Switch (17 page)

T
he train didn’t work. The rainstorm didn’t work. But neither of those things were sold to my grandma by the crystal ball witch of Africa.

Joules doesn’t look pleased as I make my way up the gravelly slope beneath the bridge.

“Your mom made pancakes.” She picks up a handful of pebbles and watches them trickle between her fingers. “You couldn’t have waited another half hour? I’m starved.”

“Let’s just get this done. One more hour in your life might just finish me off.”

She scoffs. “Yeah. Like yours is so great. What’s with those white sandals your mother wears? She looks like a fifty-year-old baby.”

I shove my hands into my back pockets because I’m afraid I might slap her. “Let’s not get into the differences in our bloodlines right now, okay?”

“And why don’t you show her how to shave her legs? I can’t even eat in that house. Oh, and I found an ad for the overseas foster kids. I left it on her kitchen table as a hint.”

Yesterday, I’d have jumped into the whole “Why do you treat Nigel like garbage?” thing. Today I know better. That Nigel thinks he can sanitize his daughter’s image of himself by spiking her coffee and making croissants.
It’s so pathetic, so sad, I can hardly stand it.

“Yeah, well. I refuse to discuss who has the better parent. I’m not sure there’s any contest.”

She eyes me closely. “Does this mean you’re over the whole I-don’t-fawn-enough-over-my-rock-star-dad thing?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not the bitch you make me out to be, you know. I used to be a better daughter.” She shrugs. “There was even a time I bought into the whole rocker lifestyle. Not any more.”

“Believe me, I—”

“My dad isn’t as generous as he seems.”

Is it possible she knows? I decide to test her. “Well, he does give to that family—Tyler Glass’s family. That’s pretty generous.”

“Wake up. He doesn’t do that from the sweetness of his heart. He does it out of guilt.”

I could throw up from where I think this is headed and hope this is not headed. Nigel couldn’t have. He
couldn’t
have.

She moves closer. “My father has a problem. He drinks. He drives.”

“I know.”

“Yeah? Well, did you know this? Nigel killed Tyler Glass.”

Behind me traffic roars past. I don’t look away from Joules but I can hear one of the cars has a muffler dragging on the ground. I can’t believe it. I mean, the news reports have speculated it could be the same driver, but this … that he actually killed a child?

“Oh God.”

“What a guy, right? What a freakishly fantastic guy.”

“Nigel killed Tyler Glass? He really did?”

“Are you deaf?”

I don’t answer.

She stares at me. “And then there’s more recent developments. Have you been in the garage lately? Have you peeked beneath the tarp?”

I drop to the ground beside her and let out a long breath. “He caught me looking. Sorry. He knows you know about the Disneyland couple.”

She shrugs. “Whatever. He knows I know about Tyler, too.”

“How?”

She looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “I was in the SUV with him. Screaming at him to stop. Go back. But he was drinking champagne. The SUV was full of evidence. He said he’d make it up to them. He said he’d write a song for Tyler. That single was never for me.”

All the money he donates publicly to that family. “Rockabye.” All out of guilt.

We’re quiet a moment. The modest house Joules and Nigel live in—it makes more sense now. He forks over most of his paychecks to undo the damage he inflicts upon the world.

I don’t have the heart to tell her that the little girl who’s been sleeping in my bedroom next to her is the Disneyland couple’s child. Instead, I stand up and motion toward the cement sound barrier. “The ruby slippers are over there.”

“Andie?”

Even at such a moment, I like the way that sounds.“Yeah?”

“I’m not sure I want to go back.” She stares up at me, a tear inching down her cheek. “Isn’t that crazy? I don’t know if I want my stupid life back. Maybe I want yours.”

I pull her up to standing and laugh sadly. “If I’d heard that a few days ago, I’d have been shocked.”

“Want to be more shocked? I wished for this too.”

Too tired to tell her I know this already, I try to arrange my face into a surprised expression.

“That night I was with Will and you were here. I saw the way he spoke with you in the music room earlier that day. It was so different from the way he treats me, and I was jealous. I wanted to be you and have him talk to me all respectful like that. Plus, the big family. You seemed to have it all.”

I did have it all. I just didn’t know it.

“So, it’s not all your fault,” she says, “this wish thing.”

I nod but say nothing.

“He’s different with you. Even when you’re me. It’s so obvious when I see you two together. Will and I … we’re wrong.”

It’s true. The way he is with Joules might look intense from the outside, but it’s more about admiring her physical self. With me, I don’t know, with me there’s something deeper. But I’d never tell Joules that.

“No,” I say. “Not wrong.”

She shakes her head and looks away. “It’s okay. What am I going to do? Force him to like me more? I can’t do that. Anyway, whatever. There’s always Shane in the bushes, right?”

I’m not sure if she’s joking or not, but when she laughs I join her. “He is kind of cute.”

She nods. “Right? I’ve always been a sucker for the surfer dude look.”

A blue jay cries out from the trees to our right and we both look. It flies toward us, but the bridge blocks it out as it passes overhead.

“Hey.” Joules stares at me. “I got Michaela to laugh this morning. We were brushing our teeth together in the bathroom and I was goofing around. My toothbrush fell in the toilet. She looked worried for a second, then when she saw I wasn’t upset, she totally started to giggle.” She smiles. “It was good to see.”

Joules’s previously impenetrable shell is starting to crack. The fosters are getting to her.

“Pretty wild for both of us,” she adds. “To see how the other one really lives. My life isn’t quite what you read about in the tabloids, is it.”

Still holding her wrists, I say, “You won’t be alone with it all any more. I’m tough to get rid of.”

We walk across the grass in silence. At the wall, I drop to my knees and fling the serial killer hose out of the way, then start to dig.

“They’re not really shoes we’re digging up, are they?”

It hasn’t rained since the other day and the ground is unforgiving. “They’re rubber gloves.” I can feel dirt packing itself deep beneath my fingernails. Joules bends down to help. The digging is tough, so we both reach for sharp rocks, sharp sticks to help penetrate the earth. Eventually we hit red clay.

I never saw red clay the first time, which means we’ve
dug too deep. I look around to check my landmarks. The crack in the cement wall. The dead bush about a foot to the left. This is definitely the place. So where are the gloves?

With panic blocking my throat, I look at Joules. “They’re not here.”

“What do you mean they’re not here?”

“I mean they’re not here! I buried them right here to keep them safe and …” I stand up and look around wildly, my chest heaving up and down. “Somebody took them. Somebody dug them up and took them!”

“You mean we have no way to wish back?”

I stomp along the wall to see if some animal dug them up, thinking they were food, and left them all chewed up among the trash. Nothing.

“Andie! Where are the gloves?”

“I don’t know, okay?” I wander around the entire plot of weeds and grass to find zero evidence of Gran’s magic gloves. But there’s not a feather, not a rhinestone, not so much as a chewed-up piece of black rubber. I go back to the hole and dig wider around the mouth of it.

There’s no mistaking it. The gloves are gone.

W
e’ve combed this area three times. We’ve crossed beneath the bridge and searched the littered side twice. We’ve checked out the train tracks, and I’ve even scaled the cement wall to have a look in the yards nearby.

All we’ve come up with is a whole lot of nothing.

Joules, who just ten minutes ago was saying she didn’t want to go back, is staring out into traffic, crying. I’m numb. It was one thing to talk about not switching back when we still had hope. Without hope, the prospect of remaining each other is terrifying.

“How could you think burying them and leaving them behind was safe?” she whispers.

I can’t answer.

“And what was your reason?”

I
really
can’t answer that one.

“Seriously. You couldn’t have brought them back to my house and put them under the bed or something? What were you thinking?”

“I don’t know.”

She flops her hands in the dirt. “So this is it. For the rest of my life I walk around as …” she waves her arms angrily above her head, “Andrea Birch?” Her voice rises
in pitch. “I mean, this is it? This is really
it?”

“Don’t panic. We can still find them.”

“Yeah? How? Some person came along and dug them up. Took them. How are we ever going to figure out who?”

“I don’t know, okay? Let me think.”

She wraps her arms around her knees and starts to rock.

“
Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod.
This isn’t happening. This totally isn’t happening.”

I put my arm around her and finally let myself cry. “I know. I know. Joules, I’m so sorry.”

She leans her head against my shoulder and starts to sob with me. A bearded guy walking past stops, moves closer to ask if we’re okay. Neither of us has the energy to answer, but he waits. When we’re both spent, when we have no more tears left to cry, we wipe our filthy faces and look up at the guy. Joules speaks first.

“It’s okay. My friend’s cat just died is all.” She puts her arms around me. “She really loved that stupid cat.”

After he moves on, Joules surprises me by offering up a sad smile. “It’s okay. We’ll keep looking for the gloves. We’ll find them. Nigel always says there’s a scratch …”

“For every itch,” I say.

“They’re not gone. They’re out there, right?”

They are. Somewhere. But looking for a couple of pieces of scrap rubber isn’t like looking for a missing grandmother or a lost dog. You can’t inform the police or ask your local radio station to air your plea.

The gloves were probably dug up by a couple of kids who had a quick laugh and stuffed them in a garbage can. Or the serial killer with the stained hose—maybe he’s
tired of scrubbing dried blood from his cuticles and has determined to cover his hands next time around. Kids or killers, it doesn’t really matter.

We’re never going to find those gloves.

Wait.

Gran.

Maybe there was another pair! Maybe she can find the roadside fortune teller and buy another pair! I pull out Joules’s cellphone and start to dial.

“What are you doing?” she asks, scooting closer.

I hold a finger to my mouth to shush her as Gran picks up.

“Hello?”

“Gran. It’s Andrea.”

She’s silent for a moment. “Which Andrea?”

“I’m still Joules. Listen, Gran. I need another pair of those gloves.”

“Another pair?”

“You can get more, right? I mean, they couldn’t have been the only pair. I was thinking we could call her. The witch. Give her a credit card number and have her mail them or something. Was there another pair?”

“All she had on her table were the one pair of gloves and her crystal ball. There was no other pair.”

My throat starts to tighten. “But … maybe if we call … she could make us another pair.”

“She was a dust-covered soothsayer in the plains of Africa. She didn’t hand out business cards. I doubt she even has a phone. What’s going on here, Andrea? Don’t tell me you’ve lost the gloves. I told you to take very special care not to lose them …”

I drop the phone into my lap.

Joules stares at me, her cheek scratched and her face smeared with dirt. She could be five years old, the way she’s looking at me to fix her world. “It’s going to be okay, though. We’ll find them one day, right?”

I push my chin up in the air and take a deep breath. “We’ll totally find them.”

W
hat choice do we have? We dust ourselves off. We walk to Pizza Hut and splash water on our dirt-smeared faces in the bathroom. I buy us a Coke and a slice with Nigel’s money. Then we go to school and sit in each other’s chairs at each other’s desks in each other’s classes.

Only now it’s different. Now I walk around in Joules’s life knowing this may be it for me. No more play-acting. The assignment on the board in Algebra is
my
assignment. The graffiti-ed binder in the bag at my feet is
my
binder. The mop-haired boy across the room who keeps looking at me is
my
boyfriend.

What a difference a week makes.

The Stanford interview no longer matters. Joules has nine days to decide what she wants to do as Andrea Birch.

Will keeps silently raising his eyebrows as if to ask if everything’s all right. It isn’t but I nod anyway. He winks, which is probably supposed to assure me he’s on my side. But the wink hits me harder than that. More than anything right now, I want to lay my cheek on his shoulder. Listen to his heartbeat.

I take my pen in both hands and snap it in half. “Ms. Wigg?” I hold up an inky hand. “My pen leaked. May I go wash my hands?”

She nods and turns back to the blackboard where she writes out tonight’s homework assignment.

Out in the hall, I lean against the iron railing and wait. A few minutes later, he’s standing beside me. “You okay?”

Holding my stained hands away from his shirt, I wrap my arms around his neck. “Yes. No.”

“What can I do?”

I shake my head, nothing. “Remember you said I was a different person before?”

He nods.

“And I said, no, I wasn’t?”

“Yeah.”

“I lied. I’m not the girl you used to date. Not even close. And I may never be again. Are you okay with that?”

He grins. “Sure.”

“You think I’m kidding, right? Exaggerating?”

“No. You mean you’ve changed. I get it.”

“I’m not sure you realize how much I’ve changed. I mean, in some ways I haven’t changed one single solitary bit. I’m still the me I always was. And always will be. That part of me can learn and grow but never really change, you know? But in other ways,” I hold up my hand, Joules’s hand, “I’m completely someone else. As in physically. I am not myself, physically. Not even close. Not even kind of close. I’m wa-a-ay off in another state of being, this freakishly impossible state of being …”

Will looks confused. “You don’t sound like Joules right now.”

My babbling. Of course! “Right! Who do I sound like?”

“I’m not sure I should say.”

“Say.”

“You might not like it.”

“Please say.”

“You sound like Andrea Birch.”

I smile, relieved. “I am Andrea Birch, Will. It’s me in here.” I touch my chest. “It’s Andrea.” I remember what Joules called me at the bridge. “Andie.”

He stares at me as if waiting for some sort of punch line to this joke. “You’re telling me
you’re
Andrea?”

“It makes no sense, I know. But there was a wish. My fault and Joules’s fault. We both wished it. And it happened.”

“You switched bodies? Lives?”

“Yes.”

His eyes dart to the right and I watch as he tries to decide what to make of this information. Squinting, he looks at me again. “That’s not possible.”

“I know.”

“As in, it’s completely impossible.”

“Right? That’s what I thought. And yet.” I wave toward Joules’s body. “Maybe we can switch back, maybe we can’t. Right now it isn’t looking good.”

He says nothing.

“But I want you to know who you’re kissing.”

“Who am I kissing?”

I rise up on my tiptoes and kiss him just to the right of his mouth. Light-headed from the warmth of his skin, I let my lips graze his as I whisper, “Me.”

That’s when my boyfriend kisses me back.