Noel
I’d really thought she’d leave me alone after what I said to her yesterday. But no, there she is, wearing the very same coat and the very same scarf, her arms crossed to keep out the cold. She has her hair down today.
She stops at the edge of the sub’s bench, watching me cautiously, her posture tense.
My eyes narrow at the sight of her. “What do you want?”
She readjusts her arms around her chest. “To talk,” she says slowly.
I get to my feet, backing away from her. “I thought I was clear that I don’t wanna be around you,” I tell her. It hurts, having to do this again. But it’s for the better. When even just seeing her makes me miserable, how could beingaround her possibly be any better?
Abruptly, I turn and begin to walk away.
“What if I could give you the body you want?” she says, her voice loud enough to carry even past the wind.
I stop dead in my tracks, then turn around. “That’s not possible.” And I know that’s the truth, but even so, I can’t make myself turn away from her again.
Her gaze doesn’t falter as she meets my eyes. “What if it was?”
I raise an eyebrow, my voice cold. “How?”
She shrugs. “Magic. I give you my body and live on in yours. A swap, basically.”
I look at her incredulously. “Are you high?”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m not. The ritual has to be done on Saturday night, during the full moon.” She shrugs a little helplessly. “I’m not sure it’s gonna work myself, but what do you have to lose?”
Ice-cold realisation hits me, and hard laughter spills from my chest like rocks. “This is a bet, isn’t it?” I ask sharply. “Do you seriously believe I’m that gullible? What, you’re gonna film me and show all your friends so you can have a laugh at the tranny?”
I know that it doesn’t make sense for her to do something like that. She’s never been anything but nice to me; to anybody, really. But what she’s saying doesn’t make sense, either. It can’t be true.
Her eyes widen. “No, I—” Tears of frustration well up into her eyes suddenly. “I would never do something like that to you,” she pleads. “I swear! I’m trying to help!”
You can’t fix me! I want to shout, but my throat knots up around the words. My stomach is tight at the sight of her. Is she really serious about this?
“Why would you even want to give me your body?” I ask, forcing the hostility from my voice.
She gives me a sheepish smile. “If it makes you happy? It’s not like it could be much worse for me than it is for you right now, is it?”
My diaphragm spasms. It doesn’t make any sense, and yet… it fits her, somehow. The words I said earlier make me suddenly sick, and I force myself to speak on in a more gentle tone.
“But why swap bodies? Why not just turn me into a cis woman?”
This can’t be true, my mind keeps thinking. And yet.
She shrugs uncomfortably. “I don’t know. The woman said it was the only possible way, because magic always comes at a price. So if I want you to have a body you’re comfortable with, I’ll have to give my own in turn.”
“And you would do that?”
She opens her mouth as if to reply, but then just closes it and gives a tight nod.
“I know I’ve said this before, but you know that you don’t owe this to me, right? I know what it’s like to be in the wrong body, and I wouldn’t wish this on anybody. Especially not you.”
Again, that little smile. “There are people that don’t care as much about gender, you know?”
I give her a look. She’s always been overtly feminine, even back when I first met her.
“You can’t really know that beforehand, though.” That’s something I could never live down: the guilt of knowing what I did to her, abusing her kindness in order to save myself, damning her in turn.
“Maybe,” she concedes. “But we’d have the first six months to figure that out, and we’d still be able to change back within that time, just by repeating the ritual. That’s what the woman said, at least.”
I want to put up further objections, but the tug of hope at the bottom of my stomach makes me stop short.
Chloe notices the opening that’s building in my mind. “Please,” she says, coming closer slowly. “Let me do this for you.”
So I finally give a short nod. “And you’re sure it’s reversible?”
She shrugs. “I’m not even sure if it’s gonna work in the first place, but the woman said we’d be able to go back, and she didn’t seem very… evil.”
***
It’s not a choice. I keep telling myself that it’s not gonna work, and that magic can’t be real, but my subconscious isn’t having it. Every time I think of the coming weekend, my stomach goes light with barely-contained excitement, and for the first time in way too long, it feels like I can cope again. Not quite like I can breathe yet, but the prospect of being right soon makes it bearable.
It makes looking at Chloe easier. Over the course of the week, I start watching her from the other end of the classroom, familiarising myself with her mannerisms and way of speaking.
Her body language has changed almost completely since the time we were friends. It’s more open now. She doesn’t shift away when classmates approach her, always keeping herself open. Her face always has some form of positive emotion on it, from dazzling smiles to dreaminess. She never looks bored or annoyed. She touches people around her casually, when they’re laughing together, or when a boy tries to flirt with her by being annoying. It drives home even further what I knew already: everybody loves her. She’s become extremely sociable, way more than I’ve ever been. Emulating that is going to be a challenge, but then, isn’t exactly that all I ever dreamed about?
The exact same reasons that used to make her presence so excruciating now make dreaming of being her a turmoil of butterflies and barely articulated dreams.
The weekend can’t come soon enough, and so I keep myself busy by taking notes constantly. I start a whole notebook about all the little things I notice, and I even manage to study my classwork more, in order not to be found out upon returning to school on Monday.
If it works.
I barely sleep Friday night, and have trouble keeping still throughout the day. At 10 AM, Chloe texts me, asking if I would like to come over early, to go over ‘everything’, since her parents won’t be home all weekend. Her Dad’s on a business trip, and her Mum’s off to visit family.
So I pack my stuff for the night, because even if we do swap bodies, Chloe will need something to wear for the night. And then I take the bus. Fortunately, she doesn’t live very far away from me. Even so, her part of town looks entirely different from where I grew up. The houses are much more expensive, with lush gardens, even in winter.
Chloe’s house lies at the slope of a hill, looking out over the city. It’s not huge, but definitely not small, either. The outside is a gorgeous mixture of rusty red and white, rounded off with wooden detailing at the roof. The garden is large, rising along the slope. The path to the top slopes along beautiful flowerbeds in serpentine walkways, and at the top, there is a plateau from where you can see over the house and almost the entire city, with a perfect view of the sunset. There’s also a tree there, a beech, that I taught her to climb on once.
Chloe opens the door shortly after I ring the bell. She hesitates for a moment, seeing me stand outside, and her hands twitch, as if she wanted to raise them, but then she just steps aside and welcomes me into the house.
The inside of the house is just as pretty. The warm colour of exposed woodwork and large windows complement the comfortable furniture. The lights are adjusted to the perfect sweet spot between cozy warmth and light that illuminates everything enough to work.
Then she takes me up to her room.
The first thing I notice about it when she opens the door is how different the colours look now. She used to like wild, colourful patterns on her bedding. Now, it looks like it’s straight out of a catalogue. Everything is held in cream-colored whites, muted rose, and beige tones.
The next thing I notice is the lack of chaos. There used to be books, worksheets, and clothing everywhere. Now, the only things on the floor aside from the furniture are a few potted plants. And even with them, everything looks so pristine.
Above the bed, there’s a black metal grid with fairy lights and fake ivy woven through the metal rods, and Polaroid pictures clipped to it. There’s a small, low bookshelf next to the bed, but there aren’t a lot of books on it. A sleek laptop with a flat mouse are sitting desk that is otherwise almost entirely empty, save for a cup of pens and a reading light.
“Something wrong?” she asks when I stop at the door.
“It changed,” I say slowly. Comparatively, my room has changed barely at all.
“Oh, yeah,” she says with a breathy laugh. “I did a little redecorating.” She gives a slight shrug and makes a weird throwing gesture, like it doesn’t really matter.
“Where did you put all the books?”
“Boxes in the attic.” She nods at her nightstand, where a small tablet with a matte-white screen lies. “I’ve got an e-reader now. Takes up less space. And anyway, I don’t really have the time to read as much anymore.”
I look up. “What do you do instead?”
She walks into the room, sitting stiffly on the edge of the bed.
“I meet up with my friends,” she says, then, speaking slowly, “I study for school. A lot. And then there are my extracurriculars. Student council and drama club, which Vivi roped me into. But I like it.”
I do none of those things, and it still feels like I barely have any free time. I don’t say that, though.
Instead, I ask a question that I’ve been wondering about for a few days now. “Just how good are your grades?”
It’s a simple equation. I haven’t been studying as much as I probably should. It’s not exactly that I’m behind, but I never deliberately went for top marks in anything. I just didn’t care enough, also because I had bigger worries. But if I’m supposed to become her now, I’ll have to pick things up where she left off.
She pulls a face, like she doesn’t really want to tell me. “You’re smart, Noelle, you’ll do great. If you don’t do as well for an exam or two, I’m sure we’ll be able to chalk it up to illness or something.”
I raise an eyebrow skeptically. “What’s your current average?”
She blushes. “I haven’t had a not-perfect grade in over a year.”
I blow air through my pursed lips. That’s gonna be fun, definitely. But then, that’s what I signed up for, isn’t it? She’s perfect, and perfect is what I want to be.