"Hello?"

It was a voice she hadn't heard since spring, and she welcomed it—for the moment. "Hello, dear," said Mrs. Winslow, Augusta's mother. "You're not sitting at home alone on a Friday night again, are you?"

Same old Mom. "Let me check," said Augusta disinterestedly. Glancing at the calendar on the wall, she added, "Yes, it's a Friday. And nobody else is here as far as I can tell, so you're right."

Mrs. Winslow sighed bitterly. "You were a disappointment as a son, and now you're a disappointment as a daughter. Unless you get out of your apartment and meet someone, you'll never get married, and I'll never have grandchildren. Remember, now that you're a woman, you have a biological clock to worry about. Whatever happened to that nice psychiatrist you were seeing?"

As Augusta wondered how much of this nagging her duplicate had endured, she heard a ring at the door. "Just a minute, Mother," she said with relief. "Someone's at the door."

"Don't hang up on me, you..." Mrs. Winslow started to say, but Augusta had already flipped her cell phone closed.

Her visitor turned out to be no less a nuisance. "Good evening, Augusta," Muffy greeted her officiously. The monkey girl wore a white chiffon dress and sported a professional-looking hairdo. "All sobered up, I see," she remarked, sniffing the air.

"I'm ready, I guess," said Augusta, looking down at the beige floral dress she was wearing. "Where are we going?"

"The Elwood City Museum of Art," Muffy announced.

Augusta groaned. "I don't know the first thing about art. Who do you expect me to meet there?"

"A friend of mine," Muffy answered. "He used to work for my father, but now he's taken up sculpture."

Too apathetic to withstand the girl's insistence, Augusta locked up her apartment and led the girl to her car. "I still think you're wasting your time," she said along the way. "No one will ever replace Rick. He made me feel as if I'd been a woman all my life."

"Bailey is a perfect gentleman," Muffy assured her. "You'll love him."

That evening the art museum was hosting an exhibit entitled, 'CHESTER' AND OTHER KINETIC SCULPTURES BY CHARLES BAILEY. Muffy's former chauffer was presenting his works to a small but appreciative crowd. Gesturing toward a wire-frame structure with a tape recorder attached, he stated, "'Chester' is based on a boy who bullied me in fourth grade. The image is not so much of the boy himself, but of my perception of him filtered through many years of recollections."

Muffy and Augusta approached him just as he was concluding his tour with a demonstration of a wooden credenza which, with the turn of a crank, transformed into a many-legged spider. "Miss Muffy," he greeted his one-time charge. "What a pleasure to see you."

"Bailey, this is my friend Augusta Winslow," said Muffy. Augusta timidly put out her hand, and Bailey reached out to shake it.

"You're the lady about whom Miss Muffy has told me so much," Bailey observed. "A pleasure to meet you."

"Nice to meet you," said Augusta glibly.

"Have you had a chance to examine the other exhibits?" Bailey asked the rabbit woman.

"No, I haven't," Augusta replied. "Can you believe it? I've been living here all summer, and this is my first time at the art museum."

Bailey started to lead her through the rooms of the museum, showing off paintings by Renault, Vandermeer, and Mondriaan. "I have been a connoisseur of the visual arts since youth," he related.

Augusta stopped in front of a Mondriaan painting, which featured a number of colored rectangles. "This isn't art," she commented. "Anyone could paint this."

"Not anyone, madam," said the unruffled Bailey. "It requires years of practice and thought to make such a powerful statement using only simple shapes and primary colors."

"I still say it looks like a floor plan," Augusta insisted.

"Perhaps art is not one of your stronger points," said Bailey. "What about literature? I have been indulging of late in the works of the French masters—Hugo, Dumas, Rabelais..."

"I don't know if Malleus Maleficarum counts as literature," said Augusta hopefully.

"I haven't heard of it," said Bailey curiously. "Is it a work of Roman antiquity?"

Seeing that the conversation was going nowhere in circles, Augusta decided to change the subject. "Do you like basketball?"

"I'm more of a cricket man," answered Bailey.

"I was quite a basketball player once," Augusta boasted.

"Odd," said Bailey, narrowing his eyes. "I've always felt that women are ill-suited for such a demanding sport."

Even Muffy, by this time, had come to the conclusion that Bailey and Augusta had nothing in common whatsoever.

Once Augusta had bid farewell to Bailey, Muffy started to propose more ideas. "Tomorrow night I'd like you to meet Mr. Wells. He's an interior decorator. Knows everything about feng shui. And maybe next week you can meet..."

"I'm sorry," Augusta interrupted her, "but I'm busy tomorrow night."

Muffy stared at her unbelievingly. "B-busy? Doing what?"

Augusta quickly thought of an excuse. "Maria and I are going to a club."

"A club? Oh, what fun! Chess club? Drama club?"

"Nightclub."

Muffy knew almost nothing of nightclubs—those crowded, flashy places where only people over the age of eighteen were allowed to enter. "Which one?" she asked stupidly.

"There's only one nightclub in Elwood City," Augusta replied. "And that's the Fifth Street Meat Market."

"No problem, then," said Muffy confidently. "I'll tell Mr. Wells to find you there."

Augusta stifled a groan. Muffy's earnestness both touched and annoyed her, and she didn't wish to hurt the girl's feelings. Come Saturday night, she would have to face either an offended little girl, or dozens, possibly hundreds, of single men gawking at her body...

----

The next morning, Beat Simon was as grounded as a lightning rod. Unable to leave her apartment, she lounged on the couch and watched nature documentaries on the small TV. Occasionally she talked to her mother, who was typing out a new fantasy novel on the computer, about her odd and inexcusable behavior of the previous day.

"There's something I haven't asked you about," said Mrs. Simon, looking away from the screen at her not-so-little daughter. "Many women get grumpy once a month because of something that happens in their bodies. Maybe that's what you were feeling when you attacked Alberto. Have you noticed any..."

Beat suddenly interrupted her biology lesson by screaming in terror.

On the TV screen, a large copperhead snake was slithering among the rocks and cactus in the Arizona desert.

"What is it?" asked Mrs. Simon in alarm.

Beat, her heart pounding like a drum, found that the fear had vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The snake was still sliding about, flicking its tongue, but she felt strangely ambivalent about it.

"The snake," she muttered in disbelief. "The snake on the telly frightened me."

"You've never been afraid of snakes before," Mrs. Simon observed.

"True," said Beat. "How very odd."

Unsettled by the weirdness of her feelings, Beat switched off the TV and retired to her bed. Lying on her stomach, she carefully pondered the events of the past two days. The most obvious explanation was that Andrew Putnam's memories and personality were resurfacing in her brain, after having been "erased" months ago. She had feared this might happen ever since discovering that she had advanced martial arts skills in spite of never having trained.

Yet that wouldn't explain the reaction to the televised snake. Andrew Putnam wasn't afraid of snakes—Mavis Cutler was. But why would Mavis copy her mind into Beat's? It made no sense at all.

I must warn Frankie, she thought, turning over and reaching for her cell phone.

Yet something stopped her.

She began to entertain wicked thoughts. "Maybe I should let it happen—let Mr. Putnam take over my brain. Let him deal with the craziness of growing up as a prematurely pubescent girl. He's more mature—surely he can handle it better than I can."

Then her better self took control. "Why am I thinking like this? Is Mr. Putnam influencing me? Is it already too late?"

Sitting up, she quickly and determinedly called Francine's number.

"You have reached the Frenskys. To leave a voice message, press 1 now, or wait for the tone."

Beat sighed with despair. She had forgotten it was Temple Saturday.

----

Moving to a new place, or staying with a new family, nearly always had the same effect on Sue Ellen—she caught a cold.

As she propelled herself through the Atlantic Ocean with plastic flippers on her feet, breathing with the help of a scuba mask and two small oxygen tanks strapped to her back, the pressure building up in her ears became harder and harder to bear. Soon she gave up, returned to shore, and trudged through the sand toward the wooden shack containing the washrooms.

No matter how much she shook her head or wiggled her cat ears, she felt as if someone had crammed conch shells into them—all she could hear was the roar of the ocean.

Resigned to wait until the pressure wore down naturally, Sue Ellen pulled off her cumbersome flippers and carried them with her across the sandy beach. Mr. and Mrs. Krantz sat on a wooden bench, eating hot dogs they had purchased from an adjacent snack bar. She would have called out to them, but she didn't feel like talking.

As she walked up to them from behind, her clogged ears picked out some of the words that Mrs. Krantz was speaking to her husband. She couldn't believe them.

"I've made up my mind. I want to abduct Sue Ellen."

"So do I," Mr. Krantz replied.

"Then we're agreed," said the moose woman.

Sue Ellen froze in terror. She had never imagined this in her worst fantasies. The Krantzes, who had treated her so kindly during the past week, were secretly plotting to kidnap her. Shocking scenarios raced through her brain. Were they also responsible for Fern's kidnapping? Were they in league with the enemy agent who had murdered her parents?

She knew she had to get away from them—to get help. Dropping the scuba flippers, she turned and ran as fast as her sand-warmed feet would take her. She was miles away from her neighborhood and her friends. Where would she find someone to protect her?

----

to be continued