When Charlie went into the bathroom the next morning, she opened my door. I lay in bed watching her go through her routine, even when she sat on the toilet and pissed. When she got in the shower, I decided to join her. I used the john to empty my bladder, but thinking about her naked in the shower didn't do much to ease my morning woody.
I brushed my teeth and slipped into the shower to stand behind her. She was just putting the shampoo in her hair and I reached up and started to massage her scalp, running my fingers through her hair as I shampooed it. Charlie didn't move for a minute, then leaned back against me, my hardon trapped between our bodies.
"Mmmm, that feels good," she sighed.
I hoped she was talking about the masterful job of shampooing I was doing — even though it was my first time ever, but then again, she could have been referring to my cock. Regardless, it jerked in recognition and she giggled.
We stayed that way for awhile, then she ducked her head under the water to rinse off the soap out of her hair. I learned a lot about feminine hygiene that morning — the double shampoo, about using conditioner, luffas and patting, not rubbing, to dry with the towel. And that wasn't all there was. There was a whole secret world of the other cosmetic stuff that women dabble in, like using magic spells and potions. I still rubbed her in a couple of places with the towel when I dried her off. I couldn't help it and she didn't seem to mind all that much. By the time we were done, there wasn't a place on either of our bodies that hadn't been thoroughly cleaned by the other. I think she got off a couple of times. I know I did.
As we waited for the bus that morning, I cautioned her to remember to stay visible all day. It was automatic for me now. I had to 'think' to go invisible, but I had a feeling the natural state of our new bodies was in the other dimension. At least, it felt more natural to me. It would create a lot of questions if she disappeared in the middle of lunch, leaving just a puddle of clothes on the floor. We agreed to meet in the library after Math to start planning what the next steps were. We also wanted to go see Mr. Griggs again, to check on him.
Billy's usual seat on the bus was empty and Charlie surprised me by not sitting with her friends, but sitting with me on the ride to school. It was kind of nice not being pummeled on the ride to school, but after what happened yesterday, I think a few of the brighter kids were beginning to wonder if picking on me was such a good idea.
Mrs. Bascom nodded to me as I entered her classroom and I smiled back. She knew I wasn't going to pursue a literary career or go into teaching, but I was still the best student she had taught in her teaching career. A photographic memory was one thing, but Charlie had trained me to analyze and think about what I was reading, too. I hadn't experienced the full gamut of emotions necessary to fully appreciate all of what I read; less than most of the other kids in my class, in fact. After all, my puberty hormones had just kicked in over the last several months. I was getting pretty familiar with the emotions of lust and horny, but I hadn't had the opportunity or motive to experience the more adult emotions of longing and love — yet. Still, I had enough of a grasp of the human condition to comment on most of the literature we read in class.
In an act of kindness to the other kids, my teachers didn't call on me to answer questions. It was kind of an unspoken agreement. I had never failed to answer their questions correctly and completely, more often than not consuming the remaining class time. It did not benefit either the class, myself or the teachers. So, I was surprised when Mrs. Bascom called my name in the middle of the class. I waited for her question and was stunned when she asked me to take Billy the homework assignments for the week. I nodded, wondering what she was trying to do. Everyone, teachers included, knew that Billy was my most ardent tormenter, one of the few who out of their way to make my life miserable.
I stopped by her desk on the way out of class and picked up the homework assignments.
"Make sure he doesn't have any questions, Mr. Hornsby," she said.
I started to ask her why and she put her hand on my arm to stop me.
"Because you're a better person, Mr. Hornsby. It's what we do." She fixed my gaze with her eyes on mine, and then smiled mysteriously. "You'll do fine. And..." she hesitated, " ... you may even learn something."
I headed for Math class. Charlie had finished up her second text and tested out, so she was busy with the proctor. The other student was still struggling with the first text book. Charlie grinned at me and flashed me a peek at her panties as she sat taking the exam. I was so surprised I just about fell out of the desk and onto the floor. She had a satisfied smirk on her face as she left for her next class.
The new substitute in the Physics class was an authentic substitute; in other words, a babysitter. It meant that the students would learn next to nothing the rest of the year and it was many months away. I didn't care, really, but I did feel sorry for a couple of the students who were trying to get into college. They would be ill-equipped for the college level classes. It wouldn't be a good reflection on Mr. Griggs and all he was trying to do for the science program here, but I didn't know what to do. I would have to see if I could meet with them after hours if they wanted and tutor them.
The substitute was the first one out of the door when the bell rang. He had packed up his bag and was ready 10 minutes before the bell so it was an easy task to hang back and go up to my lab to see if everything was OK. On a hunch, I teleported down into the classroom to see if Mr. Griggs' office and lab were bugged, too.
I went invisible, leaving my clothes in a neat pile in the darkened classroom and went into his lab, walking through the wall between the two rooms. Everything was neat, just as Mr. Griggs had left it. I turned on the lights and immediately noted the same two signals I had seen in the lab upstairs. I followed the video signal to another hidden computer. The files on this computer had already been downloaded. I erased the current file that showed the lights coming on and decided against any further investigation. It puzzled me that the smoke alarm was incorrectly wired in this room as well. Once was a mistake. But twice? Twice was coincidence and I had firmly disabused myself of this concept. There was no such thing as coincidence. I was going to have to have a closer look at the smoke alarm in my lab.
I went back into the classroom and dressed. I hurried over to the Library to wait for Charlie. When she arrived after her last class, she slid a list of tasks across the table to me. She had obviously not paid much attention to her lessons.
The first thing on her list was not what I expected. She had obviously given this a lot of thought in a very short time. Either that, or she had read my mind from the day before. Her first topic was 'limits.' Her next topic was 'goals.' Her last topic was 'who do we help.' She had several points listed under each topic.
We started quietly discussing the new abilities we had — or thought we had with our new bodies. The potential for doing evil and the temptation to do so was going to be enormous. We had to swear to each other that we would not hide any activities from each other. We agreed we would not steal from good people, but bad people were fair game. We defined 'bad' people as thieves, drug dealers and mobsters. I also included corrupt politicians, even though the government had declared themselves to be free of corruption, and Charlie agreed. The current crop in power were still the same group of people as had been involved in creating the last huge scandal, but they had declared themselves clean and pure now that the mess was too big to fix. They were even appointing themselves to investigate what had happened! I guess when you're in the government; you get to make your own rules. To be fair, Charlie added that it had to be specific politicians we went after, not just the 'government'. As bad as it was, it was, by itself, not an evil thing.
We would also not intentionally physically hurt someone, but, as with Billy, it was going to happen. We would defend ourselves, of course, and Charlie had a list of martial arts studios we were going to visit to find one to train us.
I asked her about sex and she grinned at me. She pointed at the next point. As long as no one was hurt, she would not comment on my sexual exploits. By 'hurt, ' she meant pregnancy, mostly. I thought that was rather sexist on her part, so I asked about her. Charlie retorted that she wouldn't get any girls pregnant, either. When I realized she was talking about having girl-girl sex, I got a hard-on that wouldn't go down. I asked her if I could watch. She paused. 'If my door is open, you can join, for all I care', she told me. That was all I could take and I spoofed in my pants. Again, she had that satisfied little smirk on her face.
She asked me if I had any other points. I told her I didn't, but that we should be flexible enough to be able to talk about this as we learned more about our abilities. She agreed.
Under 'goals' she had only one point and that was that we would 'do good.' I asked her if that meant if we were going to be real live superheroes, fighting crime and evil in the world. She nodded. It seemed a bit hokey to me, but then again, neither of us knew exactly what we were capable of doing. So keeping it loose was probably a good start.
I asked her how we were going to afford to be superheroes. There wasn't really an established pay scale for that occupation. Besides, we were two kids; I wasn't even going to be 18 years old for another three and a half years. We needed a base and support, even if that support was only a hefty bank account.
Charlie thought about that for a while. She nodded, then added 'financial independence' to the list. We didn't have any other points under this topic.
That left 'who do we help.' Charlie had three listed, each with a question mark. I took out my pen and eliminated 'government' and 'military.' If either of those two groups learned about us, they would never let us free. We would be rats in a cage. It was going to be hard enough to hide our existence from them as it is.
Charlie's last point on this topic was 'charity group.' I asked her if she meant like the SPCA. She rolled her eyes. She was thinking of rape victims or battered women's groups. I told her I would work for a group that was fighting crime — drugs, prostitution, weapons — that kind of thing. I didn't think gambling was so bad, but the others had left millions of victims in their wakes. The problem was finding the right group.
In addition, I didn't want any of the groups we helped to know about our existence.
I asked her if she would agree to let someone front for us, someone we trusted, and for them to be a liaison with the authorities and police forces, both local and federal. It would have to be agreed with whoever we chose that our identity would never be revealed.
Charlie said it sounded like a good idea. She asked me if I had someone in mind. I told her I did. And that we were going to go see him this afternoon. She could evaluate him for herself.
We were pretty much done with the list so we walked out of the Library and into the empty hallway. Class was still in session and we turned down the narrow passageway that led to the facilities area of the school. No one used this tunnel unless they were going to the custodial offices. As soon as we were around the corner and had confirmed that the tunnel was empty, I took Charlie's hand and teleported us to the hospital room across the hall from Mr. Griggs' room. We turned invisible and folded and hid our clothes in the closet.
Charlie was naked again and Mr. Dickie showed his ardent appreciation for her beauty. With Mr. Dickie leading the way the three of us walked through the closed door, across the hall and into Mr. Griggs' room. Another conference was taking place with the three men from yesterday. Mr. Griggs' was awake today, but not saying much.
"We checked out the Jones family," said the leader from yesterday. "You were right, Bill. There is something fishy going on there. They have no history past five years ago, just after you started teaching here. There are no tax records, no job history, nothing. We checked all possible legal means of getting large sums of money. They haven't won the lottery and, as far as we can tell, didn't inherit it. They don't run a legitimate business. The money could be from winning a jackpot from a casino, but Treasury is pretty good about getting their share of those; there would be a record of that. We can't find a direct connection to drugs, prostitution, gambling or anything else, but there are a lot of loose connections. Oh, and their kid, Billy, had an accident on the school bus yesterday morning. He's here in this hospital. It seems he broke his leg."
Mr. Griggs (Bill) shook his head. "I don't remember telling you about them."
"Yeah, it was weird. You just woke up, told those two to get out and gave me a very cryptic SitRep (situation report), including some of your 'guesses.' I just thought it was the medication talking."
"But I don't make guesses," said Mr. Griggs, frowning.
"We know. But in this case, it looks like they might pan out. I would lay money that Ms. Brisard is an honest-to-God spy for a radical French group. They don't know we have cracked their communications. We know someone in her building is sending communications using that code and that she is probably controlling someone else in town, if not multiple agents. It could be the Jones family or they could just be the local muscle for hire. We'll keep digging before we do anything."
"How did young Billy break his leg?"
"We're not really sure as the details are vague. But it does appear as if your young friend Hornsby was involved. They were sitting together."
Mr. Griggs started to laugh and then moaned in pain. "Have you seen that boy?"
"No. The professor was here yesterday and checked him out; said he wasn't too impressed."
"Not surprising coming from an ex-quarterback. Any male who can't play football is a wimp in his mind. But he's not far off on his physical description. Douglass is small, even for his age. 'Wiry' describes him best. 'Tough' would be another. Do not dismiss him — or his sister. Those two are a pair to contend with — smart, determined, fearless. But still, he wouldn't have the physical strength to break Billy's leg." Mr. Griggs paused and smiled to himself. "He would, however, be smart enough to sucker Billy into breaking it himself!"
"We'll keep an eye out for them, Bill. Anything else we can do? You want to tell us anything else that might give these yokels a motive to try to kill you?"
"Don't underestimate these 'yokels', as you call them," said Mr. Griggs. "They were very professional in the way they worked me over. Nothing vital was hit, but I'll be out of the office for a very long time, and away from Ms. Brisard." He paused. "Something's nagging at me about this. We're still missing something. Don't move on her until we know for sure. There are a lot of people who live in that building. Let's narrow it down and be sure."
"I agree, and I don't think we're going to find anything else out standing around gabbing with you, as pleasant as it is to see you awake," said the leader. "Come on, guys, let's head back to the office and see what the team as uncovered."
The three government agents left the room and Mr. Griggs lay back on the bed, exhausted. Soon, his even breathing indicated he was asleep.
I had explained to Charlie how I had entered his mind the day before, how it was just like I knew everything he did and that I could almost use his mind and his memories to think about things. She walked over to the side of the bed and put her finger tips on his head. The heart monitor fluttered briefly and then stabilized. Charlie focused on reading his thoughts, then moved her hands down to one of the bandaged areas.
"Dougie, I think I can heal him," she said, wonder in her voice.
I saw a faint glow move from her fingertips into the soft bandage. She moved to another spot and I saw the glow again. She stopped at his knee and focused. His leg was in a splint. They had apparently worked over both of his knees pretty well with the baseball bats. Charlie held the knee closest to her in both hands and the glow was rather bright this time.
"Can you do this, too?" she asked.
Stupidly, I was just standing there, staring at her naked body. OK, maybe not so stupid, but I still wasn't helping.
I reached out and took his ankle in my hands. "How do you do it?"
"I don't know. I just think about making it 'right' and then my fingers tingle," she said.
I remembered the pictures of the anatomy books I had read and then focused on the anatomy of the ankle joint. I thought 'make it right' and my fingers tingled.
"Charlie, this is really some weird shit we're doing now. This doesn't make any sense for us to be able to do this, even if it is another dimension." We kept working over his body, healing as we went along.
"I thought you were supposed to be the smart one, Dougie. 'New pitcher, new strikes, ' right? Well, 'new dimension, new rules' in this case. In this dimension, we can apparently do a lot of cool stuff. Strange, but cool."
We had continued to work on Mr. Griggs body as we talked. Suddenly he spoke.
"I guess you two don't realize I can hear you when you are touching me and you speak at the same time, right?"
"Oh, shit." Both of us pulled our hands off of him.
"Did you say something? Something along the lines of 'Fuck' or 'Shit'? I know I would have," he quipped.
I took hold of his hand. "Sorry Mr. Griggs, sir. We didn't realize you could hear us."
"I'm assuming this is Douglass Hornsby with whom I'm talking. And his sister, Charlene?"
"Charlie," she corrected.
"OK, Charlie. Would either of you two like to tell me what's going on? And why have all of my aches and pains disappeared and even my joints stopped hurting?"
Charlie looked over at me. I took my hand away from his. "Should we get dressed and come back visible?"
She nodded.
"Mr. Griggs, we'll be right back and then we'll talk.
"Well, I sure as Heck am not going anywhere," he said as we exited the room without opening the door.
As excited as I was, I was sad to see Charlie get dressed. She noticed me watching her and gave me a wry smile.
"We definitely need to get more clothes processed," she said. "You're enjoying this far too much."
What could I say? I just smiled —well, leered would be a better description — and shrugged.
I checked the hallway to make sure it was clear and then we made our way back into Mr. Griggs' room. I wasn't really surprised to see him sitting on the side of the bed, his arms free of the infusion tubes, his EKG wires hanging over the far rail of the hospital bed.
"Douglass, could you mind getting my clothes out of the closet for me?" he asked me.
"Are you sure you should be getting out of bed?" asked Charlie.
Mr. Griggs stood up on his feet and then jumped up, clicking his heels. "I don't know what you two did or how you did it, but I'm not staying in here for a couple of scratches on my face." We hadn't noticed those. "Come on, let's get out of here. Where's your car?"
Charlie and I looked at each other. We shrugged almost at the same time and then laughed.
"Here," I said, "hold our hands."
With that I closed my eyes and focused on our living room.
"Shit!" hissed Mr. Griggs. "Did you just do what I think you just did?"
"Probably. It's been a strange couple of days," I answered
"I should think so! I think you'd better tell me what's going on," he said.
I looked up at Charlie and she nodded her OK. We had already agreed that we would not tell everyone the whole process, at least until we were absolutely sure of them; or as close to absolute as we could get. So, in my rendition of the events of the last couple of days that I made to Mr. Griggs, I conveniently left out the part about needing the laser to complete the process. I had already planned to dismantle the laser after we had processed a bunch of clothes, bags and other stuff we might need. I could rebuild it easily enough later. I also didn't reveal all of our capabilities, although he knew most of them within that first five minutes.
After my tale, Mr. Griggs sat thinking. Suddenly he looked at us sharply.
"Can you read my mind? Now? Do you know what I am thinking?" he demanded.
"No, sir. As far as we know we can only do that when we're in the other dimension and then only if we're touching you. At least, that's what we've done so far, but some of the capabilities get easier as I do them."
He covered his face with his hands.
"I'm sorry, kids, but this is a bit overwhelming." He waved his hand vaguely in the air. "Before, well, before I was a teacher here at the high school, I worked for the government, a kind of a defense contractor. We did, well, 'investigations' would be a good word for what we did. What you two have, it's almost too good to be true. I was just thinking how much we could charge for your services."
"Well, there are some downsides," Charlie said, and with that she disappeared, leaving a pile of clothes on the sofa.
"Uh, yeah. I see — or don't see what you mean," Mr. Griggs said.
Charlie came down the stairs from her room a couple of minutes later, dress in her sweats. "We have a proposal for you, Mr. Griggs."
He looked at us both. "You'd better start calling me 'Bill' if we're going to be working together."
I looked at him, puzzled. "How do you know what we want to do?" I asked him.
"Doug, Charlie, you two are two of the most intelligent people I have ever met. Not just smart; there are tons of smart people. You two are intelligent. You know how to think. In fact, I'll bet you already have a plan in place for what you want to do." He looked at us. "Well, am I right?"
Charlie nodded.
"This plan — Let's see, you two are young. You have a goal, I would guess. It's probably pretty idealistic, but, then again, knowing you two, probably less idealistic than 'saving the world.' Charlie, you want to help people, do good things. Doug, you're practical. You know you're going to need funding and support. But neither of you wants to hurt anyone, right?"
"Only the bad guys," I said.
"Really?" he queried, a bit astonished. "Who do you think are the bad guys?"
"Thieves, drug dealers, murderers, corrupt politicians..."
Mr. Griggs burst out laughing when he heard our last inclusion criteria. He stopped laughing when he realized we were serious.
"You know how hard it will be to prove corruption?" he asked. He sounded like this was something with which he was familiar.
"Prove to us, prove to you or prove to a court of law?" Charlie responded.
"To a court -..." he stopped speaking, as the reality of what we were capable of became clear to him. "Oh, dear God," he whispered.
He was quiet for a while. "It has to be sanctioned, controlled somehow. You can't be judge, jury and executioners. You will have to have badges or something. Otherwise you'll be vigilantes and that will only end in trouble. No matter how much good you do, a single mistake — even just the perception of a mistake, and the press will crucify you."
"Sanctioned, but with complete autonomy," I insisted. "We follow where the evidence takes us. And we were already thinking that we wanted you to be a sort of checks and balance for us, to keep us in line and our hearts pure." I grimaced. "Well, as pure as they can be with what we're contemplating," I finished darkly.
"No one would fund your operation without some sort of government oversight," he said.
"Would they sanction it without funding?" asked Charlie.
"How would you operate?" Mr. Griggs asked.
"Please just answer the question — do you think anyone would provide us badges and sanction if they didn't have to fund us?" she repeated.
Bill thought for a while. "I can think of two super secret Agencies that would do that. These groups are so secret, they don't even use acronyms. You either know about them, or you don't and most people don't. So with no funds leading back to them — no strings — yeah, I can get you sanctioned; but no money."
"Do it," Charlie and I said at the same time.
Bill was unruffled with our response. "I'll need to make some calls," he said calmly. "And I need to make sure my friend doesn't freak out when he goes back to check on me this afternoon." He stopped to bend his knee, the one that Charlie had touched. "I don't know what you did to me, Charlie, but my knee hasn't felt this good since I was in high school. I've had three surgeries on it, but it feels like everything is back like it was before ... well, before."
"Before you got shot?" I volunteered.
"How did you know about that?" he asked.
"Well, I got suspicious of our substitute the day you were gone, the one you called 'the professor.' So when I was going to the hospital to see you and saw him in the hallway, I followed him. That's how I found you. He went into a room and I wanted to know what was going on. I went invisible and followed and found you with those four guys. Well, long story short, I kind of made you sit up and talk for a while. I had to use your voice and your, uh, memories."
He looked over at Charlie. "You, too?"
She nodded.
"Shit."
"Don't be embarrassed, Bill. I'm flattered, really. And Dougie and I know that there is a strong erotic component when we touch someone when we're in the other dimension. You don't really have a choice but to have those thoughts."
He looked at her. "Thank you for being so understanding. But most of those thoughts pre-date the last two days and are very inappropriate for a teacher to have about a student. I'm, well, I'm sorry, Charlie."
Charlie leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "I'm not, but until I graduate, nothing is going to happen, OK, big boy?"
I was sitting there, trying to follow what was going on, but I was totally lost. Suddenly it hit me —
"Ewwwww, Gross!" I sputtered, about 45 seconds too late.
Bill and Charlie looked over at me and realized I had arrived at the party late. They were laughing so hard at me that the tension that had been building just sort of disappeared.
Bill went out onto the deck to make his phone calls. Charlie pulled me next to her on the sofa.
"We need to get those clothes and stuff processed tonight. Then you have to disable the laser, right?
"Do we split up or do this together?"
"Well, we have to get Bill back to his house. Do you know where that is?" she asked me.
I nodded.
"OK, then you get him back to his house or his car, whichever, then go to the school lab and wait for me."
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to have to do some shopping."
"With what? I don't have any money."
"Well, I was going to use an inter-dimensional credit payment plan..." she offered lamely.
"A what?"
"I'm going to 'borrow' the clothes now against payment later."
Understanding dawned. "Ahh. You're not going shopping, you're going shoplifting!"
"In a word, yes."
"Don't get caught," I cautioned her needlessly.
"They'll never see me," she laughed. With that, I saw her focus and then she blinked out of the room.
I remembered I had to get the English homework assignment to Billy at the hospital and I picked up my backpack. Bill came back into the house and said it was all set up. We would have Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) credentials by the end of the week, contingent, of course, that we 'reported' through a 'real' officer.
I bristled at the qualifications being put on us. "Who would that be? We don't really want the world to know about this."
"Not to worry, Doug. I'm being re activated. You two will be reporting to me."
I looked over at him. "Something tells me I didn't dig deep enough into your memories, sir."
He looked back at me. "Probably not. Now, let's get me back to my car. Can you do that thing again and get us there?"
I nodded.
Do you know where the Chinese Take-out is on 4th Street? My car should be just down the street from there. If you need a quiet place to appear, there is a pretty dark alley right next to the shop. You know where it is?"
"Yes, sir. Just put your hand on my shoulder and we'll be off."
"Good idea. Much better than holding hands. Besides, this is really neat."
"Yes, sir." 'Neat?' I thought.