This is the original ending to my story "Living Dolls." As I prepared to post it, I realized that the end of Chapter Seven, with Jason and Karen sitting on the steps awaiting the return of Jason's parents, was the best place to end the story. Nevertheless, there are more chapters. They have none of the humanity of the first story, but I wrote 'em, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to post 'em. If you haven't read
Living Dolls
yet, I'd suggest you do that first (although be prepared to be there a while). Just click on my name above, and then on the "Stories/Poems" tab. Otherwise, the unexplained appearance in this story of dolls who can be changed into women may be a bit of a surprise.
CHAPTER ONE
I don't think I'd ever seen Mom as happy as she was when she raced down the sidewalk only to halt, out of breath, nearly out of control, and hear the voice of her goddaughter again. Maybe it was because Karen had told Mom, in no uncertain terms, that she was going to marry me.
More likely, though, it was because Karen had called her "Mom." We had talked about that before Mom and Dad got home, and Karen had insisted that this was her home, and that these were her parents. She knew that they'd never replace her real parents; in fact, I told her that, if anything, they'd help her 'find' her real parents. But the only "parent" she'd known for the last twelve years had been a sham, and she wanted something real in her life for once.
So to her she was as good as adopted. It was her family, and her mom and dad. She'd asked me if I minded sharing them, and I told her I didn't. As long as she didn't mind a little incest in the family. That's why that spot on my arm was so susceptible to that second pinch on the front steps.
I also don't think I'd seen Mom or Dad any more impressed than when explained how I'd managed to produce their goddaughter only a few weeks after they'd revealed her existence to me. Karen and I had talked about that, too, before they got there, since there were only a few instances where I was willing to let my story correspond to the truth, and I was a notoriously bad liar.
"It was all your doing," I told Mom once we'd all gone inside and I'd given them a bare outline of the facts.
"How's that?" She had trained herself not to react to sucking up like that, but I could tell she was eager to claim at least a tiny part of the credit.
"Well, once I figured out who Kerry might really be," I explained, "I decided to gain her confidence before I came right out and asked her, to establish some rapport."
Mom nodded sagely. This was one of the lessons she'd taught me. Karen was still holding my arm, listening to me shovel this shit.
"So that when I finally told her I knew who she was, she wouldn't panic and run away. 'Cause she was obviously hiding something, you know."
"Don't use 'you know,'" Mom said.
I stared at her for a few seconds – I found your goddaughter and you're correcting my English? – before continuing.
"And then we started talking, you kn – over a period of a few weeks, and we finally realized that her so-called aunt had been lying to her, too. 'Cause you guys told me that Karen's parents had died in a car accident. And her aunt – "
"Stop calling her my aunt," Karen said. "Please."
"The bitch?"
I got a nod.
"The bitch made up some really sick story to keep Karen under her thumb. So after that it was just some old-fashioned detective work. You know how much I liked all those Hardy Boys books you bought me."
Both parents just stared at me. Probably a little too much sarcasm.
"I did most of it on the Internet."
They both nodded at that. That made sense to them – the Internet. Neither one was really what you'd call computer literate. Both of them knew enough about the Internet to find sites they needed in their specialties, but if I'd told them that you could find out the location of the lost continent of Atlantis on the Internet, they'd have fallen for that, too, hook, line, and sinker.
I smiled at Karen and rubbed her arm. She smiled back at me.
I put the dolls back in my closet that morning and Karen never gave me any reason to take them out. Or frankly, any time. My parents furnished a very lovely bedroom for her, an upstairs room my mother had been using as a second study. On Saturday, they bought her a beautiful queen-sized bed, a chest of drawers, and a new desk, and had her pick out new colors for the walls and the trim. Of course, the painting meant that Karen had to spend the first few nights elsewhere, and the guest bed was too soft. The living room couch was too hard. My bed, oddly, turned out to be just right. After that, she never seemed to be able to find the time to move back to her own room. Not for sleeping, anyway. We liked to use her slightly springier mattress as a change of pace sometimes.
In the weeks that followed, Karen became a new person. From a shy, even sullen twelfth grader, she turned into an outgoing, gregarious . . . eleventh grader. During the investigation into Karen's travels with her "aunt," the police learned that Karen hadn't actually attended school one year. And what the police knew, the Hardwood High School administration soon knew. That prompted them to launch an "investigation" of their own, which meant that Karen was going to have to repeat twelfth grade.
To my surprise, Karen was overjoyed.
"You, um, won't miss me?" I asked. My inferiority complex was never far from the surface.
"Oh, honey, of course I'll miss you," she assured me. "But I've spent the last twelve years without parents. So the thought of another year at home..."
She was lost in her smile. I understood.
The other two students caught up in the "investigation" weren't quite as happy. Both Julie Pinsky and Andy Richardson had spent considerable amounts of time overseas as kids, and they, too, were deemed to be short a few essential classes. Andy's father threatened to sue, of course, but the school was adamant, and he didn't put up a very big fight. Rumor had it that Andy could use the chance to make some better grades, and maybe get into a better school. And after a while, Andy was rubbing his hands at the prospect of being elected student council president for an unprecedented fourth year in a row.
So in the end, we were fine. Right up until three weeks before the end of the school year, that is, when Karen sashayed into our bedroom with practiced nonchalance.
"Andy Richardson asked me to the prom today," she said matter-of-factly.
"Richie Rich?" I blurted. "But I thought that we – that is, I figured –"
I'd just assumed she was going to go with me. The junior-senior prom took place on the last weekend of the school year. I'd helped Karen pick out her dress, while she approved the tux Mom had bought me on New Year's Eve. But I'd never actually asked her to go with me.
And now I'd been upstaged by Andy Richardson. It was a sign of how much Karen had blossomed over the last couple of months that the guy who was universally agreed to be one of the best-looking guys in the school, not to mention the wealthiest guy, or at least the son of the town's wealthiest lawyer, had asked her to the prom.
My horror at what I'd done, or more precisely what I'd left undone, was apparently obvious on my face, because after a few more seconds of her haughtiest expression, Karen burst into giggles.
"What a gulli-bull," she laughed. "What a nin-cow-poop. What a –"
"That's enough, Bugs," I cut her off.
"I didn't say I'd go with him," Karen said. "I just said he'd asked. You don't think I'd dump my fiancée just cause Richie Rich starts hittin' on me, do you?"
"Whew," I said, breathing again. "What about Julie anyway?"
Julie Pinsky had been dating Andy Richardson since, like, forever. When he was elected head of the student council at the end of the school year two years ago – as a rising sophomore, for crying out loud; when he'd run for reelection last spring nobody even bothered to run against him – Julie was on his slate as the nominee for secretary. She was very attractive, kind of a prerequisite to being a cheerleader, and a really nice girl. If she'd sat down at our table with a signed, witnessed, and notarized acceptance, Gordon Ackerman would have been all over her.
"I don't know," Karen said. "I couldn't believe he asked me. But they were still sitting together at lunch. I wonder what's going on with them. Do you think she turned him down?"
"Julie? Rumor has it that she hasn't turned down Andy for anything. By which I mean, anything. More likely she's just like me, assuming they're going together."
"Until she finds out he asked me out," Karen said sympathetically. "The poor girl – she'll freak. I mean, don't you think?"
"It is possible to find out," I said slowly.
"How?"
My eyes drifted over to the closet.
"The dolls!" Her eyes lit up. "I forgot all about the dolls. You've been a very good boy, not playing with your dolls, haven't you?"
I grinned at her.
"I have enough trouble with the real you."
She hurried to the closet and pulled out the brunette.
"I'm sorry, I forget how they work."
I explained the protocol.
"Can you get men with them?" she asked, with a sly grin.
"No," I answered.
"When did you ever try to get a man?" she started laughing.
"I didn't," I said. "I'm just telling you that you, Karen McCarthy, can't use them to get men."
"So what you really mean is that I may not use them," she said, her eyes twinkling as they always did when she had a chance to correct my grammar. "I may not use my boyfriend's cute little Barbie doll to get George Clooney, hunky actor, life-size."
She hugged the doll's lips to hers, closing her eyes as she waited for the transformation.
