Sister Switch

by Beth Garrod

  But Mum didn’t.

  In fact, she didn’t do anything at all.

  Because…

  Oh no. No. Nooo. NO!

  I actually froze.

  In the front seat wasn’t Mum. Or Dad. Or anyone I’d seen before.

  And now, come to think of it, didn’t we have grey seats? Not black ones.

  My blood turned to slush.

  What.

  Had.

  I.

  Done?!

  ‘I’m sorry.’ A confused-looking man turned round in the driver’s seat. That I was still clutching. ‘Do I know you?’

  He had shoulder-length blond hair in an old-school Harry Styles-esque way. I must not tell him I thought he was my mum.

  ‘I thought you were my mum.’ Right. Well done, me. ‘Not because of the hair. Although it does look a bit like Mum’s.’ I gulped. ‘In a good way.’

  I didn’t know who was more shocked, him… or me. I guessed it wasn’t every day a sweaty stranger in half a beard and a droopy ruff thought they were your offspring.

  ‘So I don’t know you?’ The look on his face suggested I hadn’t really cleared things up. Shakespeare would probably have described him as ‘most alarm-ed’.

  Should I leave? Or was that even ruder?

  ‘I… er… don’t think so, no.’

  I peeled my fingers off the headrest as he slowly turned to the passenger seat. The whole time he kept me in his sights, as if I might be about to attack. ‘And she’s not one of your friends?’

  Oh holy pantaloons, he was talking to someone else?! There was another person witnessing this?! How had I not spotted them?! I blamed the ruff.

  The person in the passenger seat shifted into the middle. As they swivelled round my stomach flipped. And then went off for a cry.

  I knew exactly who they were.

  And I also knew I’d just made the biggest mistake of my life.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I’d launched myself into a car with Nic. Amazing Nic. Coolest person I knew, writer of my favourite blog in the universe and all-round iconic human.

  I’d been trying to impress her ever since I started senior school.

  And I’d just called her dad ‘Mum’.

  I’D CALLED NIC’S DAD MUM.

  ‘Nicole?’ Her dad sounded calm yet confused. ‘What’s the deal please?’ They were both staring at me – the hairy, historical mutant sitting uninvited on their back seat. All these years I’d wanted Nic to notice me, but I had not meant like this. ‘Do you guys know each other?’

  I said a definite, ‘Yes,’ as Nic said an even more definite, ‘Absolutely not.’

  Positive: she didn’t recognize me.

  Way less than positive: I needed a genius idea as to why I said she would. Despite me visiting Nic’s website every day and giving Micha almost hourly updates on what she was up to, our only contact to date had been me once offering her the last pasty in the canteen – and her saying thanks but she was vegan.

  ‘I offered you a pasty.’ No flicker of recognition. ‘On October fourteenth.’ It was Micha’s birthday, which is why I remembered. Blank faces all round. Where was my sister when I needed her?

  I had to get out of here as quickly as my salmon-feet would allow.

  ‘I’m sorry. I er… thought this was my mum’s car.’ I fumbled around for the bag handles, but the ruff made it hard to see anything. ‘So I’m just going to get my ruff – sorry, stuff – and say sorry again, and er…’ I tried to think of anything Shakespeare. ‘Bid you adieu.’

  I clambered out of the car so fast I lost my balance and splatted on to the pavement. I felt like a lamb I’d seen in a video of a sheep giving birth, limbs flopping everywhere as it plopped to the floor. I lay on the ground, in the middle of everyone walking past, and tried to use whatever sisterly connection I had to summon my sister.

  ERIN! HELP NEEDED! HEAR MY SILENT CRIES!

  But there was no sign of her, so I scrambled up, waved apologetically at Nic and backed away. My shoes were making me jerk-bow with every step, which didn’t help me look any more normal.

  Why had I said October fourteenth?!

  I tried to breathe.

  Why was I still waving?!

  Still there was one good thing. At least Frankie hadn’t put in an appearance. And maybe, just maybe, if I didn’t mention pasties or mums ever again, Nic might never figure out who I really was.

  I really should stop waving at her.

  Should I crawl into this large bin? It couldn’t get any worse.

  ‘Lily?’

  Or not.

  ‘LILY MAVERS?! Is that youuuu?!’

  I didn’t need to look to know exactly who it was. I would recognize that voice, that laugh, anywhere.

  I was in serious trouble. I put on the best game face I could and turned to face her. It was time to be the most confident, calm and composed I’d ever been.

  But my fake beard didn’t get the memo and some of its fluff did a samba up my nose, making me sneeze six times (a personal record, but this was no time to celebrate).

  ‘Oh ACHOO, hello ACHOO, Frankie.’ Oh no. It wasn’t just Frankie. She had her whole cheer team in formation behind her.

  Of course this was the moment she’d arrive.

  She looked me up and down with the exact same expression my sister uses when she watches documentaries about undiscovered sea creatures.

  ‘Can I ask why you’re dressed like that?’ Frankie’s cheer team were looking at me as if I was a mouldy sock they’d discovered in their kit bag.

  Say something funny, Lily. Nic’s window was open and she could still hear every word.

  ‘Can I ask you the same?’ I laughed.

  Frankie and her friends didn’t. In fact, the one at the front hissed, ‘Because it’s our award-winning cheer costume?’ which suggested she hadn’t grasped the concept of a joke.

  ‘So this is how you spend your Saturdays?’ Frankie sniggered as she looked round at the MUCH ADO ABOUT SOMETHING signs behind me. ‘Interesting. I didn’t even think you were any good at English?’

  Just what I didn’t want Nic to hear. My one dream was to be considered for the writing team for her online magazine, TheNicReport.

  ‘No, I am. English. Good at.’ Er, thanks, words, really backing me up there. ‘My sister made me come. After an incident. A washing-up liquid incident.’

  Frankie wound her long ponytail round her hand as she looked at the space either side of me.

  ‘Your sister… right.’ I agree – the evidence wasn’t exactly compelling. Where was Erin?! ‘What even are you?’ Frankie looked back at the car behind her. ‘Nic, any ideas?’ I didn’t like how firmly Nic shook her head. ‘Like, is that even a jacket?’

  ‘It’s a doublet,’ I replied, a little too quickly. ‘And pantaloons.’

  Frankie wrinkled her nose as if she’d smelt something bad. She probably had – my general waft of wig glue. ‘What it is, Lily, is a fashion disaster.’ And without warning she stepped beside me, putting an arm under my ruff and round my shoulders. Frankie looked at her friends as she held out her phone, ‘Can someone pleeeeease get a picture of me with it?!’

  Was I the ‘it’ or did she mean the doublet? It was hard to tell when she was laughing so hard.

  ‘Er, I’m not sure…’

  I tried to wriggle free, but Frankie’s back-flipping arms were pure muscle that had clamped me to her.

  The photo was happening whether I liked it or not. What if she showed someone back at school?!

  But one of her friends was already zooming in the shot.

  I had milliseconds before my semi-bald, fully bearded, pantalooned self was immortalized. Right next to the perfection that was Frankie.

  I had to do something. So with all the speed I had, I pulled at my wig to whip it off.

  Yank.

  But the wig didn’t shift.

  The glue had welded it to my scalp.

  And all I did was yank my head sideways so hard I gave myse
lf whiplash.

  At the exact moment the photo was taken.

  Y-owwwwch.

  I rubbed at my scalp, as Frankie and her friends gathered round to look at the photo. And maybe it was okay, because they were smiling… But as the smiles turned into tears of laughter, I wasn’t exactly reassured.

  ‘Lils…’ Erin’s voice cut through the hysterics. Finally! At least now everyone would see her costume and have proof I’d been dragged here by my sister and I was actually a very nice, and normal, human being. ‘You all right there?’

  No… She hadn’t?!

  That was why she’d disappeared for ages! Erin was in jeans looking like a totally regular person coming to collect me from my solo day of fancy dress fun.

  ‘ERIN!’ I shouted so hard a chunk of beard flopped off.

  She shrugged as if I was being dramatic. ‘You didn’t say you were meeting friends?’

  Before I could reply, Frankie spluttered, ‘Friends?! Let me stop you right there.’

  I knew we weren’t but… ouch.

  Erin didn’t miss a beat. ‘Well, why are you taking photos with my sister then?’

  Oof. Just like that Frankie stopped laughing – and suddenly I was glad Erin was here. My sister unleashed her signature move – a withering eyebrow raise – and Frankie stepped back. Never had I seen a cheerleader look less cheerful.

  ‘You coming then, Lils?’ Erin looked towards the bus stop in the distance as a car beeped. Mum’s car. My actual mum’s car. Why two minutes late, Mother? Whhhhhy? You’re never late, so why today?! You might have thought there was no harm doing a quick tidy of bits of paper by the phone, but alas, those two minutes had changed the course of my life!

  I scurried towards the car as fast as I could, feeling Frankie’s glare follow me like a laser beam.

  I just had to hope she had an ounce of humanity and kept that photo to herself. It was bad enough her cheer friends witnessing the whole thing, but if she shared it, come Monday my dream of surviving school would be over.

  I sighed so hard my ruff rippled. Why had I agreed to come? Nic was never going to talk to me now, let alone want me for her website team.

  ‘Did you have a nice day, girls?’ Mum wound down her window. Despite everything I still needed to put on a smile and carry on the plan to get in her good books.

  ‘Great day.’ Erin beat me to it. ‘Although, Lils –’ she leant on the car roof – ‘I thought you said Frankie was a nightmare? She seemed nice enough to me?’

  Eurgh! Why was Erin always like this?! So smug and so perfect with her easy-peasy life?! I glared at her. She winked right back. Would trying to strangle her with my beard count as ‘mature enough’ behaviour for Mum?

  ‘And not to change the subject, but have you seen my skull anywhere?’

  And that was when I realized I’d left her prop in Frankie’s car.

  And that was when Erin said innocently that I’d have to hurry or I might lose her precious signed artwork.

  So instead of putting this whole thing behind me, I had to chase-limp after Frankie’s car, my costume billowing around me, then hammer on their back windscreen and wait as Nic wound down her window. I think she was expecting me to say sorry, not, ‘P-please can I have my, er… skull back?’

  As Nic passed it to me, Frankie waved from the back seat, her phone up. Great, more photos.

  ‘See you Monday, Lils.’ Frankie sounded like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But as I gulped, she looked me right in the eye and grinned. ‘Smile for the video!’ And blew me a kiss. ‘XOXO.’

  RIP life as I knew it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘We can fix this.’ My best friend could always be relied on to be positive. Micha and I had ditched our usual lunch spot to sit on the wall round the back of the main building. Some people would call it hiding; I thought of it as visually obscuring. I’d skated so fast into school to try to avoid any sighting of Frankie that my skateboard had felt like a hoverboard.

  ‘How?’ I’d gone through everything I could possibly think of. Including googling head transplants and how far off we were from time travel (although the fact no one seemed to know made me think the answer was ‘for ever’). ‘You saw the look Frankie gave me in assembly.’

  ‘The big smile as soon as she saw you?’ Micha nodded solemnly. ‘Worrying. Very worrying.’

  ‘The most worrying.’ I tried not to think about the footage Frankie had of me. Or that she had about one zillion followers online. Or that for some reason this whole term she’d full-on hated me.

  ‘Although –’ I looked around to check we were still alone – ‘if, y’know, she did show anyone the video –’ full body shudder – ‘it wouldn’t be that big a deal… would it?’ My voice was so bad at lying it went all squeaky.

  ‘Of course not,’ Micha said with her big, reassuring smile, even though we both knew the real answer was: ‘The deal would be so big it would change life as I knew it.’

  ‘And we’ve always got these.’ Mich held out some cling-film-wrapped Cadbury Fingers. ‘Frankie might take away our freedom, but she can never take away our snacks.’

  ‘St-unning.’ I popped one in my mouth and instantly felt a tiny bit better. ‘And by tonight this –’ I wobbled my head, making the oversized knot-bun on top of it bounce from side to side – ‘will have been chopped out of existence as well.’ The fluff monstrosity on my head was a mix of my real hair and fake hair all glued together. Never again would I trust Erin when she said best-before dates were ‘just guides’. Over the weekend the wig glue had evolved into cement. Mum and Dad hadn’t exactly been sympathetic – they’d mainly shared pictures against my will on the extended family WhatsApp group, and overused the crying laughing emoji. There was a glimmer that Dad had been concerned, but it turned out he was just investigating the hairy knot for ideas to share with his colleagues on their ‘Concrete Chat’ forum. Sometimes I felt the only one who truly cared about me in this family was Barry the Hamster. And he died four weeks ago.

  I would never forgive Erin for this. If her boyfriend hadn’t broken his wrist on my experiment, and she hadn’t forced me to wear that stupid outfit then had an overly long wee, this would never have happened.

  We hadn’t spoken since Saturday, despite Mum and Dad hurling comments at me including, ‘Is it mature to ignore your sister?’ and, ‘How do you dissolve industrial glue?’. Erin and I were both going to the hairdresser’s tonight after school. I didn’t want to hang out with my sister but I did want to get a brush through my hair again. It had been two days.

  ‘Exactly.’ Micha put another Cadbury Finger in my mouth. ‘Hair today, gone tomorrow. And you always said you wanted Nic to know you existed.’

  Ever since we’d started senior school, Micha had been helping in my attempts to get Nic to notice me. Nic had a whole committee of students who worked on TheNicReport – all totally different, and all totally brilliant. Nic set the agenda and together they made the site a mash-up of writing, filmed stuff, animation, photos – whatever Nic thought people should know about. Actual Billie Eilish had once commented with ‘mind blown’ and last year Nic blocked Lewis Capaldi for being ‘too chatty in the comments’. There was nothing I wanted more than to write for TheNicReport. But if Nic figured out I was the Lily Mavers who clambered into her car, there was no way she’d talk to me again, let alone think I could one day be part of her team.

  As much as I wanted to cry, change my name, change schools, maybe even countries, instead I bit into another Cadbury Finger and told Micha that maybe she was right. The last thing I wanted was to let Erin ruin my life and Micha’s lunch hour. Yes, my best mate was always positive on the outside, but behind her big smiles I knew she was really stressed. She’d been falling behind in chemistry and this morning Mr Sharma had said that if she didn’t get her grades up he was putting her down a set. And if Micha dropped down we both knew what her parents would do – stop her playing football. They’d done the exact same with her older sister and her film
making. It wasn’t that her parents weren’t supportive of what their children did. It was just that they had one condition. Good grades came first. And football was the thing Micha loved most. Her dream was to play for the Aston Villa youth team – and go on to be selected for the England squad (I was the only person outside her family who knew Mich slept in an England shirt with ‘Ndiaye’ on the back to try to manifest it all happening). And she was so close to getting there. This Sunday she was playing in the Inter County Cup – a huge tournament that the Aston Villa scouts would be at. My shambles of a life could wait.

  I put my arm round her.

  ‘You’re right. And when it all goes to plan and I dazzle Nic and she asks me to guest-edit her site, my first feature will be “Why Micha Is So Awesome” told through the medium of Chase Cheney GIFs.’ He was an American pop star who we were both ob-sessed with.

  Mich smiled, happy she’d cheered me up.

  ‘Would definitely read.’ She waited a moment. ‘So in the meantime, what are we going to do about your sister? And y’know.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Frankie…’

  We both made the same tongue-out ‘erghk’ noise.

  ‘Erin? I’m not sure… yet.’ She’d spent the car journey home telling me to chill out, and to write up what happened into a ‘life fail’ piece for my blog. Thanks for nothing, sister. ‘And Frankie? Well…’ I took a deep breath and did the impression of her that always made Micha laugh. ‘Well, she is like the meanest person I know, so I’m going to have to avoid her at all costs or –’ I flipped my head just like Frankie always did – ‘my life won’t be worth living, XOXO.’ I even did the X O finger movements.

  But Micha didn’t laugh. She just kicked me hard in the shin. And considering she was top goalscorer in our school, that was quite hard.

  ‘What?’ I asked, confused. But Micha kicked me even harder. With a growing sense of dread, I turned round.

  Uh. Oh.

  ‘Cute,’ Frankie smirked. She flipped her hair so hard she whipped her best friend PJ in the eye. He didn’t even say ow.

  Please don’t let Frankie have heard every word?!