Change Places with Me

by Lois Metzger

  CHAPTER 29

  Thursday afternoon she sat at the bus stop and imagined the conversation she would have with the girl in the jean jacket. Maybe they’d get along so well they’d want to talk again, about deeper things, hopes and dreams. They’d exchange phone numbers and—

  Wait. There was that ID pic on her phone. Something needed to be done about that, right away.

  A few minutes later she pressed the buzzer in the lobby of Belle Heights Tower.

  “Yeah?” Kim said over the intercom.

  “It’s me,” the girl said.

  “It’s you, all right. But it’s not next week yet.”

  The girl faced the camera. “This is kinda important. Can I come up?”

  Kim buzzed her in. The girl got on the elevator and pressed fourteen. A gray-haired man got on with her, pressed nine, and said pleasantly, “It’s cold, it’s muggy, it’s sunny, it’s raining . . . when will the weather make up its mind?”

  Small talk. Clara would’ve kept her head down, bangs over her eyes, silent. Rose would’ve engaged the man in lively conversation. The girl glanced over at him and said, “It’s really weird when there’s no weather at all.”

  He gave her kind of a look before getting out on his floor.

  Outside the elevator she was greeted by Kim, her hair unbraided and covering her shoulders like a thick, glossy blanket. The girl had forgotten that Kim had fantastic hair. Everyone thought Astrid had the best hair in the grade, but clearly she didn’t.

  The girl followed Kim down the hall, through the living room, and past the bathroom with the fuzzy blue toilet-seat cover. This time they went to Kim’s room, which was an utter mess. Piles of books and papers and clothes were everywhere, along with scattered notes and slapdash but surprisingly vivid sketches of people with green skin, white cows with large brown spots, and furry gray wolves.

  “Great drawings.”

  “They’re possible ideas for Into the Woods. I’m having so much fun with it.” Kim plopped down on her bed, on top of a mass of T-shirts, and gestured for the girl to sit in the straight-backed wooden chair at her desk, which only had a few sweaters draped over it.

  The girl folded the sweaters neatly and put them on top of Kim’s dresser. She’d always been good at this. Kim’s window looked down on a parking lot. The whoosh of traffic and honking cars on Belle Heights Expressway was actually louder here than in the girl’s apartment. “So, why I’m here.” The girl sat on the wooden chair. “Can I trust you, Kim, as a cross-my-heart friend?”

  “Of course,” Kim said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  “I’m going to tell you something, and you have to promise not to tell anybody. People who’ve done this—no one can ever know about it, not husbands or wives or children or coworkers.”

  Kim threw a pillow at her. It arced and landed softly on her lap. “I promise not to tell your children.”

  “Kim. It’s not funny. There’s one person you must especially never, ever tell.”

  “And who’s that?”

  The girl threw the pillow directly back with a little force. “Me.”

  The girl told Kim everything; Kim had never heard of Memory Enhancement.

  “Dr. Star said I had extraordinary resistance,” the girl said. “My dad thought I was strong willed. My stepmother called it a stubborn streak. A rose by any other name, you know?” She’d had no intention of saying anything to anyone else, either blurting it out like she did with Mr. Slocum, or deliberately, as she was doing now. But she wanted Kim’s help. “I have to go back for a refresher, this Saturday at two p.m. Rose mustn’t remember my second visit to Forget-Me-Not. So you can’t say anything to trigger it. It’s my last chance—I don’t think they’d let her back another time.”

  “You’re talking about yourself in the third person, you know,” Kim said.

  “Huh? I’m a third person?”

  “No, I mean you’re using the he/she voice about yourself, Rose.”

  “Oh.” But it stuck in her craw a little, as her dad used to say, this idea of someone else entirely. Wasn’t she crowded enough already? “Kim, there’s something else I need to ask. Please take my picture again. I know it sounds kinda crazy, but I have to find this girl. She wears a jean jacket with a large embroidered rose on the back. She’s got dark hair, chin length, and really red lipstick. Have you seen her around?”

  “Well,” Kim said, “I see someone who looks a lot like her.”

  The girl straightened her back. “Anyway. I sit at the bus stop and look around. It’s the best place to see lots of people.”

  “You sit at the bus stop—like the beat-up old woman I created when I put makeup on you?”

  “This is completely different. I’m waiting for the girl in the jean jacket, so I can talk to her a little. What if she wants to call me sometime? I can’t have that ID pic popping up.”

  Kim got out her phone. “Sure, I’ll take your picture.”

  The girl beamed before erasing the smile altogether. Kim kept clicking away and then scrolled through what she’d shot. “Don’t like that smile at all . . . or that one . . . here you look like you’re gonna slug someone. . . . Hey, I like this one. Your eyes look sad, though. Take a look.”

  It was a good picture. The girl wasn’t smiling but she wasn’t not-smiling, either. Kim was right about the eyes. There was sadness there, deep and raw. In a big box of crayons, the color could be called Sad Blue.

  Kim sent the image to the girl’s phone, where she slotted it in as her ID pic. As for the old, old woman, she put that in a new file, undeleted.

  “I should get back to the bus stop,” the girl said.

  Kim walked her to the elevator and pressed the down button. “Are you really sure about this, going back to that memory place?”

  “I have to,” she told Kim. “There’s nothing else I can do.”

  “But I could, you know, help you figure out some stuff, just the two of us.”

  “Not necessary. Next week everything’s gonna be great.” No more sadness in the eyes, she thought.

  “Look. I’m really glad you confided in me. And I wasn’t going to say this—but here goes. The way I see it, there’s something you really should do first.”

  The elevator reached the fourteenth floor that wasn’t really the fourteenth floor. Kim held her hand over the side of the door so it couldn’t close.

  “Talk to Evelyn,” Kim said.

  “No.” The girl was adamant. She’d avoided nearly all contact with Evelyn for days. They’d barely seen each other. Meals were left on the stove so the girl could continue to eat in her room. Evelyn, she had to admit, had respected her privacy admirably.

  “Clara couldn’t stand her,” Kim said. “I don’t think Rose got that close to her, either.”

  “Evelyn and Rose were perfectly friendly!” Though maybe, now that the girl thought about it, when Evelyn talked to her, Rose hadn’t listened too carefully, changing the subject more often than not.

  “Does Evelyn want this for you? How does she feel about it?”

  The girl tightened her lips.

  “Let me guess. You’re not speaking to her.”

  The elevator started beeping. It didn’t like to be held open too long.

  “Why are you bringing this up?” the girl said. “You’re supposed to be my cross-my-heart friend. It was very irresponsible of Evelyn, to let me do something irreversible.”

  “Oh, that’s not fair. You were the one who wanted it. You still want it.”

  The beeping in the elevator got really loud.

  “She gave her consent. She paid for it. She’s the adult,” the girl said.

  “Right. That’s why you should talk to her.” Kim let go of the door. “Well, good luck finding that girl, whoever she is.”

  But I know exactly who she is, the girl thought, as the door closed. It was clear as day. She’s the girl I could’ve been, if life was fair.

  It was cool and gray at the bus stop. A few drops
spattered her, but it never actually rained. The girl sensed she might not be coming back here anymore, which confused her, so she stayed a little longer.

  I’ll give the girl in the jean jacket one last chance.

  As if it was the other way around, and the girl in the jean jacket was the one looking for her.

  CHAPTER 30

  She woke early Friday morning, long before dawn. Her lamp was on and cast a circle of light. It was quiet, middle-of-the-night quiet, with only a few cars on the expressway and hardly any planes.

  She’d had another dream, unbearably vivid.

  She was on a hydro-bus, heading home, standing room only. It was so crowded she couldn’t even reach out for a pole to hold on to, and she tried to keep her balance as the bus lurched its way up and down the hills of Belle Heights. Next to her stood a man, tall as a tree. She looked at his face, saw those heavy-lidded eyes . . . she couldn’t believe it. Her dad! Her dad was here! But he had died even before hydro-buses came to Belle Heights. So she didn’t want to say anything, since that might break the spell or embarrass him because he was doing something impossible. Probably he would explain the misunderstanding of it to her later, how when everyone had thought he was dead, he’d just stayed out of sight for a while, but now he was here and here to stay. She was so happy—she was bursting with happiness.

  Eventually she had to speak up. “Dad,” she said casually, trying not to sound too excited, “it’s our stop.”

  “You go on ahead. I have to be somewhere.” His voice, still gentle, didn’t have a smile in it, like it used to.

  She didn’t want to let him out of her sight. But she couldn’t make a big deal out of it. It was important just to act normally, so then he could just show up later at home and everything would be the way it was supposed to be. She got off the bus—bad mistake. So stupid! Why hadn’t she made up some excuse, that she had to be somewhere, too? She stared at the bus as it went down a hill. A woman was suddenly next to her, asking, “Did you leave something on the bus? I forgot my bag once. I called the office and they said it was in the Lost and Found.”

  Waking, the girl got a wrenching pain unlike anything she’d ever felt. A fist had tightened around her heart. She didn’t blame Clara for climbing into a glass coffin and staying there. Who in her right mind would want to go through this? Strangely, though, she felt close to Clara here in this place, and it felt like a place, where Clara had never been.

  She looked at Mr. Moore’s painting, propped up on her bureau, and also out the window, at Belle Heights Tower, where Kim lived.

  She got up and left the room.

  Evelyn always slept with the door wide open and the curtains apart. In the almost-full moon, the girl could clearly see Evelyn’s desk with her laptop, her tall mahogany bureau, and her bookshelf, where Clara had leafed through books by experts. Evelyn’s bed was near the window, open just a crack. Her dark hair was spread across her pillow, and the gold necklace around her throat caught a glint of light. She was wearing a pale nightgown with a scoop neck that exposed one shoulder. A flowery kimono was draped over the foot of the bed.

  The girl walked over to Evelyn, who smelled like lavender. She leaned down and gently nudged Evelyn’s shoulder.

  “Oh—” Evelyn stiffened and looked around urgently. “What—what time is it?”

  “Late. Early.”

  Evelyn blinked to get used to the semidarkness. “Give me a minute. I’ll get up.”

  “You don’t have to.” The girl hadn’t realized she’d brought the bald elephant with her until she put it down on the bed. “I just want to say . . . I made you worry last week, when I stayed out so long. Before I went to Forget-Me-Not. I’m really sorry.”

  Evelyn seemed relieved—no emergency, apparently. “I didn’t know what to think. If you were all right, if you were running away. . . . I tried to find you. I looked in the school directory and called your friends.”

  “You mean Kim and Cooper?”

  “The ones you had lunch with. Selena Kearn and Astrid Mills.”

  But they weren’t her friends. They weren’t even each other’s friends. The girl decided right then she would ask Mr. Slocum to switch her to different lab partners. Though he’d never done this before, she knew he would do it for her.

  “I had to leave a message for Astrid, but Selena picked up,” Evelyn said. “She told me you were with them at brunch and then you left. She also said something about a party here this Saturday—?”

  The girl shook her head. “No, that’s not happening.” Astrid and Selena would definitely not be pleased that she was canceling it the day before it was supposed to happen. She could picture Selena, face burning behind her freckles, bitterly complaining she’d already promised everybody a DJ. She could even hear Astrid saying beneath her breath, “We were nice to you. You blew it.”

  “Evelyn,” the girl said, “I should probably let you get back to sleep.”

  “That’s okay. I’m awake.” She sat up and leaned her back against the headboard.

  “I always wondered.” The girl hesitated. “I hope you don’t mind my asking . . . why do you look in the mirror so much?”

  Evelyn smiled a little. “My mother died quite young of skin cancer. I always have to look for moles, and keep at it, too. The cells in the body replace themselves so rapidly. Every seven years you have a whole new body.”

  Seven years—the amount of time Clara had spent in the glass coffin. “So I have a whole new body since Dad died.”

  “As do I.” Evelyn nodded, taking this in. “It hasn’t been so easy for us, has it?”

  Evelyn had Sad Blue eyes, too.

  “You tried telling me about your parents, once,” the girl said. But Rose had had her mind on other things. “Could you tell me, again? I’m listening now.”

  “Well, my father was a drunk,” Evelyn said matter-of-factly.

  “And your mom?”

  “Pretended he wasn’t one. I grew up with . . . lies. They were everywhere, in every corner of every room. It was as if there was a terrible storm outside, and my parents kept looking out the window and declaring, ‘It’s a beautiful sunny day!’ There were times I thought I was the crazy one. When my mother asked me a simple question—‘How are you?’—I saw fear in her eyes. She didn’t want the real answer. So I would say, ‘Fine, just fine.’ See why I never wanted to get married?”

  “Except you did.”

  “It took me completely by surprise. Phil was always so honest. My father thought that promising something was the same thing as doing it. Phil kept his promises.”

  “But he didn’t!” the girl said sharply. “He promised to keep me safe and sound.”

  “He kept that promise, too. You’re here with me.”

  In fairy tales, the girl thought, the good parents died and the evil ones lived. But the fact that Evelyn had outlived her dad hadn’t turned her into Evil Lynn. It just made her a single mom. The girl looked down, feeling something on her hand. Evelyn had taken hold of it for a few moments. It didn’t feel like dead man’s finger.

  “I’m canceling it,” the girl said.

  “Yes, the party.” Evelyn leaned back again.

  “I don’t mean that. I mean Forget-Me-Not.”

  Moonlight played on Evelyn’s face. Her eyes widened.

  There were only about thirty-five hours to go before this thing the girl had wanted so desperately.

  “I’m shocked, too,” the girl said.

  “But I’m glad,” Evelyn said.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Then,” the girl began, “why didn’t you stop me the first time?”

  Evelyn reached over and picked up the bald elephant. “It made me . . . sick at heart. I worried that I was as bad as Phil, unable to say no to you. But it was the first thing you were ever willing to try. . . . I had to admire you for that.” She put the elephant down. “I admire you still.”

  It came to the girl then, out of the blue.

  Cora.

  Clara had nev
er given any thought to her name. Rose had picked a name that fit like a second skin, but maybe that meant a name you put on or slipped into, something added to the outside. This one seemed to come from deep inside. “Cora,” she said, placing her hand on her chest. “My name.”

  Evelyn turned on her lamp and studied her carefully. “Cora it is.”

  Cora sat on the edge of the bed. “Dad used to sit on the side of my bed when he read to me.”

  “So patiently. He always read ‘Snow-white’ like it was completely new, even though the two of you already knew every word.”

  “That reminds me. There’s this old movie based on ‘Snow-white,’ a screwball comedy. I might go see it Sunday—I have to talk to someone about that—but there’s something else I’d like to do this weekend. With you, if that’s okay.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Come on—I’ll show you.”

  Evelyn got out of bed and took a moment to put her kimono on Cora’s shoulders. Then they went to the desk, where Cora sat in the chair while Evelyn stood beside her. Cora tucked her hair behind both ears. She opened Evelyn’s laptop and typed in “Australian cattle dog rescue.”

  “I only just heard about this kind of dog,” Cora said. “I saw one, and then I saw another.”

  It turned out there were quite a few rescue centers up and down the East Coast, some not too far away, in New Jersey and Connecticut. Evelyn seemed interested. She went to the kitchen to grab a chair and bring it back with her. In the moonlight, they continued looking at the computer for some time, reading about the breed—highly intelligent, tenacious, needing lots of activity. And fiercely loyal, and protective of the people they live with.

  Evelyn offered to borrow a company car to make the trip, and said, “We could make a day of it.” Or several days, she added, to find the right dog.

  Exactly, Cora thought. There was time.

  

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book is dedicated to my awesome and insightful editor, Jordan Brown, with much gratitude and appreciation.