Switched (2 page)

True to his word, Finn wasn’t creepy the rest of the day. Every time I saw him, he was doing something inoffensive that didn’t involve looking at me. I still got that feeling that he watched me when I had my back to him, but as it turned out, I couldn’t seem to do much about feelings.

When the final bell rang at three o’clock, I tried to be the first one out. My older brother Matt picked me up from school, at least until he found a job, and I didn’t want to keep him waiting. Besides that, I didn’t want to deal with anymore contact with Finn Holmes.

I walked quickly over to the parking lot at the edge of the school lawn. Scanning quickly for Matt’s Prius, I absently started to chew my thumbnail. I had this weird feeling, almost like a shiver running down my back. I turned around, half-expecting to see Finn staring at me, but there was nothing.

I tried to shake it off, but my heart raced faster. This felt like something more sinister than a boy from school. I was still staring off, trying to figure out what had me freaked out, when a loud honk startled me, making me jump. Matt sat a few cars down, looking at me over the top of his sunglasses.

“Sorry,” I opened the car door and hopped in, but he looked at me for a moment. “What?”

“You looked nervous. Did something happen?” Matt asked, and I sighed. He took his whole big brother thing way too seriously.

“No, nothing happened. School sucks,” I brushed him off. “Let’s go home.”

“Seatbelt,” Matt commanded, and I did as I was told.

Matt had always been quiet and reserved, thinking everything over carefully before making a decision. He was a stark contrast to me in every way, except that we were both relatively short. I was small with a decidedly pretty, feminine face. My brown hair was an untamed mess of curls that I kept up in loose buns. 

He kept his sandy blond hair trim and neat, and his eyes were the same shade of blue as our mother’s. Matt wasn’t overtly muscular, but he worked out a lot. He had a sense of duty, like he had to make sure he was strong enough to defend us against anything.

“How is school going?” Matt asked.

“Great. Fantastic. Amazing.”

“Are you even going to graduate this year?” Matt had long since stopped judging my school record. A large part of him didn’t even care if I graduated high school.

“Who knows?” I shrugged.

Everywhere I went, kids never seemed to like me. Even before I said or did anything. I felt like I had something wrong with me, and everyone knew it. I tried getting along with the other kids, but I’d only take getting pushed for so long before I pushed back. Principals and deans were quick to expel me, but I think they sensed the same things the kids did.

I just didn’t belong.

“Just to warn you, Maggie’s taking it seriously,” Matt said. “She’s set on you graduating this year, from this school.”

“Delightful,” I sighed. Matt could care less about my schooling, but my aunt Maggie was a different story. And since she was my legal guardian, her opinion mattered more. “What’s her plan?”

“Maggie’s thinking bedtimes,” Matt informed me with a smirk. As if sending me to bed early would somehow prevent me from getting in a fight.

“I’m almost eighteen!” I groaned. “What is she thinking?”

“You’ve got four more months until you’re eighteen,” Matt corrected me sharply, and his hand tightened on the steering wheel. He suffered from serious delusions that I was going to run away as soon as I turned eighteen, and nothing I could say would convince him otherwise.

“Yeah, whatever,” I waved it off. “Did you tell her she’s insane?”

“I figured she’d hear it enough from you,” Matt grinned at me.

“So did you find a job?” I asked tentatively, and he shook his head.

He’d just finished an internship over the summer, working with a great architecture firm. He’d said it didn’t bother him, moving to a town without much call for a promising young architect, but I couldn’t help but feel guilty about it.

“This is a pretty town,” I said, looking out the window.

We approached our new house, buried on an average suburban street amongst a slew of maples and elms. It actually seemed like a boring, small town, but I’d promised I’d make the best of it. I really wanted to. I don’t think I could handle disappointing Matt anymore. 

“So you’re really gonna try here?” Matt asked, looking over at me. We had pulled up in the driveway next to the butter colored Victorian that Maggie had bought last month.

“I already am,” I insisted with a smile. “I’ve been talking to this Finn kid.” Sure, I’d talked to him only once, and I wouldn’t even remotely count him as a friend, but I had to tell Matt something.

“Look at you. Making your very first friend.” Matt shut off the car and looked at me with veiled amusement.

“Yeah, well, how many friends do you have?” I countered, and he just shook his head and got out of the car, so I quickly followed him. “That’s what I thought.”

“I’ve had friends before. Gone to parties. Kissed a girl. The whole nine yards,” Matt said as he went through the side door into the house.

“So you say.” I kicked off my shoes as soon as we walked in the kitchen, which was still in various stages of unpacking. After as many times as we’d moved, everyone had gotten tired of the whole process, so we tended to live mostly out of boxes. “I’ve only seen one of these alleged girls.”

“Yeah, cause when I brought her home, you set her dress on fire! While she was wearing it!” Matt pulled off his sunglasses and looked at me severely.

“Oh come on! That was an accident and you know it!”

“So you say.” Matt opened the fridge.

“Anything good in there?” I asked and hopped onto the kitchen island. “I’m famished.”

“Probably nothing you’d like.” Matt started sifting through the contents of the fridge, but he was right.

I was a notoriously picky eater. While I had never purposely sought out the life of a vegan, I seemed to hate most things that either had meat in them or man-made synthetics. It was odd and incredibly irritating for the people who tried to feed me.

Maggie appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, flecks of paint stuck in her blond curls. Layers of multi-colored paint covered her ratty overalls, proof of all the rooms she had redecorated over the years. She had her hands on her hips, so Matt shut the fridge door to talk to her.

“I thought I told you to tell me when you got home,” Maggie looked at him. 

“We’re home?” Matt offered.

“I can see that.” Maggie rolled her eyes, and then turned her attention to me. “How was school?”

“Good,” I said. “I’m trying harder.”

“We’ve heard that before.” Maggie gave me a weary look.

I hated it when she gave me that look. I hated knowing that I made her feel that way, that I had disappointed her that much. She did so much for me, and the only thing she asked of me was that I at least
try
at school. I had to make it work this time.

“Well, yeah… but...” I looked to Matt for help. “I mean, I actually promised Matt this time. And I’m making a friend.” 

“She’s talking to some guy named Finn,” Matt corroborated my story.

“Like a
guy
guy?” Maggie smiled too broadly for my liking.

The idea of Finn being a romantic prospect hadn’t crossed Matt’s mind before, and he suddenly tensed up, looking over at me with a new scrutiny. Fortunately for him, that idea hadn’t crossed my mind either.

“No, nothing like that,” I shook my head. “He’s just a guy, I guess. I don’t know. He seems nice enough.”

“Nice?” Maggie gushed. “That’s a start! And much better than that anarchist with the tattoo on his face.”

“We weren’t friends,” I corrected her. “I just stole his motorcycle. While he happened to be on it.”

Nobody had ever really believed that story, but it was true, and it was how I figured out how I could get people to do things just by thinking it. I had just been thinking that I really wanted his bike, and then I was looking at him and he was listening to me, even though I hadn’t said anything. Then I was driving his motorcycle.

“So this really is gonna be a new start for us?” Maggie couldn’t hold back her excitement any longer. Her blue eyes had started to well with happy tears. “Wendy, this is just so wonderful! We can really make a home here!”

I wasn’t nearly as excited about it as she was, but I couldn’t help but hope she was right. It would be nice to feel like I was home somewhere.

2. “If You Leave”

Our new house had also supplied us with a large vegetable garden, which thrilled Maggie endlessly. Matt and I were much less thrilled. While I loved the outdoors, I’d never been a big fan of manual labor.

Autumn was settling in, and Maggie insisted that we had to clear the garden of its dying vegetation to prepare it for planting in the spring. She used words like “rototiller” and “mulch,” and I hoped Matt would deal with them. When it came to work, I usually just handed Matt the necessary tools and kept him company.

“So when are you hauling out the rototiller?” I asked, watching as Matt tore up dead vines. I’m not sure what it used to be, but it reminded me of grapevines. While Matt pulled things up, my job was to hold the wheelbarrow so he could throw them in.

“We don’t have a rototiller.” He gave me a look as he tossed the dead plants into the wheelbarrow. “You know, you could be helping me with this. You don’t need to physically hold that at all times.”

“I take my job very seriously, so I think it’d be better if I did,” I said, and he rolled his eyes.

Matt continued grumbling, but I tuned him out. A warm fall breeze blew over us, and I closed my eyes, breathing it in. It smelled wonderfully sweet, like fresh cut corn and grass and wet leaves. A nearby wind chime tinkled lightly, and I was dreading winter would come and take this all away.

I’d been lost in the moment, enjoying the perfection, but something snapped me out of it. It was hard to describe exactly what it was, but the hair on the back of my neck stood up. The air suddenly felt chillier, and I knew somebody was watching us.

 I looked around, trying to see who it was, and this weird fear ran over me. We had a privacy fence on the back of the yard, and a thick row of hedges blocking our house on either side. I scanned both of them, searching for any signs of crouching figures or spying eyes. I didn’t see anything, but the feeling didn’t go away.

“If you’re gonna be out here, you should at least wear shoes,” Matt said, pulling me from my thoughts. He stood up, stretching his back, and looked at me. “Wendy?”

“I’m fine,” I answered absently.

I thought I saw movement around the side of the house, so I went over there. Matt called my name, but I ignored him. When I rounded the house, I stopped short. Finn Holmes stood on the sidewalk, but oddly enough, he wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at something down the street, something out of my sight.

As strange as it sounds, as soon I saw him, the anxiety I’d felt started to subside. My first thought should’ve been that it was him, since he was the one that always stared at me in such a creepy fashion, but it wasn’t.

Whatever I’d felt in the backyard, that wasn’t him. When he stared, he made me self-conscious. But this... this made my skin crawl.

After a second, Finn turned to look back at me. His dark eyes rested on me a moment, his face expressionless as always. Then, without saying a word, he turned and walked off in the direction he’d been staring.

“Wendy, what’s going on?” Matt asked, coming up behind me.

“I thought I saw something,” I shook my head.

“Yeah?” He looked at me hard, concern etched in his eyes. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine,” I forced a smile at him and turned to the backyard. “Come on. We’ve got a lot of work to do if I’m gonna make it to that dance.”

“You’re still on that kick?” Matt grimaced.

Telling Maggie about the dance may have been the worst idea I’ve ever had, and my life is made up almost entirely of bad ideas. I hadn’t wanted to go, but as soon as she’d heard about it, she decided it would be the most fantastic thing ever. I’d never gone to a dance before, and she was so excited about it, I let her have this small victory.

With the dance at seven, she figured she had enough time to finish the coat of paint in the bathroom. Matt started to voice his complaints, but Maggie shut him down. To keep him from getting in her way, she commanded him to finish the yard work. He complied only because he knew that there was no stopping Maggie anymore.

Despite Matt’s attempts to slow us down, we finished the garden in record time, and I went inside to get ready. Maggie sat on the bed and watched me as I rummaged through my closet, offering suggestions and comments on everything. This included an endless stream of questions on Finn, and Matt would grunt or scoff every now and then at my answers, so I knew he was listening nearby.

Once I had decided on a simple blue dress that Maggie insisted looked amazing on me, I let her do my hair. My hair refused to listen to anything I tried to do it, and while it wasn’t exactly obedient for Maggie, she outwitted it. She left some of it down, so the curls would frame my face, and pulled the rest of it back.

When Matt saw me, he looked really pissed off and a little awed, so I knew that I must look pretty awesome.

Maggie gave me a ride to the dance, because we both weren’t convinced that Matt would let me out of the car. He kept insisting on a nine o’clock curfew, even though the dance went until ten, even as Maggie and I walked out the door. I thought I’d be back well before that, but Maggie told me to take all the time I wanted.

My only experience with dances was what I had seen on TV, but it really wasn’t that far off. The theme appeared to be “Crepe Paper in the Gymnasium,” and they had mastered it perfectly.

The school colors were white and navy blue, so white and navy blue streamers covered everything, along with matching balloons. For romantic lighting, they had strung everything with white Christmas lights.

Refreshments covered a table on the side, and the band playing on the makeshift stage under the basketball hoop wasn’t that bad. Their set list appeared to include only songs from the films of John Hughes, and I came in the middle of a “Weird Science” cover.