviting—'Why NOT get to know me better? What's stopping you?' But Maxine replied, “I know you well enough to know I want nothing to do with you. Your type, that is.”

“My type?” asked Alicia, not following.

Maxine looked reluctant to elaborate. Her mouth tightened on the cigarette, and she looked down at the concrete. “When I was in middle school, I was a little different than I am now. I didn't have the reputation I have now, and I didn't really know how to stand up for myself. I was a pretty easy target for bullies. So your type took advantage of that.”

“Cheerleaders?”

“Not specifically, just all the popular kids,” she answered. “Everybody was in on the joke. Everybody made fun of me. The teachers didn't care. I didn't have anyone I could turn to for help. Even the people I thought I could trust turned around and made fun of me behind my back because they hoped it'd get them in with the cool kids.”

It sounded horrible. “That's awful!” exclaimed Alicia. “I'm so sorry to hear that. I can't imagine how hard that must have been.”

She turned around to face the cheer captain. “I know you can't. And don't be sorry. That experience actually helped me a lot. When I got to high school, I changed myself completely. Nobody messes with me anymore. I'm tough. I'm respected. And I can see through bullshit. Bullshit such as yours. Even though you might pretend to care about me, I know that you're one of them, and I'm smart enough now to know better than to trust you.”

Alicia listened to this response in silence. She took to heart the feelings on display, while at the same time sorting out her own. When she had words to put to them, she spoke. “It's okay, Maxine. I get it. I don't blame you for not trusting me, that's just how the human brain works. You went through something bad and painful. That pain is associated with popular kids at school, and it's natural to want to avoid experiencing that same pain again. I think on some level, you realize that not all popular people want to bully you, but that bad experience is more than enough to make you wary of them forever. You don't have to trust me. Honestly, I don't expect you to. But I'll tell it to you anyway, so when you need it you'll know.”

And then, it all fell into place. It wasn't until after she finished talking that she realized how much of what she said could be applied to Melissa C.'s situation. She slapped her forehead. “Oh, my gosh, that's it!”

This very noisy realization annoyed Maxine. She was already having a difficult enough time trying to figure out how she felt about Alicia's surprisingly empathetic response without this added distraction. “What's it? What are you talking about?” she asked, irritated. “Ack!” Alicia took advantage of Maxine's disarmed state to give her a hug.

“Thank you, Maxine! Thank you! It's a really long story, but you just helped me figure out something huge!” said Alicia. She let go of the annoyed girl and eagerly looked around. “I have to tell Chase! Why she taking so long to get here?”

…

Though she did not know it, Alicia would not have to wait much longer. The song ended and Lindsey and Lawrence left the dance floor, completely oblivious to an approaching chaos.

“So that was dancing with a girl. My god. My god,” remarked Lawrence, completely shell-shocked. He looked at his shaking hands. “These hands were holding Lindsey Ericson's hands...and the rest of my body...was a mere TWO FEET away from her for the duration an entire song...I'll never bathe again.”

“Wow, exactly the opposite reaction for me. I want to bathe as soon as possible. How interesting,” said Lindsey.

A scream rose from the other side of the drive-in, near the entrance. They paid it no mind, as it was probably the twentieth or thirtieth scream the raucous and excitable teenage crowd had let rip so far that night. It wasn't until a flock of similar screams took flight, all in unison, that they turned their heads.

Two very banged-up vehicles had blown past the ticket booth: a long black limousine and a pickup truck. Riding on top of the limo was Melissa C., rattling off machine gun fire at the truck from one of her arms, and in the back of the truck was Chase, dancing away from the bullets and taking swings at her opponent with a chainsaw whenever the vehicles happened to veer close to one another. The warm, fun atmosphere of the dance was sucked out in one mighty inhalation as the crowd shrieked and parted to avoid being either mowed or gunned down.

The limo crashed to a stop against the projection stand. The airbags deployed for Torey, but there were no airbags on the roof, and Melissa C. was launched into a crowd of kids as if flung out of a catapult. The projector hit the floor, bringing the movie to an abrupt end.

When the limo's tail swung out in front of the truck, the truck's driver swerved to avoid it, but turned too hard and rolled. Chase leapt out of the truck bed just before it began a deadly gymnastics routine, flipping over and over in a string of noisy slams and crashes. More students screamed and cleared a path as it bounced through the parking lot, spilling its tools everywhere.

It finally came to rest upside down. The driver was able to crawl out the window and away, but Torey did not move. At the same time, a rattled Melissa C. was shakily rising to her feet. Students backed away from the gun-wielding girl, giving her a wide berth.

“Holy shit, isn't that Melissa C.?”

“What's that on her hand?”

Melissa C. completely ignored them, scanning the crowd for Chase. Her TMI Index informed her of hundreds of Negative Targets. No sign of a Positive one...until the curved point of a pickaxe buried itself in her back with a meaty crunch. Chase had snuck up and stabbed her from behind.

More kids screams, more running. Very quickly, the dance was being evacuated. The cyborg tried to reach behind her back to get hold of the handle and wrench the pick free, but the angle was too awkward. In frustration, she turned around and lobbed a bomb out of her gun hand. The cannibal did a backwards handspring away from the device, which detonated and left a concrete crater in her wake. With her broken arm, the acrobatic move sent a shot of pain through her that temporarily blacked out her vision and left her on the precipice of unconsciousness. She definitely wouldn't try that again.

“O-oh my god! It's her! She's here!” Lawrence panicked. “Wh-what do we do?!”

“The plan, you idiot! The plan!” commanded Lindsey. “Get to your computer thingy and shut her down!”

Lawrence nodded quickly and got to work. “R-right!”

Caitlin ran over. “Oh! Lindsey! There you are! Thank god you guys are okay!”

Lindsey greeted her with equal relief, and they exchanged 'Where's Alicia?'s. Neither of them had seen her. This gave them an uneasy feeling. Even though the plan was perfectly executable without her, it would be difficult to focus on it knowing she was unaccounted for in the midst of this chaos.

“We're online!” announced Lawrence. He was hunched over his laptop, shoulders tense and tight, hands shaking. “The program will take a couple minutes to activate, so keep an eye on Melissa C.! If she notices what we're doing, I need you to distract her!”

“Just like we planned,” trembled Caitlin, biting her lip. She looked Lindsey in the eyes with the full extent of her worry. “Are, are you sure you can do this?”

Lindsey gave a brash smile. “I have to. Too late to turn back now.”

It was Caitlin's belief that it was never too late to turn back, but before she could say this, Melissa C. spotted them.

As soon as she did, she recognized Lawrence's machine and knew what he was up to. She swatted Chase about fifty feet to get her out of the way for the time being, then began approaching them.

“Oh god! She's coming!” cried Lawrence. “Quick, Lindsey! G-get in there and protect me!”

“Leave everything to me!” was Lindsey's heroic reply.

She walked over to Melissa C. with a big smile. “Oh, hey, Melissa C.! Glad you could make it. I wasn't sure you were coming! What's up?”

Melissa C. snarled in response. “Out of my way, Lindsey. It's not you I want—”

And then, she noticed Lindsey's dress. It looked great on her. Elegant and black. Held up by two spaghetti straps which crossed over her collarbones in an X shape. A long slit freed her right leg.

“You,” she quivered, rage rising within her. “You're wearing MY dress!”

Lindsey looked at the two of them and laughed. “Oh, you're right! I guess we are wearing the exact same dress! Haha, what are the odds?” She took out her phone and posed next to the cyborg for a selfie. “Smile and say dress twinnnss!”