Untethered (31 page)

“Kevin, I—”

But he disappears. When I open my eyes there’s faint glow in front of my easel. It dissipates until the room is completely dark and I feel I’m all alone.

Thirty-Eight

Collateral Damage

After tossing and turning, I finally fall asleep again near dawn, when I’m woken up by Mr. Phillips’s knock on the bedroom door. He comes in and stands in front of my painting while I wipe crusty sleep from my eyes. “If you can do this,” he says, “why the hell are you failing Art?”

“I’m not failing anymore. I’ve actually gotten nothing but decent grades this week in Art and everything else.”

“Can you keep it up?”

I think of Kevin. He’s a jerk at times. But not dumb. “If I hang around the right crowd, yeah.”

He turns around, nodding. “Then see fit to hang with the ‘right crowd’. I don’t want anything interfering with your success.” He glances at his watch. “I’ll be at the meet tonight. To see you win.”

I open my mouth to say I’m not so sure about the meet, but Kevin’s dad silences me by holding his hand up. “Swimming’s what you’re good at. It’s what will take you places. Like it or not. Later,” he pauses, looking at me meaningfully, a small, tight smile on his face. “Champ.”

I know something important just happened, yet I’m still too groggy to figure out what. Besides, any good feelings Mr. Phillips has about me now will be long gone if I don’t get out of Kevin before the meet.

At school, I find Cassie before first hour. “Hey, where were you last night?”

She looks around us, her cheeks suddenly burning pink. “I went to a meeting. For teens with alcoholic parents.” She shrugs and gives me an embarrassed smile. “I guess I’m finally angry enough to do something other than complain.”

I gently rub her back. “Good idea, Cass. Did it help?”

She shrugs again. “Didn’t hurt. I’ll keep going, anyways.”

The bell for first hour rings. Crowds of kids run past us, banging into our shoulders and schoolbags. “I need to talk to you,” I say. “I have something to tell you.” My voice sounds like broken glass.

“At lunch?”

I think of how what I say might cause a scene. “Yeah, but downstairs. In Mrs. Stilke’s room.”

The warning bell goes off. And Cassie smiles widely at me. “Okay. See you later.”

I nod and watch her walk off. I think she’ll probably never smile at me again.

The rest of the morning I feel on the verge of puking. I think of all the winters Cassie and I spent building lopsided snow forts to take refuge in from the snowball attacks of the older boys down the street. Or how in the summers, we would draw pictures all over the sidewalk with giant-sized chalk, our clothes covered in pastel-colored dust. Or, more recently, how we would giggle over yearbook pictures, or surf YouTube for the stupidest videos, or lie on the grass under the moonlight and share our secrets.

I’m going to lose all that. I’m going to lose my best friend. And while I’ll still remember things fondly, all her memories of me will be tarnished with anger. She’ll look at me and see deception.

When the bell for my lunch hour rings, I head down to the basement which I know will be deserted. Mrs. Stilke’s not there, and the supply room is locked, but the classroom itself is wide open. I sit down and pick at a dried mound of red paint on the table until I hear the shuffle of feet in the hallway. Then Cassie comes in. Nausea clutches my insides. I breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, hoping it will pass. It doesn’t.

“So, what’s up?” Cassie tosses her hair over her shoulder and sits down next to me. “You look awful. Are you okay?”

I take another intake of breath and let it out slowly. It doesn’t help that Cassie’s hair and skin look so touchable to these hands. I shove them in my pockets. “I’ll survive.”

“You need to shave, you know that? I don’t know if Kevin would approve of the Cro-Magnon look.” She raises one eyebrow. That’s another thing I’ll miss. The one eyebrow trick.

“I can’t shave my legs without nicking them all to pieces, Cass. There’s no way I’m going to try dragging a razor across my face.”

“You’ve got a point there.”

“Look,” I say, forcing myself back to the subject. “I need to tell you something. But before I do, just know that I’ve changed since then. Maybe it was temporary insanity, or some evil force, I don’t know. But now, I would never ... I think you’re the most wonderful person there is. I always have -- despite being angry, despite what I told myself at times. If there was anyone in the world I would ever want to be besides me, it’s you. For lots of reasons. I hope you can see that that’s flattering in a way.”

“Uh ... okay.”

“I’ve learned a lot in the past few days and I’m a better person. Really.” I let out a huge breath. “I hope you can forgive me.”

“Sylvie, I’m not following.”

I can’t look at her. I stare at the silver barrette above her right ear. “The whole projecting thing? I never wanted to end up in Kevin’s body.”

Cassie lightly smacks her forehead with her hand. “Duh? I know, Sylvie. You—”

“I wanted to end up in yours.”

“What?” Cassie says, her voice thin.

“My plan was to get you out of your body so I could be you. So I could be with Kevin. So I could be normal and pretty and smart and have parents who stuck together. And you ... you were supposed to end up in me.”

It’s like all the air is sucked out of the room. I glide my eyes from Cassie’s barrette to her face. She’s staring at me, her eyebrows shoved together.

“Be me? You mean like ... possess me? Or steal me?” She adds a nervous laugh.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“Is this supposed to be funny?”

“No.” My voice is hoarse. “No. It’s the truth.”

She just continues to stare, her head shaking back and forth like she can’t believe it.

“It’s the truth,” I say again. “I know it’s hard to swallow.”

The green of her eyes turns fiery. “Hard to swallow? We’ve been best friends forever. Blood sisters. And you tell me your wanting to
possess
me might be ‘hard to swallow’? What the hell, Sylvie? What the fucking hell? First, Kevin spies on me and then you try to ... to ... become me? I never should have gotten in between you two. You deserve each other.” She stands up and shoves a strap of her backpack onto her shoulder with shaky hands. “Serves you right. Ending up in him. I hope you never get out.” She runs out of the room.

I sit for a minute while my stomach churns, then sprint over to the large garbage can next to the door, letting my nausea finally get the best of me.

Thirty-Nine

If at First You Don’t Succeed ... Get Drastic

I imagined that the second I told Cassie the truth there’d be a flash of light and I’d pop free of Kevin’s body. That he’d be yanked back into his own, just like that. But it doesn’t happen that way. I’m still him, heaving and sweating over the garbage can in the art room, when Nelson comes in.

“Kevin?”

I wipe a hand across my forehead and lean against the wall. I slide down it and hold back tears. “Nelson. What’re you doing here?”

His eyes are enormous and startled. “Got study hall this hour. I told Mrs. Stilke I’d carry some stuff in instead of sitting in the library.”

I only notice now that he’s holding a huge box. I see some white material sticking out of the flap on the top.

“What’s in there?” I point to the box.

He sets it down on a table and pulls a T-shirt out of it. A T-shirt with my design — the lacy looking one with the St. Anthony’s icons in the details — printed on the front and
St. Anthony’s High School
in bold letters underneath it
.

“Fundraising for the yearbook,” he says, setting the T-shirt back in the box. “Sylvie’s design.” His voice is low, sad. Then he looks at me again. “Why are you upchucking in the art room?”

I put my forehead on my knees and let huge sobs rip through me. They’re loud and messy. I wipe my nose on my sleeve. “I’m a horrible person, Nelson. Really horrible. You wouldn’t like me anymore if you knew.”

“Um ... Kevin, I’ve never liked you.”

And all of a sudden my sobs turn to laughter – I’m deranged enough to find Nelson’s comment extremely funny. But I stop laughing almost as soon as I start. “No, Nelson. Not Kevin. Me. Sylvie. If you only knew what I did. When I ended up in Kevin, I was really trying to end up in Cassie. To see what it would be like to be beautiful, you know? How sick is that? Talk about shallow.”

“Maybe you’d better see the nurse.” Nelson’s pupils are pinpricks in the dark turquoise of his eyes.

“You say that a lot.” I try giving him a smile. “Go with me, please? Just ... walk me there?”

He looks like he’d much rather bolt. But he says, “Okay,” and helps me up off the floor.

We walk the halls in silence until I knock on Nurse Carey’s door. I turn to Nelson. “This is the second time this year you’ve walked me to the nurse’s office, you know? Remember when I bumped my head? I wasn’t there, Nelson. I was projecting. Out of my body. ”

He just stares at me.

“Same thing when you kissed me. I was so shocked, I just –” I snap my fingers.

His face reddens then pales.

Nurse Carey opens the door. Nelson takes off back down the hallway so fast you’d think I was contagious.

Nurse Carey pokes and prods me a bit, asking some questions, but I tell her that I just need a little rest. She nods, gives me a blanket and tucks me into what looks like a dentist’s chair. Then she turns out the light and closes the door between her office and the sick room.

Dull light comes in through the windows and there’s a long line of clouds in the sky, their bottoms silvery-grey. The silver lining. Every cloud has one. My silver lining after telling Cassie and even Nelson the truth will be to get out of Kevin.

I take a deep, deep breath and let it fill my lungs. Then I exhale slowly
. Relax. Relax your toes. Relax your feet. Relax your ankles.
Eventually, I’m able to get to that state where I feel light and heavy at the same time. I imagine a rope above me that I pull myself up on, inch by inch. I feel a slight release and then a clamping down.

“Not yet,” says his voice, light as butterfly wings. “Can’t happen ... can’t ... don’t ... please ... hurry.”

And the moment is gone. My body feels solid again. Still his body.

What!?
Was he right about telling the truth? Or is he messing with me? Maybe he doesn’t even want to come back. Maybe he’s not ready!
Don’t hurry?
You’ve got to be kidding me!

I pound the chair with my fists. “
You
might not be ready, but I am! You can’t hold me here forever! My body will die, you asshole! I told Cassie! That’s the first step and you know it!” I sit glaring at the air around me hoping looks can kill—or at least scare a soul back into its body— when the door to the room opens.

“—clean it off,” I hear the nurse saying. Behind her is an overweight freshman boy with a bloody hand. They shuffle in, and she apologizes to me about the disturbance. He sits awkwardly on the table in the middle of the room listening while Nurse Carey blabbers on about safety in biology classes. The freshman slipped up with a dissecting knife.

I wait for them to finish and leave so I can try to relax again, try to leave Kevin again, but then the interphone in the room rings and Nurse Carey’s saying, “My goodness, what’s with the kids today? Of course, bring her up.”

At this rate, I’ll never get out of Kevin. And right now I’m so mad at him I could strangle myself.

I sit up. “Nurse Carey? I think I want to go home.”

“All right. Just sit tight and we’ll call your parents for you.”

“No,” I shake my head. “No, I’ve got my car. I can take myself home.”

She wags her finger at me. “Uh-uh. School policy. I call your parents or you stay.”

“Fine. Call.”

Kevin’s step-mom isn’t at home and isn’t answering her cell. So the nurse calls his dad. She explains things to him, then is quiet a bit and beckons me over to the phone. “He wants to talk to you.” I take the century-old yellow thing with the curly cord and put it to my ear.

“Hello?”

“You’re not coming home, Kevin. You have a meet tonight.”

“But Dad, I’m sick. I threw up.”
Out of guilt and despair. But I threw up all the same.

“You’re trying to get out of the meet.”

“No. I’m sick. Besides, there are other guys on the team, you know.”

“How many times are you going to try to pull this?”

“What?”

“Until you become good enough at something else, sports is what you focus on, young man. Like it or not, that’s the only thing you excel in. Poetry won’t get you into college on a scholarship. So suck it up. I’ll be there tonight. And you’d better damn well be suited up and ready to go.”

I hang up and look at Nurse Carey and the freshman, reeling from the fact that Kevin’s tried to get out of meets before. I blink at them a couple times then say, “Guess I’m hanging around here.”

My mind is racing. I try in vain to relax while sick or hurt kids parade through the office. My mom always uses the expression “No rest for the wicked.” For me it seems a perfect fit.

Once the final bell rings, I try to leave school unnoticed and take all the deserted corridors to get to the parking lot. But I can feel Kevin’s presence the way you can feel a storm coming with the change in the air. I know he’s there and won’t let me leave his body. Not yet.

“What kind of baby are you, anyways? Need me to fight your battles for you? What, can’t you face Daddy on your own?” I spit it out it under my breath but I know he can hear it. I know he can. “I can’t swim, you idiot. There’s no way I’m going to that meet.”

But when I slip through a side door that leads to the dumpsters and eventually the parking lot, I think maybe that’s what Kevin’s counting on. That I won’t participate in the meet. That I’ll lose his spot on the swim team. That I’ll take the heat from his dad and bring his grades up until it’s safe for him to come back.