"I'm alive. I'm alive."

"You've been screaming it for the past five minutes. We know. Shut up, Heather," Duke said wearily.

"Go boil your head, Heather," Heather said.

"No," Duke retorted. Then she stopped silent, her face frozen mid-word. She stared at Heather with her mouth open like a dead fish before her mind finally came to it. "That wasn't - you didn't."

"My grandmother forced me, I didn't have a choice. I traded away my power," Heather said irritably. "She wanted to steal my body, she's dead now."

She was only just now dead. Part of Heather had hoped she'd get to keep Grandma Chandler's power, even if it wasn't as strong as her own, but it looked like the deal she'd struck didn't allow that loophole. She felt empty, brought down to normal, and she knew that both abilities were gone. At least Heather Duke doesn't murder me in my sleep now, she consoled herself.

Then she bent over double, clutching her head. Across the room, J.D. moved in the opposite way. He woke up at last.

Heather knew what he'd done.

"You were right, Chandler. It was always more of a vulnerability than a power. So I traded to take some of the edge off. Part to you, part in trade, part left to me. After all, you gave away your power - virtue always deserves a reward."

But giving her a share of that power wasn't truly a reward. Heather's head split open. She pressed her fists to her eyes, trying to hide from the flood of strange tearing waves that swept through her, glittering and sparking, like pop rocks on her tongue that she couldn't crunch or swallow down.

She regained control of herself, but her senses still expanded in every direction. She felt everyone around her and couldn't stop it from happening. J.D. looked at her as if he thought she was a worthy opponent. "I'll let myself out. Be seeing you, perhaps." As if in a flicker of dull black - and layers of complicated pressed-down feelings Heather couldn't begin to name - he was gone.

She felt Heather Duke, reaching out for some newfound freedom, her hand snaking into Veronica's. She could feel something like a scarlet ribbon between them both, drawing them together beyond physicality alone. She felt Heather McNamara, slowly waking up. And she knew that there was one person, at least, who was glad to see Heather Chandler alive.

Noise and movement downstairs. Heather jumped up. Make that three. She took the stairs two at a time and opened the front door to her parents.

They looked bewildered and mildly concerned to see her, not amazed at a miracle. And yet they were still glad to find her, a sort of rose-pink feeling of genuine affection. "You dyed your hair?" her mom scolded. "It was so beautiful before! Teenagers and their MTV video games, I suppose, as Father Ripper would say."

"If you want to help us you can, Heather," her father said, "but I think I'll hire someone else to take care of all this." He waved a hand vaguely at the house. "Even after the funeral, it's hard to believe Mother's gone. She was always so lively and active. Is there any special jewellery you want, princess ... ?"

Heather had used the last of Grandma Chandler's power - before the old woman finally died - to do something she already knew how to do. Instead of convincing an entire town that she was dead, she made them know she was alive.

"There's nothing more I want," Heather said.

At sixteen, you still weren't too old to hug your parents once in a while.

—

This time, five people with shovels dug open Heather Chandler's grave and placed Heather Chandler's body there. Grim, grisly work, but they couldn't leave her grandmother's body lying in her house to have uncomfortable questions asked. They chiselled out the birth date and left the death date in place.

"Bye, Grandma, Great-Grandma, whatever. Don't miss you." Heather threw a red rose on the grave and left without looking back.

People remembered Heather at school. They still did what she said; Heather could tell just how many were afraid of her, now.

"There are an article about your death in the paper, Heather, it was the weirdest thing ... "

"Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated."

"A TV show talked about your death as a teenage suicide, Heather ... "

"My grandmother died; we had the same name; people were confused. I'm sure you understand that feeling all too well."

"I'm sure you were, like, dead, Heather ... "

"Yes, I'm dead. Undead. I'm a sixty foot tall mutant vampire werewolf from Mars. Ugh."

"Heather, you haven't handed any homework in for over two weeks ... "

"I've been dead, give me a break!"

Walking through school hallways with her new power wasn't a pleasant thing, but Heather wasn't a quitter. She'd always lived more intensely than most people - wanting and demanding to be on top, knowing for sure that even a detail as tiny as the width of a shoulder pad could make or break your social life - and the new feelings that rushed through her were even stronger sensations.

She knew exactly what she was doing, now. Before, she'd manipulated people with a blindfold on, not quite knowing whether she swung the croquet mallet at the piñata or smashed it against Heather Duke's nose. She'd been damn good at manipulating people even then, but knowing their reactions moment by moment was a whole new world. It would have been so easy, now, to go back to her old ways and twist people to their breaking points for fun and games.

But she usually pushed people the other way. Heather could tell when people around her were in a good mood. A smile, a subtle push, a gracious That's a decent photo to Betty Finn and the girl's pliant attitude immediately reversed itself to something more cheerful. People still did what Heather Chandler said, but sometimes she'd save a freshman's dumb ass from a beating and revel at her sense of power.

Then there were the emotionally fucked up beyond imagination, feelings Heather would never have wanted to enter into of herself. There were a few she could barely feel at all, and she wondered if they were as terrible as her grandmother. Other people felt like stepping into a bath of grease, expensive hairstyle first. Heather had a chance encounter with her ex David and he fled across the street like he'd seen a ghost. Served him right, the fucker. He was a mess of hedonism and demand, getting off on the feeling of being in control. Heather supposed J.D. would have said they made a perfect couple.

She sometimes saw Westerburg High's own personal Jesse James at a distance, keeping away from Heather and her friends as if by a restraining order. She'd sometimes feel him: someone with the same ability as her, reflecting the people around him, a simmering black flame buried under ash. His father died in hospital and left him an orphan, unmourning, alone in a crowd. Heather sighed, and took steps.

And it was time, of course, for Heather Chandler to sweep the school free of all that old supernatural rubbish and start a whole new trend. If Veronica and Heather Duke were going to canoodle in near-public, hold hands, and generally look like a picture-book portrait only missing a flock of doves carrying love hearts in their claws, Heather might as well start a Sherwood branch of PFLAG. She'd be president, of course.

—

"Reports of my death were greatly exaggerated." - Mark Twain