by Tish Cohen
I finally understand what it’s like to be the foster child. To have Mom fawn all over me and want so badly to erase my ugly past. If this is what every foster kid feels upon coming into this house, they are the lucky ones. Truly.
As for me, I’m lucky to have my mother back.
Like Nigel says, for every itch there’s a scratch. And this hug is a scratch I’ve been wanting for a good long time.
I spend the day hanging with Joules and Bray, who has admitted that ever since Tomas and the others were implicated in the break-and-enter, he doesn’t see them any more. Then I hang with Cici and Sam and the Ks. We have Mom’s spaghetti for supper. As she’s serving, I notice that the tan line where her engagement ring used to be has vanished. As if the ring never existed.
After dinner, as Joules and I are washing the dishes with the yellow Playtex gloves Mom bought to replace Gran’s, the doorbell rings. There’s a great fuss in the hall—Mom and Gran chatter excitedly to someone we cannot hear. I slip a dry plate into the cupboard and go out into the foyer to find a couple standing with the flowered pants lady.
The man has a bandage wrapped around his head and the woman is in a wheelchair. Adrenaline surges through me as I realize I recognize these two. Here, in my house, are Michaela’s parents.
Mom is beaming. She turns to me and says quietly, “Run and get Michaela, Joules, will you? Tell her her parents have come to take her home.”
Bray walks past with a textbook in his hand and gives the couple no more than a fleeting glance. He has no idea they’re the Disneyland couple. To him, they’re just another set of broken parents coming to pick up their child. He’s seen it before.
“Joules?” Mom says.
The image of Nigel’s SUV, the shattered windshield, won’t allow my feet to move just yet. I glance back toward the kitchen, where Joules is still busy at the sink. She has no idea she’s fifteen feet away from the family her father nearly destroyed.
I don’t have the heart to tell her. Mom’s been keeping it hush-hush from all the kids. She’s been cryptic with Joules about it. There’s a good chance it will never be discussed. There’s also a good chance it will. But Joules has been through enough, and it’s been a nice evening. She can find out the truth another time.
“Go on, Joules,” Mom says with a smile. “Mr. and Mrs. Vikolos are waiting.”
I head into the room I now share with Joules and find Michaela sitting like a frog on the floor, humming as she plays with my old stuffed animals. She’s wearing the same yellow dress she arrived in. As I squat down beside her I realize she’s humming “Rock-a-bye, Baby.” The lullaby.
“Michaela, guess who’s here?”
She looks up but says nothing.
“Your mom and dad. Want me to take you to see them?”
She nods.
I pick her up—she’s light as a piece of paper, for all her dangling limbs. Holding her close, I reach for the stuffed dog she slept with that first night. “You keep him, okay?”
Once again, she nods. But now she has the beginnings of a smile on her lips.
As I head out of the room, I realize I will likely never see her again. I stop, look at her. “I want you to remember something, Michaela. What happened that night happened. It was terrible but it’s over. You are not your past. That accident is gone now, okay?”
She stares at me and cocks her head. I wonder if she’s detected that I sound like Lise. It’s at this moment that I make a decision about my life. I never want to live too far away from this family. I never want to go to Stanford, not when Cal State Fullerton is just down the road.
“You have a great life ahead of you now with your parents,” I say to Michaela. “It’s all good now. You will never be that alone again.”
She studies me a moment and her little chest fills with breath. She reaches up to play with my hair as I take her to where her parents wait.
I stand on the darkened front porch for a long time after the Vikoloses’ taillights vanish, thinking I’ll tell Nigel during visiting hours tomorrow that they’re okay now. This couple. He’ll be glad of it. Joules is going to come with me. It’s the only way she can stay close to him now, through me.
Joules steps out of the house’s glow and stands beside me. I notice she’s wearing my black sneakers. She pokes me in the side. “Do you want to go back to the bridge again tonight? I’m feeling lucky.”
We’ve been back to look for the gloves half a dozen times. There’s never been any sign of them. There will never be any sign of them. The last thing on earth I want to do is go poke around there with flashlights right now.
Gran steps out from behind Joules. “I think it’s a good idea. To go to the bridge.”
“It’s useless,” I say. “We’ve scoured the area. The gloves are gone.”
“Maybe you don’t need them,” says Gran. “Maybe you can make your wish without any gloves at all.”
I look at her as if she’s insane. Which she clearly is. “We’ve tried it that way. And under the train. And in a rainstorm. It doesn’t work.”
Gran steps closer, slightly unsteady from the glass of wine she had at dinner. There’s a mischievous little twinkle in her eye as she pulls something out of her pocket and hands it to Joules. A cloudy hunk of filthy crystal with divots and cracks and not a bit of shine to it. “That same day, I bought the fortune teller’s crystal ball.”
“Ball?” Joules squints down at it. “More of a crystal rock, isn’t it?”
“Looks like you dug it up in the garden,” I say as Joules turns it over in her hands. She passes it to me and I hold it up to the light to try and peer into the center, which looks all murky and full of sand.
“What can I say?” Gran shrugs. “I needed a paperweight for my study. But who knows? It might do the trick”
“So do we make the wish here?” asks Joules. “Or go back to the bridge and wait for a train?”
“If you do it here,” says Gran, suppressing a smile, “one of you is liable to trade places with Brayden.”
Joules grimaces. “We’ll go to the bridge.”
I wrap my arms around Gran’s neck and plant a kiss on her powdered cheek. “You’re the best.”
She shoves me away, feigning annoyance. “Off with the two of you.” She sets her hand over the crystal. “And be careful. That’s your last chance you’re juggling like that!”
chapter 28
We wrap the crystal rock in one of Sam’s leg warmers before climbing out the window. Gran is right; we can’t afford to smash this thing. It’s not like a roadside fortune teller in Africa would be so easy to find.
It isn’t raining tonight, but it’s good and dark, and we didn’t hear a train as we approached so chances are there’ll be one coming along fairly soon. We plop ourselves down in the gravel beneath the bridge, unwrap the crusty little boulder and make a groove for it in the dirt so it doesn’t roll away.
“This might not work,” says Joules. “We should be prepared for that.”
“I know. But whatever happens, it won’t be like before. We’re too … I don’t know, interconnected now.”
She tucks her hair behind her ears. Then picks at the stones. “I want you to have him. Whichever way this goes.”
“Will?”
“Will.”
“You’re sure?”
She nods.
I think about this for a moment, hardly daring to breathe. “I kissed him the other day. At school.”
“I didn’t need to know it, but thanks for sharing.”
“Sorry.”
“Whatever. It’s fine.”
“Do you mind if I tell him we’re about to switch back?”
She looks at me, incredulous. “He knows about all this? He believed you?”
“Sort of. As much as anyone else can.”
“Wow.” She throws a pebble toward the street. “You better tell him now, then. Before the train comes.”
I pull her phone from my pocket and text Will: About to wish ourselves
back again. How would you like to date a girl with 38 siblings?
Just as I slide the phone back into my pocket, the ground begins to rumble.
“Should we hold hands?” Joules asks, scooting closer to the crystal. “Make sure we’re touching?”
The original wish was made while I was here and she was at Will’s—a good two miles away—but I don’t point that out. I take hold of her hands and wait. We stare at each other and blink as the train gets closer and flecks of debris start to rain down on us. Joules gets grit on her lip and laughs, spits it away. We squeeze each other’s hands tighter and pull each other close as the train bursts onto the bridge and thunders overhead. Then we both say it.
“I wish I was myself again.”
chapter 29
I lift my face off the pillow. The sun is out but it’s missing the window entirely. Which means I’m facing west. Which means I’m in my old room. But I’m not in the twin bed where Michaela’s cot used to be. I’m in my own bed. Which means …
I sit up and pull off the covers.
Yes!
Yes!
I am me again! Andrea Birch, for real!
I leap out of bed and look in the mirror, laughing like a crazy person when I see my actual self looking back. And there, in the other bed, is Joules. Sound asleep. I go to wake her but stop when I see the letter from Stanford on my bulletin board. My interview with Mortimer Wolf is today—my last-ditch, if-you-cancel-you-get-no-second-chance interview. If I don’t show, I can never apply to Stanford again.
It’s okay. Like I said, Cal State Fullerton is just down the street.
A few seconds later, there’s a tap at the window.
Will.
I open it up and kneel on the floor so we can be face to face. Our forearms touch, both resting on the sill. Grinning, I say, “It worked, Will! I’m me again.”
“I can see that.”
“It feels so good. My arms, my legs.” My less cumbersome chest, I don’t say.
“I’m sure.”
I tap my pinkie against his. “But weird for you, right? As in, who were you with all this time?”
Will smiles, shakes his head and presses his forehead against mine. “Nope. I know exactly who I was with all this time. I was with Andie Birch.”
Andie Birch. The Lucky One.
acknowledgments
Thanks go out …
To the two best agents a writer could ask for: the elegant Kassie Evashevski at United Talent Agency and the brilliant Daniel Lazar at Writers House. Kassie, I’m sorry I spilled on your chair. Dan, apologies for all the whining. And fretting. And way-too-long e-mails in the middle of the night, mostly full of whining and fretting.
To my agents’ assistants, Dana Borowitz (United Talent Agency) and Stephen Barr (Writers House)—both of whom can answer a question before you ask it. To Maja Nikolic at Writers House for introducing Switch to other parts of the globe. To my sensational editors: Lynne Missen at HarperCollins Canada and Greg Ferguson at Egmont USA. To managing editor Noelle Zitzer and copy editor Catherine Marjoribanks—you made Switch a better book. To Regina Griffin and Elizabeth Law at Egmont USA, for being on my side.
To Melissa Zilberberg at HarperCollins Canada for publicity efforts that never stop. To Charidy Johnston and Cory Beatty at HarperCollins Canada for being smart and funny and not losing me in that dark field in Calgary. To Leo MacDonald for supporting my career 1,000 percent.
To Steve for early comments and support. Most of all to Max and Lucas for giving me life.
Copyright
Switch
Copyright © 2011 by Tish Cohen.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Published by HarperTrophyCanada™, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Published simultaneously in the United States by Egmont USA.
FIRST CANADIAN EDITION
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EPub Edition © APRIL 2011 ISBN: 978-1-443-40716-8
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