Chapter 11

As soon as I get the go-ahead, the nod back, I rush out of the Rat as fast as my legs – no, Bea’s legs – God, this is confusing – can carry me. A tremendous clap of thunder greets me as I fling open the front door and step out into the rain, now pouring in wide warm drops and splashing up muddy earth as it strikes the ground. I clutch my backpack to my chest and race for the dorm, head down and hair clinging to the side of my face. For once I’m thankful for the sudden downpour, obscuring me as it does from anyone else wandering the quad.

It must be past eight because the dorm is quiet – study time lasts until which means girls are sequestered in their rooms, with no loud music or television, no distractions, no interruptions.

I take the stairs two at a time, one flight, then the next, and dash down the hallway before anyone happens to take a bathroom break at that very moment.

In my room, I lock the door, through my backpack down and rush to the mirror.

And see my Aunt Beatrix staring back at me. My hair is longer, as Bea’s is, my cheekbones more pronounced, and my eyes darker. Because we are related, we share some similarity in our skin tone and the shape of our mouths so I can definitely see a part of me in my reflection.

But the biggest difference is the size of my body: I have indeed filled out to Bea’s proportions, to her wider hips and hourglass shape. And in my own flannel shirt and jeans! No wonder my clothes felt tighter back at the Rat. It looks like Beatrix mistakenly wore my clothes instead of her typical skirt and blouse uniform.

“Oh my god,” I whisper to the mirror. “I’m Bea.”

I had been thinking about her while the aura was happening, had been pissed as hell at her the moment before, and now…

This is what can happen without the blue pills. This is what can happen with the shift. I can literally become another person, assume her body, and discard my own.

But most important of all: I’m not dead. I shifted and I didn’t die. I didn’t even collapse or faint or otherwise become incapacitated. I am perfectly fine. Better than fine, I feel amazing! I feel renewed, like I had just come from a spa treatment, had my entire body massaged, and drank a liter of the freshest spring water.

How did it happen? How did I shift?

Fluctuating …fight or flight…my brain experienced a pique in emotions and rearranged the cells in my body, choosing the one person I had been visualizing – and then it manifested that person around me.

Well, it sounds crazy but that’s what happened. I mean, seriously, how else to describe it? I was me and now I am Bea. Whatever came between is irrelevant because the outcome is the same, no matter how you parse it.

I stare at my aunt staring back at me, gaze into her dark eyes as if they are my own. Her beauty is breathtaking, her complexion nearly porcelain, and her smile – when she uses it – radiates her inner glow.

But this isn’t what she looks like most of the time. She rarely smiles, certainly never so wide as to reveal her pearly whites, and she keeps her lustrous dark hair pulled tightly into a bun or wrapped inside a scrunchy ponytail. I try to imitate her facial expressions – lips slightly downturned, chin lowered – and to hug my arms over my chest as she is wont to do, and am suddenly slapped with an internal feeling of melancholy.

When I looked at myself the way I know Beatrix must look at herself, I feel…sad. I have a beauty that is fading in this tiny village. I am lonely for a touch, for a kiss on my neck. I run my hands along my waist and down my legs.

Such a waste, I think. There is no one in my life to appreciate me, no one to share my private thoughts with, no one to love.

I gasp and quickly cover my open mouth with my hand. That too is so Bea-like that it makes me laugh. Do I know her so well that I am unconsciously imitating her? Or has shifting into her body given me insight into her brain?

From what my aunt has told me, that isn’t possible. I can’t possess someone’s thoughts. Yet, simply looking like my aunt makes me feel like her.

I wonder what it would be like to walk around the Darby Prep campus as Beatrix, to be a teacher of English at a small prep school, to be a grown-up woman. Would I fool others as I fooled my friends and Mrs. Gibson? Would people recognize me underneath the Beatrix façade?

And what about Bea herself? She would kill me if I did anything as her.

A stream of giggles pours out of me as I imagine being ratted out by the actual Bea. Would it be like the collision of matter and anti-matter if we were to connect somehow? Would our world collapse in on itself like a giant black hole?

Outside in the hallway, I hear a pair of voices. Fiona and Julia! On their way up from the Rat. They are still a staircase away, thank god, but I’m still Beatrix. I’ve been so focused on myself and what’s happening with my body that I haven’t stopped to wonder how I will get out of this body.

I stare at the mirror, at Bea, and try to see myself within the frame. I feel like, if I can just focus on something that is truly me, I can get back.

Where am I?

The girls’ voices are louder; I can hear their words now.

“…meeting tomorrow...”

“…good at four…”

“…Mary says…”

You’re doing a very bad thing, Callie! I practically shout at myself. This is wrong! You’re disobeying me!

The two sets of footsteps in the hallway become one as Fiona and Julia no doubt separate. I hear the whip-whisk of Julia’s card key in the lock.

The door clicks open and Julia’s startled face beholds mine. “Oh, hi. I didn’t know you’d be here.”

She didn’t know who would be here? Me? Or Beatrix?

“Oh, uh…”

She brushes past me. “You feeling okay?”

“I’m…” I sneak a peek at the mirror and see my own face – flushed and anxious – reflected back. “I’m fine.”

I am myself again: body deflated to fit my jeans and shirt, green eyes back in their sockets, chipmunk cheeks returned to their original plumpness. I can’t help but run my palms over them, to be sure they really are there.

My roommate cocks an eye at me. “You sure you’re all right? Your aunt said you were sick. You look kind of…” She makes a face. “Ill.”

I can’t nod fast enough. “Yes, yes, fine.” I point to my temple. “Headache.”

Julia’s face registers. “Gotcha. Well, if you need—”

And then her cell phone rings, a musical snippet I recognize as Mackenzie. She snatches it up before our house mother can hear it. Phone calls during study time are a big no-no.

“Hey, babe,” she says, breaking into a smile. She sits at her desk and tucks herself around her cell. “Yeah, I’m in my room…”

With a sigh of relief, I flop onto my bed, suddenly exhausted from the shift. I feel like I could sleep for a week. I let my gaze wander around my room, at the tiles in the ceiling and the blinds over the window. I can no longer see the specks of dust that coated the slats, can no longer hear the breeze blowing in through the minute cracks in the glass panes.

Thank god…I am back to normal – my normal, dull as dishwater Callie Bellflower, the girl with no particular talents or abilities. Forget sports or academics, I can’t even juggle or jump rope.

I rest my arms behind my head, reluctant to get back to my studies. As far as I can tell, there are no residual effects of the aura or the shift. I didn’t hurt myself in any way: no headache or other pain. My body didn’t seem to suffer in the transition between myself and Beatrix and back again.

Just to be on the safe side, I carefully pat myself down from head to toe. Short, spiky hair? Check. Small chest and hips? Check and check.

I am a-okay. I breathe slowly through pursed lips, then through my nose, alternating as I would if I were meditating with Bea.

So this is what it’s like to live without the blue pills. This is what it’s like to shift.

Shift.

I can feel a smile spread across my face and my heart begins to race. Do you realize what I accomplished? Do you understand the implications?

I can change. I can be anyone. I can shift.

While thinking about Bea, I had shifted into her. Just as my mother and her mother before me had, I had shifted.

And lived.

And I liked it.

The exhaustion I initially felt after the shift has been replaced with a burst of fire-tipped energy. I want to do it again. I want to shift. I want more.

Careful, Callie, I tell my speeding pulse. Not here, not now.

I still don’t understand how it happened, how I was able to manifest Beatrix while I was in the throes of the aura. And I don’t know how to get the aura back. Can I summon the aura on my own, simply by willing it, simply by wanting it? Can I force my emotions to make it happen?

“You stop it!” Julia squeals into her phone. “Mack, you’re crazy! I won’t! No!”

Julia. I wonder what it would be like to be my roommate, to have her gorgeous hair, her sexy boyfriend, to be popular and admired.

And what might it be like to kiss said sexy boyfriend? To place my lips against his, to taste the chlorine on his skin after his workout.

I roll over onto my side and watch Julia flirt over the phone. Where is Mackenzie now – in his room? In the filed house? Or leaving some other girl’s room?

Make no mistake about it: Mack has definitely been with other girls. My roommate knows this which is why she keeps him on such a short leash. That cell phone might as well be a homing signal.

“Thursday? I don’t know. I’ll try.” Julia sighs and shakes her head. “I have to meet with Fiona…I said maybe, Mack, I’ll try.”

I wonder what would happen if I were to shift into Julia and kiss Mackenzie.

Would he know? Would she? Would there be a difference in our styles?

God, that’s laughable. A style. As if I, who has never kissed a guy, could have a style.

Still…

I run a finger along my lips, imagining it. An embrace, a kiss, a touch…

Snap! Snap! “Callie!”

I blink quickly as Julia calls my name. I must have been daydreaming. Gloriously daydreaming.

“What’s up?”

“We saw Mrs. Gibson tonight after you left.”

“Mmhmm.”

Julia squints at me across the room. “You sure you’re okay? You look…I don’t know. Different.”

“Different…how?”

But instead of replying, Julia shrugs. “Whatever. Listen, Mrs. Gibson is finished with your genealogy thingy so go see her tomorrow if you can.”

“Already? Wow, that was fast.”

“Fi and I are meeting about initiation so I really want to know if you’re good to go.”

As if in answer, my palms begin to sweat. “I’m sure I’m cool, right?”

Julia swings her legs around her chair and stands up, stretching her arms over her head with a yawn. “I’m sure you’re fine. Oh god, I’m tired.” She lets her arms fall to her sides and her head slump. “I’ve got two more hours of reading to do. Your aunt assigned us Macbeth and my head is crazy filled with Shakespeare.”

“Yeah, Macbeth ordering everyone to be killed.”

“Huh?” Julia is looking at me like she’s never seen me before. Have I shifted again? “Did Ms. Bellflower tell you that?”

“Tell me…” I shouldn’t know that, should I? I shouldn’t know what she said to my aunt at the Rat because I wasn’t there. Callie wasn’t there.

I quickly cover my tracks. “No, I just remember reading it at Sisters and that was the problem I had with it too. I mean, there were other issues but that one right at the beginning with the prophecies and everything…” I look away, searching my backpack for the books I placed there as Beatrix and hope she buys it.

There is a moment of silence until Julia says, “Totally. It gets easier, doesn’t it?”

“Easier?”

“Macbeth.”

“Oh yeah. Sure. Much easier.”

Julia exhales, her face animated, her features exaggerated in relief. “That’s good. All right, don’t bother me. I’ll talk to you in the morning.” And then she pops in her ear buds and pulls out her Shakespeare.

Fine by me. I have more than enough to keep myself occupied.

Like wondering why my aunt has been lying to me for seven years.