Аманда Хокинг - Switched

For some reason, I got up and went over to the window. I caught sight of myself in my mirror, and I did not look good. My pajamas were of the sad, comfy variety, and not the sexy negligee type I would’ve liked to wear for a midnight rendezvous. My hair was a total mess, and my eyes were red and puffy. On top of that, I knew I shouldn’t even let Finn in my room. He was clearly psychotic and probably a sociopath, and he didn’t make me feel good about myself. Besides, Matt would kill us both if he caught him in here.

So, I stood in front of the window, my arms crossed, and glared at him.

I was pissed off and hurt, and I wanted him to know it. Normally, I prided myself on not getting hurt, let alone telling people if they had hurt me. But this time, I thought it would be better if he knew that he was a dick.

“I’m sorry!” Finn talked loudly so his voice would carry through the glass, and his eyes echoed the sentiment. He looked genuinely remorseful, but I wasn’t ready to accept his apology yet. Maybe I never would.

“What do you want?” I demanded as loudly as I could without Matt hearing me.

“To apologize. And to talk to you.” Finn looked earnestly at me. “It’s important.” I chewed my lip, debating between what I knew I should do and what I really wanted to do. This was the first time anyone had ever snuck up to my window or apologized to me after I had slapped them. “Please.”

Against my better judgment, I opened the window. I left the screen in so he could mess with that, and took a step back so I was sitting on the end of my bed. Finn pulled the screen out easily, and I wondered how much experience he had with sneaking in girls’ windows. Carefully, he climbed into my room, shutting the window behind him. He glanced over my room, making me feel self-conscious. It was rather messy, with clothes and books strewn about. My computer was on my desk in the corner, buried beneath water bottles and other random garbage. I had posters on my wall for Labyrinth and the Cure, but the rest of my stuff sat in two large cardboard boxes and a trunk on one side of my room.

“So what did you want?” I said as curtly as I could, trying to drag his attention back to me instead of inspecting my disarray.

“I’m sorry,” Finn repeated, with that same sincerity he had outside.

“Tonight I was cruel.” He looked away thoughtfully before continuing. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“So why did you?” I asked sharply.

Licking his lips, he shifted and exhaled deeply. He had intentionally been mean to me. It wasn’t some accident because he was cocky or unaware of how he treated people. Everything he did felt meticulous and purposeful. Even though he claimed he didn’t want to hurt me, the simple act of him having hurt me proved that that he wanted to. But he hesitated on telling me the reasons.

“I don’t want to lie to you, and I promise you that I haven’t,” Finn answered carefully. “So… I’m not going to tell you right now. It doesn’t seem appropriate.”

“I don’t care if it seems appropriate or not!” I snapped, then remembered that Matt and Maggie were sleeping down the hall and hastily lowered my voice. “I think I have a right to know what’s going on.”

“I came here to tell you,” Finn assured me. “To explain everything.

This isn’t the way we normally do things, so I had to make a phone call before I came to see you. I was trying to figure things out. That’s why it’s so late. I’m sorry.”

“Call who? Figure out what?” Then it dawned on me, and a pit started growing in my stomach. “Oh. This is about that crap you were talking about earlier. The psychokinesis or whatever?”

“It’s more than that.” He rubbed the back of his head and stared at the floor. “You’re not going to believe me. You’re going to think I’m insane. But I have never lied to you, and I’m never going to. Do you believe that at least?”

“I think so,” I replied tentatively.

“That’s a start,” Finn allowed. He took a deep breath, and I nervously pulled at a strand of my hair and watched him. Almost sheepishly, he said, “You’re a changeling.” He looked expectantly at me, waiting for some kind of dramatic reaction.

“I don’t even know what that is,” I shrugged. “Isn’t it like a movie with Angelina Jolie or something?” I shook my head. “I don’t know what it means.”

“You don’t know what it is?” Finn smirked. “Of course you don’t know what it is. It would make it all too easy if you had even the slightest inclining about what is going on.”

“It would, wouldn’t it?” I agreed sarcastically.

“A changeling is a child that has been secretly exchanged for another,” Finn explained slowly.

The wind felt like it had been knocked out of me. The room got this weird, foggy quality to it. My mind flashed onto my mother, and the things she had screamed at me. There had always been this feeling inside me of not belonging, but I had always blamed that on some latent residue from my mother. But now, suddenly, Finn was confirming all the suspicions I had been harboring. It sounded almost too good to be true.

“But how…” Dazedly, I shook my head and realized one important fact. “How would you know that? How could you possibly know that? Even if it were true?”

“Well…” Finn watched me as I struggled to let everything sink in and decided to continue. “You’re Trylle. It’s what we do.”

“Trylle? Is that like your last name or something?” I asked skeptically.

“No,” Finn shook his head. “Trylle is the name of our ‘tribe,’ if you will.” He rubbed the side of his temple. “This is so hard to explain. We are a, um, band of trolls.”

“You’re telling me that I’m a troll?” I raised my eyebrow, and finally decided that he must be insane. Nothing about me resembled a pink-haired doll with a jewel in its stomach, or a creepy, little monster that lived under a bridge.

Admittedly, I was short, but I was actually rather pretty, and Finn was at least six feet tall.

“You’re thinking of trolls as they way they’ve been misrepresented, obviously,” Finn hurried to explain. “That’s why we prefer Trylle. You don’t get any of that silly ‘Billy Goats Gruff’ imagery. But now I have you staring at me like I have totally lost mind.”

“You have lost your mind,” I nodded. I was trembling, out of shock and fear, and I didn’t know what to think. I should’ve thrown him out of my room, but then again, I never should’ve let him in in the first place.

“Okay. Think about it, Wendy.” Finn moved on to trying to reason with me, as if his idea had real merits. “You’ve never really fit in anywhere. You have a quick temper. You’re very intelligent. You are the pickiest eater in the world. You hate shoes. Your hair, while lovely, is hard to control. You have dark brown eyes, dark brown hair.”

“What does the color of my eyes have to do with anything?” I retorted, focusing on the things that I felt like I could disagree with. In fact, none of the things he said were all that conclusive.

“Earth tones. Our eyes and hair are always earth tones,” Finn answered. “And often times, our skin has almost a greenish hue to it.”

“I’m not green!” I looked at my skin anyway, just to be sure, but it didn’t look green.

“It’s very faint, when people do have it,” Finn said. “But no, you don’t.

Not really. Sometimes it gets more predominant after you’ve been living around other Trylle for awhile.”

“I am not a troll,” I insisted fiercely. “That doesn’t even make any sense. It doesn’t… So I’m angry and different. Most teenagers feel that way. It doesn’t mean anything.” I combed through my hair, as if to prove it wasn’t that wild. My fingers got caught in it, proving his point rather than mine, and I sighed. “That doesn’t mean anything.”