Young Writers Society

Belinda sat across the table slowly picking mushrooms off of her pizza just like Emily had done when she sat down. Emily tried not to be angry about that change in Belinda, but it frustrated her that Belinda didn't stay on one position for more than a second. She didn't know what Belinda liked at any given moment and it annoyed her that she didn't know something.

Belinda looked up, and paused. She looked back down and picked up her pizza. Then she set it down again, her mouth still open to bite the pizza that was not there.

Emily watched her impatiently. She sighed and leaned back in her chair as she waited for Belinda to make up her mind.

As Belinda looked down again for the fifth time she managed to eat her pizza and Emily was satisfied with her decision. Emily turned her attention back to her rapidly cooling pizza slice.

The pizza grease that she tried desperately to keep on the pizza and off her hands, found it's way into the crevices of her fingers, painting them fluorescent orange. The pizza sauce migrated to the last bite as she bit the cheese into a wall around it. And it was delicious.

She salivated over the last bite, full of five times the flavor the previous bites held. She opened her mouth greedily to swallow it-

"About your interests!" Belinda suddenly yelled, her eyes looking down and her cheeks red with embarrassment as Emily's pizza went sailing down on the plate in front of her and sauce slid the cheese off of the bread.

Emily squealed a shriek and gasped as she figured out what had happened. Emily looked up angrily, then saw that Belinda had turned quite a bright shade of red. Belinda's mouth was small again and her eyes lowered. She looked like a puppy in those SPCA commercials.

Inside her head Belinda was cursing herself for they way she was. It was exactly that yelling problem that drove people away and made her nervous to talk. Sometimes she was a ticking time bomb of words waiting to burst out of her. And she had just exploded.

"What?" Emily asked, her voice portraying a suppressed anger. Belinda looked up, she was smearing sauce off of her hand a little harder than necessary.

"Tell me about yourself." Belinda squeaked.

Emily frowned. "What about me? You seem to have a pretty good idea."

"I can't tell everything by looking at you." Belinda said in a soft voice.

Emily let silence crawl back in the room for a moment.

"What do you want to know?"

Belinda smiled slightly.

"What you like, what your friends are like, what do you like to read. I want you to tell me about yourself." Emily stared at Belinda, her expression blank and her mind processing what Belinda was asking of her. Belinda smiled gently at her, her eyes giving off an eerily child-like curiosity.

"I don't know." Emily said, picking up her mug of tea.

"Favorite color?" Belinda asked. Emily paused.

"Orange."

"Favorite song?"

Emily paused, wondering if Belinda was going to keep asking questions like this.

"A Thousand Miles."

"Favorite word."

"Prestidigitation."

"Favorite food."

"Ice cream."

Belinda glared at her, as if saying "That's not a food."

"Fine. Chicken Wings."

"Favorite book?"

"Ten Thousand Wonders."

Belinda's mouth went wide into a smile, and her hands squeezed together in excitement. "Oh my god! I love that series too!"

"Really?" Emily asked blandly to disguise her own enthusiasm.

"Yes!" Belinda squealed. "I must have read it twenty times, and that part where Marlene gets stabbed in the back by Jodie at the dance still surprising me."

"Me too, what'd you think of that Shadow Bender at the end?"

"The one with the dragon tattoo? I think he's Marlene in disguise, like Mulan but cooler." Belinda took a large bite of pizza.

"You really think she would betray Fairy Melody for that slime ball shade Keller?"

"No I think she's smart enough to make them think she would long enough to bring them down from the inside. Like Mulan!"

"That is only slightly like Mulan." Emily said, finishing her slice of pizza and reaching in the box for another slice.

"Wasn't it Mulan you built that giant horse and hid inside it until night when all the huns were sleeping and burned their camp?"

"That's the Trojans." Emily told her.

"No, the Trojans were Greeks, they wouldn't be fighting the Huns in the first place."

"So you really think it's Marlene?" Emily asked, changing the subject before she got mad again.

"One Hundred percent, who else would Keller allow to decorate their Shade suit?" "Hmm..." Emily took a but of her pizza and thought over Belinda's theory.

***

It was about midnight, or that's what his watch said. It was hard to tell in the dark. Fredrick Avana plugged his ears again, he'd broken into many people's houses. Many of these houses held people some people with very strange habits, but this was the weirdest. He'd seen men break into tears watching the Bachelor, and others dancing to Taylor Swift. Belinda Cabbotry shattered all previous records.

Bagpipes. She listened to bagpipes before she went to bed.

Bagpipes playing pop music. Pop bagpipes, at top volume. He almost wanted to jump out of her closet now and tell her to knock it off, but then where would he be?

In jail, that's where, he told himself.

It was still an easy break-in though. Heaven forbid he get arrested for something so easy. Belinda, he had discovered, the girl who was choking in front of his house, was not kidding. He just needed to break into her house and plug her nose for twenty seconds and he'd be done. Well, until he crossed the hall and smothered her friend. Then he could retire, maybe to Mexico with a nice little house.

He could barely hear a knock at the door.

Outside the locked room, Emily rubbed her ears irritably. "Belinda, could you turn that off?" She yelled.

Belinda stopped what she was doing and turned the bagpipes down a smidge. "It soothes me." She said.

How? Emily and Avana thought.

"Well, quiet soothes me." Emily told her through the door.

"I'll be just a minute, then I can go to bed, it's my ritual."

Emily groaned and a door slammed outside the room. Then Belinda turned the bagpipes up for another few minutes then the light went out in the room and the bagpipes stopped assaulting their ears. Fredrick held his breath as the bed creaked.

About an hour later, the closet creaked open, and Fredrick winced as he stepped out and a bell rang.

***

Emily woke with a start. She jumped two inches and tried to figure out why. Within a millisecond she knew. There was someone screaming, but not a female screaming, a male scream. Emily crumpled the dusty sheets off of her and leaped up. She ran out into the hallway and tried to figure out which door it was coming from.

The locked door. Of course it was the locked door.

"Belinda!" Emily yelled banging on the door. Her stomach went into knots as she listened to this mysterious man scream.

"What?" Belinda yawned from behind her. Emily spun around. Belinda was hobbling over on a little cane with a cobra head on it. She was wearing thick wooly pajama pants and a sweatshirt despite it being over eighty degrees.

"What the heck is going on?" Emily asked.

"Why don't you open the door and see?" Belinda said, pointing to the door weakly and then yawning.

"It's locked." Emily said, listening to the desperate screams of pain of this mysterious visitor.

"You assume it's locked." Belinda pointed at the door knob again and Emily pushed the door open. Inside was Mr. Avana, lying face down with his eyes squeezed shut and his arms failing about. There were scratches along his face and arms, all of which were bleeding at the moment.

"What the-?" Emily asked, her eyes shifting to the silver barbed wire and golden bells creating a web across about a foot above the floor.

"Watch the wires." Belinda told her. "I'm going to call the police. Belinda stepped surprisingly gracefully through the wholes in the wire web to the bed. Belinda pushed a lump off the bed and sat down. She grabbed a cell phone off the bedside table where it was charging and dialed the numbers 911. "Hello? Yes this is Melanie, we're in the middle of a break-in..."

***

Emily sat down next to Melanie/Belinda. Melanie looked up from her dummy that she was busy drawing a face on with an expo marker. She smiled and sat the dummy up next to her.

"And props to our leading lady, Celeste, take a bow." She made the mannequin bow her head and the long black wig on it's head shifted forward a bit and Belinda fixed it before setting her down over her legs again, and she returned to drawing her face. "I think that went well."

Emily looked down at "Celeste", she was wearing a nice purple tank-top and thin pajama pants with cupcakes on them. Tattooed on her shoulder was a caution symbol and a target that told Emily that in her past life she had been a crash test dummy.

"What exactly went well?" Emily asked.

"Personally I thought he'd hide in your room first. Gotta love dumb luck-"

"Belinda?"

"I don't know what I would have done if he decided you were the real target-"

"Belinda!" Emily insisted.

"Well I guess I would have laughed first-"

"BELINDA!"

Melanie stopped, "What?"

"What the heck just happened?" Emily asked, looking straight into Melanie's eyes so that she couldn't help but to stay focused.

"Oh..." Melanie paused, "We caught the 'BigBoss'."

"When? How? What just happened?"

Melanie looked at her quietly. "Are you in shock, or just stupid?"

"Belinda!" Emily said glaring.

"It's a legitimate question. I thought it was obvious." Emily stared at her blankly. "Obviously not. Well, I took you out for pizza to give him time to sneak in, when we got back I used my powers of observation to discover which room he was in, which wasn't hard because he was rushed, there was still mud on his shoes from all the rain the other day. Then after we ate I set up a trap, which he sprung."

"But what was with the bagpipes?" Emily asked.

"Bagpipes?" Belinda looked up incredulously.

"Yes the bagpipes, was that to disguise the sound of you setting up the trap?"

"I don't know, I don't really remember setting up the trap."

"How do you not remember the bagpipes-"

"Belinda!" David yelled, running from his car to the girls sitting on the porch.

Belinda suddenly sat up as straight as she could and tucked a loose hair behind her ears again. David frowned as he watched her.

"Melanie, hi." He said less enthusiastically.

"Oh come on," Melanie said, moving the dummy to the side and standing up. "So disappointed to see me?"

"No, it's just..." He rolled his shoulders nervously.

"I've just had a terrible shock David," she stood uncomfortably close to David, or at least uncomfortable for him it seemed as he stepped back slowly. "I could use a hug." She smiled softly.

"Yeah, no, you're fine." He inched farther back from her.

"Just a hug, David, and it's not like you're girlfriend is here to see." Emily raised an eyebrow incredulously. David glanced over at Emily for support then when he saw her face he gave her the one second signal.

"Melanie, can I just speak to Emily for a second?" Melanie sighed and sat down. She motioned for Emily to follow David.

"She's all yours."

Emily got up, looked at Melanie who was engulfed in her drawing again, then back to David who was leading her his police car where Melanie couldn't hear them.

"Your girlfriend?" Emily asked in a hushed tone.

"Emily please, it's not at all what you think." He said, glancing over at Melanie.

Emily followed his gaze and put her hands on her hips judgingly. "You told me the first day we met that you weren't cheating on your wife. Very swiftly I might add."

"I'm not!" He insisted, "My son's mom, left me a few months after he was born. I've been dating Belinda for the last two years-"

"Then what girlfriend is she talking about!" Emily pointed to Belinda.

"Belinda." And then he quickly added, "That's not Bells over there. Not the one that you first met." Emily's inquisitive glare dared him to make sense. "That's Melanie, Belinda's alter." Emily's hands fell to her side and her glare retreated.

"Wait, you mean..."

"Belinda has Dissociative Personality Disorder."

"Split personality disorder..." Emily said distantly as she glanced over at Melanie/Belinda. Emily and David were quiet for a second before Emily continued. "Well I guess that explains a lot."

"The Amnesia, the voice change, the confidence, taste differences, it's all part of the switching personalities."

Emily watched her draw for a few more seconds in quiet wonder. "Does she know?"

"Of course not." David said earning him another glare from Emily. "Belinda has enough to deal with without a second personality."

"But she already has a second personality!" Emily said angrily, "Shouldn't she be getting help to deal with that?"

"You can't tell her." David said, suddenly realizing how much taller Emily was than him. It had to be at least an inch and a half.

"Don't you think she deserves to know this?" Emily growled. David frowned.

"You know how she gets about people thinking she needs 'help', She would never agree to that kind of therapy." David's eyes didn't quite meet up with Emily's. When did my feet get so interesting? He wondered.

"You're afraid, aren't you!"

David's mouth dropped as he stuttered an excuse. "I am not!"

"You're afraid she'll break up with you!" Emily yanked at a part if her lip with her teeth in anger. "Are you kidding me!"

David opened up his mouth to deny her accusation, but-

"Hey!" Belinda yelled, Emily could tell it was her by the slight lisp she had when she yelled.

The two of them walked over to greet her. David and her both exchanging an argument with their eyes. Belinda didn't seem to notice as she shivered in her thick pajamas and rubbed a nose ring off of Celeste's expo face. Split personality. Starting to see it now, Emily thought.

"I take it whatever I did worked." Belinda said, smiling gently and letting her hair fall in front of her face again."

"Yes." David sighed, rubbing his forehead.

"Should I be expecting an Alkali-"

"Metal." Emily corrected almost on impulse.

"Thank you. A medal in the mail soon?"

"Yeah, no." David told her.

"Worth a try." She smiled and continued to erase a flower tattoo on her dummy's arm.

David looked to Emily, who was biting her lip again. David shook his head as she looked to him in her peripheral vision. She glared at him and shut her mouth.