by Dyan Sheldon
Like many of us, Remedios’ first reaction when caught out is to lie. “Nothing. We’ve been together since we got here. How could I do anything?”
This is true. Except for the few minutes it took her to join him in their suite, she hasn’t left his side. Nonetheless…
“I don’t know,” says Otto. “But I’m not leaving till I find out what it is.”
It becomes apparent that a certain amount of personal adjustment may be necessary
Lucinda carefully places the tray that’s just been delivered on her bed and picks up one of the cups. “Here. Drink this,” she orders. “It’ll make you feel better.”
Sniffling, Beth wipes the last tears away with her sleeve and obediently grasps the cup, taking a large swallow. She nearly gags. “What is that?” It looks like liquid plant food.
“Double espresso.” Lucinda hands her a napkin. “I know … I know … it’ll make your teeth beige if you drink too much of it, but I figure just this once it’ll be OK. It’s good for your nerves.”
Good in what sense? Every nerve Beth has is ringing like an alarm bell. “I— I’m sorry, but it’s so strong.” It’s only a guess, of course, but she’s fairly certain that it tastes like liquid plant food, too. She wipes coffee from her chin and dabs, futilely, at the stains on the silk pyjama top. “I don’t think I can drink it.”
“Well, do you want my skinny latte?” Lucinda holds out her own cup. “You should have something. You’re pretty frazzled.”
She is that. Frazzled as an overloaded circuit. “No, thank you. It’s OK.” She swipes at the last few tears. “Really. I’m all right now.”
“Are you sure? I’ve never heard anybody cry like that except in a movie. You know, when all hope is lost.” Because Lucinda has her sleep mask pushed up on her head, she looks as if she has two pairs of eyes that are staring down at Beth – one blankly and one with concern. Her smile is sympathetic. “You scared me even more than when the bear got into the garbage that time and I thought it was a terrorist or something. I didn’t know what was going on when I heard you bawling.”
“I’m so sorry. It must have been awful—” Every time Beth speaks she hears a voice that isn’t hers. Compared to that, the bear doesn’t sound very scary at all. “I just… I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“Oh, that’s OK. I had to get up anyway, right?” Lucinda’s smile shrugs. “It’s you I’m worried about, Gab. Are you sure you’re all right? You’re not sick, are you?”
“No.” And whenever she moves her head, a curtain of hair that also isn’t hers sways with her. “I’m not sick.”
“So why were you crying like that? It sounded like you woke up with a pimple as big as Bangor or that somebody stole all our clothes or something. What happened?”
Beth blows her nose on the napkin. Now there’s a good question. What’s she supposed to say? I’m really, really sorry, but I woke up in the wrong body and it kind of got my day off to a bad start?
Lucinda fiddles with her hair. “Did you have a nightmare? Is that what happened?”
A nightmare. Of course. The number of people who have nightmares has to be a lot greater than the number of people who transmutate like this. With that thought, Beth suddenly realizes that there must be one other person in this very hotel who knows exactly what she’s going through. Gab. Gabriela Menz. For the love of Zeus! That, if nothing else, makes sense. Why didn’t she think of that before? If she’s in Gabriela Menz’s body, then it stands to reason that Gabriela Menz must be in hers! Right at this minute, Gabriela must be in Beth’s room, in Beth’s pyjamas, probably sitting on Beth’s bed – and probably wiping the tears from her eyes, too. And all at once Beth, who a second ago wanted only to crawl back into bed, has a plan of action: she has to talk to Gabriela.
“Gab?” Lucinda’s voice is slightly raised, as though she’s repeating herself. Possibly not for the first time. “Gab? So what was it? A bad dream?”
“Yeah.” Beth gives herself a shake, trying to concentrate on the girl in front of her and not the girl in the room with Delila. “Yeah, I had a bad dream.”
“And?” prompts Lucinda. “What was it about? Were you being murdered or something?”
“No, no… I wasn’t being murdered. I … um…” This may be one of the few times when having so many anxiety dreams is actually a benefit. While part of her mind tries to figure out how she can get to see Gabriela alone, another part automatically launches into a slightly edited version of the dream she had last night.
“So that was when I started crying and woke up, I guess,” Beth ends.
Lucinda is looking at her as if she’s been speaking in a language Lucinda knows, but not fluently. “You dreamed you were reading a story to a lot of people? That was your dream?”
“Uh-huh.” Beth nods. “It was in this enormous auditorium.”
“And that’s why you were crying like that? Because you were reading a story?”
“Yeah.” The curtain of hair swings past Beth’s vision. “The auditorium was completely packed out and—”
“But why were you so upset?” It’s clear from her expression that Lucinda is trying, but failing, to understand. “Were you wearing your pyjamas or farmer’s overalls or something like that?”
“No, I—” Beth catches herself before she can launch into more explanation about the doggerel and the Nobel Prize winner and Professor Gryck. She doesn’t need to explain anything. She just needs to find Gabriela. “Oh, look, it doesn’t matter. I’m all right now.”
“You don’t look all right.” Lucinda pulls off the sleepmask and tosses it onto the floor where it makes a three-point landing on the clothes she wore last night. “You’ll have to do something about those eyes, Gab. They’re all red and puffy. You have a bath with you?”
It’s Beth’s turn not to understand. “A bath?” They’ve brought enough things with them for a month, but do these girls really travel with portable tubs?
“Yeah, you know. For your eyes? Because I think I have something with me if you don’t.”
“Oh, that’s OK.” Beth stands up. She has to get out of here. “I’ll just splash some cold water on and—”
“Really?” Lucinda smiles, in case she’s being teased. “Just plain water? You mean like from the faucet?”
“Yeah, just plain water.” Although she feels more like screaming, Beth forces herself to smile in a casual, friendly, everything’s-right-with-the-world kind of way. “Actually, do you know what? I think that’s just what I’ll do. And then I’ll throw on some clothes and go down for breakfast.”
“Throw on some clothes? Go down for breakfast? Now?” Lucinda reaches for her phone on the bedside table. “Geez, Louise! Will you look at the time? I had no idea! It’s eight o’clock already! You can’t go downstairs. We only have an hour till the car comes.”
And Beth and Delila are meeting the others for breakfast at eight. She can’t possibly talk to Gabriela in front of everybody, but maybe if she hurries she can intercept her before she reaches the restaurant. “I won’t be long.” Beth eyes the piles of clothes around the room, wondering which belong to Gabriela. “I—”
“Are you nuts?” Lucinda, too, is on her feet now, and starting to pull things from the closet and fling them on or near her bed. “We have to shower and do our hair and put on our make-up and get dressed. I know everything went really well last night, Gab, but we’re meeting some really important people today. And it’s like you said, we have to push our advantage, not lose it. Taffeta really digs you. She looked like she wanted to adopt you! So—”
Beth can’t help herself. “Taffeta?”
“Ye-ah.” Lucinda manages to make it sound like two words, with the additional words “um, duh” unspoken but audible. “Taffeta Mackenzie? The head of the college?”
Someone named after a luxury fabric is the head of a college?
“I was just kidding,” lies Beth. “Of course I know who Taffeta is.”
Done with t
hrowing things out of the closet, Lucinda is now rooting around in one of her bags. “And anyway, the other girls were really impressed too. Even if they didn’t want to be, right?” She looks up for a second to wink. “So they’ll be doing everything they can to win points today. I bet they’ve been up since dawn getting ready.”
The other girls… Of course, there are more of them.
“So do you want to take your shower first?” Lucinda is checking the time again. “Because I need to iron my skirt. And I’d better text my mom or she’ll be griping that I only get in touch with her when I want something.”
Mom! Beth’s mother will be up by now; up and calling her only child. Beth makes a sudden lunge for her pillow, but of course her phone isn’t there.
“What are you doing?” The puzzled expression has returned to Lucinda’s face.
“I just— You know— I thought I put my phone—”
Lucinda gestures to the enormous satchel on the floor beside Beth’s bed. “It’s in your bag.”
“Oh, right.” Even to Beth’s ears her laugh sounds like the screech of a panicked owl. “I should text my mom, too.”
“I thought you fixed up to call her tonight.”
“I did? Oh, I did.” A new wave of defeat breaks over Beth. Taffeta Mackenzie… Other girls… Mom… Important people to meet… Gabriela and Delila downstairs right at this minute probably, under the watchful eye of Professor Gryck. And here is Beth, trapped like a bird in an oil spill. There’s really nothing she can do but cry. “All right,” she says, more or less hurling herself towards the bathroom. “I’ll go first.”
“What about your robe and underwear?” calls Lucinda, her gesture including the foot of Gabriela’s bed and the hillock of things on the chair by the window. “You’re not putting your pyjamas back on, are you?”
Beth has no way of knowing whether or not bafflement is Lucinda’s normal expression. When she finally gets inside the bathroom, the door locking behind her is the best thing Beth’s heard all morning.
She can’t possibly take a shower. She can barely look at “her” face in the mirror; she definitely doesn’t want to look at the body that’s attached to it. Or touch it. She runs the water for Lucinda’s benefit, but washes her face and hands at the sink with her eyes closed, and dries herself on the pyjama top since she doesn’t know which towel is Gabriela’s. Beth’s underwear is functional; Gabriela’s is decorative. She closes her eyes again as she puts it on.
“That was quick,” says Lucinda when Beth emerges. “Last night when we were getting ready for dinner, I thought you’d drowned in there.” She steps inside. “I won’t be two shakes, either. The last thing we need is for them to be waiting for us.” She gives Beth a little wave as she shuts the door. “Why don’t you order us some more coffee? I’m a skinny latte grande.”
Beth just stands there like a pillar of salt. What is she going to do? What she’d like to do is go home. Well, not home. Her ticket’s not valid till tomorrow. But she could go to her aunt’s. She could pick up the phone, dial her number and say, Aunt Joyce, you have to come and get me! But then what? Her aunt wouldn’t recognize her. She’d think she was crazy. She’d call Beth’s mother. Her mother would probably call the FBI. And then Beth remembers Gabriela’s phone. Of course! She’ll call Gabriela; call herself. It’s just as well that Beth is such a worrying and overcautious person, because it means that she is one of the few people on the planet who actually knows her own number. Just in case. She gets the voicemail. “It’s me,” she says. “Beth.” And then, using a line she has heard a million times but never thought she’d say herself, she adds, “We have to talk.”
The shower shuts off, and Beth drops the phone back into Gabriela’s bag and jumps into action. Lucinda will be out soon. She has to get ready. Find something to wear. Do something about her hair. Do something about her face. Beth sighs. She has never worn make-up, unless you count the Halloween she went trick-or-treating as Morgan le Fay (and had a rash for the next two weeks), but maybe she should put some on, as Gabriela would. She opens the metal case with the initials GM engraved on the side. It concertinas out into so many trays and levels holding so many tubes, compacts, bottles, pots and sticks that she might as well be staring into the engine of a car. What is all this? The girl must have to get up at dawn just to get to school late. Beth slams down the lid and moves over to the closet. There’s nothing to wear. Gabriela’s skirts are all short; her tops are all skimpy; the dresses look like cummerbunds with minimal straps or sleeves.
When Lucinda comes out from her shower, Beth is still standing more or less where she left her, gazing, transfixed, into the closet as if it might speak to her and tell her what to do there.
“Oh my God, Gab! You haven’t even started getting ready!”
“I’m sorry.” Beth looks over her shoulder. “I didn’t order the coffee either.”
Lucinda rolls her eyes. “You really are acting weird this morning.”
Who’s acting?
“What the hell are you screaming like that for, woman?”
Gabriela turns. Standing in the doorway – looming, more like – is a girl who has to be at least six-feet tall, and who is definitely built like a member of the team whose shirt she wears. Not only does her hair stick up all over her head like each strand has a mind of its own, she doesn’t shave her legs either and her toenails are more like claws. No polish, needless to say. She is, in her way, an impressive sight, especially with the bedside lamp held menacingly over her head.
It would be stretching it to suggest that the sight of Delila has a calming effect on Gabriela, but it does bring her to her senses rather sharply. “Who are you supposed to be?” she snaps. “Xena, Warrior Princess?”
“From the way you were screaming, you sounded like you needed Xena.” The girl lowers the lamp. “I thought somebody was killing you.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you up like that.” Gabriela gives one of her silly-me laughs, but it doesn’t sound as charming coming from Beth as it does from someone with a musical voice, sparkling eyes and dimples. “I just— You know … I just had a fright.” Two if you count the sudden appearance of Beth’s room-mate.
Delila puts the light back where it belongs. “You had a fright? You could’ve cut my promising young life short by decades carryin’ on like that!”
“I said I didn’t mean to.”
“Ooooh…” Delila makes a well-excuse-me face. “Somebody sure got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.”
No, just the wrong bed.
Gabriela takes a deep breath and tries again. “Something scared me, that’s all.”
“Oh, I’m sure something scared you, all right.” Delila laughs, though not unkindly. “So what was it? You suddenly remembered you forgot your malaria medicine? You thought there could be somebody hiding in the shower?” She shakes her finger as if she’s tapping something out of a jar. “I know! You were practising screaming just in case there’s some kind of emergency later.”
Gabriela may have shared a class with Beth since they started high school, but all she knows about her is that she’s a brain, that she talks so softly the only way you could tell what she’s saying would be if you read lips and her name: Beth Beeby (which has occasionally been rhymed with “creepy”). She knows nothing about the fears and anxieties that follow Beth around like an especially aggressive pack of paparazzi; or about Lillian Beeby, the poet laureate of angst. Which is why she’s beginning to think that, on top of everything else, Delila is clinically insane.
“What are you talking about? I was still half asleep, that’s all.” Gabriela intends to stalk out of the bathroom, but Delila just stands there, watching her with amusement and blocking the way, so she squeezes past her instead. And then realizes, of course, that there is nowhere to go – just the one small room. A room that seems to be getting smaller by the minute.
“You don’t need to get all snippy with me,” says Delila from approximately an inch behind her. “I
was only fooling around. I’m on your side, remember?”
“Right. Of course.” Gabriela gives her a wan smile. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me this morning.” At least that much is true.
“Major discombobulation,” judges Delila. “Don’t worry about it. I know you’re really stressed out. Last night was OK and everything, but there were moments.” She rolls her eyes in a long-suffering kind of way. “I swear those preppy types make my butt hurt like I’ve been sitting on rocks for seventy-two hours. They’re so damn full of themselves—” She squashes her lips together and wrinkles her nose as though some unpleasant odour has been let loose in the room. “Man, if those girls’d dropped any more names the floor would’ve caved in.”
All Gabriela really registers is the major-discombobulation part. That’s putting it mildly, if you ask her. She’s like that story about the ugly duckling in reverse. Yesterday she was a beautiful swan and now look at her! Beth Beeby in shades of brown and grey. Quackquackquack.
“You’re right,” says Gabriela. “I am really stressed out.” If she were not a resilient young woman but the heaviest duty polyester thread, she would already have snapped. And she’s not going to feel less stressed until she gets rid of Xena here. Science may not be Gabriela’s best subject, but she does remember that Somebody’s Great Law says that two things can’t occupy the same space at the same time (which, let’s face it, doesn’t take a big brain to figure out – anybody who’s ever tried to find a place for a couple of new pairs of shoes in her shoe rack could tell you that). Which means that if Gabriela is in Beth’s body, then there’s a pretty good chance that – as a further example of just how heart-crushingly ironic (and unfair) life can be – Beth is in hers. Which means that she has to talk to Beth. Alone. “That’s why— That’s why I think maybe I need some personal time.”
