Airhead a-1

by Meg Cabot

  ‘I mean, she became an emancipated minor the minute she landed her first modelling contract.’

  I quit pacing and stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Nikki never got along with her parents,’ Lulu said. ‘You know you never — I mean, she never — talked about them much.’

  ‘Try at all,’ Brandon said drily.

  ‘Right,’ Lulu said. ‘Nikki didn’t have any family. I mean, none that she spoke to. Or about. I think —’ Lulu dropped her voice to a whisper — ‘I think Nikki’s parents were poor. Like trailer-park poor.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ I asked her.

  ‘Well,’ Lulu shrugged, ‘I don’t know. I mean… I guess because… Well, it’s not very classy to talk about money. And Nikki never mentioned her family, or where she grew up, or anything that happened before she came to New York and made it big.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, beginning to pace again. ‘That still doesn’t explain what my parents are doing in Nikki Howard’s hospital room.’

  ‘Because they know that’s where your spirit is,’ Lulu explained patiently. ‘Maybe her body is dead, Brandon. But her spirit is still alive. Which, of course, leads us to the real question: where is Nikki Howard’s spirit? Is it just floating around out there? If so, we need to capture it!’

  ‘What we need to do,’ Brandon said, completely ignoring Lulu, ‘is call Kelly and tell her we have Nikki here in the loft. But that Nikki doesn’t know she’s Nikki. Then we need to ask Kelly where the REAL Nikki is. Nikki’s spirit, I mean.’

  I looked back and forth between the two of them. And wondered if I could possibly have been kidnapped by two stupider people.

  ‘Do you think Kelly did this?’ Lulu asked. ‘I’ve always thought there was something wrong with her. I mean, what kind of publicist is she, when she can’t even get Nikki on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, right? She keeps saying there’s plenty of time and that Nikki shouldn’t worry. But what kind of lame answer is that? I’ll bet you anything Kelly is behind this whole spirit-transfer thing… ’

  Only I didn’t hear how Brandon replied. Because I had reached up to scratch my head and felt something.

  Something that wasn’t just hair and smooth scalp.

  I stopped pacing and stood there in front of one of Nikki Howard’s floor-to-ceiling windows, staring unseeingly at my own reflection — or Nikki Howard’s reflection — and the bright lights of downtown Manhattan beyond it as I felt along my head. Something wasn’t right. Something…

  And there it was. All along the base of my — or Nikki’s — skull. A puckered line of skin, hidden by long blonde hair. It didn’t hurt, but it was still tender. Something horrible had happened there. Something that had left a hideous raised scar, about half an inch wide and five or six inches long.

  The thing is, I knew what it was. I knew exactly what it was, from all the plastic-surgery shows Christopher and I liked to watch on the Discovery Health Channel. Someone had made an incision at the back of Nikki’s neck, then peeled her skin back, hair and all, until the gleaming white bones of her skull had been revealed.

  Only why? Why would someone have done something like that?

  Unless…

  And then I remembered something that made my blood — Nikki’s blood — run cold. A rainy Sunday afternoon at the apartment Christopher shared with the Commander, a bag of Doritos we’d smuggled in from Gristedes, and a surgery show:

  BRAIN TRANSPLANTS: THE SURGERY OF THE FUTURE IS HERE NOW.

  No. No way.

  What had they said in that documentary? It was all coming back — brain transplants, sounding like the stuff of science fiction.

  But scientists in Europe had proved it was possible to transplant the brain as a separate organ into an intact animal, and maintain it in a viable, or living, situation for many days.

  ‘Sweet,’ Christopher had said. ‘I want one.’

  The documentary had gone on to assert that it was only ethical considerations that were keeping the technology from moving forward. Bioethicists argued that it was immoral to harvest a brain-dead body for the use of a living brain.

  ‘Immoral my ass,’ Christopher had said. ‘They can transplant my brain into the Hulk’s body any time they want.’

  Christopher had been disappointed to learn that the technology for whole-body transplants — the correct term for brain transplants — in humans was far off.

  But, as he pointed out, a generation ago, human cloning seemed an impossibility as well. So how long would it be until whole-body transplants were as routine as heart transplants?

  Was that it? Was I the first ever recipient of a whole-body transplant? Had that plasma screen crushed my body, but spared my brain? Had Dr Holcombe then removed my brain and transplanted it into the nearest convenient brain-dead body on hand… the body of Nikki Howard, who’d apparently suffered from some kind of collapse at or around the same time as my accident?

  No. No, that was ridiculous. First of all, it wasn’t even possible. Hadn’t the documentary said scientists were still years from being able to perform this type of surgery in humans?

  And second of all… why would anyone use that kind of technology — if indeed it did exist — to save me?

  Suddenly some things that had only confused me before now were beginning to make sense though. Frida’s weird reaction to me — asking me if I was really me. Of course she wasn’t sure if I was me… because I was Nikki Howard on the outside, not the sister she knew and (allegedly) loved.

  And what about Dr Holcombe’s insistence that I not move or sit up? This would make sense in a post-operative brain-surgery patient.

  And his assertion that I’d made more progress than they could have hoped for? They’d transplanted my BRAIN into someone else’s body, and I was already speaking lucidly and (somewhat) in control of my motor functions (although, of course, my surgery had been over a month ago).

  And what about the fact that I was the only patient I had seen on the entire floor as Lulu and Brandon had been wheeling me out? Obviously they wanted to keep the whole thing top secret. Why? Because of what the documentary had mentioned, about the ethical controversy over such a procedure?

  And what about the fact that suddenly I liked fish?

  Or the fact that I, Emerson Watts, was looking out of Nikki Howard’s sapphire blue eyes, instead of my own muddy brown ones?

  My God. It all made sense. I hadn’t had a spirit transfer, as Lulu Collins kept insisting. Dr Holcombe had sawed open Nikki Howard’s cranium, removed her brain and slid mine in where hers had been, carefully attaching all the appropriate nerves and arteries and veins, before fusing her skull and finally stitching her skin and hair back into place.

  The realization caused my knees to buckle. Next thing I knew I was sprawled out on the white carpet, looking up at Lulu and Brandon’s anxious expressions… and being licked in the face by Nikki Howard’s dog.

  ‘Nikki?’ Lulu was crying. ‘Nikki, can you hear me? Oh, Brandon, this is all our fault. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken her from the hospital. Maybe she really is sick!’

  ‘Nikki?’ Brandon was giving my face little smacks. ‘Nikki!’

  ‘Ow,’ I said irritably. ‘Stop hitting me.’

  ‘Oh.’ Brandon lowered his hand. ‘You scared us. Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Help me over to the couch.’

  Brandon pulled me up, and then chivalrously carried me over to the couch. Once I was settled on to it, Cosabella came running over to jump in my lap and gave me a few more restorative kisses.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Lulu wanted to know. ‘Was it hypoglycaemia? Do you have low blood sugar? Do you want some TaB energy drink or something? Brandon, go pour her a TaB.’

  ‘No,’ I said weakly, refraining from pointing out to her that TaB is sugar free, not really useful for hypoglycaemics. ‘I’m fine. Really.’

  Lulu shook her head. ‘Do it anyway, Brandon. Nikki — Em �
� whatever your name is. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. We never should have… we were only trying to help. What can we do? What can we do to make it up to you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I said tiredly. Because that’s all I felt. Not outrage over what had been done to me. Not anger. Not even wonder.

  They’d done it. They had done it.

  I was the world’s first brain transplant…

  ‘Oh, here,’ Lulu said. She took the can of TaB Brandon had brought over, and waved it under my nose. ‘I think you should drink this.’

  The drink actually smelt great. Which made no sense, because it was diet. And I hate diet. I reached up and took hold of the can, then took a sip. It was cold and sweet and delicious.

  ‘Look, Nikki,’ Lulu said. ‘Or Em. Or whatever your name is. Do you want us to call someone? Your agent, Rebecca? Or your publicist, Kelly? Should we call Kelly and see if she can tell us what’s going on?’

  ‘Don’t call anyone yet,’ I said. I wasn’t ready to go back to the hospital. Not now. Not knowing what I suddenly knew. Or was fairly certain I knew.

  Why hadn’t they told me? What had they been waiting for?

  ‘I’m really tired,’ I said, handing Lulu the empty can, which I’d drained. ‘Can I just hang out here, and maybe rest a little before I decide what to do next?’

  ‘Of course you can,’ Lulu exclaimed. ‘I mean, this is your loft. I’m the one who pays you rent.’

  ‘Nikki Howard,’ I corrected her. ‘You paid Nikki Howard rent.’

  I was the world’s first brain transplant…

  … and the body they’d chosen to transplant my brain into was one of the planet’s most famous supermodels.

  Seriously. The Hulk would have been better.

  Eleven

  I woke to the sound of a buzzer.

  At first I couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from. That’s because, for a minute or so, I thought I was in my own room. I reached out, fumbling for my alarm clock. But instead of my fingers coming into contact with hard plastic, all I felt was warm skin.

  This was unusual, to say the least.

  What was even more unusual was that when I opened my eyes, I saw I wasn’t in my room at all. Or even in the last place I remembered waking up, the hospital. No, I was in Nikki Howard’s downtown loft, where I’d apparently fallen asleep on the living room couch — with my head on Brandon Stark’s chest, no less.

  When I jerked myself to an upright position — completely startled by the intimate way in which I’d curled myself up to a complete and utter stranger — I got a head rush. Not just a head rush, but a headache.

  It only took a second or two to remember why.

  And when I did, I groaned and dropped my face to my knees, Nikki Howard’s long blonde hair falling all around me like a tent. Cosy — Nikki Howard’s dog — didn’t seem to like that very much. She wiggled her way past my hair and on to my lap so she could give me a good-morning lick.

  Then the buzzer went off again.

  ‘Oh God,’ I groaned, and, lifting Cosabella, I staggered across the living room, looking for the source of the sound so I could make it stop.

  It was morning. The sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was already a bright autumnal blue.

  But that didn’t seem to trouble the two FONs who’d fallen asleep beside me and who continued to doze undisturbed. Lulu Collins looked like a little angel, with her pageboy all messed up and her mascara smudged.

  And Brandon Stark, all six and a half feet of him, lay half on and half off the couch, snoring lightly, the television remote in his hand. On the screen over the fireplace flickered soundless images of famous faces. It was MTV, on mute.

  The buzzer sounded again and Lulu, over on the couch, groaned and pulled the cashmere blanket we’d all been sharing over her head. I realized the sound was coming from some sort of intercom located to one side of the door to the elevator. Not knowing what else to do — but desperate to make the sound stop — I lifted the handset that was connected to the wall where the buzzing seemed to be coming from.

  ‘Hello?’ I croaked into the handset.

  ‘Sorry to wake you, Miss Howard,’ said a man’s voice I didn’t recognize (of course), ‘but Mr Justin Bay is here, and he’s asking to see you.’

  Justin Bay? The star of the Journeyquest movie (which blew)? Justin Bay wanted to see me?

  Then I remembered. He wasn’t there to see me at all. He was there to see Nikki Howard.

  But wait. Why? Wasn’t he Lulu Collins’s boyfriend? I remembered the pink sapphire she’d shown me that time she’d visited me in the hospital, when I’d hoped she’d been a hallucination. Hadn’t she said that ‘Justin’ had given it to her?

  Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what she’d said.

  ‘He must mean Lulu,’ I said. ‘But she’s asleep—’

  ‘No, Miss Howard,’ the doorman — because that’s who it had to be, right? — said. ‘Mr Bay says to tell you he’s here specifically to see you, and that he’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell Miss Collins, and if you’d come down to meet him. He says it’s important.’

  I stood there staring at the intercom in confusion. Justin Bay wanted to see Nikki Howard, but he didn’t want her to tell Lulu. What was going on here?

  ‘He also says,’ the doorman went on in a slightly bored voice, ‘that he’s not leaving until you see him, and that this time he really means it.’

  Whoa! I stared at the intercom some more. Why did Justin Bay need to see Nikki Howard so badly, but didn’t want Lulu to know? I tried to remember what I knew about Justin Bay, which — beyond what I’d read in the pages of Frida’s Us Weekly and that he’d been horrible in the Journeyquest movie as Leander — wasn’t much, except that he was incredibly good-looking.

  Oh, and rich. Because his dad, Richard Bay, had also been an actor, star of the mega-successful Sky Warrior franchise when he was younger. Now he produced heartwarming family friendly television shows on prime time and raised buffalo (why did Frida keep leaving her celebrity gossip magazines lying around for me to find? Worse, why was I always picking them up and reading them?) on a huge ranch in Montana.

  Maybe Justin had a surprise for Lulu. Sure, that had to be why he wanted to see Nikki and not her. Right?

  ‘Do you want me to call the police, Miss Howard?’ was the doorman’s next surprising question.

  ‘What?’ I squawked in astonishment into the intercom’s handset. ‘No! No, that’s OK. I’ll be right down.’

  ‘Sure thing, Miss Howard,’ the doorman said. ‘I’ll send the elevator up for you.’

  I hung up the handset. OK. Great. I was going to have to talk to Justin Bay. As Nikki Howard though, not as me, because I couldn’t tell him I wasn’t Nikki. It had been hard enough to convince Lulu and Brandon that I wasn’t Nikki Howard. Forget Justin Bay. His portrayal as Leander in the Journeyquest movie had pretty much proven he was the dumbest guy on earth…

  Fine. I could do this. I could –

  Oh God. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t have time for this. I had to get back to the hospital. I knew now that I had had a good night’s sleep (even if it had been on a couch, in front of Lulu’s demo for her new rock video — she was cutting her first album. Her singing voice wasn’t that bad actually) that I had to find out what was going on, how my parents could have done this to me, why no one had even told me what was going on, what had happened to my old body…

  … and Nikki Howard’s brain.

  I put Cosabella down and darted into Nikki Howard’s bathroom. Yeah. Nikki’s face was still the one that looked back at me in the mirror. No chance that any of this had turned out to be some kind of bizarre nightmare.

  I splashed some cold water on to it to wash the sleep away, then pulled open a drawer in the hopes of finding a brush, found one and dragged it through my hair — carefully, so as not to hurt the tender sutures at the back of my head. I mean, Nikki’s head — then pulled a toothbrush from the gold cup by the sink. It was Nikki
Howard’s toothbrush, but I used it anyway. Because, whatever — my teeth are Nikki Howard’s teeth now. Right?

  I rinsed and wiped my mouth, then grabbed the first jacket my hands came into contact with — something made out of buttery soft brown suede.

  I was about to walk out of Nikki’s room, when it hit me that I’d almost walked by her computer without checking it to confirm whether what Brandon had said last night was true. I mean, about me being dead. Sure, Justin was waiting — but Googling myself would only take a second.

  And besides, if I’d really been in a coma for a month, I probably had a ton of emails. Sure, most of them would be spam, but it would only take a minute to check them and see if maybe Christopher had written…

  But when I opened Nikki’s pink laptop, I saw right away something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that it was a Stark-brand PC, which frankly wasn’t what I’d buy if I was a millionaire supermodel with all the money in the world.

  It was that the keyboard was sluggish, not responding to my commands quite as soon as it ought to have.

  It only took a second for me see why. Every time I pressed a letter on the keyboard, the network activity light on Nikki’s modem flashed.

  Which meant, I knew perfectly well from Christopher’s father’s obsessive belief that all our computers were being monitored by the government, that someone was tracking Nikki Howard’s keystrokes.

  Her computer — unlike the Commander’s — was totally being spied on.

  Someone who didn’t spend much time on computers — like, say, a world-famous supermodel — wouldn’t have noticed. But to someone who basically lived on one, like me, it was totally obvious.

  And deeply, deeply sinister.

  I pulled my fingers off the keyboard so fast it was like I’d been stung. I hadn’t clicked on anything except Google News. I hadn’t typed in my name or anything else that could have given me away.

  Still. Talk about creepy. Who’d be spying on Nikki Howard?

  And why? How interesting could a supermodel’s emails be anyway?

  Just then I heard the elevator doors open, and I darted from Nikki’s room. The elevator operator — a different one from last night — grinned at me and said, ‘Good morning, Miss Howard.’