Аманда Хокинг - Switched

“Yes, ma’am,” Rhys nodded. “Sorry.”

“As for you-” Elora pointed a finger at me but couldn’t find the words to finish. She just looked so disappointed and disgusted with me. “I don’t care how you were raised before you came here, you still know what kind of behavior is ladylike and what isn’t.”

“I wasn’t-” I started, but she held up her hand to silence me.

“But to be honest, Finn, you disappoint me the most.” She had stopped yelling, and when she looked at Finn, she just sounded tired. He dropped his head in shame, and she shook her head. “I can’t believe you allowed this to happen. You are supposed to be educating her in the ways of Trylle and watching her. You know you need to keep your eyes on her at all times.”

“I know. I won’t let it happen again.” Finn bowed apologetically to her.

“I do not want to see any of you for the rest of the day.” She held her hands up, like she was done with the lot of us, and then shook her head and turned out of her room.

“I am so sorry,” Rhys apologized emphatically, his cheeks red with shame, and somehow, that only made him look cuter.

Not that I was really paying attention to how he looked just then. My stomach had twisted in knots, and I was thankful that I hadn’t started to cry. I turned to Rhys to apologize as well, but Finn cut me off.

“You need to get ready for school,” Finn snapped, and he was almost glaring at Rhys. Then he pointed to the hall and turned to me. “You. Out.

Now.”

“Jeez,” I grumbled but did as I was told.

I had to sneak past him on my way out the door, and normally, I loved that but not today. My heart pounded erratically, but none of it was happy. Finn tried to keep his face expressionless, but tension and anger radiated from his body. I slunk across the hall to my room, and Finn barked something at Rhys about behaving himself.

“Where are you going?” Finn demanded when I opened my bedroom door. He had just emerged from Rhys’s room and slammed the door behind him, making me jump.

“To my room?” I pointed at my room and looked confused.

“No. You need to come to my room with me,” Finn said.

“What? Why?” I asked.

A very small part of me felt excited about the prospect of going to his room with him. That sounded like the start of a fantasy I might have, but the way he was looking at me now, I was afraid he might kill me once we were inside the privacy of his room.

“I need to get ready for the day, and I can’t very well let you out of my sight, can I?” Finn had a heavy irritated undercurrent to his words. I just noticed that he was wearing pajama pants and a tee shirt, and his dark hair wasn’t as sleek as it normally was. He had just woken up, too.

“Yeah, sorry.” I nodded meekly and walked with him to his room. He was walking fast and pissed off, and I fell about a step or two behind. “I really am sorry, you know. I didn’t mean to fall asleep there. We were just watching movies, and it got late. If I had known it would be like this, I would’ve made sure to be in my room.”

“You should’ve known, Wendy!” Finn exclaimed, exasperated. “You should know that your actions have consequences and the things you do matter!”

“I am sorry!” I repeated, feeling tears sting the back of my eyes.

“Yesterday was so boring and I just wanted to do something.”

“Wendy!” Finn whirled on me suddenly, startling me so I took a step backwards. My back hit the wall behind me, but he stepped closer to me.

Putting one arm on the side of me, his face was only a few inches from mine, and his dark eyes blazed. Somehow, his voice was calm and even. “You know how it looks when a girl spends the night alone with a boy. I know you understand that. But it is so much worse when a Princess spends the night alone with a mänsklig. It could put everything in jeopardy.”

“I-I don’t know that means,” I fumbled.

Finn stayed there, glaring at me for another painful minute, then sighed and took a step back. He rubbed his eyes and stood in the middle of the hallway. I swallowed back tears and caught my breath. When he looked back at me, his eyes had softened a bit, but he didn’t say anything. He just walked to his room, and uncertainly, I followed after him.

His room was smaller than mine, but a much more comfortable size.

One of his walls was entirely glass, but he had the blinds covering it. His bed was covered in dark blankets, and he had several bookshelves overflowing with books. In one corner, he had a small desk with a laptop on it. Like me, had an adjoined bathroom. When he went into the bathroom, he left the door open, and I heard the sound of him brushing his teeth. Tentatively, I sat on the edge of his bed and looked around.

“You must stay here a lot,” I commented. I knew that he stayed here on and off, but to have a room this full of his stuff implied a more permanent living situation.

“I live here when I’m not tracking,” Finn replied.

“My mother is quite fond of you,” I mumbled dimly.

“Not right now she’s not.” Finn turned off the water and came out, leaning on the doorframe to his bathroom.

“I am so sorry about that,” I apologized sincerely, but Finn just ran a hand through his hair and looked away from me. “I didn’t…” I trailed off, knowing that my apologies weren’t really good enough this time. “How did you even know I wasn’t in my room?”

“I checked on you,” Finn gave me a look like I was an idiot. “I check on you every morning.”

“You check on me when I’m sleeping?” I gaped at him. “Every morning?” He nodded. “I didn’t know that.”

“Why would you know that? You’re sleeping,” Finn pointed out.

“Well… it just feels weird. Like some kind of invasion of privacy,” I shook my head. I was used to Matt and Maggie checking on me, but it felt strange knowing that Finn would come in and watch me sleep, even if it was only for a second.

“I have to make sure you’re safe and sound. Its part of my job,” Finn said.

“You sound like a broken record sometimes,” I muttered wearily.

“You’re always just doing your job.”

“What else do you want me to say?” Finn countered, looking at me evenly.

I knew exactly what I wanted him to say, but I couldn’t tell him.

Instead I just shook my head and looked away from him. My sweats pants suddenly became very fascinating, and I picked lint off them. Finn kept looking at me, and I expected him to move on to finish getting ready. When he didn’t, I decided that I had to fill the silence with talking.

“What is a mänsklig?” I looked over at Finn, and he exhaled.

“The literal translation for mänsklig is ‘human.’” He tilted his head, resting it against the doorframe, and watched me. “Rhys is human.”

“I don’t understand. Why is he around?” I shook my head.

“Because of you,” Finn said, and that only confused me more. “You’re a changeling, Wendy. You were switched at birth. Meaning that when you took the place of another baby, that baby had to go somewhere else.”

“You mean…” It was incredibly obvious once Finn said it. Rhys had blond hair and blue eyes in a colony of brunettes, and what other purpose would he have here? “Rhys is Michael!” Suddenly, my crush on him felt very dirty. He wasn’t my brother, but he was my brother’s brother, even though Matt wasn’t really my brother. It still felt… not right, somehow.

“Michael?” Finn looked perplexed.

“Yeah, that’s what my mom - Kim, my fake mom - named him. She knew she had a son, and that’s Rhys!” My mind swirled. “But how… how did they do that?”

“We normally do same-sex exchange, a girl for a girl, a boy for a boy,” Finn explained. “Rhiannon is Willa’s mänsklig, for example. Elora had her mind set on the Everly’s. After he was born, she induced labor with you, and using persuasion on the family and hospital staff, she switched you out for him. It takes harder when you do a boy to girl switch, like that. Mothers are more likely to pick up on something being wrong, as was the case with you mother.”