The rest of the evening with my friends had gone pretty uneventfully. Eventually, dad got back, and asked for them and Melvina to go home. After they’d gone, I’d taken the opportunity to hypnotize him to not think too hard about the results of my hypnotic experiences, like I had with mom. Oh, and asked him to lighten my chore load a bit.
The next morning was the start of a school day, an while I brought the coin with me, I couldn't find a good time to use it on the teachers where I wouldn’t have dozens of other students coming in or going out of the room, and any one of them who saw what was going on without seeing the coin itself could end up bringing more. I could at least agree with Wallace that the fewer other people who knew about the coin, the better.
Still, I did at least manage to get a moment alone with the teacher for my last period, Mrs. Francis’s geography class, and convinced her to tone down the homework. It's not like I was gonna be missing out on anything, it barely comes up in the average person’s day to day life anyway.
By the time I was done with my little session with Mrs. Francis, a lot of the other kids had either headed home or gone to whatever after school stuff they’d signed up for, only Tom, Shirly, Wallace, and Melvina were waiting for me in the hall when it was done.
“Well, I managed to persuade her to ease up on the homework for now, so we’ll have some more free time to do what we want,” I told them.
“Great!” Tom nodded.
Melvina smiled. “Excellent news, Master. How very forward thinking of you!”
“I hope this doesn’t come back to bite us,” Wallace said.
I waved him off as we started down the hall to our lockers. “It’ll be fine.”
As I turned the corner, I saw something I didn’t expect: a girl trying to stick something in my locker. I’d dealt with enough stupid pranks from Melvin dropping thing in my locker, or forcing other kids to do it for him, that I wasn’t about to play games. With nobody else around I held up the coin, letting it swing, and called out, “hey!”
The girl gasped, flinching as she looked over my way, before her eyes glazed over, and locked on the coin.
With her standing in place, I could get a better look at her, and recognized that she was from my class. I hadn't gotten her name, but she was short, with brown hair, kinda thin, always kept her head down, literally and metaphorically. I could definitely picture her getting threatened into dropping something in my locker to take the heat off whoever actually wanted to prank me.
“What are you doing to her?” Wallace asked.
“Hang on a second,” I mumbled, before turning back to her. “What are you putting in my locker?”
“A… A… It’s a…”
Huh. This was the first time I’d seen someone put up some resistance to the coin’s effects. I know that hypnosis couldn’t make you do something you didn’t want to, but the coin’s magic seemed to make people willing to do a little more than usual, before. I wonder what had her so nervous.
I decided to try a different angle. “Did somebody put you up to this?”
She dully shook her head. “No, it was… my idea…”
I looked at the object in her hand: a small envelope. I was starting to put it together now. “Are you feeling nervous about talking to me?”
“Y-yes,” she said in barely a whisper.
“What’s your name?”
“Pamela Cedarfield…”
“Do you have a crush on me?”
Her face flushed red, to the point I was starting to worry the trance might break. “Y-y-yes!”
I kind of expected that, but it still surprised me more than I thought it should. Thinking quick, “Picture yourself in a calming, peaceful forest. While you’re in this calming, relaxing place, far from anyone that would judge you, you’ll hear my voice, not as it sounds now, but as your own inner voice.”
“My own… inner voice…” She looked a lot less flushed, and a lot more calm, now.
I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about having gotten the wrong idea. I wasn’t really sure what she saw in me, since I don’t remember talking to her much beyond occasional hellos, or maybe some small talk. But love can be weird, sometimes.
Since I kind of put her in an awkward position, perhaps I ought to make it up to her, someway. Maybe I could give her a little taste of her personal fantasies (mixing in a little of my own, for fun), with a healthy dose of confidence boosting.
“So,” I said, “while you’re in this quiet place, away from everyone else, listening to your own inner voice, perhaps it’s time to be honest with yourself. Have you ever wanted to be something, or someone else?”
“Yes…” she nodded, after some time.
I asked, “what sort of change would you like in your life?”