Now You See Her

by Lisa Leighton

  “I saw someone else on the road. Someone else was there when I hit Amelia.”

  She visibly jerks her head back in shock. “What do you mean, you saw someone?”

  “I mean there was a man there. And I think he was chasing her.” I need to keep my story simple. Stick to the facts. Get her to believe me and then get her to help me figure out a way to warn Mae. It’s not the best plan in the world, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

  “I, um, I left something in my car. I’ll be right back.” I think I see tears in her eyes, but she is up and out of the restaurant before I can say for sure.

  Hope explodes in my chest. Janie knows something. She believes me and she’ll help me fix this. I don’t have to be alone anymore. She’ll save me. Janie doesn’t take long at the car and is back in the restaurant. My hope is punctured by the haunted look on her face. She looks so sad and so confused and she’s holding her phone. My mind immediately races with the possibilities. Is Amelia dead? Has my old body taken a turn for the worse? I hadn’t considered the possibility that my situation could get any worse. I stand, the chair almost falling back beneath me.

  “What is it?” My heart is hammering so hard it feels like it might burst. Am I ready for this? Whatever this is? I stretch my neck to see what’s on the screen of her phone, ready or not. A text message appears from— I squint to read upside down. I see an S. I think of the stranger, the monster. I think of the name I gave him, the only name that fits. Shadow man. The letters on Janie’s phone are all jumbled together but I can only see one word. It doesn’t have to make any sense at all in order for the panic to move in. I struggle to blink away darkness curling in along the edges, pull in a ragged breath through a straw because my throat is closing and it’s happening and I don’t know how to stop it in this body. The florescent lights magnify the dinginess of the restaurant and voices mingle to a constant hum. The donut sits like a brick in my stomach and I’m afraid I might be sick. I fall back into my seat.

  “Sophie?” Janie’s voice is far away as she repeats the name on a loop. I focus on the sound, let it buoy me like some sort of life preserver, which is odd because the name, her name, is what got me into this mess in the first place. “Sophie, you’re scaring me.” You’re seeing things, I think. Janie is not talking to someone called the shadow man. You are safe right now. The room comes back into focus, the lights aren’t nearly as bright, and the volume returns to normal. I can breathe. Janie is leaning over her phone, which rests on the table between us. The name Sir Graham continues to pop up on her phone. Sir Graham?

  Janie follows my eyes to her screen. “I’m sorry, Soph. I had to tell him. Your dad told us how disoriented you were when you woke up at the hospital—that this happens with head injuries.” She continues talking but I don’t hear anything besides “your dad.” Mr. Graham. Sir Graham. Of course Janie programmed in a nickname. I’m so stupid. So stupid for so many different reasons. Words keep pouring out of Janie’s mouth, her eyes glassy at the betrayal. “I promised I would tell him if you acted different. We’re all so worried about you.”

  “I’m fine. Really . . .” But even to my ears it sounds like a lie. Because I’m not fine. I’m trapped in the wrong body, in the wrong life. And if Janie’s phone, which is currently blowing up with texts from Sophie’s dad, is any indication of how little time I have to get the hell out of here before I’m shipped back to the hospital, I have to go.

  “Wait! Where are you going?” Janie tries to grab my arm, but I shake her off.

  “The bathroom. I’ll be right back.” I give her my fakest, most reassuring smile and head toward the bathroom but walk right past the ancient wood door with its chipping sign and straight through to the kitchen.

  “Hey, you’re not supposed to be . . .”

  I’m out the back door before an employee can even finish his sentence. I’m moving so fast and I’m so focused on trying to figure out what to do next that I don’t notice him until I’ve walked straight into his chest.

  I look right up into the raised eyebrows of Landon Crane.

  Seventeen

  “SOPHIE? WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” THE WAY HE SAYS THE word you instantly annoys me and briefly makes me forget about the fact that my best friend is currently planning an intervention that I best avoid.

  “I happen to love Pete’s Donuts, thank you very much. I come here all the time and I’ve never once seen you.” I can’t help the defensive note that creeps into my voice. Something about the way Landon thinks he knows everything about Sophie bothers me even though he’s dead-on and his assumptions are pretty much the exact same as mine.

  “Yeah, well, shows what you know. I come here every day during my free period. Pete gives me donut holes and lets me read in the back room if I take out the trash for him. Your turn.”

  Sure enough, there’s a beat-up paperback sticking out of his back pocket and it all kind of makes sense. I mean, of course grumpy Pete approves of Landon Crane with his sarcastic quips and willingness to haul trash in exchange for leftover donuts. Hell, I was sold based on his eyelashes alone.

  I clear my throat. “Yeah, well, I happen to come here every Saturday and I actually pay for my donuts.” It’s a lie but a calculated one. Mae and I really are here almost every Saturday and I’m pretty sure I’d remember if I saw Landon, so for all he knows Sophie is a closet donut aficionado.

  “Please. You’d probably get Sugar Is the Devil tattooed on your ass if you weren’t so terrified of needles.”

  Touché. So much for my aficionado status. “I’m not terrified of needles.” But as soon as I speak the words, I know they’re wrong.

  “Ma’am, if you can’t get your daughter under control, I’ll have to call another nurse in to pin her down.” The woman’s words are clipped.

  Panic blooms in my chest at the anger twisting my beautiful mother’s features. There’s no more room for nice. Her eyes flick away from mine as she grabs my arms and pins them over my head. I scream, not because I’m trying to be bad, but because fear has wrapped itself around my neck like a vise.

  The nurse holds a syringe. “This is medicine for kindergarten, Sophie. Don’t you want to be a big girl?”

  I try to move away from the needle, try to move away from my mom, but she’s too strong and she’s too mad.

  “See? That wasn’t so bad?”

  I think for a second that the nurse is tricking me, that they haven’t given me the shot yet, but my mom’s fingers have released my upper arms and I’m free. Shame washes over me because she was right. I didn’t feel a thing.

  Heads turn discreetly to catch a glimpse of the screamer on our walk of shame through the waiting room. A boy with thick glasses offers me a thumbs-up and I give him a little wave before I’m yanked out the door. His mom pretends not to notice how my mom won’t even look at me, but I know she sees.

  “We were babies.” I breathe the words more than say them. There’s not the same softness in his eyes for me now, no adorable thumbs-up. I wonder when things changed between Landon and Sophie. I wonder what caused it. Something tells me it was more than just a stolen scone.

  “You’re forgetting the time when we were ten and I warned you about the vaccines for your checkup and you tried to run away and live in my attic.”

  Part of me wants to remember, but I know that every piece of Sophie comes with a price. At least I think I know. It’s like I can feel myself slipping away when pieces of Sophie return to me and I can’t help but wonder what I lost to gain this memory? What piece of my own fuzzy history disappeared?

  I try to remember a moment where Mae and I were at the doctor together. I try to remember if I was scared of shots too. But there’s nothing there except Sophie and Landon and the sound of Mrs. Graham’s tired voice. The crazy thing about memories is that you never remember losing them and there’s no way of knowing if they were ever there in the first place.

  Voices float out from inside the donut shop and I remember that I’m supposed to be escaping. T
here’s no doubt that Mr. Graham will be here soon, ready to make good on his promise of rehabilitation, and I’m guessing he’s not going to be too happy about it.

  “I gotta go.” I start to push past him but he pulls me back. The touch of his fingers sends waves of heat up my arms.

  “Wait.” His eyes aren’t quite as flinty now. He’s protective, ten years old again and warning me about another round of shots. “Let me drive you.”

  I’m caught at an unfamiliar intersection of relief, excitement, and fear of what might happen if we don’t get out of here before Mr. Graham arrives. As if Landon could get any cuter, he leads me to a faded red Volkswagen Bug parked behind the donut shop and opens the passenger-side door.

  “Sophie, you remember Murray? Oh wait, I don’t think you’ve officially met. I got her after you decided it was super uncool to be friends with someone who, and I quote, ‘would rather read Stephen King fan fiction than have an actual life.’”

  “Did you just make air quotes? Because I’m pretty sure the only people who make air quotes are at least sixty-four years old and frequent bingo nights.”

  His face clouds for a second, and I worry that I crossed some sort of invisible line that he and Sophie must have drawn up after she chose the Zach Batemans over the Landon Cranes of the world. But then he grins, shakes his head, and actually laughs.

  “Just so happens B-sixteen is my lucky number.” He leans into the car and tosses a few empty coffee cups into the tiny back seat. “Sorry, we weren’t expecting company.”

  I half expect there to be some sort of adorable puppy named Murray in the front seat, but as Landon pats the roof of the beat-up red beetle lovingly, it’s confirmed that I’ve finally met another person nerdy enough to give their car a name.

  In another life, I’m pretty sure Crimson and Murray would be fast friends. I appreciate every dent, every tear in the leather, every spot of rust. The car is rough around the edges, has traveled far and wide. I toss Sophie’s bag on the floor and tuck myself into this tiny car that smells like a huge blueberry muffin and feel a little less like a stranger in this body. Much more comfortable than all that supersized, new-car-smell ridiculousness I’ve been experiencing of late.

  Landon folds himself into the car, his head almost touching the roof. “So where to?”

  I think of Janie waiting out front at the table where I left her. I think of Mr. Graham pulling into the strip mall parking lot and rushing into the donut shop to pluck his daughter away before any further damage can be done. All I know for sure is that I need to get out of here.

  “The hospital,” I say. It’s the only place I can think to go. If no one will help me in this life, I need to get back to my other one. There must be some way I can switch back. Some trick that I haven’t yet thought of to will myself back into the right body. And if it’s too late for that, if the doctors and percentages are right and I’ve been asleep for too long, there at least has to be some way to protect my family.

  “They won’t let you see her.”

  “How do you know? And how do you even know who I want to see?”

  “You’re forgetting I used to know you better than anyone, Sophie. You might have convinced everyone else that you’re some perfect, hollow Barbie, but I know you. And the Sophie I know would feel terrible about what happened. She’d want to do whatever she could to help.”

  I narrow my eyes and consider his words, wishing for a second that despite the risk, I could understand their entire history in all level of detail instead of through disjointed flashes. He’s clearly lost respect for Sophie along the way, but he still believes in her.

  “I talked to her,” he confesses. Before I can remind him that we really should get going, I hear my name and stop. “Amelia, I mean. I’ve wanted to talk to her for a while and then I finally did it, after the match. The night she . . .” He looks down at his hands. “She was . . .” He shakes his head. “And now, she’s gone. I mean, not gone, but . . .” He’s scrambling, trying to relay these words without making things worse for Sophie. It makes my breath catch. “And I can’t stop thinking about her. I tried to see her in the hospital, but the nurses wouldn’t let me anywhere near her. Does that sound crazy? Shit, don’t answer that.”

  My heart is breaking. He’s thinking about me. He’s thinking about Amelia.

  “You’re not crazy,” I say. “This is all my fault.”

  And it’s the truth. If I hadn’t wanted to stay in Morristown, if I hadn’t wanted to win so badly, if I hadn’t thrown a hissy fit after the match, served all those extra balls, talked to Landon, if I hadn’t climbed into Crimson at that exact moment, driven down that rain-soaked road, maybe everything would be different.

  And then, without warning, Mrs. Graham explodes out of the back door of the restaurant.

  Shit. I think it and Landon actually says it. My entire body sags in defeat.

  It’s just my luck to get busted by Mrs. Graham the exact moment Landon is confessing that he likes me. Well, I guess technically he’s confessing he likes a girl who’s currently in a coma to his former best friend turned perpetrator of vehicular manslaughter whose body is being occupied by said crush.

  Timing is a real bitch.

  Eighteen

  THERE’S A BATTLE PLAYING OUT ON MRS. GRAHAM’S TAUT FACE that I’m sure she’ll regret later. Concern for her daughter in the midst of a mental breakdown versus anger versus a highly cultivated appearance of perfection. Landon is really throwing her for a loop. After all, she just wants everyone to be okay.

  She shakes her head, jogging now toward Landon’s car. “Sophie, sweet girl.” It’s not the tears gathering in her eyes or her brows knitting together or her shaking hands that cause a slow burn to spread up the back of my throat. It’s not the Sophie in me, it’s not her reflex. This time, they’re not her tears. They’re mine. I hadn’t given Mrs. Graham enough credit. Yes, her reputation, their appearance as the perfect family, is vital. But she chose her daughter. In that simple moment as she closed the space between us, everything else fell away, and she said my name. She chose me.

  Facing Mrs. Graham, I whisper to Landon, “Thanks anyway,” so he can’t see the tears that have gathered in my eyes for someone else’s mom. And then I open the car door and let Sophie’s mother take over. We walk back through the busy restaurant just as Pete turns the last few stragglers away after selling his last Boston cream. Janie is gone, newspapers are folded up, and a woman wipes down tables. It’s time to go home.

  I watch Morristown slip by outside my window as we head back through town. There isn’t a bombardment of memories this time probably because they’re all tucked safely inside, woven into a new pattern, not so obvious anymore. I hope I’m not forgetting to panic.

  Mrs. Graham stops the car at a red light and takes a deep breath. “Sophie, your father has found a facility that specializes in the brain. They see your kinds of injuries all the time. The doctors can help us.”

  A facility. Rehab. Reprogram. Forget. The piece of me that had softened toward Mrs. Graham hardens instantly. I can’t go to that hospital. I can’t risk losing the last of Amelia. The Grahams need me to be fine, so I’m going to be fine.

  “Mom.” I swear I can see a physical manifestation of that simple word fly off my tongue and strike my target. Such a basic, one-syllable sound, such a powerful, immediate response. “I’m sorry I scared you and . . . Dad. All the questions at school got to me and I felt weird and I just wanted there to be a reason everything happened. But I’m done. No more stories. No more excuses. I’m sorry.” I need to take the path of least resistance, the road well traveled. If I keep trying to convince the Grahams of anything other than that I’m better, I’ll be put back away, silenced. It’s a dead end.

  She closes her eyes for a long time. “No, I’m sorry. I thought getting back into your old routine would be good for you. But it was too fast. Too much. We just want what’s best for you, honey. This is no one’s fault. You need to know this is not your fault.�
�� She squeezes my hands between hers and it hurts a little, but I don’t pull away. I can’t. I just want this conversation to be over. A horn rips through the moment. “Let’s get you home, sweet girl. You can take a long rest for the afternoon.” There. That’s better, she seems to say. No more of this crazy talk. Sleep it off. And I have to agree. If I’m not more careful, I’ll end up right back where I started, connected to some hospital bed, sedated. I don’t need anyone to tell me that the second time around would be my last.

  The house is quiet when we enter, and I escape to Sophie’s room. The second I shut the door, I pull the notebook from her bag and the necklace from my pocket to examine it more closely.

  Words trickle into my brain as soon as I run my fingers over the engraving, and I write them on a fresh page of the notebook.

  Medallion

  Tony, Tony, please come down, something’s lost that can’t be found

  The silver feels cold in my palms and a chill crawls up my arm, leaving a trail of goose bumps in its wake. My head aches.

  I pull out Sophie’s phone and type St. Anthony into the search box. A Wikipedia page comes up first.

  Saint Anthony of Padua was born Fernando Martins de Bulhões and became a Catholic priest and friar of the Franciscan Order. He was born and raised by a wealthy family in Lisbon, Portugal, and died in Padua, Italy. Known for forceful preaching, expert knowledge of scripture, and undying love and devotion to the poor and the sick, he was the second-most-quickly canonized saint after Peter of Verona. On January 16, 1946, he was named Doctor of the Church. He is also the patron saint of lost things.

  Patron saint of lost things. The irony is not lost on me, trapped inside this body without a map.

  “Tony, Tony, please come down. Something’s lost that can’t be found.” I whisper the words out loud when something catches my eye on one of Sophie’s shelves.