A Bikini Beach Summer
by Daphne Xu
Part 20
Disaster
Thanks to ElrodW, Bikini Beach's creator, for invaluable comments on
this story. The Bikini Beach universe and its principal characters are
copyright 2001 by him.
Any comments about Bikini Beach, how it works, what it does, by
characters other than Anya or Grandmother are potentially non-canonical and
wrong. As this story is told from a particular point of view by the
protagonist, this includes comments by the narrator. The protagonist, and
thus the narrative, are what the protagonist believes or interprets from
what he is experiencing. Thus some of the mechanics of BB are biased by
the protagonist's view and experiences. Furthermore, because of the
particular viewpoint of the story, those errors often won't be corrected.
When the errors are corrected, the correction will often be disbelieved and
rejected.
Sunday Evening, July 27
"Luke?" Vanessa was crying over the phone. "Tim's been murdered. Jen's
out of her mind with grief. I'm with her now, but she needs all her
friends. Please come."
"Ma, Pa," I lowered the phone, about to cry again. "Tim Anderson, the
person released on bail in Jill's murder, he's been murdered. Jen, she's
one of the girls, was his friend, and she needs all of us. I have to go."
I was babbling in my own grief and confusion.
Ma, standing over a counter, was crying in distress. "It's all my
fault!" Ma repeated. Then she said, "Luke, please go. Go help your
friends. Please!"
"Ma's ordering me to go," I told Vanessa. "If I can get there, I will.
But someone has to take me. Pa can't leave Ma. She's crying majorly."
"Mom'll get you," said Vanessa. "Ten minutes, she says."
Ruth, Daisy, and I hovered in the background, as Ma cried her eyes out,
and Pa leaned over her, murmuring things I couldn't make out. Ma kept
saying, "It's all my fault. It's all my fault."
I was relieved when the doorbell finally rang. It was Mrs. King,
Vanessa's mom. "How are they?" I asked, as we dashed to her car.
"Everyone's distressed," she replied simply, saying nothing further as
she drove off like a maniac.
We arrived in due time, ran up to the door and rang the bell. Mr. Lam,
Jen's father, whom I'd never met, answered. "Come in, Mrs. King. And you
must be Luke. Upstairs, both of you."
I followed Mrs. King up to Jen's room, scared of what I'd find.
The first thing I noticed upon entering the room was the distinct odor
of vomit. Jen was in bed, not crying but frozen in the most sickening
expression of shock I'd ever seen. She'd obviously been crying earlier.
Alice, Vanessa, Carol, and Jen's mom were all sitting on the bed next to
her. Alice was leaning over her, crying, "I'm so very sorry!"
I had no idea what to say or do. I leaned over and tried to hug her,
getting no response. "It's me, Luke." Jen's dad and Mrs. King remained in
the background until the doorbell rang and Mr. Lam went to answer it.
Becky arrived, looking utterly devastated. "Alice, Jen! I'm so very
sorry! I can't believe what happened. Tracy, my brother, was arrested
today for Jill's murder. His DNA apparently matched the murderer's." She
collapsed onto the foot of the bed in a new burst of tears.
Alice stared at Becky for a couple seconds, then burst into tears and
collapsed on Jen. "Oh, Jen, Jen, Jen! Everything I said, everything I
thought all this time, everything I believed about Jill's murder has been
totally wrong."
I had to do something. I tried to hug Becky. She said through her
tears, "That must be why I was suddenly sent to Aunt Yuko's for the summer.
To get me out of the way, to keep me ignorant. My parents knew about
Tracy."
Jen came out of her shock, and noticed the grief of Alice and Becky. We
all got into a group hug.
There's no great loss without some small gain. We were all friends
again, and nobody and nothing would tear us apart ever again.
We stayed until quite late, but eventually we separated and returned to
our respective homes. Vanessa may have stayed for the night with Jen.
It took me forever to get to sleep. I kept thinking about the horror of
what it's like to be murdered like Jill and Tim, the horror of being
falsely accused like Peter and Tim. Perhaps Becky's brother was going to
undergo a horror similar to Peter and Tim. Maybe he deserved it as the
actual murderer. But with the DNA match, they didn't need his confession.
Monday, July 28
I woke up again crying about the girls' situation. Alice's cousin
murdered. Jen's friend Tim framed for the murder, released on bail, then
murdered himself. Becky learning that her brother Tracy was the murderer.
And Ruth having been framed as Peter for the murder. I had all these
memories of life with big brother Peter as well as baby sister Ruth.
I stayed in bed for the longest time, remembering and crying, then
finally got up, got dressed, and went downstairs for breakfast. Ruth was
already up, and she jumped up and hugged me, crying. "I'm so sorry about
what happened!" Ma was apparently still in bed, refusing to get up.
"I'm taking the day off of work," said Pa. "Ma needs me here. I'm very
sorry about what happened as well." He reheated my breakfast, and turned on
the Mental Work. This was the first time in a number of days that I'd
listened to the Mental Work. I felt strangely comforted by Great-Grandma's
firm-sounding voice. Then after I finished eating, Pa insisted that he and
I record the new Lesson-sermon for the week. "This is all the more
important for the situation we are in. Luke, right now you are the only
one who can record it with me."
Mr. Matsumoto stormed over here in the middle of our recording. "Tim
Anderson's defense attorney called me, and informed me that he'd called the
police and urged them to investigate Anderson's murder. Apparently, the
officer who spoke with him said that justice had been done, the way it
should have been done originally. The officer furthermore called him scum
who got murderers and other criminals off scott-free, and apparently
slammed the phone down before the attorney could point out that the
murderer was a different person. The attorney's working to get the
identity of the officer.
"Television commentators have been saying the same thing," he continued.
"Even though a different person has actually been identified and arrested
based on the DNA evidence. This is a new low for them, but unfortunately,
since Tim has been murdered, there is no longer any defamation case against
them. They're stupid; they're shameless. And we can't do a damn thing
about it.
"The prosecutor, at least, sounded rational. He promised full
investigation of Tim Anderson's murder, and denounced vigilante justice
precisely because it goes after the wrong person. I mentioned the defense
attorney's encounter with the police officer, and said that there was at
least a faction in the police force who apparently favored vigilante
justice, and who might have acted accordingly."
He departed shortly after, and we finished recording the lesson. I went
back up and lay in bed, dozing off and on, crying off and on, fuming in
anger off and on, until it was time to don my TKD uniform and go off to
piano lesson.
My mood, the recent events, and my lack of practice the previous couple
of days led to one of my worst piano lessons ever. I'd completely
forgotten both pieces I was supposed to have memorized, and was scolded
just about every other minute to the point that I was thinking of getting
up and walking out. I didn't, though; I was too much of a coward.
Mrs. Prudence said something at the end of the lesson that surprised
me. "Everyone has an occasional bad lesson or rehearsal. Did you have a
bad week or something?"
"Absolutely. A dear friend of a friend of mine was murdered yesterday.
After being cleared and released from a false murder accusation." I knew he
was cleared, because of Becky's brother's arrest for the murder.
Mrs. Prudence said, "The case in the news? Oh my!"
"That's only part of it. Another friend's older brother was arrested
for the murder, and he apparently did it. His DNA matched the murderer's.
That's sufficiently unbelievable as it is, and you just won't believe the
rest of it. But yes, a very bad week. And this lesson... well..." I
didn't have a real sense of what I wanted to say, and was too much of a
coward to say it anyway.
I packed up my piano books, and went out -- only to encounter outside
the entire gang from Bikini Beach! Vanessa, Jen, Alice, Becky, and Carol,
all arm-in-arm. "Guys!" I exclaimed, hugging them all. Vanessa had to
briefly let go of Jen to hug me. Carol gave me a wonderful long kiss, and
whispered in my ear, "I love you." By now, I was blushing but very happy,
seeing them all.
"We still needed to be together," Vanessa explained. "Jen and Becky
need the support, Alice needs it, and we think you do too. Jen needed to
get out of the house." I'd mentioned Ma's breakdown of guilt and grief.
I joined them, sandwiched between Becky and Carol, and we all went to
the mall for my Taekwondo class. Unlike my piano lesson, the TKD class
went fine, which was fortunate because the girls were watching me. The
exercise let me forget my problems for the moment.
Then we all went together to pick up Ruth at ballet. "My goodness!" she
exclaimed upon emerging from the studio in her leotard and tights. "You
all came with Luke, to pick me up! Carol!" she hugged her hard, and then
me. "Luke! Hey Vanessa!"
I didn't want to let go of Carol or Becky, but I also wanted to hold
onto Ruth. I resolved that conundrum by lifting Ruth up -- "Luke, what are
you doing?" -- and sitting her on my shoulders, her legs on either side of
my head -- the way Pa sometimes carried me when I was little. Oof, she was
heavy! "You okay?" I asked, as I returned my arms around Carol and Becky.
"I'm fine, Luke. Just remember, if I fall, you're going down with me."
She clenched her muscular legs hard about my head and shoulders to
emphasize the point.
We started off home.
Ruth commented, "Pa carried me this way when I was just a toddler, and
later carried Luke the same way. I never imagined I would be carried again
this way, this time by my kid brother -- especially as a nine-year-old
girl."
"It's hard keeping in mind that that's really you in there Peter," I
said. "I'm so used to thinking of you as Ruth."
"When Pa took me to ballet today, he asked if I really wanted to go.
Wouldn't I be embarrassed as Peter doing it? I told him I'd gotten over my
embarrassment my first week as Ruth, and now I like the class. As Pa
discovered the hard way, ballet complements Taekwondo nicely."
Carol said, "Ballet is supposed to be the ultimate humiliation for a
manly man or boy, turned into a girl. That's probably why they do it so
often. Humiliation is one tactic they use to control and convert you."
"Yaaaah," drawled Ruth. "I think that Ma and Bikini Beach meant it that
way for me."
We walked some in silence, and then Ruth reached over and tapped Becky's
shoulder and said, "You're Tracy's kid brother, Bruce, aren't you?"
Becky burst into tears. "Yes, I'm so sorry! I'm sorry about
everything!"
"Please, please!" said Ruth. "I'm so very sorry for the situation
you're in. I knew him a little in high school, and we got to talking with
each other and becoming friends when we discovered that both of us would be
going to Pacific Tech. I can't believe he'd do such a thing. And I also
can't believe I would somehow be accused and blamed for the crime. It's
not your fault, not in the least."
Becky was still crying, so I held her harder to me, hoping to comfort
her. Alice leaned against her from her other side, and we wound up walking
the rest of the way home pressed hard together, Becky sandwiched between
the two of us.
By the time we got home, my shoulders were aching like crazy with the
weight of Ruth. I crouched down, and she dismounted into a somersault,
leaving me about to levitate into the air. I stood back up, awkward with
dizziness, supported by Carol and Becky. Meanwhile, Ruth dashed inside,
being the first as usual to shower.
As I entered, I couldn't see either Ma or Pa, so I called out, "Ma, Pa,
I'm home. My friends came with me."
Pa called out from the distance, in their bedroom. "I can't come out,
we have an emergency. Please make yourselves at home. I've called Mrs.
P--, who's working for us." Mrs. P-- was our Christian Science
Practitioner.
What was going on? I wondered, as I went into the kitchen to get soda
and snacks for my friends. I screamed, my stomach heaved trying to vomit,
and I almost fell from faintness -- at the blood in the kitchen.
My friends rushed in behind me, and suddenly there was chaos everywhere
as everyone screamed, fainted. I felt myself being pulled back, and heard
Vanessa shouting over the noise, "Everyone, back in the living room! NOW!"
She was grabbing and yanking us all away. I only barely noticed now what I
didn't notice first coming in, the blood spots leading from the kitchen to
Ma and Pa's bedroom.
"Someone get a camera!" shouted Vanessa. "We need to photograph this
before messing it all up; we may need it as evidence. Then we can find out
what happened."
Pa came out, carrying a camera. "I'll do it, although it's really not
necessary." He snapped a few pictures. "Ma tried to kill herself while I
was taking Ruth to ballet class."
Oh my bloody cursed God! I was too much in shock to actually cry, but I
felt like I was about to burst in tears. I pulled away from my friends
trying to push me down into a chair. All the arguing about whether to call
911 or trust the Practitioner faded into the background. All I knew is
that I had to do one thing.
I made my way to the telephone, found the number for Bikini Beach, and
dialed. As soon as someone answered, "Bikini Beach, how may I help you?" I
burst into tears and begged, "Please, let me speak with Anya or
Grandmother. I'm Luke Cuttington. I was with--"
Grandmother's voice promptly came on the line. "Luke, I'm so sorry
about young Anderson's murder and the arrest of your friend's older
brother."
"Ma tried to kill herself! I don't know how bad. Please do something!"
"I'm so very sorry about your Ma," replied Grandmother. "We're going to
do something. I can't tell you our plan, but things should be repaired."
"Thank you!" I dropped the phone and collapsed.
I wasn't totally out of it; I did barely notice being lifted and taken
to the sofa. I also barely registered sirens in the background, but came
suddenly alert when I realized they were stopping here.
Men entered, and went into Ma and Pa's bedroom. Something was happening
in there; I heard soft talk. Eventually, Ma was carried out tied to a
stretcher, to the ambulance outside.
"Luke, Ruth," Pa said. "I'm going with Ma to the hospital. I hope to
return tonight, but if I don't, both of you are old enough to spend the
night alone, or if you want, you can go to Daisy's house for the night." I
noticed Ruth and Daisy off to the side, clinging to each other.
Jen came up in tears and hugged me. "Oh, Luke!" I cried again, reminded
that her friend was dead. At least Ma was still alive. We had another
round of hugs and tears, including Ruth and Daisy, hugging me together.
Vanessa said, "Girls, I think a couple of us should make ourselves
useful, by cleaning things up." She went into the kitchen, and began
cleaning up the bloody spots. I decided I couldn't let my friends do all
the work.
I got up and went into the bedroom. I saw that the bedspread and the
light blanket underneath had blood on them. A little had soaked through to
the sheets as well, although none to the mattress pad and (thank goodness)
to the mattress underneath.
When we took the blood-stained bedclothes to the washer, I asked, "Can
the bedspread and blanket be washed?"
"Yes," answered Alice, "but on delicate settings."
"Blood has to be washed with cold water. Otherwise, it bakes in," added
Carol. We started with the bedspread.
Meanwhile, others put on a new set of sheets, blanket, and bedspread.
The kitchen floor was cleaned up, and someone found a carpet stain remover,
and cleaned the blood from the carpet.
We didn't limit ourselves to removing the blood. Carol and I cleaned up
my room which tended to be rather messy. Ruth and Daisy cleaned up Ruth's
room. "Work is a good antidote to grief, when we can't actually do
anything," said Vanessa. I also overheard her telling Jen, "Mom says that
during my brief reappearances as Vernon, Vanessa's personally was beginning
to stick to me. I'm not sure if that's a good thing."
"I hope you don't completely lose your carefree, cheerful attitude," I
told her.
"I'll probably wind up with a mixture of both. It's all the better to
be able to say and do things that I as Vernon was too scared to attempt. I
hope I wind up with the best of both."
I sighed. "We haven't seen as much of your sister as before, ever since
she discovered that girls-only water park a month ago."
"Tracy's made a bunch of new friends there," said Bruce, as we walked
through the mall. It was about time to meet Peter to take me home for
dinner, and we were headed to the meeting point. "I've met a few of them.
They're very nice. Very hot, too. You know, Tracy keeps trying to get me
to visit Bikini Beach. I think I managed to shut her up when I pointed out
that Bikini Beach was a girls-only water park, and I didn't want to be a
girl."
We both laughed together at his joke. Then I said, "That would be a
nice idea for a fantasy TG Universe: a girls-only water park that admits
boys but changes them to girls."
Bruce sighed. "Too bad it's impossible in real life."
We reached the entrance where Peter was going to pick me up. I said,
"Peter wants me to join him in his babysitting job tonight. He thinks I
might be able to take over for him when he heads off to Pacific Tech."
"It's tough, dude. You have my sympathies."
Shortly, Peter came to pick me up. "Bye, Bruce," I said as I got in the
car.
"You don't seem very happy about joining me tonight, Kiddo," he said as
he drove off. He was right there. "Honestly, Daisy's a great client.
She's great, her parents are great, and they pay very well." My ears did
perk up at that. Peter laughed. "I'd really have you rather than some
random stranger take over for me, when I leave."
No doubt, Daisy was one of the young girls I'd seen playing around the
neighborhood, one of the Asian ones, but what did a fourteen-year-old boy
have to do with nine-year-old girls?
We arrived home shortly after Pa got home from work. Ma had dinner
almost ready. The four of us chatted about random things over dinner, and
then Peter and I left for Daisy's house.
It was just a short walk. Daisy lived a few houses down from us. Peter
and I approached the door, Peter confidently, me nervously, and Peter rang
the doorbell. Peter slipped his shoes off as we waited for someone to
answer the door, and I followed his lead.
Mr. Matsumoto opened the door. "Hello, Peter, come--"
"Ooof!" A miniature bolt of lightning shot about Mr. Matsumoto and
grabbed Peter around the waist.
"Peter!" exclaimed the nine-year-old girl wrapped around him, as Peter
patted her back. Then the girl turned to me. "So you're Peter's kid
brother." To my astonishment, she came and embraced me as well.
For some reason, I found it natural to lift her up to eye-level, and she
put her hands on my shoulders and looked me straight in the eye.
"Peter talks about you, Luke, and I feel like I know you very well.
You'll make a great big brother." I was flattered and a bit embarrassed and
flustered, and I liked her already. Not to mention that she was very, very
pretty.
"As Daisy noticed, this is my kid brother, Luke," said Peter as I
followed him inside, carrying Daisy. "I hope he takes over for me when I
leave for college, perhaps sometimes even earlier -- and Daisy appears to
approve. I'd like him and Daisy to get acquainted, so we're both working
tonight. If you don't mind, that is."
"Sounds great. I'm happy to meet you, Luke."
Despite holding Daisy with both arms, I did manage to stretch one hand
out for a handshake. "I'm pleased to meet you, too."
Mr. Matsumoto said, "Ellen will be down in a moment, and we'll be on
our way."
Daisy slid down and grabbed my hand. "Let's go downstairs and play.
The games are there." I let her lead me on.
******************************
A Bikini Beach Summer
by Daphne Xu
Part 21
Epilogue
Thanks to ElrodW, Bikini Beach's creator, for invaluable comments on
this story. The Bikini Beach universe and its principal characters are
copyright 2001 by him.
Any comments about Bikini Beach, how it works, what it does, by
characters other than Anya or Grandmother are potentially non-canonical and
wrong. As this story is told from a particular point of view by the
protagonist, this includes comments by the narrator. The protagonist, and
thus the narrative, are what the protagonist believes or interprets from
what he is experiencing. Thus some of the mechanics of BB are biased by
the protagonist's view and experiences. Furthermore, because of the
particular viewpoint of the story, those errors often won't be corrected.
When the errors are corrected, the correction will often be disbelieved and
rejected.
Late Monday Afternoon, July 28
"How did it go?" asked Grandmother, when Anya returned from seeing the
new fourteen-year-old girl Tracy off to enjoy Bikini Beach.
"Very well," answered Anya. "The reality-shift is complete. Tracy
Miura is now Bruce's twin sister. Jill and Timothy have never been
murdered, and Peter was never arrested for the murder, or sent here to
become Ruth. Neither the eight-year membership nor the lifetime upgrade
were purchased."
"Tracy's reaction to being transformed?" asked Grandmother.
"Tracy was remorseful, shocked, horrified, overwhelmed, even suicidal at
what he'd done. His parents were keeping him on a tight leash before his
arrest, not only to keep him from being caught, but also to prevent him
from turning himself in voluntarily or killing himself in his distress.
His only complaint was to ask why I didn't change him to a little baby or a
90-year-old woman.
"I was prepared to go the little baby route if he'd complained, or
become defensive or self-justifying about his crime. But there was none of
that. Just overwhelming remorse at what he'd done. She seemed skeptical
of my explanation that seventeen-year-old male Tracy never existed, and the
murder never happened. Jill Denison is still alive and well, as is Tim
Anderson. Tracy's disbelief doesn't matter; she, like everyone else,
remembers only the new reality, in which she was always Bruce's twin
sister, and she never raped or murdered anyone."
"I'm seriously concerned that the magic may not react quite the right
way," said Grandmother. "Supposedly, the reality-shift means that Ruth
never existed, but magic is more complicated than that. Undoing a lifetime
membership and reversing the change may not be that simple. The magic may
recoil or rebel instead of vanishing, and we may not have seen the last of
Ruth."
Anya said, "It would probably have been simpler to create a new reality
with another pretext for getting Peter the lifetime membership as Ruth, but
that would have been most unfair to Peter -- and ultimately, might have led
to the same controversy all over again."
Grandmother replied, "Things would also have been simpler had they let
young Jennifer visit Spells R Us. The Wizard was going to do something
about Anderson and his false jailing. He saw Anderson being murdered, one
way or the other, either in prison or outside upon being released."
"We don't know what that shifty old wizard would have done," replied
Anya. "He has nobody but himself to blame for the reputation he's got.
Also, that would still have left Jill murdered -- probably."
"That's the usual way with murders; they stand unchanged. We simply
can't reality-shift away every murder that ever occurs."
"True. In a sense, Jill got lucky that we had to repair our own
blunder. Another thing: we have to make triply sure that it never gets out
that a lifetime membership's change can be reversed -- through selling
another lifetime membership with a reality-shift in which the original
lifetime membership was never purchased. Bikini Beach transformations are
becoming an open secret, with rumors abounding. We mustn't let this ever
approach that level.
"It's still sad. A clique of BFFs was destroyed, and romances nipped in
the bud."
"But undoing the murders, and eliminating the rage and grief associated
with them, was very much worth it," Grandmother pointed out. "Those
involved will find new romances, new BFFs, or not as the fates may allow --
just like anyone else's fortune. It's even minutely possible that some
will meet again and rekindle their friendships.
"I do sense that a clique of new BFFs has formed around the original two
girls, and that the new Tracy is one of them."
"I had her join them retroactively," said Anya. "I thought she needed
friends from the start."
The END ... and a New Beginning?