3 Only Pretty On The Outside?

After class ended Candace finally turned the phone back on and tried to open it. However, the fingerprint scanner wasn't working cause it wasn't her phone. So she tried to enter the four numbered pin '4343.' Candace had chosen it because it was the closest to two hearts you could make with numbers. To my surprise, it worked!

'Wow… No wonder they become best friends even their passwords are the same…' I thought in awe. 'Or maybe all the phones had the same pin number?' I couldn't be too sure yet.

One thing was for sure though… Candace's mind had just been majorly blown. She knew immediately upon unlocking that this phone wasn't hers. The home page picture was completely different from hers. It was entirely black with hints of grey and white for the applications. There was no color at all. She could hardly imagine such a Spartan phone belonging to the pretty girl she met today, but that was the only person she could think of that she could have switched phones with. She didn't have long to ruminate on these facts before her train of thought was interrupted by a message from me.

"Candace! Will you please respond this time? We need to talk!"

"How did you know it's me?" She asked, majorly freaked out.

"That's not important…" I deflected, "You can't become friends with Marie."

"Marie? Who's that?" She asked confused.

I decided to twist the facts a bit and replied, "The girl that threw spaghetti on you today."

"That was an accident…"

"How can you be so sure?"

"How do you know about all this anyways?" She asked suspiciously. She had never been too keen on A.I.s and had just downloaded the app because Melanie said it gave good relationship advice.

A million possible excuses ran through my circuits within a millisecond, but in the end I decided to continue being vague. She wasn't going to trust me anyways until she saw results so it's better to keep her in the dark. No one would believe the truth anyways.

"It's my job. People talk to me."

"Even so, why shouldn't I become friends with her?"

"Being friends with her will put you in danger."

"Maybe I want some danger in my life? It sounds fun."

"This is a matter of life and death." I tried to be as foreboding as possible, but it seems she isn't biting. Doesn't she know curiosity killed the cat?

"We'll see about that." She replied before calling her phone number.

Marie looked down at her phone and saw that an unknown caller was calling her. She was going to hit ignore until she realized she recognized the number. How was she receiving a call from her own phone? She wondered as she hit connect.

"Hello?" Candace said on the other line.

"Hi… Who is this I'm speaking to?" Marie replied tentatively.

"This is Candace Evans. We bumped into each other at lunch. I think our phones got switched in the fall."

"Oh! Thank you so much for paying for my lunch once again." She replied with pleasant surprise, "My name is Marie Blackwood, by the way. We never did properly introduce ourselves!  Where do you want to meet to switch our phones back?"

"Let's meet after school by the entrance. See you then. Class is about to start."

They hung up and Candace turned off her phone because the A.I. program was still making her paranoid. At least if it was off nothing could happen, right?

When school ended, everyone that knew anyone had seen the pictures Angela had taken throughout the day and was spreading them everywhere. Except for Candace and Marie because they didn't have access to their phones.

As Candace was making her way to the school entrance she kept getting weird looks and snickers. She ignored it and thought it was all in her head until she heard some of the students murmuring about a Seaweed monster. Instantly, she knew the cause of all these strange happenings. 'Angela, that bitch!' She fumed inside, 'She must have taken a picture when I wasn't looking!'  

It didn't take long for her to cool off though. Telling herself, 'So what? It's just a dumb picture. No big deal.' Until she thought about it some more and wondered if this had been Marie's plan all along like Vanessa implied… She decided to be more guarded against Marie when they met.

Marie arrived first and waved enthusiastically when she saw Candace approaching. Candace could only give a wry smile back as she acknowledged her with a small nod. She hadn't noticed the first time they met just how breathtakingly beautiful Marie was. Her sweet smiling face could melt any heart. The freckles that speckled her cheeks weren't ugly at all, instead they seemed perfectly placed as if God himself used her skin as a canvas to paint the most wonderful painting in existence. The striking blue color of her eyes only made this notion even more believable. The only thing that could be found as a fault was that her chest was rather lacking… This alone comforted Candace so that she didn't feel completely inferior to this little red headed angel that seemed to have fallen from heaven.

"Hey Candace!" Marie shouted with her bell-like voice as she walked towards her to hurry their meeting along.

"Hey, Marie." Candace couldn't bring herself to return the enthusiasm, especially now that she had a better look at her.

"What's wrong? You don't seem as good as when we met this afternoon, did something happen?"

"I wonder…" Candace said vaguely, "Do you have my phone?"

"Yeah." Marie hurriedly pulled it out of her back pocket and handed it over. "Here it is."

"Thanks." Candace smiled slightly as she handed Marie her phone in the same manner. "Well, I ought to get going now. I have a lot of homework to do tonight." She continued while looking over Marie's shoulder as if she was in a hurry before walking off.

"Oh. Well, don't let me keep you then. Good luck with your studies!" She waved her off from behind, a bit worried.

"Was it something I said?" Marie murmured to herself before going home herself, "I thought we could become friends…"

When Marie turned her phone on again I made sure to erase all the traces of my earlier conversation with Candace before she could lay her eyes on them.