by Meg Cabot
“Uh, Suze,” Paul said. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I turned my head to glare at him. “Oh, you mean, did I forget to tell you not to speak to me again? Yes.”
“No,” Paul said with a wry smile. “Aren’t those your shoes under there?” He pointed down at my Jimmy Choos, without which I’d been about to stalk from the room. Like Sister Ernestine wouldn’t have had too big a coronary if she’d caught me wandering around school in my bare feet.
“Oh,” I said, mad that my dramatic exit had been spoiled. “Yeah.” I went back to my desk so I could jam my feet into my mules.
“Before you go, Cinderella,” Paul said, still smiling, “you might also want to take this.” He held out my trig homework. I could tell with a single glance that he’d finished it, neatly and, I could only assume, correctly.
“Thanks,” I said, taking the notebook from him, feeling more and more sheepish with every passing second. I mean, why, exactly, was I always flying off the handle with this guy? Yeah, he’d tried to kill me—and Jesse—once. At least, I thought he had. But he kept saying I was wrong. What if I was wrong? What if Paul wasn’t the monster I’d always thought him? What if he was…
What if he was just like me?
“About this Craig guy,” Paul added.
“Paul.” I sank down into the chair beside him. I had felt the gaze of Mrs. Tarentino, the teacher assigned to supervise the computer lab, boring into me. Popping in and out of your chair in the lab is not smiled upon, unless you are going back and forth from the printer.
But that wasn’t the only reason I sat down again. I’ll admit that. I was curious, too. Curious over what he’d say next. And that curiosity was almost stronger than my fear.
“Seriously,” I said. “Thanks. But I do not need your help.”
“I think you do,” Paul said. “What’s this Craig guy want, anyway?”
“He wants what all ghosts want,” I said tiredly. “To be alive again.”
“Well, of course,” Paul said. “I mean, what’s he want besides that?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said with a shrug. “He’s got this thing with his little brother…thinks he should have been the one to die, not him. Jesse thinks—” I stopped talking, suddenly aware that Jesse was the last person I wanted to bring up in front of Paul.
Paul looked only politely interested, however. “Jesse thinks what?”
It was, I saw, too late to keep Jesse out of it. I sighed and said, “Jesse thinks Craig’s going to try to kill his brother. You know. Out of revenge.”
“Which, will, of course,” Paul said, not looking in the least surprised, “get him exactly nowhere. When will they ever learn? Now, if he wanted to be his brother, that would be a different story.”
“Be his brother?” I looked at him curiously. “What do you mean?”
“You know,” Paul said with a shrug. “Soul transference. Take over his brother’s body.”
This was a little too much for a Tuesday morning. I mean, I had already had a pretty crummy night’s sleep thanks to this guy. Then, to hear something like this come out of his mouth…well, let’s just say I was not at my sharpest, so what happened next can hardly be described as my fault.
“Take over his brother’s body?” I echoed. I had lowered my books until they rested in my lap. Now I reached out and gripped the arms of my computer chair, my nails sinking into the cheap foam-padded armrests. “What are you talking about?”
One of Paul’s dark eyebrows hiked up. “Doesn’t sound familiar, eh? What has the good father been teaching you, I wonder? Not much, from the sound of things.”
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. “How can someone take over someone else’s body?”
“I told you,” Paul said, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head, “that there was a lot you didn’t know about being a mediator. And a lot more that I could teach you, if you’d just give me the chance.”
I stared at him. I really had no idea what he was talking about with this body-swapping thing. It sounded like something from the Sci-Fi Channel. And I wasn’t sure if Paul was just feeding me a line, something, anything, to get me to do what he wanted.
But what if he wasn’t? What if there was seriously a way to—
I wanted to know. My God, I wanted to know more than I had ever wanted anything in my life.
“All right,” I said, feeling the sweat that had broken out beneath my palms, making the chair’s armrests slick with moisture. But I didn’t care. My heart was in my throat, and still I didn’t care. “All right. I’ll come over to your place after school. But only if you’ll tell me about…about that.”
Something flashed through Paul’s blue eyes. Just a gleam, and I saw it only for a moment before it was gone again. It was something animal-like, almost feral. I couldn’t say just what, exactly, it had been.
All I knew was that the next minute, Paul was smiling at me—smiling, not grinning.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll pick you up by the main gate at three. Be there on time, or I’ll leave without you.”
chapter
eight
I wasn’t, of course, going to meet him. I mean, despite ample evidence to the contrary, I am not stupid. I have, in the past, met various people at various appointed times and found myself, hours later, either tied to a chair, thrust into a parallel dimension, forced to don one-piece swimsuits, or being otherwise cruelly mistreated. I was not going to meet Paul Slater after school. I was so not.
And then I did anyway.
Well, what else was I supposed to do? The lure was just too great. I mean, actual documented evidence about mediators? Something about people being able to take over other people’s bodies? All the nightmares about long, fog-enshrouded hallways in the world were not going to keep me from finding out the truth at last about what I was and what I could do. I had spent too many years wondering just that to allow an opportunity like this to slip from my fingers. I had never, unlike Father Dominic, been able merely to accept the cards I’d been dealt…. I wanted toknow why they’d been dealt to me and how. I had to know.
And if, in order to find out, I had to spend time with someone who regularly haunted my sleep, so be it. It was worth the sacrifice.
Or I hoped it would be, anyway.
Adam and CeeCee weren’t too happy about it, of course. As the last class of the day let out, they met me in the hallway—I was visibly limping, thanks to my shoes, but CeeCee didn’t notice. She was too busy consulting the list she’d drawn up in bio.
“All right,” she said. “We’ve got to head on over to Safeway for markers, glitter, glue, and poster board. Adam, does your mom still have those dowels in the garage from when she went on that Amish chair-making kick? Because we could use them for the Vote for Suze placards.”
“Uh,” I said, hobbling along beside them. “You guys.”
“Suze, can we take all the stuff over to your place to assemble it? I’d say we could take it to my place, but you know my sisters. They’ll probably roller-skate over it or whatever.”
“Guys,” I said. “Look. I appreciate this and all. I really do. But I can’t come with you. I’ve already got plans.”
Adam and CeeCee exchanged glances.
“Oh?” CeeCee said. “Meeting the mysterious Jesse, are we?”
“Uh,” I said. “Not exactly—”
At that moment, Paul came past us in the hall. He said to me, noticing my limp, “Let me just pull the car around to the side door. That way you won’t have to walk to the gate,” and breezed on by.
Adam gave me a scandalized look. “Fraternizing with the enemy!” he cried. “For shame, wench!”
CeeCee looked equally stunned. “You’re going out with him?” She shook her head so that her stick-straight white-blond hair shimmered. “What about Jesse?”
“I’m not going out with him,” I said uncomfortably. “We’re just…working on a project together.”
“What p
roject?” CeeCee’s eyes, behind the lenses of her glasses, narrowed. “For what class?”
“It’s…” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, hoping to find some relief from my cruel shoes, all to no avail. “It’s not for school, really. It’s more for…for…church.”
Even as the word came out of my mouth, I knew I’d made a mistake. CeeCee wouldn’t mind being left alone with Adam—in fact, she’d probably love it—but she wasn’t about to let me off the hook without a good reason.
“Church?” CeeCee looked mad. “You’re Jewish, Suze, in case I need to remind you.”
“Well, not technically, really,” I said. “I mean, my dad was, but my mom isn’t—” A car horn sounded just beyond the ornately scrolled gate we were standing behind. “Oops, that’s Paul. Gotta go, sorry.”
Then, moving pretty quickly for a girl who felt shooting stabs of pain go up her legs with every step, I hightailed it out to Paul’s convertible and slid into the passenger seat with a sigh of relief at being in a seated position once more and a feeling that, at last, I was going to find out a thing or two about who—or what—I really was….
But I had an equally strong feeling that I wasn’t going to like what I found out. In fact, a part of me was wondering whether or not I was making the worst mistake of my life.
It didn’t help matters much that Paul, with his dark sunglasses and easy smile, looked like a movie star. Really, how could I have had so many nightmares about this guy who was so clearly any normal girl’s dream date? I didn’t miss the envious glances that were being shot in my direction from around the parking lot.
“Did I happen to mention,” Paul asked, as I fastened my seat belt, “that I think those shoes are flickin’?”
I swallowed. I didn’t even know what flicking meant. I could only assume from his tone that it meant something good.
Did I really want to do this? Was it worth it?
The answer came from deep within…so deep, I realized that I had known it all along: Yes. Oh, yes.
“Just drive,” I said, my voice coming out huskier than usual, because I was trying not to let my nervousness show.
And so he did.
The house he drove me to was an impressive two-storied structure built into the side of a cliff right off Carmel Beach. It was made almost entirely of glass in order to take advantage of its ocean and sunset views.
Paul seemed to notice that I was impressed, since he said, “It’s my grandfather’s place. He wanted a little place on the beach to retire to.”
“Right,” I said, swallowing hard. Grandpa Slater’s “little” place on the beach had to have cost a cool five million or so. “And he doesn’t mind having a roommate all of a sudden?”
“Are you kidding?” Paul smirked as he parked his car in one of the spaces of the house’s four-car garage. “He barely knows I’m here. The guy’s gorked out on his meds most of the time.”
“Paul,” I said uncomfortably.
“What?” Paul blinked at me from behind his Ray-Bans. “I’m just stating a fact. Pops is pretty much bedridden and should be in an assisted living facility, but he put up this huge fuss when we tried to move him to one. So when I suggested I move in to kind of keep an eye on things, my dad agreed. It’s a win-win situation. Pops gets to live at home—with health-care attendants to look after him, of course—and I get to attend my dream school, the Mission Academy.”
I felt my face heat up, but I tried to keep my tone light.
“Oh, so going to Catholic school is your dream?” I asked sarcastically.
“It is if you’re there,” Paul said, just as lightly…but not quite as sarcastically.
My face promptly turned red as a cherry-dipped cone. Keeping it averted so that Paul wouldn’t notice, I said primly, “I don’t think this such a good idea, after all.”
“Relax, Simon,” Paul drawled. “Pop’s day attendant is here, in case you’re, you know, suffering from any feminine misgivings about being alone in the house with me.”
I followed the direction Paul was pointing. At the end of the steep circular drive sat a rusted-out Toyota Celica. I didn’t say anything, but mostly only because I was kind of amazed at how easily Paul seemed to have read my mind. I had been sitting there, suffering from second thoughts about the whole thing. I had never exactly raised the issue with my parents, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t allowed to go to guys’ houses when their parents weren’t home.
On the other hand, if I didn’t in this case, I would never find out what I needed—and I was convinced by now that this was something I actually really did need—to know.
Paul slid out from behind the wheel, then walked around to my side of the car and opened the door for me.
“Coming, Suze?” he asked, when I didn’t move to undo my seat belt.
“Uh,” I said, looking nervously up at the big glass house. It looked disturbingly empty, despite the Toyota.
Paul seemed to read my mind again.
“Would you get off it, Suze?” he said, rolling his eyes. “Your virtue’s in no danger from me. I swear I’ll keep my hands to myself. This is business. There’ll be plenty of time for fun later.”
I tried to smile coolly, so he wouldn’t suspect that I am not accustomed to people—okay, guys—saying this sort of thing to me every day. But the truth is, of course I’m not. And it bugged me the way it made me feel when Paul did it. I mean, I did not even like this guy, but every time he said something like that—suggested that he thought I was, I don’t know, special—it sent this little shiver down my spine…and not in a bad way.
That was the thing. It wasn’t in a bad way. What was that all about? I mean, I don’t even like Paul. I am fully in love with somebody else. And, yeah, Jesse is presently showing no signs of actually returning my feelings, but it’s not like because of that I am suddenly going to start going out with Paul Slater…no matter how good he might look in his Ray-Bans.
I got out of the car.
“Wise decision,” Paul commented, closing the car door behind me.
There was a sort of finality in the sound of that door being slammed shut. I tried not to think about what I might be letting myself in for as I followed Paul up the cement steps to the wide glass front door to his grandfather’s house, barefoot, my Jimmy Choos in one hand and my book bag in the other.
Inside the Slaters’ house, it was cool and quiet…so quiet, you couldn’t even hear the pounding surf of the ocean not a hundred feet below it. Whoever had decorated the place had taste that ran toward the modern, so everything looked sleek and new and uncomfortable. The house, I imagined, must have been freezing in the morning when the fog rolled in, since everything in it was made of glass or metal. Paul led me up a twisting steel staircase from the front door to the high-tech kitchen, where all the appliances gleamed aggressively.
“Cocktail?” he asked me, opening a glass door to a liquor cabinet.
“Very funny,” I said. “Just water, please. Where’s your grandfather?”
“Down the hall,” Paul said, as he pulled two bottles of designer water from the enormous Sub-Zero fridge. He must have noticed my nervous glance over my shoulder, since he added, “Go take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.”
I went to take a look for myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him…well, okay, it was. Though it would have been pretty bold of him to lie about something I could so easily check. And what was I going to do if it turned out his grandfather wasn’t there? I mean, no way was I leaving before I’d found out what I’d come to learn.
Fortunately, it appeared I wouldn’t have to. Hearing some faint sounds, I followed them down a long glass hallway, until I came to a room in which a wide-screen television was on. In front of the television sat a very old man in a very high-tech wheelchair. Beside the wheelchair, in a very uncomfortable-looking modern chair, sat a youngish guy in a blue nurse’s uniform, reading a magazine. He looked up when I appeared in the doorway and smiled.
“Hey,
” he said.
“Hey,” I said back, and came tentatively into the room. It was a nice room, with one of the better views in the house, I imagined. It had been furnished with a hospital bed, complete with an IV bag and adjustable frame and metal bookshelves on which rested frame after frame of photographs. Black-and-white photographs mostly, judging by their outfits, of people from the forties.
“Um,” I said to the old man in the wheelchair. “Hi, Mr. Slater. I’m Susannah Simon.”
The old man didn’t say anything. He didn’t even take his gaze from the game show that was on in front of him. He was mostly bald and pretty much covered in liver spots, and he was drooling a little. The nurse noticed this and leaned over with a handkerchief to wipe the old man’s mouth.
“There you go, Mr. Slater,” the nurse said. “The nice young lady said hello. Aren’t you going to say hello back?”
But Mr. Slater didn’t say anything. Instead, Paul, who’d come into the room behind me, went, “How’s it going, Pops? Had another riveting day in front of the old boob tube?”
Mr. Slater did not acknowledge Paul, either. The nurse said, “We had a good day, didn’t we, Mr. Slater? Took a nice walk in the backyard around the pool and picked a few lemons.”
“That’s great,” Paul said with forced enthusiasm. Then he took my hand and started to drag me from the room. I will admit he didn’t have to drag hard. I was pretty creeped out, and went willingly enough. Which is saying a lot, considering how I felt about Paul and everything. I mean, that there was someone who creeped me out more than he did.
“Bye, Mr. Slater,” I said, not expecting a response…which was a good thing, since I got none.
Out in the hallway, I asked quietly, “What’s wrong with him? Alzheimer’s?”
“Naw,” Paul said, handing me one of the dark-blue bottles of water. “They don’t know, exactly. He’s lucid enough, when he wants to be.”
“Really?” I had a hard time believing it. Lucid people can usually maintain some control over their own saliva. “Maybe he’s just…you know. Old.”