Switched

by Аманда Хокинг

  Switched

  Аманда Хокинг

  When Wendy Everly was six-years-old, her mother was convinced she was a monster and tried to kill her. It isn't until eleven years later that Wendy finds out her mother might've been telling the truth. With the help of Finn Holmes, Wendy finds herself in a world she never knew existed - and it's one she's not sure if she wants to be a part of.

  Prologue: Eleven Years Ago

  A few things made that day stand out more than any other: it was my sixth birthday, and my mother was wielding a knife. Not a tiny steak knife, but some kind of massive butcher that glinted in the light like a bad horror movie. In fairness, maybe the knife didn’t glint. Maybe my memory added it in like some silly CGI effect. I can’t say for sure. What I do know is that Mom definitely wanted to kill me.

  I’ve tried to think of the days and years that lead up to that one, to see if there was something that I should’ve noticed about my mom. Unfortunately, everything before it is pretty hazy. When I ask my older brother Matt about it, he always answers vaguely with things like, “She’s batshit, Wendy. That’s what happened.” He’s seven years older than me, so I know he has a better idea about the things that happened, about what Mom was really like, but he never wants to talk about it.

  The horrible truth is that I actually have no memory of Mom before that day. Not a one. I can remember doing Christmases and birthdays, and I can even remember my dad, who died when I was five, but not her. Psychologists have insisted that it’s just my way of processing trauma, but I just wish I could remember. Even if it was all bad things. Especially if it was all bad things.

  I’ll be the first to admit that I was a brat growing up. My aunt Maggie attests to this, but in a very light fashion and always follows it up with a hug and some reassuring sentiment about loving me no matter what. Matt won’t even joke about it. Whenever anyone makes a comment about me misbehaving as a child, he just purses his lips and insists that I was a normal, curious little girl. I definitely wasn’t, but I’m not the only one suppressing things, I guess.

  We lived in the Hamptons at the time, and my mother was a lady of leisure. Celia wasn’t there that day, and in retrospect, I’d say that was the big trigger. Celia was the third nanny I had, which is further evidence of my unruliness as a child. Matt had the same nanny his whole life until I was born and I proved to be too much for her. Celia and I got on rather well, but she had an emergency and left the night before. That meant my mother was in charge of me, for one of the few times in her life, and there was a party going on that day.

  Okay, I lied when I said I had no memory of my mother. I very distinctly remember her yelling for my brother, or my father, or the nanny, or my aunt, or anyone anywhere every time she was forced to interact with me. It was as if she couldn’t stand the sight of me. As it turns out, she probably couldn’t.

  My aunt Maggie came over a little bit later to help get ready for the party, and she eventually managed to rouse my mother. I was still in my pajamas with chocolate soy milk stains on my face, and she offered to get me ready. To this day, I have no idea how Mom ended up taking that over. It was so unlike her, and nobody can remember why she decided to actually take charge of me.

  The bath was a horrendous ordeal. I was an unnaturally filthy child, and she had to scrub at my skin, which only made me wail petulantly. My hair was the worst. It was a constant state of snarled mess, no matter how hard she combed at it, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying. I sat on the stool in front of her vanity, her hands holding me down tightly so I wouldn’t squirm away.

  She had let me wear her oversized plush robe when I got out of the bath, and it made me feel grand somehow. My hair was still damp as she raked the brush through it, and I screamed bloody murder and tears ran down my cheeks.

  She had a tri-mirror on her vanity, so I could see her from three different angles as she brushed my hair. Her cheeks were red from straining, and she was out of breath. Her own hair had been pulled back in some kind of ratty bun, so I don’t know how she could complain about my hair. She was still wearing my father’s red silk robe, the same way she had been every day since he died.

  Mom finally managed to get my hair to her liking, putting in clips with little pink bows on them. She chose some frilly pink dress to go with it, and I remember protesting like mad about it. I hated dresses, but she tackled me and forced me into it. Finally, she put on little lacy socks with shiny white shoes, and let me go so she could get ready herself.

  The thing is that I didn’t even want this party. I liked gifts and all that, but I didn’t have any friends. The people coming to the party, they were my mother’s friends and their snobby little kids. She had planned some kind of princess tea party thing, that Maggie and Matt and our maid had very dutifully spent all morning setting up. I did not want a princess party. I wanted dinosaurs, and I wanted to be outside running around. By the time the guests had started to arrive, I had already ripped off my shoes and socks and plucked the bows from my hair.

  Mom came down in the middle of opening gifts, looking almost the same as she did before I left. Her hair had been smoothed out, and she had put on bright red lipstick that only made her look paler. She was still wearing my father’s robe, but she had added a necklace and black heels with it, as if that would suddenly make the outfit appropriate. Nobody commented on it, but they were probably too busy staring at me with absolute horror. I had complained about every single gift I had gotten, and I had broken or thrown away a portion of them. They were all stupid dolls or ponies or some other thing I would never play with.

  When Mom came into the room, stealthy gliding through the guests to where I sat at the end of a long table, I had just torn through a box wrapped in pink teddy bears. It contained yet another porcelain doll, and before I could even finish my diatribe about it, I felt a hand slap me sharply across the face.

  “You are not my daughter,” Mom said, her voice her cold and emotionless. My cheek stung painfully from where she had hit me, and I just gaped at her.

  Maggie quickly redirected the festivities, but the idea must’ve been percolating in my mother’s mind the rest of the afternoon. I think when she said it, she meant it that way every parent does when their child does something they don’t understand. But the more she thought about it, the more it must’ve made sense to her.

  After an afternoon of similar tantrums on my part, and many scenes involving me or another child crying, someone decided that it was time to have cake. Mom seemed to be taking forever in the kitchen, and for some reason, Maggie let me go check on her. I don’t even know why Mom was the one getting the cake, instead of Maggie or the maid, who were both far more maternal.

  On the center of the island in the kitchen, there was a massive chocolate cake covered in pink flowers with a big wax number six in the middle.

  Mom stood on the other side, holding a gigantic knife she used to cut and serve the cake onto tiny saucers. Bobby pins were starting to come loose from her hair, and she had gotten a frantic look.

  “Chocolate?” I wrinkled my nose as Mom very carefully tried to set perfect pieces onto the saucers.

  “Yes, Wendy, you like chocolate,” Mom informed me.

  “No, I don’t!” I protested, crossing my arms over my chest. “I hate chocolate! I’m not going to eat it and you can’t make me!” While I did love chocolate soy milk, I generally despised all other chocolate, and most candy and sweets for that matter. Mom might have known that, but it might have been a simple oversight on her part.

  “Wendy!” Mom closed her eyes as if she had a terrible migraine.

  The knife just happened to be pointed in my direction, some frosting sticking on the tip. At the moment, I didn’t feel afraid. If I had, maybe everything would’ve gone different.
Instead I just felt like having another one of my tantrums.

  “No, no, no! It’s my birthday and I don’t want chocolate!” I shouted and stomped my foot on the floor as hard as I could.

  “You don’t want chocolate?” Mom looked at me, her blue eyes wide and incredulous. There was also a whole new type of crazy glinting in her eyes, and that’s when my fear belatedly started to kick in. “What is wrong with you, Wendy? What kind of child are you? Are you even a child?” I just stared at her as she slowly walked around the island, coming towards me. The knife was still in her hand, pointed up at the ceiling, but it looked far more menacing than it had a few seconds ago. “You’re certainly not my child. What are you, Wendy?”

  She bent down and gripped my shoulders tightly, digging her fingers into me like talons. When she started to shake me, she shouted and spittle splashed out on my face. “What are you really? What do you want? What do you want from me?!”

  I managed to wriggle away from her and took several steps back. I should’ve screamed or run away, but I didn’t understand what was going on.

  My mother looked completely maniacal. Her robe had fallen open, revealing her thin collarbones and the black slip she wore underneath. She took a step towards me, this time with the knife purposely pointed at me.

  “I was pregnant, Wendy! Where is my child? What are you and what did you do with my child?” Tears were forming in her eyes, and I just shook my head. “You probably killed him, didn’t you? That is just like you, Wendy. That is just like you!”

  She lunged at me, screaming at me to tell her what I was and what I did with her real baby. I darted out of the way just in time, but she was backing me into a corner. Once I was pressed up against the kitchen cupboards, I had nowhere to go, and she wasn’t about to give up.

  “Mom!” Matt yelled at her from the other side of the room. Her eyes flickered with some recognition, the sound of the son she actually loved, but she didn’t back away from her stance. In fact, she realized that she was running out of time, so she raised her knife.

  Matt dove at her, but not before the blade of her knife tore through my dress and slashed across my stomach. My cut wasn’t much worse than a flesh wound, but bled profusely and I sobbed hysterically. Mom was still fighting hard against Matt, refusing to let go of the knife.

  “She killed your brother, Mathew!” Mom insisted, looking at him with frantic eyes. “She’s a monster! She has to be stopped, Mathew! She has to be stopped!”

  1

  A pool of drool unceremoniously spilled out across my desk, and I had opened my eyes just in time to hear Mr. Meade slam a dictionary down on the table. I had only been here a month, but I had already ascertained that this was his way of waking me up from my daily naps during his History lecture. I knew he got some kind of kick out of startling students awake, so I refused to let myself be jarred or react in anyway. Lately, I had been managing to wake up a second before he tried to wake me, which made it easier to ignore. This time, I didn’t do anything at all. In fact, I closed my eyes again and pretended to keep sleeping.

  “Miss Everly?” Mr. Meade snapped, clearly not happy with my reaction, and I had to fight to keep the smile back. “Miss Everly?”

  “Hmm?” I murmured.

  I lifted my head and tried to wipe away the drool as discreetly as possible. Surreptitiously, I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, and that bitch Tegan Lively was looking at me with a devilish smile, so I had a feeling she’d seen it. She pushed her golden locks out of her face and winked at me in a strangely seductive manner, and I had no response to that.

  Most of the class seemed pretty oblivious, except for Finn Holmes.

  He’d been here a week, so he was the only kid in school newer than me. There was something oddly still and quiet about him, and I was fairly certain that I had yet to hear him speak, even though he was in four of my classes. His black hair was smoothed back, and his eyes were so dark they were almost black.

  Whenever I looked at him, he always seemed to be staring at me in a completely unabashed way, like it was perfectly natural to just sit in class and look at me all the time. With his rather striking looks, he was attractive, but there was nothing flattering about the way he looked at me. He just stared, the way I stare at the TV when something boring’s on. I feel compelled to look, but I don’t really care or even notice what’s happening.

  “Sorry to disturb your sleep,” Mr. Meade cleared his throat so I would look up at him, and I purposely yawned loudly.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Go easy on her, Mr. Meade,” Tegan chimed in, her voice deceptively sweet. “Wendy was just getting her beauty sleep, and she needs all the help she can get.”

  The class snickered at that, and I turned back to glare at her.

  Unfortunately, that Finn kid sat behind her. He wasn’t laughing at her joke, but he didn’t disapprove either. For a change of pace, he was looking down at his book, and a strand of hair fell across his forehead.

  “Then you must be about due for a coma,” I told Tegan, and her plastic smile grew harder. Finn almost seemed to smirk at that, but I was probably imagining things. He never had expressions.

  “Miss Everly, why don’t you go down to the principal’s office?” Mr.

  Meade suggested tiredly, and I groaned. “Since you seem to be making a habit of sleeping in my class, maybe he can come up with some ideas to help you stay awake.”

  “I’m awake,” I insisted hopefully.

  “Miss Everly, now.” Mr. Meade pointed to the door, as if I had forgotten how to leave and that’s what was holding me back.

  “Fine,” I huffed and shoved my books into my bookbag. I don’t know why I even took my books out, since I had designated History as my afternoon nap time.

  “She’s just lucky she didn’t drown in her own drool,” Tegan sneered as I made my way towards the door.

  Restraint had never been my strong suit, but I was really working on it.

  I gripped the strap of my bookbag tightly and gritted my teeth as I walked out of the class, but I didn’t pause or look back. You cannot punch Tegan in the face, you cannot punch Tegan in the face, I kept repeating over and over in my head. It had basically been my mantra since I started here, but it was getting harder and harder to uphold.

  I walked slowly down the hall towards the principal’s office, admiring the battered lockers. There were bright colored fliers posted everywhere, telling everyone to join the Debate team, try out for the school play, and not to miss the fall semi-formal this Friday. I wondered what a “semi-formal” consisted of at a public school, but I hadn’t bothered to ask anyone. Besides that, since I had never been to a dance of any kind, I had nothing to compare it to.

  The principal’s secretary was a pudgy woman with dark curly hair, and she gave me the same severe look over her glasses that she did every time I came in the office. It was neither disappointed nor disapproving, but rather just as she expected. I could almost imagine her pleading with the principal not to accept me before I started. “No, no, not this one. She’s a bad egg,” she’d say until she was red in the face.

  Without saying a word, she picked up the phone to let the principal know I was here. The principal had yet to yell at me, but he always looked at me with that same mixture of concern and pity that everyone gave me. Well, everyone that knew about my mother at least. As if every misdeed in my entire life could be explained away and forgiven because of a single day in my childhood.

  “The principal is in meetings all afternoon,” his secretary told me after she set down the receiver. “He said to go see the counselor.”

  “Right,” I sighed. That had been his go-to lately, meaning he was giving up hope.

  Seeing the counselor was definitely worse than seeing the principal, but I guess that made it a more fitting punishment. Her office was two doors down from him, and it was always physically open, to represent her open-door policy.

  Tentatively, I knocked on her partially open doo
r, hoping that she too was locked in meetings all afternoon.

  “Come in!” Ms. Page called, and I grimaced inwardly and stepped inside her office. She had been doing something in one of her drawers, but she looked up when I walked in, and her expression fell. “Wendy.”

  “Hey,” I gave her a half-wave and immediately felt stupid after I did it.

  “Have a seat,” Ms. Page smiled grimly at me and straightened a loose strand of her strawberry blond curls. The flashy diamond on her finger assured me that she was engaged, which explained her irrational happiness and optimism. I could tell that I was starting to wear down on that. Somehow that made me feel an odd blend of pride and guilt.

  I closed the door behind me, then sat down in the semi-padded chair across from her and dropped my bookbag by my feet with a heavy thud. Ms.

  Page crossed her hands on her desk and waited for me to talk, which was a silly move on her part.

  “So…” Ms. Page said at length, when the silence had dragged on too long for her. “What brings you here this time?”

  “I fell asleep in Mr. Meade’s class,” I answered.

  I wasn’t nervous, but I felt I should play the part, so I looked down at my hands and started twisting the platinum ring I always wore on my thumb.

  Fashion had always seemed like a totally alien concept to me, so I tended to just load up on whatever seemed like a good idea. Today that meant jean skirt to my knees and a long-sleeved curve-hugging sweater. I had kicked off my skimmers almost as soon as I sat down out of my massive hatred of shoes.

  “Again?” Her voice rang with that familiar tone, and I exhaled loudly.

  “Wendy, why do you keep doing this? I know you’re bright. Your tests show your IQ is above 140, but you’re not on track for graduation. You’re failing most of your classes, and you only transferred here a month ago.”

  “I know, I know.” I twisted around my thumb ring and slumped lower in the seat.