Chapter 19

How could she have done this to me? How could she have given me this terrible horrible ability, this questionable skill, this…thing?

Is that what I have to look forward to: hardcore meds? A straitjacket? A private room in a mental institution?

Or worse, a life on the run. Wandering and shifting. Alone and crazy.

Unfair!

And then to simply leave – to leave me, to leave us – without telling a soul where she was going, when she would return. Or if.

All those years I could have gotten to know her. Hundreds of months, thousands of days, we could have spent learning from each other. Wasted.

Maybe she would have told me who my father was, where I came from.

Maybe we could have figured out a way to control the shift together.

Maybe I could have saved her.

Unfair!

In the back of my wardrobe in my dorm room, I keep a box of mementos. Movie ticket stubs, a dog-eared mystery novel, unraveling friendship bracelets…

…and old photos.

I find the box beneath a pair of blue jeans and toss it onto my bed. I should be in class now – physics, I think, it’s about that time – but I don’t care.

Let the normal kids go to school. Let my aunt Beatrix teach them: poetry and Shakespeare and English composition and how to lie to your beloved family members.

My nut box is made of cherry wood, an IA class project from back at Sisters of Mercy when all the girls had to take shop while the boys took Home Ec. That lasted all of one semester before parents complained. I carved my initials into the side and top but seeing them there makes me shudder, reminding me as they do of the headmaster’s desk.

I dump the contents on my bed and sort through the photos until I find the one I’m looking for: Evangeline Bellflower, age 16. She is sitting on a huge rock by the side of the , about to get drenched by a massive wave splashing from off-camera. Her hands are raised in front of her face to ward off the wall of water coming toward her but she wears the biggest grin possible, her lips stretched wide across her face. Her cheeks are plumped up into mounds under mocha-colored eyes, as if she were a squirrel storing acorns for the winter.

Beatrix took this picture. She told me Evie’s Fisherman knit sweater belonged to one of Evie’s boyfriends at the time which is why it fairly swims on her, and her peg-legged skinny jeans were Bea’s own, although it’s impossible to envision my stuffy aunt in them. Barefooted, bareheaded, her black hair damp from the spray of the ocean, Evangeline Bellflower is nearly my age in this photo. She isn’t pregnant here – by the man who owned the sweater she’s wearing? I wonder. For some reason, I never asked Beatrix that question.

She also isn’t insane.

Yet, Bea’s voice tells me.

So beautiful. So carefree. My fingers clasp the photo tightly as if I could pull her away from the rock and the tumbling waves.

Why? Why do I have this? I want to ask my mother.

Where are you now?

It doesn’t take long for me to feel that churning energy beneath my ribcage and in the blink of an eye – before my conscious mind has had a moment to digest what I’m doing – I see Evangeline Bellflower reflected back at me in my mirror.

“Mom…”

I’ve never called anyone Mom in my life and yet, I see her face – so much like mine – and the word falls lightly and easily off my lips. Round cheeks and a long chin – hers is dimpled in the center where mine remains flat – and a curved mouth that makes her look like she’s got a special secret.

Will you tell me? Will you share the secret? Will you please give me a clue to what I am and what I’m supposed to be doing?

I stare at my mother staring back at me and watch as my hand reaches toward her. My fingers graze the glass and I swear it bends beneath my touch, as if it’s liquid and not a solid object. It’s almost as if I could push through the frame if only I knew how.

She looks trapped in there, trapped in time, as she does in the photo from the beach. Her hand reaches from the other side to touch mine and somewhere in the middle, we do. I know we do.

I’m not crazy.

Yet, I hear Bea’s voice say.

I lean closer to my mother and gaze into her eyes, blinking when I do, tearing when I do.

Where are you now? What have you become?

Why did you leave?

I feel a sudden rage boil inside my chest. God, this is not what I wanted, not what I asked for! I should be enjoying myself at my age, not saddled with responsibility. I’m not even seventeen, how could this be happening to me?

Is that my voice in my head? But I am seventeen.

I want to be free to go and do and be whatever I want to. I’m goddamn sick and tired of being cooped up here like a rat in a cage. I need to explore the world!

Yes, yes, I need to leave. I need to go far away and leave Bea who only wants to control me, to keep me under pale-skinned thumb. She put me here to make herself feel better, to make life easier for her. She doesn’t have any idea what it’s like to be me. She’s happiest when the world barely turns, when it’s undisturbed and tidy and god, boring!

Tears – of fury and frustration – well up in the corners of my eyes and it’s hard to see; my face, my reflection is blurry, like seeing underwater, under a wave of salty sea, and I hold up my hands to ward off the oncoming drenching.

I didn’t ask for this! Why did you leave me behind?

But my hands are ineffective and the water comes anyway, twin rivers of seawater run down my cheeks, and pool at the edges of my lips. I lick the water away, taste salt and moisturizer and mascara on my tongue.

Unfair! This is so unfair. To me.

And to her.

Why? Why am I alone? Why don’t I have anyone to help me, to guide me, to support me? Why do I have to do it all myself?

Zzip!

That’s a key card in the door!

I am startled and surprised my heightened sense of hearing did not alert me to approaching footsteps. I shove my photo of Evangeline into my backpack and when next I look up, I see myself, Calliope Bellflower, splotchy-cheeked and raccoon-eyed, reflected back in the mirror. Before I have time to marvel at the ease in which I seem to be able to shift, the door opens and Julia comes in, her arms filled with bags, her face obscured. She doesn’t even notice me.

“Little help?” she asks.

I quickly wipe my eyes with my sleeve and grab a couple of bags out of my roommate’s hands.

“Thanks.”

I retreat quietly to my bed and curl up around my physics textbook, forcing myself to turn the pages as if I could actually concentrate on the words. My heart is still pounding and my hands are trembling. I don’t know what happened during the shift, how I manifested my mother so fast, and what those voices meant.

Were they me? Or her? Or both of us? Are we – were we – so similar that we shared the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same desires?

“I got us some snacks to study with tonight,” I hear Julia say as if she is in another room, her voice hollow and echo-y.

I nod. I think.

I wasn’t supposed to be able to access anyone else’s thoughts. Beatrix told me the shift is strictly physical. Nothing more than fluctuating .

Nothing more…ha.

“I got you Sun Chips,” Julia says cheerfully. “The French Onion kind are the ones you like, right?”

I nod. I think.

But Beatrix can’t shift so she doesn’t know for certain what happens – or why. She got her information from Evangeline who told her whatever she knew – or maybe whatever she wanted Beatrix to know.

What if Beatrix was wrong and there is more to it than DNA? What if the shift goes beyond merely physical replication?

Uh-oh.

And whose voice was in my head?

“Callie? Callie!”

I snap my gaze up from my book to Julia who is holding a bag of chips to me along with a giant bottle of Diet Coke and a straw.

“For me?”

She smiles. “I told you. For us to study tonight.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

I watch as Julia sets the chips and soda on my desk near my wardrobe. I suppose I should get up and take some to show my roommate I appreciate her generosity but I can’t and I don’t. Besides, I seem to be moving in slow motion.

Julia opens her own bag of chips, Extreme Cheese something or others, and delicately places one on her tongue as if she were offering herself a communion wafer.

“Mmm…yummy. Love these.”

Snacks, drinks, a lighthearted roommate…it all seems so trite, so mundane after all that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours.

Is it? I watch Julia, warily. Will another shoe drop? How many are there anyway?

Julia catches me staring and laughs nervously. “What? Do I have cheese on my face?”

I shake my head.

She scrubs at her cheeks and mouth with the palm of her hand and this time, she does manage to smear cheese powder all over herself. “Better?”

I laugh. “Yeah, better.” I reach for the soda and twist open the top, take a swig. And another and another until half the bottle is gone. I am amazed at my thirst.

Brrrp!

And at the tremendous belch I produce. Julia grins and giggles and soon we’re both laughing our butts off.

The burp that broke the ice, I think.

Julia smiles shyly. “Hey listen, I want to talk to you about last night.”

My hands clench reflexively, and the plastic bottle bends beneath my fingers. I steel myself for whatever my roommate has to say.

“That…incident,” she says carefully. “That was all Fiona’s idea. Erin and Molly and I had nothing to do with it.”

I sip at my Coke in silence and wait for her to go on.

Julia tucks a lock of blonde hair behind her ear, composing herself and her thoughts. I can tell she has been planning to talk to me but perhaps not precisely what she was going to say.

“When we got to the Admin building, she told us she would take it from there and she told us to go.” Julia shrugs. “We had no clue she had done all of that to O’Brien’s office. I swear to you, Callie” —she raises her hand in a Girl Scout salute— “we knew nothing about this.”

I hear my heart beat faster, which is odd because I don’t think I’m feeling anxious but then I hear a second beat, slow and steady.

Wait. That calm heartbeat, that’s mine. The frenetic one?

Not mine.

Julia’s.

That’s odd. Why would I hear Julia’s when I’m not in the shift?

I study my roommate more closely as she talks. She’s telling me how they had planned to haze me, yes, but it was to be very benign: wandering around campus while blindfolded, climbing through the woods, forcing me to drink a spinach milkshake. But certainly nothing like vandalism.

Is she telling me the truth? She nibbles on the cheesy chips, one at a time, using just her front teeth like a rabbit.

“Mack says I need to distance myself from Fiona, you know, politically?”

“Politically?”

“So the girls will vote me in as president of Bell Book and Candle, but geez, I don’t know. I don’t really want to be president,” she says. “I like it when Fiona takes charge of things.”

“But Julia, you still haven’t told me why Fiona would set me up like that,” I say. “Why would she want to see me expelled? I never did anything to her.”

Julia tilts her head to one side in thought. She nibbles quietly on her chips and shakes her head slowly. “I don’t know.” She answers as if the question simply never occurred to her.

“Maybe she went temporarily insane,” she adds with a laugh.

That isn’t funny, not at all, but I allow a smile.

“I mean, damn, she jumped out of a window! A two-story window!” Julia marvels. “What kind of crazy person does this?”

Not crazy!

“What did she say when you talked to her?” I ask Julia instead.

“Haven’t yet. Cops arrested her in the middle of the night and she hasn’t called or texted me or anything.” Julia lowers her voice and blinks slowly, as if she’s about to impart some crucial information. “ heard Fiona’s dad is gonna get the school’s board to fire O’Brien if he does anything to Fiona. Can you believe that? Man, that’s power.” She grins. “See? This is why I can’t be the president. I can’t get anything done like that.”

At this point, I could care less about Bell Book and Candle and what sort of influence Julia doesn’t have. I want to know about me. I want to know why Fiona targeted me. Julia just admitted the vandalism was a lot farther than she and the other girls had planned to go with me so what’s Fiona’s deal?

“Has Fiona done anything like this to anyone else? Any other pledges?”

“Pledges? Not that I can think of.” Again, my roommate is flummoxed by the suggestion. “But she’s always been kind of jealous of my other friends. And Mack. God, she hates when Mack’s around.”

I knew it! I knew Fiona was one of those girls. Not content to be just an MG, she has to prevent other people from having friendships that she’s not a part of. Control freak.

Kind of sounds like someone I know and am related to.

“But she never told you anything specific?” I ask Julia. “Why she might not want me around?”

Again, I keep a close eye on my roommate. If her eyelid twitches unnaturally, if her breathing becomes uneven, if her fingers drum unconsciously on her desk, I will know she’s lying.

Julia takes a deep breath and slowly exhales.

I still my own breath, waiting.

“Nope,” she says. “Nothing.” And then she holds the bag of chips up to her mouth and shakes out the crumbs. When she smiles at me, her teeth and lips are coated in fluorescent orange cheese.

I smile back, holding in a giggle.

“We’re good, right, Callie?”

“You and me?”

Can I trust you? I wonder. Are you telling me the truth? God, I just don’t know! I feel like I can’t believe anyone! Bea, Julia…

I force my head to nod. “Yeah, Jules, we’re good.”

Julia seems relieved by my response. She cracks open her soda and gulps down an inch of it. Her burp is a wee one compared to mine. She giggles softly.

“Oops! Excuse me.”

Her phone rings, a minute before quiet time in the dorm, and she rushes to answer it. I can tell by the look on her face that it’s Mackenzie.

“Hey,” she coos into the phone. “What’s up?”

I watch as my roommate turns her back to me, kicks her feet up on her desk and heels off her boots. They land with a clunk on the floor below.

Can I trust you? Can I, Julia?

I want to, god, I want to but a nagging voice deep inside me is saying, No.

Trust no one.