Now You See Her

by Lisa Leighton

  “The man . . . my car . . . Mae?” My voice sounds strange and wrong but that’s the least of my worries. I have so many questions to ask. But the memory of what happened already seems blurred, like it happened to someone else, and I can’t quite get the words out.

  “Shh, not so fast.” The nurse gently pushes me back into the bed. “You’ve got quite a bump on that head of yours and I don’t want you passing out on us again.” She pulls out a tablet and swipes her finger across the screen. “Let’s check your vitals and then we’ll see about sitting you up.”

  I close my eyes as she pokes, prods, listens, and nods her way through all of my body parts, but I don’t need her cheery affirmations to know that I’m just fine. My neck is a little sore, my head hurts, and my brain seems a bit fuzzy, but aside from that, everything feels surprisingly functional. I should feel relieved to be alive, I should be talking a mile a minute. Asking questions. Finding out if they caught the man who was trying to kidnap me. I need to know who he was and how he knew our names, to make sure Mae is safe. But I’m completely numb and somehow unable to string the words together to find out what truly happened.

  “They tell me you’re a tennis player.”

  I manage a polite smile and mumble something that sounds vaguely like an agreement.

  “Well, you’re lucky. No broken bones. You’ll be playing first court again in no time.” She gives a little wink.

  If she didn’t sound so genuinely happy for me and I didn’t think the sudden movement would make me pass out again, I honestly might have punched her in the boob. Instead I manage, “I’m not first singles.”

  But good old Mandy just clicks her tongue and runs a thermometer across my forehead. “Shh, you’re going to be just fine. Your parents will be back in just a minute and then Dr. Langstaff is going to want to take a look at you.”

  I close my eyes again and inhale deeply. Clearly this woman is useless.

  “Hi, Dad!” She affects a singsong voice, like a character on a tinkly kids’ show reminding children not to bite their friends. “Our tennis star is finally awake and doing great.”

  My eyes are already rolling before I even open them. “My dad died when . . .” But before I can finish my sentence, I open my eyes to see a man rushing toward me. His lips are moving but I can’t hear anything he’s saying. I’m completely paralyzed until his hand grips my arm and I know. Something about the way he moves toward me, too purposeful. Too fast. It’s him.

  And then I’m screaming and kicking and punching. The man with no face is here and he’s pretending to be my dad and oh my God this is so freaking messed up.

  As it turns out, Nurse Mandy is part ninja. Before I can blink, she’s in between us and saying something in what I can only assume to be calm and soothing tones, but I can’t actually hear her because I’m still screaming. Another nurse rushes into the room and tries to pull the strange man toward the doorway.

  “What’s wrong with her? Why doesn’t she recognize me?” The man is yelling and trying to brush the woman off him. “Honey, it’s me, Dad.”

  I shake my head and keep screaming. My dad died when Mae and I were babies. There was an accident. This man is not my father and I have no idea why he’s here and pretending to know me unless I’ve been kidnapped or something.

  “Shh, shh, don’t get yourself all worked up now, honey. Everything is fine; you’re going to be just fine.” Mandy’s plump fingers are smoothing back my damp hair, desperately trying to calm me down. When they finally manage to get the stranger out of the room, the wave of panic recedes just enough so I can stop screaming.

  I want to tell her that I’m pretty sure I’ve been kidnapped and that we should probably call 911 or the FBI or whoever the hell you call when a strange man takes you to the hospital and tries to pass you off as his daughter. That I can prove it because I remember something . . . something important bobbing just below the surface of my memory, something silver. My mouth can’t seem to form the words that could articulate any of this, so I settle for, “Want . . . Mom.”

  But before she can respond, the door to my room flies open and a tiny blond woman flings herself at me.

  “Sophie, thank God. We’ve been worried sick, but you’re awake now. It’s going to be okay.”

  Sophie?

  “I know it was just a concussion, but it’s all been so horrible, so, so horrible.” She’s hiccupping words, and tears are swimming in front of crystal-blue eyes. “I thought I lost you.” She claps her hand over her mouth even though there’s nothing more to say.

  The woman who is not my mom keeps mumbling, straightening the bedsheets to occupy her hands. But I don’t hear a word she’s saying because I’m stuck on her very first word. It plays on a crackled-sounding loop: Sophie. Sophie. Sophie. I’m cold all of a sudden, but sweating and shaking, and my skull feels like it might possibly explode with the weight of her name. I know this woman. I recognize her. How could I not? She’s tiny and perfect and expensive and always, always there.

  A fuzzy blackness threatens to consume my field of vision but I fight back, blinking it away because I have to see. I rip the covers off like they’re on fire and the woman startles, clutching her heart with her hand and scanning the room for help. Rubbing at my eyes doesn’t make anything come into focus the way it needs to. I see creamy white legs instead of familiar tan ones. It’s okay though, it’s a trick of the light, the hospital room, medicine. I rub my thighs too hard, half thinking this unfamiliar skin will peel away to reveal my own legs.

  This isn’t happening. I’m dreaming. I slap at my cheeks and now the woman is up and screaming at the nurse to get help but I can’t hear the sound because I’m pinching at my arms, which I’ve always thought seemed like such a stupid way to see if you’re dreaming, but there’s nothing else to do.

  And there it is. Delicate strands of silky black hair woven into a braid that has fallen over a shoulder that, looking down at it, is much too narrow. No auburn split ends, no frizz, not even a rubber band, but a Morristown blue-and-gold ribbon tied at the end in a bow. I don’t have much time because the woman is now standing with the man, pointing and crying and explaining, so I yank away cords without a thought and scramble out of the bed, dizzy and unsteady as blood rushes away from where it needs to be. But I need to see my dark eyes fringed with thick lashes that I’m secretly so proud of because I always get asked if they’re fake. I need my messy bun, the scatter of freckles, those two stupid zits I couldn’t cover up this morning, my one crooked tooth on the bottom.

  Eyes clenched shut, I grip the cool porcelain sink and it already makes me feel better, more aware and alive and present. I’ll laugh about this later. Maybe I’ll tell Mae if she promises not to make fun of me. I’ll tell my mom that they need to reduce the painkillers, that I’m having side effects. We’ll figure this out. We’ll go home. There are more voices outside. Be brave, Amelia, I think. You are strong, you are you. I lift my chin and open my eyes, staring levelly in the mirror.

  One blue eye. Navy around the edges and icy in the middle. The other green. Perfectly clear, pale skin, almost yellow on account of the lights or the shock. Probably both. Rosy lips. Straight teeth. Raven-colored hair.

  Not me. Not Amelia.

  I squeeze my eyes shut again and try to block out the deafening noise, the thunder of voices flooding under the crack in the door. And in that familiar darkness, I’m me again.

  Open. Sophie.

  Close. Amelia.

  Open. Sophie.

  I’m in the midst of some sort of hurricane, a war of hair whipping in a swirl over the curve of a cheek, across a delicate, sloped nose, hiding wild eyes.

  When I open my mouth to scream, I watch in horror as the girl in the mirror opens her mouth.

  I’m not me. I’m not Amelia Fischer. Somehow, I’m the girl in the mirror.

  I’m Sophie fucking Graham.

  Five

  MY VISION CREEPS GRAY ALONG THE EDGES, AND THIS TIME I FALL until I’m swallowed comp
letely by blackness. I feel myself crumple downward, the only familiar thing that’s happened since I woke up, strong arms carrying me back to bed, words floating in and out. Car accident. Head trauma. Hallucinations. Short-term memory loss.

  I want to sit up; I want to try to explain to them that there’s been some kind of terrible mistake. But then I remember the face in the mirror that isn’t mine, and I let myself sink back into the darkness. That place seems safer.

  I have no sense of time, but when I open my eyes again there’s light streaming in from the window and I’m alone in the room. Beside me, a clear bag hangs from a metal stand and tubes are attached to my body. Everything is punctuated by a slow and steady beep from a large machine opposite the bed.

  My mind flashes back to eighth grade, when we were living in a tiny two-bedroom bungalow in Kentucky. My tennis coach at the time, Mr. Grant, forced all of us to do yoga. I spent the entire ninety-minute session discovering that I was the least-flexible human being on the planet and trying to calculate how much longer we had in our current school before my mom got out the old orange suitcase, cueing another move. I hoped they’d at least send us somewhere warm.

  But then at the end of the session, the instructor told us to focus in on every single part of our body, to relax every toe and then our feet and then legs, until we felt, actually felt, every square inch of ourselves. And for the first time ever I felt a real connection with my body and it was kind of amazing. Not amazing enough to convince me to suffer through another ninety minutes of stretching, but amazing just the same.

  And now I find myself clenching and unclenching, furling and unfurling, lifting and lowering until I’m sure that I’m really here, present and in control of my body. You are you, I think. The stress of losing that stupid match and the thunderstorm and the man with no face created some kind of crazy hallucination, or maybe it was some kind of hyperrealistic dream—either way it’s over now and you are you. You are Amelia Fischer.

  I need to open my eyes. I need to look down and see my hands, my legs, my chipped blue toenail polish. But that hallucination, that moment I stared at someone else’s face in the mirror, still feels too real and I can’t bring myself to do it. Because with my eyes shut against the world, I’m still me.

  I want Mae. I need her to make the nightmare go away the way she used to when we were little and slept curled up in the same bed every night. I want my mom. Fear has replaced any anger I have ever felt toward her, and I need her to pull me close and promise this will go away, that she will make this better the way only a mom can. I want to smell our laundry detergent, eat takeout off mismatched plates, and fight over the remote. Moving doesn’t matter anymore. I can’t believe it ever did. I’ll go anywhere. I’ll smile and study and make friends and volunteer. I’ll be good.

  So I take a deep breath. I open my eyes and kick the blanket off.

  I notice the petal-pink toenails first. Wrong. And then I see the creamy white skin, soft and smooth, and under the hospital gown, lacy underwear with polka dots. So wrong.

  I fight tears as I run unfamiliar fingers up my body. The skin on the inside of a forearm is so white it’s almost translucent, like the shimmery powder Mae and I always swipe across our collarbones at Victoria’s Secret.

  I need to block out this new storm and try to remember what makes me me. My birthday. November 14. The day of my birth. Red and orange and brown leaves, sweater weather, Thanksgiving around the corner. It’s mine. Tears manage to slip down my cheeks despite my clenched eyes because I know when I open them, I know with a sickening certainty, that every mark or bruise or baby-fine hair will belong to someone else and remembering some stupid day won’t change any of that.

  The tears come fast now, followed by a low, keening wail that sounds nothing like any noise I’ve ever made before. Is it because I have Sophie’s vocal cords, her mouth? Or is this just the kind of sound you make when every rule you’ve ever understood to be true has suddenly changed?

  The room fills up with people. Two nurses and a doctor appear as quickly as if I’d pushed the little red call button on my bed.

  “Sophie, I’m Dr. Langstaff. You’re in a safe place and I’m here to help you.” The doctor holds a syringe and a container, measuring out a clear liquid. “I’m going to give you some medicine to calm you down and help you sleep.” He inserts the syringe so the medicine flows into my IV. It drains the screams right out of me, like he’s pulled the plug on my lungs.

  I lie back down on the bed and look up at the doctor, praying that he’ll understand me.

  “I need help,” I say. My throat is raw and sore. “Something’s happening to me. My name is Amelia Fischer and I live at 6528 Mayberry Drive. My mom is Carol Fischer and my little sister is Mae. I’m not who they say I am.” But even as I speak the words, I know he won’t believe me. I think of my birthday again, try to recall the date, but can only come up with May and I know it’s not right but my head is pounding and my body is weak. I’m not sure I believe me.

  “Sophie, you were in an accident.” Dr. Langstaff lifts the IV bag and types something into his computer. “You hit your head and you’re a little disoriented. I promise you’ll feel better soon, but you need to rest.”

  “I can tell you anything,” I say, desperate now. Even the medication can’t stop my tears, which pour from these unfamiliar eyes in rivers. “My birthday is May 23. My middle name is . . .” My mind is fuzzy again, and I curse the medication because I can’t remember my own middle name and it makes me cry harder. “My name is Amelia, um . . .”

  But the doctor doesn’t even give me a chance to try.

  “Yes, Sophie, you were born May 23. Now dream of your birthday and I promise everything will get better.” He pulls more liquid from the vial and pushes it into the IV, nodding as my eyelids grow heavy. “Let yourself sleep, Sophie. We’re taking excellent care of you.”

  My last thought before I fall asleep again is that I’ll be stuck in this hospital forever if I try to make them believe the unbelievable. Because the last thing I remember is a man trying to take me and a car barreling toward me, and now I’ve somehow woken up in Sophie Graham’s body.

  But if I’m Sophie, then what the hell happened to Amelia?

  Six

  THE DRUGS DON’T LEAVE ROOM FOR DREAMS, JUST A SLEEP SO black it feels like dying. But there’s another nightmare just waiting to take the place of that blackness and it just so happens to be my current reality. I keep my eyes shut against it for a little while longer.

  “I thought they said she’d be awake by now. We should call the nurse.” The voice is deep and rings with an authority that makes it very clear he never calls anyone himself. It must be Sophie’s dad. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize him earlier. After I’ve watched the Graham family celebrate countless birthdays, vacations, and Father’s Days via Instagram, he’s way more familiar to me than the one blurry picture I’ve unearthed of my own dad.

  “Let’s not rush her. They said she needed her rest. We’re going to have to be patient.” A defensive note sharpens Mrs. Graham’s voice. She doesn’t call the nurse.

  I try to keep my breathing even and stop my eyelids from fluttering too much. I need time to get my bearings and it’s pretty clear that I’m not going to figure out what happened to me all drugged up in some hospital bed. I need answers and the only way to get answers is to act like being stuck in someone else’s body is a totally normal thing. And to pretend to sleep. At least with my eyes closed it’s easier to believe I’m still me.

  “We’ve been sitting here for hours. Where’s the doctor?”

  “She was in a terrible accident, Robert. This type of trauma is expected.” Their voices are hushed, volleyed back and forth with practiced control. I have no idea who these people are but the tone doesn’t seem to match the beautiful faces imprinted in my memory. I always pictured families like the Grahams coming together in a tragedy, not whisper-fighting.

  “There’s nothing normal about her not recognizin
g me, Hillary,” Mr. Graham throws back.

  “No, what’s not normal is what happened to that poor Amelia Fischer.”

  And there it is. All sound is vacuumed up out of the stuffy room after the words leave Mrs. Graham’s mouth. I’m only left with the thump of someone else’s heart pounding through a skull that is not mine. I’m dead. Amelia is dead and I’m stuck and I’ll never go home, hug Mae, say sorry to my mom, or be me again.

  “She’s in intensive care, Robert.” Mrs. Graham’s voice shakes. “At least Sophie isn’t in a coma. Kathy Lenore was telling me that every hour that poor girl doesn’t wake up makes it more unlikely that she ever will.”

  I feel a scream roiling in the deepest part of Sophie or me or whoever the hell I am. But I manage to keep it in because I’m not dead. I’m not dead yet.

  “What in the hell was she doing in the middle of the road anyway?”

  And just like that Mr. Graham expertly shifts the blame. Like it’s my fault that my car broke down and some terrifying man tried to abduct me. It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to shoot up in bed and launch the truth like a dagger. I was being chased, abducted. Why isn’t anyone talking about the stranger from the night of the accident? Did the police catch him? Are they even looking for him? Do they know he was driving a black truck? Or was it an SUV? A black car? I squeeze my eyes shut harder and hope no one notices.

  The rest of me is torn somewhere between relief and agony. Relief that Amelia is—that I am—a real person, a real person who is still alive. And then agony slices through that fleeting hope. My real body is lying unconscious in the intensive care unit. Does that mean Sophie’s in there? Trapped somewhere between life and death? And what the hell does any of this mean for me, in this body, in this life?