The Body Shifters (Book 1 Body Shifters Trilogy): A Novel (The Body Shifters Trilogy)

by Leslie O'Kane

“A classmate who transferred from a school in Virginia,” she countered, undaunted.

  “You’ll have your memory back in no time,” her dad declared as he got back behind the wheel.

  “Yes, you will. In no time.” Her mother gave Ellie a wan little smile.

  Ellie gazed at the truly wonderful woman who was looking back at her with an anguished and yet loving expression on her face. The sight broke Ellie’s heart. She’d seen that expression on her own mother’s face when Ellie had broken her wrist after falling from a tree in their back yard.

  She shifted her vision to the house where she’d supposedly spent her entire life. Ellie knew for dead certain that she’d never once set foot in the place.

  Chapter 7

  Despite a patina of guilt, Ellie smiled with relief when she spotted Fiona waiting for her on the sidewalk in front of Albany Central. During the three days that had passed since her release from the hospital, Ellie had yet to tell Fiona that she’d abandoned any hope of believing that she was Alexis Bixby.

  Alexis’s mother had insisted upon driving Ellie to school this morning. She squeezed in one last: “Are you sure you’re feeling up to this?” just as Ellie was shutting the car door. Ellie bent down and gave her a cheerful wave. Alexis’s mom responded with a tentative smile and began to drive away—albeit at a snail’s pace.

  As a means to encourage Alexis’s mom to go ahead and leave, Ellie joined Fiona in waving goodbye to her. “She’ll be fine,” Fiona said to Ellie through a forced smile. “It’s just first-day-back jitters.”

  Ellie’s goodbye wave morphed into a go-that-a-way gesture as she replied, “She’s so worried about me, it’s amazing that she didn’t insist upon walking me to my first class.”

  They turned toward the school. Fiona pointed with her chin at a cluster of students in front of the main entrance. “Head’s up . . . it’s been a slow news day. You’re probably going to get a lot of gawkers.”

  “Gawkers?”

  Two seconds later, Ellie could see that absolutely everyone was staring at her. Some of them averted their gaze when she made eye contact. Others offered an occasional, “Hi, Alexis,” but not with any conviction.

  A guy brushed past and held the door for them. He was really good-looking. His first name was Peter; she remembered his yearbook photos. He was Top Jock at Albany Central—football quarterback, baseball and basketball starter. “Hey, what’s up, Alexis?”

  “Just . . . trying to get back into the swing of things,” Ellie answered with a smile.

  He flashed a truly charming smile of his own. “Yeah, well, take it easy. Glad you’re okay.”

  “Thanks, Peter.”

  She heard Fiona mutter something like: The young god just parted the sea. All bets are off.

  Suddenly, it was as if Ellie had aced the coolness litmus test. At least half of the dozens of kids that surrounded them were greeting her now as if she were their long-lost friend.

  Fiona showed her to her locker and fished out a small piece of paper with her combination before Ellie could ask her for it. “Remembering numbers was never your strong suit,” Fiona said with a shrug. “You got your class schedule handy?”

  “I memorized it.” Fiona arched her brow, and Ellie added, “There’s nothing like amnesia to improve your short-term memory.”

  “Hope that helps in Pre-Calc. Our teacher likes to give pop quizzes on Mondays.”

  As Ellie followed Fiona to their classroom down a pea-green painted corridor, past a predictable showcase of trophies and plaques, she started to feel queasy at the thought of how familiar this all felt. Yet it wasn’t Albany Central that she remembered, but rather Willow Grove in Philadelphia. Even the air that she breathed felt unpleasantly familiar. Do all schools smell the same? That odd combination of floor-wax, gym socks, and Cheetos? She would probably have to endure another three full semesters of high school here.

  They entered their classroom. Fiona jerked her chin at a desk roughly in the center of the room, then took another seat that was kitty-corner to hers. Classmates continued to enter and to talk until a few seconds after the bell rang. The teacher—an attractive Hispanic woman—cleared her throat a couple of times. Ellie heard a couple of derisive throat clearings behind her. The teacher’s already tight smile tightened another notch.

  “Welcome back, Alexis. I’m afraid this isn’t going to be the best of ways to celebrate your return. We’ve got a pop quiz today.”

  Several of her classmates groaned. The teacher cleared her throat. The girl to Ellie’s left cleared hers.

  A flicker of annoyance passed across the teacher’s expression, then she gave Ellie a reassuring smile. “You’ve missed a lot of classes, so just do the best you can. I’m only having you take the quiz to give me an idea of where you’ll need tutoring.”

  “I’d be up for some late-night tutoring,” the boy seated behind Ellie said.

  “Shut it, Klondike,” Fiona growled.

  The teacher handed out the quiz, giving Ellie her copy first, then let the students in the front row grab one and pass the sheets back. Ellie still had to pass a handful of test sheets behind her, and eyed “Klondike,” but couldn’t remember seeing his picture in the yearbook. He rolled his eyes at her in a tacit: Ugh! A quiz!

  She skimmed the questions, which were problems that she would have found simple two years ago. Her biggest challenge would be forging Alexis’s signature on the top line. She briefly considered getting a couple of answers wrong even so, but the last thing she wanted was unnecessary tutoring. She flew through the exam, flipped her sheet over and put down her pencil, only then realizing that she should have taken more time. Everyone else was still working. She picked up her pencil once again, but it was too late. The teacher had been watching her and was already making her way down the aisle to Ellie’s desk.

  “Don’t worry about not being able to finish,” she said quietly. “This won’t count against your grade.” She snatched up Ellie’s test and glanced at it, promptly raising her eyebrows in surprise. “Your penmanship has improved.” The smile left her face as she lingered by Ellie’s desk, reading her answers in earnest. She added incredulously, “As have your math skills.”

  Ellie felt her cheeks growing warm. “Um, there wasn’t much for me to do at the hospital except study.”

  The teacher gave her a puzzled look and reclaimed her seat.

  Ellie thumbed through Alexis’s notebook to pass the time till the others finished. Alexis spent more time drawing elaborate doodles than taking notes, and her trigonometry equations were all but illegible. Ellie needed to work on making her handwriting messier and her drawing more precise. And she had to unlearn two years’ worth of education.

  The teacher collected the tests and started her lecture. Ellie’s mind wandered. A snippet of a conversation she’d had a couple of years ago with her dad popped into her head. She’d been complaining that boys seemed to be turned off by her intelligence. He’d peered at her and asked: Why would you want to date anyone who found a pretense of stupidity attractive? Do you want some guy to gaze into your eyes and tell you, ‘I knew you were the one for me the moment I realized that your IQ is lower than mine?’” She remembered thinking: Of course not. But I do want someone to gaze into my eyes and tell me that I’m The One. At the time, she’d been worried that that would never happen because she wasn’t pretty enough; she’d wanted to be tall and lithe, with high cheekbones, pouty lips, and haunting eyes. Now whenever some man gazed lovingly at her, he would merely be captivated by the lithe build, high cheekbones, and haunting eyes of Alexis Bixby.

  “Alexis?” the teacher said, standing at the dry-wipe board. “You understood this on the test. Why don’t you explain how to get the answer?”

  Ellie gave a quick glance over her shoulder at Fiona, who looked terrified on her behalf. “Um . . . I’m not good at explaining things,” she said feebly.

  “Then just come up here and write the correct solution on the board.” She held out the marker.


  Fiona had told her that, in this situation, Alexis would give some sort of vague, enthusiastic reply, but Ellie had no idea how to pull off such a thing in a math class.

  She felt trapped into giving the right answer—using the appropriate Pythagorean identity to solve for cosine when sine was given. Her classmates stopped chattering. Worse, they stayed quiet for the rest of math class, as if everyone was holding their collective breath to see what “Alexis” would say next.

  When the bell rang, Ellie dawdled, hoping she could talk privately with Fiona. Maybe she’d imagined the class’s stunned reaction.

  A moment later, Ellie sensed that many of her classmates were also deliberately taking their time, as if waiting for her to drop the other shoe. She rose and turned toward Fiona, and realized that Peter, the quarterback, was making his way toward her.

  “So, Alexis,” a classmate said. He had acne. Ackerton, she remembered. “Did they sneak some smart pills into your meds at the hospital?”

  “Maybe she’ll get some for you,” Klondike said with a snort. “You could sure use ‘em.”

  Ellie rose. “It’s just a weird aftereffect of my concussion,” she said to Ackerton.

  Peter chuckled. “I got a minor concussion last season after a brutal sack. But the opposite happened to me. It was like I’d forget every other word I read. Maybe I didn’t hit my head hard enough to get intelligent.”

  “You could try playing without a helmet,” a fourth male classmate joked. The guy looked like a football player himself, and Peter laughed.

  “I don’t really recommend concussions,” Ellie said, following Fiona as they left the room. “For one thing, hospital food sucks.”

  “I’ve got Spanish,” Fiona said, indicating that she needed to head in the opposite direction from Ellie. “You’ve got Chem. Room one-fifty-seven.”

  “I can walk you there,” Peter’s friend said.

  “That’s okay. I’ve got to stop by my locker.”

  “Catch you later, Alexis,” Peter said as he and his football friend continued on their way.

  “See ya,” she called after him. She did a double-take at Fiona, who looked a little worried as she waited with Ellie for the others to leave.

  “If you wanted to fly under the radar, you blew it big time,” Fiona said.

  Ellie sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. I felt like I was in a no-win situation when the teacher called on me.”

  “We’ll talk at lunch. I’ll come find you.” Fiona turned and was soon lost in the crowd.

  Ellie took her time at her locker, trying to strategize. If she tanked in the classroom, she could kiss Stanford goodbye. She probably didn’t stand a prayer of getting in again, regardless; Alexis had been a B student. Getting straight As for the next two semesters and perfect SAT and ACT scores might catch the eye of an admissions counselor, though. Especially when she wrote a dynamite essay on how her coma changed her life forever.

  Someone bumped into her. “Excuse me,” Ellie said automatically.

  “Watch where you’re going,” a girl snarled.

  Ellie could guess who this was, just from Fiona’s description of the Who’s Who hierarchy. Ellie turned and saw that it was indeed Peter’s girlfriend, the head of the highly regarded pom squad; she was a pretty girl with an ugly expression on her face as she glared at Ellie.

  “Hi, Savannah,” Ellie said in a monotone. Savannah had not been in Pre-Calc, but one of Savannah’s three minions—currently lined up behind Savannah—had been the throat-clearer sitting next to Ellie.

  “So. You remember my name,” Savannah said, crossing her arms. “I thought you supposably had amnesia. That’s what your little friend . . . Fifi . . . has been telling everyone.”

  Ellie couldn’t help but smirk. It was bad enough that Savannah didn’t know that the word was “supposedly,” but she was going to resort to calling Fiona “Fifi?” How lame could this girl get? “Chill out, Savannah. I’m just doing my time here in high school. You don’t have to waste your breath trying to keep me in my place. I have no interest in stealing your boyfriend or your limelight, or whatever.”

  Savannah’s eyes increased their laser-like intensity. “Enjoy your fifty minutes of fame, Alexis. That’s all you’re ever going to have.”

  “The expression is ‘fifteen’ minutes, so thanks for the extra thirty-five.” Rolling her eyes, she added, “I’m, like, totally intimidated by you.”

  Savannah clenched her teeth and her fists, instantly enraged. “You little bitch! So much for moping around, boo-hooing about your ass-kissing sister! You’re such a loser, it’s no surprise you botched your suicide!”

  Ellie sighed and grabbed her Chemistry book from her locker and shut the door. “The thing is, Savannah, I honestly don’t care what other people think of me. And I’ve got to get to class now. So if you’re determined to keep this up, send me some insulting texts. That’ll be a time-saver for both of us.”

  The bell rang. Ellie brushed past Savannah and strode down the hall.

  “Hey, wait up.”

  Ellie stopped and looked back. It was one of Savannah’s three cronies, who was trotting after her. “I’m heading to class,” she repeated, truly not interested in continuing the argument.

  To Ellie’s surprise, the girl met her gaze with a look of admiration on her face. “I’m sorry for . . . That was seriously uncool. What Savannah said to you just now, I mean. You must’ve really freaked her out. She’s not usually like that.”

  “It’s fine. But thanks.”

  “No problem, Alexis.” She ducked into a classroom.

  Ellie mulled the girl’s reaction as she continued another couple of doors down the hall. Apparently the secret to being cool in high school was to inhabit someone else’s body. It didn’t matter to her what anyone said about Alexis, because she wasn’t Alexis. She entered her Chemistry classroom.

  Ellie’s Chemistry teacher interrupted roll call to tell Ellie privately not to worry unduly about making up for lost time—that he’d help her after school or find a tutor for her if necessary. Ellie thanked him, but was inwardly cursing. It was rotten luck for her to wind up at a high school that cared this much about its students.

  She made it through Chemistry and third-period Language Arts without incident. Fourth period was French class, and she accidentally laughed at a joke that the teacher told in French.

  Fiona shook her head at her when they met at Ellie’s locker at lunchtime. “OMG, Allie. I overheard Emily Mickelton telling someone you understood what your French teacher was saying. Not to mention that some argument you had with Savannah is all over school. This is like upside-down world.”

  Ellie grimaced. “I should probably steer clear of the cafeteria. Savannah’s going to pop a blood vessel, trying to give me the stink eye.”

  “Good call. Let’s get a slice across the street.”

  Ellie grabbed her coat and asked if Fiona was going to stop at her own locker for hers. “Nah,” Fiona said as they headed for the exit. “I’m building up my cold-weather tolerance . . . in case our friendship continues to take us all the way into social Siberia.”

  Ellie laughed. “Freezing your butt off is not a good way to win friends.”

  “Sure it is. Some great-looking guy will wrap his coat around my shoulders to keep me warm.”

  “But then he’ll notice that your butt has been frozen off, and he’ll dump you for a cheerleader with a nice bootie.”

  “Well, my great-looking guy would—” They pushed out the door and were greeted with a wintry blast. “Holy crap, it’s cold. I’m running.” She pointed at the pizzeria, which was not far, yet not all that close considering Fiona was wearing just a skirt and a three-quarter sleeve top. Fiona sprinted ahead of Ellie and was soon weaving her way through the dozen pedestrians in the crosswalk.

  A minute later, Ellie entered the pizzeria and was promptly greeted with someone shouting: “Hey, Alexis! Way to go!”

  Ellie looked at the girl and realized that
this was the perky Gayla, but she felt thrown off by the unexpected greeting. “Pardon?”

  “It’s all over the school. You put Savannah, AKA ‘Miss I Am All That,’ in her place.”

  Ellie was already bone tired of this situation. She wanted nothing to do with Savannah or Peter. She didn’t care if anybody in Albany Central High ever took a second glance at her. All she wanted was her old life back. “Yeah, um, not really. I’m just kind of trying to take a break and get some lunch right now.”

  “Scoot over,” Gayla said to the cluster of girls seated in her booth. Gayla was making room for Alexis—the star of the minute.

  Ellie felt frozen in place.

  Fiona appeared by Ellie’s side. “Gayla, everybody, sorry, but I kind of promised Alexis we’d just sit by ourselves. She’s got amnesia, and she can’t possibly keep track of this many people all at once. You know?”

  “Oh. Sure.” Gayla’s face fell. “Everybody understands. It’s okay, Alexis,” she said slowly to Ellie, as if she had a learning disability. “We’ll give you some space.”

  Frustrated, Ellie turned. The kids standing in line at the counter were all staring at her. Fiona silently reclaimed her place in the line. Still numb, Ellie stood beside her. After an awkward pause, Fiona said, “By this time tomorrow, the hot topic will be someone else’s hook up, break up, or screw up. No worries.”

  Ellie nodded, but wasn’t consoled, unable to steer herself away from the thought that it was always going to be like this. Everyone would look at her from here on out and see Alexis Bixby.

  Chapter 8

  After school, Ellie did her best to sound upbeat. Alexis’s mother had baked chocolate chip cookies, still warm from the oven. The least she could do in return was pretend to be happy about her school day. She was, at least, able to truthfully reassure her that the school work was not over her head. But, beyond that, what could she say? That she’d come between the “It” couple? That she was the object of such extreme curiosity she felt like an amoeba under a microscope?