Dyan Sheldon - Away for the Weekend

“Look at me! Who else could I be?” Gabriela gestures at herself. “You think there are two people in the world who look like this?” Skinny; pinched, sharp features; seriously myopic; anaemic complexion; dull, lifeless hair; toenails like claws and fingernails that look like a chewed cob of corn. “You know it’s me. I look exactly the way I looked yesterday.”

“Even plain looks are only skin deep,” says Delila.

Gabriela sighs. It has, indeed, been a long day. The last reserve of stubbornness and fight she had left was used up on Aunt Joyce. “You’re not going to believe me.”

Delila plops herself down on the opposite bed. “Try me.”

And so Gabriela tries. She tells her story simply, adding no trimming or embellishments – and offering no explanations.

Delila sits in total silence, listening to Gabriela’s story the way families once gathered around the radio in the evening to listen to the latest instalment of their favourite shows.

“Well?” Gabriela asks when she’s finished. “Don’t just sit there like you’re having your portrait painted. What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Delila, of course, had no idea what story she was going to hear, but she definitely wasn’t prepared for the one she heard. “I think you should be writing science fiction, that’s what I think. Girl, I’ve heard some wild stories. I mean, there are people who say they’ve seen the Virgin Mary in Bayside, which, you know… Bayside? That’s pretty out there. But this one beats them all.”

“Only it happens to be the truth.” Gabriela’s mouth pinches with resignation. “Didn’t I tell you, you wouldn’t believe me?”

“It’s not that I don’t believe you, exactly.” Delila, after all, does have a grandmother who believes in angels. “I know there’s more in Heaven and Earth and all that stuff. But it is a little hard to get my head around the idea that through some mysterious process you got switched with somebody else. I mean, I haven’t checked lately, but last time I looked we were in The Hotel Xanadu, not The X Files.”

“But you said yourself I’m different to how I was yesterday. If I didn’t get dumped into Beth Beeby’s body, what do you think’s going on?”

Delila shakes her head. “Danged if I know. We don’t have this kind of problem in Brooklyn.”

“Well, it happens all the time in Jeremiah. We drop into each other’s bodies the way the rest of you drop into coffee bars.” Gabriela is beginning to show a flair for creative writing that she never knew she had. “We don’t even bother going to movies or concerts or anything. If we want something to do we just say, ‘Hey, let’s be so-and-so for a couple of hours tonight’.”

“You don’t have to get all sarcastic.”

“And you don’t have to act like I’m making this up. Just because something’s really unlikely doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, you know.” Gabriela flaps her arms in exasperation. “I mean, do you think it’s easy for me to believe it?”

“No, I don’t. But it’s different for you. You’re the person it’s happened to. So, even if it seems impossible and improbable, you know it’s true. Whereas the innocent bystander doesn’t have that advantage. The innocent bystander – which, in this case, is me – has a serious belief challenge going on.”

“Oh, my God! How could I be so dumb?” Gabriela jumps to her feet, smiling for the first time in quite a few hours. “I can prove it. I can prove what I’m saying’s true, can’t I?”

“Really? And how are you going to do that?”

“Simple.” Gabriela reaches for the phone. “We’ll talk to the real Beth Beeby!”

Beth and Lucinda also ride up to their floor in a preoccupied silence. Around them, the other girls talk about the party – the amazing clothes, the super-cool people, and how the night couldn’t have been more perfect if they’d dreamed it – while the more memorable moments of the evening (memorable because of how horrible and humiliating they were) play in Beth’s mind like a slide show and Lucinda checks her arms for bruising.

And, almost like an echo of what is happening two floors away, as soon as they reach the privacy of their room, Lucinda says, “What’s got into you, Gabriela? You could’ve knocked my teeth out whamming into me like that! My father would have killed me after what they cost him.”

Beth drops onto the bed as if she has no bones. “I’m sorry. I just— I had a fright.”

“You had a fright? Oh, really?” Lucinda kicks off her shoes as if she’s angry at them. “Was that why you screamed when that guy tried to help us up? I thought you’d ruptured my eardrum. I mean, really, Gab. He was trying to help us, not attack us.”

“I’m sorry. He—”

Lucinda holds up one hand. “No, don’t say it. Don’t tell me he was your stalker.”

Beth doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t have to.

Lucinda sighs. “I thought you said your stalker was one of the waiters. You said that was why you threw yourself across the room like that. But he couldn’t be a guest too, could he? There are physical laws, you know. You can’t wear two dresses at the same time, and you can’t be in two different places at the same time.”

That’s what you think , thinks Beth, but what she says is, “Look, Lucinda, let’s just forget it, OK? I said how sorry I am.” Indeed, she’s beaten her own record of apologizing once every five minutes by at least two-hundred-and-forty seconds. “It’s been a very stressful day. Let’s go to bed and pretend tonight never happened.”

As if.

“Stressful? Stressful means you break a nail or get a pimple five minutes before your date comes to pick you up. It doesn’t mean that you forget how to walk in heels. Or that you think every guy you see is a vampire.” Lucinda’s lips come together to form a very small “o”, as if she’s planning to suck the truth out of the air. “Anyway, it’s more than just tonight. You’ve been acting really freaky all day.” Her foot taps as though keeping time to music only she can hear. “And since I’m the one who’s been dragged on runaway buses and nearly knocked unconscious, I think I deserve to know why.”

There are quite a few things that it’s easier to do if you feel you have nothing to lose. Taking risks, for example. Exposing yourself to humiliation. Telling the truth. And Beth, at last, realizes that she has nothing to lose.

“It’s really hard to explain,” she says slowly. “I mean, really hard. I can’t even explain it to myself.”

Lucinda sits down, folding her hands on her lap as if she’s waiting for the show to begin. “Don’t explain. Just tell me.”

Beth takes a deep, let’s-go-up-this-mountain breath. “I don’t really know where to start.”

“Start at the beginning,” advises Lucinda.

By the time Beth gets to the end of her tale, she is in tears and Lucinda is sitting next to her with a box of tissues on her lap.

“Here.” Lucinda passes Beth a handful of tissues. “Your face looks like it’s melting.”

“Humphhumph,” snuffles Beth, dabbing at her eyes.

Lucinda pats Beth’s shoulder. “It’ll be OK,” she says, but her tone is more hopeful than convinced. “Really.” She doesn’t dare ask herself how.

“The worst thing is that I’m ruining everything for Gabriela, and she’s ruining everything for me,” sobs Beth.

“I’m not so sure that’s the worst thing.” Lucinda hands her more tissues. “The worst part for me would be being stuck in somebody else’s body.” She shudders involuntarily. “I mean, even if it’s better than the one you had, it’s pretty creepy, isn’t it?”

Beth looks over at her, blinking. “You mean you believe me?”