Choose to Be Me

Betty was crying, and she didn't care who knew it. She could feel the tears running down her face in big, fat droplets, steaming up her glasses and streaking her red, blotchy cheeks before dripping down to soak her sweater with hot salty water. She knew that her gray-blue eyes were swollen from uncontrollable sobbing, even though she'd long since passed through the deep, wracking phase of weeping and on to the random jags of shuddering sighs. It didn't matter. She felt like everyone already knew about her humiliation anyway. Let them at least see what Caleb made her feel like.

He could have just said no. That was the thought that kept running through Betsy's head, sparking a new round of heaving sobs each time she came back to it. All Caleb had to say was that he wasn't interested in going to the Sadie Hawkins dance with her, that he was already spoken for or that he liked her as a friend or simply anything that wasn't cruel. He didn't have to tell her that he only pretended to like her because he would have flunked senior year without her tutoring him. He didn't have to say that he was way out of her league. He didn't have to, to...the endless minutes of icy, hateful condemnations of her outfits, her body, her teeth and her hair and her personality began to overlap in Betsy's head as she relived them all at once until the sidewalk shimmered in front of her face like a mirage.

That was why she didn't see the woman in red until she was almost on top of her. Betty was stumbling along, trying to keep it together just long enough to make it home and get upstairs without losing it completely and bursting into full-on sobbing again, when the crimson blur in front of her suddenly resolved into a human figure just a little bit too late to keep from barreling right into it.

The other woman saw Betty coming and moved out of the way as best she could, but Betty still collided with her hard enough to send them caroming off each other. Betty recovered her balance and tried to move away with a mumbled "Sorry!" She simply couldn't handle the additional embarrassment of having knocked someone over with her ungainly, lumbering body on top of everything else. But the woman in red caught her wrist and gave her just enough of a tug to force Betty to stop herself and turn to see the person she'd just slammed into.

Once Betty's vision cleared a little, she could see that the woman in front of her was beautiful. Impossibly, almost hatefully beautiful-Betty couldn't help comparing each of her features to the woman in red and coming up wanting. The woman in red had impeccable fashion sense-the strapless dress she wore was simple, but it clung perfectly to her figure and accentuated her graceful curves. It made the way Betty's lumpy green hand-me-down sweater and navy-blue denim skirt hung like a tent over her scrawny body seem even more dowdy by contrast.

The woman's hair was long like Betty's; but while Betty's mousy brown hair hung straight down like she was a refugee from an old 70s movie, the stranger's hair flowed in lustrous waves as black as a raven's wing. Betty felt sure that this was a person who had never suffered a split end in her entire life.

And her skin-Betty couldn't see a single pimple, a single blemish, even a mole or a freckle to mar the smooth, dusky perfection of the woman's long, bare arms and legs. Her complexion had a slightly olive tones to it, suggesting some kind of Mediterranean ancestry, but her features were impossibly delicate and perfectly symmetrical. She looked like every standard of beauty in the world, all rolled into a single package. When she smiled at Betty, fluttering her perfect eyelashes over startlingly pretty brown eyes, even her teeth were perfect.

The woman didn't seem to care that Betty was staring at her. Betty suspected she was used to being stared at. "Please excuse my rudeness," she said, in cultured tones that betrayed just a hint of an Italian accent, "but it is not often one sees a little girl crying such grown-up tears."

Stung by the woman's words, Betty yanked her hand free. She stared fiercely at the other woman and snapped out, "I'm eighteen. I'm not a 'little girl'." She knew she should just walk away, leave the stranger to her misapprehensions and leave herself to her miseries, but the words stung. They felt uncomfortably close to Caleb's description of the way her short, rail-thin body and outsized clothes made her look 'like a fucking nine-year old'. Betty felt helpless to stop herself from taking out her frustrations on this woman instead.

The woman seemed more amused than upset, though. She said, "My mistake," but the tone of condescension in her voice suggested that she was merely humoring Betty's anger. "Even so, you should dry your eyes. Never let a boy make you ugly with tears, my dear. We were born to break their hearts, not to waste our lives with weeping. It was a boy, wasn't it? Some pretty, callow youth who turned his nose up at you because the girl of his dreams is coming some day."

She smiled. It was a beautiful smile, but impossibly cruel. "I assure you, darling, it is better to be that girl. There is nothing sweeter than hearing the boy who once scorned you now pine for you, beg for you, plead for you...and to watch the light die in his eyes as you say, 'No'." She took Betty's hand again. This time, Betty let it be taken. "My name is Francesca. I think you are a lucky girl, to have chanced upon me like this."

"I, um, I'm Betty-" She didn't get the chance to say anything more. The look of stern disapproval on Francesca's face sent her voice into hiding. Francesca hooked her arm around Betty's, steering her into a walk that headed away from Betty's house and in the direction of downtown. Betty noticed the delicate scent of perfume as Francesca pulled her close, a whiff of sandalwood and violet that gave the other woman a literal sophisticated air. But she was more focused on Francesca's expression than her aroma.

"'Betty'?" Francesca's voice was filled with sweet scorn. "My darling girl, no wonder the boys can make you cry, if you tell them that you are as common as the stones around their feet! Your name should whisper the quiet delights of your beauty, the secret hints of impossible majesty in your soul. You should be an Elisa, or...no, a Lisette. Say it for me, dear, and feel how much more sensual, how much more attractive you feel about yourself."

Betty squeaked out, "I'm-" She coughed, then tried again. "I'm, um, Lisette." She didn't feel more beautiful. She felt the name squirming away from her in embarrassment at being associated with a dumpy, dowdy girl who looked half her age and cried in public. "I...I don't think it's working, sorry."

"Of course not, Lisette," Francesca said, walking Betty briskly through the busy streets and crowded sidewalks of the downtown area, taking lefts and rights with such dizzying rapidity that Betty wasn't entirely sure she could find her way home on her own anymore. "A name is nothing but a word. If you are to become a heartbreaker, my darling girl, you will need more help from your Francesca than that."

She stopped suddenly, yanking hard on Betty's arm to bring the young woman to a stop along with her. "Behold!" she said, gesturing to a tiny storefront sandwiched between a clothing store and a nail salon. It looked for all the world like the small glass-fronted door had elbowed its way in between the other two shops, squeezing into a space that wasn't there yesterday and wouldn't be there again tomorrow. "Your deliverance from the ordinary, my dear. Francesca's home away from home. Welcome to Fascino!"

Sure enough, Betty noticed the word 'FASCINO' worked into the wrought-iron door handle. She didn't speak enough Italian to know what it meant, though. Probably something to do with 'fascinating', like buying their clothes or their perfume would make you a fascinating woman. Not that Betty thought she could turn into Francesca just with a change of outfits. She needed more help than a fancy clothing store could give if she wanted to become irresistible.

Francesca must have seen the look on her face, because she made a sharp tutting noise as she opened the door and pulled them inside. "Now, none of that, little Lisette!" she said, a note of mocking sharpness in her voice. "I know what you must be thinking. 'I am a little scarecrow, a four-eyed frog with a too-wide mouth and hair like old straw!'" Betty winced. She'd never even thought about the mouth thing before now.

Francesca didn't seem to notice. "'How can I possibly hope to be as beautiful, as sensual, as irresistible as the lovely Francesca?'" she continued, still mimicking Betty's Midwestern tones. "Fear not, darling Lisette! Fascino can make even you into me! Just come this way." She dragged Betty down a dim hallway lit by soft green lamps into a room full of racks upon racks of dresses. Some looked formal enough to wear to a state dinner, others light and fresh as a spring flower.

Betty began to reach for one, but Francesca smacked the back of her hand. "Ah!" she said, tugging Betty away from the rack. "My darling girl, you're nowhere near ready for the challenge of dressing yourself! This is a situation that calls for...professional attention." She clapped her hands, and two women stepped out from behind the racks of clothing as if they'd been waiting their whole lives for this moment. Betty did a double-take when she saw them-both of them looked almost identical to Francesca, right down to the hairstyle and the dress. She had to look so closely to spot the differences between them that she felt like she was doing a puzzle in an old 'Highlights' magazine.

"They look like you," Betty gasped, before she could stop herself. It sounded so stupid, so obvious coming out of her mouth, but they genuinely could have been sisters. Betty felt even more intimidated by comparison; all of them looked like they could be fashion models or actresses, and Betty was just...Betty.

Certainly Francesca seemed to think the remark was foolish. "Well, of course, my dear," she said airily. "After all, if you had the choice, why would you possibly be you when you could be me instead?" She jerked her head sharply at the two women. "Monica, Rebecca, where do you think we should begin here? Certainly with the clothes, don't you agree?"

The woman on the left tilted her head slightly and cast a skeptical eye on Betty. Betty wanted to hide under the carpet. "Well, there's definitely no shortage of places to work on, but...yes, definitely the clothes. Shall we, Rebecca?" She gestured to the woman on the right, who nodded silently back. Then the two of them swept in like jungle cats making a kill.

Before Betty could do anything more than let out a startled yelp, they had hooked their perfect fingernails under the hem of her sweater and pulled it up and over her head. The smooth, swift motion took her glasses with it, sending them flying across the room. Betty didn't see where, because she no longer had her glasses. She spent an instant wondering what happened to them before remembering that she hadn't bothered wearing a bra and clapping her hands over her bare chest.

"Don't worry," Rebecca said, glancing at Betty's chest. "We'll do something about those, too." She yanked Betty's skirt down around her ankles. Within moments, Betty's panties followed. "And that," she said, eyeing Betty's pubic mound.

"Oh, dear," Francesca tsked, clapping her hands rapidly again. "Don't worry, my darling, gentle child. I promise you, we won't let any of this...this injustice stand. I promised you beauty, and no matter how hard we must work, beautiful is what you shall be!" Another woman entered the room, just as beautiful as the rest and in the exact same way. "Sofia, the skin cream, quickly! It's an emergency."

Sofia reached into the stylish handbag she wore and produced a small ceramic jar. She opened it to reveal a pale cream, which she scooped out with her free hand. "You're absolutely right, Francesca," she replied, with the same urgency of a consulting doctor called to the bedside of a terminal patient. "You did the right thing calling me in." She began to smooth the cream into Betty's legs, working her way up from the tops of her feet to her ankles and slowly up her calves.

"Um, I, could we, just, just..." Betty stammered in incoherent mortification, not sure whether she was more upset about being naked or being groped or being treated like some sort of candidate for a leper colony. But her growing consternation faded into stunned amazement as she watched the effects of the cream where Sofia worked it into her skin.

Everywhere Sofia's fingers touched, Betty saw her skin growing smoother-not just the usual kind of smoothness she got when she used cream on her occasional dry skin, but a physical transformation. Her razor burns faded away to be replaced by perfect, unblemished skin, and the tiny infected hairs that always troubled her simply vanished where the cream soaked in. Even the scar on her knee that she got playing volleyball in junior high disappeared. The skin that replaced it was a different color, more like Francesca's olive complexion than Betty's usual pale cast. Betty was so astonished that she almost didn't notice how far Sofia's hands were going until they had already reached her upper thighs.

"Um, hold on just a mo...ment?" Betty squealed, as Sofia's hands cupped her vulva and began to spread the startlingly cool cream all over. The other woman's touch was firm, professional, and entirely too practiced to ignore no matter how hard Betty tried. "Can't weEEE!" she gasped out, her composure melting into sudden and unexpected bliss at the way Sofia's thumb rolled over her clit.

"I'm afraid we can't, dear, at least not right now." Francesca's smirk left Betty red with embarrassment, but at the same time she couldn't bring herself to push those hands away. "It's good that you're taking so well to this part of your beauty treatment-a cultured woman should always be open to pleasure-but this isn't about sex. This is all about bringing out the luster in your skin. See how gorgeous you look already?"

Betty stared down, her vision slightly fuzzy from the missing glasses. Sofia had already gone to work on her other leg, but she could see that her pubic mound looked perfectly smooth and enticing. It was so pretty that it took Betty a moment to work out what had happened. "My...hair?" she whispered, completely bewildered now.

"Oh, darling," Francesca said, "surely you didn't think that you needed to be so...unkempt down there?" She chuckled, the other three women joining her in laughter. "A woman's cunt should always be perfectly kissable, Lisette. I know mine is." She twirled, spinning her skirt up so that Betty could see she wore nothing under her dress. "It's so easy. Just ask yourself, 'What would Francesca do?'"

"But I mean...how...?" Betty's voice trailed off into another moan as Sofia found her way back between Betty's thighs, working their way around her hips to massage her buttocks with the cream. Then they moved on, up her stomach and around her back, leaving perfect olive skin behind them. Leaving Francesca's skin behind them.

"It's all part of the magic, Lisette," Francesca said, taking Betty's hands in hers as Sofia's fingers worked cream into Betty's tingling, aching breasts. "After all, who would want a makeover that just left you a better you when you could get one that made you into an even better me?"

Betty frowned. "But, I...I don't want to be..." Another wave of pleasure left her quaking where she stood, her whole body trembling from Sofia's slick-fingered caresses. Her breasts felt like they were swelling with arousal, the flesh on her chest feeling tight and hot and electric with excitement. She let out a choking gasp as the sensation overwhelmed her.

"I understand completely, dear. You don't need to say another word." Francesca nodded, as though agreeing with a notion that was simply self-evident. Betty almost said the last word anyway, just to make it clear that it was 'you' and not 'me', but then Sofia lavished a bit more attention on her nipples and she decided to simply let it go.

"Just let us do all that hard work," Francesca continued, her voice like warm syrup in Betty's ears, "and you simply relax and enjoy yourself." Sofia's hands ran up over Betty's shoulders, down her arms, soothing away all the tension in her muscles until she could barely even move. "There, my dear. All done. Now let's find you something to wear."

One of the other women-Betty couldn't tell whether it was Rebecca or Monica, they'd switched positions once or twice and the details that she'd used to tell them apart were a mere blur without her glasses-lifted a pink bra off of the rack and slipped it onto Betty's chest. "I know, you probably haven't needed to wear one of these yet," she said, "but trust me, you'll need to get into the habit." Betty looked for matching panties, but they didn't seem to be forthcoming.

The other of the pair pulled a red sleeveless dress off of its hanger and pulled it over Betty's head. "There," she said. "See how that accentuates those curves of yours?" Betty looked down again, her mouth hanging open in shock. She'd worn enough dresses for church or family events to know that she didn't really have any curves to accentuate-even her mother had commented once or twice that it was a shame Betty didn't grow up in the Seventies, when her body type was all the rage. But now...

As she watched, the fabric of the dress billowed out at her hips. It looked almost like a faint breeze stirred it from below, but it didn't fall back into place; instead, Betty felt the soft silk caressing her body all over. The dress narrowed slightly at the waist, but Betty could still feel it touching her as though it had been tailored to fit her perfectly, and her chest...oh God. Her chest. The tight, hot feeling intensified with every passing second as she watched her breasts swell into the cups of the bra, turning the loose fit into astonishing cleavage within seconds.

Betty tried to figure out how she was going to explain this to her parents and her friends. Would they even believe it was her? They'd have to, wouldn't they? She looked different, certainly, but it was just a makeover when all was said and done. They'd have to accept it eventually, even...Caleb. She smiled slightly, thinking about what her would-be boyfriend was going to think when she showed up at the Sadie Hawkins dance and gave him a good look at what he'd turned down. "Shoes, please," one of the women said, and Betty stepped into the open-toed pair of heels they provided without even looking at them.

They fit perfectly, and Betty was somehow unsurprised that she seemed to have grown a full foot even though the heels were only perhaps an inch thick. She grinned, feeling like she had just found her own personal fairy godmother. Perhaps one a bit more cutting than the cheerful old lady in the Disney movies, but Betty was willing to forgive a lot at the moment. "What's next?" she said eagerly.

Francesca took her arm, and Betty noticed that this time they stood shoulder-to-shoulder. "Next, my dear Lisette, we do something about that face. After all, the most gorgeous frame still needs a pretty painting to go in it, wouldn't you agree?" She led Betty back out into the hallway, then into another room on the other side a bit further down. They left Sofia and Rebecca and Monica behind, but there were two more women waiting next to the mirrored make-up table who looked like they could have been their identical twins.

"We have a charity case for your special talents, Adriana," Francesca said as she guided Betty to a stool in front of the mirror. "Work your magic, please?" The woman stepped in, picking up a brush from a selection of tools and dusting Betty's face with powder. Betty still couldn't see very well-she hoped she didn't get her new dress dirty searching for her glasses-but she could tell that her face had already begun to match the skin tones of her new body. Within moments, the join was seamless.