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She sighed. "Your mother insisted on driving me to school, first day and all. She was really flattered when I asked to borrow her dress." She spun around once so I could admire it. "I thought you should wear something special, start the year off right. Bet your bottom dollar--after today, people are going to know who Claire Martin is!" She glanced back at the Dumpsters. "I'm actually having a pretty nice time. I've met some swell kids."

"You could have pretended to be sick."

"I don't like to lie. Besides, I was afraid of saying too much, of getting in trouble. I don't think we said ten words to each other all morning."

"Where's Larissa?"

"She's you know--around." She waved her hand in the air. "That nice girl Jessamine gave me the rest of her ciggies," she said as she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her bulky handbag, which I recognized as my mother's. "I promised myself I'd stop after just one, but smoking is so much better with real cigarettes--not to mention real lungs."

"Hey!" I grabbed the pack. "Those are
my
lungs!"

"You're right, sweetie." She batted her eyelashes in shame. "I shouldn't get you started on these nasty things. I just figured that a few cigarettes wouldn't make any"--she paused to cough--"difference."

"Time trials are tomorrow!" I tried to squish the cigarette pack in my hand and failed. Even Larissa's fingers were weak.

Evelyn reached into her purse--my mother's purse--and pulled out a compact. "Swim team, you mean? Well, let's hope you

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switch back tonight, because I've never been a big fan of the water." Evelyn had never shown much interest in my swimming, always encouraging me to try something more feminine, like figure skating or baton twirling. Yeah, like that was going to happen.

"Why didn't I switch back last night?" I asked. "I was asleep by midnight. And by the way, no one under sixty uses powder."

She flipped open the compact and patted her cheeks, chin, and nose. My nose.

"Larissa woke up around eleven and couldn't get back to sleep," Evelyn told me. "So we played Uno for probably an hour, though I'll tell you, it felt more like ten. She had to move all of the cards for the two of us, of course, which took all of the fun out of it. Assuming there was any fun in the first place."

"Uno?"

"She used to play it with her father. You know about her father?"

"Not much. Just that her parents are divorced and he doesn't get to see her much." I reached out and brushed some loose powder off of her cheek. I had to say, the powder looked better than I would have expected.

She dropped the compact in her bag and pulled out a lipstick. "Her father used to have a drinking problem. He's cleaned up his act--hasn't touched the stuff in years--but the courts are still making it really hard for him and Larissa to see each other." She opened the lipstick, made an O with her mouth, and smeared it more or less within the lines. "Her mother's boyfriend is a high-powered lawyer, which doesn't help. They're on a cruise in the Greek islands right now."

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The lipstick was red--far too bright for my skin tone.

"I would never wear red lipstick!" I said. "Or that dress. You're making me look like a forty-year-old woman."

She blotted the lipstick with a tissue and blinked sadly. "I never got to be forty. I think I would have enjoyed it."

"Evelyn, this isn't about you!"

She raised her eyebrows. "I'm just trying to help you put your best face forward."

The final bell rang. We had to hurry. "What happened after Uno?"

"Claire--Larissa--that girl--she whined for a bit about her ex-boyfriend. He's way too old for her--nineteen or twenty, I wasn't really paying attention at that point--and he's moved on to someone else, but she still loves him, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, her mother is on a mission to keep her away from him. And from her father too. Maybe her father even more. Larissa wanted to stay with him this week, but her mother will do anything to keep them apart. That's why Larissa's here." She shrugged as if that were the end of the story, glossing over the little detail of how she, Evelyn, ended up in my body today.

"And?"

She squinted up at the clouds as if watching a bird fly away. "She fell asleep, finally. Her connection to your body started to loosen, until I could see her spirit drifting at the edges, like little puffs of smoke. The sooner she vacated the premises, the better, I figured, so when you didn't show up, I cuddled next to your body and slipped in. Larissa never felt a thing."

"And?"

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She looked at me briefly and then at the ground. "I called Roger."

"Danish Roger?"

"He's not Danish, he's American. He just lives in Denmark. A lonely country, Denmark."

"How long did you and Roger talk?"

"An hour? Three? You might want to buy some more minutes for your cell phone."

"I didn't have enough minutes for a three-hour conversation to Denmark."

"True. You had enough for about twenty minutes. You shouldn't let your balance run so low. What would you do in an emergency? Anyway, Roger called me back on the home phone. We talked until the sun came up."

"You gave Roger our home phone number?" I took a deep breath and then another. I counted to ten and then I counted to twenty. And still I wanted to wring Evelyn's neck--except, of course, I'd be wringing my own neck, which would pretty much defeat the purpose.

"What time did you wake up?" she asked.

Prescott had come in shortly after sunrise. If she was being honest about when she went to sleep--a big if--then our sleep overlapped at least briefly.

"So we had at least twenty minutes," she said, as if that absolved her of any guilt. "Maybe even a half hour."

"Why didn't we switch, then?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it took too much energy getting Larissa out of your body. Maybe a body can only take so

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many electrical changes at once. Or maybe it just wasn't long enough," she conceded. "I'll go to bed early tonight--pinky promise." She held up her pinky. "Everything will be fine. For now, let's just enjoy the moment."

She reached for her cigarettes. I held them behind my back.

I didn't feel as calm about the situation as she seemed to be. Evelyn had always said a switch was quick and painless, like a sneeze. She always insisted that the spirit is drawn back to its own body like iron filings to a magnet. Suddenly I knew there was something she wasn't telling me.

"What happened to you?" I asked her.

"When? Today?"

"No, years ago. When you went to ... that place." Evelyn didn't like me to use the word
institution.
In fact, she didn't like to talk about "that episode," as she called it, at all, and always changed the subject when I brought it up.

"Or ... weren't you the one there?" I asked.

Her mouth drooped. "It was me. Unfortunately."

"But what about before that? What happened to get you in there?"

She held up a hand and said what she'd always said: "You don't need to know about that."

"But maybe I do." This was no time to be polite or sensitive. I had to know the truth about switching. "You've always made it sound like it's easy to switch in and out of a body, that I'd never get stuck, but--"

"Larissa, is that you? I thought you were leaving today." I turned around and there was Nate, a blue backpack slung over his

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shoulder. He looked at the package in my fist. "You smoke?"

"No! Of course not! They're ... hers." I thrust the cigarettes at Evelyn. A smile twitched at her red lips. Then I remembered that Evelyn was me, and I wouldn't want Nate thinking I'd acquired such a vile habit. "I mean, we found them on the ground. We were just about to throw them away."

Evelyn took the pack and dropped it into her pocketbook, murmuring, "I'll stick them in the trash on my way out."

"Plans changed," I told Nate. "I'm here until tomorrow." Suddenly, that didn't sound so bad.

We stood there smiling at each other until Nate remembered his manners. He turned to my grandmother. "Hi, I'm--Claire?" Nate said, blinking. "I didn't recognize you at first."

Evelyn tilted her head to one side and smiled broadly. The red lipstick made my teeth look yellow. "I'm trying out a new look," she said. "What do you think?"

I cringed inside. I think I cringed outside too. I was actually embarrassed to be seen with myself. But Nate just grinned. "I think your makeup is going to get ruined in the pool. You're coming to practice, aren't you?"

"What practice?" I asked in Larissa's unpretty voice. "Trials aren't until tomorrow." Nate looked at me, confused. "I mean, that's what Claire told me, anyway," I added lamely.

Nate looked back and forth, uncertain which of us to address. "The coach called everyone last night. Said the pool would be open today."

"Oh, right. There was something on the machine," Evelyn said absently.

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"You should go," I told her, even though she was better dressed for a funeral than swim practice.

"I don't really like the--" She stopped herself before she could say "water." She looked at Nate and then at me--and back at Nate. "I don't really like the first day of school. I think I'll just go home and lie down."

"Okay," Nate said, shrugging. "See you tomorrow."

As Evelyn walked away, I stared at him, stunned. Could Nate care so little about me that he wouldn't care whether or not I showed up for practice?

Suddenly, I pictured myself--not the way Evelyn had dressed me, in that freakish 1950s PTA style, but the way I usually look, in sweatpants or boys' jeans, with my big shoulders and boyish hips. It's not like I was hideous or anything, but how could I have imagined that someone like Nate Jameson could ever like me as more than a friend?

Someone came up behind me. "Hey, Nate, you going to practice?"

Beanie. She was eating a Snickers bar and carrying her Hawaiian-print beach bag, a striped towel sticking out of the top. Oh, Beanie. Sea-guard camp was one thing. Didn't she know that sports gear belongs in a duffel bag?

"I'll be there," Nate told Beanie. "You going?"

"Yeah, I figure I should at least check it out to see if I should bother with the trials tomorrow." She shifted the bag to her other shoulder and then turned her blue-eyed gaze to me. "Hi." She smiled.

If I didn't know her so well, I'd think she was being genuinely

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friendly, but I could see the hardness in her eyes, the hint of disapproval. You'd think girls could just get over the whole competition thing. It wasn't my fault that I was so perfect. I mean, that Larissa was.

"Hey," I said. It was so weird. On the one hand, I wanted to ask about her day: who was in her classes, if her teachers were okay. But on the other hand I felt like saying, "You have chocolate on your front teeth." And then I wanted her to go away.

"It's cool you're going out for swim team," Nate said to Beanie. "You've got a rockin' backstroke."

She blushed. "Oh, it's not that good."

Beanie was doing that thing she did--putting herself down so people would tell her that she was okay, she was worthy. If there's one thing that drives me crazy about her, this is it. I rolled my eyes. I didn't mean to--it just happened.

She saw it. The smile disappeared, and her face flushed deeper.

"Yeah, Beanie---it is too that good," Nate said.

I burned with shame. "Yeah, it's great," I added lamely, though of course Larissa had never seen her swim.

She took a step backward. "Okay. I'll see you at the pool, then." She gave Nate a final polite, Snickers-glazed smile. I couldn't let her walk around looking like that.

"Just to let you know?" I said.

Her smile disappeared.

"Your teeth." I made a little toothbrushing motion with my index finger. "They've got chocolate on them."

She narrowed her eyes and gave me a closed-mouth smile.

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Actually, it was more like a sneer. She sucked on her teeth for a moment and mumbled, '"Bye, Nate," before walking away.

Around us, kids streamed past. More than a couple did a double take when they saw us. I tried to forget about Beanie, which should have been harder than it was.

"She's such a nice girl," Nate said. Then, "I could skip practice."

I shook my head. "No, it's important. You've got the trials tomorrow, not that you have anything to worry about, but still-- you want to clock good times. We can meet up later, when you get out."

He ran a finger along my cheek. "It means so much to me that you would say that--that you would understand how important swimming is to me."

"I understand more than you can imagine."

I rode the bike home--to my real home, that is. Evelyn wasn't there. I'd seen her leaving school, packed into a decrepit car that spewed black smoke.
She'd better wear a seat belt,
I thought. I
don't want my body ending up in the emergency room.

I let myself in the back and went up to check my computer: no messages. I was both relieved and hurt. Remembering Beanie's injured look, I felt a wave of guilt.

I typed a quick note: