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by Carol Snow

  I wasn't scared anymore. It was as if my nastiness had given me some kind of strange power: Nothing could hurt me. Could Larissa have left some part of herself behind? I wondered.

  Near the bonfire, Avon sat huddled with Ricki and Dayna. Ricki glared at me. A surge of pity for Avon hit me, but I got over it. There were plenty of familiar faces around the bonfire, but still no Nate. Giving up, I turned to walk back to the Ice Cube House and almost ran into him.

  He blinked at me and then smiled. I smiled back. This time, I didn't mind being stared at.

  "You're here," he said. He wore faded jeans, his blue "Sandyland Swimming" sweatshirt, and an enormous grin.

  We smiled at each other with a silence that should have been awkward but wasn't.

  "Do you guys do this much?" I asked. "The bonfires, I mean."

  He shrugged. "Every week or two."

  I nodded, feeling a stab of pain at having never been invited. "Let's get away from here," I said. "We can go farther down the beach."

  I knew everybody was watching us, but I didn't care. It's not like there was anything much to see: just the most beautiful girl in the world walking down the beach with the most beautiful boy in the world. The Golden Couple. We were such a perfect match, I felt like it deserved a comment, like, "We'd look good together

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  on a shopping bag or a billboard. Or maybe on a bottle of cologne."

  But I didn't say any of that because I didn't want him to think I was, you know. Vain.

  After a bit, the bonfire became a distant glow, and we plopped down on the chilly sand.

  "You cold?" Nate asked. "You can borrow my sweatshirt."

  I shook my head. "I like the beach at night. Being cold is part of it."

  He gazed at the dark ocean. "You know when I like the beach best?"

  Somehow I knew the answer. "January?"

  He turned his head to look at me. "How did you know?"

  I pictured the winter light, the vast, open sand. "It's my favorite time on the beach too. It's so empty that I can pretend that I own it. Or, even better, that no one owns anything because there's no one here. Sometimes I look around and imagine what it was like when it was just the Indians here, living off the land."

  "You've been here in the winter?"

  Oops. "Here? No. But other beaches. For weekends and stuff." (Nice save.)

  Satisfied with my answer, he returned his gaze to the ocean. "What do you think the Indians ate?" he mused. "Just fish and berries?"

  "Nah--I bet they ordered breakfast burritos and milk shakes from the snack shack."

  He laughed and turned to me. "You're funny."

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  "That surprises you."

  "Not really." He didn't sound very convincing. "I'm more than just a pretty face." I tossed my hair for dramatic effect.

  "I know you are. I've known that since ..."

  "When?" I asked, a little too eagerly.

  He shot me a sly grin. "Since the first time I saw you."

  "Oh." I swallowed with disappointment.

  He touched my face. "What?"

  "Nothing." I picked up some sand and let it run through my fingers. "Just, the first time you saw me ..."

  "It blew me away. How pretty you were." I tried to smile.

  "Pretty isn't the right word," he said, mistaking my lukewarm reaction as a desire for greater praise. "You're, like, a goddess. I've never seen anyone even half as beautiful as you. I mean, not in real life, anyway. There's girls on television and stuff, but they've got all that makeup and hair extensions. And they do stuff with lighting to make them look better. Those girls could be three hundred pounds, with hook noses, and they'd still make them look good."

  My Golden Couple glow had passed. I felt like he was talking about someone else--which of course, he was. I kept playing with the sand and didn't say anything.

  "I should probably just shut up now," he said.

  "Huh?" I looked up.

  "The first time I saw you, I guess I acted like an idiot. And I didn't think you liked me at all. And you were so pretty, but I kind

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  of thought you were, well, I don't want to say a bitch, but --" He stopped dead. "Oh, God. I've just blown it, haven't I?" I burst out laughing. "No, not at all."

  He took a deep breath. "There's something about you-- some ... something. When I saw you at the beach today, I thought you'd blow me off again, so I wasn't going to say any-thing. But then, just seeing how cool you were with those kids-- and how hard you tried in the water, even after you got knocked over. I mean, you're just ... fearless. And so, yeah, at first I did think you were just a pretty face. But you're more than that. A lot more."

  He fell back on the sand, crossing his arms under his head. "I'm not good at this."

  I lay down next to him, crossing my arms as he had done. Our elbows touched. "Maybe you just need practice. You can keep talking, if you want. I mean, about how fabulous I am."

  He laughed. "Nah. I wouldn't want to use up all of my good material at once. Hey! Did you see that?"

  "What?"

  "A shooting star! Make a wish! Look--there's another one!"

  "Nate?"

  "Yeah?"

  "That's an airplane. It just went behind a cloud." Silence, and then: "Oh, crap." We smiled in the darkness. "What did you wish?" I asked. "If I tell you, it won't come true."

  "It won't come true anyway," I said. "You can't wish on an airplane."

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  "I can if I want to."

  I thought it about it a moment and then said, "Good point. In that case, I think I'll wish on the airplane too."

  Later we held hands as he walked me home. The water splashed our feet. I took off the flip-flops so the flowers wouldn't get ruined. My toes were numb, and my sandy cuffs chafed my ankles. I didn't care. Our pace was slow, but eventually we reached the rocks that kept the ocean from washing away the Ice Cube House.

  Nate took my other hand, the one holding what I thought was both my flip-flops, and we faced each other. "You lost a shoe," he said.

  He was right. I was down to one pink flip-flop. The other was probably on its way out to sea.

  "Oh, no." I felt worse than I should have over the loss of something plastic and rubber.

  "I can go back and look for it."

  I shook my head. "I won't need it after tonight."

  He pulled me over to the rock wall, and we scrambled onto a boulder right next to the "Keep Off Rocks" sign. The moon had risen high in the sky, escaping the clouds and giving the ocean an eerie glow. He put his arm around me. I leaned against his chest, my long blond hair cascading over his sweatshirt. The water flowed toward us and then back, forward and back, in an endless, unstoppable rhythm, like the beating of a heart.

  "Is it nice staying in that place?" he asked, looking above the rocks.

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  "Not as nice as you'd expect. It's ... cold. Everything's white and steel. Most of the floors are concrete." Then I thought about Larissa's body. "But it does have certain benefits."

  He stroked my head. I leaned into his hand like a cat. "Do you really have to leave tomorrow?" he murmured.

  I nodded. "I wish I could stay." It was true--I did. For a little bit longer, at least. But then, school was starting tomorrow, and there was no way I could miss it.

  "Maybe you'll come back next summer."

  "Maybe." I looked in his light eyes, and in that moment I believed he was seeing me--the real me, not the me in Larissa's body or even the me in my own body, but the very essence of myself.

  Then he put his hand on the back of my head and we kissed and I forgot all about whose body I was in. It was just me, Nate's lips, and the pounding of the waves. I slipped my arms around him and held on tight. He tasted salty. It wasn't until later that I wondered whether this counted as my first kiss. Did I have to use my own lips?

  "I should get going," he said finally. "I was supposed to be home over an hour ago. School starts tomorrow."

&
nbsp; "What time is it?"

  He checked his watch. "Almost midnight."

  "Midnight?" I gasped. "I've got to go."

  We slid down the rocks and stood for one last moment on the cold sand, holding hands and looking at each other as if we could stop time.

  But we couldn't. I kissed him on the cheek and whispered, "Good-bye. I'll never forget you." Then I scurried up the stairs

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  without letting myself look back. I fled through the shadows at the side of the house, dropping the single pink flip-flop into a trash can before sliding open the glass door.

  The house was dark and quiet. My pillows were just where I'd left them, made into the bed to look like my body. Well, like Larissa's body. I'd need more pillows to make it look like mine.

  The big gray T-shirt was dirty from the beach, so I stripped down to my pink underwear and crawled under the covers, shoving the pillows back up where they belonged. It was a minute before midnight.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Nate. "Good night, sweet prince," I whispered as I fell into a deep and heavy sleep.

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  ***

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  "Boo!" The voice was loud, close.

  I'm dreaming, I thought. I must be dreaming. "Boo!"

  I kept my eyes squeezed shut, trying to remember my earlier dream. Something about Nate. About kissing Nate.

  "BOO!" This wasn't a dream. Someone was yelling in my ear. Only they weren't actually saying "Boo," they were saying:

  "BOOB!"

  My eyes popped open. It was morning, the gray light filtering through Larissa's pathetic excuse for a window. Prescott stood next to me, level with my face. I'd pushed my sheets off in the night, exposing the lacy little pink bra and my--

  "BOOBS!"

  "Be quiet!" I sat up and grabbed the sheet in one motion, pulling it up to cover me. I looked around the room in amazement. What was I still doing here? What had gone wrong? Where was Larissa?

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  Prescott clutched his stomach and bent over laughing. Prescott's cackling was even more annoying than Cameron's whining. "I saw your boobies! I saw your boobies!"

  "SHUT UP!" I said, thinking, If you were a dog, someone would put you down.

  He stared at me, shocked, and then he dissolved into angry tears. "You can't say shut up! I'm gonna tell!" He was wearing short summer pajamas, pale blue with airplanes. His blond hair was sticking up on one side.

  "Fine," I snapped. "Tell away."

  "You're gonna be in trouble! My mom's not gonna let you babysit us anymore."

  "Really? That's wonderful. I should have told you to shut up a long time ago." Seriously--it wasn't a bad strategy.

  At that, he crumpled to his feet and began pounding the floor. "I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

  I closed my eyes, my jaw tense. "And I'm supposed to care?"

  His howls turned to whimpers. "You don't like me." He sniffled.

  I was just about to say, "Yes, that's right. I don't like you, and I don't like your brother or your mother either," but then I caught a look at his face and it stopped me. For the first time since I'd been here, Prescott didn't look like the devil. Instead, he just looked like a sad and lonely four-year-old boy. (Of course, I reasoned, given that I'm a body switcher, it's entirely possible that Prescott is a shape changer.)

  I took a deep breath. "I like you."

  "No, you don't."

  "I do. I like you. You're ..." Here I struggled to come up with

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  something positive. "You're tough," I said finally. He was too: tough and feisty.

  He sat up and wiped his tears with the back of his bunched-up first. "Do you really think so?"

  Still holding the sheet over my front, I used the other hand to reach for a tissue on my nightstand. I handed it to Prescott. "Oh, yeah. You're one tough dude all right. The toughest four-year-old I've ever seen."

  "Larissa?"

  "Yeah."

  He held out the tissue. "Can you help me blow?"

  Cameron got up soon after Prescott. I stirred their chocolate milk as I watched the clock, counting the minutes until school began. Had my mother discovered the new me? Had Larissa figured out that this wasn't just a dream?

  I was so agitated, I could barely sit still. When Mrs. Sealy finally appeared, in yoga clothes again, I blurted out, "Can I go for a walk?"

  Mrs. Sealy fluttered her eyelashes tensely before saying, "Consuela will be out running errands this morning. I need you to be extra helpful, Larissa."

  I nodded silently while Prescott, to my amazement, took my hand.

  My waffles were way better than Consuela's, but Mrs. Sealy didn't have any because she was "avoiding glutens." Instead she drank some nasty-looking green stuff that she said was "cleansing." She offered me some. I passed. The boys had two waffles

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  each. I put away four, even though my stomach started to hurt after three. I knew it was wrong to beef up Larissa, but it was the only thing giving me any pleasure right now.

  After breakfast, Mrs. Sealy slathered the boys' pink skin with sunblock. "While I'm at yoga, you can take the boys down to the beach for an hour or two. Before the sun gets strong. After you've finished the breakfast dishes, I mean."

  I wore the brown bikini under shorts and a T-shirt, not that it mattered. I didn't plan to spend much time at the beach anyway. I stuck Larissa's cell phone in my pocket, though I couldn't imagine who I'd call.

  I expected to find Evelyn sitting on my front step. When I didn't see her there, I led the boys around to the back and peered through a window into the empty kitchen. "I have a friend who lives here," I explained. "I thought she might be home."

  I was seriously tempted to let myself into the house using the spare key that we kept in a bird feeder, but I was afraid that Cameron would rat me out to his mother. That kid was a total suck-up.

  I sat on the back steps. "Well. I guess she's not here." My voice quavered. I thought about my mother. Had she taken me--that is, the girl who looks like me--to the emergency room? To a mental hospital?

  I pulled out Larissa's cell phone and dialed the medical clinic. "Is Dr. Martin in today?" She was.

  "And is she ... there all day?"

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  She would be.

  I closed the phone and exhaled with relief. If my mother was at work, then she hadn't discovered me missing yet. Was I missing?

  "Let's go to the beach," I said to the boys, who were doing their best to destroy my mother's herb garden.

  Nate wasn't at the beach, of course. No one between the ages of five and eighteen was there. They were all in school.

  "When do you start school?" I asked Cameron as he filled a red plastic mold with sand. The mold was shaped like a car. He shrugged. He turned the mold over. The sand fell out, loose.

  "Are you going into kindergarten?" I asked.

  His face turned red. Well, redder. "I'm in preschool! My dad said I can't go to kindergarten yet because they don't let crybabies go to kindergarten!" At that, he started to cry.

  "You're not a crybaby," I said.

  "You mean it?"

  "I mean it." I took his shovel and dug until I reached damp sand. "Here. Let's fill the mold again. I bet it'll work this time."

  When the sun broke through the fog, we headed back to the rock wall. I climbed the concrete steps to the Ice Cube House ahead of the boys, who were studying some barnacles on the boulders. At the top of the steps, a brand-new boogie board lay on the grass. I started to reach for it when I noticed someone out of the corner of my eye.

  There was a man standing by the downstairs slider. When he saw me, he emerged from the shadows and walked in my direction. He was middle aged, his blond hair streaked with gray. He

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  wore a black polo shirt and khaki pants. He looked respectable enough, but he scared me. There was something hard about his squinty blue eyes.

  Ever since my encounter with the tattooed jogger, I'd been skittish ar
ound strange men.

  "Can I help you?" I asked, my heart beating faster.

  "I would hope so, Larissa," he said, glaring at me.

  I blinked in confusion. I didn't know what to say.

  "Perhaps you can tell me where I can find my wife and children?" he said finally.

  At that, I heard a little voice behind me call out, "Daddy!" Prescott darted across the lawn and grabbed his father's legs.

  "Hey there, Sport!" Mr. Sealy reached down to pick up Prescott, then tossed him in the air. I tried not to gasp as Prescott's solid but small body flew above his father's head and was relieved when he was safely back on the ground.

  I looked back at the steps to make sure that Cameron hadn't been washed away by a rogue wave. He stood there, the ocean behind him, looking very shy and small, even though he was older and taller than his brother.

  Mr. Sealy slapped his hands together as if wiping off traces of Prescott. "Hello, Cameron."

  "Hi, Daddy."

  "Are you just planning to stand there, or are you going to come over to say hello?"

  Cameron skulked across the lawn. When he reached his father, he held out his right hand, and they shook like two businessmen sealing a deal.

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  Mr. Sealy peered down at Cameron with his icy blue eyes. "You want me to throw you in the air?"

  Cameron shook his head and wrapped his skinny arms around his concave chest.

  Mr. Sealy rolled his eyes and then turned his gaze to me. I had been holding my breath, I suddenly realized, gulping some air.

  "Where is Mrs. Sealy?" he asked.

  "Yoga, I think."

  Consuela had lunch waiting: peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for the kids, chicken salad for the adults.

  "You eating?" she asked me, eyebrows raised.

  "Oh, yeah."

  "You want your chicken salad plain or you want it on a croissant?"