Аманда Хокинг - Switched

“No, no, no! It’s my birthday and I don’t want chocolate!” I shouted and stomped my foot on the floor as hard as I could.

“You don’t want chocolate?” Mom looked at me, her blue eyes wide and incredulous. There was also a whole new type of crazy glinting in her eyes, and that’s when my fear belatedly started to kick in. “What is wrong with you, Wendy? What kind of child are you? Are you even a child?” I just stared at her as she slowly walked around the island, coming towards me. The knife was still in her hand, pointed up at the ceiling, but it looked far more menacing than it had a few seconds ago. “You’re certainly not my child. What are you, Wendy?”

She bent down and gripped my shoulders tightly, digging her fingers into me like talons. When she started to shake me, she shouted and spittle splashed out on my face. “What are you really? What do you want? What do you want from me?!”

I managed to wriggle away from her and took several steps back. I should’ve screamed or run away, but I didn’t understand what was going on.

My mother looked completely maniacal. Her robe had fallen open, revealing her thin collarbones and the black slip she wore underneath. She took a step towards me, this time with the knife purposely pointed at me.

“I was pregnant, Wendy! Where is my child? What are you and what did you do with my child?” Tears were forming in her eyes, and I just shook my head. “You probably killed him, didn’t you? That is just like you, Wendy. That is just like you!”

She lunged at me, screaming at me to tell her what I was and what I did with her real baby. I darted out of the way just in time, but she was backing me into a corner. Once I was pressed up against the kitchen cupboards, I had nowhere to go, and she wasn’t about to give up.

“Mom!” Matt yelled at her from the other side of the room. Her eyes flickered with some recognition, the sound of the son she actually loved, but she didn’t back away from her stance. In fact, she realized that she was running out of time, so she raised her knife.

Matt dove at her, but not before the blade of her knife tore through my dress and slashed across my stomach. My cut wasn’t much worse than a flesh wound, but bled profusely and I sobbed hysterically. Mom was still fighting hard against Matt, refusing to let go of the knife.

“She killed your brother, Mathew!” Mom insisted, looking at him with frantic eyes. “She’s a monster! She has to be stopped, Mathew! She has to be stopped!”

A pool of drool unceremoniously spilled out across my desk, and I had opened my eyes just in time to hear Mr. Meade slam a dictionary down on the table. I had only been here a month, but I had already ascertained that this was his way of waking me up from my daily naps during his History lecture. I knew he got some kind of kick out of startling students awake, so I refused to let myself be jarred or react in anyway. Lately, I had been managing to wake up a second before he tried to wake me, which made it easier to ignore. This time, I didn’t do anything at all. In fact, I closed my eyes again and pretended to keep sleeping.

“Miss Everly?” Mr. Meade snapped, clearly not happy with my reaction, and I had to fight to keep the smile back. “Miss Everly?”

“Hmm?” I murmured.

I lifted my head and tried to wipe away the drool as discreetly as possible. Surreptitiously, I glanced around to see if anyone had noticed, and that bitch Tegan Lively was looking at me with a devilish smile, so I had a feeling she’d seen it. She pushed her golden locks out of her face and winked at me in a strangely seductive manner, and I had no response to that.

Most of the class seemed pretty oblivious, except for Finn Holmes.

He’d been here a week, so he was the only kid in school newer than me. There was something oddly still and quiet about him, and I was fairly certain that I had yet to hear him speak, even though he was in four of my classes. His black hair was smoothed back, and his eyes were so dark they were almost black.

Whenever I looked at him, he always seemed to be staring at me in a completely unabashed way, like it was perfectly natural to just sit in class and look at me all the time. With his rather striking looks, he was attractive, but there was nothing flattering about the way he looked at me. He just stared, the way I stare at the TV when something boring’s on. I feel compelled to look, but I don’t really care or even notice what’s happening.

“Sorry to disturb your sleep,” Mr. Meade cleared his throat so I would look up at him, and I purposely yawned loudly.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“Go easy on her, Mr. Meade,” Tegan chimed in, her voice deceptively sweet. “Wendy was just getting her beauty sleep, and she needs all the help she can get.”

The class snickered at that, and I turned back to glare at her.

Unfortunately, that Finn kid sat behind her. He wasn’t laughing at her joke, but he didn’t disapprove either. For a change of pace, he was looking down at his book, and a strand of hair fell across his forehead.

“Then you must be about due for a coma,” I told Tegan, and her plastic smile grew harder. Finn almost seemed to smirk at that, but I was probably imagining things. He never had expressions.

“Miss Everly, why don’t you go down to the principal’s office?” Mr.

Meade suggested tiredly, and I groaned. “Since you seem to be making a habit of sleeping in my class, maybe he can come up with some ideas to help you stay awake.”

“I’m awake,” I insisted hopefully.

“Miss Everly, now.” Mr. Meade pointed to the door, as if I had forgotten how to leave and that’s what was holding me back.

“Fine,” I huffed and shoved my books into my bookbag. I don’t know why I even took my books out, since I had designated History as my afternoon nap time.

“She’s just lucky she didn’t drown in her own drool,” Tegan sneered as I made my way towards the door.

Restraint had never been my strong suit, but I was really working on it.

I gripped the strap of my bookbag tightly and gritted my teeth as I walked out of the class, but I didn’t pause or look back. You cannot punch Tegan in the face, you cannot punch Tegan in the face, I kept repeating over and over in my head. It had basically been my mantra since I started here, but it was getting harder and harder to uphold.

I walked slowly down the hall towards the principal’s office, admiring the battered lockers. There were bright colored fliers posted everywhere, telling everyone to join the Debate team, try out for the school play, and not to miss the fall semi-formal this Friday. I wondered what a “semi-formal” consisted of at a public school, but I hadn’t bothered to ask anyone. Besides that, since I had never been to a dance of any kind, I had nothing to compare it to.

The principal’s secretary was a pudgy woman with dark curly hair, and she gave me the same severe look over her glasses that she did every time I came in the office. It was neither disappointed nor disapproving, but rather just as she expected. I could almost imagine her pleading with the principal not to accept me before I started. “No, no, not this one. She’s a bad egg,” she’d say until she was red in the face.

Without saying a word, she picked up the phone to let the principal know I was here. The principal had yet to yell at me, but he always looked at me with that same mixture of concern and pity that everyone gave me. Well, everyone that knew about my mother at least. As if every misdeed in my entire life could be explained away and forgiven because of a single day in my childhood.

“The principal is in meetings all afternoon,” his secretary told me after she set down the receiver. “He said to go see the counselor.”