Little Red Gem (13 page)

“
Would it kill you to keep
your phone charged?” I told my reflection.

The worst part of taking
over Audrey’s body was that I lived inside the body of a fifteen
year old, which meant I’d have to go down two levels in school. On
the up side, I’d already completed high school so the lessons
should have been a breeze. You’d suppose so, but by mid morning,
I’d discovered that somewhere in the last two years the dictionary
had been rewritten and every trivial thing known about the universe
had been changed. I couldn’t get a single answer correct, and by
late morning I’d given up even trying and etched doodles in my
textbooks instead. When the lunch bell rang, I headed straight to
the music rooms where I suspected Leo might be. I found him alone
amidst an orchestra of instruments minus the orchestra. I studied
him as he adjusted plastic chairs and music stands in readiness for
band practice that afternoon.

His hand paused above a
seat, and then he turned his head.

He’s looking right at
me
, my brain screamed.

It was like I was watching
him for the first time. Tall, almost six foot, with killer biceps
from gripping the neck of an electric guitar and lugging two
hundred pound amplifiers around the studio.

“
Try outs are after
class,” he said.

“
Oh, I’m not here for try
outs.” Except there was no other plausible explanation for my
presence. “Well, not exactly. It’s a tossup between band and drama.
Or maybe even French.”

All of which were
lies.

“
What about cheerleader
try outs?”

I laughed so hard, I
almost tripped over my own feet. “I don’t think so. You need a
certain level of coordination, which I clearly don’t
possess.”

Even if I were to trade
bodies with an Olympic gymnast, I would never be the athletic
type.

The upright piano beckoned
and I was happy to take the call by sitting at the stool and
lifting open the lid. My fingers easily found the G chord and my
foot found the reverb pedal. A haunting tune echoed and words to a
song exploded inside my head:

You walked a million miles
around me. Not noticing at all…

When Leo neared, the song
slipped away.

He offered me a weak
smile. “You don’t seem the cheerleader type anyway. And I doubt you
could suffer the French teacher, Monsieur Tre Obnoxious. So band or
drama it will have to be.”

A giggling fit escaped
against my will; I was beyond embarrassed that I’d waited days to
speak to Leo, and now that I stood before him I gushed like a
little girl. He was more charming than I recalled. I was also sure
he was flirting with me.

This last notion brought
an abrupt halt to my bright mood. I jumped up from the piano. My
body had been in the ground for three days and already he seemed to
be flirting with another girl.

Leo stared down at his
hands. His voice went flat and lifeless. “Band or drama, it’s up to
you. Both are good places to hide out. Nobody comes here unless
they have to.”

I took two steps toward
him and felt something bump into me, spinning me off course.
Righting myself, I saw Shanessa had bustled past me and now headed
straight for Leo. Before tears gushed out – fifteen year old
emotions were more volatile, I’d re-discovered – I slipped out of
the room and kept my back pressed against the wall outside to learn
everything going on inside.

“
How are you doing, Leo?”
I heard Shanessa ask. “You weren’t in the cafeteria. Have you
eaten?”

“
Not hungry.”

“
You should eat
something.”

Silence. I prayed they
weren’t kissing. Why would they? If Leo had loved me like he said
he did he wouldn’t have been so quick to kiss someone else. Unless
his lips were as lonely as mine.

“
I still can’t believe
she’s never coming back,” Shanessa said. “Any time you need someone
to talk to, you know I’m here for you.”

I couldn’t bear to listen
to any more so I scurried off to the toilets where I could bawl my
eyes out in privacy. I didn’t get ten feet when I crashed into the
girl from Audrey’s photographs – Hannah.

“
What are you doing?”
Hannah asked, looking over my shoulder to the direction I’d come
from.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
I’ve tried to get you to
join band for, like, forever. Try outs are this
afternoon.”

“
Yeah, I know. Leo told
me.”

She raised her eyebrow.
“Leo? Leo Culver?”

I opened my mouth to
protest, and shut it closed to watch in surprise as Leo stormed out
of the room like a man on a mission. He hurried passed us and
continued down the hall. I knew I was staring after him in abject
longing, but I couldn’t help myself.

“
Since when do you have a
crush on Leo Culver?” Hannah gushed. “You dirty dog. He’s a
senior.”

“
And
he’s recently lost his girlfriend,” I reminded her through
clenched teeth.

Hannah rolled her eyes.
“Which is precisely why he’s so desirable. You should listen to the
way all the girls are talking about him. Everyone is dying to ease
his pain. I’d give it a go but I don’t date musicians.”

“
You’re a
musician.”

“
Exactly. One ego per
relationship only. I read it somewhere.
Cleo
or
Cosmopolitan
.”

Before I could utter a
word in defense of musicians everywhere, she linked her arm through
mine and steered me toward the music rooms. We almost got knocked
to the ground by Shanessa who seemed in a hurry to leave. Shanessa
scurried away without apologizing or making eye contact. I wondered
if she noticed the imaginary daggers I shot in her back.

Eyes smarting, but my
chest beating with secret pleasure at how Shanessa’s advances had
had no effect on Leo, I let Hannah guide me to the music rooms, but
for the entire lunch break I couldn’t focus on anything she said
because I was too busy fuming over my best friend’s traitorous
behavior. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Shanessa was the one
offering support to Leo. Hurt, gutted, devastated, and pissed, but
not surprised.

Was I reading too much
into this or, like my mother was fond of telling me, had the signs
always been there? Shanessa had told me on at least a dozen
occasions exactly how she felt about Leo: “You’re lucky to have
such a catch”, she’d once said. “Were Leo and you to break up, you
wouldn’t find it weird if I asked him out, right?” was one
statement she’d said out of the blue and I’d laughed her off. “If
scientists discovered a way to clone people would I have your
permission for Leo to be cloned?” had left me thinking,
oh, if only you knew the truth.
No matter how many times I’d told her that Leo
was not without flaws, she’d never believed me. Nor was I prepared
to let her or anyone else discover them. I didn’t know if I was
jealous of another girl capturing Leo’s heart, or of another girl
sharing his secret, but I burned with hostility.

The rest of my day was
spent with a green-eyed monster on my shoulder as the most
beautiful girls in school paraded their wares in front of Leo. So
consumed was I with jealousy that after school finished I wandered
aimlessly until I kicked my toe on the edges of a rock garden. I
glanced up to find myself standing on the sidewalk in front of my
real home. The home where a family had lived in until two people
had left and one had remained – my mother. Only the fact that she
was at work stopped me from running up to the front
door.

With a sinking heart I
turned around and headed to Audrey’s home – my new home– by way of
the café where the sight of Shanessa and Natalie scribbling lyrics
on paper napkins and sipping lattes dropped my mood to impossibly
lower levels.

News flash – life goes
on.

My purpose had never been
clearer. I had to make the most of returning from the grave, no
matter how long it meant keeping Audrey’s body trapped in the
hollow. But first I had to get over the idea of slipping
into
my
old life
and track down
hers
.

Stuck for ideas, I decided
to hang out with Teri for the rest of the afternoon. When I pushed
through the front door of the shop, Oleander wasted no time in
making me feel unwelcome. Did he hiss at everyone? I hoped so.
Otherwise I suspected he would be the tri-colored flea-ridden ghost
buster capable of sending a telepathic signal to Teri that her
daughter was not whom she appeared to be. How crazy that my arch
nemesis was a cat.

“
How was school today?”
Teri asked, briefly looking up from the box of stuff she’d unpacked
onto the counter.

I dropped my bag heavily
on the floor. “Harder than I expected.”

“
If everything in life was
easy, you’d never appreciate it.”

“
I’d like to test that
theory.”

Wandering over to the
counter, I picked up the deck of tarot cards and absently flipped
through the cards. No ordinary King or Queen of diamonds in this
lot. Instead Pages, Kings, Queens, and Knights ruled with wands,
pentacles, cups, and swords. There was also a bunch of suns,
magicians, moons, chariots, towers, and other weird stuff. I
cringed when I came across the hanged man card.

“
This is sick,” I said
under my breath.

Losing interest, I decided
to stack them on their sides to make them into a house of cards. I
managed to form the lower level when Teri snapped up the
lot.

“
Audrey, I know you don’t
care about the work that puts a roof over your head and food on the
table, but you know better than to play with these
cards.”

“
Sorry.” I was curious.
“What happens if I play with them?”

Teri didn’t answer. She
stacked the cards neatly into a pile and returned to unpacking.
Peering over the top of the box, I noticed she was sorting a
million crystals into a million piles. I’d had such a horrid day at
school, the simple act of sorting crystals offered a means of
distracting my mind.

“
Can I help sort
those?”

Teri stared at me. “Are
you all right?”

“
Yeah, I’m fine.
Why?”

“
You never usually offer.”
Teri shook her head and rewarded me with a motherly smile; I
couldn’t help but grow a few inches beneath it. “Of course, I’d
love a hand.”

In the background, music
played; pipe music and a lilting voice warbling about a stranger
who loved her. In the glass cabinet were pewter goblets and velvet
slippers. The setting sun hit the painted trees on the store front
window and shards of greens and blues sliced across the room. Teri
and I separated pink crystals from grey onyx while the sun dropped
from its perch in the sky. We sorted green jade stones from amber
rocks while the lilting voice sang about valleys and
streams.

Oddly, this was the
calmest I’d felt since I’d taken a tumble in the Jeep and didn’t
get back up.

After Teri placed the last
of the crystals into a velvet lined tray, she shifted her gaze to
the clock on the wall. “Where did the day go? Let’s lock up and go
upstairs.”

I jumped down off the
stool. “I’ll make dinner tonight if you like.” I often helped out
when mom got stuck back at the tourism centre and I was too hungry
to wait for her to get home.

Teri laughed and grabbed
the yowling cat that she carried unceremoniously up the stairs. At
the top, she stopped and said, “I swear I don’t know what you did
with my Audrey but I’m not complaining.”

Okay, perhaps my trading
places had identified a slight problem. Audrey and I were nothing
alike. Every time I opened my mouth I gave more of my personality
away and less of hers, which meant there was a strong chance Teri
would eventually take notice of Oleander’s attempts to warn her and
she’d exorcize me or vanquish me or whatever else her powers
enabled her to do. The solution was that I had to act more like
Audrey. The problem was that I didn’t know Audrey. After our dad
had left for Japan, we’d drifted apart. The best I could hope for
was to act like myself and trust that I impressed everyone with the
change.

***

Teri pulled two steaks out
of the freezer. I’d already had my first glimpse into Audrey’s
personality last night when Teri had served crumbed chicken with
onion gravy for dinner. Audrey wasn’t a vegetarian, but since
falling pregnant, morning sickness had ruined my carnivorous taste
buds which meant I was a vegetarian, or at least I used to be. Last
night, my taste buds had returned three-fold and I’d wolfed the
meal down. Teri hadn’t raised an eyebrow, and as I ate dinner this
night she didn’t give me a second glance, however, everything I
said or did was another chance at exposing myself as a fraud, so I
ate in silence.

The effort to chew through
every last piece of steak left me feeling exhausted so I headed up
to my bedroom without asking if there was anything for dessert.
Besides, Audrey’s giant laptop with its TV sized screen had been
calling me throughout the meal, and I was happy to oblige my needs
and curl up under the covers to watch a movie. I guessed I was
still down in the dumps from the way the girls in school had
flirted with Leo. They had perfect hair, full boobs, long legs.
Audrey was all stick and bone, a kid. What chance would this body
have against real women?