“Sophie! Who is it?” Mrs. Graham comes to the door holding a dish towel. I wonder if it’s a prop or if she’s managed to wash something after being home for five minutes. She makes me tired. “Oh! Landon, so nice of you to drop by.” She takes the basket from my hand and smiles without showing her teeth. “Please thank your mother for me. So thoughtful. Any chance you know if they’re gluten-free? Not to be a bother, it’s just Sophie’s sensitive stomach.”
Oh super, we don’t eat wheat and are total assholes about it. I can’t resist messing with her a little. “Huh. I ate a bagel before I left the hospital today. My concussion must have cured me because it was delicious and I feel great. A real miracle.”
Landon choke-laughs and stops when he figures out I’m not joking.
Mrs. Graham, meanwhile, is trying to translate my words into a language she understands. “Well, okay then. I’m sure someone will enjoy them! You know, we’re just getting back into the swing of things around here.”
Translation: I will be giving your beautiful scones to the cleaning ladies tomorrow. Please leave now.
“Well, I’m sure the cleaning ladies will enjoy them.” Landon smiles broadly at Mrs. Graham.
Holy shit, he actually read my mind. I can’t help but honk out an Amelia-style snort. My eyes lock with Landon’s. He smirks at me and I smile back at him. We’re stuck in the moment together for a few beats until he shakes his head, almost like he’s annoyed with me somehow. “Yeah . . . okay . . . glad you’re feeling better.”
Meanwhile Mrs. Graham is taking the whole scene in with a look on her face that can only be described as visceral horror. “Landon, please tell your mother I’ll return her basket.” She retreats into the house and closes the door an inch, but Landon doesn’t need a cue to leave. He’s already halfway down the brick path. I push the door back open to watch him go and catch him shaking his head just slightly.
“Sophie, I know you don’t like Landon, but he’s our neighbor and I did not raise my daughter to . . . snort.” She can barely form her lips around the dirty word.
Huh. Apparently, sarcasm is frowned upon in the Graham house, but kindness is a blood sport. No wonder everyone is in such good shape. Passive aggression probably burns more calories than a spin class. Also, what could Sophie possibly not like about Landon? Being thoroughly annoyed by this fact would be a priority if I weren’t stuck in someone else’s body. Sophie’s mom turns on her heel and carries the basket back to the kitchen. I make a move to leave, to finally escape to a quiet room. To plan.
But as I start for the stairs, Mrs. Graham pauses in the hallway to straighten a frame. “Lovey, I know you’re still healing and might not be feeling back to normal, but let’s not forget how important the start of the school year is for you. You’ll have states and ACTs and college essays . . . and . . .”
I cut her off. I’m not Sophie, I’m in a coma, I’m in the wrong body, and her words stress me out. “Um, okay? I’ll just go get some rest then.” It’s probably easiest just to agree with everything she says and let the real Sophie figure things out once we switch back. A dull buzz sounds from Mrs. Graham’s pocket. Her phone. How could I have forgotten Sophie’s phone? Now that we’re home, maybe they’ll let me have it back. I can Google and research and learn. I can figure this out.
“Oh, um, can I have my phone now?”
Mrs. Graham is only half listening to me, absorbed by her own screen. She mumbles, her eyes downcast. “Oh sure, just needs to charge, let’s not worry about that just now.” It’s beyond annoying that this woman refuses to hand over my phone, her face illuminated by the comforting glow of her own. I feel the overwhelming urge to grab her phone and run, but they probably have a prescription for that. Too risky.
Sophie must have a computer in her room, anyway. I walk up the stairs and pretend like I know where I’m going—or do I know where I’m going? I can’t even tell anymore. A huge grandfather clock at the end of the upstairs hallway begins to sound. The noise startles me into motion. Do we even have a clock in our house? I try to picture our kitchen or the dining room. I try to remember the color of the walls or how we got to the front door if the doorbell rang, the exact shade of my mom’s eyes, but I can’t remember any of it. The ceiling height that at first had seemed palatial now feels comfortably lofty, like anything lower might suffocate me, might pound me right down into the ground. I could touch the ceilings in my house. I think.
In the hospital, I was two floors away from my previous life. Here, I might as well be a universe away. Sophie’s world bears no resemblance to my own. We couldn’t be more different. Why me? Why her? Why us? Why this? Am I crazy or dead or the subject of some weird psychological experiment?
The final chime rings out to mark the hour and then silence. The details of my life that I always took for granted are being drowned out by the ominous drone of the Grahams’ grandfather clock, replaced only by the soft ticks and tocks of time slipping away.
Eleven
THE STAIRCASE IS WIDE AND FLANKED BY THE KIND OF HUGE BANISTER that orphans and servants slide down when they’re exploring the houses of rich people in Disney movies. Gallery-framed photographs march up the wall like rungs on a ladder, a timeline of Graham family perfection. From Mrs. Graham’s tiny baby bump all the way up to some stunning black-and-white photographs taken of Sophie on a beach somewhere recently. The only ones missing are of Sophie’s future wedding, the train of her dress spilling like a waterfall down these very stairs. This must be what it feels like to have your life flash before your eyes right before you die.
I try to remember if any memories rushed in like a wave, if time hung in the air for a second, if life hit rewind before the accident. Is everyone’s history documented by flawless snapshots? Is mine? But those memories, that life, it feels hazy and distant compared to the sharp contrast and crisp lines of the Grahams’ photos.
Upstairs, there’s nothing standing between me and the relative privacy of Sophie’s room except four closed doors. Since I have no idea which room belongs to Sophie, I figure my best bet is to try them out one by one in order of appearance, Goldilocks-style. When I open the first door there’s a huge white table and the walls are lined with pristine shelves holding paints, fabrics, and rows and rows of wrapping paper. This one’s way too crafty.
The second door I open features a room painted a tasteful shade of greige with a canvas proclaiming “Be Our Guest” hanging over the bed. The window treatments tie into expensive rugs over hand-scraped floors that coordinate with linens and throw pillows. So many throw pillows. A cozy blanket is draped so naturally it’s unnatural near the footboard. This one’s way too impersonal.
When I open a set of double doors at the end of the hallway, a flash of fur barrels toward me and I barely have time to think, let alone react. The dog is approximately the size of a large rat. Yapping and jumping and scratching, its paws tracking tiny paw prints of pee on the hardwood floors.
“Oh my God,” I can’t help but yell, horrified. I push at the thing with my foot and it yelps, backs up, and plops into a puddle of urine, offended.
“Sophie?” I hear my name called from downstairs. “Is everything all right? What’s gotten into Banks? Don’t let him out of our room.”
“I’m fine,” I scream down the hall. Banks is cocking his head at me as I back out of the room and pull the door shut. When it clicks, I let the air out of my lungs. Of course Mrs. Graham has a rat-sized dog squirreled away in her master suite. He probably lives in one of her many, many pillows. This room is way too gross.
And then, finally, I open the fourth door to a room that’s just right. Well, just right for Sophie, I guess. There are no clothes on the floor or nail polish lining the dresser, no hastily made bed or closet door left open. But the tennis trophies that stand proudly on a shelf near her bed and yet another gallery wall featuring artsy black-and-white snapshots of Sophie and her perfect boyfriend and all of her friends indicate that this is, in fact, Sophie’s room.
&
nbsp; I snoop around a little, pull open the cabinets in her bathroom, unzip cosmetic bags tucked in the back of a linen closet, rifle through the contents of her bedside table, through photographs of smiling friends, proof of a happy life. Zach’s flowers are pretty impressive, a cheerful blend of roses and lilies. I pluck the envelope from between the blooms and pull out the tiny note card inside.
Zach Bateman.
Jesus. He didn’t even include a “get well.” And thank God he added his last name. How else would I have known that it was Zach my boyfriend versus Zach the TV star? This looks more like the card my mom would get from her company on her birthday than a get-well bouquet from a boyfriend.
I feel something looking at me and turn toward a chair near the window. There’s an American Girl doll that looks exactly like a miniature Sophie with black hair so fine it must have been taken from her own head and eyes so bright that for one horrible second I’m sure they’re going to blink at me.
I can’t help but think about how jealous six-year-old me would be over that stupid doll. It was on my Christmas list every single year until when I was eight my mom finally bought me a generic version with eyes that didn’t shut. I stopped asking for dolls after that. There’s something a little satisfying about seeing that the authentic version is even creepier than the one my mom bought me all those years ago. I can’t resist picking her up from the rocking chair. One blue eye, one green. They must have had it custom-made. This fact makes the doll even more depressing. As I grip her around the middle, I feel something beneath her dress. There, tucked beneath her mini doll camisole, is a half-empty packet of birth control pills.
I snort at the hiding spot and can’t help but feel a little surprised. It’s not that Sophie is some kind of prude, but I can’t exactly picture her having sex either.
When Mae and I were bored at night we’d play a game we dubbed Virgin, Slut, or Everything But. Mae came up with the game to keep my mind off the rejection after Jake Radcliff stood me up for homecoming. I tried to protest the “slut” category, but the name stuck because sometimes when you’re locked in your bedroom with your sister and your heart is broken, rhyming trumps feminism. Anyway, the rules of the game were pretty simple. One of us would randomly say the name of someone we went to school with and the other had three seconds to categorize them using absolutely zero evidence whatsoever. It was the equivalent to the endless game of Would You Rather? whispered in borrowed bedrooms over the course of our childhood. Would you rather lose an arm or a leg? Arm. Duh. Mae and I had pegged Sophie as an “everything but” girl, and as I run my fingers over the rows of plastic-encased pills I can’t help but imagine the look on Mae’s face when I share this little trinket of gossip with her. My second thought is that I’ll definitely have to leave Sophie a note telling her to use back-up protection before I switch back. It’s only fair.
But the grandfather clock in the hallway marks another half hour gone. I’m wasting time. I pull open Sophie’s desk drawer. Jackpot. Her razor-thin laptop shines like a beacon and I say a silent prayer of thanks that Sophie has her own computer. We had to go to the library for that.
I force myself to think back to lessons teachers taught about doing thorough research on the internet. Nothing terribly helpful or specific comes to mind aside from the fact that we’re never supposed to use Wikipedia as a source, so I pull up Google, plug in some key words that describe my current predicament, and hope for the best.
Thunderstorm kidnapping concussion body switch truck
The first thing that comes up is related to brain-injury awareness. Super.
I decide to refine my search a little.
Body switch coma
Aside from a list of the twenty best body-swap movies there are lists of different kinds of comas, each one more depressing than the next. The worst is something called locked-in syndrome, where a person’s entire body is paralyzed except their eyes and they’re completely aware of everything happening around them. I think back to my body in the hospital. My eyes were shut tight and I can’t help but hope that Sophie isn’t aware of what’s happened to us. For one horrible second I feel something like relief that I’m here in Sophie’s life instead of trapped in a hospital bed. I shake my head to clear it. I can’t afford to lose focus. I have to believe that if I’m able to get back into my body, I’ll wake up.
Clearly it’s time for a new research tactic. I type Amelia Fischer, Morristown and the moment I click enter, articles flood the screen.
I do this thing when I’m scared to read something where I squint because somehow it’s easier to read bad news when you can only make out a third of the words. Mae caught me doing it with my report card once and almost peed her pants laughing. She accused me of trying to use the power of my mind to transform a C+ into an A—and she wasn’t exactly wrong.
I feel my eyes instinctively slit as the headlines flood the computer screen. Tragic accident, severe head trauma, critical condition. Even through my blurred vision I can see the impossible facts.
It’s completely surreal to see the same pixelated photo in every article. It’s old, the same one they ran in the Haven, Kentucky, local paper of me in eighth grade playing on the varsity tennis team. I remember the flash of the camera and the way my cheeks hurt from smiling, my stomach in knots with every click. The spotlight never looked good on me.
I close my eyes to preserve the memory so it doesn’t get muddled by any of Sophie’s. There was a reporter who came to school during lunch to ask me questions and I was so proud of my thoughtful responses. I didn’t tell my mom because I wanted it to be a surprise. The day the paper came, my mom looked . . .
The memory is getting harder to feel and I squeeze my eyes shut tighter. She looked worried. I remember wondering why. Did she think I’d mess it up somehow? Shortly after the article ran, we moved again. I’m not surprised that it’s the only picture anyone could dig up because for as long as we’ve been in school, my mom sent notes opting us out on picture day. When you can’t afford the photos, what’s the point of even taking them?
Looking at the photo makes me wish the papers at least had my senior picture to run, which I saved months of babysitting money to pay for in the beginning of the summer. The photographer insisted on shooting me in the park, positioning me on a rickety old bridge spanning a river tumbling over smooth rocks. The poses were forced and uncomfortable and my long hair, usually pulled back, kept getting stuck in my lip gloss.
When they arrived in a thick envelope, Mae poured over them, said I should always wear my hair down. I waved off the pictures as cheesy and lame. Deep down, though, I loved how grown up I looked, how much I resembled my mom. The sun bounced off my auburn hair that day, spinning it gold, and my skin practically glowed. More than anything, though, I loved the moment I unwrapped the prints. I loved holding a physical picture of myself in my hands. It felt real in a way that a digital image never could.
I caught my mom in her closet a few nights later long after I was supposed to be asleep. A metal lockbox was open beside her and her eyes were fixed on the photographs. It took me a minute to notice that her shoulders were shaking and tears were streaming down her cheeks. I slipped back to my room before she could see me.
The memory looks a little different somehow and I wonder if it’s because I’m seeing it through Sophie’s eyes. I was so embarrassed to catch my mom staring at my pictures. It was so awkward to see her so unguarded, so emotional, that it never occurred to me to question why. Or maybe I was just scared of how she might answer. Maybe a girl like Sophie would have asked more questions.
I hope I still get the chance.
I shake my head. All of this worrying and wondering won’t do me any good; I need answers. I click on the first article.
The September 19 storm, which caused widespread power outages across Ohio, also left a local teen in critical condition. Amelia Fischer, seventeen, varsity tennis player for Morristown High School, was struck by a vehicle along State Route 9 shortly after five
p.m. The teenager’s car had become disabled, and authorities believe she was waving for help. Police blame flooded streets and driving rain, making it near impossible for the seventeen-year-old driver of the other vehicle to see Fischer. No charges have been filed.
No mention of a black truck. No mention of the man who tried to abduct me. A shiver of doubt worms its way into my head. What if I’m wrong? What if I really did imagine him? What if I jumped in front of Sophie’s car on purpose? Was I hallucinating? I click another article.
No charges have been filed after the accident that left Morristown senior Amelia Fischer, seventeen, in critical condition. The seventeen-year-old driver of the other vehicle is listed in stable condition at Marymount Hospital.
As I reread the words, I feel someone’s eyes on me. For a second I fully expect to turn around and see the real Sophie standing in the doorway, jaw set, eyes wide at the stranger in her room, sitting in her chair, typing on her computer, living her life. It’s like I’m waiting for that moment when I’ll pull the hair in front of my face and no longer see black but my familiar reddish brown.
But when I shift around in my seat I see Mr. Graham at the bedroom door—face tense, eyes unblinking.
“Dinner’s ready.” I think of Banks behind the master bedroom door, cocking his head, sensing that something is different. Can Mr. Graham see through me too?
“I saw someone. The night of the accident. I think someone was trying to take Amelia.”
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. I have no idea why or how, only that I need someone to know. I need someone to help.
Mr. Graham stays perfectly still, listening. I take it as a cue.
Now You See Her Page 7