Airhead a-1

by Meg Cabot

  ‘I know what she’ll feel like eating,’ Mom said, her nose wrinkling a little, the way it always does when she’s about to say something she thinks is funny. ‘Ice-cream sundae. Right, Em?’

  ‘With a chocolate-chip cookie on the side,’ Dad said, looking a little more like his normal self, and not Fake Cheerful Guy.

  ‘Is that what you want… Em?’ Frida asked.

  Except, weirdly… it wasn’t.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. Because I couldn’t remember a time when I hadn’t wanted ice cream and a cookie. Until now.

  Oddly though, that ‘Sure’ turned out to be the right thing to say. Because for the first time since I’d woken up and seen her, Frida smiled. Tentatively, but still. It was a smile. Then she said, ‘Be right back,’ and took off.

  Which was pretty strange in itself. I mean, when was the last time my little sister had ever been eager to bring me food… in bed? The fact that Frida was so willing to fetch and carry for me told me way more about how hurt I must be than my dad’s fake cheer or my mom’s teariness.

  ‘So what happened?’ I asked when Frida was safely out of earshot.

  ‘Why am I here? Was there an accident? A subway accident?’

  Mom frowned. ‘You don’t remember? Going to Stark’s? Anything?’

  Going to Stark’s? Gabriel had mentioned something about Stark’s, too. A grand opening. Something about those words seemed to tickle my memory, but when I tried to remember, it was like it was just out of my grasp…

  ‘We don’t have to talk about that now,’ Dr Holcombe said hastily.

  ‘Let’s concentrate on getting you better.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I mean… I’ve been out of school for a month?

  What, have I been in a coma or something?’

  ‘The, er, accident didn’t cause the coma,’ Mom said gently. ‘Dr Holcombe placed you in a chemical coma, so that you could heal more comfortably. He’s been bringing you slowly out of it over the past few days, to see how you were doing.’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘What part of me is hurt, exactly? Because I feel pretty good. Except for my head. And my voice. Do you hear how weird my voice sounds?’

  My mom and dad looked at Dr Holcombe, who said to me, ‘Well, Emerson, the truth is, your injuries were, in fact, extremely severe. We used a special technique we’ve developed in order to save your life, since the type of injury you suffered is, in fact, fatal.’

  I blinked at him. ‘But I’m alive.’

  ‘Because the procedure worked,’ Dad explained.

  ‘Worked isn’t the word for it,’ Dr Holcombe enthused, his eyes glittering excitedly behind his plastic-framed glasses. ‘Your recovery up until now has far, far surpassed our expectations. We certainly didn’t expect you to be speaking, much less for you to possess any sort of motor skills, until many days from now, if not weeks. But like with any risky medical procedure, no one can be one hundred per cent certain of the outcome. And you’re going to notice that some things — like your voice, for instance, which you already mentioned — might not seem the same as they did before your accident—’

  ‘That’s why it’s very important that you do what the doctors and nurses here tell you,’ Dad said.

  ‘Such as, don’t take off your sensors,’ Dr Holcombe said, picking up one he’d missed before and attaching it to my temple.

  ‘And no homework,’ Mom said. She’d recovered herself and wiped the tears from her eyes. Now she attempted a smile… and didn’t do a half bad job at it. ‘Understand? You need to concentrate on getting better first. Then we’ll worry about what’s going to happen with school.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, glancing from her face to Dad’s, looking for some clue — any clue — as to what was really going on. Why were they treating me like I was in the first grade? Concentrate on getting better? Who did they think they were kidding? Why wasn’t anyone levelling with me? ‘But… I’ve really been in here a month? Can I at least call Christopher and find out what’s happening in school? He must be wondering how I am. I’m his only friend, you know… ’

  But no one exactly rushed to get me a phone. Instead everyone said I needed to rest, that Christopher was fine and that they’d get me my laptop (my other request) soon. And Dr Holcombe did call a nurse over to unplug some of my more intrusive and bothersome wires (not all of them, it turned out, were attached to a sticker. Some of them were attached to needles that went UNDER my skin. It was quite a relief to get rid of those, in addition to the ones that pinged so noisily every time I moved).

  So by the time Frida got back with my ice cream and cookie, everyone was treating me less like a hospital patient and a little more like a normal person.

  ‘Here,’ Frida said, putting the ice cream — which she’d slathered with hot fudge, whipped cream and nuts — on the bed tray one of the nurses had set up in front of me. Next to the ice cream lay an enormous chocolate-chip cookie — the kind I used to eat four or five of a day, if I had the money for them.

  Now the thought of putting any of that sugary stuff into my mouth actually made me feel a little sick. Which was weird, because normally dessert is my favourite meal of the day.

  Still, everyone — Mom and Dad, Frida, Dr Holcombe, three nurses who had wandered into my room and the orderly who had been in my hallucination (because it had definitely been a hallucination. No way had Lulu Collins been in my room… with Nikki Howard’s dog, no less) — seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for me to take a taste of the sundae Frida had brought me.

  So I did the only thing I could. I lifted the spoon and dipped it into the bowl. Then I brought it — carefully, remembering what had happened with the water — to my lips and took a big bite.

  ‘Mmmm,’ I said.

  Everyone in the room exhaled at the same time. And smiled. And laughed. The orderly high-fived one of the nurses. While I took a really fast gulp of water. Because all that sugar? It tasted totally gross to me.

  What was happening to me? Since when did I hate ice cream?

  What had this doctor done to me?

  Fortunately no one noticed. Everyone chattered away about how great it was that I was making so much progress so soon.

  Which was flattering and all, but might have meant more to me if I’d known exactly what I was making progress from. I mean, what was I supposed to be recovering from? What had happened to me? Which part of me was hurt?

  And what exactly was this ‘procedure’ they’d used on me?

  Dr Holcombe had been right about one thing: I was beginning to notice that some things were different than they’d been before the accident.

  And not just my not liking ice cream any more. That was the least of it. The weirdest thing so far was how the people in my own family acted around me… as if they didn’t know me.

  Almost as if — and I know it sounded crazy — but almost as if I was someone else.

  Seven

  ‘What — what’s going on?’

  That’s what I asked the doctor and nurse — both wearing full surgery gowns, including masks — who showed up in what seemed to be the middle of the night to shake me awake, then transfer me from my bed to a hospital wheeled stretcher.

  ‘Shh,’ said the nurse, pointing at my mom, dozing in the chair next to my bed. ‘Don’t wake her up. She’s exhausted.’

  ‘But where are we going?’ I asked, stiffly rolling from my bed to the stretcher.

  ‘Just to do some tests,’ the doctor whispered.

  ‘In the middle of the night?’ I asked groggily ‘Can’t they wait until morning?’

  ‘These are very important tests,’ the nurse said. ‘They can’t wait.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, sinking down against the thin mattress. As usual, I was so tired. I was dimly aware that they were wheeling me down a long, empty hospital corridor. But they could have been rolling me down the middle of Times Square and I wouldn’t have known the difference, that’s how sleepy I was.

  ‘How we doing?’ the doctor asked
when he stopped the stretcher to push the button to an elevator, way down at the end of the hall, about a thousand miles, it seemed, from my room.

  ‘Fine,’ I murmured, at the same time that the nurse pulled her mask down to say, ‘Looks good so far. There was no one even sitting at the nurses’ station. The whole floor is empty. I think we’re going to make it.’

  That’s when I got my first good look at her.

  And I realized she wasn’t a nurse at all.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, feeling suddenly wide awake. I leaned up on my elbows.

  And, my head didn’t feel at all throbby any more. ‘You’re —’

  The elevator doors chose that moment to slide open.

  ‘Go!’ Lulu Collins yelled at the guy in the surgical mask.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I demanded as the two of them rammed my hospital stretcher into the elevator.

  ‘We’re kidnapping you,’ Lulu explained, stabbing the button marked B for basement. ‘But it’s all right. It’s us, Nik. Me and Brandon. Show her, Brandon.’

  And the doctor — although I guess that’s not who he was after all — peeled off his surgical mask and looked down at me.

  ‘It’s me, Nik,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘Brandon. See? Everything’s going to be all right. We came to rescue you.’

  ‘Rescue —’ I blinked right back at him. He was young, blond and impossibly handsome.

  And clearly completely insane.

  ‘I think there’s been a really big mistake,’ I said. Was I hallucinating again? Except that I couldn’t be. Because hallucinations were never this detailed, were they? I could hear each ping of the elevator as it went down. And I could smell Lulu’s fruity perfume (or maybe that was her gum). And I could see that Brandon was sprouting a pretty serious case of five o’clock — in this case, five o’clock in the morning — blond shadow along his jaw.

  It wasn’t until we emerged from the elevator into the hospital’s underground garage, and my captors wheeled me towards a limo — yes. A limo. Black stretch — that I realized just how dire the situation really was. Because there wasn’t even anyone around to hear me if I screamed for help. The place was echoingly empty.

  That’s when Lulu turned to Brandon and said, ‘She’s not going to get in willingly. She still has no idea who we are.’And he gave a sigh, turned around and swiftly yanked me off the stretcher and over his shoulder.

  Now, I may have just spent a month in a coma or whatever. But I wasn’t about to let myself get kidnapped by a celebutante and her FFBF henchman. I sucked in my breath and let out a shriek that I swear had to have been heard halfway to New Jersey —

  — if there’d been anybody around to hear it, that is.

  There wasn’t. Brandon stuffed me, kicking and biting any part of him with which I came into contact, into the rear seat of the limo, then settled into the seat opposite mine and sat there looking hurt. And not just physically.

  ‘Jesus, Nikki,’ he said, as Lulu jumped in beside him and yelled at the chauffeur to go… ‘It’s me. Brandon! You know me. We’re going out!’

  And the thing of it was… I kind of did recognize him. Seriously. From some of Frida’s magazines. It was Brandon Stark — as in Stark Megastores. Brandon Stark as in the Brandon Stark, Nikki Howard’s onagain, off-again album-producing boyfriend. Brandon Stark as in heir to the Stark family fortune… which one magazine of Frida’s put at a net worth of like a billion dollars or something.

  Which pretty much makes him the richest person I’ve ever met.

  But that still didn’t mean it was OK for him to grab me and then stuff me in a limo like that.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I demanded of both him and Lulu. ‘Can’t you see I’m sick?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lulu said, pulling off her surgical gown and mask. I could see that, underneath it, her make-up and skintight black catsuit were still perfectly in place. ‘It’s just that we couldn’t think of any other way to get you out of there. I mean, seeing as how they’re brainwashing you.’

  ‘No one is brainwashing me,’ I cried. ‘What are you talking about? I don’t even know you!’

  This was the wrong thing to say. Lulu and Brandon exchanged glances.

  ‘See what I mean?’ she asked him under her breath.

  Brandon, meanwhile — all six-foot four or five of him — gaped down at me. He was so good-looking, in a frat-boy way — sort of like Jason Klein, Whitney’s boyfriend. He had a big square jaw and blond hair that hung a little bit into his green eyes… but maybe that was just because he was still partially wearing the surgical mask on top of his head. ‘Nikki… what did they do to you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I complained. ‘That’s the other thing. Why do you people keep calling me Nikki?’

  ‘Oh God.’ Lulu dropped her head into her hands, while Brandon just stared at me as if I’d asked him why carbon-based life forms need to breathe oxygen.

  The limo driver turned his head and asked calmly, ‘Back to Ms Howard’s loft, Mr Stark?’

  Lulu lifted her head to say, ‘Oh God, yes.’ She looked over at Brandon, slumped beside her. ‘Maybe if she sees something familiar… ’

  ‘Yeah, to the loft, Tom,’ Brandon said in a dejected voice.

  ‘You guys can’t do this,’ I said, trying to stay calm. Which wasn’t easy, considering everything that was going on. I mean, that I had just been kidnapped. In a hospital gown, no less. I didn’t even have any shoes on. So it wasn’t like I could throw myself at the car door and bail.

  ‘Nikki,’ Lulu said in a patient voice. ‘We’re doing this for you. Because we love you. Whatever they’ve told you… it’s a lie. All right? We’re your friends.’

  ‘I’m more than your friend,’ Brandon said, coming to sit beside me. A little too close to me, actually. Why was he… looking at me like that? The neon lights from the signs on the buildings we were driving past along Second Avenue flickered across his face, turning it from pink to blue to green and then back again. ‘I’m your boyfriend. How can you not remember me?’

  I had to hand it to him… he sounded genuinely upset. He wasn’t faking it. His deep voice broke on the word boyfriend, and everything. It was almost moving.

  Or at least, it would have been, if I hadn’t been convinced the two of them were completely off their rockers.

  ‘If you guys make this limo turn round,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking (yeah. Good luck with that), ‘and take me back to the hospital, I promise I won’t press kidnapping charges. No one will have to know. Just drop me off and I’ll never mention it again.’

  ‘Kidnapping?’ Brandon looked stunned. ‘We aren’t kidnapping you!’

  ‘Yes, we are, actually,’ Lulu said to him. She’d dug an energy drink from the limo’s mini-fridge and was gulping from it. ‘I mean, that’s what this is, really. Only I prefer the term intervention.’

  ‘How can she not know who we are?’ Brandon asked her. ‘Who she is?’

  Lulu shook her head. ‘I told her to stay away from those Scientologists… ’

  I took a deep breath, still fighting for calm.

  ‘I don’t know what the two of you are talking about, but I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. My name is Emerson Watts. My parents — who are going to be very upset when they find out I’m missing from my hospital room, by the way — are Daniel Watts and Karen Rosenthal-Watts. I don’t know why you guys seem to think I’m Nikki – Howard, I presume. Because I’m not.’

  The two of them blinked at me with a lack of comprehension that was, to say the least, absolute. Their gazes were as blank as Frida’s always got when I was trying to explain the finer points of role-play gaming to her.

  But I’d never let that stop me before, and I wasn’t about to now either.

  ‘Up until very recently,’ I went on, ‘I was an eleventh-grader at Tribeca Alternative High School. Then about a month ago, I was… I don’t know. In an accident of some kind. I’m not real clear about the details, ac
tually. But when I woke up, I was in the hospital you just kidnapped me from. Which I would like to go back to. Now.’

  My voice rose a little hysterically on the word now. But overall I managed to deliver that speech with a reasonable amount of composure. Certainly more than I actually felt, considering I was being held in a limo against my will by a couple of teenaged socialites.

  Also, I noticed no one had offered me an energy drink. And I was really thirsty.

  ‘My God,’ was all Brandon said about my speech. And he sort of let that slip out like he hadn’t wanted it to.

  ‘I know,’ Lulu said, not taking her completely blank gaze off me. ‘It’ll be all right when we get her home. When she sees her stuff she’ll be fine. I mean, look at that dress. You know she’d never be caught dead in a dress like that if she was in her right mind.’

  That’s when I realized she was referring to my hospital gown. As a dress.

  ‘That’s it,’ I said. I turned in my seat and spoke directly to Tom, the limo driver. ‘Pull over and let me out, or you’ll be joining these two in jail for unlawful imprisonment.’

  To my surprise, the limo stopped. But only, it turned out, because we’d reached our destination.

  ‘Sorry, Ms Howard,’ the limo driver said, sounding like he meant it. ‘Just following orders.’

  Why does everyone keep calling me that?’ I practically shrieked.

  ‘Calling you what, ma’am?’ Tom wanted to know.

  ‘Ms Howard,’ I hissed. ‘And Nikki.’

  ‘Well,’ Tom said, looking uncomfortable, ‘maybe because that’s your name, ma’am?’

  ‘I told you people,’ I said, still addressing the limo driver. ‘My name is Emerson Watts. I’m not Nikki Howard.’

  ‘Um, actually, ma’am,’ he said, turning the rear-view mirror in my direction, ‘you are.’

  And I raised my gaze.

  And screamed.

  Eight

  Well, you’d probably have screamed too, if the face you saw looking back at you from a mirror belonged to someone else.