Little Red Gem

by D L Richardson

  Ghosts didn’t need sleep, so I’d forgotten how good curling up under a warm blanket felt. I burrowed deeper, shifting in and out of dreams, but in the end neither the alarm nor the white rays of daylight were to blame for preventing me from sleeping in. Behind closed eyes I was plagued with images of Anne, William, and I walking hand in hand through Providence every Halloween accosting people for candy corn. If my plan failed, that would be my future.

  Waking bright and early wasn’t usually my favorite thing, but today I rolled out of bed with a bounce, a stretch, a yawn, and a wriggle of my toes in the plush carpet. Today wasn’t only the start of my return from the dead it was also Wednesday, a school day. The significance brought butterflies to my stomach, lines erratic as a Geiger counter to my heart, and a messy jumble of black-ink doodles to my head. Today I’d talk to Leo. And we had much to discuss.

  Still not used to Audrey’s body, I stumbled around my new bedroom as I pulled on her clothes. I stood in front of the mirror, and naturally the shock that I was someone else hit me, but what I noticed most was that my eyes looked alarmingly like mine.

  I took this as a further sign that Leo would notice the real me.

  Teri called Audrey to breakfast and it took a few seconds to register that she called for me.

  “You’re a big girl. You can do this.” I stared at my reflection, glad that I wouldn’t have to get used to seeing this other face. This swap was only temporary. After I’d spoken to Leo, I’d return to being a ghost. Right? Of course I would. But I could think about that later. For now I had to get to school.

  I put a quick stop to my internal counsel, yelled, “Coming,” and grabbed Audrey’s school bag and cell phone.

  Before I stepped out the room, I noticed the screen on the phone was blank. Hanging out of the power socket was the charger. I plugged in the phone and prayed I didn’t need anything stored in its memory, like the answers to exam questions.

  “Would it kill you to keep your phone charged?” I told my reflection.

  The worst part of taking over Audrey’s body was that I lived inside the body of a fifteen year old, which meant I’d have to go down two levels in school. On the up side, I’d already completed high school so the lessons should have been a breeze. You’d suppose so, but by mid morning, I’d discovered that somewhere in the last two years the dictionary had been rewritten and every trivial thing known about the universe had been changed. I couldn’t get a single answer correct, and by late morning I’d given up even trying and etched doodles in my textbooks instead. When the lunch bell rang, I headed straight to the music rooms where I suspected Leo might be. I found him alone amidst an orchestra of instruments minus the orchestra. I studied him as he adjusted plastic chairs and music stands in readiness for band practice that afternoon.

  His hand paused above a seat, and then he turned his head.

  He’s looking right at me, my brain screamed.

  It was like I was watching him for the first time. Tall, almost six foot, with killer biceps from gripping the neck of an electric guitar and lugging two hundred pound amplifiers around the studio.

  “Try outs are after class,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m not here for try outs.” Except there was no other plausible explanation for my presence. “Well, not exactly. It’s a tossup between band and drama. Or maybe even French.”

  All of which were lies.

  “What about cheerleader try outs?”

  I laughed so hard, I almost tripped over my own feet. “I don’t think so. You need a certain level of coordination, which I clearly don’t possess.”

  Even if I were to trade bodies with an Olympic gymnast, I would never be the athletic type.

  The upright piano beckoned and I was happy to take the call by sitting at the stool and lifting open the lid. My fingers easily found the G chord and my foot found the reverb pedal. A haunting tune echoed and words to a song exploded inside my head:

  You walked a million miles around me. Not noticing at all…

  When Leo neared, the song slipped away.

  He offered me a weak smile. “You don’t seem the cheerleader type anyway. And I doubt you could suffer the French teacher, Monsieur Tre Obnoxious. So band or drama it will have to be.”

  A giggling fit escaped against my will; I was beyond embarrassed that I’d waited days to speak to Leo, and now that I stood before him I gushed like a little girl. He was more charming than I recalled. I was also sure he was flirting with me.

  This last notion brought an abrupt halt to my bright mood. I jumped up from the piano. My body had been in the ground for three days and already he seemed to be flirting with another girl.

  Leo stared down at his hands. His voice went flat and lifeless. “Band or drama, it’s up to you. Both are good places to hide out. Nobody comes here unless they have to.”

  I took two steps toward him and felt something bump into me, spinning me off course. Righting myself, I saw Shanessa had bustled past me and now headed straight for Leo. Before tears gushed out – fifteen year old emotions were more volatile, I’d re-discovered – I slipped out of the room and kept my back pressed against the wall outside to learn everything going on inside.

  “How are you doing, Leo?” I heard Shanessa ask. “You weren’t in the cafeteria. Have you eaten?”

  “Not hungry.”

  “You should eat something.”

  Silence. I prayed they weren’t kissing. Why would they? If Leo had loved me like he said he did he wouldn’t have been so quick to kiss someone else. Unless his lips were as lonely as mine.

  “I still can’t believe she’s never coming back,” Shanessa said. “Any time you need someone to talk to, you know I’m here for you.”

  I couldn’t bear to listen to any more so I scurried off to the toilets where I could bawl my eyes out in privacy. I didn’t get ten feet when I crashed into the girl from Audrey’s photographs – Hannah.

  “What are you doing?” Hannah asked, looking over my shoulder to the direction I’d come from.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve tried to get you to join band for, like, forever. Try outs are this afternoon.”

  “Yeah, I know. Leo told me.”

  She raised her eyebrow. “Leo? Leo Culver?”

  I opened my mouth to protest, and shut it closed to watch in surprise as Leo stormed out of the room like a man on a mission. He hurried passed us and continued down the hall. I knew I was staring after him in abject longing, but I couldn’t help myself.

  “Since when do you have a crush on Leo Culver?” Hannah gushed. “You dirty dog. He’s a senior.”

  “And he’s recently lost his girlfriend,” I reminded her through clenched teeth.

  Hannah rolled her eyes. “Which is precisely why he’s so desirable. You should listen to the way all the girls are talking about him. Everyone is dying to ease his pain. I’d give it a go but I don’t date musicians.”

  “You’re a musician.”

  “Exactly. One ego per relationship only. I read it somewhere. Cleo or Cosmopolitan.”

  Before I could utter a word in defense of musicians everywhere, she linked her arm through mine and steered me toward the music rooms. We almost got knocked to the ground by Shanessa who seemed in a hurry to leave. Shanessa scurried away without apologizing or making eye contact. I wondered if she noticed the imaginary daggers I shot in her back.

  Eyes smarting, but my chest beating with secret pleasure at how Shanessa’s advances had had no effect on Leo, I let Hannah guide me to the music rooms, but for the entire lunch break I couldn’t focus on anything she said because I was too busy fuming over my best friend’s traitorous behavior. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Shanessa was the one offering support to Leo. Hurt, gutted, devastated, and pissed, but not surprised.

  Was I reading too much into this or, like my mother was fond of telling me, had the signs always been there? Shanessa had told me on at least a dozen occasions exactly how she felt about Leo: “You’r
e lucky to have such a catch”, she’d once said. “Were Leo and you to break up, you wouldn’t find it weird if I asked him out, right?” was one statement she’d said out of the blue and I’d laughed her off. “If scientists discovered a way to clone people would I have your permission for Leo to be cloned?” had left me thinking, oh, if only you knew the truth. No matter how many times I’d told her that Leo was not without flaws, she’d never believed me. Nor was I prepared to let her or anyone else discover them. I didn’t know if I was jealous of another girl capturing Leo’s heart, or of another girl sharing his secret, but I burned with hostility.

  The rest of my day was spent with a green-eyed monster on my shoulder as the most beautiful girls in school paraded their wares in front of Leo. So consumed was I with jealousy that after school finished I wandered aimlessly until I kicked my toe on the edges of a rock garden. I glanced up to find myself standing on the sidewalk in front of my real home. The home where a family had lived in until two people had left and one had remained – my mother. Only the fact that she was at work stopped me from running up to the front door.

  With a sinking heart I turned around and headed to Audrey’s home – my new home– by way of the café where the sight of Shanessa and Natalie scribbling lyrics on paper napkins and sipping lattes dropped my mood to impossibly lower levels.

  News flash – life goes on.

  My purpose had never been clearer. I had to make the most of returning from the grave, no matter how long it meant keeping Audrey’s body trapped in the hollow. But first I had to get over the idea of slipping into my old life and track down hers.

  Stuck for ideas, I decided to hang out with Teri for the rest of the afternoon. When I pushed through the front door of the shop, Oleander wasted no time in making me feel unwelcome. Did he hiss at everyone? I hoped so. Otherwise I suspected he would be the tri-colored flea-ridden ghost buster capable of sending a telepathic signal to Teri that her daughter was not whom she appeared to be. How crazy that my arch nemesis was a cat.

  “How was school today?” Teri asked, briefly looking up from the box of stuff she’d unpacked onto the counter.

  I dropped my bag heavily on the floor. “Harder than I expected.”

  “If everything in life was easy, you’d never appreciate it.”

  “I’d like to test that theory.”

  Wandering over to the counter, I picked up the deck of tarot cards and absently flipped through the cards. No ordinary King or Queen of diamonds in this lot. Instead Pages, Kings, Queens, and Knights ruled with wands, pentacles, cups, and swords. There was also a bunch of suns, magicians, moons, chariots, towers, and other weird stuff. I cringed when I came across the hanged man card.

  “This is sick,” I said under my breath.

  Losing interest, I decided to stack them on their sides to make them into a house of cards. I managed to form the lower level when Teri snapped up the lot.

  “Audrey, I know you don’t care about the work that puts a roof over your head and food on the table, but you know better than to play with these cards.”

  “Sorry.” I was curious. “What happens if I play with them?”

  Teri didn’t answer. She stacked the cards neatly into a pile and returned to unpacking. Peering over the top of the box, I noticed she was sorting a million crystals into a million piles. I’d had such a horrid day at school, the simple act of sorting crystals offered a means of distracting my mind.

  “Can I help sort those?”

  Teri stared at me. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

  “You never usually offer.” Teri shook her head and rewarded me with a motherly smile; I couldn’t help but grow a few inches beneath it. “Of course, I’d love a hand.”

  In the background, music played; pipe music and a lilting voice warbling about a stranger who loved her. In the glass cabinet were pewter goblets and velvet slippers. The setting sun hit the painted trees on the store front window and shards of greens and blues sliced across the room. Teri and I separated pink crystals from grey onyx while the sun dropped from its perch in the sky. We sorted green jade stones from amber rocks while the lilting voice sang about valleys and streams.

  Oddly, this was the calmest I’d felt since I’d taken a tumble in the Jeep and didn’t get back up.

  After Teri placed the last of the crystals into a velvet lined tray, she shifted her gaze to the clock on the wall. “Where did the day go? Let’s lock up and go upstairs.”

  I jumped down off the stool. “I’ll make dinner tonight if you like.” I often helped out when mom got stuck back at the tourism centre and I was too hungry to wait for her to get home.

  Teri laughed and grabbed the yowling cat that she carried unceremoniously up the stairs. At the top, she stopped and said, “I swear I don’t know what you did with my Audrey but I’m not complaining.”

  Okay, perhaps my trading places had identified a slight problem. Audrey and I were nothing alike. Every time I opened my mouth I gave more of my personality away and less of hers, which meant there was a strong chance Teri would eventually take notice of Oleander’s attempts to warn her and she’d exorcize me or vanquish me or whatever else her powers enabled her to do. The solution was that I had to act more like Audrey. The problem was that I didn’t know Audrey. After our dad had left for Japan, we’d drifted apart. The best I could hope for was to act like myself and trust that I impressed everyone with the change.

  ***

  Teri pulled two steaks out of the freezer. I’d already had my first glimpse into Audrey’s personality last night when Teri had served crumbed chicken with onion gravy for dinner. Audrey wasn’t a vegetarian, but since falling pregnant, morning sickness had ruined my carnivorous taste buds which meant I was a vegetarian, or at least I used to be. Last night, my taste buds had returned three-fold and I’d wolfed the meal down. Teri hadn’t raised an eyebrow, and as I ate dinner this night she didn’t give me a second glance, however, everything I said or did was another chance at exposing myself as a fraud, so I ate in silence.

  The effort to chew through every last piece of steak left me feeling exhausted so I headed up to my bedroom without asking if there was anything for dessert. Besides, Audrey’s giant laptop with its TV sized screen had been calling me throughout the meal, and I was happy to oblige my needs and curl up under the covers to watch a movie. I guessed I was still down in the dumps from the way the girls in school had flirted with Leo. They had perfect hair, full boobs, long legs. Audrey was all stick and bone, a kid. What chance would this body have against real women?

  But by the time I dragged my legs through the bedroom door, my melancholy mood meant I could barely manage the effort of slipping under the covers. I did, though, and I piled them over my head to make a cave. These sheets whiffed of something different than mine. Mom liked to wash our linen in floral scents. I inhaled orange blossom. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have cared which scent tickled me to sleep, but my cranky mood made me want to lash out at everything. So I cried into the pillow, telling myself I’d never get to sleep with this stupid vapor trail of fruit.

  In truth, I was angry because I wanted to return from the grave in my body, not Audrey’s. I wanted my life, not Audrey’s. I wanted my problems, nobody else’s.

  At home, on my bedside sat a framed photograph of Leo and me, taken on our third date. I’d packed a picnic and we’d hiked from my house into the woods. Beneath a canopy of fir trees, we’d found the perfect place to have a romantic lunch. Afterward, I’d lifted the camera in the air and taken a photo of us lying on our backs amongst a bed of white wild flowers. At night, I used to stare at the photograph until my eyes grew too heavy to stay open.

  Zipping home to hold the photo frame would have made it easier for me to sleep. Trouble was, when I’d been a ghost I’d simply wished to be somewhere and, hey presto, I arrived, even if I did need someone to open the door. Inside this mortal body I was bound by something more impossible - rules and curfews. Even if I could
figure out how astral projection worked, I’d be an idiot to step one foot into the world where I’d trapped my half-sister.

  I should check up on her, I told myself. Tomorrow. Or the next day at the very latest.

  Check up on Audrey. Convince Leo to spend time with me in order to squirrel out the depths of his love. Find a way to tell my mother that other than being dead I was okay. Try not to dwell on the possibility that I was fated to end up trapped in limbo like Anne and William.

  I had a lot to achieve and I had no idea how much longer this spell would last.

  ***

  Tossing and turning should have been an Olympic sport. After two hours of it, and on my way to winning a gold medal, I begrudgingly tossed aside the covers, got up, and flipped open the laptop only to discover that Audrey had her laptop protected with a password. I’d taken over her body, but not her memory. Dejected, I then ripped the phone out of the charger and gazed longingly at the blank screen. I’ll send a text to Leo, I told myself. I used to send a goodnight text, and until I did, I could never get to sleep.

  Common sense prevailed and I put the phone back on the desk. I don’t know how I managed, but I eventually dozed off, thinking things could only improve.

  Chapter Seven

  If yesterday rated high on my too-hard register, the moment I set foot on the school grounds, shivers along my spine signaled that things would not improve. For a start, I’d slept in so I’d missed out on the opportunity to catch Leo driving into the school parking lot. During the morning’s lesson changeover I didn’t once set eyes upon him. And I practically had to sever off Hannah’s arm in order to slip out of her clutches when the lunch bell rang.

  I rushed from class to the courtyard, knowing Leo would be heading there after a history lesson, and provided our timetables hadn’t changed in the past week, the lunch room was the only place our paths would cross. I spotted Leo heading straight for me and I clenched my fists, ready to punch anyone who got in my way. He continued walking toward me and I channeled my thoughts to him: