#totaleclipse

“Oh my God, look at her.” Came the unmistakable voice of Tessa. Ally tensed.

Tessa was the queen bee of their high school. All tanned skin, cropped tops, and cruel smiles. Her gang wasn’t far behind, beach bags slung over shoulders, phones out and recording.

Ally tried to ignore them, tilting her telescope higher. She knew she should have picked a more isolated spot.

“What’s that, your virgin detector?” Tessa kicked a little sand at the legs of Ally’s tripod. “Gonna find aliens with that thing, or just more losers like you?”

Ally flinched but didn’t reply. The eclipse was minutes away.

“I said.” Tessa stepped closer, eyes glinting, “What are you even doing out here? This is a beach, nerd. Not a science lab.”

Ally reached for her telescope again, but Tessa grabbed her wrist and yanked her away. The tripod tipped.

“No!” Ally cried, trying to catch it. The telescope hit the sand with a thud. Tessa snorted. “Oops.”

A sudden chill crept over the beach. The moon had almost fully covered the sun. Shadows warped. The air shimmered. Ally looked up, her heart pounding. “You’re ruining it.”

Tessa rolled her eyes and shoved her. “Relax dork, like anyone cares.” The light changed. Dimmed. A dark halo flared around the blackened sun. Ally could feel electricity in the air and watched as Tessa’s hair started to levitate.

Tessa’s smirk faded as her hands, still gripping Ally’s shoulders, started to sink into her like mist meeting water. “What the?”

Ally convulsed. A glow pulsed through her skin, violet and silver. Tessa cried out and tried to pull back, but her arms were stuck. Her face twisted in horror as she was pulled into Ally’s chest with one long slurping sound.

Ally collapsed onto her beach towel. For a moment, the beach was silent. Tessa’s friends, like everyone else on the beach, were transfixed by the eclipse to notice the weird science it was creating with Ally and Tessa.

Ally’s oversized hoody shrank and morphed into what could generously be called a bikini top, her old worn jeans turning into a matching bottom. Her skin started to glow with a golden tan.

Her body changed next, becoming curved, sculpted, with legs long and lean, breasts fuller, and a tighter waist. Her lips tingled as they plumped up, becoming instantly kissable.

She felt the heat of her new body. The strength. The power. And something else. Memories.

Not just Tessa’s. Not just Ally’s. Hers. A lifetime of being both. The hours spent stargazing and dreaming of more, followed by the day she decided to stop hiding and instead to start taking. She remembered being mocked… and then making them afraid to try. She remembered being invisible and then impossible to ignore.

These weren’t the memories of Ally or Tessa, but of someone new. The name came out of the ether and became as natural to as breathing. She was Alyssa. She had always been Alyssa. The bitch, the babe, the queen bee. Every dork’s nightmare and every guy’s wet dream.

She looked at her French manicure and rolled her hands over her body, feeling it as though she always had it. She was going to enjoy being the alpha from now on.

One of the girls turned around to see where Tessa had disappeared to but finding only a new beauty in her place. However after a moment the name Tessa seemed foreign to her, like it was someone she knew in a past life. “Alyssa? You okay?”

Alyssa tilted her head, letting the sun’s returning light gleam off her perfect physique. “Never better babes.”

They other girls looked at her for a long moment, as the new reality settled in their minds. Then they smiled and gravitated towards their leader, gaming over her.

“Oh my God, Alyssa, you have to tell me where you bought your bikini.” One said.

“Totes, you look banging babe.” Another added.

“Wait till the guys see you.” The last sycophant said but Alyssa ate it all up.

Alyssa smirked. “Well, let’s not keep them waiting.”

She walked away, hips swaying, the queen of a world rewritten by the eclipse, leaving behind the broken telescope, now half buried in the sand. A relic from another life, a life she was about to totally eclipse.