Rod shakes his head. He stares at the piece of string in his hand, and ties it around his wrist.
"What's the matter, big guy?" Rick asked.
"Does the name Chad mean anything to you?" he asked his blond teammate. Strange the players resembled each other so much. What were the odds that the entire team was made up of blonds?
"Chad? Dude, you must've really banged your head in practice. Coach taught us all about the Essence of CHAD. We are all CHAD. COURAGE, HEROIC, ACADEMIC, DETERMINED."
"Oh, yeah, Rick, sorry guess I was a bit dazed."
"Yeah," Rick pinched his nose, and said, "Raise your arms! Your pits stink. You need a spritz of body spray."
Chad screamed as the last of his essence left the canister and changed Rod's dark haired pits blond. Rod inhaled, and the sweet musky scent made him feel better.
"Yeah, we're all CHAD."
And they were.
Chad's parents donated most of the stuff in Chad's old room. They couldn't remember where it came from or why they bought it. They decided it had been a joke that they played on the son. They had bought trophies and clothing at thrift stores and had it personalized with the name Chad, and they had their son Brad that he had an older brother, whom he kept missing. He saw the room, and was sure that he had a brother, but he couldn't remember seeing him. Even when they looked at the family portraits, their minds erased the picture of the older brother. The prank had gone far enough, and they were getting overweight, and needed to workout. The non-existent Chad's room was converted to the family gym. Though sometimes they would pause and have an odd memory-which surely was from a dream and couldn't be real. They would think they forgot something important, but then it couldn't have been too important because they had forgotten it right?
Chad's consciousness lingered on the new and improved bodies of his former teammates. They were all Chad now, and he was them. It was just the way it was.
Rick smiled in the mirror. The reflection was blonder, with a golder tan, and slightly taller than he had been before, and everyone thought he was always this way, even his parents. He was happy. The fact that his teammate had to be sacrificed to perfect himself and his teammates was a necessity. He was happy. Chad wasn't dead, he lived on in all of them. And no one would miss him, would they?