“For real, dude. I just wrote her name on it and she does whatever I tell her to,” Holden said. In his hand he brandished a piece of paper, about the size of a check, that read:

COUPON

Redeemable for one FREE

Xena O’Connolly

The Xena O’Connolly in question was currently draped over Holden’s arm, giggling after every one of Holden’s sentences. Xena, who’d been a chubby bookish brunette who wore nothing but frumpy jeans and oversized anime t-shirts, now sported pastel pink hair, a miniskirt, and a very, very low cut top.

“Seriously?” Jack said. “Prove it.” He sat with his legs propped up on the desk next to his, as usual. The owner of said desk, some nerd named Elliot, had learned not to object after Jack showed him what would happen if he did. With his fists, of course.

"Watch,” Holden said. “Xena, can I touch your boobs?"

“Ok!” she giggled, thrusting out her chest for Holden to grope. Which he did, with great enthusiasm. 

Jack would have felt weird about Holden openly fondling a girl in public, if it weren’t Xena. But according to the coupon, Holden owned Xena, and his private property was his business. None of their classmates seemed to find it strange, either. 

“Holy shit. Dude. You’ve got to get me one of those,” Jack said, craning his neck to see if he could look down Xena’s shirt while Holden rubbed her tits. Xena had been a solid 3/10 before now. Someone Jack wouldn’t fuck even if he was really down bad. If these coupons could make even a gloomy loner like Xena look hot and be willing to be groped in public, he had to get ahold of some. 

Holden pulled away from Xena’s chest, looking conflicted. “I dunno, dude…I’ve got another, but I’ve already, kinda, got plans for it.” His eyes flicked over Jack’s shoulder to the back of the room. Jack turned to follow his gaze. 

The only person back there was Sam, who was currently pretending not to eavesdrop on their conversation. She was a quiet girl with dark hair and glasses, who was always reading or doodling at the back of the classroom. Wore chunky, shapeless sweatshirts that made her look frumpy and sexless. She was always hiding her face behind her hair, which was probably why she had more zits than friends. 4/10 in the looks department. Might be a 5 if she tried. She and Jack had been in the same homeroom for several years now, but since he didn’t want to fuck her they'd never hung out. At least she was hotter than Xena.

“C’mon man, her ? You could have picked anyone. Bella or Amy or Melanie, literally any of the hot girls. But instead you go for Xena and Sam ?” Jack barked out a laugh. “You have terrible taste in women. Give that coupon to me, I’ll show you how a pro does it.”

Holden considered for a minute. “All right,” he said, smiling. “You can have it. I’ll bring it…tomorrow.” 

Jack frowned. Something seemed… off… about the way Holden was smiling. But Jack dismissed his own concerns. There was no reason for Holden to be upset with him, after all.

The bell rang, signalling the beginning of first period, and Holden returned to his desk with his new toy slut. Jack crossed his arms. Whatever. He could wait a day. In the meantime, he should think carefully about who he was going to use the voucher on. Sure, his class had some hot girls, but why not think bigger? Would the coupon work on anyone, so long as you knew their name? If so, he had a few actresses and influencers to add to his list of considerations…

The strange feeling Jack had when Holden smiled followed him around for the rest of the day. It was like he was the butt of some unknown joke. Classmates who typically lowered their gaze instead stared at him, whispering to one another behind one hand. Conversations stopped mid sentence when he approached, and people gave him a wide berth in the halls. It wasn’t like Jack had ever been well-liked or popular, but he’d at least been feared. The open disrespect with which he was being treated was new and disconcerting.

Still, he paid it no mind. He would get back at them all later. Right now, he was too preoccupied thinking about all the things he was going to do once he got his hands on that coupon. 

After basketball practice, Jack took a quick shower before changing back into his school uniform. He put in his earbuds, turned on some music, and began walking home. It was a route Jack walked on autopilot almost every day, and so he was surprised to look up from his phone to find himself outside an unfamiliar house.

Jack frowned. Where was he? Why hadn’t he gone home? But even as he thought this, he was walking up the front path and ringing the doorbell. 

The door opened. On the other side was…Sam?

She looked him up and down, appraisingly. " There you are. I forgot you had practice. I was expecting you ages ago.” She gestured into the house. “Come on in."

He stepped inside, and Sam shut the door behind him. He found himself in a typical suburban living room, with an overstuffed navy couch and beige wall-to-wall carpeting. A little middle class for his tastes. “Uh,” he said, mouth dry. “Why did I come here?”

“Because I told you to,” Sam said matter-of-factly, as she plopped onto the couch facing him. “And then told you to forget I told you.”

Jack laughed, and waited for her to provide another explanation, one that actually made sense. When it didn’t come, he shifted awkwardly on his feet. "Um. I guess I'll just. Go now?"

She smiled wide at that, a grin that bordered on a smirk. "Go ahead. The door's where you found it."

They stared at each other for a moment. 

"Uh," Jack said. "I can't."

Sam giggled. "Oh, that is so funny. This is going to be so much fun."

"What do you mean, ‘this’? What's going on?” Jack said, voice rising. He wasn’t sure what was happening, but Sam seemed to be responsible. ”Let me go!" 

"Keep it down, or else the neighbors will hear," Sam said, studying her nails. 

Jack's voice immediately softened. "I'll have you know, my father's a lawyer. Whatever you're doing right now, he'll sue the shit out of you," he whisper-shouted. 

That only served to make Sam laugh even harder. "Recognize this?" she said, pulling a card out of her breast pocket. It read:

COUPON

Redeemable for one FREE

Jack Mynecky

It took him a moment to comprehend what he was looking at, but once he did, Jack's head spiraled. 

This wasn't possible. 

She couldn’t… he couldn’t be…

There was something wrong with this situation. Something he hadn’t bothered to interrogate until being affected negatively. But he couldn’t put his finger on what .

That’s just a piece of paper. Why should it…

Jack frowned. Wait. Where was he going with that? Something… not being right? 

You saw the coupon right there in her hand, he thought, despairing. ‘One free you.’ Not much room for interpretation. 

But how– why– since when–

Each protesting thought slid off his mind, one after the other. Chased away by the absolute confidence with which the coupon proudly proclaimed “one FREE Jack.”

It was no use. Every time he tried to push against the facts, to argue he couldn’t possibly be Sam’s property , the image of his name written on the coupon flashed like a siren in his mind, interrupting his thoughts.

Sam cocked her head to one side, watching him struggle. “Has it sunk in yet? That you belong to me, now?”

Jack gritted his teeth, and said the only thing he could think to say. “Fuck you.”

In response, she just laughed. That, more than anything else, sent chills up his spine.

Sam’s room was messy and surprisingly cute. There were a lot of stuffed animals strewn about. Her desk had a full PC setup, with white and pink decals. Little plastic penguin figurines were lined up on her windowsill like soldiers. She had a fluffy beanbag chair. 

Jack snorted. “I’m surprised you like all this girly shit.”

Sam sat on her bed and leaned back onto a giant plush bear. “What did you expect me to like?”

Jack shrugged. Up to this point Sam existed in his mind (as little as she did) as a superposition of stereotypes: the contradictory concepts that she didn’t look and act feminine enough to be a ‘real’ woman, while also being too much of a girl to take seriously. To find out that Sam considered herself both a woman and a person was a bit difficult for Jack to wrap his head around. 

Sam pulled out her phone. She opened up some sort of document on it and scrolled through its contents. “Let’s start here,” Sam began. “What can you tell me about your relationship with Melanie Kwan?”

Jack frowned. "That bitch?" Melanie was his ex. "She's a total psycho. Super clingy, way too emotional. Wouldn’t do anything fun."

“Is that all?”

“What else is there?”

“You don’t remember cheating on her?”

“It doesn’t count as cheating if she wasn’t putting out–”

“Multiple times?”

“Well, she was being a frigid bitch all the time.”

Sam scrolled further down the document. “And you also apparently spread a rumor that she had genital herpes?”

“Well, why else wouldn’t she want to fuck me–what the hell are you reading from, anyways!?” Jack stormed over to the bed and reached out to snatch Sam’s phone. 

“Stop,” she said, pointing at him. Jack froze, fingers inches away from her phone. “Stand in the middle of that rug and listen.” Jack stomped over to the pastel pink area rug and waited, fists clenched so tight he could feel his fingernails leaving indentations in his palm. Sam looked back down at the screen. “Our class put together a list of all the terrible things you’ve done, so I wouldn’t forget any when confronting you.”

"The whole class?" Jack croaked. "They were all…?"

"In on it? Yes," Sam said.

Jack remembered today’s whispers, stares. Holden’s weird vibes when talking about the coupons.

Wait. 

Holden said he had plans for his second voucher. Plans that involved Sam. 

Jack swallowed. “Did you…get that coupon from Holden?”

Sam nodded, and Jack’s heart plummeted. Even him?

“I’ll continue, then,” Sam said. “You told everyone Victoria was faking being a lesbian for attention, then lied about her giving you a blowjob at Anthony’s party. Smacked Amy’s butt in front of the entire class. Stole half the proceeds from Margaret’s bake sale–jeez, dude, really? Wasn’t that for cancer or something? Whatever, moving on. Played keep-away with Paige’s snowglobe, broke it, then threatened to sue her because you cut yourself on the glass. Called Robert a fag and gave him swirlies, multiple times. Refused to do any work on your group's American history final, which forced David, Anthony, and Holden to complete your section for you. Told Shawn racism 'doesn't exist anymore' and that he should quit being a loser. Intentionally broke Amir’s glasses. Harassed and stalked Bella after she rejected you. Pulled off Khadija’s hijab in front of everyone. Et cetera, et cetera. Hm, what else…oh, yeah. The worst thing.” Sam scrolled to the very bottom of the list. “After Anthony’s party, Holden drove Xena home because she was drunk. According to Holden, you encouraged him to take advantage of her, and called him a pussy when he didn’t.”

“...What’s the point of throwing all this stuff in my face?” Jack eventually muttered, eyes locked on the floor. 

“Well,” said Sam, standing up and walking over to him. “I wanted to remind you of the things you’ve done. The terrible ways in which you’ve behaved. I want every little selfish, mean, cruel, vindictive action you’ve ever taken to be at the forefront of your mind. Because,” she grabbed him by the chin and forced him to look her in the eye, “you are now going to feel bad for every single one. ”

And suddenly, he did. 

A thousand suns of shame ignited inside him all at once.

His lack of empathy. His disregard for the feelings of others. His selfishness. The gleeful sadism with which he inflicted pain. His attitude towards women. The way he used other people as stepping stones for achieving his own desires.

It was the personality equivalent of an H-bomb.

He collapsed onto his knees, tears streaming down his face. Sam looked down at him, expressionless. He replayed in his mind all those incidents she’d listed from an entirely new, involuntary perspective of kindness. And he was appalled by himself. Disgusted. Who was that person, and why did he act like that? 

“I’m… I’m a horrible person,” he cried, burying his face in his hands. "What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? Why am I like this?" 

He just wanted to die of shame. The world would be better off without him in it. 

“Well…you were a horrible person,” Sam said, softly. “But from now on, you're going to feel compassion and empathy for others. And you'll always want to act in ways that benefit those around you. Isn’t that right?”

In the fallout of the nuclear blast, the scaffold of a new personality began to take shape. Nothing permanent, nothing solid. But the foundation was laid.

“You… you just changed me,” Jack said, looking up at Sam with glassy eyes. He swayed slightly. “You just changed me.”

Then, he vomited.

"Ew!" Sam screamed, leaping back. "Go clean that up!" 

He immediately stumbled to his feet, still crying. 

“Might have changed too much too fast there," Sam muttered as Jack left to find cleaning supplies. "Oh well."

Sam knew she was a freak.

She didn’t want what she was supposed to want, and what she did want, other people didn’t. That fact didn’t calcify for a long time, remaining a nebulous feeling of not fitting in that followed her most of her life. She’d only recently put her finger on what it was that was so different about her.

Sex bored her. The idea of a relationship exhausted her. For a while she assumed she was either asexual or aromantic, but that wasn’t it. She definitely felt sexual and romantic attraction. It was just–the execution of those things that confounded her. 

The one time she’d hooked up with someone–Devon Shielder, from her summer art intensive–she couldn’t get him to do anything she wanted. Every time she tried to tell him what to do, where to touch, how to properly fuck her, he got all offended. And he’d cum ten minutes in and then the fun was over.

(“You aren’t the Sex Director, Sam. Let me have some fun, too, Sam. I'm tired, Sam.” God, what a little mosquito. She couldn’t believe she’d had that man’s penis inside her.)

It was the same with dating. The games, the back and forth, the compromises. It just seemed like so much work for so little reward. Being lonely was so easy in comparison. Maybe if the perfect guy falls into my lap, she thought, I’d enjoy dating a lot. But I think I’m too particular for that to ever happen. 

It alienated her from her peers, having nothing to contribute to conversations about dating and love. But she’d always been an introvert. It didn’t bother her too much. 

It was because of her freakishness that she was so eager to participate in Holden’s plan.

“I know we’re seniors, and we could just tough it out until we graduate. But I’m worried about what kind of impact he’ll have on the world afterwards,” Holden rationalized, sliding the blank coupon forward on the table. He’d called for an emergency meeting in the class-wide group chat (that Jack had been banned from for using slurs) and now everyone besides Jack had assembled in their classroom during lunch, on a day Jack had detention. “He got into Yale. He wants to be a lawyer, run for political office,” Holden said, grimacing. “It’s really the moral thing to do, if you think about it. Shoot Hitler when he’s just a baby, and all that.” 

“But who’s gonna do it?” Melanie asked, wringing her hands. “I don’t want to be around him any more than I have to.”

“Me neither,” agreed Bella. 

“He needs to change,” said Robert. “But I’d feel really bad if I were the one who had to pull the trigger. Even though he’s a jackass.”

“I can’t do it, ‘cause I already have Xena,” Holden said, pressing his mouth into a thin line. “Anyone want to volunteer?”

Sam waited for someone to raise their hand, and was surprised when it didn’t happen. Everyone was trying not to make eye contact, staring at the floor and shuffling their feet.

Really, guys? Sam thought. Sure, he’s a prick. But the coupon makes that irrelevant. He’ll be a piece of clay for you to mold. A piece of clay that happens to have a nice body and long eyelashes. 

“I’ll do it,” Sam said.

Everyone turned to look at her. Holden raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. Give it to me.”

Holden slid the coupon over to her, and she wrote Jack’s name as his victims watched. A grim little marriage with 19 witnesses and an absent bride.

Jack learned he would be living with Sam from now on during dinner with her parents. 

"Do you expect me to leave my new toy at someone else's house?" she snorted, shoving a forkful of green beans into her mouth. Jack began to object, but couldn’t think of a good counter argument. What she said made sense, after all. “You can go home tonight and pack a bag to bring to school with you tomorrow.”

“I know this is a big change, but I appreciate you rolling with the punches,” Sam’s mother said. She looked like Sam but fatter and shorter. She had a strong Minnesotan accent.

“We don't fully understand this new business with the coupons, but it seems like Sam's made her choices, and her business is her business,” her father said. He wore glasses like Sam, and had the charisma and shape of a cardboard box. “But, if you could ask your parents about getting an allowance, that would really help with the extra cost in groceries.”

“Aren't you upset about Sam having a boy staying over every night?” Jack asked.

Her parents looked at each other. “Well, we would be, yes,” her mother said. “But you don't really count, dear.”

“Sam’s an adult. If she wants to have certain special toys, then–”

“Ew, Dad! Stop talking!”

Sam's parents weren't the only ones acting surprisingly lax about the situation.

“These coupons are causing me a real headache at work,” Jack’s dad said, on his last night in their house. He sat back on his leather recliner while Jack paced back and forth across the tiled living room floor, fuming because his brothers, Jilson and Buckett, said he wasn't allowed to take the PS5. “Laws aren't written with them in mind. Everything's going to need changing. We've gotten tons of new cases with no precedents, all of which involve those coupons. Seems like they're popping up everywhere all of a sudden.”

“Can’t you do anything to help me?” Jack whined.

"I'm sorry, champ. Those coupons are legally watertight. It says quite clearly on the coupon itself, she’s entitled to one free ‘you’. Nothing you can argue with there.” His father sighed in a mildly disappointed way, as if he’d lost his car keys and not his son. “Tough luck.”

"So you're just, ok with Sam taking me away?!" Jack seethed. “You’re not even going to try to fight it?”

"Well, of course your mother and I would prefer you live here with us for the rest of your senior year," his father consoled. "But Sam's entitled to what's hers. Private property is the foundation of our society, son. You of all people should know that." 

"But dad–" 

"No buts! What's done is done," his father said. He pulled out his phone, apparently bored with the conversation. “I’ll have to look into getting some of those coupons for when Buck and Jilly turn 18,” he mused to himself. “Wouldn’t want to lose another one.”

Late that night, after packing his bags, Jack researched coupons online. His talk with his father made him realize he didn’t really understand how they worked fully. Maybe with some digging he could find a loophole that got him out of this mess.

This is what he learned. Coupons appeared out of nowhere and became an international phenomena overnight. Nobody knew where they came from. Independent attempts to trace their spread inevitably led to dead ends–mysterious strangers thrusting envelopes into people's hands, only to disappear around corners or into buildings, never to be seen again. 

There was still a lot of confusion on how the coupons worked. Sometimes, you'd write a name and nothing would happen. Sometimes, you'd successfully bind someone at first, only for their coupon to randomly burst into flames later on. In successful cases, a name couldn't be erased once written, and no further marks could be made on the paper. Tearing up or otherwise damaging an active coupon had mixed results. Sometimes it would appear in your hand overnight, as if nothing had happened. Sometimes it remained destroyed, and no longer bound its target. Giving away an active coupon produced similar results, sometimes successfully transferring ownership of a person, sometimes not. 

A few things seemed clear and steadfast. A person could only be bound by one coupon at a time. The coupon’s redeemer, the one who owned the subject, was completely immune to being bound at all. Therefore it was impossible to create "chains" of bound people. Trying to redeem a coupon for a minor inevitably failed, as did trying to capture someone with extreme mental disability or dementia. You also couldn't exchange a coupon for an immediate family member.  Writing the name of an animal or object did nothing. Same goes for names of people who were deceased or fictional. If multiple people had the same name, the coupons seemed to default to whoever was closest to the writer by association, Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon style. Coupons were also not a source of infinite free labor: everyone who tried to bind and set to work huge groups of people had all their coupons disintegrate within seconds. In fact, it was rare to find anyone who had managed to successfully bind and keep more than a couple people. 

I guess that’s why Holden didn’t bind me himself, Jack thought, bitterly. Getting his rocks off with the pepto-bismol fatass was important enough to warrant throwing me to the wolves. The wolves being Sam, of course.

New Jack immediately felt bad for mentally calling Xena a pepto-bismol fatass. Can you literally be nice for once in your life? New Jack chastised Old Jack.

Jack leaned back in his chair (which Buck had already claimed for when he left). That was another thing to think about. What was New Jack going to do about Old Jack? He had to go to school tomorrow with all the people he now felt bad about hurting. How could he handle that?

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose, pulled out his phone, and opened a new note. He’d be going to bed late that night.

As it happened, Jack didn’t go to bed last night. He arrived at school exhausted after pulling an all-nighter, and still reeling from his personal implosion on top of that. When he stumbled into class that morning, he knew he must look like hell. 

Everyone in class turned to look at him, with anticipatory stares. He cast his gaze to the floor and shuffled over to his desk. No one dared approach.

The only person who seemed completely at ease was Sam, who, in her spot at the back of the class, was reading some sort of comic.

Elliot, who had the misfortune of sitting next to Jack, was pretending to casually check his socials. Jack took a deep breath. Time for the humiliation to begin.

“Elliot,” he said, softly, trying not to scare him. 

Elliot jumped anyway. “What?” he responded, a little too loud.

“Um. I’m sorry for putting my feet on your desk,” Jack said, unable to make eye contact. “And for hitting you when you asked me not to put my feet on your desk. That… wasn’t cool.”

Elliot studied him for a minute. “...Wow. I can’t believe it worked,” he finally said. “I thought this whole coupon plan was crazy. Maybe I was wrong.”

Jack’s face burned red with embarrassment as the first bell rang. One apology down. An uncountable number to go.

Word travelled fast.

“Did you hear? Jack Mynecky–you know, the asshole who’s dad is on all the billboards? He’s going around apologizing to people.”

“Lawrence told me he got coup’d by some girl, and she’s making him do it.”

“Coup’d? Is that really what we’re going with?”

“Well, I’d like to hear you come up with something better, dipshit.”

By the afternoon Jack had apologized to about a third of his classmates. Their reactions ranged from sincere to cold, from incredulous to smug. 

Whoever said apologizing makes you feel better ought to be hanged, Jack thought. Each apology left him feeling more humiliated and ashamed than the last. But he couldn't stop. Sam's order to feel compassion and empathy and act in ways that benefit those around you made not apologizing impossible. So he soldiered on, even while screaming in the privacy of his own head.

Holden (and, by extension, Xena) seemed to be avoiding him. Maybe they weren't ready to confront him, yet. That was all fine by him. He knew that apology would be most difficult.

“So,” Sam said, once they were home in her room. Jack was unpacking his suitcase and putting his things away where Sam told him to. “Holden said you got into Yale?”

Jack brightened. “Yep. I'm going to major in business and finance. Then I'm either going to go to law school or work on wall street. I haven't decided yet.”

Sam snapped her fingers. "Not anymore you're not,” she said, smug. “None of that interests you anymore. Instead, your dream is to be a house husband."

Jack froze, halfway through refolding a shirt. Visions of wealth, of himself expertly maneuvering through the political world, of making risky trades behind his fancy desk with a cigar in his mouth, all faded from Jack's grasp, replaced with images of a cozy, well-kept home, lines of laundry billowing in the backyard, of a dog playing with two children as he prepared dinner for him and his wife. His white hot ambition cooled into something soft. It felt like a loss.

“Don't,” he whined, curling inward, as if that could shield him from Sam’s words.

"Also, you now love all things domestic,” Sam continued. “Washing the dishes, cooking, cleaning, folding laundry, mending clothes. Everything that a typical housewife would do is now your favorite thing in the world." 

"S-stop," Jack said, pleading. "Stop changing me."

"Why should I stop?" Sam asked. "You're mine. I can do whatever I want to you. Besides, you have a history of making bad choices. So I’ll just make them for you now." She stood up and grabbed the shirt he was unpacking. “This isn't sentimental, is it? If not, I'm throwing it away. It's hideous.”

“Go ahead,” he said, deflated. Now that Sam mentioned it, it was pretty ugly.

“Oh, dearie,” Sam’s mother said. “You didn't need to do all that!”

Jack started, as if from a trance. How long had he just spent cooking? Sam had ordered him into the kitchen to make something for dinner, and it's not like he could disobey . He'd never cooked a day in his life, but found there was plenty of help online. He'd taken stock of the ingredients and tools in the kitchen, looked up some simple beginner recipes he could make with them, and then… he’d just, kinda…got in the zone. Looking down, he found he'd cooked a sheet pan chicken with a teriyaki glaze, a side of roasted broccoli and fingerling potatoes, and brownies for dessert.

“No, it's no trouble,” he found himself saying, in the dazed afterglow of his domestic nirvana. “I… like cooking?”

“Well, I certainly won't complain, then,” Sam’s mother replied. “It smells amazing.”

It tasted amazing, too. Jack felt a weird glow of pride at the silence that fell over the dinner table as the Abletons devoured the food he made. A pride that felt distinct from the artificial (but still infuriatingly pleasant) contentment Sam had inflicted upon him while he cooked.

Mentally, he started meal planning for tomorrow.

At Sam's insistence (and also because there was no guest room, and the Abletons didn't own an air mattress) Jack slept in bed with her. Her bed was a regular twin, and so was too short for him–his legs dangled over the edge. Sam fell asleep immediately. She snored and held Jack like a teddy bear in her sleep. Jack assumed he was replacing the giant plushie he had seen on her bed earlier that day.

He knew he should feel humiliated by the comparison. Here was this nobody loser girl (Jack's new conscience winced at that description) treating him like a toy. But Sam's insistent clinging to his body was somehow comforting. He ran hot, and she cold, so Jack actually felt comfortable under the covers for once. He was surprised how quickly he dozed off.