Change Places with Me

by Lois Metzger

  “I can’t believe she was nosy enough to read the card,” Stacey said. “I can’t believe she had the nerve to ask about it.”

  “What do the letters really mean?”

  “TC means Typical Cocker. They’re overbred and crazy. TCO is Typical Cocker Owner. Draw your own conclusions. The red star means bad dog, watch out. Maybe Candy’s a biter.”

  “Candy—everybody’s favorite?”

  “The very same.”

  “What if somebody stole Ms. Brackman’s purse? The thief would find—”

  “Chicken, broiled, no skin!” Stacey laughed.

  Rose laughed too. Despite the age difference, Rose felt an instant connection here, a kindred spirit. Selena and Astrid would like her too; so would Kim. The five of them could do all kinds of fun things together. But what did Stacey like to do?

  “Why don’t you tell me about yourself?” Rose asked her.

  “Well . . . this isn’t exactly the time or place.”

  “Where were you born? How’d you get interested in working with animals? Do you like to go shopping? I’m trying to find a jean jacket, a very particular one. I went to Second Nature four times already, but they never have it.”

  Stacey just shook her head.

  “You can tell me things. I’m a really good listener, contrary to what a certain bio teacher might say. What do you think about when you wake up alone in the middle of the night?”

  “What makes you think I wake up alone?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get personal. I used to wake up several times a night. Some therapist told me to count backward by threes, that it would make me sleepy, but I got so good at it, it woke me up even more. I could count backward by threes from any random number. Even now I can do it—five-forty-eight, five-forty-five, five-forty-two, five-thirty-nine, see? I went to so many therapists, you wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Rose, this is . . . much too much.”

  “How so? We’re friends!”

  “We just met.”

  “Technically, we met the other day, but it doesn’t matter. I’m having a Halloween party tonight. Please come! You don’t need a costume. I’m not wearing one. I’d really like to introduce you to my friends. So will you come?”

  “What grade are you in, anyway?”

  “Tenth.”

  “Rose, I think I’m a little old for a high school party.”

  “You never know—you might change your mind. Tell me your number—I’ll send you the address.” Rose opened her phone. “Don’t pay attention to the picture. I keep forgetting to get rid of it. Do you forget to do stuff you know you should do but you just don’t do it?”

  “I can’t really have this conversation right now.”

  “Later, then?”

  “We’ll see.”

  Which sounded too much like what parents say to children when they mean no. She’d always hated it when her dad tried to tell her no.

  CHAPTER 9

  The party was packed.

  “Isn’t it fun?” Rose had to shout at Evelyn over the music.

  Evelyn smiled briefly, though Rose could tell she wasn’t a big fan of parties. She liked quiet evenings, thick books, old movies. Selena had certainly spread the word—there were a lot of kids there Rose didn’t know, some she didn’t even recognize, who looked like seniors, or older. Stacey would fit right in! Nick Winter hadn’t arrived yet. Rose looked around for Kim, who wasn’t there either. Skeletons bobbled around overhead; they got tangled in each other’s arms, but someone always pulled them down and freed them. Some of the pumpkins glowed, some just flickered, and a few were entirely dark. Rose made her way over to Astrid and Selena and the group inevitably surrounding them.

  “You invited Kim, right?” Rose shouted at Selena.

  “I said I did, didn’t I?” Selena didn’t have to shout; her voice was naturally loud.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Take it easy, Rose. Maybe I forgot, whatever. I’ll invite her now.” Selena took out her phone.

  Rose, making sure of it, watched over Selena’s shoulder as she opened the student directory, and said, “It’s so late now. She probably has other plans.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Astrid said. “We’re talking about Kim Garcia.” She was wearing a sleeveless black dress with a web design. She pointed to a tattoo of a small black spider slowly crawling on her arm. “It’s the real thing, none of that stupid Sün-Fade stuff for me. It’s got a three-inch radius.”

  “Didn’t your mother mind?” asked a girl dressed as a cowgirl.

  “She’s never home to notice. She’s in Argentina now, working on husband number nine.” Astrid, whose voice was always so low, might’ve said “five”—which was more likely, Rose thought, though that was still a lot of ex-husbands. Astrid grinned. “I got another tattoo, too. Don’t ask where.”

  Dylan Beck, Nick Winter’s best friend, was dressed as a banana. He wrapped an arm around Astrid. “Want to pin the tail on the donkey? You be the donkey and I’ll be the tail.” He laughed as if this was the height of wit. Astrid pushed him off; she never went out with high school guys. Dylan said to Rose, “Who are you supposed to be, your own mother?”

  Rose was wearing an old dress of Evelyn’s, the color of fallen leaves. “I’m not in costume,” she said, and then thought, Yes, I am. Which didn’t make any sense.

  Selena had on a leather jumpsuit and love beads with a huge peace sign. “So have you seen her yet?” she bellowed at Rose.

  “Who?”

  “The psychic!”

  Rose hadn’t even met her. Evelyn had set her up in Rose’s room.

  “I barely had to say a word,” Selena said. “She told me my uncle just died, and that I have a crush on my sister’s boyfriend. The psychic knew everything!”

  Somebody else said a friend of her mom’s had gone to a psychic and uncovered a traumatic episode in her past. “My mom suspects she had memory work done to help her through it,” she added.

  “What kind of memory work?” asked a girl dressed as a zombie. Retro costumes were big this year, pirates, magicians, ghosts, vampires, along with cowboys and zombies.

  “Oh, could be any one of these new things,” Selena answered her. “Memory wipe, like cleaning off a blackboard, or a memory replacement of your choice, or a total memory transfer from somebody else. I saw a bunch of videos. This one woman said her sister went from hating her husband to loving him like they’d just met.”

  “Yeah, I saw a few of those videos,” Rose said. “Interesting but kinda crazy, you know?”

  The girl in the cowgirl dress shrieked—a skeleton foot was tangled in her hair. Another girl was helping untangle it, but not before taking a picture. “Don’t you dare make a video out of that,” the cowgirl said.

  “It reminds me of Hypno-Friends,” said the zombie girl. “What a disaster! You got hypnotized into remembering a wonderful best friend you had when you were a kid. People said it made their childhood memories a million times better. But it turns out people would believe the best friends really existed and then try to find them, hiring detectives, placing ads—and then some creeps would answer the ads, saying yeah, it’s me, your best buddy, and oh, by the way, I need money. They had to shut the whole thing down.”

  “I spoke to the psychic,” Astrid said. “She didn’t uncover any buried trauma or a Hypno-Friend, but she told me things I’ve never told anyone.” She shook back her long, glistening, skeleton-free hair. “And I’m not repeating any of it.”

  “Darcy Franzen’s in there now,” Selena said. “She’s probably hearing, ‘You will take home a guy tonight.’ With her parents in Europe, doesn’t take a psychic to get that right!” She jabbed a sharp elbow into Rose’s ribs. “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “Nothing.” Rose realized she was rubbing her jaw and stopped. That strange pain hadn’t gone away yet. She headed for her room just as Darcy Franzen was leaving—practically in tears.

  “My personal life is none of
her damn business,” Darcy said.

  “What’d she say?” Rose asked her.

  “Oh my God.” Darcy waved Rose away.

  Rose felt bad; kids were supposed to be having fun.

  Rose’s room was surprisingly quiet behind the closed door. She sat and faced the psychic—a tanned woman all in white, cinnamon-colored hair in many braids with colorful beads that clicked. Well, she certainly dressed the part. She spoke in a hushed tone, but her voice filled the room. “You live here,” she said.

  “How’d you know?”

  “By the way you entered. This is your room and you didn’t need to look around. May I take your hand?”

  She held Rose’s hand in her rough fingers. Rose smelled peppermint. A long time passed, or maybe it only seemed that way. The beads clicked. Selena had made it sound like the details of your life would come spilling out.

  “Well?” said Rose.

  “Perhaps you could tell me about yourself.”

  “I thought it was the other way around.”

  “Please,” the psychic said.

  Rose cleared her throat. “Okay, I’m a tenth grader at Belle Heights High. I live with my stepmother, Evelyn.”

  “Do you two get along?”

  “Lately, yes.” Rose hadn’t known she would say “lately” and instantly wished she could take it back, rub it out.

  “Lately? Since when?”

  “This whole week has been great.”

  “Before this week?”

  “Well, I was kind of moody,” Rose said. She caught sight of a bald stuffed elephant on her bed. So embarrassing, that kids saw that when they came into her room. She should’ve hidden it away in the closet.

  “Do you have friends?”

  “Of course. I’m very close to a girl I’ve known since I was a kid. She’s supposed to be here. She lives in Belle Heights Tower, a hop, skip, and jump away—my dad used to say stuff like that—but another friend of mine forgot to invite her . . . well, maybe not forgot, and that’s wrong, isn’t it, when you say you’re going to do something and then you don’t? Sometimes it’s really wrong. I mean—”

  Rose stopped short. Why was she doing all the talking?

  The psychic paused too. “Where is your father?”

  “He died when I was eight.”

  “And your mother?”

  “She died when I was a baby.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  This whole conversation was heading in the wrong direction. Why such an emphasis on the past? What about the future?

  “Dear girl, I should be sensing something in you, even years after such loss. The work of mourning.”

  Rose had to smile—it sounded like school service. “I’m over it. I’m very happy.”

  But it was as if the psychic wasn’t listening. “It’s as if you’re not here.”

  Rose felt her throat tighten. “So, where am I?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  Rose couldn’t believe it. What was she talking about?

  “I’m truly sorry. You may send in the next person.”

  Rose went back to the party, telling herself she didn’t believe in psychics any more than she believed in zombies or Hypno-Friends. She started dancing, watching the other kids and copying their movements, hoping she didn’t look like one of the bobbling skeletons.

  Finally—there was Nick Winter. He looked spectacular, dressed as a pirate with an eye patch. Rose went right up to him; instantly he grabbed her and held her close.

  “Hey, it’s farmer girl,” he said.

  She noticed, among lots of other thrilling things, that at over six feet he was the perfect height for her. “I’m here,” she said, and didn’t care how it sounded. “I’m here.”

  “You don’t have to convince me.” Nick grinned. There was that diamond in his front tooth.

  “Did that hurt, putting a diamond in there?”

  “No nerves in the teeth. You like it?”

  It sparkled like a star. “Yes.”

  “I like you, farmer girl,” he slurred. He tilted his head at the music. “Yeah, great song!” He kissed her. Her first kiss! But she tasted something musty and sharp on his breath. He couldn’t have been smoking or drinking here, not with Evelyn keeping close watch. But maybe that was why he’d arrived so late. This wasn’t her idea of what a perfect first kiss should be, far from it. But Nick liked her. He’d said so.

  By the time everyone went home, it was nearly two. At the door, Selena’s elbow managed to poke Rose’s ribs again. “Look at you, getting all up close and personal with Nick.”

  Rose couldn’t help grabbing hold of that elbow of Selena’s. “You’re not upset or anything?”

  “Oh God, no. A bunch of us are getting together for brunch at noon tomorrow, or should I say later today? At Stella Dallas, that place next to the old movie house. You know where that is?”

  “I’ll find it,” Rose said.

  “We can plan the next party!”

  CHAPTER 10

  Rose had never been to Stella Dallas or to the old movie house, You Must Remember This, which showed twentieth-century films and didn’t even have a holo-screen. She figured she’d look up the route on her phone but then forgot her phone; still, she found her way easily, even while walking along unfamiliar streets that had names instead of numbers—Belle Circle, Forest Glen, Fragrant Meadows—bordered by tall trees filled with chattering sparrows. Why couldn’t these birds nest on Mrs. Moore’s windowsill instead of ones that sounded so sad all the time? Rose had slept deeply and felt great—well, good. The red light had been there when she woke up and hadn’t faded until she started brushing her teeth, which was definitely something new. And she couldn’t help saying to Evelyn on her way out the door, “I’m sorry we hired that psychic. I said I’d pay for her, but what a waste.”

  “She wouldn’t accept payment,” Evelyn had said.

  “What—why not?”

  “Something about an incomplete reading.”

  Rose shrugged this off. “I’ll be home right after brunch.” As if brunch was something Rose did every Sunday and this wasn’t her first time.

  Stella Dallas was a coffee shop plastered with movie posters from years gone by. Rose knew some of the famous names, Marilyn Monroe and Jack Nicholson, and didn’t recognize others, Joel McCrea, Molly Ringwald. She took off her coat, one of Evelyn’s—wool, tweedy, with fake fur around the collar—and became the seventh person to squeeze into a booth meant for six, leaving her half on, half off the padded bench next to Dylan Beck, who wasn’t giving an inch, and a couple of guys she didn’t know. Across from her were Selena, Astrid, and a girl she didn’t know either. There’s no room for me here, she thought. I could’ve just been someone passing by, and then had to remind herself that of course that wasn’t true; Selena had specially invited her only hours before.

  And Selena immediately focused on her, leaning across the table. “Such a cool party! Everyone’s asking, how about another one next weekend? You can get a DJ then. It’s a lot more fun than a stream.”

  “I know something a lot more fun than a stream,” Dylan said.

  “Shut up,” Astrid said. She had deep shadows beneath her eyes.

  Dylan reached for her, which knocked open a bottle of ketchup on the Formica tabletop. No one moved to clean up the spill, so Rose used her napkin to wipe it up. “I heard a really strange story yesterday, at Belle Heights Animal Hospital.”

  “I know that place,” Dylan said. “They put my cat under for an operation and she never woke up.”

  Rose thought that sounded awful. Never getting a chance to say good-bye. “It’s not that kind of story. There were these dogs that hated each other. One day, one of them died—”

  “Don’t talk about that!” Selena cried. “I had a schnorgi. I loved her so much. She died last year.”

  “What’s a schnorgi?” asked the girl Rose didn’t know.

  “Half schnauzer, half corgi, and all a-dog-able.”

  “That’s the
stupidest thing I have ever heard from you,” Astrid said.

  Selena looked like she might cry.

  “Don’t be such a baby,” Astrid said.

  “You’re calling me stupid! Meanwhile she’s telling us some horrible story about dead dogs!”

  “That’s just it,” Rose said. “The dog wasn’t dead—it was alive the whole time, and somehow the other dog knew it and dug him up. But even after that, they still hated each other. Actually, I don’t like the ending to this story; this experience should’ve changed them on the deepest level, brought them closer together—”

  “Stop! I miss my schnorgi.” Selena held her hands over her ears.

  Rose remembered doing that as a kid. Holding her hands over her ears, pressing hard, shutting her eyes tight—anything to blot out the world, make it go away.

  Across the room, near a poster for a movie called Ball of Fire, Rose saw a girl with a long, ropy braid down her back, sitting at the crowded counter. Kim was here! Rose could bring Kim over to the table and squeeze her in, too. But there were older people on either side of Kim, maybe an aunt and uncle.

  “I was meaning to tell you,” one of the guys next to Rose said. “Your mom is hot.”

  A waiter came to their table. Rose looked up to see a short kid in a black T-shirt and black jeans, with frizzy, curly hair and bushy eyebrows that were almost a unibrow—the kid from the cafeteria scanner. Kim had mentioned his name—what was it? “It’s . . . you,” she said.

  “It’s me, all right.”

  “You work here, too?”

  “My parents own the place. Weekends are busy, so I help out.”

  “I guess they like movies, huh?”

  “That’s an understatement. My mom’s from Korea and my dad’s from the Dominican Republic. Their families thought they couldn’t possibly have anything in common, but they did.”

  Everyone else at the table was ignoring them, talking to one another. Rose gestured to the poster across the room. “What’s Ball of Fire?”

  “A screwball comedy from 1941, with Gary Cooper and the lovely Barbara Stanwyck.”

  Rose remembered that he’d told her she looked like Barbara Stanwyck. “What’s it about?”