Lance and the Impostor Who Tried to Steal His Identity
One summer day, Lance and his little sister, Mallory, were so bored that Lance had an idea:
"You want to play a trick on Mom?" he asked Mallory. "Let’s switch places. I’ll act like you.
You act like me. We’ll fool Mom. It’ll be fun!"
Mallory agreed. Then they went right to work, preparing their trick. They didn’t have much
time before their mother returned from shopping, so they had to move fast. In Mallory’s room,
Lance found a nice, flowery halter top, and some clip-on earrings. In Lance’s room, Mallory
found Lance’s favorite crab soccer jersey. She cut off her long hair, braided it into two
pigtails, and clipped them to the back of Lance’s head. Then, since Lance was a little taller
than Mallory, he hunched over, while she got on her tiptoes.
When they were all finished, they could hardly believe their eyes. The transformation was
amazing! And sure enough, their mother was easily fooled. She never suspected that Lance was
really Mallory, and that Mallory was really Lance. Lance and Mallory were so amused by this
that they decided to continue playing their trick.
Soon, they were fooling everyone; their friends, neighbors. Remaining in disguise was
particularly hard for Lance. He could only drink birch beer when no one was watching,
because everyone knew that Mallory hated old-fashioned, red birch beer.
Finally, after a few days, Lance decided that he’d had enough. He wanted to be Lance again.
But when he told Mallory, she just laughed. She liked being Lance, and wasn’t going to give
it up without a fight. This made Lance very angry.
He went right to his mother and told her the truth, but she didn’t believe him. She said,
"Oh, Mallory! What an imagination!" When Lance tried to pull the pigtails off, he found
that Mallory had Super-Glued them to his head. When he started throwing a tantrum, Mallory
said, "Look, she’s throwing a tantrum. Mallory must be insane!"
Their mother sadly agreed with her. The next day, she committed Lance to a mental
institution, saying that she’d remove him only if he admitted that he were Mallory.
Lance refused, so his mother kissed him on the forehead, and left him there.
Now, Lance was not at all happy in the mental institution. All the toys were old, dirty
and broken. There was hardly any candy, no birch beer, and meals were always ruined because
another inmate kept trying to touch Lance’s food. Soon, even Lance began to doubt his own
sanity: Maybe he was really Mallory. Maybe he’d been Mallory all along.
Mallory, however, was enjoying herself. As Lance, she could stay up later, eat more, get
really dirty. Best of all, she could pick on her girlfriends, and, instead of fighting back,
they’d giggle and follow her around.
But soon, she came across an unforeseeable problem. Lance had checked out from the library,
a book about ventriloquism. It was now overdue, and Mallory couldn’t find it. The library
was charging 25 cents a day, and this began to severely cut into her savings. She looked
everywhere. In all of Lance’s favorite places -- under his bed, in the secret closet, in the
washer-dryer -- but she just couldn’t find the ventriloquism book.
Finally, Mallory became so desperate, that she decided to visit the mental institution. She
found Lance tied to a bed, restrained because he kept attempting to pull off his pigtails.
Mallory tried to be clever, to find out where the ventriloquism book was without
communicating her dire situation. But Lance was too smart. Nothing could make him budge.
He absolutely refused to divulge the whereabouts of the book.
Facing financial ruin, Mallory gave in. Reluctantly, she took back her pigtails.
She untied Lance, and allowed herself to be tied down in his place. Then she admitted she
was Mallory, and was allowed to go home. As he left the hospital, Lance was very happy --
Mallory was Mallory, and Lance was Lance, and, never again, not even on a boring day,
would Lance be Mallory, or Mallory, Lance. For him, this ordeal was over.
Unfortunately, for Mallory it was not over. Her nightmare was just beginning. She arrived
home to find that, while Lance was Mallory, he had accidentally stretched out all of her
clothes. Nothing fit her now. This made her so furious that she couldn’t sleep all night.
She just laid there, and with tears in her eyes, she cursed Lance, and plotted how
someday soon, she’d get her revenge. . . .
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