Cracks

The situation was not exactly what she had expected. Jessica felt herself trying to get on the other side of Simon while walking, feeling the scowl on Kevin’s face. They had at least made it back before the period started, but now she was hungry.

What in the hell was Simon thinking?

“What in the hell are you thinking?” she thought to him.

“What in the hell are you thinking?” the third wheel of their conversation voiced aloud.

Why did that bastard have to be here? And why did he, out of everyone, have to share the same thought as she did?

Jessica was the Queen of Eastlake, Kevin was the Abomination, and her Master was an idiot.

The blonde continued scowling as a stone-faced Simon managed to raise an eyebrow worth of effort at Kevin’s comment. Thankfully, her Master’s emotions weren’t as terrifying as they had been earlier.

But what part of letting Kevin keep going with them wasn’t a mistake?

Why did HE, of all people, have to know her secret? It was so simple that Simon could erase everything and act as nothing had happened! Then they could get on with their lives!

Now the worm not only blew up their entire day but now she had to be angry about what he revealed to them out in the field!

In the process of trailing Jessica, Kevin saw her boyfriend cheating on her with one of her best friends and teammates. She began feeling the anger coming back after having been cowering and in fear for the whole weekend. Jessica told her Master she just wanted Simon being Simon, everything to go off as they planned! Well, he had been acting like himself, but it was fucking EVERYTHING ELSE that was falling apart around her!

Everything was clicking together from that morning. First, Tiffany needed to talk to Brad before class, then that hickey that showed up that she went out of her way to cover up!

Jessica shuddered to remember how Brad tried to talk to her when he knocked her Master away to get to her.

These were the people who helped her craft her popularity and image. The ‘It’ Guy Boyfriend, the teammate cheerleader who got everything to work for her as she wanted, that’s who Brad and Tiffany were supposed to be!

How many people were doing things behind her back in this school?

Sam should never have quit cheerleading! It would’ve made her life so much easier if she didn’t have that pride and did what she said.

Oh, right. Master gave her that power, and she had been using it on Sam.

Jessica growled as she thought about her life now spiraling out of control. If she were seen with Simon and Kevin together, the whole school would be in more of an uproar than it was before she and her Master trapped him into confronting him.

What in the hell did her Master see in Kevin to feel any kind of loyalty toward him?

Master was hers. HERS!

Again. That same thought from before. Jessica bit her lip nervously as she darted her eyes around and clutched a book in her arms, trying to figure out what was causing her to think that way.

Simon finally responded to the question being mentally and physically asked of him by both his genie and his friend by stepping out in front of them, his face exasperated still from what he was still feeling.

He clapped his hands and looked at them both back and forth like he was going mad.

“Okay. Guys! Listen. I don’t know how I’m going to make this fucking work out, but I will make this work out!”

He flailed his hands at the two, pointing back and forth and crossing his arms, “For my friends, the mortal nemeses, you sound like a god damned stereo to me asking me that.”

Kevin’s voice perked up as he pointed to her accusingly, “But she didn’t say anything!”

“I’m telepathic with him, asshole!” the blonde growled back angrily.

She fidgeted with her necklace to make a point, “This is how Master and I talk without having to be seen!”

“Well, him putting a collar on you is a minor improvement. Maybe I can help him to get you through obedience training!”

“I wish I could tell you both to shut up, and you would Shut. Up.”

Oh fuck. Jessica let out a moan and fell against the wall as she looked at her Master, glaring at both of them, her book falling to the floor. She let out a whine at him as she felt herself and Kevin go silent.

Her Master was not amused with either of them arguing, especially in the hallway. He pointed at the cafeteria with his eyes wide at both of them.

“You’re going to draw more attention if you keep yelling. I’m hungry. We’re getting food. Got it?”

Her emerald orbs glanced at Kevin’s dark eyes hiding behind his glasses to find him giving the same nervous look, then both looking at their auburn-haired companion and nodding quickly.

At this point, it didn’t really matter if they were late to their class or not. It was probably easier to skip it. Her Master picked up her book and gave it back to her. The cafeteria was still open, and Simon glared at Kevin, who shook his head, confused.

“You’re still buying lunch.”

Jessica watched as the young man dropped his head dejected and reaching for his wallet, “Fuck. I forgot I told you that.”

The blonde raised an eyebrow and watched the two of them interacting. Her green eyes watched her Master still with some concern.

Simon being as angry as he did, still making her terrified for him. All of Sam’s warnings about how making her brother get crazy suddenly made more sense after having felt glaciers worth of furious and icy emotions hit her out in the warm late-spring day.

Now with food, Jessica found herself, not with her friends, but the two outcasts eating lunch in an unused classroom with the lights off.

“Why couldn’t you just wish for the damn food?” Kevin asked his friend in frustration, “You literally can get us lunch from anywhere, but you’re still having me pay? Your **** girl is the rich girl! Why not use her bank account?”

Jessica winced at the term **** girl as she tried to eat quietly next to her Master.

“You promised to buy me lunch,” Simon deadpanned coldly, “So you’re buying me lunch.”

That earned a smirk from the young genie. Kevin, on the other hand, sighed in frustration and rubbed his face. Then, he took an unhealthy bite from the fried chicken sandwich in his hands and talked with his mouth full.

“Look,” the weasel interrupted by swallowing his food partially and motioning at Simon, “I honestly don’t understand why you would come back to this place now that you have her. You could do whatever you fucking want, Simon! Why would you come back to this hellhole?”

“Eastlake isn’t a hellhole,” Jessica found herself defending back.

“Of course not for you. Not yet anyway. You haven’t enjoyed being on the fucking receiving end of the kind of shit you put me through until now,” Kevin seethed, leaning in front of her. The genie **** herself to lean back and away.

“But Simon has, and he deserves almost the same amount chance that I do to rip the veil off this place finally. You’re popular. You’ve always been popular, at least until your Mom finally showed you; you’ve always been wanted by everyone, too. Guess that’s the cost now, huh?” he pointed out, relishing the enjoyment at the end of his sentence.

Jessica looked up at her Master worriedly as he remained silent, “Master. You, you don’t want to do any of that, do you?”

His eyes shifted down at her as he continued to frown and then looked again at Kevin, his serious tone making Jessica unsure.

“It’s tempting.”

She bit her lip and looked down worriedly at her food, then glared and shot back at Kevin, “Why are you trying to give him those ideas? He’s not wrong about what you would do, but I’m not going just to let you control….”

Kevin nearly let out a cackle, “Hello? Genie? I know what he fucking said to me out there, too. He’s not wrong! But you don’t get a say here among your Masters!”

“Master,” the other young man sternly reminded as he took a drink from his lunch, staring right at his friend, “It isn’t plural, Kev.”

Jessica stuck out her tongue and taunted the boy in satisfaction as the nerd threw his arms up, frustrated. At least she didn’t have to suffer the indignity of referring to him by the same title as her Master. She had only one Master, and that was Master!

Kevin smirked darkly at her, “Oh, I get it. You ENJOY being Simon’s **** girl, don’t you?”

The blonde bombshell froze in place and glared back at the young man who leaned over, “You want to be his good little genie.”

‘I want to be his good little genie….’

No. No. NO! NO! She did not want to be a genie! She shook her head and nearly found herself shrieking again but caught herself.

“YOU… you are the worst, most perverted, egotistical, little piece of shit….”

“Enough,” Simon commanded out, “Both of you. You’re giving me a headache.”

As Simon continued to eat, the awkward silence returned to the room, Kevin looking away in one direction, Jessica glancing up toward her Master and back down at her disappearing food occasionally.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized to him.

Her Master rubbed his forehead as he finished his sandwich and looked at them both. His head did hurt, she could feel him in pain, but he was still frustrated and bewildered.

“Do you two even know when you started fucking doing this to each other? Because I don’t know what caused it! It just pilled on-and-on-and-on-and-on! Why?”

Jessica felt her face go blank around the same time as Kevin’s asking the same question. And both of them looked in disbelief at their friend.

“Simon, seriously? She’s always been a bitch to me!”

“And Kevin’s always been gross!” she added, “Ever since I saw him with….”

Her eyes widened as she became tight-lipped and kept herself from finishing that sentence. It was so intuitive because she remembered the moment as clear as day.

Holy fuck, she remembered the moment as clear as day!

Kevin’s glare and suspicion rose as he leaned forward, now increasingly interested in her answer, “Saw me with who?”

His eyes widened, realizing it before her Master, his voice seethed as he pointed at the boy next to her, “You mean Simon?”

Jessica’s green eyes widened in horror as she looked up at her Master and at her enemy, her hands covering her mouth preventing any more details from coming out. Finally, he stood up and walked forward.

“You mean. All the shit. All that fucking shit. The years of bullying and tormenting me, calling me a fucking psycho? Make me feel worse than dogshit. So you did ALL OF THAT to me because you thought I took Simon from you?”

The genie seethed back and hissed at hearing him act like it hadn’t happened.

“You did take him from me! He was my friend! Why would he want to hang out with you?”

Kevin laughed in disbelief and shook his head. It seemed utterly hysterical to him that would even be the cause, but it was! She knew it was! It had to…

“Simon, can she still lie to you?”

Her Master shook his head, “No.”

Kevin continued to chuckle, rubbing his forehead and temples, sitting back across the blonde genie on top of the desk.

“Make him wish to have me not lie to him either. I don’t care. That’s not what happened,” he informed the genie coldly.

She didn’t have to wait for him to make a wish.

“Simon says don’t lie to Master or me.”

“Jess,” her Master’s voice was mellow but firm, serving as a warning from going overboard.

Kevin looked ahead and then blinked once, shaking his head. Jessica growled again and ordered, “Why did you take Simon from me?”

“I never took Simon from you,” the pasty-skinned teen hissed, “Simon’s Mom knew my Mom from PTA, and he started coming over. It sucked when it started because he always threw fits over this friend he had that didn’t want to hang out with him anymore. The fact it was you of all people means there has to be some sort of karma in this universe.”

He wasn’t lying.

She felt the pit of her stomach fell out again. Kevin slumped into the back of the desks he was sitting on and looked at her Master.

“You see? Mistress Frankenstein created us monsters over something that didn’t happen! You’re the reason for all of the shit I’ve had to go through!”

The fire rose back up in the belly. Jessica was clenching her fists, “I didn’t create you being a weirdo.”

“No, of course not, but that’s just gasoline for you, isn’t it? Someone is different from how you want them to be! You’re a creature of expectations!”

Jessica fell silent and clenched her teeth as Kevin continued to seethe, “Fuck those expectations. You don’t get to have them anymore, ****.”

“Quiet,” her Master ordered coolly again.

Kevin went silent. Jessica turned her green eyes up to Simon again worriedly as he frowned, staring off away from them. The more the monster talked, the more he picked deeper and deeper into the genie’s wounded psyche.

****.

That word ate at her. It was the opposite of what she had always been but now found herself being. Her Master had done his best to try and keep it from being said or thought. He had told her of all the amazing things she could be capable of, and he did his best to be well-mannered, courteous, innocent to a point. But, they kept pushing the line for that innocence of what was and wasn’t acceptable.

But he was the Master.

The final say rested with him.

She watched his hazel eyes shut and take a deep breath. Kevin and herself both flinched visibly as Simon’s fist slammed into the desk.

Then he slammed it again, and one more time, feeling his hands run through his hair.

They were hurting him.

And when her Master hurt, she could feel it. The genie remembered back to when she had first felt his pain, that unbearable feeling that twisted and screwed painfully into her chest. His eyes were red, and he kept thinking to himself.

“Simon…”

Kevin seemed to realize it, too. That made the blonde feel even angrier with him. He got what he wanted, didn’t he? Her Master explained to him what he had done to her.

“Look, maybe you need a break,” the nerd offered.

“I’m not giving you Jess,” her Master hissed, looking at his friend, “I lost her once. I’m not going through that hell again. Everything since then is how we got here in the fucking first place!”

He stood up and pressed his finger into Kevin’s shirt, “But I’m not abandoning you either. So get that through your head.”

Jessica stood up as she watched her Master walk away from them both, rubbing his face, still trying to think of a solution to this mess.

“Just wish for him to forget, Master. I won’t bully him anymore. I promise!”

“I need a walk, Jess. I need to think.”

She ran over to the door as he stepped out, then stood in the doorway worriedly. Her eyes became angry as she shot a look over at an equally frowning Kevin.

“And I thought I was the one you fucked up the most.”

Jessica spun around, ready to slap him as he avoided her arm. Instead, seeing him smirking smugly, she spat at him, “He deserves better than you.”

“Then you would have stayed his friend, wouldn’t you?” he stepped forward, pushing by through the doorway, and looked down on her uncomfortably close.

“You really want to know what I think? I think you should suffer for what you did. I think everyone should watch you suffer. Watching you lose everything. It would be easy.”

He then smiled, “But after watching him, I think Simon deserves you. As much as I terrify you, I think the thing you’re terrified of isn’t me, but the idea that I’m right. You want Simon to control you. A human wouldn’t have these urges, but maybe a genie can’t control them. It must be your true nature. You want to fight it, but you can’t. That’s what scares you, ****. You know that’s what you truly are. I can ask my friend for anything, but you, you must obey your Master.”

Her emerald eyes looked up at him shaken. Jessica held her elbow, then looked down at the floor ahead of her, absorbing what Kevin was saying.

“Don’t worry though, ****, her Majesty’s secret shall stay with me. Run along now genie...”

Jessica began to walk forward in the direction her Master had wandered off in, shaken to the core by Kevin’s words.

If Simon gave Kevin what he wanted, what would she be able to do to stop it?

And Kevin hadn’t been told what else they wished for before now. He didn’t know what she had given up to her Master by choice. She clutched the book tightly in her arms as the thoughts from the bastard’s words invaded her mind. It conjured images that both frightened and excited her.

She was frightened by the idea of Kevin getting a hold of her, making wishes from her as if Simon would permit him - that she was a possession that could be shared around. She was afraid of losing her popularity, her standing, everything she had worked so hard to cultivate into her safe and stable world.

Her Master, on the other hand, the image of him being more assertive excited her. She knew because she had already experienced it before. The fact that it was exciting scared her - was Kevin right? No human would want to be controlled or enslaved - so what was this nervous energy in her that wanted more? The idea that Simon could do it, that he could do anything. That he could throw away the rules that he had shouldered, that they wouldn’t be apart again.

She shook her head, feeling the tension getting to her as it had to her Master.

What was happening to her?

Kevin was wrong; he had to be! She had to convince Master that he couldn’t trust him! Giving him what he wanted would be horrible for everyone!

She had to protect herself and her Master -

“How could you do that Jess?!” a familiar voice accosted her, jolting the genie from her thoughts.

Jessica was stopped in her tracks by Tiffany scowling at her, an accusatory finger pressed into the book clutched to the genie's chest, “Nice going, Jess! You really blew it!”

The confusion on the blonde bombshell’s face was apparent as she held her book and looked at the angry faces of her cheerleading cohort. It was also the worst time to run into the raven-haired girl.

“Wh-What are you talking about?” she asked, confused.

“Blowing Brad’s chances at Prom King! What kind of little stunt did you pull in the hallway with Simon Harris, of all people?”

Jessica’s eyes widened as she watched her friend toss the stray black hairs from her face and cross her arms, “Well, Brad’s going to take care of Simon, at least.”

“Wh-What do you mean, ‘take care of Simon’?”

Tiffany smirked and pointed further down the hall, “He’s got some teammates with him to take down that dork….”

The blonde pushed the other cheerleader out of the way and began bolting down the hallway as fast as she could, reaching the end of the three-way hall.

There was a commotion at the end of the hall, a group of the football team and onlookers were gathered around someone. She didn’t even stop to think as she pushed past their leader and grabbed his left arm before it could strike down.

“Brad! What’re you doing!? Stop!” she yelled out in a confused panic.

The QB turned with his bright blue eyes and let out a roar, tossing her off of him and letting her body bounce on the floor, her skirt riding up and shirt falling off her shoulder.

“I’ll be with you in a moment, babe!” he called back tauntingly.

Jessica darted her eyes around to see who else was around that could help in the hallway in a panic. She knew Simon was behind that huddle, being held against the lockers by the collar of his shirt. She turned to a frowning face among the football players who didn’t feel all that proud to be there.

“Chris! Get him to stop! Get help!”

Jessica moved to get up again as another student in the hallway turned and began shouting.

“FIGHT! FIIIIIIGHT!”

Shit.

The genie moved to get up when the sudden burst of pleasure dropped her onto her knees again,

‘I wish you told me what you really thought, Brad.’

Jessica moaned and then started panting to keep the feeling from letting out and soaking onto the floor. Then, angrily, the voice of her boyfriend began yelling.

“You want to know what I fucking think! I think you’re NOTHING!”

The Quarterback began cackling in unhinged glee, Jessica looking up from a position on her knees as the teammates around him began backing away.

“I think you and your retarded little brain need just to quit thinking that you’ll ever be anything more than an insect! A damned gnat that won’t know when to buzz the fuck off. I think when I’m done beating you, I’ll go fuck my girl in the locker room like the purebred toy she is! Remind her who the Big Dog is in this school! Make her beg my name!”

Jessica trembled as she heard Brad talk about her and the way he spoke about her Master.

Purebred Toy.

Was that all she was to him? Just some fucking toy?

Her hands clenched into fists as the tears welled up in her eyes.

“Then I’ll give her the idea of inviting your sister over for drinks! And we'll have some more fun! I’ll give that fucking camera of yours something it can really take a photo of for your wall! How about that? Then I’ll go fuck whoever I want! Because that’s the thing you don’t understand, you dumb fuck! We just humor you! I’m TOO IMPORTANT to get in trouble!"

Brad shifted his weight against Simon's collar, holding him higher, his free hand held level near his eyes.

"I'm up here - and you're," he pointed at the floor and stomped his foot, "you're dust to me. There are no consequences for people like me; the people at the top, and we crush people like you at the bottom. And I’ll always be on top as its always meant to be!”

That… that unbelievable BASTARD.

Jessica felt her teeth grind as she remembered Sam’s conversation with her on the Sunday car ride home.

Enough.

‘ENOUGH ALREADY!’ her mind screamed out.

She got the point!

She shot her eyes toward Chris in pleading, now looking back at her, his shoulders dropped, guilty and insulted by his teammate’s words. His fists clenching down as he shook his head and stormed back over to the QB.

“That’s enough, Brad...”

He got elbowed in the stomach by his teammate, scaring the others off around him as he looked more unhinged. Other students began to gather from the commotion.

The genie watched in fear and anger as Brad’s fist flew forward to make contact with its victim.