Chapter 25

It’s so easy to shift into Fiona, like slipping on a pair of comfortable duck shoes. Not that Fiona would be caught dead in duck shoes.

No aura, no headache, no pain, just a flood of feel-good hormones flowing through my body, like an endorphin rush from exercising or a serotonin high from eating chocolate.

I have to hurry to get the book back to Mrs. Gibson. I have no idea when Fiona will come back to school and I obviously can’t return the book as myself nor should I take a chance of shifting once Fiona has re-established herself as Queen MG.

I knock loudly on the librarian’s door but there’s no answer.

“Mrs. Gibson? Mary? It’s me, Fiona. Are you there?”

I press my ear to the door but hear nothing. Try the knob: locked.

Hmm, this could be a good thing. Maybe I can get inside, leave the book with a note and take off. In-out, in as Fiona, out as Calliope. No one will be the wiser and Beatrix will be happy and I can go back to being the Good Niece.

Down the hall from Mrs. Gibson’s office is the custodian’s room. Today’s library custodian is Roger, a local guy, not much older than we are, manning the office in a set of denim coveralls with his name written in block letters over his left breast.

“Excuse me,” I say, instantly assuming my haughty Fiona manner. “I need the key to Mrs. Gibson’s office. I need to return a book to her.”

Roger’s face pales beneath his auburn beard when he sees me standing at the door. He reaches inside a desk drawer for the master set of keys; they clang and thunk against the wood in his thick fingers.

“I, I have to, to do it…” he stutters. “For y-y-you.”

“Just do it. My god. Move.”

Roger hustles a little faster but honestly, I doubt this guy can move at lightning speed. Even knowing that, I can’t help but push him.

“While I’m young, Roger, god. Wombat.” I sneer derisively at his flat round butt as he squeezes past me.

When we reach the librarian’s office door, Roger stops. “She…she’s not here.”

I sigh. “I know that, idiot.” I hold up the book. “I have to give this to her.”

Roger’s plump pale hand goes for the book but I snatch it back.

“Not you.”

He shakes his head, forlorn. “She’s not here. You’ll have to leave it at the desk.”

That’s the last thing I want to do with this precious tome. I flip the back of my hand at Roger and stalk back through the library’s stacks. The last thing I see of Roger is his mouth opened in a long O, as if he is about to stammer out something else.

Oh god, just go back to your ratty, smelly cave. I’ll have to do this another time.

I need to shift back anyway. I’m starting to think a little too much like Fiona.

I duck down the path between the library and the Admin building, intending to take the shortcut around the quad back to my aunt’s dorm, when a middle-aged woman calls to me.

“Miss Geddes!”

Oh now, who the hell is this?

I put on a moderate smile and pause to let the woman catch up to me.

“Yes, ma’am?”

The woman starts; another one who doesn’t like the ma’am. “Miss Geddes, your father would like you to come home for dinner tonight.”

“My…?”

“I see that you’ve finished your community service for the day.”

“My…?”

Who is this woman? Obviously Fiona knows her. She’s wearing a wool cardigan that folds over her generous bosom and pooch of a tummy; combined with her Hunter Green plaid skirt with suede-topped clogs, she looks like she just stepped out of an LL Bean catalog. She holds open the passenger side door of a late model BMW sedan, apparently assuming that I will follow.

A panic begins to rise in my chest. To say no would be to arouse suspicion yet leaving will demonstrate to my aunt just how little I can be trusted.

My steps feel heavy as they take me to the car. But what else can I do?

A half hour later, the woman pulls down a long tree-lined driveway to a house set back from the road by at least the length of a football field. This is no mere carriage home: it’s a manse, an old Colonial with a stone face and a peaked roof. The driveway turns to pebbles and leads up past the house to a pair of red barns. When we get out of the car, I notice an in-ground pool up an incline with a wooden fence around it and a layer of ice covering its plastic sheeting.

I find myself rooted in place, staring at the grounds. The air is saturated with moisture, although it doesn’t feel like rain, not like at school. It feels like snow is coming. I snort a laugh: it figures that the only place in this rain-soaked county that would have snow is the Geddes home. I’ll bet when it does fall, the snowflakes land in precious little mounds, blanketing the landscape like a Currier & Ives painting.

My driver breaks my reverie with a hover of her hand at my shoulder; she doesn’t actually touch. “Don’t keep your father waiting. You know how he gets.”

The house is as dark inside as the sky is outside and only slightly warmer. Where is the hustle, the bustle, the family embrace?

While I stare at the furniture and furnishings, the woman re-appears beside me, wrapping a white apron over her cardigan. Ah, she’s the cook. “Your father is on a call, Miss Geddes. But he asked me to set the table.”

“Oh. Maybe I should, uh…”

“Go upstairs?”

“Yes, yes, that’s what I’ll do.”

I go back through the front hallway and find a staircase leading to the second floor. My room must be up here somewhere.

My very pink room.

“Holy crap,” I whisper when I find the room that surely must belong to Fiona. From top to bottom, the room is awash in all flavors of pink: cotton candy and peppermint stick; cherry blossom and carnation; neon, baby, shocking and hot. The room is so girly it might as well have pigtails and breasts.

I very carefully slide across the queen-sized bed, the one covered in a lacy pink blanket, matching shams and bed skirt, and lower my head to the down-filled pillows. Ah, these are seriously the most comfortable pillows I have ever in my life rested my head upon.

I close my eyes and try to relax. This isn’t bad at all. I wonder if I can remain in the shift indefinitely.

Could I be Fiona – or anyone else – forever?

Would I want to be?

My hands play with the lace on the bedspread beneath me. It’s nothing like the lace I have ever felt before, nothing scratchy or stiff about it. The texture feels silken and soft, like spring water cascading over my palms and fingers.

Who wouldn’t want to live like Fiona? Who wouldn’t want her life? Golden and gifted, blessed with wealth and pedigree. She has everything anyone could want.

Everything that I don’t have: parents, a real home, money, power, influence.

Yes, it might be nice to be Fiona Geddes.

There is a knock at the door.

“Yes?”

“Miss Fiona? Your father’s ready for dinner.”

I am reluctant to leave this room, this expanse of space. This is a penthouse apartment compared to my room in Chalmers. I smooth down the creases from where my body was laying on the bed, returning the linens to their original state before I head down to dinner.

Ah, Fiona, you lucky girl. I would never leave this house if I were you.

The dining room has been set with a quartet of white tapers around a centerpiece of greens. In front of each of two chairs is a full set of silverware, glasses and plates. They both look identical so I pick one and take a seat. No sooner have I rested a napkin on my lap do I hear a hiss in my ear.

“Get up!”

Huh?

“Now!”

Douglas Geddes roughly lifts me by the elbow until I am standing beside the chair I was just sitting in. He’s dressed in a hound’s tooth jacket and striped tie, as if he had recently posed for a Town & Country spread. He shares a long face and aquiline nose with his daughter but there the resemblance ends. Fiona’s father looks like an aging Wall Street whiz kid, rather than a small town mayor. The fierce sparkle in his eyes says he has ambition far beyond this two-bit tourist trap.

He catches my eye and growls, “You wait for me.”

“But I didn’t—” I start to say.

Douglas Geddes, without changing the placid expression on his face, slaps my cheek so hard my teeth make a cracking sound.

“No backtalk.”

“Oh god!” I clutch my hand to my face and move my jaw from side to side. Tears immediately spring to my eyes and cloud my vision.

“Now you may sit. Siobhan!”

Siobhan, the cook and driver, carries a plate of roast and potatoes to the table. I stare hard at her, willing her to say something about what just happened but she keeps her eyes on her task.

I slide into my chair while massaging my jaw. Nothing feels broken.

“Elbows off the table, Fiona,” my father says and I dutifully take my hand from my face and put it in my lap. Is the skin red, I wonder? I so badly want to run to the kitchen for ice but I force my body to remain seated.

Fiona is strong. Fiona is courageous.

I am Fiona.

“Now I will say grace,” Douglas Geddes says.

I can feel a fury rise under my skin and it’s all I can do to keep my head bowed reverentially to my chest while my father says an evening prayer over our food. I grip my fingers in my lap, twist the cloth napkin around and around my thumbs and dig into the stitching with my nails.

I hate this. I hate this feeling of weakness, of powerlessness. I hate sitting in this chair and not doing anything.

I hate feeling like I am less.

As the prayer comes to an end and we both whisper “Amen,” Siobhan’s hand appears in front of my face to pour water from a pitcher into my glass.

I don’t want water. God, what an idiot.

Before she can finish her task, I snatch the glass from off the table and watch as water dribbles down the sides and onto the tablecloth. I hold Siobhan’s gaze for a long moment until finally she turns away.

A small victory but at least I have won.

I hear a cell phone ring, muffled by fabric, and look around the room. I don’t immediately recognize the tune. It sounds like classical music and I despise classical music.

My father grabs my biceps; I can feel each one of his fingers through my school uniform. “Fiona. Your phone.”

My phone? Mine? Yes, it is mine: it’s Calliope’s phone. That’s her ringtone – my ringtone. The phone is in the pocket of my school blazer.

“Shut it off, Fiona,” Douglas Geddes says and squeezes my arm harder.

“I…I’m…” I struggle to remove it from my pocket but my fingers root around, like poring through quicksand, coming up with nothing.

The phone continues to ring and the tension grows around me; I can feel it like a shroud being hung around my shoulders.

God, just get to the friggin’ ringer! Just shut the damn thing off!

Through accident or divine intervention, the phone stops ringing but my father’s fingers do not loosen their grip on my upper arm.

“Your manners are appalling,” his voice rumbles low and threatening.

“I’m sorry,” escapes my lips in a whisper but still that’s not enough for Douglas Geddes.

“Leave now.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re not eating with me. Go to your room.” Finally, he releases his hand and returns to his meal.

I am so shocked by being sent away that I don’t do anything for a full fifteen seconds.

“Fiona,” my father warns me.

I slowly rise from the table and place my napkin very carefully beside my plate, which is still full of the dinner I haven’t eaten. My stomach growls at the sight and I reach for a potato but my father slides the plate out of my reach, without even glancing in my direction.

As I go back through the kitchen, I see Siobhan at the stove, stirring a wooden spoon in a saucepan of pudding; it smells like cinnamon and vanilla and again my stomach makes noise.

I stand rigid next to her while her hand moves the spoon around and around in the pot.

Look at me! I want to yell. Pay attention to me!

Instead, I shove her aside and reach for the tray of potatoes that sits on the back burner, swiping a few and stuffing one in my mouth. It burns my tongue and cheek but I don’t care.

Siobhan’s head slowly swivels to take me in and her eyes register sorrow at my rudeness. I grab another handful of potatoes and stare her down until she blinks and turns back to her pudding.

Another victory.

Upstairs, away from the dining room, away from the food, I lay on my bed and let the down pillows curl around my ears. Why? Why does he do this to me? What have I ever done to him? It’s humiliating and cruel and I hate him. I hate everything about him. I wish he would leave. I wish he would go to and be a senator and let me stay at school with my friends and Mary.

I feel tears roll down my cheeks, salty rivulets that pool at the corners of my lips and I wipe them away on my jacket sleeve. As I do so, the phone in my pocket rings again, startling me. What is that song and why would I have picked it?

Muffled by the thick nylon of my jacket, it continues for a few more notes. Da-da-da-da, dum, da-da-da-da, dum, dum. I close my eyes and let the rhythm seep into my brain. I know this tune. Somewhere in my brain I know this tune.

Ah! It’s the Chopin waltz Bea likes, the one she and Callie usually play in the car on long trips. She and Callie…she and me. I am Callie. I am not Fiona.

I jump up from the bed and find my reflection in the mirror above the dresser, expecting to see my own face – Callie’s face - but there’s only Fiona. Where is Callie? Where am I? As if in answer to my question, the phone begins to ring again: Beatrix. But I can’t answer. Not like this, not like Fiona. I have to shift back to do that.

Oh god, I can’t be Fiona any longer!

For one brief moment, my green eyes are reflected back at me but it’s a struggle to hold onto them. There! There I am. Hold it! Hold…

…but they’re gone. Oh no, this can’t be good. Is it too late? Have I stayed too long in the shift? Will I ever get out?

I have to leave now. I have to get back to Darby Prep, back to my Aunt Beatrix, back to my duck shoes and my crappy Physics grades.

I have to go back before I get stuck.

I sneak out the front door and dash down the driveway, gluing myself to the shadows of the trees.

There’s just one thing I seem to have forgotten and it’s nagging at me.

What is it? What was I supposed to do?