by Carol Snow
"Almost ready, Missus Sealy."
Mrs. Sealy turned to Prescott. "How's my little Presie this morning?" she asked in a baby voice.
"I want to go to the beach," he growled, without looking up from his mutilated place mat.
"Of course you can go to the beach, Peanut," she cooed. "Larissa will take you after breakfast."
"I want to go swimming," he said, still stabbing.
"Daddy will take you in the ocean when he comes this weekend."
"I want to go swimming now."
Mrs. Sealy sighed--actually, it sounded more like a moan-- and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, she said, "You know Larissa can't take you into the ocean, Presie."
"But, why!"
"We've been through this before." She smiled at me gently.
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"Larissa can't take you into the ocean because Larissa can't swim."
Mrs. Sealy left soon after that, carrying her herbal tea in an enormous travel cup. "I finally tracked down a yoga studio, thank God," she told me. "I've been feeling so off balance, so uncentered lately, probably just not taking good enough care of myself." She put a twenty-dollar bill on the stainless steel countertop. "This should cover lunch for you and the boys in case I don't make it back in time. And don't forget their sunscreen--at least fifteen minutes before they go outside."
She kissed the boys good-bye, grabbed her keys, and called out, "See you in a bit!"
Cameron sprinted after her. I practically had to hold him down to keep him from getting run over by her silver luxury SUV. He had tears in his eyes.
"Don't worry," I said. "Mommy will come home soon."
He blinked at me, as if he'd forgotten for a moment that I existed. "I hate you!" he said.
"How can you hate me? You hardly even know me." I was fishing.
He stared down the road until the SUV disappeared, and then he turned to me with a scowl. "I've known you for, like, a hundred years. I've known you since before I was born."
"That's not possible." Like I was one to talk about possible.
"My mom and your mom are friends! So it is too possible!" And then he started to cry. Again.
But for now, Cameron was the least of my problems. I knew
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where Larissa's body was, but what about my own? I had to go see Evelyn---or, more precisely, to see myself. I kept trying to convince myself that she'd made it up to my room in time, but I wasn't so sure--though I couldn't imagine that Larissa would have much use for my body anyway.
I settled the boys in front of a DVD and asked Consuela to keep an eye on them while I went out for a short while.
"Why? You got a date?" she asked.
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, that's it. I got a smokin' hot date."
In the bedroom, I pulled out a pair of sneakers (plaid, Converse, super cute). I'd thrown on a pair of gym shorts when Cameron first got me up, so there was no real reason I couldn't go out "as is," in the baggy gray T-shirt. But why leave the house looking merely pretty when I could be spectacular?
It took me only a moment to choose between a black halter top and a little orange blouse that tied at the waist. I went with the blouse. It looked just right with Larissa's faded denim miniskirt.
I didn't bother with makeup or earrings. That would have been overkill.
I knew I was in trouble the minute I stepped into my yard. Evelyn--or a vague outline of Evelyn--was sitting on the front porch steps, smoking her cigarette. "Oh, no!" I gasped.
Evelyn looked at me blankly for a minute and then smiled when she realized who I was. "Don't start with me," she said, flicking an imaginary ash onto the grass. "Smoking is one of the few pleasures I have left."
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"Not that," I said. "You. Here. Sitting on the steps. If you're here, who's ... ?" I looked up at my bedroom window.
"I think her name is Larissa." She looked me up and down. "I wondered what she looked like. Pretty. No wonder she's so helpless. What happened?"
"I don't know. One moment I was in my closet, flipping the light switch, and the next thing you know, I'm in this monster house on the beach. It doesn't make sense. I remember seeing the moon outside my window, and the room had that nasty new-carpet smell, and-- That's it!" I snapped my fingers.
"What?"
"It was the switch! The switch made me switch!"
"You lost me."
"You know that new carpet Mom is so jazzed about? I shuffled across it in bare feet and then hit the light. Must have generated some static electricity."
"That's what your mother gets for buying a polyester carpet." Evelyn sighed. "If only I had lived. I would have taught her to appreciate quality. But I still don't get it. Didn't you go to sleep last night?"
I shook my head. "I tried to, but this little kid woke me up." She didn't need to know about my mini fashion show. Suddenly I pictured Larissa, poking through my closet. And then I imagined my mother coming home at the end of the day. "This is a disaster!"
"Now, now. Don't overreact." Evelyn gave me a limp-wristed, no-big-deal wave. "You'll be fine once you go to sleep. For now, I've got everything under control. Larissa thinks she's having a
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dream. A really long, strange dream. She's just lying around, whimpering and asking if she's going to wake up soon."
"But what is she doing in my body? Why didn't you get there first?"
"You didn't exactly give me a warning. I was downstairs. And even though that was a lot closer to you than Princess Pathetic, her electrical pull was stronger than mine because she is--you know. Alive." She rolled her eyes.
"But didn't you sense something? Some sudden change in electrical forces? You must have had a few seconds, at least. Why didn't you rush upstairs?"
Evelyn leveled her gray gaze at me. "I was Instant Messaging Roger, and we were having a moment."
"Who's Roger?"
"He's a gentleman friend. An American living in Denmark. Very lonely. Very nice. I couldn't just abandon him in mid-sentence."
"So that's what you've been doing hour after hour on the Internet? Hooking up with some poor guy who thinks you're alive?"
"I'm entitled to a little happiness," Evelyn said, tugging on her long braid.
"But you were supposed to protect me!"
She pulled herself up straight. "Not everything is about you, Claire."
"Aargh!" I buried my face--Larissa's face--in my hands. In Larissa's hands. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do. Wait a few hours and then give her some Benadryl. Let's say three o'clock?"
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"Why Benadryl?"
"It always knocks me out. Since she's in my body, it should knock her out too. I'll go back and take the boys to the beach, really wear them out so we can all take naps. I should be back in my body by dinner, and Larissa can wake up from her dream."
"One itty-bitty problem," Evelyn said.
"What?"
"I don't have a body."
"Your point being?"
"I can't exactly get past the childproof cap on the Benadryl bottle. Or any cap, for that matter."
"Ugh." I wrinkled Larissa's pert nose. "I'll take care of it."
The Benadryl bottle was on the bottom shelf of the medicine cabinet, between a tube of extra-strength Clearasil and some ear drops. I shook a couple of pink tablets onto my palm, and then I added a couple more. Evelyn appeared behind me.
"Just tell her to come get these." I put the tablets on the counter next to the sink, along with a glass of water. "Tell her they're diet pills."
"What if she won't take them?"
"She'll gobble them up. Believe me."
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***
13
There was no mistaking a beach outing with Cameron and Prescott for a dream--a nightmare, maybe. First came the bathing-suit battle. Cameron wanted to wear his shark bathing suit. But the real Larissa hadn't hung his shark bathing suit up properly the day before, and it smelled. I suggested he wear the orange trunks instead.
"I want to wear my shark suit!"
Fine. So he smelled.
Next came Prescott, who didn't want to wear a bathing suit at all because it was much more fun to run around buck naked, penis in hand, yelling, "I got a pee-pee! I got a pee-pee!" As it turned out, Prescott was not telling us that he had a pee-pee. He was telling us that he had to go pee-pee. Funny, the difference a couple of words can make. Ha, ha. Hilarious.
Once I got that mess cleaned up (I 'll spare you the details), I sent the boys off to bug Consuela while I put on my bathing suit.
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Okay. I admit it. I took a little longer getting dressed than was absolutely necessary. Brown bikini or blue? The brown covered more, believe it or not, but I'd already seen it on Larissa--the old Larissa, that is. I wanted something new, something mine. So I put on the blue. But then I worried that it showed too much of, well, pretty much everything. So I tried on the brown suit-- which brought up the old Larissa/new Larissa issues. So I went back to the blue suit (along with a delicate silver anklet), but I covered up with the oversized gray T-shirt Larissa wore to bed.
Cameron and Prescott were in the kitchen sucking on juice boxes when I finally appeared. Consuela was nowhere to be seen.
"Okay, your sunscreen," I said. "Where is it?"
"We got it already," Cameron said. "Consuela did it."
That was one less thing to worry about, at least.
We spread our towels on the sand in front of the rock wall, right below the house. I sat down, took off the big gray T-shirt, and spread suntan lotion over my endless legs, scrawny arms, and unbelievably flat tummy. There was a lot of surface to cover: The blue bikini was teeny. Once I convinced the boys to stop climbing on the rocks (I told them it was illegal and they might get thrown in jail), they started running to the edge of the surf and then back--to the edge and back again. If they kept this up for a couple more hours, I'd have it made.
But the water splashed Cameron in the face and he started to wail. "My face is wet!" Of course, in Cameron-speak, "wet" went on for minutes: "WEH-uh-EH-uh-EH-uh-ET!" The kid should've had a flashing red light on his head.
"We're at the beach," I said. "Water happens."
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He finally settled down enough to dig in the sand. He'd filled half a bucket--not a terribly big bucket, even--when he got a grain of sand in his eye. "My eye!" He wailed, clawing his face with his (sandy) hands and making it worse. "My eye-aye-aye-aye-aye!"
This was right about the time that Prescott discovered the joy of seagulls, or rather, the joy of throwing rocks at seagulls.
So I said, "Keep crying, Cameron. That's good--your tears will wash the sand out. STOP IT, PRESCOTT! No, Cameron, I can't call your mommy, she's at yoga--PRESCOTT, LEAVE THE SEAGULLS ALONE! Cameron! Mommy will be back soon and then--PRESCOTT! NO!"
Prescott didn't manage to hit a seagull. He did, however, graze the shoulder of a big, scary tattooed guy jogging down the beach.
"Ow!" the guy said, grabbing his shoulder.
I jumped up and ran over to the jogger, fully prepared to be chewed out. "I'm so sorry!" I said. "I wouldn't have let him throw rocks, but his brother got sand in his eye and--"
I stopped talking because the man was looking at me in the strangest way, his eyes all buggy. There was blood dripping down his tattooed shoulder, the red blurring the lines of his blue tattoo, and then all of a sudden he was ... smiling? How could that be?
"Are you okay?" I asked, thinking: Are you crazy?
"I'm great," he said, still smiling, still bleeding, still ... leering.
"Oh. Good."
I nodded at his shoulder. "You should probably wash that off." My skinny arms crossed in front of my concave belly, but the
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bikini didn't allow for much modesty. I wished I had left the gray shirt on.
"Maybe you can wash it off for me," he said, moving a little closer.
I stepped back, right onto a shell. "Ouch!" I stumbled and looked at him with what was surely fear.
He held up his hands in a peace gesture. One of his hands, the one that had been holding his shoulder, was smeared with blood. "Hey," he said. "Just kidding."
I didn't respond.
He'd stopped smiling. He shook his head, irritated now, and grimaced, finally, at his shoulder. He swore under his breath. Then he gave me one last long look and walked away.
My legs shaking, I settled back on the towel next to Cameron, who was still sniffling, though not crying as much as before.
"I'm hungry," Prescott announced.
I looked at the back of the bloody tattooed man. He'd started jogging again and was getting farther away by the second.
"Five minutes," I said, pulling the gray T-shirt over my head.
"I'm hungry!" Prescott's angry growl was almost as bad as Cameron's fire-siren whine.
I glared at Prescott. He glared back. I looked away first. "Five minutes," I muttered. I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned. It was Cameron, scaling the boulders, working his way up to the "Keep Off Rocks" sign.
"Cameron!" I yelled.
He climbed higher. Prescott scurried over to join him. "No!"
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Prescott turned around, one hand still on a boulder.
"Five minutes are up," I said, although of course they weren't. "Let's have lunch."
By the time we reached the snack shack, I was so hot from the walk that beads of sweat slithered down my back. My face felt like it was glowing. The ocean shone blue and inviting. I'd have given anything to jump in, but since Larissa had never learned to swim, I was stuck on the hot sand.
Ryan smiled when I approached the counter. "You're back," he said.
I narrowed my eyes and kept my mouth turned down. "We'll have two hot dogs with lemonade."
"I want a milk shake!" Cameron squealed.
I swung my head around. "Yeah? Well, I want a week in Maui. Alone." I turned back to Ryan, pleased and surprised that I'd shut Cameron up for once.
Ryan leaned on the counter and gazed at me. He had one of those peach-fuzz mustaches, and it was studded with perspiration. "And what can I get for you?"
I crossed my arms around my waist. My ribs poked through the T-shirt. "I'll have a double cheeseburger. With everything."
"Okay." He wrote it down.
I glanced down at my legs: skinny, skinny, skinny. "And an order of onion rings. Large."
"Okay."
"And to drink, let's see," Another bead of sweat slithered down my back. "A milk shake. Chocolate. Jumbo."
"Wow," he said. "I like a girl with an appetite."
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I ground my teeth together. "Well, you're out of luck, because I like a guy with a personality."
He looked so hurt that I actually felt bad for about one one-thousandth of a second. He told me how much money I owed, and I gave him Mrs. Sealy's twenty-dollar bill.
"I'm actually pretty nice when you get to know me," he said, handing over my change. Did this guy ever give up?
"That'll never happen," I said.
We ate at the picnic table. Larissa's deprived little stomach started to hurt after half a burger, but I soldiered on, mostly for Ryan's benefit. At one point, I felt grease spill down my chin and I left it there on purpose. I was on a mission to make Larissa look gross.
I had to stop after a couple of onion rings and a few sips of the shake: I was in serious pain by then, and I didn't want to risk vomiting, no matter whose body I was in (even though it would have accomplished the grossness mission). The boys asked for some of my shake. I lied and said I finished it all. Something-- either the heat or my beauty or the kids--was making me mean. What shocked me was that I was getting away with it.
For the first time ever, Nate saw me before I saw him. Okay, that's not strictly true. Nate saw Larissa before I saw him. I heard someone pop out of the surf as Prescott, Cameron, and I began our long walk back to the Ice Cube House and turned to see Nate looking away from me, pretending
like he hadn't seen me at all. He wiped the water out of his eyes. His blond curls, dripping with ocean water, framed his tanned face.
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Before I could do or say anything, Cameron had run over to him.
"Are you a lifeguard?" Cameron asked him--though it took me a moment to realize who was talking. I'd never heard Cameron speak without whining before.
"Not yet," he said. "This summer I worked at a camp, teaching kids to be better ocean swimmers. But next summer, I'll be sitting right up there." He pointed to a lifeguard tower. I thought, Good. Now I know where to spread my towel.
"Hi." I smiled. Nate always made me smile. "We met yesterday. Well, we didn't really meet, but I saw you. At the snack shack."
His face, speckled with ocean drops, flushed pink. "You were with those two girls," I added. "What girls?"
"I'm Larissa," I said, because I didn't know what else to say.
"Nate," he added, finally cracking a smile.
"So you're not a lifeguard," Cameron said.
"Do you little guys like the ocean?" Nate asked, squatting down to Cameron's level.
"We're not allowed in the water because Larissa can't swim," Prescott volunteered.
Nate blinked up at me in surprise.
"Of course I can swim," I said, wondering if that were true. "Just not very well. Not good enough to go into the ocean." Beyond the wave break, the yellow swim float bobbed gently. It was covered with people. If it weren't for this body-switching nonsense, I'd be out at that float in fifteen strokes. Of course,
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if it weren't for the body switching, Nate wouldn't be talking to me.
Nate straightened. "I could teach you." He snuck a peek at my face and then, embarrassed, looked at the ground.