It's an average day at Wonderflonium High School, called 'Wonder High' by most due to the fact that only the most extraordinary students attend it. From super-heroes to super-villains, you have to be super to go to Wonder High. This story is about when one girl destroyed it all.
Carrie Rayne laughed a laugh of nightmarish proportions. She had a gun in one hand and unlimited physical strength in the other. She began her evil reign by walking slowly through the aisle of cowering students. A person she didn't know was staring up at her, begging her to stop. She felt an urge to listen to him--briefly, before she pulled the trigger.
Suddenly, Carrie woke up. In a cold sweat, she slowly realized it had all been a dream. She was pretty freaked out at the thought of her as an evil maniac destroying the school...but on the other hand, that boy was kinda cute...she shook the thought away. She had to get ready for school.
It was her first day of her sophomore year at Wonder High, but Carrie was dreading it. She glanced at the clock and wished she had telekinesis like the Carrie in the movie. All she had was empathy, a power she hated more than anything. As if she didn't have her own emotions to worry about. Aside from the occasional levitation, that was all Carrie was good at.
Sighing, Carrie decided there was no point in trying to go back to sleep since she only had about four minutes of sleep left anyway. She got up out of bed, grabbed her notebook that contained her favorite perfectionist sketches of various trees and flowers, and put on her favorite T-shirt designed to look blood-stained and well-worn blue jeans with holes in the knees.
"Morning, sunshine!" said a cheerful voice as Carrie entered the kitchen. "Hi, mom." she replied as she pulled a box of Cheerios out of the cabinet. Squinting at the box, she debated whether or not to rhetorically ask what was so cheerful about little spherical circles and chose to remain silent. Suddenly, her face went pale as she saw the school bus drive away from her house. "Oh, crap." thought Carrie as she grabbed her backpack and ran out the door. She pulled her bike out of the driveway and got on it. Carrie did not want to be late.
POP!
Well, that wasn't a good sound.
Kneeling down beside her rusty red bike, Carrie's eyes went wide as she realized that her tire had, in fact, popped. She was almost done thinking a long string of profanities, when suddenly she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Hi, I'm new to Wonderflonium High. Do you know where it is?"
Carrie froze. There, standing in front of her, was the best looking boy she had ever seen. And he was talking to her. Her. Carrie Rayne, resident dork/empath.
"Um, I'm sorry, do you go there? It's ok, sorry for wasting your time. I'll ask someone else.."
"NO! NO! I mean, uh, yeah, I go there. Wonder High! Right this way. Big building thataway with 'Wonder High' in big letters. Yup, Wonder High!" stammered Carrie. "Oh, ok. Guess I should have picked up on that. My name's Billy, what's yours?" he replied to Carrie's incoherent mumblings. "I'm Carrie. Empathetic floaty-girl, that's me! So, tell me, why are you special? Not that you aren't---I mean that Wonder High's kind of a private school--I'm gonna shut up now." Billy smiled at her. "I'm a science dork. I love chemistry and stuff." Carrie couldn't believe what she was hearing. "You? A dork? You retard." she deadpanned as she turned to walk away (since she was already late for first period).
Great. She just called the boy of her dreams a retard. "Smooth, Carrie." she thought to herself.
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"Carrie Rayne, come in, take a seat." Carrie was overjoyed to find that her first-period teacher was Ms. Kowitt, the teacher who read minds and, thus, knew when an excuse was legit or made up. Carrie was just about to start praising God right then and there when she saw the only two seats that were left. They were both next to HIM.
Billy.
The boy she suddenly loved and yet called a retard all in thirty minutes.
How was she going to do it without vomiting?
Slinging her backpack over her shoulder, she realized that she was not, in fact, the latest student to class. While most students at this school had a sort of built-in clock that prevented this from happening, Carrie knew of one student who was by far the exception to the rule.
Jennifer "Jinx" LaMour.
Suddenly, the door fell down and a short, messy haired blonde stumbled into the room. She stood up and tried to adjust herself, only to accidentally unwind 3/4 of her skirt because a thread had caught on to a loose nail. Nobody was surprised by this, because Jinx's only power was to be ironically, incredibly, and pitifully unlucky. She had worse luck than a cat going under a black ladder, which had happened once when she brought her black cat, Damien, to Pet Day and tripped and fell under the janitor's ladder.
"Sorry I'm late. I couldn't get my locker open, then when I did it turned out one of the seniors booby-trapped it to launch a pie in my face. Then I went to the bathroom to go clean it off, and Misty Pleasant pushed me into the boys' bathroom, but the principal didn't see that part, and I got written up."
Carrie winced at hearing this story. It was true that Carrie did not lead a particularly blessed life, but surely karma did not hate her as much as it did Jennifer. Carrie, having a horrific stroke of empathy, went and helped Jennifer up. "Here," said Carrie, untying her jacket from around her waist. "You can use this to cover up..well...your skirt isn't really dress code appropriate now...so here.." Jennifer smiled and accepted. "Thanks Carrie." she said, then got up and scurried to her seat...then tripped again over a paper clip someone left on the floor.
Billy looked amazed at the misfortune of Jennifer, but she shrugged it off. "It's nothing, really. I'm just an unlucky person...a really, mind-staggeringly unlucky person." As Carrie slowly began to realize how slim her chances were with this dream boy, she got a little jealous. Let's just say that it was the first awakening of her evil side.
"Jennifer, I don't see why you have to throw yourself at every boy in the area. Give the man some space, or at least some Rohypnol so he doesn't have to remember what horrible things you do to him." As soon as these venomous words exited her mouth, her good self immediately took over. "Oh no! Jennifer, I'm so sorry! I don't know what came over me. Please forgive me, I didn't mean any of it!" Jennifer, meanwhile, was too confused to even begin comprehending any of this.
The bell rang at that moment, and everyone ran out of the room. Carrie, however was far too mortified to even move. What had come over her? Carrie was by no means perfect, but she didn't think she was evil. Shaking her head, she dismissed it as a really bad case of the green eyed monster. She ran to catch up with Jennifer and Billy.
She ran too fast and bumped into Misty Pleasant, the most popular girl in the school. She did not live up to her name. If you weren't popular, Misty didn't want anything to do with you. Misty glared at Carrie most bitterly, a "gift" that most people claimed was her real power, even though she was admitted to the school for her ability of Pyrokinesis. Translation? Fire.
"What are you looking at, loser?" Carrie's face turned a deep red. "I--uh--it's--you see, I--" Misty cut her off. "Listen, Rayne, don't waste your breath. Well, you totally could and I wouldn't care, but the point I am trying to make is that you are a loser and that I don't want to be caught talking to you. You have empathy, right? Well read this emotion, dork: Get away from me and go f--urk--!"
Carrie had calmly lifted her hand up and closed it around Misty's throat. As her grip got tighter, her face showed more and more evil pleasure. As suddenly as it has started, Carrie dropped Misty on the floor. "You bore me and I am tired of seeing you. Get out of my line of vision, you little useless waste of matter."
Suddenly, just as Carrie was beginning to snap out of it, she heard a teacher's voice ring out her name. "RAYNE, CARRIE! REPORT TO DETENTION AFTER SCHOOL!" Carrie looked in horror from the monitor to Misty's unconscious body.
[after school]
"Name, please?"
"Carrie Rayne."
The lady at the front desk looked shocked. "That's odd. Usually the kids in here have powers like super strength and things like that. In fact, we usually only get guys in detention."
Carrie sighed and sat down. She looked completely mortified, and who could blame her? Given that most of the kids at this school had huge egos (especially the kids with powers like mind control and super strength), small,scrawny Carrie was out of place. She tried to sort of melt away into a corner and tried to ignore the school's conspiracy theorist, Johnny Foxx, screaming about how nobody could handle the truth.
Now, Johnny Foxx's IQ had been tested and he had gotten a score of around 288 which is, of course, no where near possible. Despite this, however, nobody at the school took him seriously. He talked about stupid things like aliens and whatnot. But his words, to Carrie, had struck a nerve. Carrie's head was so dizzy and confused that she genuinley could not handle anything at that moment, much less the truth. (The fact that Billy's line was one used the world over, and probably by Chuck Norris at some point, went over Carrie's head)
The truth. What was the truth? Before Carrie could begin to finish this thought, in walked Penny LaMour.
What is there to say about Penny LaMour. Well, the list is either a good one or a bad one, depending on if you ask the boys of Wonder High or the girls. Neither list is anywhere near appropriate to post. However, there is a common denominator: To Penny's face, everyone loves her. They can't help it. Whether they know it or not, they love Penny. It's in their DNA. Therefore, she was a very popular girl among Wonder High students.
Of course, Penny didn't go to Wonder High. She was stunningly beautiful and an evil, clever shrew. Neither alone will get you into Wonder High. Penny went to Agatha's School for Aspiring Young Ladies. To this day, no one knows what the heck that is supposed to mean, if anything. Most will tell you that it's all important sounding nonsense. This is probably true.
"Okay, so the fact that you're in here is NOT good. It means your in detention. And detention is where you go if you are bad. So you are all bad. And that's not good." Like the name of the school she went to, the words leaving Penny's mouth were cleverly (or not so cleverly in this case) arranged to sound important. Carrie had forseen Penny's arrival. Occasionally Wonder High would send especially threataning students to have nice and friendly, albeit far from legal, chats with girls who did bad. Agatha's did more or less the same thing. They figured that if your being talked down to by a stunningly pretty girl, you will feel bad. Never did they take into account girls like Carrie. Well, Carrie was tired of listening to Penny's cumbersome 'speech' after the first few minutes. So she zoned out. She imagined the picture of Billy she would draw with oil pastels once she got home. She did everything but listen to Penny in those thirty minutes. And while at first it was pretty easy for Carrie to blend into the wall, soon her lack of total engrossment caught Penny's eye.
After everyone was released, Penny caught Carrie by the shirt collar. Carrie, wincing at this unwanted attention, tried to just shut up and get this over with. This was bad enough without Carrie having to open her big fat mouth. "So. Rayne, is it? Carrie Rayne? You don't want to listen to me? I think you'll want to listen to me from now on. Carrie, I hate you. That means by tomorrow, the whole school will hate you. I am going to make your life miserable." Now, this did not faze Carrie as much as you might think. Carrie's life was already miserable. She felt that Penny was a little slow on that one. The only way it could conceivably become any worse was if...
At that moment, Billy walked past the open door. He didn't take one look into the detention room, much to Carrie's delight. If Penny didn't find out that Carrie liked him, there was still hope. Sadly, this was not to be. Penny grew a smirk that would put the Chesire Cat to shame. "You like him. Nooo, you love him. Don't deny it, Carrie. It's coming off you in waves. Too bad he'll never know that. Because I get what you want. He will be mine because you want to be with him. It's that simple."
Penny sashayed away, leaving Carrie to pick up the pieces. But Carrie just sighed, picking up her backpack and dragging herself home.
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"Hey, hon, how was school?" Carrie's mother was the eternal optimist, but Carrie simply couldn't be cheered up at that moment. So she told her mom the truth. "They guy I have a crush on is being stolen by what is essentially sex on legs. That's how school was." Her mother gave her a sympathetic look. "Aw, I'm sorry to hear that. Maybe tomorrow will be better." Carrie sighed and went up stairs.
Carrie closed and locked the door behind her, pulled out an easel, and began her work. Of course, she had no picture to go by, just her memory. This made it turn out even better than it would have otherwise. Had she a picture, she may have noticed little unimportant flaws about him, like the fact that his nose is just a little bit bigger than normal, or that his eyes are a slightly dim shade of blue. But she didn't notice these things, because in her mind he was perfect, and she finished the painting feeling slightly proud.
Carrie hung her picture up against the wall (in her closet) and thought about what Penny had said. She knew she was screwed. Carrie couldn't compete against Penny in...well, anything. For starters, Carrie didn't consider herself to be attractive. She had blonde frizzy hair that always looked bad, thyroid gland eyes, and crooked front teeth. She was thin, but only in that scrawny, mousy way, as opposed to the glamorous, supermodel way that Penny rocked.
Also, Carrie was flat. Flatter than posterboard flat. And Penny...well, she was endowed. Let's leave it at that.
But if Carrie knew one thing, it was this: guys tell their female best friends everything. They're the closest thing to a girlfriend sans the kissing and holding hands. Carrie could settle for that. And that was her plan.
So as Carrie tucked herself into bed, a little voice whispered in her ear, "You can do better."
For the next few weeks, both women achieved their goals: Penny became more and more attractive to Billy, and Carrie became more and more of his friend. In fact, he saw Carrie more. They had a hangout--the P.E. locker room, which was coed. They usually stayed there after school and talked about stupid stuff, funny stuff, the way friends do. Carrie was fine with this. She could certainly hold her feelings in...couldn't she?
The answer was no. See, she could hold it in. Every fake smile she put on when penny came up in conversation, every time she desperatley wanted to come clean but kept quiet, and every time she remained polite, even friendly, when Penny came along brushing up against Billy in ways Carrie found totally creepy. Every time she did these things, her evil side, or 'Evil Carrie' as it had dubbed itself, grew.
It became so evil that it was one little push away from pushing Carrie off of the cliff of sanity for good. That's what happens when you bottle up your emotions. Evil Carrie was pissed at Billy and wanted revenge. Good Carrie loved him to pieces. What's a girl to do?
Let's find out!
Carrie was just about to leave--it was 5:00 and she had to get home in time for dinner. That was when Billy and her always parted, anyway. So Carrie waved at him goodbye and left. The sad thing? Carrie could have been utterly oblivious had she remembered on the first try one simple thing: her purse. But she didn't. So she went into the locker room, ready to make some stupid self depricating joke, when she saw Billy with Penny. So she hid behind a locker and watched. She couldn't believe what she saw.
Well, she could, but she definitley didn't want to. Here she was, hiding and spying behind a locker, watching her dream guy have his first kiss with the girl she destested the most. She couldn't look, but she couldn't not look. They were practically floating as their lips connected. As Carrie's eyes welled up with possesive tears that she knew were ridiculous, she ran off, mortified, confused, and heartbroken.
She knew she never had a chance with him. Somehow, this kiss had killed any chance that could have resided in Carrie's mind, as well as any of her good side that was left. Her face grew dark, and evil Carrie was here to stay. And she was going to get revenge.
As Evil Carrie snuck back to the scene of the "crime", things had gotten unimaginable. They weren't kissing still, and they weren't doing anything worse. They were sitting on the bench, holding each other. And they looked so happy that Carrie...
Carrie felt a flash of her normal self come back, and instantly became sick. As she tore herself between good and evil, heartbroken and heart destroying, she screamed in an extremely unsubtle and painfully girly way and stormed away from the location where she had witnessed them fall in love. She couldn't help but wonder how it had all happened so fast. Boys will be boys, and that's not always a good thing, but even the neediest boys in her school wouldn't go from a kiss to true love in a matter of minutes. Something was defintley up, but it didn't take Carrie long to calculate a plan to find out Penny's secret.
As Carrie returned to the locker room an hour later, in full biohazard gear, she noticed a distinct smell of pheromones in the air. Now, Carrie wasn't the kind of girl who went around smelling pheromones, so the only way she could recognize it at all was from a personal experience of her own.
A six year old Carrie had gone to the zoo with her dad. Unfortunatley for Carrie, she saw the miracle of reproduction while she was there. Maybe her sinuses were really clear that day or maybe she was just "lucky", but somehow little Carrie picked up on the sweet smell of romance chemicals in the air. That smell was identical to what she picked up on now.
And if Carrie's advanced science class had taught her anything, it was that only animals used pheromones.
Suddenly, Carrie made the connection: Penny was, in fact, super. And she knew it, too. Her power was, quite literally, attraction. (Thankfully, Penny's were not like real pheromones that induce sex on the spot. That probably would have sent Carrie into a killing spree right then and there.) Carrie felt simateniously amazed and repulsed, as well as a smidge confused. Penny obviously appealed to everyone, boy or girl, but it was clear that she sent out a special chemical signal to anyone with that elusive Y chromosone.
In other words? She wasn't an overly romantically inclined harlot, she was just born that way.
Carrie, evil or not, was now even more inclined to show everyone Penny's charade. Sure, she'd probably have to kill a person or two, but that would be a small price to pay if even one person saw through the lies. Particulary Billy. She wanted him to see it more than anyone else. And he would. Carrie would see to that.
"Hey, Billy. What's up?" Carrie's smile was cordial, her disposition sweet. Sure it was fake, but Billy had one thing that evil Carrie needed. It was shiny, sparkly, and it could erase your memory in a heartbeat. Or, more accurately, a zap.
Billy looked sickening. A dopey smile was plastered on his face, a dreary yet peaceful fog in his eyes. She knew that look, because it was the way she looked when she thought about him. Still, she ignored him. "Uh, Billy? Hello? Seriously, someone's got their head in the clouds." He snapped out of it. "Hey, Carrie? You know Penny? She's over there, by the water fountain." Carrie nodded. "She kissed me yesterday. And I think I'm in love!" She faked her smile like she had never faked it before. It was so plastered on, she didn't know if it would come off.
Remember how I danced around any sort of character development by skipping ahead a few weeks into the story? Well, perhaps I should explain something. Number one, Carrie's good friend Jinx had harnessed her powers. This is important later. And number two, Billy had harnessed his science abilites to build all kinds of crap. Including...
"Hey, you know that memory eraser you invented? Could I borrow that for a second?" He nodded and pulled it out of his backpack. Now everyone was royally screwed. Let's watch as everyone's lives go to Hell from here on out.
Carrie looked at it with sparkly anime eyes. "Ooooohhh...the blood of the innocent....I mean, uh, shiny." Just at that moment Jennifer walked by, which, as usual, meant bad luck for everyone. However, you'll remember that she learned to control her unluckiness. So this time, it's on purpose.
"Thank you, Jennifer! Just the girl I am looking for!" As she held Jennifer by her side, she pulled a real gun out of her pocket. Never mind the fact that no self respecting school would let a student just waltz in with a loaded gun. "EVERYBODY GET OUT OF THIS SCHOOL UNLESS YOU WANT SOME BRAINS TO BLOW!"
Naturally, everyone complied.
Carrie laughed a laugh of nightmarish proportions. She had a gun in one hand and the memory eraser in the other. Billy was staring up at her, begging her to stop. She felt an urge to listen to him, so she stopped, and didn't pull the trigger. Not yet.
"Not so fast, Miss Tall, Thin, and Busty. You're staying right here." Carrie smiled as she pressed the gun against Penny's head. Mmmm, power. She also held Billy back. "Now, now, you wouldn't want me to hurt your girlfriend, would you? Let's play nice, shall we?" Carrie was right about to put her plan into motion when good Carrie got a say.
"You can't do this! They don't deserve to die, Carrie!" Carrie frowned as her good side's voice rang out. "Silly girl, I'm not going to kill anybody. Killing isn't elegant or creative, and that's not how I roll. Nooooooo, I'm way worse than that. See, if you hadn't interrupted me, I would have explained it all. May I finish?" Evil Carrie didn't wait for an answer. "Good. Now please allow me to elaborate."
"See, Billy, you are a jerk. The biggest jerk there is. But for some reason Good Carrie liked you a whole lot, so I tolerated you for a while. If only I had capped you the first day---then we'd all be a lot happier. Sadly, that's not how it happened. Anyway, she was actually kind of pathetic, the way she followed you around like a puppy. Yes, she really seemd to like you. And you took her heart and crushed it. Not cool." He looked very confused, so Carrie continued. "See, here's a little tidbit about your little angel that you may not have known: She's no angel. In fact, she lives life a bit like an animal. She shows dominance through violence, first of all. And second of all, she releases pheromones. Pheromones, as a science geek like you surely knows, are chemicals sent out for all that naughty stuff that we big people call 'mating rituals.' But these are a less extreme version, thankfully. These are toned down a bit. Just enough to get you to love her." She paused, then went on.
"Point is, you basically just broke Carrie's heart, then added salt to the wounds by proceeding to date the woman who made her life Hell. Now, isn't that cold? Isn't that EVIL? Why, yes it is. But not is evil as what I am going to do to you. Actually, it is exactly as evil." She took his memory gun and shot him and Penny with it. "Now, as you know, this thing takes, oh, about five minutes to warm up, which is just enough time for me to explain how this is going to work. Jennifer?" Jennifer glared at Billy before shooting him with a bolt of purple energy. "Thank you, you may go now. Anyway, Billy, when that gun's rays take affect, you will both walk out of here thinking that you just graduated. When you walk out into the world all bright eyed and bushy tailed, you will fall in love. I don't know when and I don't know with whom. You could be anywhere from 27 to 77, and it could be anyone from Penny here to some random girl at the laundromat. But the point is that you'll fall in love with her and she'll only see you as a friend. Then she'll end up holding hands with with the guy who beats you up on a daily basis. And there WILL be such a guy. I've made sure of that."
She checked her watch. "Oh, we're almost out of time, Billy. Wow, time flies when you're having fun, huh? Well, I gotta go, and I'm sure so do you. After all, you're about to graduate. And just remember, Billy. Every ounce of pain you feel in your life is because of us. And we will be laughing."
There was a flash. Everyone who had been in the school, even those who escaped at gunpoint, was now mind wiped. As everyone ran out into the world, both evil Carrie and good Carrie were smiling.
Now he would know.