Being Sloane Jacobs (24 page)

She texts me back to meet her on the McGill University quad. According to Google, it’s a fifteen-minute walk, and I take my time strolling through the streets. Even though school is out for the summer, when I get to McGill, the area is crowded with people having picnics, playing Frisbee
in the fading light, and wandering along the paths and through the quad.

I spot Sloane Devon on a bench and trot over to meet her. I haven’t seen her since that day two weeks ago when we switched places. She was already wearing my clothes, but she definitely still looked like herself.

But now she looks different, like the mint-green cami and black capris she has on actually belong to her. She’s braided her long dark hair so it hangs over her left shoulder. She’s wearing my favorite black ballet flats with the white flowers embroidered on the toes. Suddenly I wish I’d attempted to pick out an actual outfit instead of throwing on a pair of cropped sweats and a
GET IN THE GOAL
tank top.

“Holy crap, you look like a hobo,” she says. I can’t tell if she’s teasing me or not. “You’re in public, for God’s sake.”

“Oh, shut up,” I say. “I’m embracing my inner jock.”

“Hey, I
never
looked like that,” she says. I see her catch sight of her reflection in the plate-glass window. “Did I?”

I notice her use of the past tense, but ignore it. “Good to see you.”

“You too,” she says. “Care to wander?”

“Yes, please,” I say. “My quads are burning from scrimmage.”

“I thought you said hockey was easy. ‘All padded up like a crash-test dummy’ were the words I think you used.” She smirks.

“I admit I
might
have been wrong,” I reply. And then, because I can’t help it: “What about you? Is morphing into an ice princess as easy as you expected?”

She just shakes her head and smiles at me. “Let’s walk,” she says.

CHAPTER 20

SLOANE DEVON

We make our way along the paths, past the windows of the McGill bookstore. They’re crammed with mannequins clad in red and white apparel: scarves, T-shirts, hoodies, sweatpants, all bearing the school’s logo and name. A headless bust in the corner sports a
MCGILL HOCKEY
T-shirt. I feel an odd sort of fluttering in my shoulders, like I’m missing something. Or someone.

“So how’s camp?” Sloane asks.

“Oh, you know. Just perfecting my double axel, working my way up to a triple,” I reply.

She actually stumbles. “You pulled off a double in two weeks?” She practically screeches at me.

I burst into laughter. “I can barely hang on to a single,” I say. “But I’m getting there. This guy named Andy’s helping me.”

“Who’s Andy?” she asks. For the next few blocks, I fill
her in on Andy and his theatrics. I worry she’s actually going to fall into the street when I tell her that he knows about our switch, and I have to swear up and down that he’s cool and won’t tell. When I tell her how he helped me dye my roommate pink, she seems slightly mollified, especially since she has heard of Ivy, the holy terror of the skate world.

“So how did the whole scout thing go?” I ask. I’ve been dreading getting the full report. If she bombed it, I really have dug my own grave with this stunt. I haven’t yet decided whether that would be a blessing or not. “I never got a recap.”

“It didn’t suck,” she says carefully. “Or more accurately,
I
didn’t suck. I mean, I don’t think I totally screwed up your future.” I know she means to be reassuring, but I feel sort of nauseated.

“Like I give a crap about my future,” I say.
When in doubt, act like it doesn’t matter
. I try to laugh, but Sloane Emily gives me the side-eye.

“I’m serious,” she says. “It turns out I’m a good team player. I’m good with assists.”

“When Coach Butler gets that report, he’ll
know
something’s up. I never share the puck.”

“People change.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“You changed,” she says, and then nudges me with a shoulder. “At least, your wardrobe did.”

“A temporary glitch, I promise you,” I say. But my
stomach knots up. When I get back to Philly, will everything just go back to the way it was? Hanging out with Dylan and his stupid friends, getting the tingles, getting benched? I think of Mom, too, and whether she’ll be the same. And if she isn’t—if she really does get sober—will she change in other ways too? Will she still come to my games and cheer me on in her Mama Jacobs T-shirt? Will we still go on crazy, impulsive adventures where we come home with a vintage sewing machine or a new dog? I don’t know what part of her is the alcohol and what part of her is, well,
her
. I don’t even know if I believe people
can
change.

Then again, it sure seems like Sloane Emily’s different. When I first met her, she was wearing something with sequins on it, I think. There was definitely pink involved. I remember that her hair was all shiny and straight and smelled like the flower arrangements at my great-aunt Eleta’s funeral.

I wonder what
that
girl would say to the girl who’s sitting across from me now. I’m pretty sure she’d lose her mind over Sloane’s still-wet-from-the-shower frizzy hair or her mismatched clothes.

We wander for a little bit longer. Sloane Emily tells me about some guy at her camp, Matt. I don’t know him, but I can certainly picture him: an oafish, rich-kid hockey dude. Sloane Emily tells me he comes from Chestnut Hill. I saw their hockey team at a tournament once. It was like an army of blond guys named Sven, all in perfectly worn-in rugby
shirts with Ray-Bans on top of their heads. He’s probably Sloane Emily’s dream guy.

Nando’s face pops into my head, but I will his image away. I don’t want to talk about him—I’m not sure what I would say.

We end up in front of a giant stone wall in the shape of a crest. It’s filled with red and white flowers to mimic the McGill shield. Sloane Emily takes a seat on the edge. I sit down next to her and pull my knees to my chest.

“Oh, I have something for you,” she says, then reaches into her bag. She pulls out a stack of envelopes, maybe four or five held together by a paper clip, and holds them out to me. I take them carefully, like they’re something poisonous that might bite.

The letters are addressed to me, care of Elite Hockey Camp. The return address is preprinted on the envelope in a soft blue ink. “Hope Springs Rehabilitation Center,” it says. There’s a little illustration of a babbling brook across the logo. Underneath the address, in black ink scrawled in familiar handwriting, is my mother’s name, Elena Jacobs. I blink at the words over and over, as if I’m looking through a viewfinder and eventually the image will change. I notice one whole seam is torn enough that I can make out a few lines written in my mother’s handwriting. I look up, frowning, at Sloane Emily.

“I didn’t open it,” she says quickly. She looks nervous but is trying for a smile. “It looked like that when it got here.”

“I don’t care,” I say, a chill creeping into my voice. I drop
the whole stack into the black leather satchel that belongs to Sloane Emily—the bag I’m carrying around like it’s mine. It probably cost more than my mother’s stint in rehab.

She’s still looking at me expectantly, as though she’s Oprah and expects me to pour my heart out to her.

“If you ever want to talk or anything …,” she says.

“I
don’t
.”

She looks down at her nails, which now look just as bad as mine. “Families suck,” she says. “But at least your family’s trying.”

“You don’t know
anything
about my family,” I say icily. She stares at me for a second, then checks her phone.

“I should probably be getting back,” she says just as coldly. “Early-morning run with the team.”

“Good idea,” I reply. The final competition is only two nights away, which means Andy is scheduling more and more extra practices.

On the walk home, my bag somehow feels heavy, as if the letters have added weight. I wrestle them out of my bag and stare at them, at the handwriting I’ve seen in countless birthday cards, permission slips, and notes in my lunch bag. Does she have an explanation? Is she sorry? Is she coming back? I want to know, but I’m afraid of what she’ll say.

She took her time sending them. I think I’ll take my time opening them. Now I just need to figure out where to stash the letters so Ivy doesn’t find them, even if she goes on a little snooping adventure.

If ever I needed a distraction, it’s now. I take a deep
breath and scroll through my call log. Just hearing Nando’s voice will make me feel better. I dial his number and my heart skips when it rings. Once, twice—then the phone clicks abruptly over to voice mail. Huh, that’s weird. I try it again, and this time it only rings once before the voice mail picks up.

Is he screening my call?

As I round the corner to BSI, I’m surprised to see his car parked in front of the main building. At first I think maybe it’s wishful thinking or some kind of hallucination, but then I spot him: leaning back on the passenger-side door, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his worn-in jeans. With boots and a flannel shirt on, staring down at the curb, he looks sort of like some kind of modern cowboy. Just the sight of him makes me warm from the inside out.

“Hey,” I say, a huge smile spreading across my face. “I was just calling you.”

Nando pushes off from the side of the car. His face is completely blank, almost hard, and there’s no trace of any of the warmth from last night. He blinks a few times, glancing down at his brown boots, then back up at me.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I know that yesterday may have—I don’t know—freaked you out or something. Maybe I shouldn’t have unloaded all my problems on you. But I figured you knew,” he says.

“What?” I ask. I’m so confused, my head feels like it’s one of those shaken-up snow globes. “Knew what?”

“That I liked you.” He shakes his head, and my heart melts a little. “And I thought maybe you liked me too.”

“I … I do,” I reply. My heart is a puddle of pudding, and yet it’s managing to pound so loudly I think it might burst from my chest.

Nando isn’t smiling. “You have a boyfriend,” he says. His mouth is set in a straight line; his brown eyes are dull.

“No, I don’t,” I say, and for a second I have the completely ludicrous fear that somehow Dylan is spreading rumors we’re still together, and that somehow Nando found out.

“That’s not what Matt O’Neill said,” he says flatly.

“Who?”

“Matt O’Neill,” he says, crossing his arms. “You don’t remember him? He came into the bar tonight. Going on and on about this amazing girl he’s dating. Her name’s Sloane, he says. Sloane Jacobs. She’s gorgeous, with dark hair. She skates. Scar on her chin. Plays a hell of a game of hockey. Sound familiar?”

I feel like I’m standing in quicksand, and I’m in danger of getting sucked down into the ground. “But I don’t—” I’m starting to feel too hot, and my stomach turns over too fast.
It’s not possible. It’s a huge city. There’s no way
. “I mean, it must be someone else.…”

“Are you kidding me, Sloane?” he bursts out. “Do you think I’m an idiot? You
knew
I liked you. You let me act like an idiot, letting me whine, and the whole time you were with this
Matt
guy.” He shakes his head. “I should never have trusted you.”

I feel like I’m going to throw up right on his boots. “Nando, it’s not like that. I
do
like you.” He doesn’t look at me, and I hear myself pleading with him. “It’s complicated.…”

He finally looks at me. His eyes are cold and steely and angry in a way I never imagined they could be. “Unless there’s another dark-haired skater with a scar on her chin and the name Sloane Jacobs, I don’t want to hear it.”

“Actually—”

“Jesus, Sloane, seriously, how stupid do you think I am?” He kicks at a small pile of gravel with the inside of his boot, and the little rocks go skittering across the pavement in all directions.

“Not stupid at all,” I reply, but my voice is so low I don’t think he hears. It doesn’t matter anyway. He’s already turned around, yanked open the car door, and practically thrown himself inside.

I want to run in front of the car, stop him from leaving, make him listen to the whole story. But I just stand where I am, feet glued to the ground, while he goes tearing out of the driveway in a spray of exhaust and gravel.

Either way, I lied to him. And how would he react if he knew I was running away from hockey? The hockey—the fact that I play, the fact that I love it—is what made him like me in the first place. He might be so mad that he tells someone about our switch. Better Nando think I’m a cheater than an imposter.

I know I have to text Sloane Emily to tell her what’s
up. She’ll need to make sure Nando didn’t say anything to Matt. But when I go to start typing, my heart is pounding and my fingers are shaking so much that my attempt at a text looks more like alphabet soup than a coherent thought. I erase the message and try again.

Matt met someone I know. Someone I like. We’re screwed.

CHAPTER 21

SLOANE EMILY

Sloane Devon’s text freaked me out so much I thought I was going to hurl. I called her back ASAP for more details, and even though she wouldn’t tell me much about Mystery Man, she sounded shaky enough that I knew it was a big deal.

I had to stop myself from pounding on his door first thing this morning. I didn’t want to arouse any kind of suspicion if he doesn’t actually know anything about the switch. Instead, I’d calmly showered and made my way to breakfast like it was any other day.

I manage to choke down one bite of toast, which seems to lodge itself in my throat as soon as I spot Matt. He takes the seat across from me and begins assembling a breakfast sandwich, piling eggs, bacon, and home fries between two toaster waffles. He uses a layer of syrup as some sort of epoxy to hold the whole mess together, and then takes a
bite so large it cracks into the fourth row of waffle squares. Three weeks ago, watching the boy I’m kissing sit across a table and eat something like that would have made my stomach turn. But a lot has changed since I became Sloane Devon three weeks ago.