Chapter 14

When I return to the dorm after dinner with Bea, I expect to find Julia studying or talking on the phone but our room is quiet and empty. As I shake the rain off my regulation Darby Prep poncho, I remember: she and Fiona are meeting tonight to discuss the initiation. Now that I’m an official pledge, I suppose I will be on their agenda.

And speaking of agenda, is there a hidden one inside my roommate’s invitation to join Bell Book and Candle? We get along well enough but part of me wonders if there isn’t another reason Julia wants me in the sorority.

I remove my poncho and discover my clothes – from my turtleneck to the socks in my duck shoes – are soaked from the walk from the dining hall. So much for the quality of items purchased from Darby Prep’s bookstore. I quickly strip down to my undies and wrap a robe around my body. It’s not as plush as my roommate’s: mine is thin cotton and threadbare at the elbows and butt and it’s plain white – except where it’s stained from spilled coffee and strawberry jam.

I open Julia’s wardrobe and spot her robe, thick and expensive velour and always perfectly-pink. She would never be caught dead in my crappy clothes.

Which makes me wonder again…why does she like me? Why does she want to be friends with me? She has far more in common with someone like Fiona, the prepster with the pedigree.

Not to mention, why would she choose to be friendly with me when it’s pretty obvious Fiona doesn’t like me? That girl never wants me around her and Julia, never seems pleased to see my face when she knocks at our door. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d be happiest if I wasn’t Julia’s roommate at all. It’s as if she’s jealous of anyone who is friends with Julia. I wonder if that’s why she’s always dissing Mackenzie: she simply doesn’t want any other person to spend time with her best friend.

I know just what Fiona means, only I’m not jealous of Julia’s other friends. I’m jealous of Julia herself. Not merely lucky, but blessed is my cheerful roommate from sun-splashed . It isn’t fair that she has everything in her life and I have nothing and no one but Beatrix. She has an ideal family too, with a pair of loving parents, a sister and brother, a home to go to.

I look in our shared mirror: I am a green-eyed monster.

On the dresser in front of me is Julia’s brush; she must have left it out when she went to her meeting. Long blond hairs wind around the nylon bristles and trail down the wooden handle.

I forget that I’m supposed to be calm, cool and collected and instead I indulge in coveting all that she possesses: that gorgeous hair, that perfect figure, those adoring friends.

That sexy boyfriend.

Unfair.

I wonder: can I do what I did with Beatrix? The aura came to me unbidden. Can I summon it on my own?

I hold Julia’s brush to the side of my head and close my eyes. With each stroke, I feel the bristles graze my hair; the harder I pull, the more my scalp prickles and stings.

I use the jealousy, the fireball of resentment I feel toward Julia, and focus as hard as I can on the energy that concentrates itself in the center of my body, below and behind my ribcage. Flashes of bright lights obscure my vision, even as I squeeze shut my eyes.

The aura! I struggle to recreate all that happened last night outside the Rat.

Instead of Beatrix, I think of Julia.

Instead of anger, I feel envy.

Instead of black hair and dark eyes, I imagine blond hair and blue eyes, as I continue to brush the air around my head.

Long, blond, a sheet of gold…

From somewhere deep inside me, my genes tell me what has to happen: every part of me must be in agreement, brain and body need to understand what they are being asked to do – and then do it.

Long, blond, a sheet of gold…

Will it work? Will I be able to do this with someone who isn’t related to me, someone I have only touched, someone whose truly isn’t related to mine?

Or will Bea’s prophecy – that shifting will kill me – be fulfilled? Perhaps I am only alive out of sheer dumb luck; perhaps Bea will eventually be right.

But no! I can’t think that! I have to believe it will work.

I open my eyes, afraid of what I will – or won’t – see reflected in the mirror.

A cry escapes me - I shifted! Julia’s exquisite blond hair cascades down past my shoulders, framing my face – no, her face – in a heart-shaped box. I use her brush to curlicue the ends, admiring the way they glisten and shine under the light, completely static-free.

Her eyes are my eyes now, lapis lazuli blue.

Ooh, I’m pretty, I think. No, I’m beautiful.

I can’t stop staring at my lovely unblemished skin, can’t stop touching the silken hair that fairly bounces atop my shoulders as I admire my reflection.

Gorgeous.

But this robe – ugh! This old rag has got to go. I can’t be wearing this ratty thing. What if someone were to come in and see me in it?

Well, certainly I’d have other things more crucial to worry about then but in the meantime, I might as well look good.

I pull a lacy top from my roommate’s wardrobe and hold it up to my body. I twirl around the room, tiptoeing on the balls of my feet, dancing far more elegantly than I ever have.

“Hi, I’m Julia Poole. My boyfriend is Mackenzie Dodd. Isn’t he handsome? Aren’t we beautiful together?” I say to the mirror, enjoying how the words curl in my mouth, melting like slivers of chilled butter on my tongue. I smile again, admiring my pretty self. I can’t help but smile. The world is a little bit sunnier in Julia’s shoes.

Oh, shoes! I can wear her slinky ankle strap sandals! Those will be sheer perfection with this top. And maybe…yes! Those skinny-legged jeans. Mmm, sexy!

I hurry into the clothes, knowing in the back of my mind that Julia could wander in at any minute and catch me in the act, and then run to the back of the door where we have a full-length mirror. Truthfully I have never used this mirror; what reason would I have to?

Julia does, though. Every time she walks out, she glances at herself for a full minute to make sure everything is in its place.

And now, I stand before it. And I don’t turn away. Why should I when I look this good?

I am startled by a knock at the door; my guest doesn’t wait for an answer, barging right on in.

“Mackenzie!”

When I meet his navy blue eyes, I am struck by a desire I’ve never felt before. His gaze is filled with warmth, passion, lust.

He smiles broadly, and his eyes travel my body. “You look hot. Did you know I was coming?”

“Huh?”

“Or are you meeting someone else?”

Before I can protest – weakly I admit - Mack wraps his arms around me and slides his hands down my back all the way to my butt, giving me a little squeeze under both cheeks.

“Mack!” My face warms with a blush. I squirm out of his grasp and step back into the room.

Mackenzie blinks. “What?” And then his gaze narrows at me. “Are you meeting some other guy?”

“What? No! Of course not.”

What is he doing here? I feel my chest begin to tighten, forcing me to take in quick shallow breaths. He knows Julia. He knows more about her than I will ever know. He’s gonna notice I’m not Julia.

“How did…how did you get past Mrs. Duncan?” I ask.

Mackenzie reaches for my arm. “Pamela let me in.”

Pamela…our waitress at the faculty dining hall. How ironic.

“That was nice of her,” I say, eluding his touch – but only barely. I’m becoming less and less inclined to keep my distance from Julia’s boyfriend.

Because tonight, right at this very moment, he is my boyfriend. I can kiss him, touch him as much a girlfriend would.

Because that is who I am right now.

“Oh man, these guys tonight,” Mack says as he flops down onto Julia’s twin bed and his fingers begin playing with the ruffles on her pillowcase. “Some of them seriously suck shit. I mean, how am I supposed to make the Olympic team when I’m surrounded by these losers?”

He looks to me for a response. “Um…you’re talking about swim practice?”

“I told Coach he should cut some of the slow ones,” he goes on. “You know the ones I’m talking about. Those twin tub-o-lards that always hang out at the Rat?”

Another glance at me, I have no idea what he’s talking about. I only look like Julia; I don’t have my roommates’ memories.

“Jules, we were just talking about them this morning. Did you forget already? God.” He rolls his eyes and I feel a brief flash of anger at his dismissal of me but it’s quickly supplanted by my need to be with him. I don’t know where this sudden desire comes from but I want only to touch him, to feel his lips on mine, to feel his skin against mine. Before I can question what I’m doing, I sit beside him on the bed and place my hand on his thigh.

Mackenzie turns to me with a wicked grin in his eyes. “Geez, I thought you were really gonna make me work for it tonight.” He takes my hand from his thigh and moves it higher up on his leg.

The skin on my palm tingles as I rub Mack’s jeans. As each fiber brushes against my fingertips, I feel a jolt of electricity travel my spine. I inhale the scent of him – his deodorant and shampoo and leftover chlorine from the pool – and my muscles quiver and ache.

I can’t wait any longer. I have to feel Mack’s lips on mine. Somewhere deep in my brain, I know I will at some point shift back to myself and I have no idea when that will be. I grab Mack by the Darby Prep logo on the front of his sweatshirt and turn him to face me, enjoying the startled look in his eyes just before our mouths meet.

A fireball of color, intense and red, suddenly explodes in my head. My lips throb as if they have swollen to ten times their natural size. Mack’s hands slide around me, pull me closer to him. I can hear our heartbeats quicken as clearly as I can hear the inhale of our breath each time we break apart and then reconnect to kiss again.

His lips are on mine, at first just grazing the surface of my mouth and then sinking deep, deep, into it. I have the odd, light-headed sensation of falling, as if I’m plummeting from the sky at a hundred miles an hour, headed straight for the ground, but then euphoria spreads through my body…if this is how I am destined to die, bring it!

Mack’s tongue against my teeth, rough and nubby and insistent, is the force that slows my fall. I open my mouth wider, feeling all of him – his lips, his face, his cheeks – press firmly against me.

Even as it’s happening, part of me is watching from the sidelines and wondering what’s going on inside my body. If I open my eyes, what will I see? Who will I see?

My skin begins to tingle, the hairs stand on end, as Mack wraps me tighter in his arms. Am I about to shift? I imagine Aunt Beatrix scolding me from her room in MacAllister: “No touchy!”

Sorry, Bea, that rule has been thrown out, kicked around, and stomped on a hundred times over by now. His is mine now, commingling with everyone else’s I have ever touched, who has ever touched me. And god, how I so do not care.

Mack falls back onto the bed, pulling me with him. I become entangled in shirts and jeans and sheets and a soft wool blanket. His hands are at my back and his lips are on my neck and the world swirls around me. I open one eye and catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and gasp:

I am blonde, brunette, a redhead.

I have green eyes and blue and hazel and brown.

I am Fiona and Julia and Beatrix and Daphne and Erin and Mary Gibson.

I am everyone – and no one.

Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no no no…

Yet another face emerges in the mirror: a young woman with porcelain skin, her dark hair plaited and wound high on her head. She is not at all familiar to me but her face, her expression, startles me.

And then she is gone.

A wave of emotion surges through me, as if I am underwater – as if I am water, flexible, malleable, changeable. A wave of desire, next a wave of love, then fear, then jealousy…stop! Stop it!

I have to go back to Julia. Julia, Julia…

I take a deep breath and try to remember the meditative words Beatrix taught me to remain calm and control our emotions.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.…

When next I glance at my reflection, I see Julia reflected back.

Mack is oblivious to all this: his hands search me out, his lips find my mouth and neck and cheek and the tip of my collar bone.

I have to push him away. I have to. I have to regain control somehow.

“Mack…” I say. “Please. No.”

His eyes flutter open and his smile is lazy, like he’s being awakened from a pleasant dream. “Huhhh…?”

“You have to go. You have to leave.” I extricate myself from his grasp, retrieve my top, zip up my jeans. And hustle my butt off the bed.

Mack sits up and leans against the wall. “I don’t understand.”

“My roommate will be back soon.”

“She won’t mind. And I’ll bet she just might want to join—”

“Leave, please. Now.” I grab Mackenzie’s jacket from where he dropped it on the floor. It’s still wet and the inner lining is damp and clammy. I shove it at him as he takes his sweet-ass time getting up.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?” But it won’t be me, will it? It will be the real Julia. I must think quickly. “And Mack, let’s not talk about this again.”

He makes a face as he unwinds the sopping jacket and reluctantly puts his arms through the sleeves. “Talk about what?”

“This. Tonight. We’ll just pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Nothing did happen,” he grumbles.

“Mack? Please?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, whatever.” He reaches his lips toward mine but I turn my head and he lands my cheek instead.

I should probably care that he has to sneak out of the dorm. But at this point, I just want him to leave before there’s any possibility he will meet up with Julia on his way out.

I close the door and hustle to get out of my roommate’s clothes and into mine before I run into her myself.

And I pray that I shift back before she gets here.