Flip

by Martyn Bedford

  It wasn’t possible. It absolutely could not be possible.

  But there it was, literally staring him in the face. This boy was Philip. He was Philip. And if this was Philip—if this was what Alex looked like now—no wonder the woman, Philip’s mother, had flipped her lid at him for claiming he was someone else. No wonder she’d told him he was behaving like a seven-year-old.

  I’m not Philip! You’re not my mother! No wonder she didn’t believe him. What chance was there of her believing him now if he emerged from the bathroom and told her he was trapped inside her son?

  He wasn’t sure he believed it himself. Kept hoping that the next time he stole a peek at his reflection, Philip’s features would be gone, replaced by his own.

  But each time, Philip was still there.

  Alex dried himself clumsily, shaking so much he dropped the towel. His legs were hairier and more muscular, too, he noticed. When he went to pee, he had the next shock. Two shocks at once: a) pubes; b) size. No. No way. It’d be like holding another boy’s thing for him while he peed. He did it sitting down, like a girl, hurriedly brushed his teeth and left the bathroom as quickly as he could so that he wouldn’t have to look at himself in the mirror any longer.

  But the image wasn’t easily erased from his mind. Nor could he get rid of the thought that if he had—somehow, impossibly, incomprehensibly—woken up inside another boy’s body, with another boy’s face, then what had happened to his own? And what had happened to “Philip”? In Alex’s house, right now, was this other boy, Philip, staring into a mirror, just as Alex had been, in numbed disbelief at the face staring back at him? Was a woman who wasn’t his mum chivvying him off to school?

  * * *

  Outside in the street, in Philip’s school uniform (black blazer, not green; plain gray tie, not green and gray diagonal stripes), Alex watched Philip’s mother set off in her bright blue Punto for wherever it was she worked. No lift, then. She’d done her bit, hurrying him out the house—the rest was down to him. No problem there, apart from his having no idea which school to go to. Or where it was.

  Not that it mattered. Alex had no intention of going to school that morning.

  He fished Philip’s mobile from the blazer pocket. He’d spotted the phone on a shelf in the bedroom along with a handful of change and an expensive-looking watch, which he checked now. Eight-twenty-five. If it was a Monday, Dad would’ve already left for work and Mum would be dropping Sam at breakfast club before heading to work herself. Alex sat on the wall at the front of the house and switched on the phone. It was a slimmer, flashier model than his, but simple enough to figure out. The trouble was he didn’t know his parents’ mobile numbers by heart—they were logged in his own phone’s “contacts.” Same with Mum’s work number; Dad’s, he’d never been given. (Phoning Dad at work was strictly forbidden.) Alex knew the home number, naturally, but no one would be there to answer and any message wasn’t going to be picked up until the evening. So he dialed directory inquiries and got the number for the college where his mum worked, called that number and asked to be put through to the library. She didn’t start till nine but Alex could at least be sure of getting a message to her soonest this way.

  Hearing her voice on the tape caught him unawares and he was too choked up to speak at first. Then, “Mum, hi, it’s Alex. I … I don’t know what’s happening or where I am or anything, but … I’m here. I’m okay. Can you call me back? Can you come and fetch me?” He lost it again for a moment. Once he’d composed himself, he explained that he was using someone else’s mobile and read out the number, which he’d found under “ME!” in Philip’s contacts. “Mum, I don’t understand any of this. I’m scared. I want … I want to come home.”

  Alex wiped his face, took several deep breaths. Now what?

  He looked at the watch again. If she checked the machine as soon as she got there, he had about half an hour to wait for her to return the call. He felt conspicuous, sitting outside in the street, but going back indoors wasn’t an option—he didn’t have a key to the house. He searched the blazer pockets. Nothing. Just a tissue, a Snickers wrapper and a blue Biro with its cap missing.

  At that moment the mobile buzzed and Alex almost dropped it in surprise. A text message, not a call, but even so, he clicked “view” in the hope that it was from his mother. It wasn’t. The name that came up in the display was Donna.

  hey sxy where u at!? u skivin off!? :-)

  He closed the message. So, Philip had a girlfriend. Good for him.

  In a moment of inspiration, it occurred to Alex to call his own mobile number. If some kind of body-swap had taken place, then maybe Philip had ahold of Alex’s phone. Worth a shot, anyway. But when Alex dialed, a voice message said the number wasn’t recognized. He tried again. Same result. How could that be?

  He stared at the phone for a moment, then slipped it into his pocket.

  Right. Just sitting there was pointless. Shouldering Philip’s schoolbag, Alex set off down the street, not at all sure where he was headed, but needing to be headed somewhere. If Mum was going to collect him, he had to work out where he was.

  Philip’s family lived in a terrace of old-looking four-story houses. Built of stone, not brick. Leafy front gardens, posh cars parked outside. At the T-junction at the bottom of the street, Alex randomly took a left onto a busier road. The view opened out and he saw that beyond the rooftops lay countryside. Fields, hills, trees, sheep. Not London, then. Unless this was out on the edges. Did he have enough money to make it home by himself, if it came to that? He rummaged in his pocket for Philip’s change. It’d pay for a bus ride, or tube fare, just about. There was a Tesco across the road and, beyond, a railway line. Cars cruised by but he hadn’t spotted a pedestrian yet. No one to ask Excuse me, can you tell me where I am, please? Actually, it was nice here, wherever “here” was. The buildings, with the sunlight on the stone; in the distance, the tops of the hills, purple and green beneath a clear sky. He was too warm in Philip’s blazer. It pulled him up short again with the reminder that it was summer now—June—not the damp, gray winter he’d left behind less than eleven hours earlier.

  Half a year gone, in the space of a night’s sleep. Alex wished he could call his father. His rational explanation for this would’ve been interesting.

  Thinking about Dad, he came close to tears again. If it was June here, it had to be June back home as well, which meant—didn’t it?—that he’d been “missing” for six months. Or in a time warp. For all he knew, his parents not only had no idea where he was but had been grieving for him since December.

  Their lost son. Or was “Philip” their son now?

  Alex thought he might break down right there in the street, but he didn’t. He held it together. Just. He’d been doing okay since he’d left the house. By concentrating on the practicalities of sorting this out—trying to ignore how he looked and the fact that it felt so wrong to walk around in this unfamiliar body—he’d managed to distract himself from whatever had happened. Managed to be Alex again, if only briefly. His thoughts were the same as always. Alex thoughts. The body might have been Philip’s but the mind was still his. On the inside, he didn’t feel any different at all. Except for the knowledge that something freakish and terrible had occurred. No matter how hard he tried to suppress that thought, it was there, nagging away at him.

  After a few minutes, he came to a row of shops, then a car park and more shops, a post office, an Indian restaurant. A train station, with bays out front for buses. The sign outside the station said Litchbury.

  Alex hadn’t heard of the place. He went over to the timetable board, where there was map of the local rail network. A few people were about, going into and out of the station or M&S Simply Food, or waiting for buses. Among these strangers, in this strange town, he was conscious of being an outsider, of acting suspiciously somehow, as though he was a spy in their midst. Not that anyone paid him much attention. To them, he was probably just a schoolboy bunking off. He studied the map. Litchbury was
at the end of a line that ran into—he traced the route with his, with Philip’s, finger—Leeds. Leeds. Where was that? Somewhere up north. A long way from south London, anyway. His spirits dipped. He could have ended up anywhere, really, he supposed. Tokyo, Mumbai, Buenos Aires. Litchbury wasn’t too bad when you considered it like that. Even so, he thought of being this far from Mum, Dad and Sam, from where he belonged, and of how long it would take his mum to reach him.

  And when she did …

  He tried not to think about how he would convince her it really was him inside this body. Behind this face. Or even if she believed him, what she would be able to do to rescue him. To reverse this. How could she? How could anyone help him? Never mind hours, he might be stuck like this for days, weeks, months, years.

  Forever.

  The phone buzzed again. Fumbling it from his blazer, he opened the message.

  Meet in Smoothies after skl? cu there Bx.

  This one was from Billie. Two girlfriends.

  To pass the time until Mum returned his call, he parked himself on a bench outside the station and opened Philip’s schoolbag. In the rush to leave the house, the bag had been shoved into his hands by the giraffe-woman as she had bundled him out the door. What was in there? Keys to the house, maybe. Money. Packed lunch (having brought up his breakfast, Alex was hungry). Some clues, perhaps, to who Philip was. Of all the billions of people in the world, Alex had wound up as him. He couldn’t help thinking it wasn’t just down to chance—that there had to be a reason, some connection that had paired them together like this.

  Alex opened the various compartments and set the contents down beside him on the bench. The results were disappointing. A waterproof coat, rolled up tight; schoolbooks (maths, history, French); a school planner; another Snickers wrapper; pens, pencils, ruler, eraser, sharpener; a calculator; an iPod; a fixture list for Yorkshire County Cricket Club; a lighter; a pack of playing cards; a one-gigabyte memory stick; deodorant (Lynx); hair gel; breath-freshener spray; a twopence coin; a dried-out apple core; a half-finished tube of Polos; a young person’s travel pass; four elastic bands; two paper clips; a mobile phone top-up card; another Snickers wrapper; and finally, a small key (for his locker?) on a key ring in the shape of a pair of breasts.

  Alex popped a mint, binned the apple core and wrappers and methodically put everything else back into the bag except for the planner, the iPod and the playing cards. There was something odd about the box; it was too light to contain a deck of cards. He flipped the lid. Cigarettes. Well, that explained the foul taste in his mouth when he’d woken up. It also explained the lighter, the Polos and the breath freshener. He’d never smoked, apart from half a cigarette at a party, just to give it a try. But even if he’d liked it (which he hadn’t), smoking wasn’t a good idea for an asthmatic. It occurred to Alex that he didn’t have asthma now. He inhaled—deeply, no hint of a wheeze—and let the air back out in one long blow.

  These were definitely Philip’s bronchial tubes. Philip’s lungs.

  Maybe this was how transplant patients felt, with someone else’s lungs or heart or liver inside them. Only, in Alex’s case, it was an entire-body transplant. Skin, flesh, muscle, ligaments, bones, blood, internal organs—the lot. All he had left of himself, as far as he could tell, was his brain. Or not even the actual brain, but the thoughts inside it. The mind, or … consciousness. Whatever it was that made Alex Alex.

  No. It was way too weird even to think about.

  He turned his attention to the planner: A5, spiral bound, with a clear plastic cover and, beneath that, the school crest, motto (Cognitio vincit omnia) and name (Litchbury High School). Philip’s surname was Garamond (what kind of name was that?) and he was in Tutor Group 9b. Okay, so they were in the same school year. Tenuous, as connections go, but age was something they had in common, along with gender and country of residence.

  A train had arrived. Passengers were streaming out of the station. Alex glanced up, distracted by the blur of passing feet.

  He checked his watch again. Come on, Mum. Call. Please call.

  She would call. She would believe him. She would drive straight up here and take him home, away from all this. She would get help, somehow, and it would be all right. He would be himself again.

  “Garamond.”

  There was a baker’s across the road. Alex thought about getting a sausage roll or something with Philip’s change but didn’t want to use up what little money he had.

  “Garamond.”

  Alex bent over the planner once more, ready to have a proper nosey inside. A shadow fell across the page.

  “Philip Garamond, I’m talking to you.”

  Alex looked up. The guy was bald and wearing a red and white bow tie and a checked jacket buttoned tight across his belly. He carried a leather briefcase too fat with books and papers to shut properly.

  “It’s ten to nine, boy,” he said. “Why aren’t you in school?”

  “Right, let’s see what Ms. Sprake has to say, shall we?”

  Alex was made to stand in the corridor while the teacher with the bow tie and bulging briefcase went into one of the classrooms. He’d been marched from the station to the school, his escort panting alongside him, too out of condition to walk and talk at the same time. If Alex had made a break for it, there was no way Bow Tie could’ve caught him. But it wasn’t in his nature to disobey a teacher quite so blatantly, even if that teacher had mistaken him for someone else. Besides, Alex had nowhere to run.

  Bow Tie reappeared with a woman Alex assumed to be Philip’s form tutor. She pulled the door, shutting off a hubbub of classroom chatter. EN2, the panel on the door said. English. He wondered what they called Ms. Sprake behind her back. Spray Can, or something like that. Quite young, but frumpy in her pale blue blouse and a navy corduroy skirt that came to her knees. She removed her glasses and held them carefully by the stems. Alex’s friend David was the same with his—paranoid about smudging the lenses, obsessively cleaning them with a special cloth. A long way from here, David was in history at this moment, an empty seat beside him.

  “What’s this about, Philip?” the woman said, a crease forming between her eyebrows. If she had meant to sound stern, it came out more concerned. Perhaps she liked Philip. That was a first that morning.

  “I don’t know, miss.”

  “Mr. Johannsen says you were at the station.”

  “I wasn’t going anywhere.” He shrugged. “Just sitting there … thinking.”

  A snort, from Mr. Johannsen. “That would make a change, Garamond.”

  So it continued: the two teachers doing the good-cop-bad-cop routine, Alex failing to come up with a satisfactory explanation for his truancy. For sure, he wasn’t about to tell them the truth.

  Oh, what it was, I woke up in another boy’s body and …

  Eventually Ms. Sprake decided that whatever the reason, he had been caught off-site during school hours without permission. Sanction: a comment in his planner, and he was to see her after last period so they could discuss this properly.

  “Just be thankful Mr. Johannsen came by when he did,” she said. “An entire day on the skive and I’d be sending a letter to your parents and red-slipping you.”

  Red-slipping. That must mean isolation here. At Crokeham Hill High it was called being kabinned, after the Portakabin where you served your sentence. Alex had never been kabinned or received a comment in his planner, although he was getting one now. At least, Philip was.

  “What’s your first lesson?” Ms. Sprake asked.

  Alex plucked a subject out of the air. “History.”

  “I hardly think so,” cut in Mr. Johannsen, “seeing as I’m your history teacher.”

  Damn. What were the odds? “Sorry, I meant … actually, which week is it?”

  “Blimey, Philip, you’ve been on this timetable for nine months.” This was Ms. Sprake. If that frown cut any deeper, her eyebrows would shear off. She flipped to another page in his planner. “Blue Week, Monday, first period: Germa
n.”

  German. He didn’t do German. “Oh, right, yeah. That’s it, German.”

  “Right, get yourself off there. And no stopping at the lockers—you’ve missed twenty minutes as it is.”

  As she handed back the planner, Philip’s mobile rang.

  Mum.

  He pulled the phone from his blazer pocket, the ring-tone (some rap thing) startlingly loud. Before he could answer, Mr. Johannsen snatched the mobile from him.

  “I don’t think so, do you?” With that, and some fumbling for the right button, Bow Tie switched off the phone. The ring-tone stopped.

  “That call was important!” Alex’s raised voice ricocheted along the corridor.

  It was hard to tell which of the three of them was the most shocked. After a pause, Ms. Sprake said, “Philip, you’re in quite enough bother as it is.”

  “Sorry, but I need to take that call. I really do.”

  “What you need to do, in fact, is take yourself off to German. Now.”

  “But—”

  “Now this minute, Philip.” She took the mobile from Mr. Johannsen. “As for this, you can have it back when you come to see me this afternoon.”

  Halfway down the corridor, he realized he hadn’t a clue where the German classroom might be. He must have headed off in the right direction, because Sprake or Johannsen would’ve called after him otherwise. Frankly, Alex didn’t care where he was going. All he could think about was the missed call. Just a minute later, he’d have been free to talk to his mother. One minute. How unlucky was that? Now he didn’t know how or when he’d get another chance. If the rules at Litchbury High were the same as at his own school, only Years Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen would be allowed off-site at lunchtime, and there were bound to be teachers on gate duty, so no chance of sneaking into town to use a pay phone. He’d have to wait until he got the mobile back. Which meant he had to survive a whole day in this school, passing himself off as Philip Garamond, attending lessons that were nothing to do with him, surrounded by teachers and pupils he had never met, in a building that might as well have been a maze.