Lovesick

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  Scarlet and Eric were still at IdentiTea, alone in the dark except for a single candle burning between them.

  "Was that good for you?" Eric asked.

  "Amazing," Scarlet said, trying to catch her breath.

  "We should do it again."

  "I don't think I can," Scarlet confessed wearily.

  "Okay," Eric went on, "As long as you're satisfied."

  "I definitely am."

  "Then let's hear the playback," Eric suggested.

  "Let's," she agreed nervously.

  She pushed aside her mic, jumped up, and headed over to the café mixing board she used to record live performances onstage. She pressed the Back button, then Play, and they both listened to every measure carefully as the track flowed through the speakers.

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  "Now that," Eric paused for effect, "is rock."

  "Really?" Scarlet said incredulously. "I don't know."

  "You put your heart into it," Eric said admiringly. "Every word."

  "And you put your soul into every note."

  Eric just smiled. She didn't know how right she was.

  As if on cue, Charlotte came to the front door and looked in. Scarlet saw her and quietly freaked that she was caught in what may have appeared to be a compromising position. Charlotte got flustered at seeing Scarlet and Eric and ran. And when Scarlet turned back to Eric, he too looked like he'd just seen a ghost. But he couldn't have, she thought, could he?

  "What's wrong?" Scarlet asked, her curiosity suddenly turning to suspicion.

  "Nothing," Eric mumbled sheepishly.

  "Did you see that person in the doorway?"

  "What girl?"

  "I didn't say it was a girl, Eric," Scarlet said.

  He was busted. Scarlet began to rewind their entire relationship in her head and came to the only obvious conclusion.

  "Do you have something you want to tell me?" Scarlet asked.

  "What are you talking about?" Eric asked.

  Scarlet paused, giving Eric time to step up and be honest with her.

  "You're dead."

  From the look on her face, Eric couldn't tell if she meant she was going to kill him or if she had figured out the whole thing. Still, part of him was relieved and thought it was time he rocked the truth.

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  "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, her tone becoming angrier by the second.

  Eric was silent. Scarlet didn't push it. The real culprit here was Charlotte anyway. How could Charlotte keep this from her? And then it occurred to Scarlet.

  "The girl you wrote the song for," Scarlet said. "It was Charlotte."

  Everything was starting to make sense.

  "I wanted to tell you," he said.

  "Why didn't you?" she asked.

  "It just never came up," Eric said, grasping at straws. "Anyway, I had no idea you'd be able to see me."

  "Yeah, it's a real gift," Scarlet said sarcastically. "What are you doing here anyway?"

  "I don't really know," Eric said, "but I'm gonna guess that it has something to do with helping you work some things out for yourself. And judging from what we did here tonight, I think I've done my job."

  "I appreciate the song," Scarlet said, "I really do, but this Angels Anonymous crap has done nothing but screw things up for me."

  "You're not the only one," Eric said. "We're all paying a price for being here."

  Scarlet tried not to sympathize, but she couldn't help it. She could see on his pale face the sacrifice he was making.

  "Do me a favor," Scarlet asked. "Don't tell Charlotte I know."

  "We're not really talking," Eric said, "so that won't be too difficult."

  "Because of me?" Scarlet asked, guilt-ridden.

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  Eric just nodded. Knowing Eric, even the short time she had spent with him, she knew how Charlotte must have fallen for him and how threatened she must have felt by Scarlet's relationship with him. She must have felt like he was emotionally cheating on her which, in Scarlet's mind and certainly in Charlotte's, was even worse than physically cheating.

  "So Darcy and Damen," Scarlet continued in junior detective mode, "is to make me see the error of my ways?"

  "Among other things," Eric said, nodding.

  "If Charlotte weren't dead, I would kill her."

  "She's feeling really bad about it already," Eric said. "That's probably why she came back just now. To tell you."

  "Damen's letter," Scarlet said, mostly talking to herself. "I know she was there when he wrote it. She helped him to write those things I needed him to say."

  Eric just smiled, impressed that Scarlet put it all together.

  As her anger subsided, an odd feeling swept over Scarlet. She had been singing, laughing, talking, and fighting with a dead guy.

  "What happened to you?" Scarlet asked.

  "I was onstage getting ready to play my first real show," he began to recount painfully. "It was about to storm, but everyone thought it would pass quickly."

  "But the only thing that passed...," she said somberly.

  "Was me," Eric concluded. "I got electrocuted when lightning hit my amp."

  "Sorry," she offered.

  "It's okay, I'm over it," he said, but the look on his face told her quite the opposite.

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  "So you never got to play in front of a crowd?"

  "Nope."

  "Let's see what we can do about that," Scarlet said, grabbing the flash drive with their new song from the board and putting it in her pocket.

  Darcy and The Wendys zipped through town after spending the whole day filling up on ridiculously expensive makeup, soaps, perfume, and undergarments, not to mention inane conversation, all in the name of prom.

  "Who do you think Petula is going with?" Wendy Anderson asked, unsure if she should care or not.

  "Why do you care?" Darcy snapped from the driver's seat of Wendy's convertible.

  "Oh, right, I don't," Wendy Anderson said from the passenger seat. "I just forgot for a sec."

  Wendy Thomas took the opportunity to cackle hysterically at her fellow Wendy's self-esteem smackdown.

  "Push your seat up," Wendy Thomas said, kicking the back and causing Wendy to jerk forward. "I'm going to get a blood clot back here."

  "Next time, you sit up front then," Wendy Anderson complained. "It's not my fault you were born with freakishly long tibias... no offense."

  "Just because you say no offense doesn't make it okay, Wendy."

  Darcy ignored The Wendys' chatter and slowed down to scope out the side streets.

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  "Check it out," Darcy said, pointing.

  It was Petula, leaning up against the side of her car talking to someone. She was handing over suit jackets and slacks to a young man.

  Darcy beeped the horn.

  "Quick, give me that bag," she said to Wendy Anderson.

  Wendy threw her the bag and Darcy grabbed some soaps. She rolled down her window and chucked them out at Petula and the derelict.

  "Hey, that's mine!" Wendy Thomas scowled. "Those were totally natural, cold-process, Soil Association-Certified soaps you just tossed!"

  "Write it off as a charitable donation," Darcy spat, tossing her tax lawyer's business card into the backseat.

  Wendy didn't know much about giving, but she knew enough to keep a receipt. She checked her purse and breathed a sigh a relief when she found it, folded neatly.

  As the Hawthorne harpies sped off, Petula opened the bag and saw the luxury cleansing bars as well as Tate's raised eyebrows.

  "Oh, those were my friends," Petula said, eyeing the product. "I asked them to pick some of this up for me. High-end stuff."

  "You don't have to cover for them," Tate said.

  "You're right, I don't," she said. "They threw a bar of soap at us because you're dirty... and they aren't my friends. Anymore."

  She was so relieved to tell the truth. She was relieved to be herself and to go after what she wanted, despi
te what others

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  thought. It was liberating. CoCo would have been proud. She led her to him, but Petula was the one who did all the hard work.

  "Would you go to my prom with me?" she asked.

  He didn't answer her but instead gave her a peck on the cheek.

  She was disappointed, but she knew he cared for her.

  "You never answered my question the other day," he said. "What are you doing here?"

  "These people may be starving or whatever," Petula said, not quite expert in the linguistic subtleties of the downtrodden, "but they can still look their best."

  His first reaction was that she was hopelessly naive to the point of ignorance. But then it dawned on him that Petula understood something that even most well-intentioned politicians, pundits, and philanthropists didn't: self-esteem is the best medicine for malaise. And she was helping them the way she knew how. The proof was right in front of him. Petula made each of them over and brought some beauty into their lives.

  Tate took the soap out of her hands.

  "Looks like I might be needing this," he said.

  "You're going to go with me?"

  After watching her put smiles on face after face, night after night, Tate tenderly accepted Petula's offer and put a smile on hers, as well.

  Stylus barged into the studio just as Damen was about to end his shift. He'd been assigned the long and tedious job of digitizing tracks from all the vinyl albums they had in the

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  studio archive. He was bleary-eyed and smelled like a mildewy mixture of plastic and damp cardboard. Even Charlotte, who didn't need sleep, was exhausted just from watching him.

  "Dylan," Mr. Stylus grumbled, tossing over a CD like a Frisbee. "Catch."

  Damen's athleticism served him well as he plucked the disc from the air and flipped it over to read the credit. The name on the disc, written in Magic Marker, read: " 'Kiss Your Kiss'/Scarlet Kensington."

  "I thought you said she was disqualified," Damen said, surprised not just by the addition of the song but that it even existed.

  "It's new," Stylus explained in his morning-shift baritone. "Just came in under the wire. It's your girlfriend's, right?"

  "Ex-girlfriend," Damen clarified, thinking to himself how little time remained in the competition.

  "Bad for you, good for the song," the station manager gruffed. "As long as you're not on it, it's allowed. Load it in."

  Damen had mixed feelings as he watched the control room computer rip the song off the CD and convert it into a music file. She did it without him, and he couldn't bear that. He left the studio as the song was loading.

  "IdentiTea," Scarlet answered trepidatiously, and a little hopefully, after noticing that the caller ID on the café phone displayed the number from the radio station.

  "Is this Scarlet Kensington?" the caller asked in a big, echoey voice.

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  "Yeah, who wants to know?" she replied in her token jaded tone after it was clear that it wasn't Damen.

  "Mr. Stylus, INDY-Ninety-five Morning Man," the station manager advised. "You're on the air."

  "So," she replied, thinking maybe this was some kind of prank or worse, a love-line intervention.

  "We were wondering if you've picked a location," he said.

  "You're sitting on it."

  "That's a good one," he said in a cheesy radio-announcer voice, "but I don't think you could fit a guitar in there, although with this new fiber diet I'm trying, maybe!"

  Scarlet's instincts were right, she thought. He was an ass.

  "What's this about?" she asked, trying to keep her composure.

  "We want to know where and when you'll be playing your song live," he said. "You can pick any venue in town."

  "What?" she asked, her mood brightening in anticipation.

  "That's the prize for... THE WINNING SONG."

  Stylus rolled the goofy marching band tape and hit the fireworks sound effects that signaled her victory to all of his listeners. Instead of being cheesed out, Scarlet was blushing with pride.

  "Are you messing with me?" she asked, her cheeks now hot and in full, rosy bloom.

  "What's going on?" Eric asked, wondering if some degenerate had called in to harass her.

  "We won," she mouthed, not wanting to disturb the paying customers. "We get to pick a place around town to play our song."

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  "We're gonna play in front of people?" he asked in shock.

  It was definitely a life-and-death dream come true for him; but for her, it was the perfect opportunity.

  "Well, where would you like to play, and when?" the announcer asked.

  "I have just the place," Scarlet said.

  "You win," Marianne said, throwing up her hands at the prom committee meeting. "What do you want us to do?"

  "This is something I've been thinking about a long time," she began.

  Scarlet explained her idea and instructed them on what was to be done. She insisted it all be shrouded in secrecy because if a certain trio, Damen, or Charlotte found out about it, her plans could be ruined. With everyone on board and so little time to pull everything off, preparations got under way immediately.

  Aside from being obsessed with all the details of the night, Scarlet was working diligently to find the perfect dress for the occasion. And although Damen was nowhere to be found, he too was at the forefront of her mind. Still, it was necessary to keep him in the dark, because that meant keeping Charlotte clueless as well.

  Scarlet wasn't the only one with a plan for prom, however. Pam, Prue, and Charlotte were busy planning something a little more sinister: Darcy's demise. They decided that the prom was the best place to do it since everyone would be distracted, and hopefully, if things went off without a hitch, the

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  real Darcy could reinhabit her body without anyone being the wiser.

  Charlotte knew they had little control over the outcome, so she left it up to fate. She was sure that Scarlet would probably never talk to her again, and she didn't blame her one bit, but she did want her to be happy. If that meant sacrificing her friendship, something she cherished more than anything, then she would do that.

  "What are we going to do exactly?" Pam asked.

  "Kill her," Prue said matter-of-factly. "That's what."

  "I don't think I can kill anyone," Pam said, "especially on prom night."

  Petula was hurriedly palming through frock after frock, this time for herself, at Dressed to Kill. It was her last stop of the day, following a pretty fruitless search for a prom dress. Ordinarily she would have had her pick of the litter for such a special occasion, but things were different now.

  Petula was surprisingly serene about it, now that her priorities had changed. After rummaging through rack after rack and finding nothing, she looked up at the cash register to see a beautiful red sequined gown bagged and hanging. Petula eyed it covetously. As the fashion bell went off in her head, the doorbell went off in the shop, which Petula saw initially as a good sign.

  She approached the salesperson, flashing her plastic, ready to snap it up.

  "I'll take it," Petula said, still not used to having to explain herself.

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  "What do you mean?" the clerk asked, "A job application?"

  "The dress." Petula pointed. "It was absolutely made for me."

  "No," a voice came sternly from behind her, "it was made for me."

  Petula spun around and came face-to-face with Darcy, then slid her credit card back into her wallet.

  "Isn't your ass a little big for that gown?" Petula cut. "Prom will be over by the time you get into it."

  "I'm sure Damen only cares how fast it comes off," Darcy cracked. "I'll get back to you on that."

  Darcy snuck in a twofer. Not only did she just retro-dis Petula's and Damen's relationship but she dissed Scarlet as well.

  "I love what you've done with your hair," the salesclerk said, trying to protect her customer.

 
"Home perm?" Petula snapped.

  Darcy was thrown for a second by the hair cuts and reflexively checked herself in the store mirror. She noticed the salesclerk chuckling along with Petula and re-engaged in the bitchy banter.

  "What are you doing here anyway?" Darcy asked, picking away. "You don't buy clothes anymore; you donate them."

  "I don't just give things away," Petula insisted, turning back to Darcy. "I'm a social entrepreneur."

  "More like a social leper, I'd say," Darcy pushed back. "Hey, maybe prom can double as a friend-raiser for you? Everyone is into helping those less fortunate these days, ain't that right?"

  Petula walked back menacingly toward Darcy, who held her ground.

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  "I have real friends now," Petula said. "Besides, you didn't take anything away from me. I let you have it."

  "I never look a gift horse-face in the mouth," Darcy swiped, feigning a whinny. "I'm happy to take it all."

  "Now who's the charity case?" Petula snipped.

  "You can always just stop," Darcy suggested casually, looking through the rack in front of her and keeping one eye on Petula. "I'm sure I could persuade The Wendys to let you hit the Reset button."

  Petula's future flashed before her eyes--the future she had planned and plotted for herself before now. She could see it all, except for herself. She was no longer there.

  "People change," Petula said simply. "I don't need the echo chamber anymore."

  "You are an egomaniac with a guilt complex, that's all," Darcy remarked, drilling down deep in search of Petula's motivation. "This is about you, not about helping those losers downtown."

  "Psychobabble from a psychobitch," Petula said calmly. "How enlightening."

  "You are not making one bit of difference," Darcy pressed, seeming a tad frustrated. "And you're trashing perfectly good outfits in the process."