Switch

by Carol Snow

  "So, what are we looking for?" my mother asked as we strode across the open-air parking lot. It was a clear, blue-skied morning, warm but not humid. A perfect beach day, I thought. As much as I hated to think about it, school would be starting in two days.

  "The usual," I said. "Sneakers, jeans." I thought of Nate standing next to the snack shack in his damp white T-shirt. "Maybe something nicer. Like, I don't know, a skirt or something."

  My mother looked at me, startled. I hadn't worn a skirt--at least not willingly--since I was six years old. "Whatever you want," she said with forced casualness. "It's your day."

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  ***

  I looked stupid in skirts. That was obvious immediately.

  "You don't look stupid in skirts," my mother said as we stared at my reflection in the dressing-room mirror. I'd tried on a short, pleated one, royal-blue-with-black plaid. "That skirt looks too much like a school uniform--it would look stupid on anyone. Try another style."

  The other styles weren't any better. First I tried a turquoise peasant thing. "It makes me look stubby," I said.

  My mother shook her head. "It's not you, it's the skirt."

  It was the skirt again when I tried on a denim knee-length.

  "Let's just get jeans." I sighed, feeling defeated. I knew just where to find jeans that would fit me: in the boys' department.

  "How about we try some other stores after lunch?" my mother suggested.

  I nodded. I wished I were in the ocean, my body completely submerged.

  For lunch we bypassed the food court in favor of a chain restaurant, where we ordered gourmet pizzas: barbeque chicken for me, some gross thing with olives for my mother.

  "So," she said as we sipped our ice water, waiting for our food to arrive. "Sophomore year. Wow."

  "Mm." I pulled a sugar packet from the little plastic cube in the center of the table just to have something to fiddle with. I tipped it one way and then another, the grains of sugar sliding like sand in an hourglass.

  "Are you excited?" my mother asked. "About a whole new set of classes?"

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  I shrugged.

  "Maybe a little nervous?"

  I considered. "No." Of course I was nervous, but talking about it would only make things worse.

  At least it wouldn't be as bad as last year, when I didn't even know my way around the building. Going into ninth grade, I already knew a lot of people because Sandyland is one of those places where "everyone knows everyone." (I know that that sounds cozy, but trust me: It's mostly just annoying.) But Sandyland High is a regional school, which meant that there were even more people I didn't recognize. I couldn't believe how old some of the kids looked. They must have been held back, like, three or four years. There were guys with thick beards and girls with tattoos. There were a lot of pierced eyebrows.

  My mother drank some water, the ice clinking in her glass. Her eyelids fluttered nervously. For two people who have lived together for fifteen years, my mother and I have never been great at conversation.

  "Do you like the new carpet?" my mother asked. She'd just covered the worn wood floors upstairs with wall-to-wall.

  "It's nice," I said. "It's fine." The carpet was beige polyester-- how excited could I get? The house smelled vaguely of Scotchgard.

  She put her water glass on the table and cleared her throat. "You know, in my practice, I sometimes see kids. From your school."

  "Uh-huh." Was Nate one of her patients? No way was I going to ask. Beanie still went to the pediatrician she'd been

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  seeing since she was born. She really liked him, but she said the Highlights magazines in the waiting room were getting kind of old.

  I put the sugar packet back, pulled out a Sweet'N Low and tilted it to one side. Too powdery: it didn't have the same hourglass effect.

  My mother cleared her throat again. "Some of the kids, they--not all of them, I know it's not everyone, but some of the kids ..." She took a deep breath and spread her fingers out on the table, as if for balance. "You're getting older, and sometimes things are different. Than they were before, I mean. And the pressure--sometimes a kid can feel pressured."

  I looked up at her. Her face was bright red.

  "I won't do drugs, Mom."

  She nodded rapidly, her face still red. "I know. I mean, I never thought you would. But there's other, there are other ... things. Temptations ..."

  "I won't drink, either. Or smoke. I promise." My mother had been lecturing me on the evils of alcohol since I was about six. I had never seen her drink anything stronger than iced tea.

  But this wasn't about alcohol. Her eyebrows were raised. She was waiting for more. "What?" I asked.

  She took a deep breath. "Chastity Dunhauser," she said finally. Chastity Dunhauser was an honor-roll student at Sandyland High until she got pregnant in the tenth grade (talk about ironic). Now she takes care of her baby during the day and works night shifts at the Rite Aid.

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  "You're afraid I'm going to work at Rite Aid?" I deadpanned. She laughed in spite of herself and threw her napkin at me. "No Rite Aid!" I said, laughing. "I swear!"

  After lunch we went to a store that girls at school were always talking about. It was dark and the music was really loud. My mother flinched when we walked in but held back whatever thoughts she had about high-frequency hearing loss. My mother keeps a lot of her opinions inside, I think because she feels guilty about leaving me alone so much. Of course, she doesn't know about Evelyn; if anything, I'd like to be alone more often.

  I picked up a mustard-colored T-shirt from a table display. It would have fit me perfectly if I were five foot ten and weighed eighty-five pounds.

  "It's cute," my mother said uncertainly. She checked the price tag. "Forty dollars? For a T-shirt?" She checked my face. "You can have it if you love it."

  Ah, the power of working-mother guilt.

  I smirked. "It's fugly."

  She relaxed. "It is, kind of."

  I wandered farther back into the store and was looking at a cool but majorly overpriced sweatshirt when a familiar voice said, "Claire? Is that you?"

  Of course Avon would be here. Avon was like a walking billboard for this place, the store's name plastered across her chest in a different color every day of the week.

  It took me a second to recognize her. "What happened to your face?"

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  She touched her cheek--well, she touched the slab of makeup on her cheek, actually. "Me and Dayna got makeovers at Macy's? They were free, which was cool. Except then we had to buy makeup 'cause Dayna said they expect you to. My mom's gonna have a cow when she gets the credit-card bill, but-- whatever."

  Her eyes were lined in copper, and she was wearing too much blush. Her hair was blond (she'd discovered peroxide last year), long, and super-blow-dried straight. Still, she looked kind of good, I had to admit, if only because the chalky makeup covered her pimples. Her acne, which had blossomed in tandem with her breasts at the end of eighth grade, had gotten worse over the last year. Too bad her father wasn't a dermatologist.

  My mother appeared at my side. "Avon? I didn't recognize you at first--you're getting so grown up!" My mother doesn't know that I hate Avon. Neither does Avon, because, to the best of her knowledge, there's no way I could know what she'd said about me back when we were supposed to be best friends.

  "Are you here with your mom?" my mother asked.

  "Nuh-uh," Avon said with a shudder that implied that only a loser would go to the mall with her mother. "I'm with Dayna? She's in me and Claire's grade? And she has an older sister who drives?"

  "Oh, right. Dayna." My mother has no idea who Dayna is. I wish I could say the same. I could see her at the other end of the store checking out size 0 jeans, her long hair freshly bleached and blow-dried, her makeup a perfect match to Avon's. She pretended not to notice us, though I knew she and Avon would be

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  doubled over with laughter as soon as my mother and I were out of
sight.

  "I don't like any of this stuff," I said, looking at my mother. "Let's go to Sears." Then I turned to Avon and made her hold my gaze. "I really like their boys' department." She looked frightened for an instant, as if she thought I could read her mind.

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  ***

  9

  Avon's and my friendship began with one birthday party and ended with another. The first was a joint celebration in our kindergarten classroom. My birthday fell on a Friday that year. My mother sent me to school with a cardboard box full of vanilla cupcakes. Avon appeared with her own box of cupcakes, also vanilla. We stared at the cupcakes and then at each other, amazed. We were turning six on the same day and we both liked vanilla? How could we help but be best friends?

  The years that followed were a blur of play dates, sleepovers, and telephone conversations. I liked going to Avon's big house in the hills because her mother was always home and we could climb trees in the enormous backyard. Avon liked coming to my house because my mother was never home and the local woman who babysat let us eat junk food and watch TV.

  I said we'd be college roommates someday. Avon said we would be each other's maids of honor. After that, we agreed, we'd

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  buy houses next door to each other and have daughters the same age who would be best friends, just like us.

  Things changed when we got to junior high school. Avon started going to the day spa for manicures and facials. (Sandyland doesn't have a movie theater, but it has a day spa. Life in a resort town can be weird.) I joined the junior-high swim team. Avon refused because she didn't want the chlorine to ruin her hair. She tried out for cheerleading but didn't make it. I said, "No big loss. Why would you want to be a cheerleader anyway?"

  She said, "You just don't get it."

  She was right. I didn't.

  By eighth grade, Avon had begun hanging around with Ricki Chilter, another cheerleading reject, and Dayna Pynch, a squad alternate.

  "You like them better than me," I joked one time. At least, I tried to sound like I was joking.

  "Ricki and Dayna? Better than you?" She rolled her eyes. "You're just not around much anymore, you know. Swim team? All those practices and meets? Ring any bells?"

  Looking back, Avon was already starting to get on my nerves, and she wore so many stinky floral products--perfumes and powders and hair sprays and deodorants--that I couldn't be in the same room with her without sneezing.

  But still. She was my best friend. We were going to live next door to each other some day.

  With Avon being born only two hours after me, it might seem inevitable that I'd switch into her body sooner or later. Her house in the hills was several miles away, though, so I figured I was safe.

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  But on the night of Dayna Pynch's slumber party (when Avon had told me she was going to her cousin's house in another town), she was right around the corner.

  When we were little, Avon and I slept over at each other's house all the time, but once the switching began, I told her I'd started talking in my sleep and wouldn't want to keep her awake. I was so relieved when she accepted this lame excuse that it didn't occur to me to wonder why she didn't seem to mind.

  The storm hit suddenly, violently, the rain pelting our roof. From the living room, my mother called to me to close the windows upstairs. I went from her bedroom to our shared bathroom to my room, pulling down the windows with shaking hands. I shut down my computer, much to Evelyn's dismay.

  When all that was done, I sat on my bed and stared out the window. I hugged my knees to my chest as if I could hold my spirit inside. I trembled with fear of the unknown. Where would I end up tonight: in Kimmy's body? In Beanie's? I'd switched with each of them once at this point (not counting the time in science class). Well, okay, I hadn't really switched: I'd actually taken over their bodies and left them floating around in some unknown dimension while Evelyn, as me, raided the fridge.

  Evelyn slipped over and sat down on the end of my bed. "Don't cry," she said. "I'm here."

  I hadn't even known I was crying.

  "You'll be back by morning," she said, her form becoming more distinct as the storm moved closer.

  "Don't eat too much ice cream," I said, forcing a smile through my tears. "You gave me a stomachache last time."

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  She smiled back but didn't agree.

  Then the lightning flashed and I woke up on the floor, sweating in a sleeping bag. I opened my eyes slowly. It was dark, but I could see two other forms on the floor.

  "Hey, Avon, we thought you fell asleep."

  Avon was here? I looked around, searching. Would she know me behind a stranger's eyes?

  "Hey, Avon, you okay?" It was Ricki talking, I suddenly realized. Which meant that the other girl was ... Dayna.

  "What?" I said softly, testing my new vocal cords. "Yeah, I'm fine. I guess I just drifted off."

  You know how it is when you hear your own voice on an answering machine or a video camera and it sounds nothing like you think it does? Well, that's how it felt hearing Avon's voice coming out of my mouth--her mouth. I recognized it, but it sounded different, lower or something.

  "So, what were you going to say about Claire?" Dayna asked.

  "Claire?" I said, my own name feeling odd on Avon's tongue.

  "Did you see what she wore on the last day of school?" Ricki said.

  "What she wears every day of school." Dayna snorted.

  "Sweatpants," Ricki said. "My God."

  Dayna laughed. "Avon said Claire buys all of her clothes at Sears--in the boys' department!"

  Ricki gasped, her hand flying across her mouth. "Didn't you say that, Avon?" said Dayna. I stared at them.

  "Avon?" Dayna said. Lightning flashed, reflecting against Dayna's braces. It looked like she had more braces than teeth.

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  Ricki and Dayna squealed at the lightning, then looked back at me--at Avon. I shrugged. "Sears has some cool clothes."

  They paused, silent for a moment, then broke into a fit of giggles. "Avon, you are so bad," Ricki said. "You totally crack me up."

  "I can't believe Claire doesn't know who her father is," Dayna said. I stared at her. Everyone knew who Dayna's father was. He was the McDonald's night manager who left his wife, Dayna's mother, for a twenty-year-old fry cook.

  "Yeah, really," Ricki said. "And, like, how she stares at strange men to see if they look like her, like maybe they could be her father? It's totally creepy."

  My breathing grew shallow. My palms were sweating. I had told Avon that I searched men's faces (in quick glances; I never stared) for clues: eyebrows shaped like mine or tiny clefts in their chins. I had told Avon and no one else.

  "It's not as bad as her grandmother, though," Dayna said. "My mother said she went crazy and had to be put away. You think craziness could be catching? Like, genetically?"

  I think I stopped breathing for a moment. I hadn't told anyone about my grandmother being sent to an insane asylum. Until that moment, I hadn't known myself. Was it even true, I wondered? Maybe Dayna was just saying that to be mean--well, meaner. But at some level, I knew that it must be true. First Avon's betrayal--now this. It was almost too much to process at once.

  "What did you tell Claire about what we were doing tonight?" Dayna asked me. "Did she know about my birthday?" She turned to Ricki. "Claire kept asking Avon to hang out this weekend."

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  "Eew," Ricki said.

  The lightning flashed again, and then the thunder came, a low rumble in the distance. The storm was moving away. "She told me she was going to her cousin's house," I said softly.

  "What?" Ricki said, confused. "Claire was going to her cousin's? I didn't think she had any relatives."

  "I mean, that's what I told her," I said. "I told Claire that I was going to my cousin's house." I swallowed hard, but the lump in my throat wouldn't go away. "I lied to Claire."

  I tried to sleep, but Ricki and Dayna wouldn't stop talking-- about who was
too fat, too short, too loud, too shy. It was almost daybreak before their venom dried up. Finally, I closed my eyes and flew away from Avon's body--and from a friendship that, I knew now, had disappeared a long time ago.

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  ***

  10

  It never gets normal, this business of leaving my body, but it has grown less terrifying, at least. We have developed a routine, Evelyn and I. She sits next to me in bed, her presence feeling like a cool draft. I close my eyes, take deep breaths, and wait for the inevitable.

  After that awful switch with Avon, I asked Evelyn about the insane asylum. She stared at the wall for a long, silent time before admitting that it was true. "Though I wasn't crazy," she said. "Not for an instant."

  "Was it really you in there?" I asked. "In ... that place?" The mental hospital where Evelyn spent her last months was up in the hills, right at the edge of town. It has since been turned into condos.

  She nodded sadly.

  "Did they put you in there because of ... the switching?" I asked, afraid to hear the answer.

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  "It was because I wasn't careful enough," she said. She wouldn't give any more details about the experience; she said it was too painful. And I didn't ask her about it either, because I was afraid of what I might learn.

  Here's what Evelyn did tell me: As the years passed, she felt her spirit fading until she feared she would disappear altogether. It was getting harder and harder to see her daughter. It was like she saw everything through a thick ocean fog, the kind that creeps in during the middle of the night and refuses to burn off, even as the day grows long.