Switched (4 page)

“Call who? Figure out what?” I took a step back.

“It’s about what you did tonight, with Patrick,” Finn said gently, and the pit in my stomach tightened.

“I didn’t do anything with Patrick.” I shook my head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You really don’t?” Finn eyed me suspiciously, unable to decide if he believed me or not.

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stumbled. A chill ran over me and I started feeling vaguely nauseous.

“Yeah, you do.” Finn nodded solemnly. “You just don’t know what it is.”

“I’m just very… persuasive,” I said without any real conviction. I didn’t want to keep denying it, but talking about it, giving credibility to my own private insanity, scared me even more.

“Yeah, you are,” Finn admitted. “But you can’t do that. Not like this.”

“I didn’t do anything! And even if I did, who are you to try and stop me?” Something else flashed in my mind, and I looked at him. “Can you even stop me?”

“You can’t use it on me now.” Finn shook his head absently. “It’s really not that major, especially the way you’re using it.”

“What is it?” I asked quietly, finding it hard to make my mouth work. I let go of any pretense I had that I didn’t know what was going on, and my shoulders sagged.

“It’s called
persuasion
,” Finn said emphatically, as if that were somehow much different from what I had been saying. “Technically, it would be called psychokinesis. It’s a form of mind control.”

I found it disturbing how matter-of-factly he talked about all of this, as if we were talking about biology homework instead of the possibility that I possessed some kind of paranormal ability.

“How do you know?” I asked. “How do you know what I have? How did you even know I was doing it?”

“Experience,” he shrugged.

“What does that mean?”  

“It’s complicated.” He rubbed the back of his head and stared at the floor. “You’re not going to believe me. But I haven’t lied to you, and I never will. Do you believe that at least?”

“I think so,” I replied tentatively. Considering we’d only spoken a handful of times, he hadn’t much of an opportunity to lie to me.

“That’s a start.” Finn took a deep breath, and I nervously pulled at a strand of my hair as I watched him. Almost sheepishly, he said, “You’re a changeling.” He looked expectantly at me, waiting for some kind of dramatic reaction.

“I don’t even know what that is,” I shrugged. “Isn’t it like a movie with Angelina Jolie or something?” I shook my head. “I don’t know what it means.”

“You don’t know what it is?” Finn smirked. “Of course you don’t know what it is. It would make it all too easy if you had even the slightest inclining about what is going on.”

“It would, wouldn’t it?” I agreed.

“A changeling is a child that has been secretly exchanged for another.”

The room got this weird, foggy quality to it. My mind flashed onto my mother, and the things she had screamed at me. I had always known I didn’t belong, but at the same time, I’d never consciously believed it was true. 

But now, suddenly, Finn confirmed all the suspicions I had been harboring. All the horrible things my mother had told me were true.

“But how…” Dazedly, I shook my head and realized one important fact. “How would you know that? How could you possibly know that? Even if it were true?”

“Well…” Finn watched me as I struggled to let everything sink in and decided to continue. “You’re Trylle. It’s what we do.”

“Trylle? Is that like your last name or something?” I asked.

“No,” Finn smiled. “Trylle is the name of our ‘tribe,’ if you will.” He rubbed the side of his temple. “This is hard to explain. We are, um, trolls.”

“You’re telling me that I’m a
troll
?” I raised my eyebrow, and finally decided that he must be insane.

Nothing about me resembled a pink-haired doll with a jewel in its stomach or a creepy little monster that lived under a bridge. Admittedly, I was kind of short, but Finn was at least six feet tall.

“You’re thinking of trolls the way they’ve been misrepresented, obviously,” Finn hurried to explain. “That’s why we prefer Trylle. You don’t get any of that silly ‘Billy Goats Gruff’ imagery. But now I have you staring at me like I have totally lost my mind.”

“You have lost your mind.” I trembled, out of shock and fear, and I didn’t know what to think. I should’ve thrown him out of my room, but then again, I never should’ve let him in.

“Okay. Think about it, Wendy.” Finn moved on to trying to reason with me, as if his idea had real merits. “You’ve never really fit in anywhere. You have a quick temper. You’re very intelligent and a picky eater. You hate shoes. Your hair, while lovely, is hard to control. You have dark brown eyes, dark brown hair.”

“What does the color of my eyes have to do with anything?” I retorted, focusing on the things that I felt like I could disagree with. In fact, none of the things he said were all that conclusive.

“Earth tones. Our eyes and hair are always earth tones,” Finn answered. “And often times, our skin has almost a greenish hue to it.”

“I’m not green!” I looked at my skin anyway, just to be sure, but it didn’t look green.

“It’s very faint, when people do have it,” Finn said. “But no, you don’t. Not really. Sometimes it gets more predominant after you’ve been living around other Trylle for awhile.”

“I am not a troll,” I insisted fiercely. “That doesn’t even make any sense. It doesn’t… So I’m angry and different. Most teenagers feel that way. It doesn’t mean anything.” I combed through my hair, as if to prove it wasn’t that wild. My fingers got caught in it, proving his point rather than mine, and I sighed. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“I’m not just guessing here, Wendy,” Finn informed with a wry smile. “I know who you are. I know you are Trylle. That’s why I came looking for you.”

“You’re looking for me?” My jaw dropped. “That’s why you stare at me all the time in school. You’re stalking me!”

“I’m not
stalking
,” Finn looked at me defensively. “I’m a tracker. It’s my job. I find the changelings and bring them back.”

Of all the major things that were wrong with this situation, the thing that bothered me the most is when he said it was his job. There hadn’t ever been any attraction between us. He had just been doing his job, and that meant following me.

He was stalking me, and I was only upset about it because he was doing it because he had to, not because he wanted to.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” Finn admitted. “I’m sorry. We usually wait until you’re older. But if you’re already using persuasion, then I think you need to head back to the compound. You’re developing early.”

“I’m what?” I just stared up at him.

“Developing. The psychokinesis,” Finn said as if it should be obvious. “Trylle have varying degrees of abilities. Yours are clearly more advanced.”

“They have
abilities
?” I swallowed “Do you have abilities?” Something new occurred to me, twisting my insides. “Can you read my mind?”

“No, I can’t read minds.”

“Are you lying?”

“I won’t lie to you,” Finn promised.

If he hadn’t been so attractive standing in front of me in my bedroom, it would’ve been easier to ignore him in the first place. If I hadn’t felt this ludicrous connection with him, I would’ve thrown him out right away.

As it was, it was hard to look into his eyes and not believe him. But after everything he had been saying, I couldn’t believe him. If I believed him, that meant my mother was right. That meant that I was evil and a monster, and I didn’t want to be. I had spent my whole life trying to prove her wrong, trying to be good and do the right things, and I wouldn’t let this be true

“I can’t believe you.”

“Wendy,” Finn sounded exasperated. “You know I’m not lying.”

“I do,” I nodded. “After what I went through with my mother, I’m not ready to let another crazy person into my life. So you have to go.”

“Wendy!” He was in complete disbelief.

“Did you really expect any other reaction from me?” I stood up, keeping my arms crossed firmly in front of me, and I tried to look as confident as I possibly could. “Did you think you could treat me like shit at a dance, then sneak into my room in the middle of the night and tell me that I’m a troll with magical powers, and I’d just be like, yeah, that sounds right?

“And what did you even hope to accomplish with this?” I asked him directly. “What were you trying to get me to do?”

“You’re supposed to come with me back to the compound,” Finn said, defeated.

“And you thought I would just follow you right out?” I smirked to hide the fact that I was really tempted to do that. Even if he was insane.

“They usually do,” Finn replied in a way that completely unnerved me.

Really, that answer is what completely lost me. I might have been willing to follow his delusions because I liked him more than I should, but when he made it sound like there had been lots of other girls willing to do the same thing before me, it was kind of a turn off. Crazy, I could deal with. Slutty, not so much.

“You need to go,” I told him firmly.

“You need to think about this. This is obviously different for you than it is for everyone else, and I understand that. So I’ll give you time to think about it.” He turned and opened the window. “But there is a place that you belong. There is a place where you have family. So just think about it.”

“Definitely,” I gave him a plastic smile.

He started to lean out the window, and I walked closer to him so I’d be able to shut the window behind him. Then he stopped and turned to look at me. He felt dangerously close to me, his eyes full of something smoldering just below the surface.

When he looked at me like that, he took all the air from my lungs, and I wondered if this is how Patrick felt when I persuaded him.

“I almost forgot,” Finn said softly, his face so close to mine I could feel his breath on my cheeks. “You looked
really
beautiful tonight.” He stayed that way a moment longer, completely captivating me, then abruptly he turned and climbed out the window.

I stood there, barely remembering to breathe, as I watched him grab onto a branch of the tree next to my house and swing down to the ground. A cool breeze fluttered in, so I closed the window and pulled my curtains shut tightly.

Feeling very dazed, I staggered back to my bed and collapsed on it. I had never felt more bewildered in my entire life.

I barely got any sleep. What little I had was filled with dreams of little green trolls coming to take me away. I lay in bed for hours after I woke up. Everything felt muddled and confusing.

 I couldn’t let myself believe that anything Finn had said made sense, but I couldn’t discount how badly I wanted it to be true. I had never felt like I belonged anywhere. Until recently, Matt had been the only person I had ever felt any connection with.

Lying in bed at six-thirty in the morning, I could hear the morning birds chirping loudly outside my window. Quietly, I got up and crept downstairs. I didn’t want to wake Matt and Maggie this early. Matt got up with me every day to make sure that I was awake and drove me to school, so this was his only time to sleep in.

For some reason, I felt desperate to find something to prove we were family. All my life I had been trying to prove the opposite, but as soon as Finn had mentioned that it might be a real possibility, I felt oddly protective.

Matt and Maggie had sacrificed everything for me. I had never been that good to either of them, but they had loved me unconditionally. Wasn’t that evidence enough?

I crouched on the floor next to one of the cardboard boxes behind the couch in the living room. Maggie’s pretty cursive had scrawled across it the word “memorabilia.” She never actually unpacked any of the pictures or anything, because the last time she had Matt had smashed all the picture frames. That had been almost ten years ago, but I was betting that his reaction now would have only lessened slightly.

Underneath Matt and Maggie’s diplomas and lots of Matt’s graduation photos, I found several photo albums. Based on the covers, I could tell which ones had been Maggie’s purchases. Maggie picked albums covered in flowers and polka dots and happy things. My mother had only had one with a faded brown non-descript cover.

Below the oldest photo album, there was a damaged blue baby book. Carefully, I pulled it out, along with my mom’s photo album.

My baby book had been blue because all the ultrasounds had said I was a boy. Tucked in the back of the book there was even a cracked ultrasound photo where the doctor had circled what they had incorrectly assumed was my penis.

Most families would have made some kind of joke about that, but not mine. My mother had just looked at me with disdain and said, “You were supposed to be a boy.”

Most mothers start out filling the beginning of the baby book, but then forget as time went on. Not mine. She’d never written a thing in it. The handwriting was either my father’s or Maggie’s.

My foot prints were in there, along with my measurements and a copy of my birth certificate. I touched it delicately, proving that my birth was tangible. I had been born in this family, whether my mother and I liked it or not.

“What are you doing, kiddo?” Maggie asked softly from behind me, and I jumped a little. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Wrapped in her house coat, Maggie yawned and ran a hand through her sleep disheveled hair.

“It’s okay.” I tried to cover up my baby book, feeling as if I had been caught doing something naughty. “What are you doing up?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Maggie replied with a smile. She sat down on the floor next to me, leaning against the back of the couch. “I heard you get up.” She nodded to the pile of albums on my lap. “You feeling nostalgic?”

“I don’t know really.”

“What are you looking at?” Maggie leaned over so she could peer at the photo album. “Oh, that’s an old one. You were just a baby then.”

I flipped open the book and it went chronologically, so the first few pages were of Matt when he was little. Maggie looked at it with me, making clucking sounds at my dad. She gently touched his picture once and commented on how handsome he was.