by Sean Platt
Then Carla met Chelsea, the last person in the world she’d expect to be so perfect for her. Chelsea was the daughter of a religious self-help guru and conservative mother, an uptight girl afraid of life. But over time, she slowly left her shell in such a way that Carla couldn’t help but take notice. She started coming to class after school, at first under the pretense of extra tutelage. Soon, instruction gave way to long conversations. Chelsea wanted to know about Carla’s life, the things she enjoyed in her off time, and what she thought about big subjects.
And as ridiculous as it seemed at first, Carla found herself wanting to know the same about the girl.
She’d tried to talk herself out of her developing feelings. Asked herself a question her mother would later ask: What could a high school student know about anything to make her interesting? What life experience could she possibly have? And for a while, that argument worked. Chelsea wasn’t like Laura, full of all these crazy experiences, bold and daring, unafraid and unapologetic in her approach to life. No, Chelsea was more like Carla as she’d been when she’d met her first love. And Carla was now the one with experiences, who was (somewhat) bold and unapologetic. It was almost as if Carla had somehow gone back in time and reversed roles, except now she was the one helping another girl to discover herself, and, eventually, her sexuality.
But it wasn’t all the reanimation of a relationship gone by. Carla was genuinely intrigued by Chelsea. She had original ideas about art, in all its forms. For a girl living with such repressive parents, Chelsea had one of the most creative minds Carla had ever seen — but hidden beneath layers of fear and insecurity.
Chelsea was a beautiful, rare flower waiting for someone to tell her just how beautiful and rare she was.
And even though she tried to fight the feeling, Carla wanted to be that person.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Chelsea, wondering what she was doing, wondering what sort of conversation they’d have next, what new layer of the onion the girl might reveal. She was a mystery, a lovely forbidden mystery.
After feeling Chelsea’s love, Carla wasn’t sure she could live without it.
I look around the studio and notice a half-finished painting in the corner, sitting on an easel. It shows a woman’s shoulder and the nape of her neck, brown locks of hair cascading down her back. A nude of Carla draped beneath a white robe, which Chelsea had been in the process of painting. Chelsea was more skilled with a brush than she was with a pencil, but you could see her raw talent just looking at the composition, brush strokes, and palette. Art wasn’t just what you decided to focus on, but often just as much about what was left out. And in this instance, the framing of Carla’s body and the placement of her robe were different from how most artists would’ve painted her.
I reach out to touch the painting, and a crushing realization hits me: Chelsea may never finish the portrait.
Tears sting my eyes.
Being inside Carla is too intense. Her feelings too raw. It’s hard to separate myself from her, harder still to feel the anger I felt before when I was in Billy and Jack. Then, I was angry at this woman for stealing my sister, stealing my daughter, for taking advantage of a child.
But being inside Carla, I don’t get the sense that she was some dangerous predator looking to take advantage of naive students. She wasn’t looking for sex. She wasn’t even looking for love. She fought it. No, not hard enough, but I find it difficult to blame her as much as I did before.
Yes, she was wrong to sleep with a student. She likely destroyed her life and may have contributed to Chelsea’s death, but I no longer feel like she exploited or took advantage of Chelsea. In many ways, you could make the argument that she helped her become a strong young woman, no longer hiding from her true self — embracing her sexuality instead of denying it as a Devil’s temptation.
If only you hadn’t slept with her.
And there is Carla’s fatal flaw — a weakness, a loneliness she wasn’t strong enough to overcome.
I’m not sure how I would feel if this were to happen to my child. I doubt I could ever understand it. Doubt I could ever forgive. If Carla hadn’t slept with Chelsea, hadn’t been so careless as to be seen by someone who had somehow managed to record video of the two of them in Carla’s bed, then Chelsea would never have been blackmailed or bullied. She would never have tried to kill herself.
None of this would’ve happened if Carla had kept her distance, at least waited for the girl to graduate.
Being inside Carla, I feel pity and compassion for what her life is about to become. If Chelsea dies, the guilt will kill her.
As I stare at the paintings, I can’t take any more.
I need to get out of Carla’s place, take a drive, do something to take my mind away from all of this shit.
I change my clothes, putting on a blue skirt and matching top. I slip on some flats, grab Carla’s purse, phone, and car keys, then head out the door.
In the hallway outside of Carla’s apartment, a skinny white man in a baseball cap is approaching me.
At first, I don’t recognize him.
By the time I do, it’s too late.
He’s suddenly on me, shoving a rag against my face.
My head is pounding, my vision blurry as I wake up to the sound of footsteps echoing off walls in what sounds like a large empty space. I’m sitting in a chair, hands tied behind my back, a gag in my mouth preventing any cries for help.
I open my eyes to a blinding light, and can’t see anything of my captor, save for a shadow behind the light.
“Well, well, well, look who decided to wake up and join the party,” says a voice I’m all too familiar with.
I squirm, trying to loosen the binds.
“Hey, hey, did I say you can move?” Jack Caldwell approaches me with something in his hand.
I don’t see what it is, but feel the jolts as they enter my body.
Chapter Four
I wake in a chair, startled.
I’m in Susan Caldwell’s body. Beside me, in the hospital bed hooked up to machines and life support, is Chelsea.
I’m stunned to see her there sleeping.
I’m seeing her not only as having been in her body, in what feels like ages ago now, but also from the perspective of her father, her brother, her lover, and now her mother. A current of helplessness ripples through me. I’m so close, yet unable to help her, or nudge, her out of unconsciousness.
Wake up, Chelsea. The world needs you.
I reach out to touch her hand, and tears well up in my eyes. I think of all the hell she’d been through, all because of some invisible, anonymous coward.
Poor girl.
And then, after too long of a moment, I remember what happened: I was in Carla’s body — Jack had gone nuts and kidnapped her.
I look at the phone.
It’s still Saturday. I jumped into Susan’s body the second time Carla passed out.
Thankful that Susan nodded off at her daughter’s bedside, I need to make good use of the timing. I find the phone in her purse and dial Jack’s number hoping like hell he’ll pick up and I can talk him out of doing anything stupid. Well, stupider.
No answer.
Shit.
Come on, Susan, give me some memory that’ll tell me where Jack took her.
After a year, I still can’t figure out how to tap into a host brain to get exactly what I need when I need it. I suppose it’s miraculous that I get anything, let alone enough info to pass off as the person I’m pretending to be on any given day. But at times like this, I would love some sort of indexed database where I could plug in a few keywords or a question like places Jack might take a kidnap victim, and get a response.
I’m getting a vague memory about a cabin in the woods, but nothing that provides a location. I suppose I can go home and search the house to see if we have a deed for a cabin in the woods, but that would take forever, assuming they even had anything readily accessible.
Think, Ella, think.
&n
bsp; Waylon! Maybe he even knows what Jack is up to, though I doubt something like this would’ve earned his sanction.
No, Waylon would not approve.
Jack must’ve lost his mind. I wonder how much he remembers from when I was in his body — the police station, the phone call, the conversation with Waylon. From what I can tell, people usually retain most of their memories. It’s almost as if the brain removes me from the equation. It calls up the history and presents it all to the host as if it happened while they were still on duty. There might be some disassociation, but not enough to where anyone knows they were gone from their body. The brain has a marvelous ability to trick the self.
I have to imagine that when Jack woke up, he remembered what happened, maybe called the police only to learn that they let Carla go, pending investigation. And then he lost it.
Susan’s memories confirm my suspicion. She overheard part of a heated call with Waylon this morning, after which Jack hung up and said, “I can’t believe they let her go!”
He didn’t stick around to explain things. He said he was going for a run, as he often did when agitated — far better than turning to the bottle as he’d done for so many years.
I call Waylon.
“Hello?”
“Are you with Jack?” I ask, voice filled with an urgency he can’t help but notice.
“No, why?”
“I think he’s done something awful.”
“What?”
“I think he’d kidnapped Chelsea’s teacher, Ms. Valencia.”
“What? What do you mean you think he did? Did he say something?”
“I can’t explain how I know. Can you think of anywhere he would’ve taken her? Somewhere maybe without too much furniture?”
He’s quiet for a second, then says, “We have that fishing lodge in the mountains. It’s still not furnished.”
“That’s gotta be it.”
“Wait … how do you know he took her? Or that he’s got her in some place without furniture?”
Stuck for an answer, I give one that he’ll either laugh at or believe. “God told me.”
He’s quiet.
“I’m at the hospital. Can you take me to the cabin? Like now?”
“On the way, but you better tell me more about this God-told-you stuff.”
“Thanks,” I say.
After I fill Waylon in on the lie that God gave me a vision of Jack holding Ms. Valencia hostage, we ride in relative silence. I’m guessing he doesn’t believe me, as Waylon seems a bit too street smart for God told me. But beyond a raised eyebrow or two, he keeps his skepticism to himself. He likely figures it’s something he’s better off not knowing, which is good because there’s no way I’m telling him the truth: Hey, I’m not Susan, but rather a woman named Ella who just might be a body-jumping assassin.
After a while, I say, “Do you think you can convince him to let the teacher go?”
“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Caldwell, I’ll talk some sense into your husband.”
Susan’s memories gush forth, giving me some background on her relationship with Jack, a story he wrote in his first book, Lost, Now Found.
Jack wasn’t a believer when they met in college. He wasn’t an atheist, just didn’t give much thought to God. Susan was the one who went to church every Sunday, and whose belief was a source of strength. While Susan never thought she’d date, let alone marry, someone who didn’t share her faith, Jack was nice and extremely charming. He was also strong and self-confident, but lacking the excessive bravado that was a shared trait among most of the men she knew.
He began his career as a marketer, making a lot of money selling everything from supplements to seminars. It was easy money. Too easy. Jack bought into a lifestyle he couldn’t maintain — expensive cars, fine clothes, a house beyond their means. And, for a while, everything was fine.
But then his darkness appeared. Jack had a hole inside he was trying to fill, and when money didn’t work, he drank, gambled, and cheated.
Susan didn’t know what to do. Family and friends urged her to leave him, saying things like: He’s no good. He doesn’t deserve a woman like you. You can do so much better.
But there’s one thing they didn’t know. Not even Jack knew.
Susan was pregnant with Chelsea.
Even when things were terrible, she couldn’t give up on the man she loved, at least not without a fight.
One night she followed him to a bar, then parked her car and waited for him to stumble out of the bar, drunk with some floozy.
Susan got out of her car and stormed up to Jack.
His eyes were wide as she grabbed him, told the floozy to get lost, and dragged him back to her car.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Wherever the road leads us,” she said, no clue what she was doing, only that she had to do something. She got on the highway and drove, trusting that God would help her figure things out.
At first, Jack was apologetic, saying he was sorry over and over, promising Susan that he’d never do it again.
She said nothing. Just kept driving.
His cries turned to anger, accusations that she didn’t know what it was like for him — the pressure of his job, the soul-sucking nature of his work, and how she didn’t understand him.
And she drove, feeling God pushing her forward.
Where am I going?
You’ll know when you get there, she felt Him say.
Eventually, Jack fell asleep.
She drove until sunrise, finding herself on a long stretch of mountain road with nothing in sight but rocks and trees.
Then she came to a long bridge overlooking a lake far below.
She glanced to her right and saw orange bleeding into the violet sky, a sight so beautiful she had to stop.
She shook Jack awake, and they got out of the car.
Then, the floodgates opened.
Jack told her about his awful childhood, how his father had been a monster. How no matter how happy he was, Jack always felt like he wasn’t deserving, that something, somehow would come along and destroy everything.
“You don’t have to follow your father’s footsteps,” she told him. “You aren’t him. You are a kind, loving man.”
He held her tightly, sobbing.
It was the first time she’d ever seen him weep, and it made her cry right alongside him.
She told him she was pregnant.
He cried again. At first, she thought he was upset, but then realized they were tears of joy.
Because Jack had found God.
He promised never to let the darkness back inside.
As we pull up to the cabin, with Jack’s Panamera outside, I fear that the darkness has returned. And it’s up to me to help drive it out before he does something he’ll regret forever, something that will destroy Ms. Valencia’s life, and the Caldwell family.
Am I up to the task?
Waylon looks at me as we approach the door. “You sure you wanna go in there?”
“Yes.”
He shrugs then sticks his keys in the lock and unlocks the door.
Jack appears before we’ve made it ten steps into the living room. A disheveled mess — shirt untucked, hair messy and sweaty, blood stains on his shirt, holding a bottle of whiskey.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, staring at us wild-eyed.
“What the hell are you doing?” Waylon says.
“You should go home, both of you.” His voice is slurred, eyes red.
I hear a cry from a room somewhere in the back.
I start toward it.
Jack gets in my way.
“No.”
“Let her go,” I say.
“No. If the police aren’t going to do their jobs, I will.”
Waylon comes toward us. “Come on, Jack, you’ve gotta give them time. They only questioned her yesterday. They have to build a case before they can make an arrest.”
“They ain’t arresting her!” He takes a swig of
whiskey. “We both know it.”
I challenge him. “So, what, this is your idea of justice? Kidnapping her? Hurting her?”
A horrible thought occurs to me. What if Carla is dying? What if he has passed the point of no return?
“Please, tell me you didn’t …” I can’t finish voicing the thought, lest I somehow make it true.
Jack looks up at me with a sneer. And for a moment, I’m certain we’re too late, that Carla is bleeding out.
Oh, God no.
Waylon pushes past Jack, heading toward the back of the cabin.
Jack goes to stop him, but he’s not fast enough.
Seconds after he reaches the room in the back, Waylon cries out, “What did you do?”
I run after Waylon, also past Jack, and join him in the doorway. Carla is sitting in the chair, tied up, blood all over her clothes, face bruised purple, one cheek the size of a golf ball.
My gut drops as she looks up, eyes almost void of emotion.
I turn to Jack, now coming into the room, then run up and, with both hands balled into fists, shove him backward.
“What did you do?”
He stumbles back, somehow managing to stay on his feet.
“It’s her fault Chelsea’s in a coma! We trusted her. She’s a teacher! And she took advantage of our girl, abused her trust. She turned our little girl gay! Chelsea’s gonna burn in Hell for eternity because of her.”
He breaks down, crying.
Waylon stares at me, speechless.
I remember how smooth he had been when talking to Jack, how he could pretty much handle any situation, spin it to their benefit.
How the hell is he gonna spin this?
I go over to Carla, fumble with her gag.
“What are you doing?” Jack calls out.
“I’m taking this thing off her before she chokes to death!”
I pull the gag off, and Carla looks up at me, her terrified eyes lighting with life — help is here.
“Please,” she cries, “I need to see a doctor.”
I look down, see blood soaking her blue top near her abdomen. I pull up at the bottom of her top, see a bandage soaked in blood.
