You Had Me at Halo (4 page)

Boy, she could say that again. Holly took a deep breath. “Gem, it’s true. It’s me. I know it sounds crazy. Ridiculous even, but the Cliff’s Notes version is that I’ve been sent down from heaven for two days in someone else’s body.”

“You’re damn right it sounds ridiculous.” Gemma folded her arms and glared.

Yep, it was really going well. “Okay, so why don’t you ask me any question you want?” Holly licked her lips and tried to keep the desperation out of her voice. “Something only I...I mean something only Holly would know the answer to, and then you’ll see.”

“I’ll see you getting arrested,” her friend retorted.

Oh crap.
Holly winced. So much for her brilliant plan. Perhaps if she’d ordered a tuna salad instead of the hamburger, she would’ve thought of something better? Fish was meant to be brain food wasn’t it?

“I mean it.” Gemma fumbled around in her purse, presumably for her cell phone.

“Your last serious boyfriend was Gavin Rivers but you broke up with him at Christmas because he had been cheating on you,” Holly blurted out in a rush.

Gemma lowered her hand and stared. “Who told you that?”

“You did.”

“Yeah right, because I tell you technicians about all my dates.”

“No, you tell Holly Evans about all your dates. What about the fact you have a secret crush on Simon Trimmer, and when he accidentally touched your leg in the staff canteen last week you sent me a text message to tell me how hot he was? You have high hopes he’s going to ask you on a date any day now.”

“Oh my God. So you’re the creep who stole Holly’s cell phone the day after she died and now you think it’s funny to have read her text messages. Well I can tell you something for nothing Vince Murphy: You’re one sick guy.”

“No.” Holly scowled in frustration. “Of course I...wait…someone stole my cell phone?
Oh man, I hope they didn’t see the photo of us lifting up our shirts after we’d drunk that bottle of wine, because I looked so fat in that. How embarrassing.”

Gemma’s mouth fell open and she widened her eyes. “Okay, so now you’re starting to freak me out. I deleted all those photos before the cell phone was stolen. So if you did steal it then there’s no way you’d know about them.”

“Unless I was Holly.”

Gemma narrowed her pale blue eyes and folded her arms tightly around her waist. “Fine, so if you really are Holly, you won’t mind answering a few questions then.”

“Shoot.”

“Do I prefer George Clooney or Brad Pitt?”

“Trick question because you don’t rate either of them; your heart always has and always will belong to David Boreanaz.”

“What’s my favorite color?” Gemma demanded in a firm voice.

“Green because you think it suits your hair, but to be honest I’ve always thought blue looked better on you. Especially that Gap blouse that you like to wear with your True Religion jeans.”

Gemma started to look a little less comfortable. “A-and what was the name of the concert Holly and I went to see last November?”

Holly felt a lump formed in her throat. “We went to see U2 and you still have the ticket stubs at the back of your drawer along with the pressed flower your very first boyfriend gave you. It was a yellow rose.”

“H-holly? Gemma said in a whisper. “But, I don’t—”

“Me either,” Holly finished off. “None of this makes any sense at all. Especially the waking-up-dead bit. But it really is me.” Holly could feel the tears pouring down her face.

“But how can this be happening?” Gemma said in a shell-shocked voice. “I mean I saw you in the coffin; how could you now be—”

“That’s because heaven is complicated. It has even more rules than a Baker Colwell Staff Incentive Fun Day, and it’s twice as boring. But the thing is I still have some earthly issues to get sorted out and until I can do that, they won’t let me move up through the levels.”

“Heaven? Levels? I think I’m struggling here.” Gemma shot her a bewildered look as she dropped down onto the bench next to Holly. “I mean I want to believe you, but—”

“But it doesn’t make any sense,” Holly finished off with a sigh. “Tell me about it. And you haven’t even heard the rest of it yet...”

xxx

“So let me get this straight, you’ve been put into therapy and given a two day pass back to earth?” Gemma said several minutes later once Holly had explained it as best she could.

“I guess you could say that.”

Gemma shook her head. “The whole thing is extraordinary. I mean who knew that heaven was such a bureaucracy?”

“Yes, they certainly keep all this body-swapping business quiet.” Holly snorted.

“It does take a bit of getting used to,” Gemma agreed before suddenly hitting her forehead in annoyance. “I feel so bad that I didn’t believe you sooner.”

Holly sniffed. “I probably wouldn’t have believed it either, but at least you know now. That’s all that matters.”

“Er, I’m afraid that’s not exactly true.” Gemma winced as she searched for her cell phone and frantically started to stab in a number. “You see when I saw you sitting outside my apartment I panicked a bit.”

“It’s okay,” Holly tried to reassure her. “I’m honestly not mad.”

“No, but Todd sure was. You see as soon as I saw you I thought you must be stalking me, which is why I called him. He should be here any minute,” Gemma said miserably. “And he didn’t sound happy.”

Of course he didn’t
. Holly groaned. On a day like this, it made complete sense

CHAPTER FOUR

“This will be him,” Gemma said ten minutes later as someone knocked on the apartment door. Despite her urgent calls, Gemma hadn’t been able to get back through to Todd’s cell phone to let him know everything was okay. “So what do you want to do?”

She really should have just kept her big mouth shut when she was up in heaven and then none of this would be happening. Tyrone had certainly warned her enough times. Why hadn’t she just listened to him? Perhaps if he’d given her a heads up on the whole being shoved into a computer nerd’s body thing, she might’ve paid a bit more attention.

There was another knock on the door. “Well?” Gemma said.

Holly twisted the fringe of Gemma’s bedspread as she tried to decide. Half of her longed to go throw herself at him, but the other half (possibly the half with the better self preservation skills) wasn’t so keen on the idea of getting punched.

“Just tell him you made a mistake and that I’m not here.”

Gemma raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you lie to Todd?”

Holly raised an eyebrow before glancing down at her long lean legs.

“Oh yeah, good point,” her friend conceded. “But perhaps you should explain it now and get it over with?”

Holly had been thinking the same thing, but had reluctantly dismissed it since it was becoming more and more obvious that she wasn’t going to get very far on her mission if she didn’t have a bulletproof plan. And the only thing worse than not talking to Todd now, was talking to him and screwing the whole thing up even more.

“I’m sure,” she said firmly. “Now go and tell him...but act casual...and smooth down your blouse, it’s wrinkled up the top.”

Gemma snorted. “Well at least I know you’re definitely Holly, only she would say something like that at a time like this.”

Holly sighed as her friend left the room. If only it would be so easy to convince Todd.

xxx

It was no good. No matter how hard Holly tried, she couldn’t hear a word that was being said and unless she wanted to open the bedroom door and risk getting her face punched by the man of her dreams, she was just going to have to wait until Gemma came back.

She padded back across to the dressing table, just like she used to.
Gosh, that was a nice lipstick. It was sort of like a lip-gloss but with a matt finish. Interesting.

“It’s all done.” Gemma pushed the bedroom door open. “I just told him I’d made a mistake and...Holly, what are you doing?”

“I’m trying on your lip-gloss. Is it new? Anyway, tell me what else Todd said. Did he...
What?
Why are you looking at me like that?
Is there a problem?” Holly frowned. It wasn’t like Gemma to worry about a bit of makeup.

“Yes, there’s a problem. I don’t think Tropical Pink Crush really goes with your stubble.”

“What...? Oh crap.” Holly groaned as she looked in the mirror. This was ridiculous. She could not spend the next two days in Vince Murphy’s body.

She reached over for the makeup remover and quickly smeared it on her face. Except it wasn’t her face at all. Gone were the brown eyes with the heavy lashes, the pointed chin and the nose that was slightly crooked. And instead, staring back at her was Vince Murphy.

It was going to take a bit of getting used to. Though, really, if you took away the attitude he wasn’t such a bad looking fellow. Mind you, he could use some sun. But despite his pale face, he had a nice pair of blue eyes and light brown hair that flipped and flopped all over the place. She puckered her lips. Actually, they were quite full weren’t they? Weird she’d never noticed before.

“Are you okay?” Gemma was looking at her strangely, and Holly realized she’d been checking out her own face. Well Vince’s face. Which was sort of her face since she was the one on the inside.
Oh dear, this was getting confusing.
She finished wiping the makeup off and quickly turned away from the mirror.

“Just pretend you didn’t see that,” Holly advised as she sat back down on the bed.

“It’s forgotten,” Gemma readily agreed. “Anyway, the good news is that Todd seemed to believe I’d made a mistake, which means we can now get down to working out a plan. What should we do first?”

Holly paused for a minute and rubbed her chin, trying to ignore Vince’s one-day stubble. He could’ve at least shaved for her funeral. “Well the sooner I can find out just how I really died, the sooner I can start convincing everyone of the truth. Especially Todd, so I suppose we’d better start with trying to figure out how those pills got in my system. Mind you, I would’ve quite liked to see myself as a bride as well, but I guess that’s out of the question in this body.”

“Yes, I don’t think that can do any of us any good.” Gemma blanched as she reached for a diamante-studded diary next to her bed. “So pills it is. We need to work out if someone purposely gave them to you, or if you took them by accident. Or perhaps they just did it as a joke that went wrong?”

“Very wrong.” Holly sighed. Not that she really remembered too much of it at the time, but when she’d first arrived on Level One, disjointed images had started to come back to her. Dying wasn’t really that much fun. And it sort of hurt.

“Your stepmother told me they’d found Dimenhydrinate in your system, which is most commonly used in motion sickness pills. Here.” Gemma ripped the page out and handed it to Holly. “These are my notes. They couldn’t be certain of the dosage, but thought it was probably the equivalent of about four pills—not enough to kill you, just enough to make you drowsy. Oh, and they’re not prescription so anyone can get them.”

“Great.” Holly shoved the piece of paper into Vince’s jacket and thumped the love heart pillow she had been hugging, in frustration. “This narrows it down to just about anyone.”

Gemma reached over and grabbed the cushion from Holly’s tight grip. “I better take this. Now that you have all of this man-strength, we need to be careful with you.”

Holly looked at the now misshapen cushion and blushed. “Sorry, it’s just so frustrating.”

“I know. I mean you’re dead. You’ve got every right to be pissed off. And it’s not really all doom and gloom since the person who gave the pills to you—either intentionally or otherwise—might still have them. After all, why would they get rid of them when there’s no need to? It’s not like CSI are going to come crashing through their door with rubber gloves and fingerprint kits.”

“Good point.” Holly brightened up. Okay so it was a long shot, but at least there was still a chance, and if she had to search everyone’s desk to find the pills then she would do it. She sent her friend a grateful smile. “And Gem, thanks for this. It’s so nice to be around someone who’s on my side. The people in heaven were saying I’d killed myself and I guess I was starting to believe it. Especially after, well...”

“Hey,” Gemma said firmly. “It’s got nothing to do with this. For a start it was six years ago. A lot of kids do weird stuff when they’re teenagers. It’s just the hormones. Try t just forget about it.”

“I thought I had,” Holly admitted as she looked down at the smooth skin on her wrists. Well that was one advantage of being in Vince’s body, she didn’t have a constant reminder of a past she would rather forget.

The shrinks had called it self-harming, but to Holly it had been the only way that she could get out all the frustration trapped in her body. The worst thing was she’d worked so hard in the last few years to make amends for her lapse in wisdom, and now all her hard work had been undone in one foul swoop.

“It’s true,” Gemma insisted.