Chapter 19: Reconstruction and Creativity

He didn't know what it was that tipped her off. He tried to be quiet, to show no response, but she still noticed. Maybe he sighed. Maybe it was some magical sense she had. Or maybe it was just plain old God-damned feminine intuition. Whatever it was, when she turned her head and stared at him with her beautiful violet eyes, Joey knew that Sarah had sensed something was wrong.

"You don't want to go out with me," he sighed. "Do you?"

She opened her mouth to speak, sighed, and rested her head on his bare chest. "Of course I do," she said, her mind flashing to creativity. She watched his eyes, saw his skepticism, and sighed again. Her mind flipped into new patterns. "It's just that ... I'm worried. Will that photographer be there too?"

Joey groaned and closed his eyes in shame. "Oh, yeah," he admitted. "And others. I'm sorry. I forgot."

He could feel her mind change to reconstruction. "Plus," she added, "I really don't go to movies. They get scary sometimes."

That made sense to him too. He imagined her sitting in a theater watching a film, and on the giant screen, the murderer suddenly jumping out of nowhere, shocking the whole audience into mass screaming. Sarah had good reasons to not want to be startled, especially out in public.

"I see." He sighed. "So that's why you don't want to go? Because of the photographers, and the movies?"

Her mind when creative again. "Yeah," she said.

Joey sighed again. Another lie.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"Hmm?"

She stared at him carefully. "You weren't thinking about the photographers, and you didn't know I don't watch movies. So why did you think I didn't want to go?"

Joey hesitated, and Sarah rolled onto her stomach and partially lay on top of his body. She propped her head on her hands, with one elbow passing straight through his chest and into the mattress, and she stared at him, waiting for an answer.

"Well?" she prodded him.

He looked down at her arm. "Do you have to do that?"

She stared at him with her new 'Look at me' stare, refusing to be distracted. "How did you know? What is it?"

Joey took a deep breath, and idly wondered how much of that air was passing through her arm. He made a decision. "Okay. I need to be honest with you about something." He shifted, extracting his body from her arm, and sat up against the headboard. He could see her eyes dart down to his naked penis for a moment, but quickly return to him. "It's my powers," he said. "I'm attuned to you now."

She stared at him quizzically.

He reached out and took her hand, sending the Omegaplasm into her body. Her arm immediately started glowing and dripping with blobs of light, and she looked at her arm and the blobs curiously. "My powers only work on people who I have some emotional connection with. And after you and I ... well ... You're open to me now. I can give you powers. I can make you fly, strong, bullet-proof ... frictionless." They both grinned as he said that, and he got serious again. "I can use you as a target in Ranged Powers class now. But I have to tell you. Part of the power is that, when I'm touching you, I can feel how you use your mind."

Sarah frowned, and pulled her hand away from him, breaking contact. The light on her arm extinguished. "My mind? You can read my mind?"

He shook his head. "I can't read your mind. It's not like I can get anything specific like your locker combination or your Facebook password. And I can't hear your ... what's it called? ... internal ... mono ... something."

"Internal monologue?" she offered.

He nodded. "That's it. The thoughts that you think, I can't hear them. But I can feel which parts of your brain you are using. It's like, if you want to do something with your hands, all I can tell is that you're thinking about your hands. There's a big part of your brain that controls your hands. But I don't know what it is you want to do. Like, I don't know if you want to cast a spell, write something, or fondle me." He glanced down at her hands. "But when we were making out, I was pretty sure you didn't want to write something."

She continued to stare at him. He took another deep breath. "It's just that ... I can tell when you're lying." Her mouth dropped open in shock. "Annie explained it to me," he said, continuing. "It's reconstruction and creativity. She said that, when someone asks us a question and we tell the truth, we go to one part of our brains to reconstruct memories. But when we lie, we go to another part to be creative. And that's what I felt."

Sarah pulled back away from him, staring and processing. Her face twisted in horror.

"You mean you were..." she started.

"No! I'm not trying to invade your privacy, Sarah. I can't! And I'm not angry with you for lying to me. I don't think you were trying to hurt me. I think you were trying to NOT hurt me, and I appreciate that. But, I just want to be honest with you, to let you know that this is what I am."

Sarah had pulled away from him, crossed her legs, and covered her breasts with one arm, and for one frightening moment started rocking in her familiar obsessive frantic motions. "Oh god, no," Joey thought to himself. "Please don't start freaking out on me." But then she stopped, and snapped her eyes up at him, glaring at him. He could tell, even without touching her, that she was using her mantra. Her violet eyes burned with a growing fury.

"Oh great. Maybe freaking out would have been better," he thought.

"So!" she said, challenging him. "You want to be honest with me, right?"

Joey nodded. "Yeah."

"Really?" She gave him a snide look. "Then be honest with me. How long have you wanted me?"

"Huh?" Joey's stomach churned at this sudden change in direction.

"How long have you wanted me? Simple enough question!" She turned, releasing her breasts and crawled towards him like a snowy leopard on the hunt. He shifted back in panic. "Like, you said I'm one of the most beautiful girls in the school. But you've been sitting next to me in English class for five days a week for five weeks, and you've barely said two words to me any day! So I want to know if you ever noticed me! Tell me!"

"I noticed you!" he defended.

"Really? Then why didn't you ever say anything to me?"

"I don't know! I didn't know what to say."

"Well, why didn't you even look at me?"

"I ... What make you think I didn't look at you?"

"I would have noticed!" She stared him down. "I look for these things! I look for boys who notice me. So how long have you wanted me?" Joey hesitated. "Or is it that there is someone else you wanted?"

"Someone else?" he asked, and his mind flashed to Lynne. "Does she know? How does she know?" But then Joey made another connection. He glared back at her.

"What about you? Did you want me? You said you wanted to go out with me, but you lied to me about that."

"I didn't want to go to where there would be paparazzi and scary movies that will make me fade in public! That's all."

"No!" Joey shook his head. "I was touching you when I asked you if that was why you didn't want to go, and you said yes, and you lied then. I could feel it! So that wasn't the reason. So what is it? Why didn't you want to go out with me?"

Sarah opened her mouth a couple times, and fumed. "This is not fair," she grumbled.

"Sorry!" he said. "I wish it were."

She grimaced and frowned, and then stared back at him angrily. "Really?" she blurted at him. Joey sat in confusion as her eyes darted down and back up his naked body. "You want this to be fair? You really want to be honest with me?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

She leered at him. "Good!" she said, and without another word, Sarah lunged for him, tackling him and pressing her lips up to his and she kissed him furiously. She pulled him by the shoulders, and they rolled across the bed, kissing and writhing, rubbing and stroking each other. Joey didn't know where this came from, and after a few moments, quite frankly didn't care. It was Angry Sex, something he had heard of, something he had never had before, and it awakened his libido, and charged his cock back into life again. Her soft magical breasts pressed into his body, tempting him, and her sweet tongue plunged deep into his mouth, and she licked his tongue sensuously as she ground her soft, warm body into his. Her hips churned against his groin, and he wrapped his arms around her luscious body and held and squeezed her tightly as her legs wrapped around his.

She kicked and they rolled across the bed, kissing, tonguing, feeling, and gasping, and as he lay on his back, she straddled him and sat up. Sarah took a deep breath. "That was easy!" she said proudly.

"What?" Joey said, blinking and gasping for breath.

Then she raised one hand with one finger high in the air, ignited that finger with a brilliant glowing arcane fire, and then stabbed him in the chest with it.

"AHH!" Joey shrieked as she pinned one arm down and quickly drew a circle on his chest. "What are you doing!?" he shrieked.

"Hold still!" she barked, completing the circle and starting the glyphs.

"SARAH!" he screamed, watching the young witch cast a spell on his chest. He lunged at her, trying to push her off, but his arms passed straight through her arms and body. He bucked, trying to get up, but she pinned him down fairly strongly with one hand. "STOP IT!" he yelled.

"Don't fidget!" she commanded. "Believe me! You don't want this to go wrong."

Joey's mind froze in pure panic as he tried to figure out which was worse; letting her complete an intentional spell which could do just about anything to him, or interrupting her at some critical point, botching the spell, which could do just about anything else to him. He wondered if he was safe in either situation, and remembered the small explosions that would pop next to her as she would botch spells in class. He figured if there was one situation that could be safe, it would be her completing the spell, even if it meant him turning into a newt or something.

She finished the last glyph, and the hypersigil flashed into life on his chest. A wave of mystical energy grabbed his heart and pulsed through his body, and a blast of wind blew her hair back. She towered over him, gorgeous, naked, powerful, commanding, and triumphant. The arcane light from the glowing sigils illuminated her translucent skin eerily. And as he lay trembling under her, she smirked.

"There!" she said. "Now we're even!"

He looked down at his body. He hadn't changed. He was still human. The only thing that had changed was there was a glowing circle of mystic symbols on his chest. "What did ... what did you do to me?" he asked.

"You said it yourself. You wanted things to be fair. Now things are fair," she said with her hands on her hips. "It's a truth spell. It lets me know when you are telling the truth, and when you are lying." She cocked her head at him. "If you get to know when I'm lying, it's only fair that I get to know when you are."

Joey looked down at his chest. The hypersigil pulsed and orbited his heart, thrumming with power and faint music. A slight breeze emitted from it, and he turned back to her. "Will ... will it hurt?" he asked.

"Lie to me and find out," she answered. Joey stared at her in terror, and she balked. "No," she admitted. "I don't want to hurt you. It'll just tell me."

It was the truth. He could feel it. She leaned on his chest and stared into his eyes. "How long have you wanted me? When did you notice me?"

Joey took a deep breath, and mentally prepared what he and every other man in the history of this planet knew what to say to a woman to that particular question, that he wanted her from the very first day he met her. The sigil started glowing red in response to his thoughts. She saw the red pulse and glared at him.

"That's not fair!" he said. "I didn't say anything!"

"Can you tell when I'm thinking of lying?" she asked.

He thought about it, and nodded his head. "Yeah," he admitted.

"It's fair," she concluded. "You were thinking of lying to me, to not hurt my feelings. And I appreciate the gesture too." She leaned in a little closer to him. "Now hurt them," she ordered.

He took another steadying breath. "Okay. I have noticed you occasionally in the past couple weeks," he confessed. "But only like in Ranged Powers class, when I can see you clearly. You're always all wrapped up in these dark and depressing clothes, hiding from everyone, so it's really hard to notice you." He glanced down at her nude body, admiring her young breasts and tight stomach, and he caressed her legs. "But I only really started wanting you today, when you opened up to me in class."

She watched the glowing glyphs and nodded. "I thought so," she whispered. It was a sad but relieving tone in her voice. "Am I the girl you really want, or is there another you're more interested in?"

Joey squeezed his eyes shut, and he could feel the hypersigil throbbing on his chest, ready to betray him. "I don't want to tell her. I don't want to tell her."

"Joey. Just tell me."

"I..." He couldn't.

"Just say her name!" Sarah shouted in exasperation. "Say 'Lynne!'"

He popped his eyes open. "Lynne," he admitted. "I want Lynne."

Sarah was sitting on him, her naked vagina touching his semi-hard penis, and she sighed and nodded. Then she lay down on top of him, closing her eyes as she rested her cheek on his chest. Joey sighed as she pressed her full weight on him, and he wondered if she was crying or not. He cradled her head, and whispered to her. "I'm sorry," he said, caressing her back and face. "I'm really sorry. I didn't want to hurt you."

"It's okay," she whispered back, not crying. He could feel her mind. It was the truth.

He held her for a long moment, cradling her, caressing her. "How did you know?" he finally asked. He looked down and watched the slowly rotating glowing glyphs on his chest. "Did your spell tell you that?"

Sarah lifted her head and propped herself up on his chest, and then she rolled her eyes at him. "No, Joey," she said, rather annoyed. "The whole fucking school knows."

Joey's mouth dropped open in astonishment. Sarah just rolled her eyes again and dropped her head on his chest and sighed. "You two have been making googly-eyes at each other for over a month now, and everyone knows," she complained. "It's a favorite subject in the girls' rooms. Whenever she's out of earshot, we all start talking about it. They're placing bets on when you two will hook up."

She turned to face him again. Her eyes were soft and caring now. There wasn't a hint of hurt or anger in her. "Why haven't you asked her out?" she asked, genuinely concerned.

Joey wondered about it. "It's hard," he settled on.

"And I was easy?" she asked.

He shook his head. "EasiER," he said, stressing the final syllable. "But you were still hard. But she's impossible. It's like, I can never get her alone, you know? I can't ever talk to her. She's always with her brother."

Sarah rolled off of him and lay beside him, their intimacy transforming into a comfortable equality. She took one hand and meshed her fingers into his. "Preaching to the choir!" she complained with a heavy sigh, and she lay there and stared at the ceiling, toying with his fingers. Joey stared up too, thinking about how he could never get a chance to talk to Lynne alone. Jeff was always there, always with her. Then he thought about what Sarah just said. His brow furrowed, and he turned to look at her.

"Jeff?" he asked her.

She nodded and gave him a sheepish grin.

"He's the reason you don't want to go out with me?"

"I like him," she said, shrugging. "He notices me. I've seen him looking at me, and I didn't know if it was because he was interested in me or not. But then you said he finds me pretty." She paused and grinned. "Plus, he's got this really cute butt!" she growled enthusiastically, grasping the air with one hand. "Have you seen it?"

"Um ... Actually, I have."

She turned to him, still smiling, and saw Joey's face looking a little forlorn. She dropped her smile. "I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay," he said, realizing it really didn't bother him. He understood now why she wasn't angry with him for wanting someone else. She wanted someone else too. And he lay there, reflecting on the situation. He was naked, laying in bed next to a beautiful naked girl, in post-coital afterglow, and they had both just confessed that they really weren't that interested in each other.

"Well, this is awkward," he said.

She chuckled. "Yeah."

"Pathetic, really."

"Huh? You think I'm pathetic?"

"Both of us are. I mean, here we are, we're both interested in someone else, and neither one of us can get close to that person, 'cause they're always joined at the hip with the other one. And because we can't pull them apart, we fall into each other's arms."

She chuckled and cuddled up to him. "Yeah," she agreed. "But I did have fun."

"Me too." He hugged her.

He lay there holding this beautiful girl, and thought about their future. Gone were the idle fantasies of a dating and marriage and family, and now he could only think about what he was going to do at school tomorrow. He wondered how they were going to act around each other at school, and he glanced at his chest. The glyphs had mostly faded, and were barely visible.

"Sarah? How long does this last?"

She glanced at the sigils. "Not much longer."

"Could you recharge it?"

She gave him a weird look. "Why?"

He rolled to his side, facing her. "Because I want to be honest with you. I want things to be fair between us."

She raised an eyebrow and touched the spell. It pulsed back into life. She left her hand on his chest, and he caressed her cheek. "Sarah. I like you. I really like you, and I'm worried about tomorrow. I don't want things to get weird between us. I don't want us to avoid each other. I want to be able to talk to you, and hang out with you, and do homework, and have lunch with you. And I know that you're interested in Jeff, but I think, if he's the one you want, you should go for him. You deserve him. You deserve to be happy."

She smiled as he spoke, and he continued. "I just want you to know that, even though I want to get close to Lynne, I still want you in the rest of my life. Somewhere, anywhere, I want you there. You're too interesting, you're too cool to give up." She blushed. "Look, if things work out between you and Jeff, I'll be happy that you're happy. And if things don't work out, I'll still be available on November second." He paused. "I'll be your safety penis."

Sarah burst out laughing, "Deal!" she said. "Friends?"

"Friends," he agreed.

They cuddled up together, looking and smiling at each other, and lightly caressed each other's bodies. Joey's erection surged and prodded into her thigh. Sarah glanced down at his member and giggled. "Does that thing ever go down?"

"It has a mind of its own. It knows there's a gorgeous naked girl nearby."

She chuckled and playfully traced her fingers through the mystic sigils, giving the entire disk a twirl. He could feel the mystic bonds twisting through his heart. "You know, there are many different kinds of friends," she whispered.

"Really?" he said, feeling the patterns in her brain shifting. He could sense a surge of sexual desire. "What kinds?"

"Just friends. Good friends. Best friends. Fair weather." Her fingers traced down his chest, lower and lower, tickling his stomach. "Each has their own ... benefits," she added.

He smiled, and slipped one hand down to cup her soft breast. His cock pulsed with life. "More honesty here. I can tell when you're getting turned on."

Her fingers slipped over his erection, curling around it. "So can I."

They pulled each other close and started kissing again. Sarah squirmed and moaned as Joey rolled her onto her back and lay up against her. He kissed her and fondled her breast for a while as she stroked him, and then he moved his hand down her smooth stomach and over her abdomen. His fingers brushed across her labia, and she squealed and opened her legs. He tickled her clitoris, and she bucked and gasped.

He kissed down her cheek and nuzzled into her neck, fingering her clit while she squeezed and stroked his cock in one hand. He idly wondered why their arms weren't getting in the way of each other, and after a quick glance, confirmed his suspicion that yes, she had faded part of her arm so that their arms intersected with each other. Her fingers stroked and caressed his cock lovingly, and he decided to forget about the weird stuff and concentrate on the good stuff. He licked her sweet neck, causing her to giggle and squirm.