by Carol Snow
Switch
Carol Snow
For Lucy & Philip
Special thanks go to Stephanie Kip Rostan for finding the perfect editor for this book, to Farrin Jacobs for being the perfect editor for this book, and to everyone at HarperCollins for their hard work and enthusiasm.
To the staff of the Levine Greenberg Literary Agency: Thank you for taking care of the details so I don't have to. And to Monika Verma: I'm so lucky to have you as "my people." I am, as always, grateful for my early readers' comments, my family's support, and Sue Raffman's New York City apartment. Finally, thanks and love to Andrew Todhunter--I couldn't do it without you.
1
You've been to my town , or you've been to one just like it. You drove in on a sunny day in July, your father at the wheel of the minivan, your mother in the passenger seat, passing back juice boxes (which you'd outgrown years ago) while you pressed your nose to the window, searching for that first glimpse of blue water.
This is what you remember about my town: the wave that knocked you off your boogie board and dragged you along the ocean bottom. The ice cream--chocolate with fudge swirls--that you ate from an enormous homemade waffle cone. A tray of french fries seasoned with sand.
You remember the night you walked on the beach, the sand strangely cold on your sunburned feet, and stared up at the stars that shone so much brighter than they did at home.
Maybe you remember a storm, one more violent than any you'd ever seen before, the lightning so harsh and bright, it made your bare arms turn ghostly white. Then there was the thunder,
2
coming one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi after the flashes, booming so hard that it shook the walls of your little rented cottage with the sand dune paintings on the walls. You started to cry, and your mother came to your bed and sang: Hush, little baby, don't say a word. Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird ...
Your mother's breathy voice made you stop crying, even though you were far too old for lullabies.
Then again, maybe you don't remember the thunderstorm. Or your mother's cornflower blue nightgown. Or the way she smelled like moisturizer and salt. Maybe you don't even remember the lullaby.
Because maybe you weren't really there on the night of the thunderstorm, in that little rented cottage with the sand dune paintings on the walls.
Maybe I was there instead.
3
***
2
Don't freak out : It probably wasn't you I woke up in on that stormy night last July. Well, unless you're about five foot four, with pretty brown eyes and long, dark hair. Then it might have been you. (You might want to rethink that white-blond streak in your hair, by the way. It makes you look like a skunk.)
Note that I said that I "woke up" in your body (or, you know--somebody else's body). I didn't jump in or sneak in or steal in. I am not a body snatcher or a ghoul. I am a body switcher, which is totally different. I don't take over other people's bodies on purpose. And I always give them back.
So don't picture me as some bizarro Goth girl with dyed black hair, black lipstick, and a pierced eyebrow. I don't even own any black clothes. I am just a normal fifteen-year-old kid with normal fifteen-year-old problems: an overworked mother, a missing father. I worry about the usual stuff. Like, will a boy ever admire me for anything other than my killer butterfly stroke? And will I
4
survive the first day of tenth grade without saying something stupid or losing my schedule or getting detention because I forgot to turn off my cell phone?
This is me: Claire Martin, fifteen years, five months old. I'm a Pisces, the sign of the fish, which is totally appropriate since I'm in the water about as much as a person can be without growing gills. My birthday is March 9-10; my birth certificate says March 10, but I was born on the stroke of midnight, so I think it should count as two days. My hair is brown, straight, shoulder length, and utterly resistant to anything resembling "a style." Mostly, I just pull my hair back with a plain elastic when it's still wet. My eyes are okay: hazel bordering on green but never quite getting there. I am five feet, seven inches tall. I will not tell you my weight because it is a big number, though I'm really just "solid," with virtually no body fat, even in places where it would be nice to have some. My best feature? My powerful shoulders. My worst feature? Ditto.
So, as you can see, aside from the occasional body switching (I mean, really occasional--a few times a year, tops), I am a completely normal, average, boring kid.
Okay, unless you factor in all of those conversations with my dead grandmother.
5
***
3
When I was little , I thought I had a guardian angel. But then, who didn't? As far as I knew, everyone's guardian angel lounged at the end of her twin bed, smoking a ghostly cigarette and saying, "Your mother should really do something with her hair-- all that gray and no style at all. No wonder she's never been married."
"She doesn't need a husband," I'd squeak, parroting what my mother had said a hundred times. "She's got a good job, and she's got me, and that's all she needs."
My angel would laugh her husky smoker's laugh and roll her eyes.
"You shouldn't smoke," I told my angel once. "It's bad for your health."
My angel took a long drag on her cigarette. She'd been smoking the same one for as long as I could remember, but it never got any smaller. She pursed her lips as if she were going to whistle and
6
blew out a smoke ring, which floated up and hovered over her head like a halo.
"It's a little late for that, don't you think?"
"How did my grandmother die?" is my mother's second-least-favorite question. But she'll answer it--at least sort of--if I also ask her first-least-favorite question.
"Who was my father?" I'll never look her in the eyes when I ask this. I'll say it casually when I'm getting milk out of the fridge or staring out the car window.
"I'll tell you when you're older." She'll say this quickly, trying to move beyond the moment as fast as possible.
"You've been saying that for years. I'm older."
"Not old enough."
"Okay, then--what happened to my grandmother?" This time, I'll look at her. She won't look back.
Here she'll pause, consider. She can't refuse me twice. "She got sick and died. I was four years old."
"How did she die?"
"She died in the hospital."
"I didn't ask where, I asked how."
She'll bite her lip, look at her hands. "She got sick."
My angel wasn't much better--even once I realized who she was. I was six when I found out. My mother was looking for something in her desk, and she pulled out some loose photographs.
"It's the lady!" I squealed when I saw the black-and-white snapshot of Evelyn. She was wearing a long coat and a big hat, standing next to a car.
7
"What lady?" my mother asked, snatching up the photograph and shoving it back in her desk.
"The lady who sits on my bed. The lady who talks to me. My angel."
My mother turned white and said she needed some time alone. I went upstairs to my room and asked Evelyn why she'd never told me that she was my grandmother. She took an especially long drag on her infinite cigarette. And then a second. And a third. "I didn't want to get you in trouble," she said finally.
Sure enough, my mother took me to a shrink the very next week. We drew pictures and played games. It was fun. I didn't even know Dr. Bob was a shrink until Evelyn told me. She told me what to say, and I said it. There wasn't really a lady at the end of my bed. I just made that up. And all those times my mother heard me talking in my room? I had some imaginary friends. But I knew they weren't real--I mean, duh! After two visits, Dr. Bob diagnosed me as "creative" and "imaginative" and a
ssured my mother she had nothing to worry about.
When I came home, I asked my angel what my mother and Dr. Bob had meant by "a family history of mental illness."
Here's what I know: My grandmother's name was Evelyn O'Shea--Evelyn Martin once she married my grandfather. She was six feet tall, with red hair that she wore in a heavy braid down her back. Her eyes were the color of the fog that rolls in from the ocean every afternoon.
Evelyn was tone deaf, but she loved to sing. She made bird calls. She talked to blue jays, but she was never crazy enough to
8
imagine that they understood her. She ate black licorice so much that her teeth were often gray. She spent hours combing the beach for sand dollars, which she insisted brought good luck. She loved to eavesdrop and gossip. She could sit on the beach for hours (with a hat and umbrella--her fair skin burned easily) just to watch the world walk by.
My grandfather, Charles, with a parade of housekeepers, raised my mother. He was Sandyland's first Dr. Martin. My mother, Lydia, is the second. On clear days, my grandfather would walk to his little office just off Main Street. He dropped dead of a heart attack two years before I was born. Whenever my mother talks about him, her eyes get glassy with tears. "I wish you'd met him. I wish he'd been able to see you, at least."
My mother works with two other family doctors in a health clinic near the highway. We live in the same house she grew up in, two blocks from the ocean, but she has to drive to work. She says we are lucky to live in our drafty blue bungalow, with its two small bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs. The upstairs was an addition, and it looks like it, as if someone just plopped a blue box onto the house. There is a pretty front porch that my mother had built with some of the money she inherited when her father died. My mother says, "We could never afford this house if we had to buy it now." The houses on either side of us belong to summer people, and their additions are larger and prettier. As my mother says, "Only people who don't live here can afford to live here."
My childhood was pretty nice, actually: three generations of Martin women living together in a cottage by the sea. So what if
9
one of us was dead? Evelyn was my little secret, my cozy companion, the thing that made me special.
It never occurred to me to wonder why I was the only one who could see her.
10
***
4
My mother says I was an easy baby. She hired a local woman to take care of me while she worked. The woman would leave me in my crib for hours while she watched talk shows and soap operas in the next room. If I cried, the woman would pick me up, but I hardly ever cried. Why would I? There was a beautiful red-haired woman standing over me, telling stories and singing songs in her off-key voice. She elicited my first smile, heard my first laugh.
Things chugged along pretty smoothly until the year I turned thirteen. I thought that might be significant--unlucky thirteen, and all that.
"There is nothing unlucky about the number thirteen," Evelyn told me, braiding her long, red hair. "It is just another number."
"Why now, then?" I asked.
"You're becoming a woman," she told me. "The party's over."
11
***
My first switch happened two years ago, on a sunny day in June. We were in seventh-grade science class with Mr. Peiteroski. Mr. P was a hands-on learning kind of guy: ocean drops under the microscope, beakers of clear stuff that turned fizzy when added to another beaker--that sort of thing.
Mr. Peiteroski was so jazzed about learning that he could barely sit still. He tended to spit when he talked. No one wanted to sit in the front row of his classroom. He had greasy black hair and the kind of oversize tortoiseshell glasses that were totally hip about twenty years ago. He wore wide ties and striped shirts that made him look even skinnier than he was. You'd think we'd all hate Mr. P and make fun of him mercilessly. The weird thing was, we all liked him. You could just tell he was a good person. Besides, he brought in donuts every Friday, and there's not a kid alive who can't be bribed with something fried and glazed.
It was the last week of school, and we were learning about electricity. I remember Mr. P saying something about grounding, and how during a thunderstorm you should avoid the highest ground, and how electricity always travels along the easiest path, as if it were something cunning and alive.
I wish I had paid more attention--it might have helped me understand what came later--but I was too busy counting down the time until school would be out for the summer and I could spend my days in icy waves instead of stuffy classrooms.
We were going to do an experiment, Mr. Peiteroski told us, his voice crackling with excitement. He had us all sit in a circle and hold hands. Our chairs screeched as we dragged them into the
12
center of the room. On one side, I was stuck holding hands with this doughy, dopey kid. His name was Brandon, but everyone called him Pillsbury. He had sweaty hands. I couldn't wait for the experiment to be over.
A girl named Beanie was directly across from me. Beanie and I would become best friends, but I didn't know that yet. Back then my best friend was this girl called Avon, but she was in a different science class.
After making sure that we were all holding hands, Mr. P skittered over with a little wooden box with a switch on one side and different-colored wires sticking out of the top. Mr. P took one kid by the hand and then put his other hand on the box. "As soon as I flip this switch, I will take Marina's hand, which will make an unbroken chain! Remember, electricity always takes the easiest path!"
A few kids looked nervous. I wasn't scared. Mr. P would never hurt anyone.
He flipped the switch, and one girl yelped. The boy next to her giggled. Mr. P took the hand of the kid on his other side, creating a closed circle. The electricity traveled down the line, clicking through wrists, shooting through fingers.
It all happened so fast.
When the current reached me, I didn't yelp. I didn't giggle. I didn't say anything at all--because the force didn't simply pass through me with a pinch in one wrist and then the other. For a flash, I felt like I was floating near the ceiling, looking down at the classroom, the way they say you do when you die.
Then the current reached Beanie, and I wasn't watching from
13
above anymore. I was watching from the other side of the circle. I was staring at myself. I was staring back.
The current went around another time, and I blinked. I was back where I should be, next to Pillsbury. Beanie looked at me a little funny; I looked at her a little funny too. We said nothing.
I tried to forget about it. Just a little too much electricity. A dizzy spell. Water conducts electricity; everybody knows that. And Pillsbury's hands were so sweaty, they were practically dripping.
When I got home, Evelyn was in the kitchen, sitting at my mother's computer. Because she emits such a strong electrical force, she can make it work without even touching the keys; she just waves her hand over the keyboard and concentrates really hard. Evelyn says that MySpace has given her a whole new lease on life, which is quite an endorsement when you consider that Evelyn is actually dead.
"How was school?" she asked, as she did every day, logging off the computer. Since she died when my mother was four, Evelyn never got to do the welcome-home-from-school routine in real life, so she's trying to make up for it. Besides, it's not like she's got someplace better to be. As soon as she walks out the door, she gets lost in a fog.
Without looking at her, I opened the fridge and shrugged. My orange-and-white cat, Fluffernutter, ran into the room and began twining himself around my legs. Fluff can't see Evelyn. Or, if he can, he knows she can't feed him or let him outside, so he chooses to ignore her.
I pulled a can of cat food and a jug of milk out of the fridge.
14
Evelyn would get me an after-school snack if she could--which is to say, if she had a body.
"Is something wrong?" she asked, alarmed.
"Did something happen?"
"Nothing's wrong," I said a little too sharply. "I've just got a lot of homework, is all." It didn't even occur to me to tell her what had happened. It never crossed my mind that she'd understand.
She frowned and checked my face. Then her expression softened with relief. "Hormones." She tapped her nose. "What?"
"You've got a little pimple, sweetie. Right on the end of your nose. It's the hormones. They can affect your mood, too." If only it were that simple.
15
***
5
Evelyn assures me am not a witch . She assured me of that three weeks later, after I ended up in a strange cottage, in a body I did not know.
Thunderstorms had never scared me. I'd lived my whole life in Sandyland, after all. We have no video arcades here, no miniature golf, no mall. But we have noisy, flashy storms, and you take your thrills where you can get them.
It was the first big storm of the summer, and I was sitting up in bed, admiring the way the lightning lit the old maple tree in our yard like the beam from a lighthouse. I remember the storm coming closer: five-Mississippi, then four-Mississipi, then three. I hoped it would pass over my house with a giant flash-boom, an electrical explosion, an adrenaline rush.
It never made it to my house; or, if it did, I had already gone. At two-Mississippi, I was flooded with heat, like when you stand too close to a bonfire and the wood suddenly tumbles down,
16
releasing an eruption of sparks. The lightning flashed, and it was like I became part of the light, the power, the surge.