This Is Our Story Ch. 04

"So this is our own private version of the software, custom-made for our own yearbook. Everybody go ahead and click on the shortcut, and I'll walk you through the basics," began Miss C that afternoon.

Conner was already logged in and drumming his fingers impatiently. No wonder he couldn't find another product name on the software anywhere; it had been written specifically for Northside High School. He needed to figure out how this crazy thing worked so he could find another way to fix what he'd broken. If he couldn't learn about the maker online, maybe Miss C could point him in the right direction.

With agonizing slowness, his teacher helped the class set up their logins and be introduced to some of the major features. Her plan was to tackle a couple a day in depth for the remainder of the week, so that by the weekend they'd be relatively self-sufficient and could resume production. Today, she was starting with the class spread tool. Conner followed along, opening the class spread as she instructed.

"Everybody seeing what I have up on the projector?" she asked. No one dissented, so she began explaining. "This here is what we call the master spread. This is an index of all NHS students, current and in a few cases former. Expulsions, withdrawals, that kind of thing. This is what TIOS uses to annex all the other references of students. It's sort of a combination of the usual class spread and the index, where it not only has each student's class photo, if they have one, but also has indexes for every other photo they're tagged in elsewhere in the book."

Indeed, a handful of students had a small print number under their names. Conner immediately recognized them as the freshmen academic decathlon participants. "So you see here, Raymond Marquez - everybody find him on your screen - there's a little number 0001 underneath, OK? That number is a spread he's tagged in. The number is in green, which means he's in a picture in that spread. The royal blue is for spreads where he's quoted or mentioned by name, and teal is for both. If you click on it, it takes you to that spread." She clicked, and the screen projected on the front board showed Conner's in-progress spread he'd begun over the weekend.

DeShaun raised his hand with a question. "But a number seems kind of... I mean, like, wouldn't it be better if it just named the spread so we'd know what we were clicking on?"

"It would for a lot of students, but let's take... well, let's take you, DeShaun. How many clubs and organizations are you in this year?"

"Um... cross country, track, wrestling... band... marching band... natural helpers, National Honor Society, Key Club... I think that's it."

"And yet somehow he's single, folks!" teased Jordan. DeShaun shot him a dirty look

"Don't forget yearbook now, DeShaun," added Miss C with a smile. "And you'll have your senior quote, plus maybe one or two others... my point is, for a very active student, it takes up a lot of visual space here. So TIOS uses numbers to keep it short, but if you mouse over it..." She did so, and the wordsAcademic Decathlon popped up. "There you go. As long as the spread has a title, so make sure you get in the habit of titling them as soon as you open them, so you know what you're going back to."

"Are you following this OK?" whispered Heather as Miss C paused to do some one-on-one troubleshooting.

"Yeah, it's pretty basic so far. I played around with it a little over the weekend; it gets pretty complex, but a lot of it seems to be learning what the program will intuit."

She frowned. "I just wish we had some kind of straight-up manual. These tutorials are always so..." She made a little growling noise. Coming from her cherubic blonde face, it was rather adorable. "I mean, we're going to have a test over this, and it's all going to come from notes and ad hoc pointers."

"You're probably the smartest student in class, Heather. If Miss C ever writes a test you can't pass, the rest of us are doomed."

She gave him a little smile; Conner hadn't even realized he was complimenting her until her reaction. "Well just make sure you know what you're doing, because if I need to start cheating off of somebody, you're my guy."

Conner laughed. "Why, because I'm an easy mark?"

She arched a thinly sculpted brow. "No, because you sit right beside me. If the editor-in-chief gets any input on the next seating chart, try to keep yourself in my eyeline."

Miss C called attention back to the front of the class and resumed going through pointers. As she went on, Conner heard very little of it. After surreptitiously tilting his monitor so that Heather couldn't observe him, he resumed staring at those interchanged pictures, still idly daring them back to their proper place, every time still getting the same error.

"Wishful thinking there, Conner?" said Don behind him in a stage whisper.

Suddenly everyone was looking at him, even as he once more dragged Hailey's picture to Hayleigh. All eyes on him, rather than quickly scroll away before anyone else saw what he was doing, he instead froze. "What's going on?" asked someone up front who couldn't see his screen.

"He was trying to swap Hayleigh McKnight's picture with some fat girl," said Don.

"Donald!" snapped Miss C. "That's very rude. Why don't you mind your own business and pay attention up here, all right?" Still, Conner didn't miss the sharp look she directed at him for a bare second.

The editor-in-chief's mind was racing, both in terms of the embarrassment he'd just suffered and the information he so desperately needed. In a rush, he cut in before the teacher could continue. "All I was trying to do is see if you can rearrange the photos, like if there's an error or something. And I guess my brain got mixed up in the alphabet or whatever because I thought Hailey McManus and Hayleigh McKnight were in the wrong order."

Miss C paused, then scrolled from the freshman all the way down to the seniors until she found the two girls, in the same wrong order on her screen, and the projector connected to it, as on his. "They look to be in the right order to me..."

Nobody disagreed. Conner gritted his teeth in frustration for just a moment, then replied. "No, I see that now, but like, what if. Like say there's a new student and they're put in the wrong order, or somebody switches some pictures as a prank."

Miss C nodded. "Thankfully, that shouldn't be a problem - at least not for you. The photos here are all entered by the photography studio, attached to each students' name, and they sent the info to the TIOS team. See, say I try to switch two pictures..." She leaned down to her laptop as the males in the class as ever trying not to be too obvious about admiring the view down her less-conservative-than-usual neckline.

"Like say, we tried to do yours," she said, scrolling up a couple pages to the F's. "I click Conner Fishers, try to put his photo on Alexandra Finch..."

"NO!"

The whole class turned to stare at him in shock. He'd screamed that outburst, terrified by the prospect. Miss C just mouthed "w.t.f." at him, eyes askance, and completed the operation anyway. The girl's picture now said Conner Fishers, and vice versa. Conner flinched, then immediately looked down at himself. He was the same... right? Clothes for sure. Alexandra was multiracial, but his skin tone still looked the same shade of pasty-white-boy to him. As the class got over its puzzlement at his behavior and resumed looking at Miss C up front, he surreptitiously slipped a hand between his legs to confirm that yes, his penis was still there. He heaved a sigh of relief.

"So see, it swapped the pictures. And now Conner can relax as we see it only switches yearbook photos and not their immortal souls." The class had a little chuckle at his expense. "Now, neither of these two are tagged in any spreads yet, but rest assured, the spreads are attached to the names, not the pictures, so it won't break any links or mess with anyone's spreads. And all you have to do to fix it is just...voila." She dragged the two back.

No error message. And, so far as he could tell, no body swap.

What the hell?!

The remainder of the tutorial went off without incident. Conner paid attention, though distractedly, and nothing that was said explained anything about how he'd done what he'd done. But hehad done it, hadn't he? Could all this be some kind of hallucination?

No. That made no sense. People hallucinated under the influence of chemicals, or extreme stress. He'd been under neither, and even if he had, it wouldn't persist this way. Hailey was Hayleigh, and Hayleigh was Hailey. Even if nobody noticed but him. He'd get to the bottom of this... but today, he'd already drawn enough attention to himself, and he didn't want to take further risks.

At the close of class after spending the last fifteen minutes helping individuals troubleshoot, Miss C returned to the front of the room. One glance was all it took to confirm she had her Business Face on, one she only wore when someone had truly screwed up. The students stopped readying backpacks and listened closely.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the yearbook staff. Earlier today, I was privileged to find a pair of underwear in the yearbook office." The class broke out in the mumbles, some in timid giggles, but a sharp gesture from Miss C and they were silent again. "I don't know whose they are, and the school has refused by request for DNA testing, so you got lucky this time."

"That's right he did," said Don with a smirk. Everyone else had read the room, and knew this was not the time for jokes. No one laughed.

"They were actually women's underwear, Donald, and I encourage you not to double down on your point." She re-directed the stern look to the rest of the class. "Henceforth, the office will be locked at all times unless in use. Only Conner and I will have a key. So if you need to check out equipment, you'll have to find one of us to let you in. Or if you need to defile my classroom, you'll need to dump some ice down your britches and grow up. Understood?"

"What if they were Conner's panties, Miss C?" said Jordan, smirking at his classmate out of the corner of his eye. A derisive eye roll at the boy's idea of a joke from Heather was small comfort to Conner. "Doesn't seem fair to accuse everyone but him."

"Well then I suppose if it happens again, we'll know who to blame, won't we," she responded irritably. "And one more comment like that, Jordan, and you'll be spending the rest of the week in detention."

"Yes ma'am," he said, smirk not fading.

The bell rang moments later. Miss C wordlessly handed him his key with a lingering gaze that made him wonder how seriously he took Jordan's quip. Regardless, he was out the door a moment later. He rendezvoused with Owen at his locker, and as his friend went on about some banal incident in math class, Conner tried to figure out how to make things right again. He couldn't keep using Hailey - especially since once he found out how to reverse the switch, he wouldn't want to. It was a shallow of him, yes, and that was a big part of what was making him feel so guilty. Still, physical attraction was a real thing, and honestly, he wasn't even attracted to her personality. Besides, once they graduated and moved on to the real world, would Hayleigh's reality come crashing down if people started treating her like they did Hailey? Maybe her popularity was only a result of her having won the genetic lottery and being so afraid of fatness that she spent ten hours a week on the treadmill, but that didn't make it any more right for him to take it from her.

Only then, he walked by her on his way to the parking lot.

She was with a group of her friends, though he didn't see her boyfriend Jayce Deacons among them. He did, however, see Jordan Lyons, smirking as ever. Lord, how Conner wanted someone to knock that look off his face. Aside from Hayleigh, everyone else in that cluster was either gorgeous, or close enough that their family's money could make them seem that way. As for Conner, he barely glanced at them, like usual, only then Hayleigh spoke to him.

"So Jordan tells me you were trying to turn your little girlfriend McManus into me in yearbook. Is that right?" said Hailey McManus' voice with a level of haughtiness it had never before held.

"What? Hailey's not my girlfriend," he stammered. Owen stopped beside him, but stayed back. Starting an argument with these people could be social suicide, and Owen's position was already precarious. He'd step in if he had to, but only then.

"Really? Weren't those her panties you were sniffing in the yearbook office? That's what I heard. You two would make such a cute couple. Fatty, and Ratty."

Conner didn't really get the jibe, but the imagery coupled with her rhyme seemed to amuse her friends. "Look, I didn't mean to-"

"Fuck what you meant to," she cut him off with a sneer. "You know, I could tell Jayce you were messing with me and he'd beat your geek ass through the pavement. Now apologize, and then get the fuck out of here."

Conner just stared for a moment. Jordan's arms were folded across his chest, looking more pleased with himself than anyone Conner had ever before seen. "I-I'm sorry," he stammered. "But I really wasn't... trying..."

His words fell on deaf ears; as soon as he apologized, the popular crowd broke into laughter and started walking away. He heard Audrey Fowler trying to console Hailey. "Ugh, the number of creeps you have to put up with, babe..."

"Uh, so... how wasyour day, dear?" asked Owen.

Conner didn't answer his friend. What would be the point? He couldn't convince him of the reality of the situation, and he didn't want to relive the tongue-lashing he'd received from Hayleigh. Instead, they drove home in awkward silence, and after dropping off Owen, Conner had every intention of calling up Hailey and telling her it was over. Then his nerves got the better of him, and he thought maybe he could find a way to do it via text. Of course, bringing up his text conversation with Hailey was an immediate window to those lurid pictures she'd sent him at lunch, which sapped what remained of his will.

Ever a believer in nap therapy, Conner retreated to his room and took a couple hours' sleep. His dreams were fitful, and while they weren't metaphorical to his plight, they certainly kept him mindful of the urgency of what he was dealing with. With his mind better rested, he reached to his nightstand to pick up his phone and-

Where was it?

A search commenced. Conner was forever misplacing the thing; he wasn't such a social butterfly that he was getting a steady stream of updates. Only it didn't seem to be in any of his usual spots. Not the bathroom, not the kitchen counter, not in the foyer where he took his coat off, not his desk, not yesterday's pants pockets... nothing. Before he quite reached the point of despair, he finally thought to check the next most probable cause of it going missing: his pesky stepsister Angelica.

"Hey Ang, have you see my phone?" he yelled down the hall.

"We're indoors, Conner, use your indoor voice - or just text, for crying out loud," said his stepdad from the living room, gradually trailing off in volume.

But Angelica arrived in his room a moment later. "Looking for this?" she asked, holding up his phone.

"Yeah - what the heck are you doing with that?" Conner made a grab for it, but she pulled it back.

"Well you left it on the gossip bench, and the damn thing was ringing nonstop. Being the benevolent sister-ish type I am, I went to mute the damn thing, but when I swipe it on, what do I find?"

She held it up at arm's length behind her, the screen facing towards him. As her thumb moved across the screen to unlock it, the color drained from his face. The first thing that popped up was the closeup of Hailey's bare breasts that she'd sent him earlier that day.

"Give me that!" he said, trying to push past her outstretched arm to get it. She relented after a moment, letting him snatch his phone back and remove the image from the screen.

"So looks like my advice worked!" she said proudly. "Got your little gal pal sending you some kinda freaky pics, do ya?"

He sighed. Of course to her, the pictures would seem to be nothing all that hot. "They're not 'freaky.' People do that all the time. It's normal."

"What, send each other porn? In my experience, you usually start with selfies and bore yourselves into stooping to porn shots. Not that I've ever bored a guy," she said, grinning smugly. Conner doubted it. His stepsister was blessed with some mighty fine genetics of her own, and he'd be lying if he said he hadn't occasionally noticed when she walked around the house in something skimpy. It was an awkward thing, suddenly gaining a hot female presence in your house at the age of sixteen but having society tell you not to notice.

"Well kudos to you. And theseare selfies. That's just what she looks like." He glared, daring her to laugh.

And laugh she did. "Yeah right. So your chubby date turns into a skinny girl with amazing boobs under a full moon of fluorescent lights, does she?"

Conner was ready to tell her to mind her business when suddenly it struck him. "Wait. You think... you think these boobs are amazing?" He unlocked the screen, then held up the picture of Hailey's chest.

"Don't be a pig, Goner. I'm not gonna sit here and talk about your girlfriend's taste in porn with you."

Conner rushed to cut her off as she turned to leave, kicking the door shut behind him. "Wait. Just this one question. Not a conversation, just... you're telling me that this picture, right here on the screen... this looks like porn to you, and not a fat girl?"

"First off, big girls can and do star in porn, ya pig. Get woke. Second off, I'm not blind. Obviously those are quality ta-tas. Now can I go, or do you have some more smut you wanna run by me?"

He didn't get in her way as she brushed past him. Instead, he was throwing on shoes and moments later dashing across the street to Owen's house. He was practically family there himself, so he went straight in and down to the basement, where Owen's room was.

"Oh hey, man," said Owen. "Good timing. Trying to unlock the viridian skin for-"

"I don't care. I need to show you something." Conner fished his phone out of his pocket, and with a swipe of his thumb revealed the shot of Hailey in her stall. He didn't like showing something this personal to his friend, who could be insensitive in even the best of times, but he needed another set of eyes.

"Um, what? Did you just come over to show me... wait, is that a bathroom stall at school? Who the hell is that? Is that Casey Nielsen? Damn nice titties, baby!"

"No. Shut up. I need you to do me a favor and describe what you're looking at."

"No seriously, dude, you have to tell me where you got this. Did one of your staff members do naughty things with a camera and forget to wipe the memory card? Holy shit, is that Heather? No way, her tits are volleyballs, not softballs. Hair's wrong, too, I guess."

"Damnit, Owen, just tell me - do you think these boobs look good, or gross?"

"Well, I'm definitely not a fan of those tan lines. Those are just terrible."

"But overall-"

"What do you want me to say? Good job finding a picture of amazing boobs? Now are you gonna tell me who those belong to, or do I have to fucking guess?"

"AHA!" Conner shouted, then winced at his own volume. "Dude, you need to sit down for this one."

"Um, I am sitting. And frankly, it's kind of annoying that you're not."

Conner settled into the spare seat on their gaming couch as he replied. "OK, now... tell me what you think ofthis shot." He scrolled up just a little to Hailey's original shot, where she was still in her bra.