Linda Singleton - Dead Girl Walking

Leah Montgomery caught the puffin with a pinched, puzzled expression. She shook her golden head and said, “I don’t think so.”

“Sorry,” I murmured. “My mistake.”

“Obviously.”

“I thought you were someone else.”

“Oh?” She arched her blonde brows. “Who?”

“Not actually someone else, that’s not even possible. What I mean is …” Under Leah’s glacial stare my brain froze. What had I meant to say? Something clever and witty, like my book Celebrities Are People, Too advised. But my mind blanked.

Afterwards, I would torture myself by replaying this scene in my memory. Leah’s hair flowed symmetrically like a waterfall, spilling golden waves over her slim shoulders. She wore a chic red-belted dress, a cropped jacket, and open-toed, gold-heeled sandals. Her makeup glowed with glossy peach lipstick and a luminous glitter trail across her dusky eyelids. Everything about her seemed so perfect … making me feel less than adequate. That’s my only excuse for fumbling my words, rambling on like an idiot, saying something lame about puffins and baskets.

“Whatever.” Leah held the puffin’s black tail delicately, with two French-tipped fingers. “I believe this is yours.”

Before I could even say “thanks,” she’d tossed the toy back at me and turned to join her groupies, who suddenly appeared out of nowhere. She whispered to them, pointing in my direction, and they all convulsed into giggles.

Humiliated, I shoved the fuzzy puffin in my backpack and took off running. After only one or two wrong turns, I reached my next class just as the bell rang. And the puffin remained tucked away in my locker for a month.

Now I was living the ultimate Leah Moment. There could only be one Leah Montgomery and I was definitely not her. I had to tell someone, but who would believe me? I didn’t know what to believe myself. Except I had a sick feeling this was all my fault. “Turn left,” Grammy had told me.

Instead, I’d turned right and landed in the wrong body.

I didn’t just look like Leah.

I was Leah!

When Leah found out that I’d shanghaied her body, she was going to be supremely mad. Hmmm … where exactly was Leah? If I was in her body, was she in mine? Was this like that movie where the mom and daughter switched bodies? Or were Leah and I both sharing this body? Like a two-for-one body offer.

Leah , I thought, raise our hand if you’re in here with me .

Nothing happened.

“Leah,” I whispered in that awful croaking voice. “Where are you?”

The heart echo quickened and each beep slammed me with new fear. I looked at myself — or well, Leah — and tried to understand how my body wasn’t my body. It just didn’t make sense. You couldn’t change bodies like switching a TV channel.

This. Could. Not. Be. Happening.

Yet it had happened. And until I figured out to make it un-happen, I was stuck looking like the most beautiful and popular girl in school.

Alyce is going to die when she sees me, I thought. Except I’m the one who died … or did I?

Desperately, I wished I could talk to Alyce. She believed in all things weird and could come up with an explanation for my body change. But if calls were restricted from this room, how could I reach her?

Maybe a nurse could help.

Struggling through waves of dizziness, I pressed the “call” button. Then I sagged back against my pillow, breathing heavily and dizzy.

The door opened and a light flashed on.

“Are you all right?” a soft voice asked. A nurse in a flowered uniform hurried to my bed. “It’s good to see you awake,” she said cheerfully. “How are you feeling?”

“Awful,” I groaned.

“No surprise there,” she said, patting my hand.

I longed to ask so many questions: why my throat burned, how long I’d been here, what was wrong with me, where my real family was, and if there was any special meaning for the horned snake tattoo on her wrist. But I was so damned weak.

“Can I get you something? A glass of water?”

I pointed at the phone.

“Sorry sweetie, but it’s not allowed.”

I mouthed, “Why?”

“For one thing, you can’t talk.”

“I–I can … whisper.”

“For another thing, it’s not allowed.”

I shook my head and pointed at the phone again.

“Would you like me to call your mother, Leah?”

“No!” I croaked. She meant the Lavender Woman.

“Then what do you want?”

To be myself and wake up from this nightmare. But that was impossible to explain, so I just leaned back wearily. Tears burned my eyes and I didn’t even have the strength to stop them.

“Don’t you fret, honey.” The nurse reached to smooth back some loose hair from my forehead. She wasn’t much older than me, yet she seemed motherly, making me miss my own mother even more.

“You’re just making things hard on yourself,” she added. “You have so much going for you. I just don’t get it. Someone like you shouldn’t be here.”

Someone like me? I didn’t understand the disappointed look she gave me, and anxiety knotted in my gut. “Wh … Why?”

She bit her lip, hesitating as if she wasn’t sure what she should tell me. In her hesitation, I sensed pity. Ohmygod! How bad were my injuries? I didn’t seem to be missing any body parts and wasn’t paralyzed, so what was wrong? What was too terrible for her to talk about?

“Don’t you remember what happened?” she asked, glancing behind as if afraid someone might overhear.

I shook my head, then gestured to the phone again, pleading with my eyes for her to help me.

“I can’t,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry. They don’t trust you after what you did.”

“W-What?” I cried, fear mounting.

She looked over her shoulder again, then seemed to reach a decision. She bent down, so close that her ponytail brushed my neck. “You can’t make calls or talk to anyone outside your immediate family because you took all those pills,” she whispered. “You tried to commit suicide.”

Suicide! But I would never … I mean … never!

Sure, I’d had self-pitying moments when I threatened to do something drastic, but I never meant it. End my life? No way! I had so much to live for: best friends, family, college, career, and the unknown super-hot guy I would marry. We’d have only one child — boy or girl, I wasn’t picky. Being an “Only” had lots of perks, which I’d enjoyed until the triplets came along, and I wanted that for my child. I had all these huge plans for my career, too, complete with sketches I’d drawn of the fabulous Malibu beach home I’d live in with an entourage of “my people,” which would include a personal assistant, hair stylist, chef, and nanny. It was exciting to imagine myself as a top-flight agent, giving advice, counseling clients, and watching a spark of talent skyrocket into stardom. Also I’d be invited to A-list parties, where dessert tables offered oh-so-delicious chocolates.

Yeah, life was going to sweet.

So suicide? I don’t think so.

Of course, while all these thoughts raced through my head, I watched sorrow play across the nurse’s face as if her heart was breaking for me. And I remembered that this wasn’t about me. I wasn’t the one who’d attempted suicide.

That was Leah.

And she’d nearly succeeded.

Um … not good. Definitely not good.

Not being myself anymore — at least on the outside — was terrifying. Like when I’d been trapped in my sleeping bag at fourth grade science camp. My hair had snagged in the zipper. I screamed, squirmed and yanked, but I was totally stuck. It took two counselors to unsnag me, and eventually the bald spot grew back. But I never forgot the suffocating panic of being trapped.