Switched
Authors: Jessica Wollman
CONTENTS
For my parents
Many many thanks to Wendy Loggia,
Pamela Bobowicz, Kendra Marcus,
Martha Jackson, Elizabeth Wollman,
Caroline Wallace, Martha Atwater,
Samantha Lee, Tiffany Aguilar, Mark Twain
and, above all, Daniel Ehrenhaft.
Prologue
On a hot summer night in late July, a daughter was born to a poor family. The mother named her Laura and cradled the baby in tired arms. The father did not want the child and spent most of the evening in a local bar.
On that same night, in the very same town, another daughter was born to a rich couple.
They named the infant Willa and wrapped her in white cashmere. Nurses fussed and fawned over the baby, while her parents planned her future. It would be glorious.
The two girls grew up. Side by side on life’s timeline, they learned to crawl, walk and talk within hours of each other. And every year they celebrated their births on the very same day and in the very same town.
But although they were separated by only a few miles, the difference in their stations kept them apart. And so it passed that neither girl knew that the other existed.
1
Mr. Clean cleans your whole house and everything in it.
—Mr. Clean Slogan
“Guess what happened this morning?”
Laura shook her head as her mother steered their battered station wagon through the posh streets of Darien, Connecticut. “I have no idea.”
“When I woke up there were two crows on my windowsill.” Laura’s mother’s voice practically fizzed with excitement. “They were just sitting there, staring at me. You know what that means, don’t you?”
“We need to buy a bird feeder?”
Laura watched as her mother stuck her arm out the window to signal for a left turn. She tried to think of a time when the blinkers had worked properly, but she couldn’t remember that far back.
“No, no . . . it’s a sign!” her mother insisted, pulling her hand back inside and rolling up the window. “It means tonight’s the night. It makes sense, too. The jackpot’s up to twenty-four million. Can you imagine? Twenty-four
million
! Remember, sweetie, you’ve got to play to win. Now we just have to choose our numbers, then after work I’ll stop. . . .”
Laura shifted in her seat. How did her mom manage to be so upbeat? She stole a glance at her mother’s hands. After years of cleaning and scrubbing, they were every bit as coarse and chapped as her own. But while Laura felt self-conscious about her perpetually chipped nails and red fingers, her mother didn’t even seem to notice.
Laura glanced back at the familiar pile of cleaning supplies loaded into the backseat. She knew every product—their ingredients, slogans and effects—by heart. They were practically an extra appendage at this point.
How am I going to survive a full year of scrubbing toilets for the rich and not-so-famous?
she wondered.
Laura Melon had grown up cleaning houses. Raised by a single mother, she’d been working for her family business—Darien Full Service Home Maintenance—since preschool. She didn’t really have a say in the matter. Laura and her mom were the company’s only employees.
Most kids dragged brooms and mops around the house, pretending to help their mothers. But Laura actually
did
help. She’d accompanied her mother on every job, helping her polish and clean the homes of their wealthy clients. By the time she was four, Laura knew how to get vegetable oil stains out of a tablecloth (don’t rub, just sprinkle the spot lightly with baby powder, then launder). And when she was five, she’d stopped addressing her Christmas cards to Santa and switched to Mr. Clean.
The older Laura got, the more she cleaned. She cleaned after school, on weekends, during the holidays and over summer vacations. And somewhere along the line, she’d made an important discovery. Monumental, in fact.
She hated cleaning.
She hated the way ammonia made her eyes water. Hated how the work was so mechanical and mindless; she could clean an entire house without ever really turning her brain on. Hated having to stick her hands into other people’s lives—touching their dirty clothing and half-eaten food. And most of all she hated the fact that, once she stepped inside a mansion, she instantly became invisible to its residents.
Laura glanced out the window. The homes were getting larger now, the front lawns more expansive, the grass rich and velvety.
The farther we drive from our apartment, the nicer the neighborhoods get.
Laura pictured the musty two-bedroom apartment she shared with her mother, on the outskirts of a town famous for its estates. Their place was boiling in the summer and freezing in the winter. And no matter how hard they cleaned, it always looked dusty.
Laura wanted out. She had to leave. Because if she was miserable cleaning now, at sixteen, she couldn’t imagine what life would be like at twenty-seven. Or thirty-seven. She had a plan, too. It was brilliantly simple. So simple, in fact, that the entire plan could be summed up in just two syllables:
college.
If she had a degree, she’d be able to get a better job—something that didn’t involve a scrub brush and a bottle of Fantastik. She’d probably even be able to help her mom out.
Yes, education was the only answer. Otherwise, Laura’s hands might as well become Brillo pads.
She had the grades, too. Having taken every single Advanced Placement course available, she’d sailed through high school with a perfect 4.0. True, she’d spent all her free time working with her mom, so she had no extracurricular activities, but hey, she had a good excuse. Laura smiled as she thought of an Ajax-free four years. And then reality set in, coating the pleasant images like a thick layer of dust.
Her smile fell away as doubt rolled in.
Had she made the right decision?
The station wagon turned onto a long driveway lined with trees and paved with cobblestones.
Laura’s mind wandered back to last fall, when her plans had begun to unravel. She and her mother had sat down and examined Laura’s college account. The situation had been bleak.
Though her mother had tried to squirrel money away, life kept getting in the way—there were the station wagon’s frequent trips to Midas, slow summers for the business, and cleaning equipment that decided to break at the worst possible moments—and she’d been forced to dip into the savings quite a bit. As a result, the balance was underwhelming. There wasn’t even enough for Laura to attend UConn full-time for four years.
Her mother had urged her to take out loans, but Laura had refused. The money would have to be repaid—with interest—and Laura knew that her mother would feel obligated to help. She’d always worked so hard to avoid debt. How could Laura force it on her now, after all these years?
Looking for better news in the form of a scholarship or grant, Laura had met with her high school’s college counselor, Mr. Atkins. Sweet, sympathetic and stretched so thin he was practically transparent, the frazzled teacher had assured Laura that she was definitely one of his strongest applicants. Unfortunately, if she were to step outside of her own high school, she’d see that there were actually a lot of students like her: students with great grades, great test scores and great recommendations. They were all desperate to go to college and were also looking for the least financially painful way to get there.
Basically, everyone was fighting for the same baby pool of money.
“There just isn’t that much to go around,” Mr. Atkins had explained as he sifted through the contents of his bagged lunch and fished out a sandwich. “You don’t mind, do you? Budget cuts. I don’t get a real lunch break anymore.”
Laura had shaken her head.
So, between healthy bites of a turkey sandwich, Mr. Atkins had suggested that Laura strongly reconsider her position on the whole loan situation. That was how most of his students financed college—especially with the current administration cutting out so much of the educational support system.
“You’re a strong candidate, so there’s a good chance that you’ll get
some
aid,” he said. “But between funding and your savings, you need to prepare yourself for some sort of gap.” He swallowed. “Because it’s going to fall on your shoulders to close that gap. And believe me, it can be quite large.”
Never in her life had Laura felt more trapped. She’d always been strong. But now her resolve seemed to slip. Her bank account was small and, by extension, the world less accessible.
So Laura put her plan—and her mind—on hold for the year. She would graduate early and spend what would have been her senior year working full-time with her mother to save enough money for UConn. She had more than enough credits to get her diploma, and as for UConn, well, it was cheap, good and close to her mother.
When she broke the news to Mr. Atkins he shook his head. He still thought she was making a mistake about the loans, but in the end it was her decision. And at least she was
going
to college. At a high school that had a fifty-two percent graduation rate, Laura’s was a success story.
So here she was. Laura Melon, full-time housecleaner. The problem was, it was only June and already she felt as if she were drowning in buckets of Murphy Oil Soap. Her mother had suggested she take some night courses to help the year go faster. At the time, random classes had just sounded depressing—Laura wanted to be a full-time college student, not a part-time one.
It’s too late now anyway,
she thought glumly.
Registration’s closed at New Canaan Community.
“Oh, oh . . . this is just gorgeous,” her mother crooned. Her voice shook a little on each word as the station wagon bounced along the stone drive. “These new clients, the Pogues, they have quite a place.”
“It’s just a drive . . .,” Laura began, then stopped as the car approached its final destination. She looked up at the enormous Tudor estate and inhaled sharply.
With the ease of a seasoned professional, she quickly calculated the number of windows per floor. Her eyes ran up and down the grand facade, soaking up the impressive number of columns, turrets and wings. And then she exhaled.
It’s gonna take forever to clean this place,
she thought as she unbuckled her seat belt.
But on the bright side, at least the Pogues would be able to spring for their own supplies.
