Darren turned as he heard someone call his name from across the library, but not so quickly that he didn't see the flash or fail to hear the muted click from phone's camera. He slowly turned his steely gaze back on Stephen. "The fuck was that for, dude?" he asked.
"What was what?" Stephen asked. He couldn't quite meet his friend's gaze.
"You wanna picture, take a picture." Darren leaned back and thrust out his chest. "This'll be a nice one." Stephen muttered a demurral, but Darren pressed him, and reluctantly he held up the phone again and took another, better shot. "Now how about one of the two of us together."
Stephen's lips disappeared. "I gotta get to my locker before class starts," he muttered, and quickly stood and shoved his books into his bag. "I'll see you around."
"Yeah, around," Darren said. Stephen felt the wrestler's eyes boring into the back of his head as he hurried away.
* * * * *
"Fucker's been acting weird for the last week," Darren said to Karl. It was the evening of the same day, and the two of them were down by the river, watching and listening as it hissed shallowly over its stony bed beneath the concrete overpass. From the other side, from the renovated warehouses of the downtown district, came the muted thumps from the night clubs.
"He's been having problems with Monica," Karl replied, and chugged down a good quarter of his Coke. From a hip flask he added a few liquid gurgles of rum to the bottle and carefully swirled it until it mixed.
Darren shook his head. "So why's he acting weird with us?" He told Karl about the camera incident. "He's been spying on us, or something."
"You think it's a matter for the Brotherhood?" Karl made a face after taking a pull from his bottle. He jerked his head toward the nearby parking lot, where Trevor and Mike were leaning against their cars, arms draped around their girlfriends.
Darren made a face of his own and kicked at the concrete abutment. "Something for the Brotherhood," he agreed guardedly.
"It wouldn't be hard to stage an intervention. Remind him who his friends are, and not to dick around with them."
"But why is he dicking around with us? I think a replacement might be in order."
"You mean like with Taylor?" Karl's own tone became more guarded. Josh Taylor had been the fifth member of the "Brotherhood," until he'd hooked up with a girl no one liked, and then they'd persecuted him out of their group and even off the wrestling team. Mike Grissom, now so confidently and firmly a part of the posse, had been almost pathetically grateful when he'd found himself elevated to the innermost circle of jocks at the high school.
"Something like that," Darren said, though his mouth hardly moved. He took his iPhone from his pocket, called up a few images, and showed them to his teammate. "Carson? Emwalt? How about Mustafa? That'd be a hilarious."
Karl cursed. But Darren persisted, and in the end agreed to submit the matter to the other two.
* * * * *
At his house, Stephen carefully studied the photo he'd tried to surreptitiously snap. It was too blurry to really make anything out, and with a sense of frustration he turned back to the website he'd found on a tip, and uploaded the copy of the photo he'd emailed to himself. The results of the scan it performed were equivocal.
"Nothing to do but take a chance," he muttered, and entered his credit card information. He chose "Overnight Delivery," and was relieved when he checked his email an hour later to find a confirmation that his order had immediately shipped.
* * * * *
No one said anything to each at school the next day—or, at least, no one said anything to suggest that they found each other's behavior uncharacteristic. Darren said nothing at practice when, having been able to pin Stephen to the mat, he felt the latter stealthily reaching around to grope at the muscles between his shoulder blades. Mr. Olewsky said nothing when he returned the biology tests, having had to given Mike a much better score, and Stephen a much lower one, than he normally had to. Naturally, no one in the school said anything when Karl and Trevor hustled a twig-like junior, a member of the glee club, out into the parking lot and shoved him into the trunk of the latter's car and drove off after classes had let out.
If anyone said anything about Stephen, he himself was not around to hear it, having hurried home to find the expected package sitting on his bed. With trembling hands he tore it open and studied its contents: a vial of amber liquid and a vial of ochre liquid, and six syringes. He sat for a long time on the edge of his bed, not touching them, as he studied the snaps he'd taken of some of his best friends.
He finally decided on Darren.
* * * * *
"He called me," Darren simply told Karl. The latter hadn't said anything, had only given Darren a black look when they bumped into each other at the bend in the trail that led deep into the campgrounds.
"Pretty fucking short notice," Karl said. "I had to give my dad a real story to get out of working at the shop this evening, and I could tell he didn't believe me."
"It's best to settle things while they're hot," Darren said. "But maybe we can just stick to an intervention after we see what he has to say."
"Too late for that," Karl snapped.
"But that's why I wanted to get here early," Darren persisted. "The four of us talk about things, and when Stephen finally shows up we have a solid story about how he's fucking up."
"But there'll be five of us waiting for him," Karl retorted. "And why are you being a fucking pansy all of a sudden? You're the one who wanted to pull the plug on him."
"I guess when it just comes to the point ... Oh, hell, me and him have been friends for a long time."
Karl gave Darren a slit-eyed sidelong glance and snorted.
In fact, when they entered the circle where they had their Brotherhood meetings, they found they were the fifth and sixth persons there. Stephen had also come early, and Mike and Trevor had him on the ground with his arms locked behind him. The other member of their company, who they'd brought along, stood to the side, hunched against the brooding violence that still hung in the air.
* * * * *
"So it's like that, is it?" Darren said softly as he fingered the syringe. "Jesus, dude," he said, turning to Stephen. "You are so fucking smart. But which agent were you planning to use on me?" He indicated the two vials.
"I don't know who you are," Stephen spat, "though I'm pretty sure I can get it in four guesses." He pulled against his captors; three solid sets of muscles strained, but no one shifted more than a few inches, so tightly did the others have a hold of him.
Darren smiled thinly. "Yeah, in four guesses. But did you even know there were four guesses you could make? You know what," he added with a snicker as Stephen glared. "Just so this isn't too horrible for you, I won't even use the stuff you so kindly thought to provide." He tossed away the packet they'd taken from Stephen and instead drew out a syringe and amber vial that he'd been carrying in a pouch of his own. "It would be ironic turnabout, but I'll use my own supply. The green stuff I'll add to my own collection—since none of us plan on shedding our skins any time soon, it's not much use."
Stephen tried to draw back, but the effort was as vain as his attempt to escape, and he began to slowly wilt after Darren had jabbed him in the side of the neck. "Son of a bitch" was the last thing he could mutter before he collapsed.
Karl beckoned the remaining member of the company over—Mustafa, the unhappy victim of their abduction. He swallowed and watched with keen fascination as the others began to press and squeeze Stephen, until there was nothing left but a shapeless sack of skin.
"You believe it now?" Karl gloated. Mustafa twitched, and ducked his head in a quick nod. "Good. Then today's the first day of the rest of your new life," Karl said. "Get undressed, and we'll get you into your new skin." The newest member of the Brotherhood tore his shirt off.
* * * * *
"It was just a lot of little things," Stephen said as he leaned back against a rock and scratched at his chest. "Actually, he'd never even have suspected something was wrong except that he got that link from an old middle school friend. That's some crazy shit they were peddling, but it seemed to fit a lot of what he'd noticed about you."
"What you had noticed about me," Darren corrected his friend.
Stephen blinked. "Yeah, sure," he shrugged. He peered closely at Darren and Karl and Mike and Trevor in turn. "Now, which one of you is Ron? I've missed you, man. Tore me up when they said you'd vanished."
Four pairs of cool eyes returned his querying glance without cracking. "There's no one here named Ron," said Darren. "Just as there's no one here named Mustafa. It's just the Brotherhood."
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