Maria. I checked the clock on the wall. She would wonder why I’d skipped out on our geometry class, and whether I’d be around to eat lunch with her on the wall in front of the school.
Except maybe Sarah was now in my body. One sure way to find out. I grabbed a cordless phone from its stand on the counter and dialed my home number.
“Hello?” My mother’s voice. My throat went tight with longing.
“Um, hi.” That low, throaty voice again. “Can I talk to Jamie?”
A long silence. Fear blossomed in the pit of my belly. Please, no, I thought. Then another voice came on, one I recognized. Our neighbor, Janelle. Aunt Janelle, I’d called her since I was a child. Den mother to the whole block. Always at her house there with extra plate of spaghetti, a leftover slice of cake, especially at the end of the month when the Lumley family’s food stamps where long gone.
“Who’s this?” Aunt Janelle demanded.
“I’m, ah, a friend of Jamie’s. From school. From French club.”
Another silence, too long. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to speak to her,” Aunt Janelle said. The suspicion lacing her voice had gone, leaving a weariness I’d never heard before. “She’s – something’s happened.”
“But she’s okay, right?” I tried to swallow down the note of desperation. “I mean, she will be, right?”
“No. I’m sorry, no. She’s not okay. She’s. . .dead.”
In the background I heard my mother’s wail, like the shriek of a wounded animal. I dropped the phone; it clattered on the kitchen floor, skidded under a cabinet, and lay still.
CHAPTER TWO
In the bedroom was a walk-in closet, the floor littered with discarded outfits. A sequined halter top. Latex pants in a red so bright they hurt my eyes. Shoes with heels three inches high. I touched my cheek to a sweater on a padded hanger; cashmere, and lovely beyond anything I’d ever owned. Sarah’s lingerie was gorgeous, too, tiny scraps of lace and silk. It felt weird to wear someone else’s underwear, but I didn’t have much of a choice. My own tended toward cotton, white, and high enough to cover my belly button. From Sarah’s collection I chose one of the few pairs of briefs from the heap of scanty thongs and g-strings. I pulled on the sweater, and a pair of low-rise jeans that barely cleared my hip bones but fit like a second skin.
I did all of this with my brain working overtime.
If Jamie Lumley was dead, who did that make me? Not Sarah Winslow. I had none of her memories. In my mind I was Jamie, my thoughts, emotions and identity as clear and sharp as ever. When I caught my reflection in the full-length bedroom I did a double-take, still; I expected to see my own face, not hers.
So what had happened to Sarah? I could only think she must be gone, dead as she had probably intended when she took those all those pills. Or had she only meant to dull some awful pain, not to die? Either way, there was no trace of her now. If she still lurked in my brain somewhere, she kept silent.
At the moment, though, I couldn’t bring myself to care much about Sarah Winslow – who she’d been, what she’d dreamed of, where she was now. I had only one goal, and that was to get my old life back. True, I didn’t look like myself anymore, but I – the “I” inside, the “I” that counted – hadn’t changed.
There was only one person who would listen to me and know me. My mother would be hysterical, unreasonable, out of her mind. She never coped well with crisis. When I’d fallen off my bike as a kid, cracked my head on the pavement, and bled all over the living room, I’d called 911 myself while she sobbed and clutched at my arm.
No, it was Maria I needed. Maria would help me figure out what to do.
The iPhone rang as I snatched Sarah’s wallet and keys from the counter, but I ignored it on my way out the door. Her keychain said Lexus and was one of those buttons you pushed to unlock a car door. I wasn’t up to figuring out where she'd parked it, though, and besides, I felt less than confident in my driving abilities. While I’d passed driver’s ed last year, I’d never gotten around to scheduling a test at the DMV. I couldn’t see the point of getting a license