Airhead a-1

by Meg Cabot

  And I didn’t mind. I really didn’t. Because after the shock I’d had, a face-licking actually felt pretty good.

  ‘OK,’ Brandon said, lowering himself on to the couch opposite mine and studying me with a worried expression on his face. But not, I soon realized, because he was trying to figure out how to get me to kiss him again. Unfortunately. ‘It’s time to stop messing around. Who did this to you, Nikki? And be honest. Was it Al-Qaeda?’

  ‘Brandon!’ Lulu shrieked from the kitchen.

  ‘Well,’ Brandon shook his head, ‘if they want to strike a blow against freedom, why not go after the Face of Stark, one of America’s most beloved models?’

  ‘Al-Qaeda doesn’t know how to give people AMNESIA,’ Lulu declared from behind the black granite-topped island. ‘Only the Scientologists have the technology to do that.’

  Brandon looked at me gravely. ‘Was it the Scientologists, Nikki?’ he asked.

  ‘OK,’ I said. I’d reached up to rub my temples — I mean, Nikki Howard’s temples. But apparently, they were mine now. ‘We need to get one thing straight right now. I know I look like Nikki Howard. And I know I sound like Nikki Howard. I realize that right now, I am in Nikki Howard’s loft and wearing her clothes, while her dog is licking my face. But I am not Nikki Howard. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Brandon said. ‘Except… you are.’

  ‘I’m not,’ I insisted. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on any more than you two seem to. But seriously, I’m not Nikki.’

  ‘But how is that even possible?’ Lulu wanted to know. She came around the kitchen island… and I noticed what she was carrying — food. Lots of food.

  And that the smell coming from the food was sublime.

  Which didn’t make any sense, because when I saw what the food was — after she’d put it down on the white marble-topped coffee table in front of me — I could see it wasn’t anything I’d ever get excited over… in the past anyway. Just the promised blackened sea bass — which, being fish, I shouldn’t like. A bowl of soup — it looked like warmed-up leftover miso, judging by the bits of tofu and seaweed floating in it, and which, again, yuck. I completely hate tofu, let alone seaweed. All this was accompanied by a cup of green tea.

  I totally hate green tea.

  But apparently Nikki Howard doesn’t, because the next thing I knew, I was gulping that tea down. And a second after that, I’d started in on the sea bass and the miso soup.

  And all of it was the most delicious food I can ever remember eating.

  Don’t think Lulu and Brandon didn’t notice, either. They looked at how I was stuffing my face, and Lulu went, almost admiringly, ‘The blackened sea bass from Nobu always was your favourite.’

  That was enough to make me put my fork down. Although of course the truth was that by then the fish was all gone anyway. And I’d put a pretty good dent in the soup too.

  ‘You guys,’ I said. ‘Come on. Obviously I’m not Nikki Howard. I mean, I didn’t even know who you two were at first. I’ve seen you in magazines and all, but… I don’t know anything about you.’

  Brandon looked sadly at Lulu. ‘She pushed me away when I kissed her.’

  Lulu threw me a shocked look. ‘Nikki! Way to be a bitch!’

  I felt myself blushing to my hairline. If only they knew the truth, that pushing him away was the last thing I’d wanted to do…

  ‘But that’s what I’m trying to tell you!’ I cried. ‘I’m not Nikki Howard! I’m Emerson Watts — honest, I really am.’

  ‘I know, Nikki,’ Lulu said, laying a sympathetic hand on my arm.

  ‘That’s why we’re staging this intervention. To help you remember who you really are — which isn’t this Emerson Watts person. Look —’ she bent over and pulled a black portfolio out from beneath the couch — ‘I have your book. I know this will spark some memories.’

  She turned it to the first page, where there was a tearsheet from a magazine ad featuring Nikki Howard in a poofy prom dress jumping into the air from a trampoline. ‘This is from your first ever shoot for Stark Enterprises, when you were just starting out. Remember? This was before we met, when Rebecca first brought you to New York. You remember Rebecca, right? Your agent?’ When I looked at her blankly, she prodded, ‘You must remember getting signed by Ford. They said you were the most professional fifteen-year-old they’d ever represented. They said you were way more mature than most of their twenty-year-old models.’

  ‘Uh,’ I said. ‘I told you. I’m not Nikki. I’m Emerson Watts—’

  ‘Emerson Watts.’ Brandon’s eyebrows were knitted. He was concentrating… which you could tell for him wasn’t all that easy.

  ‘Emerson Watts. Why does that name sound so familiar to me?’

  ‘Shh,’ Lulu said to him. ‘Don’t confuse her.’ She turned a page in the portfolio. ‘Look, Nikki. Look at this. This is from your first runway show with Chanel. Remember, I was sitting in the front row? And at the party afterwards I asked you if those lace-up gladiator stilettos hurt, and you said they hurt like a mo—’

  ‘Emerson Watts,’ Brandon said again. Now his expression suggested that he was in pain. But only from concentrating so hard. ‘Seriously I’ve heard that name before… ’

  ‘Ignore him,’ Lulu said to me, and turned the page. ‘He’s just tired. He was up all night last night dancing at Cave. Oh, look! Here’s your first Victoria’s Secret spread!’

  I stared down at the pictures, holding Cosabella close (she didn’t seem at all inclined to leave my lap. Ever. Which I didn’t mind. I liked the way her fluttering little heartbeat felt against my thighs. Or, er, Nikki Howard’s thighs. There was something comforting about this little creature that seemed to absolutely adore me. Who cared if who she really adored was Nikki Howard?).

  Looking at the pictures, I recognized the body I’d just seen in the bathroom mirror a little while ago. In the air-brushed ad for lingerie, that body looked even more perfect than it had in the mirror.

  It seemed weird to me that, if Lulu Collins was really trying to jog my memory, she’d show me Nikki Howard’s portfolio, and not a family album.

  But of course, given the context — that I was apparently a normal eleventh-grader trapped in the body of one of the world’s most famous supermodels — maybe it wasn’t that weird after all. Maybe, under the circumstances, hoping to make me remember who I really was by showing me pictures of myself in a diamond-encrusted bra wasn’t the worst strategy.

  ‘Oh,’ Lulu said, turning the page. ‘Here’s your first print ad for your new clothing line! See how pretty you look there? Your eyes are the same colour as those sapphires… That’s not even photoshopped, you know. Your eyes really are that colour—’

  ‘I know!’ Brandon cried suddenly, startling us both — and Cosabella, who lifted her little head from my knee and cocked it at him inquisitively. ‘Emerson Watts! That was the girl who got hit by the plasma screen at the grand opening of my dad’s new store in SoHo.’

  I blinked. The words plasma and screen triggered something deep within the recesses of my mind. Dimly — like a dream I’d had long ago – the memory of the day Christopher and I had taken Frida to the grand opening of the Stark Megastore came back to me… just a trickle at first… then a flood.

  ‘Yes!’ I cried, clapping my hands and startling Cosabella a little. ‘Yes! That was me! I’m Emerson Watts! I was there that day!’

  ‘So was I!’ Lulu squeaked, her dark eyes widening. ‘Oh my God! That was so horrible! Nikki, do you remember now? You fainted!’

  ‘I’m not Nikki,’ I reminded her. ‘I’m Emerson Watts. I’m the one who got hit by the plasma screen.’

  ‘And, Nikki, you like totally passed out,’ Lulu said, ignoring me. ‘And that Gabriel Luna guy ran over and he totally like cradled you in his arms, but he couldn’t wake you up. No one could. And the paramedics came and… ’ Lulu swung her head around to stare at me accusingly. And that’s the last time I saw you! Kelly said you’d been diagnosed with hypoglycaemia, and wer
e taking some time off to try to get it under control. But I knew that wasn’t true. I mean, for one thing, you’d never said anything to me about having hypoglycaemia. Acid reflux, maybe. But not hypoglycaemia. And also because no way would you take time off without telling me where you were going. And no way would you leave Cosy behind.’

  I looked down at the little dog on my lap. No. There was no way anyone would leave Cosy behind.

  Not if she’d had a choice.

  And no way would you not call me,’ Brandon added. And when I glanced at him, I saw that he was looking at me in a way that… well, no guy had ever looked at me before.

  Except possibly for Gabriel Luna, that night in the hospital.

  Only-I realized with a sudden pang of disappointment — it hadn’t been ME Gabriel had been looking at like that at all.

  It had been Nikki Howard. Nikki Howard, whom he’d supposedly cradled in his arms after she’d passed out at the Stark Megastore grand opening, then later visited in her hospital room.

  Of course! How could I have been so stupid? How could I ever have thought Gabriel Luna would bring me flowers? Those flowers hadn’t been for me.

  They’d been for Nikki Howard.

  God. How naive could a person be? What guy would ever look at a girl like me — a normal girl — when a girl like Nikki Howard was around? Even Christopher hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her the whole time she’d been within sight range, back at the Stark Megastore. And Christopher isn’t the type to fall for a pretty face. I mean, Christopher has always laughed at Whitney and the other Walking Dead at TAHS.

  But I remembered now, the way his gaze had been glued to Nikki Howard’s chest that day.

  That chest was mine now… at least for the foreseeable future.

  What did that mean? I mean, as far as my relationship with Christopher went?

  The thought made my new chest feel a little tight.

  Then I remembered something: Christopher had said I looked fine at the Stark Megastore grand opening. But that was back when I’d still been me, Em Watts. Would he still think I looked fine as Nikki Howard?

  Somehow, I sort of doubted it.

  ‘So I started looking for you,’ Lulu went on. ‘First I checked all the usual places you might go to get away from it all — Bali, Mustique, Eleuthera — but there was no record of you there under any of the fake names you usually use to register—’

  ‘And that’s when she asked for my help,’ Brandon said. ‘And so I talked to my dad. Because, you know, if anyone was going to know where you were, it’d be my dad. But he was all freaky about it—’

  ‘Right,’ Lulu said, looking indignant. ‘He told Brandon you were all right, but that you were working through some things. Which, you know, I knew right away was total B. S. Because no way you’d work through anything without asking for my help. I always help you work through things. Like that time Henry put the cafe-au-lait lowlights in your hair, remember? So then I thought maybe they’d stuck you in a Promises somewhere — just for a rest, you know, because I know you’d never be there for drugs, because I know you’d never mess up your body by doing them, and so that the press couldn’t find you—’

  ‘— but you weren’t registered at any of them, so finally I snuck into my dad’s office,’ Brandon said, ‘and I looked through his stuff and I found your file and I saw that you were right here in the city, at Manhattan General on Sixteenth Street—’

  ‘You were literally just down the street!’ Lulu cried. ‘The whole time! So I went to scout it out,’ Lulu explained. ‘Because Brandon—’

  Brandon looked sheepish. ‘I thought you might not be so happy to see me. About the Mischa thing, I mean. But honest, Nik, I thought you were mad at me, and that’s why you hadn’t called. And the thing with Mischa, I mean, whatever, she just won’t stop calling me, she wants to cut an album, and you know I’m producing now—’

  ‘But then when you didn’t remember me,’ Lulu went on, after flashing him a glance filled with annoyance, ‘that’s when I knew. That they’d gotten to you.’

  It was hard to take in, this not-very-lucid explanation of what had gone on, from their point of view, from the last time I remembered being myself — the day of the Stark Megastore grand opening — until now.

  But one thing was apparent. Something very, very weird had taken place that day.

  ‘Wait!’ Lulu cried. ‘I figured it out.’

  Both Brandon and I looked at her. ‘Figured out what?’ I asked.

  ‘How come you look like Nikki,’ Lulu explained, ‘but you think you’re this Emerson Watts person. God, it’s so obvious! You’ve had a spirit transfer!’ she cried. ‘Like in that movie Freaky Friday!’

  Now it was my turn to blink. ‘Uh, Lulu,’ I said. Seriously. It is a crime that girls like my sister worship people like Lulu. Yeah, she’s good looking, and she’s rich. And maybe — just maybe — she means well.

  But she’s got the brains of a clam.

  ‘There’s no such thing as a spirit transfer,’ I informed her.

  ‘Of course there is!’ Lulu cried excitedly. ‘Why have there been all those movies about it if there isn’t?’

  ‘Lulu,’ I said. How was I going to sum up quantum physics — let alone biology — for this girl who so clearly had dropped out of school after approximately the eighth grade, if not earlier? ‘What you’re describing. that doesn’t happen. OK?’

  ‘But what other explanation is there?’ Lulu asked me, her brown eyes wide and innocent. ‘Obviously, when that girl was hit by the plasma screen, and you — I mean, Nikki — fainted, you two swapped spirits. All we have to do now is find this Emerson Watts person — who has Nikki’s spirit trapped inside her — and you two can swap back and be normal again.’

  Brandon was frowning. ‘Except—’

  ‘No except,’ Lulu said stubbornly. ‘That’s how it works. I mean, maybe, since you two both passed out at the same time and that’s how your spirits got swapped, we’ll have to hit you both over the head to make it happen again. But we’ll be careful not to do any permanent damage. Also not to bruise you, because you have the spring shows in Milan coming up—’

  ‘We can’t,’ Brandon said, before I could interrupt.

  ‘What do you mean, we can’t?’ Lulu demanded. ‘Of course we can. Why do you always have to be so negative, Brandon? It’s because you spend too much time with Mischa, and she’s still bummed out about her last pilot not getting picked up—’

  ‘No,’ Brandon said. ‘I’m not being negative. I mean you can’t do the spirit transfer thing.’

  ‘Why?’ Lulu snapped, looking angry. Only, because she was so tiny and pretty, it was kind of hard to take her anger seriously It was like seeing a chihuahua growling. ‘If we need a spirit guide or whatever, I can totally ask Yoshi from my yoga class. He’s way spiritual.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Brandon said. He looked super uncomfortable. ‘It’s just that… when I was going through my dad’s files, looking for information about Nikki, I saw something. Something about that Emerson Watts girl.’

  I leaned forward in my seat — even though it wasn’t easy, since the couch was so soft it kind of enveloped you.

  ‘What about me?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ Brandon said hesitantly. ‘It’s just that, according to this report my dad had, when that TV fell on Emerson Watts, she — I mean, you — died.’

  Ten

  ‘No,’ I said, horrified, shaking my head. ‘That’s not possible.’

  Brandon looked like he felt sorry for me.

  ‘I’m just telling you what I read,’ he said. ‘Dad seemed pretty upset by the whole thing. I mean, even though those EGG people did it—’

  ‘Egg? You must mean ELF,’ I corrected him.

  ‘Whatever,’ Brandon said. ‘It was still his fault. Dad’s, I mean. He should have had better security.’

  ‘He should have made sure those plasma screens were better secured to the ceiling,’ Lulu said gravely.

&
nbsp; ‘Well,’ Brandon said, looking uncomfortable. ‘It was secured. Secure enough that it wouldn’t have fallen down if someone hadn’t shot it with a paintball—’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, cutting him off.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but it’s true. If anyone’s to blame, it’s those elf people—’

  ‘Not about the plasma screen,’ I said, getting up from the couch… but still clutching Cosy to me. ‘About me. Being dead. I can’t be dead.’

  ‘Oh, believe me,’ Brandon said. ‘Emerson Watts? She’s dead. It was in the paper and on CNN and everything. I even saw the obituary. It was in the file in my dad’s office with the rest of the stuff.’

  It felt as if something moved over me. Nothing too massive.

  Just a steamroller.

  Lulu, who’d been biting her lower lip, released it and said, ‘I’m sorry, Nik. But I think Brandon’s right. I saw the way that thing landed on the girl, and she… well, I don’t see how anyone could have survived that. It squashed her. Like a bug.’

  ‘If I’m dead,’ I demanded when the steamroller finally moved off me and I was able to speak, and also pace the length of the loft, which I promptly began to do, ‘how can I be here? How can I be talking to you? How can I just have eaten that blackened sea bass?’

  ‘Because,’ Lulu said patiently. ‘I already told you. You had a spirit transfer—’

  ‘Oh my God!’ I yelled. ‘For the last time! There’s no such thing as a spirit transfer!’

  ‘God, OK,’ Lulu said, blinking rapidly. ‘You don’t have to yell.’

  ‘There’s got to be some other explanation,’ I said, still pacing. ‘I mean, if Emerson Watts is dead, and I’m Nikki Howard, why are Emerson Watts’s parents the ones who’ve been at my bedside all along in the hospital? Why haven’t Nikki’s parents been there?’

  ‘Well, because Nikki doesn’t have any parents,’ Lulu said matter-offactly.