Switch
Authors: Tish Cohen
tish cohen
To my parents, Patricia Gill
and Lachlan Mackinnon Bleackley
D
espite what Mr. Mansouri says, I didn’t drive my mother’s three-day-old station wagon through Sunnyside High School at lunchtime on a Tuesday as a childish plea for attention. I did it because I have thirty-seven siblings. Give or take. It’s surprisingly hard to keep track. I mean, it’s not as if we’ve all lived under the same roof at the same time. There are laws against that kind of thing. Or there seriously should be.
Sitting on the desk in front of me is a sheet of paper that demands to know the following: the date, my name, my homeroom teacher and the reason I’m in detention. Simple:
November 7
th
Andrea Birch
Mrs. Coffey
Okay. The reason I’m in detention is complicated.
“I’m waiting, Miss Birch.” Mr. Mansouri sits at the front of detention room. He leans back in his chair and puts his feet on the desk and right away I am sad and annoyed. Not by the act itself, but because of the way he crossed one foot over the other like a big shot. I mean, his
loafers are all worn and decrepit and one of the heels is covered in flattened gum that’s been stuck there so long it’s turned black. Which makes them pretty unsuitable as the footwear of a big shot. That explains the sad. What makes me annoyed is that he went and made me feel sad for him in the first place.
He sees me looking and adds, “It shouldn’t take long to complete the form if you tell the truth about what happened.”
The truth.
Honestly, the truth is pretty long. I’m not sure it’ll even fit on this sheet of paper. Or if I have the energy to get into it. That many brothers and sisters—even if they aren’t blood relatives—is hard to explain.
See, my parents take in foster kids. Temporarily offer them a safe, loving haven from their horrifically broken lives. Or, more like my mom does. My dad does the loving haven thing part-time because he goes to work all day as a bank manager, then comes home to make sure the fosters have done their homework and chores. Once everyone’s completed duties have been checked off on the laminated chart he keeps on the fridge, he changes into his baby-blue jeans and T-shirt and sheepskin slippers so he can monitor meteorological disturbances that hardly ever happen from the family room of our ranch bungalow. Since we live in Orange County, California—Fullerton, to be exact—the weather is pretty much sun, sun and more sun.
Which also makes me sad. I mean, if anyone, anywhere, was meant to be a weatherman it’s Gary Birch. My father is a man without a storm. In Ugg slippers.
If you’re thinking I have a pathetic issue with footwear, don’t waste your brain cells. Mansouri having gum on his shoe and not knowing it is sad, no matter what my dad has on his feet.
Anyway, back to the fosters. It always starts the same way. They get dropped off by someone official—usually this woman who wrings her hands a lot and wears flowered pants—and they stay for a day, a year, sometimes half a decade. Then, as unexpectedly as my pretend siblings show up, they’re gone. Either they’re shipped back to parents who have kicked the drugs or been freed from prison, or else they’re permanently adopted into loving homes. There’s one constant with these pseudo brothers and sisters of mine. They leave.
They always, always leave.
My mother is a woman who never sits down. Seriously. It’s entirely possible that her knees don’t bend. Lise Birch is an MBA from Pepperdine who, before I was born, spent her days as a management consultant up in L.A. But she was fostered as a child for a few years when Gran got hooked on pain meds (more on Gran later, I promise), and Mom always wanted to give back. So after I was born, she went into the fostering game full-time, bringing in a pair of toddler brothers the day I turned one.
Mom never gets tired, never complains, is never too busy to wrap a lonely foster child in hugs, and never misses out on her bedtime routine of storytime by the gas fireplace, no matter how hot it is outside.
She is the quintessential perfect mother.
Except to me.
Don’t get me wrong. She’s not mean. Not even close.
I am the lucky one, her “Number One,” she insists. It’s not that she doesn’t care about my problems, either, but given that I was privileged enough to have been born to two pretty decent people, there’s this underlying expectation that my emotional resilience is as fluffy and thick as the duvet folded neatly at the foot of my brass daybed. An air current runs through our house on Highcliffe Court. Andrea Birch is no sapling that buckles every time the jet stream changes course. She can handle it. Whatever “it” happens to be.
Take today. Auditions for the twelfth-grade spring fashion show were being held in the auditorium at lunch. I’m no stunner or anything, and there’s probably no way I’d have been chosen, but I am in twelfth grade and thought it might be fun to try out. It’s not as if it was going to pad my application to Stanford University, but I thought “why not?” Besides, the local stores offer up their newest fashions, and rumor is the models get to keep an entire outfit. Take one look inside my closet and you’ll realize what that means to a girl like me, whose parents believe looking good is a sign of the Apocalypse. Just once, I’d like to step onto campus wearing designer jeans and cool boots I don’t have to share with the fosters. Just once I’d like to turn a few heads, feel special.
If that makes me shallow, well, sorry. Try existing one week as me.
Not that I’m going to live this way forever. I got the letter this morning—from Mortimer Wolf, the recruiter from Stanford who’s coming to interview applicants from my area on November 17th. That’s this Wednesday—two days from now. At 1:25, I’ll be sitting in one of the orange
plastic chairs in Principal McCluskey’s office, making sure Mortimer Wolf sees me as the perfect Stanford student. Here’s the plan—get accepted with a full scholarship and, in nine months, next September, move four hundred miles north to Palo Alto, where I can escape all that it means to be Andrea Birch.
Anyway, I’d been practicing walking all sexy and coltish, leading with my hips like runway models do, in my room for a week. But as I ran out the door for the bus, Mom stopped me. Handed me the keys to her three-day-old Volvo and said there was an order ready for pickup at the drugstore and could I do it at lunch. She needed baby formula for the little girls’ 4:30 feeding.
I could have argued, but come on. My mother, who had been up half the night because Kaylee was teething, was standing at the door with Kaylee’s twin, Kaia, in her arms—the Ks are two chubby, pink, huggable babies whose favorite word is “Mama,” even though their mother is a prostitute who turned tricks in the living room while the girls slept in their crib down the hall. Was I really supposed to tell Mom no? That I’d shaved my legs extra carefully and was planning to slip on platform stilettos and a pair of dark-rinse skinnies and let my hips pull me across Leighton Auditorium for an audience full of ogling boys?
I took the keys and promised to be home by 3:15.
Which, judging from the look on Mr. Mansouri’s face, is not going happen. So here I sit. In detention hall, with a piece of paper that wants a better reason for why I’m being detained than the fact that I have thirty-seven foster sibs.
“I am waiting, Miss Birch.” Mr. Mansouri sucks from a can of Coke. “The truth should come to you as quickly as your name.”
I watch as he finishes the drink, crushes the can and tosses it at the trash. He misses, which makes me wince. If only to make him feel like the big shot he so badly wants to be, I click my pencil and give the man what he has asked for, sort of. The abbreviated truth.
I am in detention because of Joules Adams’s red shirt.
Do I dare leave it at that?
I look down at the shirt. The chest is all stretched out from where Joules’s breasts were just three hours prior. And it’s a terrible red. Any other red, a deep pepperoni or a faded tomato, for instance, might have had me in the Volvo right now, sucking back the new car smell, and Joules Adams doing whatever it is daughters of aging rock superstars do once the last bell rings.
But this red … I don’t know what Joules was thinking. Seriously, if you’re going to fool around with someone in the hedges between the student parking lot and the soccer field after lunch, and if that someone happens to be your boyfriend’s best friend, Shane, and if said boyfriend is lacing up his soccer cleats straight across the field from you, you’ll want to avoid a scarlet so dazzling it calls to mind an artery spurting neon-bright blood.
Mr. Mansouri booms as he picks up his soda can from the floor, “I’m waiting, Miss Birch. Your paper.”
I look at my answer again and decide it’s the best explanation I’ve got. So I underline it. Twice.
See, here’s what went down … Joules was up to no good in the bushes. I was angelic in comparison—fresh
from the drugstore, pulling the station wagon into the student parking lot, blissfully unaware of both the red shirt and the whatnottery in the shrubs. Lunch period was over, first bell had just rung. I was busy hunting for a parking spot in the shade where the infant formula would stay cool, hoping to get to the building where Honors English lives without hearing anything about who did or didn’t make it as a fashion show model—and who would or would not be going home in my designer jeans.
Then it happened. The car door flew open and none other than Joules Adams was staring me in the face.
“Move over,” she said, wiping shards of dead grass off her plaid skinnies and waving toward the passenger seat. Her bra strap was hanging through her sleeve and the red shirt was twisted sideways. But more bizarre was this—in the five years I’ve known her, it was the first time she’d spoken to me. “Move!”
Here’s the thing about Joules. She’s not exactly human. And the otherworldliness is not in her physical attributes—which, believe me, are astonishing enough. It’s more in her patina. This polish of what I can only describe as authenticity that covers every inch of her being like fairy dust. It’s like this magic powder that you feel, rather than see. There’s not a store in the world that bottles it. Trust me, if there were, I’d be first in line. So would you.
Her long hair is so dark it’s nearly black, except for these wavy ribbons of bronze that frame her face, which appears toasted all year round and is punctuated by lips the shape and color of a cinnamon heart. And gray eyes that blink about ten times slower than anyone else’s. I
don’t really know why. I guess when you’re Joules Adams you’re never really in a hurry.
Believe me, life isn’t going to leave this girl behind.
She’s not the most popular girl in school. Not even close. That sort of designation is saved for the cheerleaders and the homecoming royalty and the cliquey chicks with the perma-sneers. No. Joules Adams doesn’t have much in the way of friends. She’s the kind of misfit you become if your dad is the only famous parent in the school. Contrary to what the average person might think, having a notorious parent does not make you revered, it makes you different. And different doesn’t become a good thing until college. In high school, it’s the kiss of social death.
I think she’s the coolest girl in school.
And don’t assume it’s because her father is one of the biggest rock stars in the western hemisphere. I’m not that superficial. It’s more like this: she’s a loner because no one else is cool enough to hang in her presence, and I’m a loner because, well, why would I trust anyone not related by blood to stick around in my life for good? So far, none of them have.
So me and Joules, yeah. We’re way more alike than she can probably stomach.
“Please!” She squatted down low, hiding, and poked my thigh. In the mirror, I saw Shane raise his arms to profess his innocence to her boyfriend. Then said boyfriend, sweet and adorable and funny (did I mention adorable?) Will Sherwood, the soccer player with legs that could have been hacked from a statue of a Zeus himself, who’d been lacing up for practice, started limping in our direction with one
soccer shoe in his hand, the other on his foot. He peered between each pair of parked cars, suspicious but not nearly as distraught as if he’d known his girlfriend’s unhooked bra was about to fall onto the pavement.
Joules covered her eyes. “I’m such an idiot! Do you think Will saw me?”
“Actually, I think—”
“Please move over.”
She was polite, I’ll give her that. Convincing, too, with that look of desperation on her face. For a moment, a moment made of pure stupid, I allowed myself to imagine the two of us as friends. We’re both misfits, is it so unfathomable? (Wait—don’t answer right away. You barely know me and I’ve described Joules like a dream. Fathoming me under these conditions is absolutely NOT FAIR.) And if you’re thinking, what if Joules leaves me just like all my siblings do, don’t waste your brain space. I’d risk it to have a friend like her.
I pictured us sitting on the grass in the quad, sharing a package of chocolate chip cookies for lunch and making plans about what we’d wear backstage at her dad’s next concert. But we wouldn’t talk just about him. Some days we’d discuss important things, like global warming and slutty cheerleaders and how lame it is to be popular.
“Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!”
If I don’t help her, I reasoned, our lunches together will never happen. Then again, they won’t happen if I do help her either, because my mother will kill me.
Turned out it was too late for decision making; Joules Adams was climbing in on top of me. Rather than be squashed, I scrambled across the center console, striking
my knee on the cup holder. Already she was in position and struggling with the gear shift.
“Joules, this is my mother’s brand-new Volvo. She’ll kill me if anything happens to it.”
“I’ll buy her another, I swear.”
Surprisingly, that would not go over well in my house. “Yeah … my mother’s big on the whole reduce, reuse, recycle thing so that’s not really going to fly—”
I was slammed against my seat as the car lurched forward and roared through the student lot, barreling toward the teachers’ parking.
It was then that I saw a quick flash of Brayden—my highly annoying fourteen-year-old foster brother, the longest foster we’ve ever had at five years and counting—and his three delinquent friends, smoking behind a tree that was doing very little to hide them. Even in my distress, I made a mental note to thump him later for cutting class and sucking nicotine with those losers.