Christmas At St Clare's School For Girls - Part 3

“Hey wait what?” I said.

“You heard me.” said Ava, “Nobody will be able to tell that I’m not you. I’m great at impressions, watch.”

Ava screwed up her face and made her voice comically flat.

“Yeah guys I dunno.” she said in a mocking imitation of me. “Yeah that’s pretty good guys. I don’t know.”

“You already said that one.” said Evelyn.

“That’s because she doesn’t say anything else!” Ava said, gesturing at me.

“Rude!” I said, only half pretending to be annoyed. “Anyway you don’t get to possess me because nobody will take the bet and risk getting possessed by you!”

Ava frowned. “Why wouldn’t anybody want to be possessed by me?”

“Because you’ll make them do something crazy!”

“Yeah, but it will be funny!”

I sighed.

“I’ll take the bet.” said Olivia from inside Charlotte’s body, still doing the splits on the ground. “But only if I don’t have to leave Charlotte's body first.”

“Wait, does that mean- ?” I started, but Ava cut me off.

“Boo-yeah! Give me that flute!” she snatched the flute from Olivia’s body’s limp hands and aimed it at me.

“Hold on!!” I shouted quickly. “Rules! We need rules!”

“I’ll take your body and go chat with Steph and that over there.” said Ava, gesturing across the common room to where the only other group sat playing chess. “If they don’t ask if I’m really Ava, I win.”

“No!” said Olivia sharply. “Of course they won’t ask if you’re Ava. If they so much as say “Are you feeling okay, Sophie?” or suspect something is wrong in any way, then I win this bet. Evelyn makes the final decision.”

“Fine” said Ava. “Ready, Sophie?”

I stared down the barrel of the flute and gulped. Ava blew into it and-

I was standing on my tippy toes.

What the hell? Going from lounging about to standing in an instant was weird. My clothes felt a bit ruffled, and my right arm was a bit sore for some reason, but otherwise I felt completely normal.

“Woah.”

I noticed I suddenly felt really sleepy, as if I’d stayed up waaaay past my bedtime. I was still in the common room, fortunately, but the candles had burned more than halfway down. I frowned. Ava had stayed in me much longer than I’d meant her too.

I glanced around the room, letting the hand holding the flute drop to my side. It was basically empty, and a candle flickering up the stairs to the bedrooms signalled that somebody had just left. Evelyn was dozed off on one of the lounges, and Olivia’s body was still slumped over where I’d last seen it. Was she still inside Charlotte then?

In front of me, Ava stretched and grinned. “Hey, I’m not too sore this time!”

“What happened? How long did you stay inside me?” I cringed “And what did you make me do?”

“Only an hour or two.” said Ava, yawning. “I won the bet, by the way. Nobody could tell I wasn’t you.”

It was hard not to feel a little bit hurt by that. Ava patted me on the shoulder lazily as she headed up to bed.

“You can beat me in an arm wrestle, by the way.”

“What? How could you know that?”

Ava just giggled and wandered upstairs.

________

Ava had apparently worn me out, as well as kept me up past my bedtime, so it was with a bleary shuffle that I made my way down to breakfast late the next morning

I didn’t look nearly as out of sorts as Charlotte, however. She stumbled in about 10 minutes after me, red eyed and frazzled.

“What the hell happened last night?” she asked, as she took the spot beside me. “I don’t remember a thing after bloody Evelyn couldn’t do the splits.”

“I missed most of it as well.” I told her.

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Ava” I said, gesturing at myself. Charlotte let out a snort.

“I would have thought Olivia would have been better, but apparently…” she trailed off, obviously too tired to get her thoughts into words. “Where is she this morning anyway?”

Olivia, it turned out, was right behind us. She leaned over Charlotte and me, wearing an uncharacteristic smirk.

“Mornin’” Olivia chirped. “Have fun last night, Charlotte?”

“I can’t believe you possessed me all night, Liv. Not cool.”

Olivia chuckled and threw back her hair. “Just having fun, you know! Gotta let my hair down every now and again!”

“Bitch” Charlotte muttered, turning back to her cereal. Olivia grinned and messed up her hair.

“It’s so tight that who knows how wild it can get when I let it go?”

Olivia winked at me, and it clicked.

“Ava?” I asked.

Olivia grinned wider. “Got it in one. If only you had been there for the bet last night!”

“Were you…”

“No, I only took over Olivia about two minutes ago. That was all her in Charlotte last night! I caught her trying to sneak out of the Great Hall when she spotted you guys and thought, since I had won that bet, I’d better bring her over.”

Charlotte smiled darkly.

“Make her pick her nose.”

Ava obliged.

“And now stand on one leg.”

Ava did, wobbling slightly.

“Now jump on the table and do that again.”

Ava gave her a look.

“This just feels like I’m the one being humiliated! Let me jump out of her afterwards.”

She pulled the flute out from somewhere inside Olivia’s robes.

“But where’s your body?” I asked.

“Last night we discovered you don’t need to go back to your own body.” said Ava. “I can just blow right into the next person and Olivia will wake up like normal.”

“How did you work that out?” I asked, confused.

Ava ignored me. She made Olivia stand up straight as an arrow, head held high in the air like a prince entering a ball. Then she leapt up onto the breakfast table, raised a finger high into the air, and shoved it into her own nose.

People started to turn around and look at the commotion. I heard whispers of disbelief. Olivia had apparently gone mental.

“Hey, wait a minute! You got to possess Olivia because she bet against you! Who are you going to bet with now?”

Ava crinkled Olivia’s face as she wobbled on the table, a finger in her nose.

“I bet that you can’t make Sophie… I dunno… take off her shoes.”

“Deal accepted” smirked Ava, and raised the flute towards me.

Dammit.

An instant later I was staring down at my school shoes, which had apparently teleported to where my breakfast had been a moment before. I wiggled my toes and found that, yes indeed, Ava had managed to make me take them off. Very impressive.

Next to me, Charlotte giggled like mad. “Your face!!” she laughed, pointing. “You look so resigned! Ha!”

So Ava had ‘won’ that bet too then.

“Come on.” Ava said standing up. “Let’s go find my body.”

“But I haven’t eaten yet!” I grumbled.

“I ate it for you!” laughed Ava, “Come on, Charlotte’s exhausted and I don’t want to stay in her a moment longer than I have to.”