Chapter 28

The incident with Michelle was just fucking bizarre.

It all started after sixth period at school, when Emily, Donna, and Michelle were sitting at one of the lunch tables in the cafeteria. Lunches for the three best friends had oddly not changed all that much, even after they’d all been tricked

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subjected

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privileged and, well, gosh, lucky enough to be a part of Jack’s special conditioning process. Between bites of sandwiches and sips of diet soda, they talked about how their classes that day were boring and stupid, how their teachers were boring and stupid, except for Mrs. Winter, who had started wearing more and more revealing outfits every day, which was kind of hot, and voluptuous Mrs. Jennings, the music teacher, who had taken lately to either letting her classes simply draw pornographic pictures in class, or personally posing naked for the class, usually in delightfully lewd and obscene positions. They grumbled about boys, the ones at school who were all stupid, too, not smart and sexy and handsome like Jack. They grumbled about the cafeteria food, especially the meatloaf.

In other words, they talked about

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the exact same things

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they’d always talked about, ever since freshman year.

But that one particular afternoon, Donna had casually asked Emily if Jack had ever talked about baby names with her, and Emily had said no, why, and Donna had said that she was just wondering about it, she wasn’t sure what she would name her baby if it was a girl but if it was a boy she was definitely going to name it Jack, and Emily had laughed, how funny, lately she had been thinking the exact same thing...

... and that was when Emily and Donna realized that Michelle was staring at them like they’d each suddenly sprouted a second head. Or turned into aliens. Or both.

Also, it was when Emily and Donna realized that Michelle – unlike them – wasn’t pregnant.

Oh, wait, Emily thought idly, as she’d watched Michelle’s eyes start to bulge and burn with rage, and her hands ball up into tight, white-knuckled fists, Jack... didn’t knock all of us up?

Huh.

For some reason, Emily had simply assumed that was part of Jack’s conditioning process. Get conditioned, get impregnated, usually by Jack – it was kind of like a package deal. But ... apparently it wasn’t. Which meant that there was apparently some sort of method to Jack’s madness, that he specifically wanted her and Donna to get pregnant, along with certain other girls, and Emily didn’t understand it, and that had made her head start to throb and hurt, and that

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Emily shook her head, and smiled. Obviously,

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it didn’t matter. At all.

However, Michelle had gone just about ballistic when she’d learned than Emily and Donna each had a brand-new bun in the oven, so to speak ... she’d shrieked and cried and pouted and complained – loudly – about just how unfair it was that Jack had knocked up all of her best friends, and not her, and how that was bullshit, and half the cafeteria had started staring at their table in disbelieving confusion, and so

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Emily had gotten super annoyed about all of Michelle’s stupid, whiny complaints.

And to be honest, it just wasn’t Michelle’s complaining. It was Donna, too. God, it was always Donna. Or it was fucking ditzy, stupid, desperate Kimmy. Or it was Dawn. Or it was Tamara, or Rebecca, or Jessie, or so many of the other cheerleaders. Fuck, it was the older women, too. Mrs. Winter, sometimes, practically begging to personally drive Emily home after cheerleading practice, just so she “could spend some magic time with Jack”. Donna’s mom Holly, who was getting to be almost as fucking annoying – and desperate – as

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her stupid slut daughter. And lately, Miss Carter, the freshman English teacher, the one who’d just gotten engaged to Mr. Washington ... she’d been hunting down Emily in the hallways between Emily’s French and History classes, pleading with Emily with tears running down her eyes, begging to be fucked by Jack, in a sad, pathetic way that Emily found