The Hypnotist

"Come on," Bonnie scoffed, as they entered the tent. The sign had read Behold The Power Of Hypnosis, over a single staring eye, and they'd gotten into such an argument about it that they'd finally had to go in and see what it was all about. Thirty or forty folding chairs had been set up in front of a makeshift stage. "There's no way hypnotism is real."

"You don't know what you're talking about," said Susie. The improvised theatre was about half full. As luck would have it, two seats were free right up the front. They made the way down the aisle, still bickering, passing several of their friends from high school, including Trixie Washington, Ben from the chess club and Hank whatshisname from the football team. "It's totally real. And nobody knows how it works. Isn't that crazy?"

"I know how it works. They're all just audience plants."

"I assure you," said Miss Trickett, in a sonorous tone of voice, "that hypnosis is very real." She was a tall, exotic, mildly sinister woman, her skin the colour of coffee, her lithe, sensuous curves straining the taut black silk of her cheongsam, looking down at the two girls from the stage. "And what's your name, you skeptical little creature? It wouldn't happen to be... Bonnie, would it?"

"Whatever," said Bonnie, rolling her eyes. "There's a million ways you could have known that."

"So there are," Miss Trickett said, as more people shuffled into the tent behind them. Susie turned to look, and noticed something she didn't like.

The cheerleaders were coming in! The whole posse of them, led by Anne-Marie Patchett, that blonde bitch who'd been elected homecoming queen just because she happened to be super hot. Susie, who totally didn't even care about stupid things like homecoming queens, shuffled down in her seat.

Anne-Marie didn't like her, for no reason at all, just because Susie had written that article for the school paper about how homecoming queens were an outdated sexist institution and it had won all those national awards and been reprinted in the New Yorker. Susie hadn't even named her. Ridiculous, really. And she didn't like Bonnie as well, just because Bonnie was Susie's best friend, and had beaten Anne's boyfriend in arm wrestling just one stupid time, and then Anne's boyfriend had mooned over Bonnie for like a year and kept forgetting Anne's name. Which wasn't even Bonnie's fault, but the stupid boyfriend's fault. Whatever his name had been.

Susie didn't want to get her attention. Still, it probably wasn't a big deal.

"Let's begin," said Miss Trickett. "Perhaps I could have a volunteer from the audience."