Chapter 10

A WEEK LATER

Blaise was one of the first to arrive at the caf for the party, grabbing a slice of pizza and a soft drink cup before rushing over to Larry as quickly as his encumbrances allowed. His eyes glowed with excitement. “So when did this happen?”

Larry gave him a hug and a smile. “A few weeks ago.”

“What?? You got sold a few weeks ago and never said anything? Did Laney know?”

Larry grinned and rolled his eyes. “Of course Laney knew about it. Look, I’ll explain when everybody’s here.” He looked up as Blaise’s roommate Carla came over. “Hey! Don’t ask yet, okay? I’m waiting till everybody gets here.”

In about fifteen minutes, all of the graduates had arrived. Larry waved to me and I closed the door, after putting out the “Privacy, Please!” sign.

Abe raised his eyebrows as I closed the door, and shot Larry a puzzled look. He gestured at and Grant and me, and asked, “Why’s it only graduates here, except them?”

“Because...” He shrugged and smiled. “I know you all know enough about me that you won’t be offended, but with Laney gone, there’s nobody closer to me than Amy and Grant are. And because they can help explain if any of this seems ... weird.”

Carla blinked. “Ummm ... it’s starting to seem weird already, if you want the truth.”

Larry laughed. “Just wait. Anyway, what I’m about to tell you, please don’t pass it on yet to anybody outside this room, but that’s not because I’m going to keep it a secret. I just want to tell everybody myself, and it’d be a little overwhelming for me if the entire student body came in here all at once...”

Kendrick held his arms out. “Larry, what the hell’s going on?”

“Okay.” Larry sighed heavily. “Well, I’m going to the hospital in a couple of days.” Several people gasped. “And when I come back, I’ll look kind of ... different. I’m having ... well, basically, it’s facial reconstruction surgery.”

Jaws dropped all around the room. I watched closely, and sure enough, within seconds several students suddenly gasped and said, “Oh!!!” All of the graduates were familiar with Steffi Bloom’s folder, and given enough time, probably all of them would have figured it out on their own, but Blaise saved them the trouble, blurting out in astonishment, “You’re going to look like Zeke Hillcrest!!” Everybody who hadn’t gasped yet did now.

Larry waved his arms for quiet. “Okay, we don’t have a lot of time. You know we can only keep everybody out of here for an hour, and I want to spend part of it actually having a party...”

Jules interrupted. “And this was really okay with Laney?”

Larry nodded and smiled. “Telling all of you like this was her idea. I’d actually wanted to spend the few weeks after I came back pretending I really was Zeke. Laney convinced me that would never work, because A, you’ve known me for years, and B...” He laughed. “You’re all Noosemeisters, so you’d see through it in a second.”

Carla said, “Not to mention we’d probably see Zeke in some entertainment news bit on TV in the meantime.”

“Well, yeah, that too. Anyway, I really do want your help. Laney was sure you’d understand this...” Larry waited as the murmurs grew in the background around the room. Grant and I gestured for quiet.

As the murmurs died down, Larry went on, speaking quietly to keep the background noise from rising again, “This is really important to me—I need you to help me be the best Zeke I can be.” He started ticking off points on his fingers. “First of all, I’m not going to be Larry anymore. I want all of you to call me Zeke...”

He raised his hands in a renewed plea for quiet, but the whispering continued until Grant said, “He can bring this off if we all help him.” That, together with Larry seeming more serious than any of us had ever seen him, brought the noise level back down again.

Larry went on to the next finger. “Second, I hope you will all try to treat me as Zeke. Act as if I really was him. It’s not that anybody here is going to be fooled. Everybody will know what’s going on. But I need to get in that frame of mind.”

Heads started nodding around the room. This was a matter of a Noosemeister bringing honor to his profession.

Larry seemed to relax visibly. The hard part was over. “Third...” He switched suddenly to Zeke’s voice, “I’m going to be talking like this.” A renewed round of gasps circled the room. His vocal impression of Zeke was getting uncanny. Larry waited for quiet once more, and continued in that same voice, “If any of you catch me sounding like Larry, punch my arm or do something that really gets my attention. I want to get to where this is my normal voice.”

Somehow, the room had gone dead silent. Everyone was watching with wide eyes.

Larry went on, still in Zeke’s voice, “Fourth, I want you to test me. Ask me personal questions. Anything you think I should remember, try it out on me. A movie I’ve made, some memory from my earlier life...”

Even my jaw dropped now. It wasn’t that Larry had seamlessly drifted into using the first person for Zeke. It seemed so natural. He didn’t yet look like the actor, but somehow, at this moment, he was Zeke.

“If you catch me on something, if you know something I say isn’t accurate, I need you to give me a reference. Tell me where you saw it in a magazine, or online, or wherever, so I can study it.” He put on his serious face again. “Please, really. I know you’ll want to joke around, but please don’t make stuff up and pretend it’s something I should know. Something that seems like harmless fun could end up confusing me and hurting my performance later.”

Larry smiled, and went on in his own voice, “Okay, that’s what I wanted to say. Let’s party!”

Amos broke in, before the oncoming noise could drown him out, “Can we all punch you for sounding like Larry?”

Everyone broke into laughter, including Larry, who waved his arms in a defensive gesture. “No, no, that hasn’t started yet. After I come back.”

Two Nights Later

“No Zeke tonight, okay hon?” I whispered, “I want one last night with Larry.” He sprawled full-length on Grant and me as we lay side by side on the bed. Grant’s shoulder and hip were pressed against mine. I reached up over Larry’s back and used just my fingertips to stroke his back down to his buttocks, slowly and lightly. Larry giggled and shivered. “That feels nice.” He moved his head to the right and kissed me.

Larry alternated kissing Grant and me for a few minutes. Grant reached across with his right arm and brushed his hand along Larry’s cock. Larry gasped and closed his eyes. “We could have a contest to see who can make me come first.”

I laughed. “What’s the prize?”

“Ummm ... me.”

I scrunched my nose. “Yuck. What kind of prize is that?”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’m going to vanish tomorrow, so you wouldn’t have me for long.”

Grant said softly, “I want to get this straight. You’re not going to pretend you don’t even know us, right?

“Of course not. We’ll be really good friends. Like I’ve known you a long time for some reason.” He kissed Grant again. “But I have to get totally in a Zeke mind-set. So just like everybody else, you’ll never call me Larry again, right? Not even in here. I’m Zeke. And if I slip up...” Larry smiled.

Grant laughed. “Yeah, I know. Punch you in the arm.”

I asked, “You going to sleep with some of the other students? How’s that going to work?”

Larry laughed and buried his face between my breasts. He came up for air, still giggling, and gasped out, “I guess the students here are going to find Zeke is a lot more friendly with fans than they’d imagined.” That started Grant and me laughing.

I stopped first. “How do we want to do this?” I turned to look at Grant. “Sweetie, do you want him first?”

Larry interrupted. “I do want each of you one-on-one, but first let me see if I can make both of you come at once.” He pulled my legs apart slightly, then did the same to Grant. He rolled us slightly toward each other, bringing our heads closer so he could easily kiss one, then the other, with only a slight turn of his head. Then he started rocking his hips, his left thigh rubbing my pussy, his right rubbing Grant’s cock. Grant moaned, and I did too a second later.

Grant lay on the pull-out bed, his turn with Larry already done. I tried to slow my spinning mind and focus on the physical sensations of holding Larry, my breast pressed against his chest, our thighs intertwined, tasting his breath through our joined lips. It was so much like saying goodbye to Laney, but so much different. Larry and Laney had been my first friends at the Academy. Laney was gone, and Larry would be soon ... but not. I would share nights with him again, but not as Larry. His face would be different. His voice would be different. Even his name would be different.

Would he really be the same person?

A feeling of reassurance washed over me. My new friend Zeke would be filled with Larry on the inside. And I would always see my oldest friend within the new.

I pressed more tightly against Larry, tasting his tongue in my mouth, tasting a part of Larry that wouldn’t change.

Midnight, the Next Night

I poked disinterestedly at the magazines in the waiting room. Grant had already found a news magazine, the one item amid the scatter on the coffee table that I thought might be worth a look. I thought about leaning on Grant’s shoulder to read it with him, but decided to wait on the magazine. That way, my mind would have something to focus on when Grant was done.

A bored nurse’s aide sat behind a window, reading a fashion magazine. I went over to the window and rapped lightly on it for attention. When the girl finally looked up, I asked, “Do you know anything about Dr. Perrin’s surgery?”

The girl started to look down, and did a double-take at the sight of my slave collar. Grant and I had appropriated some very ordinary clothes from Wardrobe, but we still had to mark ourselves as slaves. The aide looked from the collar to a clipboard in front of her to the collar again, obviously unsure of the protocol for dealing with a slave who was standing at her window boldly asking questions, without any obvious permission from her Master. She looked at Karl, our Academy bodyguard, for guidance, but Karl was absorbed in a sports magazine. She finally decided it was okay to speak to me. “All I know is that Dr. Perrin requested the operating room for six hours. Sometimes they run over, though. Or he could have just wanted an extra cushion of time. It’s hard to predict.”

“Thank you.” I cursed myself for not asking Larry how long the operation would last when I had a chance. I hadn’t thought about that until Larry, already goofy from pre-op tranquilizers, was being wheeled down the hall toward the operating room, where his doctor was already waiting. The orderlies, of course, had no information to give me.

I went back to sit by Grant; I rested my head on Grant’s shoulder and closed my eyes. The clock on the wall said only forty-five minutes had gone by.

Grant snorted and I opened my eyes. Grant looked at me and pointed at a page in the magazine. He’d found a photo of Zeke Hillcrest, on tour to promote his recently-released movie. I grinned. “Little does he know what’s about to happen to him, huh?”

Grant laughed. “He won’t even know after it happens.”

“Should we see if we can get that outfit for Larry?”

Grant shrugged. “Got a feeling Bloom wants something a little hotter.”

“Hot, we got.”

I looked around the tiny waiting room. Four walls, one with the window to the nurse’s aide, one with an entry door. Sofas, tables, magazines, prints of happy scenes on the walls. I sighed. As exciting as it was to see, again, something outside the walls of the Academy, as excited as Larry had been about embarking on his great adventure in celebrity impersonation, I felt boredom crashing in on me, almost swamping my worries about how the operation was progressing.

Grant and I might be the only students in the school the Dean would have allowed to accompany Larry to the hospital. He had a soft spot in his heart for us, as much for our skill and dedication as for the extra money we brought into the Academy with our party performances. Come on, Amy, that’s being too cynical. He respects us. Yeah, that’s it.

I twisted around to lay full length along the sofa, my legs hanging over the arm at the end, my head resting in Grant’s lap. Grant, holding onto the magazine in one hand, absently began stroking my hair with the other. The warmth and comfort of Grant’s lap put me to sleep in seconds.

I leaned forward quickly as Larry began to stir. On the other side of the hospital bed, Grant sat up abruptly.

I’d been a little disappointed to see Larry’s head completely covered in bandages. Standard stuff, Dr. Perrin had assured me. I could only see Larry’s eyes and lips through small openings in the wrappings. Even his lips, though, attested to the fact that at least something had been done. Collagen injections had made them fuller, matching Zeke’s.

The bandages conveniently served an additional purpose. Nobody on the staff of the hospital would be able to tell exactly what had been done. Only Dr. Perrin’s own nurses and anaesthesiologist had been present in the operating room. The bandages would be taken off inside the Academy’s infirmary.

I leaned still farther forward at the soft sound of a moan from Larry. I took Larry’s hand in both of mine. “Right here, honey.”

I strained to make out the whispered words. The slurring from the dopiness of drugs was made worse by the Larry’s inexperience with the fuller lips. As nearly as I could make out, he said, “Feel weird. When’s gon’ start?”

I let out the breath I’d been holding and giggled. I repeated what I’d heard to Grant. Laughing softly, tears streaming from my eyes, I reached out to stroke exposed the hair on top of Larry’s head, above the end of the bandages. “Already over, hon. Doc says everything went perfect. You’re Zeke now.”

Slowly, the thickened lips curled upward into a smile. “Means you got’ be nice t’me.”

Giggling helplessly, sniffling, I lifted Larry’s hand and kissed the back of it. “Anything you say, Zeke.”

Three Weeks Later

I flinched at the sound of the intercom speaker making its preliminary crackling sound. I hadn’t been conscious of how tense my body had become while waiting for exactly that noise. Seconds later the summons issued quietly from the speaker, “Amy and Grant, please report to the infirmary.”

I grinned at Grant and pumped my fist. “He’s ready!”

This afternoon, Dr. Perrin had performed the secondary procedure; this one didn’t need a hospital. I knew that the bandages covered up a considerable amount of bruising, and I’d been glad I didn’t have to deal with the sight of Larry looking as if he had suffered a severe beating, but now the black and blue patches had faded away. It was time to finish Larry’s transformation, at least above his neck. Dr. Perrin had come in with his own staff for several hours of work: he’d given Larry a birthmark and some other minor adjustments—small spots on his lips, a slightly lighter color on his nose-tip. After the discussions with Ms. Bloom, we’d realized we couldn’t count on being able to retouch Larry’s makeup during his “captivity.” Larry had suggested the additional tattooing as a way of ensuring that he looked his best throughout, as well as post-mortem. Bloom had been very happy with the idea.

I was slightly irritated that I would not be the first person at the Academy to see the new Larry. That honor had gone to staff members from the hair salon, who should by now have dyed, cut, and styled Larry’s hair. I did understand Larry’s wish that no one not involved in creating the transformation, not even Grant and me, should see him until he looked the way he wanted to.