N
“Girl, you’re gorgeous!” Vivi greets me as I sit down in the passenger seat, carefully using the technique C showed me: first sitting down, my legs outside, and then putting them in so as to not tear the skirt or show things I don’t want to show. In spite of the thick woollen trench coat I’m wearing, the short walk to the car was enough to leave my legs freezing. It had started snowing earlier tonight and I’d probably be able to appreciate that a lot more if I weren’t so scantily clad.
“Well, so are you,” I grin, putting on the seatbelt.
Vivi’s wearing a wine-red off-the-shoulders knit pullover, a black skirt with tights underneath and high boots. A lot more weather appropriate than my outfit and maybe a little less flashy, but beautiful nevertheless.
“Aw stop it you! You’re gonna make me blush!” She starts the motor and puts the car into reverse to back out of the driveway.
I wait until we’re on the street, driving toward our destination before asking, “So, where are we going?”
“The sushi place you liked,” she says, briefly looking away from the road to press the button that skips the current song.
“Sakura?” I’ve been there before. It’s a nice restaurant with great food, but not really expensive. “Aren’t we overdressed for that?”
Vivi gives a huff more than a laugh. “But that’s half the fun, isn’t it?”
Right. Vivi and C are both very confident people so it only makes sense that they enjoy doing stuff like this.
Absently, I rub my legs to get rid of the sensation of the cold that seems to stick in spite of the warm air inside the car.
“Cold?” she asks, moving to turn up the heater.
“It’s fine,” I huff as the sensation falls away at the warmth of my hands. “Should’ve put on tights.”
She grins. “The price of looking hot, eh?”
I roll my eyes, but smile as well.
“But isn’t it romantic?” Vivi asks as she takes a turn and speeds up onto the street that leads around town so that we won’t have to drive through the centre. “The snow won’t stay, and still, on the night we decided to have a night out. Think of the aesthetic.”
I give a slow nod. Indeed, looking out the window it seems like a movie scene. The night where the pair of long-lost, star-crossed lovers finally reunite, kissing against the backdrop of the dark skyline of the city, snowflakes catching in their hair.
A new song comes on, and suddenly, Vivi’s grinning, glancing over at me for moments at a time in between. The song is surprisingly slow and low-key. The kind of music you’d listen to in the car on your own while driving home through the rain. Definitely not something I’d have expected from Vivi.
But Vivi seems to love it. She wiggles her shoulders to the melody and when the lyrics start, she sings along in a low voice, her eyes taking on a faraway look.
And then she stops moving and singing and asks, without taking her eyes off the road, “Everything okay?”
I freeze in my seat, completely uncertain what she’s even getting at. I can’t seriously have already outed myself as an imposter before we even made it to the restaurant. Fuck. But if it’s not that, what could she mean?
“I’m… fine?” I say hesitantly, watching her closely for any sort of reaction.
She doesn’t look at me as she switches lanes. There’s an impish grin playing around the corners of her mouth. “You always sing along to this song. Are you sure you’re not a skinwalker who replaced my best friend or something?”
The giggle I let out leaves a metallic taste on my tongue. “Yeah, totally. And later I’m going to lure you into some back alley and eat your brain or something.”
When the second refrain of the song comes and Vivi still doesn’t say anything more, I breathe a little sigh of relief. If only she knew how close she was to the truth just now. But it’s like C said, there’s no way anybody would ever guess the truth.
“Remember how we used to say we’d listen to this song while driving around in a car when we would be old enough?”
I give a vague nod. Of course, I don’t remember, but this seems to be an important memory for her, so it would have to be for Chloe as well, right? So it’s not like I can just say ‘no’ and be done with it.
“I don’t think I ever told you, but now I listen to this song every time I drive on my own, and almost every time I drive with you.” She gives a low laugh. “It’s wild how pretty much every song you like, I end up liking as well, even if it’s just because I associate it with you.”
I give a low huff more than a laugh in reply because I don’t know at all how to reply to that. But fortunately, Vivi doesn’t seem to have anything more to say, either, and we spend the last few minutes of the drive in silence.
As we walk out of the car park and into the cold air outside, Vivi holds up her hand, attempting to catch the slowly drifting snowflakes.
“Look!” she says, presenting one of the white crystals in her open palm. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
My lips move by themselves; even if I wanted to, I couldn’t keep them from smiling right now.
“Yeah, it is.” We stop briefly and watch. It only takes seconds before there’s nothing left but a single droplet of water caught in one of the many crevices of over palm.
“Let’s walk past the river,” she exclaims then, wiping her hand on her coat.
It’s the longer route, we both know that. But it’s bound to look nice at this time.
Vivi hesitates. “Oh wait, your legs. Right.”
I’m not even sure why I react the way I do. I know full well that I’m gonna get cold legs walking along the river. It’s windy there, especially this time of the year. Maybe it’s the brief flash of stifled disappointment in her eyes.
“No, sure, let’s go. I’ll be able to warm up at the restaurant.”
So we walk straight on instead of taking the first left, and soon, we’re walking along the promenade, hands buried deep in our pockets. The wind isn’t strong, just a cold breeze against our backs that my coat has no trouble keeping out. My legs are already going numb, but as long as I keep my core tense, I don’t really feel cold.
Next to me, Vivi has pulled back her head to look up, so far that I’m sure she’d run into any obstacle now if I didn’t stop her. So, after a moment’s hesitation, I link arms with her. She lets it happen with a low laugh and opens her mouth in an attempt to catch snow flakes on her outstretched tongue.
When she manages to catch one, she pulls her tongue back, smacking it as if she were a gourmet taster.
“Hmmm, a little bland,” she says finally, flashing her toothy grin at me.
“I don’t think it’s an option to fly up to the clouds and use a salt shaker to make the snow taste better. The two don’t go well together.”
I’m about to look away again, when something in her eyes shifts. And I don’t know why, but suddenly, my thoughts go silent. The wind has stopped.
Vivi’s expression is uncharacteristically serious all of a sudden, her lips just barely parted. At the edge of my mind, I register that we’ve stopped walking, and a vague sense of anticipation flutters in my stomach.
“I’m really grateful that I know you, Chloe,” she says in a tone that’s missing all the usual emotion. There’s no humour, none of that laughter that sometimes seems to echo in the space in between her words, none of the energy she seems to possess in such abundance—
“I’m grateful, as well!” I reply, putting on my best ‘Chloe is having a genuinely good time’ voice. “You’re the coolest friend ever.”
A car drives past and I blink, briefly distracted. When I look back at her, the moment has passed, and she’s grinning again.
“Alright, I think we should hurry up and get to the restaurant before you end up freezing your gorgeous legs off!” she winks and I giggle as we resume walking, at a brisker pace now.
By the time we arrive at the restaurant, my legs are pale with cold, and we stop in the coat area to allow me to warm up a little before I take off my coat.
As I’d already realised earlier, we’re both hopelessly overdressed for both the occasion and the location. Vivi doesn’t even seem to notice the dozen pairs of eyes that follow us as the waiter takes us to a free table in the corner. Meanwhile, I can’t tell whether my cheeks are burning from the attention or the sudden heat of being inside.
It’s not really uncomfortable, though. I like the idea of being one of, if not the prettiest in the room. A soft giggle escapes me under my breath as Vivi pulls me along by the hand.
Then we’re sitting down, and the waiter leaves to get our drinks, and Vivi grins again. “What’s funny?” she asks, even though her eyes are already laughing.
“People are looking,” I say in a low voice only she can hear.
“Damn right they are,” she says simply. “They know you’re the prettiest girl around.” She winks and another giggle bubbles up my throat.
“We are the prettiest girls around.”
She blows me a kiss.
***
I tap my foot nervously, spinning slowly in my desk chair. My room is almost completely dark aside from the halo of yellow light coming from my desk lamp.
It’s late in the evening and I’m already in my pyjamas. But in spite of the eventful and long day, my thoughts keep circling around a single moment.
Finally, the beeping in my ear stops and C’s slightly breathless voice says, “Sorry, I would’ve picked up sooner, but I was playing with Jas.”
Immediately, what I’d been planning to say disappears from my mind. “You play with Jas?” I ask, non-plussed.
“Oh yeah,” she says lightly. “Remember how I built a snowman with him? That seems to have given him a taste, and now he keeps asking me. I don’t say yes all the time, can’t spoil him after all, but occasionally. We just wrestled.” She sounds happy about it, albeit a little gassed.
In the meantime, my stomach twists with discomfort. I never played with Jas. He stopped really asking me a long time ago. And it’s not even that C changed something about other people’s perception of me; I don’t care about that part. The reason for this vague nausea in the pit of my stomach is the fact that she’s so much better at being me precisely because she doesn’t consistently stick to the parameters of my old personality. It’s better for Jas that we swapped bodies. And if it’s better for Jas to have C around, and C knew a lot more people in her original body, wouldn’t it be better for them to have her around as well?
“That’s nice,” I say lamely. “Glad you had fun.”
C doesn’t seem to pick up on my tone. Thank you! Anyway, why did you call? How’d it go with Vivi?”
Right. I was the one who called in the first place. “Great, mostly. She took me sushi eating and we had a lot of fun. She’s hilarious.”
C giggles softly. “She really is.”
“But on our way there, there was a song that I didn’t know and she sang along and then seemed to expect me to sing along. And I know you say nobody’s ever gonna guess the truth, but she literally asked if I was a skinwalker who secretly replaced you Though I don’t think she meant it entirely seriously.”
There’s a pause, then C says, “That’s hilarious. If she knew—” She stops herself. “Well, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the song, I barely listen to it anymore, so I kinda forgot to tell you with all the other stuff going on.”
I mean to tell her that she doesn’t need to be sorry, because it’s impossible to tell me everything about herself within such a short time frame. But she goes on without pausing.
“I don’t think you need to worry, though. She’s not going to suspect anything. And even if she found out, she wouldn’t do anything, especially if you told her that it was my idea."