Chloe
I’m back in the clearing. But this time, I’m not the one holding the old booklet and reading out the text. Instead, I stand at the centre of the circle of candles, feeling warmth seep into my chest.
Looking up, I see a girl standing there, staring at the booklet in her hand with iron focus as she reads the foreign words. She looks unreal, her hair billowing, as she fiercely defies the wind and the weather, pushing through the incantation with determination.
I realise a little too late that the girl is supposed to be me. And then I wake up.
It’s a comfortable feeling, lying in my bed. The blanket is heavy against me, and perfectly warm where I have it pulled all the way up to my cheek. It’s the kind of morning where you just want to nuzzle deeper into the pillow, pull the blanket more tightly around you and enjoy the sleepy comfort of your bed.
But then I hear the shaky breathing of a person next to me.
Noelle.
I shift from my side onto my back and turn my head, and even before I’m fully turned, even before I have opened my eyes, I feel the changes in my own body. Or, well, I suppose not really my own body.
The first thing I realize is that my chest is flat. Not that I ever had a lot there, but the difference is definitely apparent. My hair is short, and there’s a lump of… something in between my legs as I move them to turn myself.
I push the thoughts about my current body to the side and open my eyes. This isn’t about me. I can figure it out later. And anyway, it’s not like there’s much to figure out. The spell has obviously succeeded, whether going to sleep still wearing the linen clothes from the ritual helped or not, and Noelle is now in my body.
But then why is she crying?
She’s sitting at the edge of the bed, her back turned toward me. It feels weird, seeing ‘myself’ from the back like this. My body seems so delicate, hunched over like this, its long blonde hair still a little messy from sleep.
I sit up as well. I’m tempted to scoot over and touch her, but make myself still instead.
“Are you alright?” I ask, my voice still hoarse from sleep. It sounds so deep. I feel it vibrate all the way through my throat and down into my chest.
She sniffles and turns. My gaze is met with teary eyes and a mouth pulled into a kind of sobbing smile that could be both crying and laughing. But then she gives a sob and throws herself over the bed and against me, hugging me tightly.
“Thank you,” she whispers breathlessly into my ear as her arms hold me with all her strength. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
A feeling of fuzzy warmth spreads through my chest, not unlike the feeling of the magic last night, and I put my arms around her in turn. This is what I’ve been living for. This makes all the doubts, all the late nights, all the leaps of faith, all the hours of work worth it.
I did it.
***
The air is warm and smells of candle wax, tomato sauce, and laurel leaves when I open the door to Noelle’s house. The light in the hallway is off, but yellow light falls in from the living room. I hear the exhaust hood from the kitchen a few rooms over, and the TV from the living room.
Immediately, I’m catapulted back in time to when my hands and smiles were still smaller. When Noelle would take me home with her, and at first I assumed it was just out of pity. She was friends with everybody, and still she chose me. It never made sense to me, I wasn’t anybody special, after all, until I realised that’s just the kind of person she is. Was. I just got lucky.
It might not have meant much to her, but it was everything to me.
I remember the cold of winter nights biting my skin as the two of us hurried along streets that seemed so much bigger then. Piling through the door to be greeted with warm welcomes from her Mum, cups of hot cocoa that would leave chocolate smiles on our upper lips, the taste thick with sugar and rounded off by cinnamon.
It was a safe haven, this place. A temporary retreat from the outside world where I wouldn’t have to worry as much about homework and where there was no fear of being judged for the way I would talk or how much I read.
I remember all the late nights we spent in front of the TV, or reading together in her room. Even when we did stuff for school together, it was always so different from when I did it on my own. Maybe because she needed my help with her schoolwork, at least, and not the other way around. It made me feel like I was giving for a change. Made it easier.
Now I shut the door behind me and untie my shoelaces before stepping out of my shoes, leaving them neatly in the shoe rack. I specifically asked about this, and Noelle said this would be the safest way to do it.
We spent the entire day together until now. The moment she calmed down after realising the ritual had worked, we started our ‘identity notebooks,’ as I call them; where we summarise all the relevant details about ourselves that we need to know to make it through our daily lives. Like passwords and the names of friends, where we could find certain things in our rooms, and how to interact with our parents.
Obviously, I’m going to spend a substantial amount of time feeding all of this into a comprehensive database, a wiki of sorts, tomorrow. But today it was all I could do to write it all down.
I’m tired now. My eyes have trouble focusing, and my head feels heavy. It’s a nice kind of exhaustion though, the kind that makes you look forward to going to sleep early.
Slowly, I walk into the living room. Jasper, Noelle’s little brother, is sitting on the couch in front of the TV with some kids’ show running. I don’t know it, but then how would I? I never watched TV as a child until I met Noelle, and then we watched mostly movies, not shows. And we were too old for these kinds of shows, anyway.
Jas jumps and turns around on the sofa until he’s leaning against the backrest, his arms propped on top of it, to look at me.
“Hiiii,” he says, grinning slyly. “How was your date?”
I stop dead in my tracks as I stare at him, my brain trying and failing to connect two dots as butterflies swarm in my stomach. Did Noelle say that was what we were doing? Going on a date together?
“Date?” I manage to say finally, after what seems like an eternity.
Jas tilts his head, looking at me with big innocent eyes. “You said you were meeting a girl, weren’t you?”
“Oh. Yeah..” Yeah, oh. I was meeting a girl. “But that wasn’t a date. She’s just a friend.” I realise that he must not remember me, even though Noelle and I watched him from time to time when he was still a toddler.
“Uh huh,” he says sceptically. But then he just turns back around to face the screen.
Amélie, Noelle’s mother, is standing in the kitchen when I enter, fussing over a salad while also keeping a firm eye on the several pots on the stove.
She’s a tall woman with dark curls spilling out from where she pulled it back into a ponytail. She’s not as pale as Noelle and her skin looks much more weathered, but her eyes are the very same, piercing blue eyes.
She looks up when I come in, and I notice that her skin has more wrinkles now. Crow’s feet are beginning to appear around her eyes. She must be what, now? Mid-forty? She looks like thirty-five at most.
“Ah, there you are, sweetie,” she says, offering a warm smile. “Your timing is perfect, actually. I was just finishing this salad, and then we’re going to have goulash.”
I remember that dish. Amélie made it a few times for me when I came over. I absolutely relished the taste every single time. Yet another upside to this arrangement, huh? Having a person who lovingly cooks dinner for me? Is Noelle sure she’s getting the better of me with this trade?
“That’s great,” I say, noticing only as I speak that my voice is too soft for Noelle’s speech. My lips tighten briefly, but I force them slack. I trained this, I’m supposed to be better at this.
But Amélie doesn’t seem to pick up on it. “How was it at Chloe’s?” she asks, turning back to mixing a salad dressing.
“It was nice,” I say tentatively, leaning against the counter by the door. I know I should probably avoid talking too much to the only people who can realistically notice something strange in my behaviour, but I can’t make myself. I’ve always loved being around this house and Amélie. There’s just something about the way she looked at me back then, and I notice that she just looked at me much the same way. There’s a kindness in her eyes that makes my heart melt.
“How’s she doing?”
I swallow. “She’s…” doing much better now. “Great.” Feeling guilty at my short, seemingly unenthusiastic replies, I add, “Still studying for school all the time.”
Amélie gives a soft laugh. “Some things will never change, eh?” She shrugs. “It always left me in awe at what that girl was able to do at her age.”
She pauses and turns, to give me a long, plaintive look. “Sooo, are you two hanging out again?” she asks then, slowly, as if to make sure she says the right words.
I give a slight nod as the butterflies stir. “Yeah, I think so.” It’s kind of part of the deal, isn’t it? At least during the first few months we won’t have a choice but to hang out a lot to talk and coordinate each other’s attempts at becoming the other. I hope we’ll become friends again because of that. I mean, we were such good friends before, so if this fixes Noelle’s problems with me, shouldn’t we be good friends again?
“That’s nice,” Amélie says, before giving me a meaningful look. “I hope you’re going to bring her over again sometime.”
“Why?” I blurt before I can think better of it.
She shrugs. “Because I miss her, you know? She was such a lovely girl to have around.”
Warmth floods my chest, even as heat rises to my cheeks.
Amélie acts like she doesn’t see it. “I always felt like you two complemented each other really nicely. Honestly broke my heart when you stopped talking.”
Ha. If only she knew the context of that.
“Please tell her that she’s always welcome for dinner,” she says lightly. “I mean, if you want her over, that is.”
“No, of course,” I say. “I’ll tell her.”
***
That night, when I lie in bed, surrounded by Noelle’s smell that is so familiar and yet so strangely foreign from the perspective of this body, my thoughts keep circling.
I keep wondering what Noelle is doing right now. I know I could just ask her, she’s only a phone call or text away, but I don’t want to seem overbearing. And anyway, it’s not like she could’ve faced any trouble so far in her evening; my parents, her parents, still aren’t home. They’re only coming back tomorrow. So what is she doing right now? Staring at the ceiling, dreaming of all the possibilities her new life holds? Is she thinking of me?
Does her new life include me?
Butterflies swarm like autumn leaves in the wind, and I turn over onto my side. It feels weird to dream of a relationship with her now. Not just because she wears the face I used to see in the mirror, but because of what I did for her. She seems to be of the opinion that I didn’t owe this to her, which, that’s a point of contention, but the point still stands. Does she feel indebted to me now? Would that mean that she would feel pressure to say yes if I asked her out on a date?
There’s a tug at the bottom of my stomach.
I never did this so she would like me, I tell myself. I did it to help! This isn’t a selfish act to guilt-trip her into loving me! I just want her to be happy!
But I’m not sure I believe it myself.