Chapter 147: [8] A Brand New Goth Girl 8 [Transform the Dorm Arc]

A Brand New Goth Girl

[8]

[This is the fourteenth overall chapter.]

After enjoying a couple of videos, Norah wanted to see what kind of clothes new Luke had in her dorm. We spent a good while basically teasing poor Luke with girly names because she refused to look at her college registration and other evidence to determine what name this twist of fate granted her.

Kasey approached it methodically, working backward from the light-related meaning of Luke to come up with Lucy, Elaine, and Phoebe. Rhea, expressing her rainbow roots, broke up that light into a variety of colors for suggestions going off of Scarlett (even though Luke didn’t have red hair), Aqua, and Hazel. Meanwhile, Norah just opted to lay on the cutest possibilities like Cassie, Blossom, and Layla.

The videos were fun, especially with an energetic group of roommates. I had a good group, with Marshall especially, but they were fundamentally different than this one. We just happened to be put together in freshman year and stuck around for two years like that. Me, Marshall, Keith, and Gordon. I did my best to forget Wade though.

He was our neighbor first year and he would come over all the time and dominate whatever situation. Keith knew him from high school, so they always liked to hang out. The problem was Wade always brought the drama.

I heard so much, too much, about his itemized list of who in that building were the good friends and who were the bad ones. He always called on me to make art for him. I liked the practice. Separating myself from the art as a personal thing and instead making it for someone else was an unintentional positive. A lot of my stuff was crap back then, but he always lauded it.

Wade also used, posted, and shared it all over the Internet with my contribution barely an afterthought. It was about the exposure, right? That was fine too. But it started to get rough when he would have his moods and act like he didn’t even know me. I saw him throwing out the trash once and rushing back to his dorm. I wanted to discuss something with him, and I hustled over. But, before I could even manage a word, he lashed out, “NO NO NOOO!”

He slammed the door so wildly that the ripple of air staggered me. I was barely a foot away with my hand reaching out. The situation terrified me that he might trap the door on my fingers and not even care as I screamed in agony. I took it hard.

The rest of that day, I just squirmed in bed as my head raced with a thousand potential, reasonable explanations, a million bitter fantasies of smacking him in the face, and an endless tangle of mental confusion. I’ve often told myself that I don’t need other people. It’s easier that way. Don’t dwell on my family and don’t get tangled up in messy social crap.

But it hurt so much to be essentially ghosted in person without any possibility of explanation. All I could imagine as anything approaching a slight was recent grumbling about Wade’s social tiers, but he good-naturedly agreed with me that it was silly. We had several normal days after that before he suddenly snapped.

He ensnared me to be on his softball team which never won a game. I barely played any sport and we were constantly up against huge guys who could launch shots into the parking lot. I tried my best and was rewarded with two minor concussions dashing along the base path and running into human muscle walls. Wade blamed me for those injuries.

When the ghosting ended, it was like a switch was flipped and no disagreement ever occurred between us. Wade was just as animated, energetic, and personable as before. I talked with Keith in private and broke down. Basically, I pussed out.

The exhaustion of dealing with this crap came out as frustrated tears and struggling words. Fortunately, Keith didn’t hold it against me as a guy. I expressed my confusion and terror that Wade hated me. Keith explained it clearly and succinctly: Wade was an asshole.

So, I had to wonder why on earth was he friends with him? Keith didn’t really have a clear answer for that. Their families were close, and he mostly got amusement over the way that Wade overreacted to everything. Keith had the impressive skin of an elephant when it came to all this. Wade couldn’t hurt him.

I did my best to withdraw from dealing with Wade and toughen myself up. But, inevitably, I fell back into his influence. The next time, he brutally ripped through my art. He pointed out a dozen failings and countless nitpicks. No construction to the criticism, just a soul blasting that it sucked and he never really liked it anyway. We changed dorms not too long after that and I didn’t see as much of Wade.

Bitterly, I fought to improve myself so that everything he brought up was addressed and resolved beyond reproach. After spite burned out, what I had left felt like a forest after a fire. I couldn’t quite link the mental scars of Wade to the walk of frustration that led to distracting billiards that led to my benefactor making me Beatrice, but it still felt like a tangible thread. If not for the obligation of my classes, I would’ve given up art.

While Luke revisited his designs of running away to Northern California by bus, Norah led her boyfriend downstairs to their altered dorm. I excused myself and vaguely hinted that there was something I needed to do.

The gradual trek over to room 116 was almost as daunting as my initial adventure to 212. This was unfinished business that I needed to complete. I held up Beatrice’s slim knuckles poised before the wood. Closing my eyes and steadying all the wobbly bits inside did little for my resolve. I desperately wanted to just run away. But, as Beatrice‘s stomach gave a twisting gurgle, my hand rapped firmly but measuredly on the door. Wade daily scrutinized my methods of knocking on his door. Too hard. Too fast. Too loud. Too soft. Too often. His roommates, who barely said anything, were allegedly, privately screaming at him about this.

I set aside some time to contact them and personally apologize. They confessed that they had no idea what I was talking about and said it was alright. Such a pussy, even before Beatrice.

The door slowly creaked open and an unfamiliar sliver of a face emerged and expanded to reveal a fretful girl. It was clearly Marshall, drastically altered since our last, confused encounter.

“Oh. Oh my gosh. It’s you. That girl who was asking about someone named… Taylor? What do you want?” That’s right, to them I was never Taylor. Maybe this was pointless. But, considering what happened since my last visit, I hoped they might believe me.

“Hi, Marshall. You used to know me. I used to be one of your roommates, before… all this.” It was such a succinct and simple set of words to say, yet it felt like an arduous mountain climb to get through them. Not helping was the fact that Marshall had been transformed into a gorgeous, perfect all-American classical beauty.

She had an immense swath of radiant, sandy blonde hair stretching and twisting down to her chest. Marshall didn’t quite receive the same endowment as Brian in the other dorm but plenty was evident through her light maroon blouse. Did every other boy transformed into a girl receive perfect grace and poise compared to me? No, that was being too harsh on Beatrice. However, darn if Marshall didn’t look like she was meant to be plastered all over beauty ads and hanging off the arm of some equally flawless, muscular quarterback.

That was an assumption though. From how I looked, people probably expected me to fling curses, court raven familiars, and stroke black cats while smiling ominously.

Once through the threshold, it was easy to see how unsettled and awkward Marshall appeared while wielding her new body. She tentatively tugged her top down, then back up, then sideways, and then back down all while fussing with her hair and acting like she was holding something she needed to place somewhere but couldn’t find the right spot.

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The rooms were basically all the same with a little small hallway leading in and then bending towards the living room with the two bedrooms and bathroom the other way. Gordon was mostly responsible for a nice marker board with reminders and a flourish of movie posters. Marshall decorated with local sports teams and muscle cars while Keith represented artsy video game stuff. Some of those elements were still here, but the video games had more of a shirtless Goku focus along with the Fist of the Northern Star and Tekken. Muscle cars had been replaced with UFC fighters and beautiful landscapes. The movie posters appeared largely unchanged but now they had more ornamentation and decoration akin to where I lived now.

To my surprise, there were three girls in the living room. Who had replaced me? Working from one side to the other, it was easy to recognize what had become of Keith. I was a mutt of ethnicities that just existed in separation from my origins because my parents wanted to forget. Keith was Thai and assumed immediate kinship.

I was too horrified to correct him until a month later. She had a luxurious, sculpted dome of dark hair with light streaks that traced her jawline but didn’t reach her shoulders. And she was absolutely enormous up top, wearing a gray sweater that failed to make her bust inconspicuous.

The other two, I had to scrutinize. One was a girl in a light pink flower-decked blouse with cleavage much closer to mine. She had pouty pink lips and even more eyeliner than I could boast. Her dark, lightly disheveled hair looked like gentle fur settling thickly on her shoulders. Out of everyone, she appeared the most relaxed and comfortable in this moment.

I waved and pressed my fingers together as I sought the right words. “Hi. I used to live in this dorm with you all. You probably don’t remember me though. My name was… Taylor Lee.“ Pushing my way through that, I learned with some careful questions that Gordon was actually the relaxed girl in the pink outfit. And Wade was the other one…

She looked very different than him. Wade was a little heavyset, but this girl was lean, although not absurdly so. She had the light impression of a model, especially with the even, narrow structure of her face. Her blue eyes were striking as were her enormous, colorfully pink lips. They were easily the biggest of anyone I’d seen around. A smattering of freckles spread to her cheeks and bridged her nose. She definitely had something to speak of beneath her shirt, along with the obvious traces of a bra seeping through. The shirt was a pop-culture-filled Tarantino love letter, the usual for Wade. My entire college life till now, the good and the bad, surrounded me and I had no idea what to say.

“Taylor? I wish… Dang. Wish I could remember. So, someone or something altered our memories too?” Wade said.

I took a deep breath. “Must have. I don’t know. I was just playing billiards in the common room after I went for a walk, and it was like everything about me changed.”

Keith mentioned that she was taking a shower after working out when it happened. Marshall didn’t notice for several minutes because she was listening to Lo-Fi with her earbuds in. And Gordon said she was taking a nap. Where Wade fit into this wasn’t especially clear but, apparently, she came over to try and get some answers. I had a few answers in my pocket with the little flashlight I brought with me. But I kept quiet and listened to the group.

At one point, Wade vented about her long brown hair and the garbage tie that she got from Gordon. Gordon appeared unbothered by that comment, but my heart rate pressed. During a lull, I asked to use the restroom. Glancing over at the open rooms, it was hard to tell which were whose since a new, prescribed sensibility surrounded each girl. Mitchell had way more plushies than I could ever imagine him keeping around.

A rough memory assaulted me. Stupidly, I borrowed time on a 3D printer to make gifts for everyone. Keith got a sci-fi heroine. Mitchell got an action hero. I made Gordon some anime thing. And Wade received his custom barbarian character from a campaign he mentioned once.

Doing all that didn’t really earn me any points, but the guys liked it, I thought. Several weeks later, after I quietly learned that Wade had used and paraded it around, I found the barbarian smashed and burned over by the main dumpster. It was something I kept to myself. He claimed that he still had it somewhere, but he didn’t know where it was. For this reunion, I’d switched back to my previous outfit of a vine-covered dark blouse and a cross-flanked skirt. I clutched the slim, meager side pocket of the skirt where I just managed to tuck the flashlight within.

Carefully, I manipulated the controls and offered up a few softly uttered commands. Empathy. Kindness. Sympathy. Removal of what are the fuck was wrong with Wade‘s goddamn head. Empathy and kindness linked together as a command and gave me the affirmative. If I shifted it so that only I was aware of the change, then it could work. The cruel bastard version of Wade would surely be snuffed out. This wasn’t erasing him. It was just making him a nicer person. A better person.

But did I have that right? Who cares! My benefactor went wild on this entire campus without getting hung up on what people would think about it. This was a good thing. Who knew what kind of person Wade would be beyond college before the change and especially now that all he had to do was flash his pretty face and pouty lips? A total jerk and psychopath or sociopath or whatever the hell he was.

I wanted to tell myself that she would have a shitty life with that personality, but I also understood that Wade tended to be a wildly popular guy everywhere. Things were crazy right now, but I could only imagine his female self would soon follow in those footsteps.

Fuming with barely stemmed fury, I looked at myself in the mirror. This could be the first change I made on my own as practice towards helping others, whether they knew or understood it or not. I would have to make choices that would drastically alter entire lives. I couldn’t be hesitant.

Why was I here though? What business did I really need to finish? Everyone here who once knew me as Taylor had totally forgotten me. Meanwhile, several people who had just met me wanted to be my friends. They accepted me as Beatrice. Furthermore, I laid out the truth that I had only been Beatrice for a short time and the rest was pretend. But it didn’t matter. They accepted me. I had fun with them, and I wanted to find out what sort of stuff Norah would discover in Luke’s dorm. This place was my past… And I didn’t need to amend it.

With a careful sigh, I relocked the flashlight and placed it back in the pocket. For my former roommates outside and the asshole I used to know, I informed them that I would keep looking for answers, but it was helpful to stop by. They appeared confused that I was leaving so soon, but I assured them I would see them around. And so, we parted.

At Luke’s dorm, I caught up with Norah and smiled at what she had put her boyfriend in. It wasn’t anything especially fancy or feminine, but it was a plain white tank through which a lot of detail could be seen about her chest. Below, she had on torn, super short jeans that scarcely covered her thigh. Luke lamented her girly alter ego, especially the blushing, crushing reality that her name turned out to not be any of our efforts or suggestions but actually Lily. She sprouted a swarm of red blushes every time Norah spoke it.

As Lily’s head dipped and stayed down, I found myself easing on teasing. I asked her if she was alright, despite everything. She glared at me gloomily but wrapped her arms around her lean stomach. “I don’t like it, any of it, but I’m glad to be talking to Norah, because I was scared she misunderstood, and I hurt her when I first tried to explain with the photo I sent. All of this is crazy, but I’m glad she’s here.” I rubbed her shoulder and nodded. Norah was actually listening in and tackled Lily around the back.

She apologized with a smile but also admitted that this was a lot of fun because she didn’t have a really good relationship with her sisters. She made sure Lily knew that if stuff actually hurt then she was welcome to poke her and say something. To this, Lily sighed but admitted she was still fine. She was just overwhelmed by how much her life changed, even though she clung to the slim notion that any minute could bring her restoration or awakening from this dream.

Accepting this, Nora pivoted from clothing, hair, and names to putting on a serious expression. “I want to make sure you’re prepared and comfortable in everything coming your way. That’s why, with full sympathy and careful coaching, I’d like to talk to you about feminine hygiene.”

Lily blanched but stiffly nodded. To that, I also felt my own nerves trigger. Forever a girl with a lot to learn still before I could really teach others.

[This is one of three perspectives for Transform the Dorm. There is A Brand New Goth Girl following Beatrice, Shifting the Sci-fi Guy focusing on Zach and Connor, and Tuning the Guitar Player with Anthony. I hope to release at least one of each chapter a week with two having two and one with one. Beatrice will always have two. Each should stand alone but release order is always the best way to read. I have a question at the end of the chapter again to help with suggestions for where the story should go. I'm actually not that far ahead this time and I am wide open to all possibilities for this particular story. Feel free to add an idea which doesn't show up in the options. Also, if you see any random typos or uncapitalized starts of sentences, please pass them along. I have to cut down on my editing due to release speed and my programs don't seem to be catching lowercase sentences. Thank you for reading!]

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