5~
Marcie backed away from Jonny, as he approached and raised his hands at a pugnacious elevation.
"It's your Misery Date!" he said, in an evil sing-song voice.
"Sorry," Marcie quipped, while keeping her eyes on him. "You're still not my type."
Jonny smiled, easily. "Well, we'll know for sure, after my dad analyzes your blood from the floor."
Marcie tossed the history book off to the side, for safety, and then, pulled out two capsules from her jacket. She then gave a risky glance away from Jonny to Red to see how he was fairing with his opponent.
Both he and Race's hands were locked in a struggling grip, as they pushed against each other. Red sweated hard, his hands, wrists and arms aching against Race's greater strength, but he managed to hold his own.
However, Red didn't know how to proceed after this. He couldn't pull away from the grasp. Then, his mind was made up for him, as Race, suddenly, pulled Red in and launched a knee-lift into the red-head's midsection, knocking him breathless and loosening his grip.
Race twisted under the stunned Red, scooping him up into a Fireman's Carry, before tossing him off of his shoulders towards a terrified Jason, who yelped and jumped out of the way, as Red crashed into a nearby wall and crumpled onto the floor, in a heap.
As Herring got, unsteadily, back on his feet to meet Bannon, again, Hadji quietly stalked Daisy, as she kept a distance from the Indian. She didn't know what he would do, since he was calmly holding his hands behind his back, as he strolled towards her.
"Keep away from me, you, or I'll ruin my manicure on your face!" she warned.
Hadji stopped a few feet from her. "You needn't worry about me, miss. Unlike my friend, Jonny, I would never hit a lady."
Daisy dropped her guard upon hearing that. Was he going to subdue her some other way? At least, a non-lethal way?
"Really?" she asked, slightly surprised.
"Indeed," he said, bringing the fingers of one hand up to touch one of his temples. "However, this is totally different."
"Wha-" was all Daisy could utter, before the combined sensation of an ice cream headache and an icepick in her brain drove her to her knees, clutching the sides of her skull and wailing.
"Daisy!" Marcie called out, stopping her retreat and watching her friend suffer, giving Jonny time to close in on her and scoop her off her feet into a painful bear hug.
Her creaking spine and torso throbbed in agony, and her breath left her with every hiking lift and squeeze he gave. Even his laughter made his grip around her midsection constrict more.
"Usually, I'm not so touchy-feely," he joked as his arms closed around her, endeavoring to squeeze the life out of her. "But, that's what you make me feel when I'm around you!"
If Marcie had a rebuttal to that, it came out as a gasp, as her perception became light-headed.
"You're probably wondering how I got to be so strong," he said, as her kicks and strength began to wane. "I'd lie and say it was clean living, but actually, it was science. See, when your mom burned me in Gatorsburg, my dad grafted Questoid skin to my torso and arms. I'm tougher, now. Stronger. So, I guess I have your mom to thank for that. I'll be sure to do that before Pop gets through with her."
"Not...touch...my mom..."Marcie managed to cough out, before trying to think of what he said about his torso and arms, earlier. He was still vulnerable, somewhere.
"I didn't get that," Jonny said. "What did you say?"
"Head's...up..." she gasped, seething in a breath. She took the hand that held an Instan-Ice capsule, held it high over Jonny, and smashed down, hard, on the crown of his head.
She ignored the pain of the capsule's broken shell stabbing into her palm, as she dropped to the floor and watched as the capsule's contents flowed down Jonny's head, face, and neck, cooling, solidifying, and then, expanding into a rough, incasing ice block, robbing the boy of air and sight.
He fell to his knees, punching, slapping and banging his fists against the cold, thick mass, in a suffocating panic, as Marcie took a breath of her own, and called out to Daisy, again.
In her agony, Daisy opened her eyes and glanced in Marcie's direction, seeing a capsule rolling towards her. When the sphere came close enough, she snatched it from the floor, focused in on Hadji through gritted teeth, and threw it, hard, on the floor, by his feet.
The acrid, irritating smoke exploded and billowed around him, breaking his concentration, immediately, as he choked, coughed, gasped, and temporarily, lost his vision.
Hadji, clumsily, tried to fan away the miasma and back off, but then, a foot whipped into his crotch, making him collapse to the floor with a surprised squeak, as Daisy, rushed back from the mist, after her counter-attack.
Red, sporting a fresh black eye, stepped back to take the time to size Race up. The man was a stronger and a more experienced fighter than he was, Red had to admit, but as soon as Race took a step closer, Red, instinctively, reacted.
He moved forward, as well, and Race thought he was closing in for an attack, until Red's foot stamped and pressed down onto Race's.
The unexpected pain of his toes being crushed, took Race out of his focus for seconds, allowing Red to come up and ram his left fist into Bannon's gut, winding him, momentarily. A following haymaker to Race's eye, in retaliation, drove him back, stumbling.
Race gingerly blinked his bruised and aching eye, as he caught his breath, with a cough, against the angled wall behind him.
"A dirty fighter, huh?" he asked, giving his opponent a respectful nod. "I like that."
The sight from the corner of his good eye of Jonny passing out, however, put all eagerness of fighting Red out of him. With a grunt, he leapt over to the boy, and laid him down on the floor.
With no tools on-hand, Race shook his head.
"I'm sorry, kid," he apologized, quietly, as he gripped both sides of the boy's frozen head and slammed the back of it against the floor, cracking melting chunks free with every rattling blow, until the rest of the ice slid from the teen's wet, red face, like a mask.
"Jonny!" Race called to him. "Can you breathe, Jonny?"
Jonny's eyes fluttered open, looked stupefied at his savior, and muttered, "I missed you, too, Mom." Then, he slumped in Race's arms.
Down the hall, away from the chaos of the fracas, Jason saw Benton Quest calmly walk up to his location, a small staff with a glowing tip, brandished in his hand.
Jason knew that he wasn't a fighter, and that he didn't like pain of any sort, which he knew Dr. Quest would introduce to him with that device in his hand.
He backed away, and then, stopped when his heel touched something on the floor. Reaching down, he picked up the severed arm of the luckless Questoid of the incinerator and pointed it at Quest, in a quaking defensively.
"Uh, speaking as, uh, a fan of your work, before you went bad guy, sir," Jason stammered, as a quizzical Quest closed in. "I was wondering, when you designed your Questoids, did you ever place individual back-up generators in the limbs?"
Quest stopped and considered his question as a last request, wondering why he would ask it, and then, said, "Yes, I did, young man, to save space in the torso region. Why do you ask?"
With a thrust, the Questoid's hand was rammed up into Quest's throat, and with a deft twist of some trailing wires from the torn shoulder linkage that connected both the ancillary power supply and the finger servos, Jason had the robotic hand clench tight around the scientist's windpipe.
"Just curious, now, call them off," Jason warned him, shakily, bringing a sputtering Quest back to the combat zone up the hall.
Hadji, leaning against a wall to catch his breath and clear his vision, and Race, still holding up and tending to a weakened Jonny, saw an unassuming Jason guiding Benton forward, as if handled in a man-catcher.
"Hey, what are you doing to the Doc?" Race bellowed.
"Tell them," Jason, nervously, ordered Quest.
"Race...take Jonny and Hadji...to the...hangar," Benton choked out, spots of light dancing in his view. "We're...leaving..."
Bannon wanted to rush towards Jason, disarm him, and then, punch his rotund body through one of the walls, but Benton, Jonny, and Hadji needed him, and every minute that passed was another level taken over by the traitorous Questoids.
"Hadji," Race called out. "Help me with Jonny. We're out of here."
"Right," the Indian wheezed, coming over and putting an arm under his childhood friend, while Race led them into the called-down elevator.
After they entered the car, Jason guided Dr. Quest in, as if he were a cobra. With the wires' leads twisted apart, the hand sprang open, leaving red finger marks on the scientist's neck.
Benton favored the teens a look of genuine, honest hate, and whispered through his sore throat, as the door began to close, "My genius will finish you."
The descending elevator cut both adversaries from one another, leaving the gang to ponder the hanging threat Dr. Quest had left them.
"Let's wait for the next one," Marcie joked, somberly.
"Deja vu," Marcie muttered to her friends, while walking through the chaotic gatherings and mass exodus of the escaping scientists and security, outside the rotted bungalow.
"You say something, Marcie?" Daisy asked.
"This is what happened in Gatorsburg, at least, the old Gatorsburg. Lab rats leaving a sinking base. Where did you guys park?"
"By your car," said Jason.
Summoned buses drove off the road and trundled onto the open field, waiting to pick up the fearful and disillusioned, as the gang approached their waiting vehicles.
Marcie was about to open the door to her VW, when a sudden roar startled her and everyone outside, as all watched a white, modified private jet climb from the direction of the cliff face, and then, power high over the Pacific, that early evening.
"I guess those guys we tangled with, bugged out," Red reasoned. "What happens, now?"
"Well, Quest bowed out as my lead to getting information on Greenman, since Greenman tried to liquidate their partnership...by liquidating the partner. So, at the moment, Red, your guess is as good as mine," Marcie shrugged, tossing the history book into the front passenger seat, and then, stepping into her car.
As the others piled into Daisy's sports car, the cell phone in Marcie's jacket chimed.
"Hello. Oh! Hi there, Schrödinger. How are you?"
"I'm fine, Marcie," the cat answered. "However, you must come over to Sundial, at once. Something...has happened."
She could only think of one thing that mattered to her, at all, there.
"Hang on, Schrödinger!" Marcie told him, while starting up the car. "I'm on my way!"
She called out the rest of the gang. "Guys, something's up at Sundial! Follow me, there!"
The Siamese sat on top of his desk, watching the door of his office open and admit four teens, one of them, looking a little more anxious than the rest.
"Thank you for being so prompt," Schrödinger said, as he walked over to where the concealed monitor's controls were and batted at the button that revealed the screen from behind the large, wall portrait.
"What's going on?" asked Marcie. "Why did you call us?"
"Someone important wanted to speak with you, personally," the cat explained, as the monitor focused and corrected resolution to bring forth the image of a surly-looking, world-weary man with iron eyes behind his tinted glasses.
"Mr. Ellison?" Marcie said, recognizing the man more as the author, and not a university professor. "You wanted to see me?"
"Yes, I did, and it's Professor, dearie," he corrected. "I understand that it was you who gave my students a hard time, after you figured out what had happened when they appeared in your world."
"Well, yes, but-" Marcie tried to explain, recognizing, at once, who his students were.
"And you, recklessly, took it upon yourself to try and fix the situation, by returning the displaced, native versions of my students back from the past, early, after you managed to steal a time machine and shanghai another bunch of teens."
"Well, I don't think I shanghaied them, per se-"
"And you did all of this, in the middle of trying to piece together why, in the world, did the timeline of the world just change, completely. Am I correct in my understanding of all of this?" he asked, gruffly.
Marcie wondered if he really wanted to speak to her, as opposed to speaking with her, as she failed to understand why she was called all this way, just to be given a professional dressing down by the man, but she nodded, if just to end this harangue.
"Yes, sir," she said, quietly.
"Taking time from my busy schedule of trying to mold young minds into my own intelligent image, I wanted to tell you that...you did well enough, despite your obvious lack of discipline."
Marcie stood dumbfounded; an expression the professor always felt that he was cursed to see on the faces of the young.
"You remind me of a me, a long ago, when I had more nerve than sense. I'd tell you not to take this as a compliment, but because it came from me, you probably will."
As the others gathered around Marcie, he explained the reasons for his little chat. "I detected the reweaving of this Earth's history before the changes had a chance to reach the Twenty-first Century, and made sure that Mystery Incorporated cut their little road trip, early, to get to Miskatonic University, at my personal urging. The Annunaki may have shielded them from this Earth's timeline, at first, but I wasn't going to gamble with them being assimilated into this new one."
"You mean that they're protected?" Daisy asked the professor.
"Yes, dear," Ellison muttered, not liking to be interrupted by this unfamiliar girl. "The ancient, cosmic nature of the town of Arkham protected itself, and its people, from the change in history, just like your Crystal Cove have done, I can assume, by some other means. The kids wanted you to know that they're safe, and to thank you for whatever fool things you've done to help out."
Marcie gave a grateful smile in the face of that gruff message. After all the misunderstandings and struggles of the heart that they both waded through, the wayward teens from a war-torn town in an alternate Earth, were now free to pursue what they had been promised. Despite the chaotic situation in town, she began to feel some order in the world.
"Would you tell them that we wish them all luck?" Marcie asked him.
"Why?" Ellison asked. "They've been loitering in my office, listening to you, the whole time."
Just then, Mystery Incorporated rushed in around their grousing professor, and waved at Marcie and her gang.
"Hey! You guys made it!" Jason cheered.
"Of course!" Fred said. "You don't think a little thing, like history being rearranged, would stop us from a lifetime of mystery-solving, do ya?"
"It's a shame that we had to stop and make a bee-line to Arkham, but, all things considered, it was, definitely, for the best," Daphne added.
"Yeah, like, we would have been gone without a trace, if we didn't get Mr. E's message, right away. Right, Scoob?"
"Yeah! Gone, like an All-You-Can-Eat Buffet!" the Great Dane concurred.
"In any case, we wanted to thank you for what you did," Velma said, focusing her words to Marcie, in particular. "You guys threw a bucket of cold water on us to make us see what we were doing to others, here."
"That's okay, Velma," Marcie nodded. "You made us see what it was like being in your shoes. It opened our eyes. I'm just glad that it ended on a high note."
"Oh, I don't think it's quite over, yet," Dinkley said, cryptically.
"What do you mean?" Marcie wondered, aloud, following Velma's slight glance behind her.
Marcie turned, and for a moment of impossible magic, her troubles disappeared under the shy smile of a freed Velma Dinkley, standing inside the office threshold, beside her native associates, while their doubles grinned.
"V!"she shouted, not believing that his day would happen.
"Sis!"Daisy cried out, running over and crushing a laughing Daphne in a swinging, elated bear hug.
Marcie jogged over to her and squeezed the air out of her, with her thin arms. Velma could only hug back, breathless, but happy.
"Miss...you...too...Marcie," Velma managed to gasp, hoping that she didn't pass out before too long.
Unseen by anyone in Schrödinger's office, at the moment, Velma pressed her lips together in a tight smile, watching the veracity of emotion shine between the two girls as they embraced, and she tried to bury her own emotions under a bittersweet facade of congratulation.
Like an island of sourness in a positive sea, Professor Ellison grumbled, "Yes, this Kumbaya moment is touching, but I have papers to grade, idiots to fail, and ancient enigmas of the cosmos to explain, and I can't do that if I'm stuck in this greetings card. So, if you don't mind, I'm going to hang up, now."
He reached over to switch the camera off, on his end, but before the screen went dark, the last image the jubilant people in the cat's office saw, that they wanted to take away with them, was the beaming faces of Mystery Incorporated, wishing their counterparts good fortunes, long lives, and endless mystery.
"What happened?" Scooby-Doo asked, grateful for his release from limbo, but confused at how that release had turned out.
"I don't know," Fred shook his head. "I'm not used to all of this weirdness, myself."
"Like, does anybody know if we have to go through any of that status stuff, again?" the native Shaggy asked.
"It's stasis, and no," Schrödinger told him, hiding the monitor, again. "Your doubles are in another place, now. You are all free to live your lives, once again."
Daisy put her arm around her sister's shoulder. "But first, there are some people who've been wanting to see you for a long time, sis."
Marcie, who had released Velma from her death grip, concurred with a grin. "Daisy's right, V! Believe it or not, it's time I took you home to meet the folks!"
The receptionist sat bored in her kiosk, which sat between the waiting room and the office of a quaint little building in a quiet neighborhood that served as the location of a private practice of a pair of obstetricians.
The two doctors stepped out of the office, focusing on the stacks of folders full of medical records, in their hands, as one of them spoke to the receptionist.
"Good night, Sharon. See you tomorrow," the woman doctor said.
"Oh, Doctor Chiles. There's a gentleman in the waiting area. He said that you know him."
"Did you tell him that we're closing?" the male doctor asked, as the two prepared to pass the kiosk.
A familiar voice from the room ahead, said, "She did, but I told her that you guys wouldn't mind."
Brad and Judy Chiles looked up from balancing their stacks of paperwork, and then, let it fall, in shock, upon seeing their only child looking as tall, strong, and handsome as the last time they had seen him, lo those many long months ago.
"Freddy!" they called out to their son.
Stepping over the forgotten folders, the parents rushed into the room and held their boy, again.
Paula Rogers examined a dubious angle of the topiary in the family garden, making a note to get in touch with the landscaping people, tomorrow.
"That's the trouble with nature," she muttered to herself. "It's so hard to maintain."
She turned to walk over to where her husband had been inspecting the condition of their roses, when the sound of something weighty crept along the short grass of an enclosed, private space of the garden, nearby.
"Colton," she whispered, aloud, pointing at the hedged section of the yard. "Did you hear that?"
Her husband stood up from his stem inspection and approached the area. "It's probably gophers," he reasoned. "They do come around at night. I'll call the exterminator tomorrow to check it out."
Something far larger than a gopher bounded from the hedges and brought Mr. Rogers to the ground, licking his face, happily.
It took a few moments for him to recognize that tackle, but when he did, he sputtered in surprise, "Sco-Scoobert, you're here?"
The family dog stopped his affectionate attack in time for someone else to come from the rent hole in the bushes.
Mrs. Rogers covered her mouth to control the emotions that overwhelmed her, as her son stepped from the hedges, nervously giggling over the trouble the Great Dane had done to their prized garden.
"Like, sorry, Mom and Dad," Shaggy apologized. "I guess Scoob was just super happy to see you guys."
Not one for open displays of affection, Mrs. Rogers went to her son and took him her arms, hugging him for dear life, while Mr. Rogers stood up, again, and brushed himself off.
"Norville! Where have you two been? When did you get back?"
Shaggy gave a wan smile and shook his head. "Mom, Dad, you wouldn't believe us, if we told you."
"We'll give it a try, son," his grateful father assured him, as he patted Shaggy's shoulder. Soon, they all walked into the mansion, under the darkening sky.
"I didn't know that Cassidy Williams was preggers," Nan Blake told her husband, Barty, upon reading her social magazine, in the lounge of their mansion. "We must get her something for the baby shower, but what do you get the woman who has it all?"
"Hmm," he considered, after putting down his financial newspaper. "What did we get you, dearest when you were carrying the girls?"
"Oh, that's right! A-"
A slight noise distracted the couple, with Barty lifting his head and calling out, "Who's there?"
"It's me, Daddy," Daisy answered from the foyer.
"You're not bringing in more of that junk you keep collecting, are you?" Nan asked, wearily. "Your father and I simply can't abide that scent of motor oil in your room. You smell like that boy you hang around with."
"No, but I think you're gonna like what I did bring with me!" she countered, cheerfully, walking into the living room with a grinning sister in tow.
"Bless my eyes!" Barty gasped when he saw who it was. "Honey, Daphne's back!"
"Daphne?"
Nan's attention tore away from the magazine, and months of worry and lies to her friends came back to her, the only response and the only way she could cope with her youngest daughter's absence.
Water welled in her eyes and the pain of the past was exorcisized upon seeing her. She flew from her chaise, and followed her husband in rushing over to her, not caring how uncouth it was to be seen being carried away by one's emotions, like an upper middle-class commoner.
She showered Daphne with teary kisses, while Barty squeezed his daughter and whispered into her hair about never letting her go, again.
The warmth of the tea felt good to Angie, as she sat by the register and counted the profits from the day.
She sold more newspapers and magazines that told about the strange nature of the world and how it was disrupting the life of the town, than any other reading material. Such weirdness was right in her bailiwick, and she decided to go into her Weird World forum tonight, after work. Between this, and the visitation she had in the store basement with a ghostly mirror of herself, a few weeks ago, there would be plenty to talk about.
A light knock on the window of the front door interrupted Angie's thoughts. She stood up from behind the counter, and walked through the empty bookstore, towards the locked door.
Approaching the door, she called out. "I'm sorry, but I'm closed. I'll be open, again, at nine in the morning."
"I don't know if I can wait that long," Velma's voice said, amicably, from the other side.
Angie rushed to the window and peered out of it. A few feet from the door stood Marcie, and next to her, was a miracle.
She unlocked the door and pulled it open in haste, ran outside and grabbbed her only daughter in an embrace to rival Marcie's.
"Oh, my little Velma!" Angie whispered. "I was so worried that I'd never see you again!"
"Worried...never breathe...again..." Velma gasped.
"What was that, dear?" Angie asked, finally, releasing her.
Velma caught her breath and looked at her mother. Months had passed by between them, a veritable lifetime of pining and pain between eras, and seeing the tears running down her mother's cheeks opened up the floodgates within her, as well.
She stepped up to Angie and, gently, hugged her right back, refusing to deny herself the sweet agony of missing her.
"I miss you, too, Mom!" the girl sobbed against Angie's shoulder.
This went for long, necessary moments, as Marcie looked on, beaming with pride that she did what she set out to do, successfully. A family, in fact, several families, were reunited this day, even if hers wasn't, and the satisfaction of that kept the hope alive in her that one day, when all of this craziness was over, she and her family could be whole, once again.
She turned away from the happy scene, and was about to walk to her car, when a hand grasped the collar of her blouse and jacket, and pulled her back.
Marcie stumbled backwards and was suddenly gathered into Angie and Velma's arms. They knew that this wonder couldn't have happened if Marcie hadn't risked so much to make it so. With that mutual hug, they did more than just acknowledge her heroics, they told her that she was and always would be a member of their family.
With a moved heart, Marcie couldn't help thinking how ironic it was that something as strong as a bond could break her into so many emotional pieces.
"Your folks are really making up for lost time," Marcie said, buttoning up her pajama top and sitting in one side of the wide four-poster bed in Velma's bedroom. "A picnic on the weekend, a trip to the science museum, it's like the town's not going off the deep end. If you have some time, maybe you'd like to come over to my dad's park."
Velma poked her head through the collar of her nightgown, and then, smoothed out her bobbed hair. "Cotton Candy and fast, scary rides? After months of square dances and quilting bees, it sounds like the most fun I could have outside of a lab! Sign me up!"
"If I see my dad, again, I'll move Heaven and Earth to convince him to give you a discount," Marcie offered.
'If she see her dad, again?' Velma thought, catching that reply and the note of the forlorn that came from Marcie, a sadness that she tried to hide under the air of joviality, one that she was familiar with when it came to her.
She didn't want to dwell on it, but something in her always wanted to help, even if all she could so was listen to the problem.
"You're not seeing him?" Velma asked, quietly. "Is that why you crashed, here, because you and your dad aren't talking?"
Marcie wanted to shove a shoe in her mouth because of her vulnerabilities. Her heart, subconsciously, demanded that her pains be put to words and communicated, when all she wanted to do was make Velma's return to her life as drama-free as possible.
"Ugh! I'm sorry, V. The last thing I want to do is ruin your time back home."
Velma sat on her end of the bed, but reached a hand over to hold one of Marcie's, in consolation.
"Talk to me."
It didn't seem fair to burden her with any of this, but Marcie sighed and, reluctantly, unburdened herself. "It's Greenman! Ever since he showed up in town, he's done everything he could to tear my dad and me down. I know that it has something to do with Dad's amusement park, and now that he forced my dad to sell it to him, I can't help thinking that all the trouble he made for us has something to do with what he's done to the world, so far."
"From what you told me about him, I still can't believe that he was able to go back in time and change the world," Velma admitted. "It was hard enough believing that you traveled back in time. Plus, Crystal Cove is unaffected by the altered timeline? Talk about culture shock. No wonder the town's coming unglued."
"Yeah, it's a mess, all right, V, and it doesn't look like anyone knows what to do about it. Some want to leave town, some want to stay and try to make sense of all of this, and others...they're just lashing out in confusion and taking advantage of the breakdown. Looting, vandalism, it goes on and on."
Velma quietly considered the citizens' options and wondered if her parents had ever explored those same choices, since this situation was getting bigger than was comfortably possible to handle.
"It's a good thing that my parents didn't leave before I could come back," she sighed, gratefully. "I wouldn't know what to do, if they did."
Marcie nodded. "This was the only place I could think of going to when I ran away, and I wouldn't know what to do if they left town, either. But, your folks are strong, V. They're stronger than the weirdness."
'What a time to return,' Velma thought, glumly. 'Right in the middle of some temporal crisis.'
She sighed, again. Fearing that Marcie was right about bringing her down with such negativity, she opted to change the subject, and leaned out from under the roof of her bed to glance at the posters of stylish chemical icons and Ska artists on the walls, next to her own posters.
"You mentioned people taking advantage, earlier," she said, slyly. "I see that you made yourself at home in my room, while I was away."
Knowing that she was talking about the posters, Marcie sat up, pensively. "I'm sorry about that, Velma. I'll take the posters down in the morning."
Velma gave an understanding chuckle and reclined across the bed to Marcie's side, holding her hand, again. "It's okay. You don't have to do that. It's cool, kind of like...learning about you, all over again."
"Were we apart that long?" Marcie asked, not wanting to think that so much time had passed between them, that a weird kind of amnesia had set in.
"Maybe, maybe not," Velma said, a little friendly, a little coyly. "But, now that I'm back home, I wouldn't mind a little refresher course in Marcie Fleach, y'know?"
With her impropriety over the posters settled, Marcie smiled warmly and held Velma's hand, as well. "Well, come to think of it, my Velma Dinkley has been kind of rusty, lately. It's just shocking what happens when you let yourself fall behind on your studies."
"Oh, just shocking, and as a former teacher, I suggest that you hit the books as soon as possible," Velma mock-expounded. "I expect you to be an expert on me, before long."
"I'll be an open book, myself, then," Marcie offered.
Velma sat up, looking into Marcie's indigo eyes, and giving her a light scolding. "Don't you dare, Marcie Fleach! I want a subject that's challenging, so don't you go easy on me. Okay?"
Marcie understood what she meant and smiled, again, to convey it. "Well, what would you like? Calculus-challenging, or advanced trigonometry-challenging?" she teased.
Velma gave a stretch and yawned. "Mmm, let's let the future decide. For now, though, let's get some sleep."
As both girls slid under the covers and settled in, Marcie said to her, "All right, but I have to warn you, I, sometimes, hog the blankets."
"Marcie, we've had sleep-overs since we were kids. That's something I certainly know that about you!"
"What a comedienne!" Marcie smirked, before turning off the lights.
