Untethered (23 page)

“A coma!”  That means Kevin’s not in my body! That means ...
oh, God, what does that mean?

“Yeah. And they don’t know when or if she’ll come out. So I don’t need any games right now, Kevin.”

“No, this isn’t a game, Sam. I’m Sylvie. I can prove it. Look. I know you had a stuffed pea pod instead of a teddy bear when you were little. You—”

“This isn’t funny, you jerk. I thought you were okay, but you’re not.”

“Sam! Just listen! You have to listen to everything. You’d know—”

But all of a sudden Sam punches me right in the gut. I feel the breath shoot out of me, both from pain and surprise. I don’t think Sam has ever, EVER hit anyone in his life.

“Shut up, Kevin,” he says, and leaves.

My stomach is killing me, but I straighten up and follow him. He practically sprints to where our parents are waiting. “Get Kevin out of here,” he says to Dad. His voice is full of hatred.

“N-no, look, Sam,” I stutter.

“He’s wasted, I think. I don’t know. But he’s making jokes about Sylvie, and I don’t want to hear it.”

“No, I’m not!” I yell, but it doesn’t matter— my mom’s face gets blotchy and my dad swears.

“Get out of here,” my dad growls. “Or I’ll throw you out.”

Mr. Sanders shakes his head at me. Cassie looks like she’s posing for Munch’s
The
Scream.
Sam’s eyes are even more angry. Even more red.

They won’t listen to me. Not now. I shouldn’t have said a word. I smother a sob that makes its way out. I grab my stomach and run down the hallway and out the front doors.

And then I’m alone. In front of the hospital at almost 4:00 in the morning. It’s dark, the dimmest color on the watercolor palette at school: Lamp Black. I don’t know what to do or where to go, so I grimace in the cold and walk. I walk and walk until my stomach no longer hurts, but my ears and nose are numb with cold. Luckily, I’m near the 24-hour Kimmy’s Kafe. The bitter smell of coffee greets me as I open the door. My ears and nose tingle in the newfound heat.

I sit down at a cracked Formica table and feel in Kevin’s jeans for his wallet. He’s got $34.77 and his dad’s VISA. Good. I’m suddenly starving.

I order eggs, bacon, sausage, French toast, and hot chocolate with extra whipped cream. No All-Bran in sight. When the food comes, it looks like there’s enough for three people. But I crave the fat, the grease, the sugar. And this body seems to want anything, as long as there’s a lot of it.

I poke a piece of French toast. The fork feels tiny to me in these big hands. I’m a bit clumsy, but manage to get it to my mouth and chew.

Think
. Kevin’s not in my body, or I’d be walking around. So we can’t talk this over, figure out a way to switch back.

What happened to Kevin?
If I can’t get out, he can’t get in.

I sit thinking forever and order a Coke. The sun comes up as I’m finishing off the last of it. That’s when Kevin’s cell phone beeps. I take it out of his jeans pocket. It’s a message from Bryce:
“Jst got bck frm wiiiiiiiiild nite. 3 dys left. U screw u win. No screw I win. Get on it, derp.”

He might as well have written in Sanskrit. I don’t get any of it.

Ugh. Who cares?

I pay for my breakfast and walk back outside. The wind has kicked up. Now what? Where do I go since I can’t go home?

My body is in a coma. And I can’t get back to it
. Terror scuttles through me. I’m freezing, tired and my head feels like it’s been bashed in with an axe. The wind zaps my ears and I hunch down into Kevin’s sweatshirt. I put one heavy foot in front of another and trod on for a good hour until I get to Kevin’s house. I stop in front of it.

Hoping to sneak in, I go around and try the back door knob as quietly as I can. It’s slick black metal, really cold. I turn it left, then right. I even tug and push hoping I’m not making too much noise. But it doesn’t give. I blow on my hands. The wind makes my eyes tear up. I trudge back to the front. My legs are stiff as I climb the porch steps. I step over a rolled-up copy of
The Journal Times
shoved into a sleeve of thin, orange plastic. The storm door opens, but not the inner one.

Come on, come on
. I push and pull on the polished gold handle. Panic is like an itch under my skin. I search Kevin’s pockets but find no keys. A dark cloud passes over and I feel pricks of freezing rain on the back of my neck. It’s the last straw. A tremor starts somewhere in my lower spine and takes hold of me entirely. My teeth chatter. My whole body spasms. I take deep breaths and wrap my arms around myself. That’s when the front door is yanked open and Kevin’s dad stands in the doorway.

“Where on God’s green earth have you been! We’ve ...” But I can’t concentrate on his words my teeth are chattering so badly. I just watch his face turn different colors and hug myself tighter hoping to stop the shivering. Finally, Kevin’s dad stops talking. He stares me down like he’s waiting for an answer.

“I ... she’s ... in ... a ... coma,” I say, barely getting the words out for all the teeth clacking.

“Huh? What’re you talking about?”

“S-Sylvie. Sylvie S-Sydell.”

“Who’s that? The girl you’ve been dating?”

“N-no. She’s ...  she’s ... at the hospital.”

“Oh, Christ. Why are you telling me this? Bryce put you up to something again, didn’t he? What happened? What did you do?”

“N-Nothing.”

That’s when I hear a low voice somewhere behind me say, “
That’s bull! You did everything!
” My lungs are squeezed flat with fear and I turn around. But no one’s there.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you! Was there drinking and driving? Drugs? You leave sometime during the night, stay out and don’t tell us where you are, and then you come back to say some girl’s in a coma? Jesus! What the hell were you up to?!” Kevin’s dad’s voice reaches decibels I didn’t realize were possible.

“No,” I say. “I wasn’t with her. It ... it w-wasn’t me.”

But the voice says, “
Yes, it was. It was you.”
A cold gust of air reaches into my collar. I stiffen but I’m too scared to turn around.

Mr. Phillips studies me, then opens the door wider. “Get in here.” In the living room, Kevin’s step-mom glares at me while she rocks Kevin’s baby brother in her arms. The hatred in her eyes makes me take a step back toward the door.

Mr. Phillips questions me some more then finally says, “I’ll call the hospital to see what’s going on. But after what you’ve pulled, you’re grounded for a week. The only time you will be out of your room is for school and swim practice.”

I run up to Kevin’s room and, once inside, I lean against the door, trembling. My body spasms so much, my head and elbows knock audibly on the wood. Hot tears run down my freezing cheeks.

That voice. That voice.
It wasn’t in my head, I know that. It also wasn’t the voice of the shadows. The voice ... was like it was coming from the air and not ... from a body. It was low enough to be Kevin’s. I wobble over to Kevin’s mirror and look directly into the face I know so well – the seven freckles, the copper eyelashes, the bump on his nose. It is Kevin’s face, but the expression behind his dark eyes is not one I’ve seen him wear. It’s terrified, lost, and even feminine. That’s my expression. Not his.

Tremors take hold of my body again. I grab onto Kevin’s headboard and whisper, “Where are you?”

No answer. There’s no sense of anyone but me.
Get a grip, Sylvie. You’re going psycho, here. Psycho Sylvie Sydell.
I breathe in slowly and wait for my fear to dull down into something I can try to ignore.

I have to get out of him.

I want my mom. My dad. Sam. Cassie. Nelson. I need someone to be my friend right now.

Kevin’s phone beeps.

Cassie’s name is displayed before me, and I stare at it until my throat goes raw with unshed tears:
“Sylvie is my BFF. U bettr hav n explnation or it’s OVER.”

Oh, yeah. Do I have an explanation. Just not a believable one.

“Talk 2 u bout it 2morrow,”
I write.

Because I hope by then I will be back to being me.

Twenty-Eight

Watch What You Wish For (Because you’ll get something else altogether)

I’m so tired I’m dizzy, but I try to project over and over until I know it won’t work. I call to the shadows, but all is eerily silent. I spend the rest of the day on the computer, pleading for help in astral projection chat rooms. With no luck.

Kevin’s dad knocks on the door. “We’re going out to eat. There’s Macaroni and Cheese to make if you want it.” He walks away without waiting for an answer. A few minutes later I hear the back door slam and a car engine starting. Kevin’s parents haven’t talked to me all day. I mean, I come home really shook up about me –well, Sylvie—being in a coma and I’m ignored?

Let them go out to eat. At least that way I don’t have to pretend to be Kevin.

I try projecting some more, then when that fails, I try to sleep and fail at that. I hear Kevin’s parents come home. Baby David cries for a while then the house is quiet. Despite being wiped out, my eyes don’t want to stay closed. Every creak and moan in the house keeps my body tingling with both fear and anticipation. Maybe tonight is when Kevin will come and take back his body. Maybe he’ll come and I can slip out sometime during my dreams.

When I do finally doze off, I hear the low-pitched hissing of the shadows. Their voices join up in rusty laughter and I see them, their fingers stroking Kevin’s arms. Kevin stares at me, his eyes burning hatred. A silver cord slips tighter and tighter around my neck.

I wake up sweaty and shivering. I flick on the bedside light in panic.
Just a dream, Sylvie. Just a dream.
Yet I can’t shake the nightmare.

The sky is still pitch black at 6:00 a.m. and everything seems blurry. My eyes burn. I blink. I blink again, and the room goes in and out of focus.

What the ...?

I rub my knuckles against my eyelids and something falls out of my right eye. It’s tiny and wrinkled and translucent. Kevin’s contact. Oh, crap. The damn things have been for two days straight.

No one else is up, so I lock myself in the bathroom. It takes me a good long time to get the left contact out of my eye. When I wash them off and try to put them back in they sting so much I can’t keep my eyes open. Forget the contacts. I’ll have to find Kevin’s glasses.

But the smell coming from my underarms is overpowering. First things first.

I undress myself without looking, but once I’m in the shower scrubbing up, I peek. I glance down at the muscled chest, the strong legs. So beautiful, so solid. I pass my soapy hands over the hard planes of Kevin’s body, rough with hair and then quickly over his ... penis. And then I stop. The skin on it is soft. I mean, I wasn’t expecting sandpaper or anything, but still ...

Suddenly, I feel the thing grow firmer in my hand and I jump. “AHH!” I just catch myself before I skid on the soapy shower floor.

This is soooooo wrong. So, so wrong.
I mean, I’ve imagined putting my hands on Kevin’s body before, but I wasn’t wearing it! My head starts to buzz like it’ll explode. I lean against the slick wall tiles and wait for the sensation to pass. Then I finish the shower staring intensely at a spot of mildew in the grout.

I sneak out of the bathroom and back to Kevin’s room. Everyone is still asleep.

All of Kevin’s clothes are on the floor. I can’t tell which are clean and which are dirty without putting my nose to them. I finally put on his green cable knit sweater and a pair of jeans. I find a clunky pair of old glasses, his keys, phone, and wallet and hurry as quietly as I can downstairs.

I slip into Kevin’s Camaro, his heart pounding inside me. I’ve barely driven in the six months I’ve had my license, and most of that wasn’t in a stick shift. Is it stomp on the clutch and then put it in gear or the opposite? I turn the key and manage to get out of the driveway and into the street without a problem. The car shakes every time I change gears, but I don’t kill it. I get to the hospital in one piece.

At the front doors I realize I’m four hours too early for visiting hours. But then I think that might not be bad. That Mom won’t be there yet, that I might be able to slip in without anyone noticing. If I had the room number. I think about texting Sam. But there’s no way he’ll give me –Kevin—that info.

Kevin’s phone rings and I answer it without looking at the screen. “Yeah?”

“Where the hell are you, dude?” It’s Bryce.

I sigh. “I—”

“You won’t believe it. Sylvie, Sam’s sister, she’s in an effing coma. Like, lights out.”

“Yeah, I know.” It’s only 7:00 a.m. and the word has already hit school. I feel my throat tighten.

“You knew?” Then Bryce’s voice turns devilish, teasing. “Ah-ha ... Been consoling Cassie, huh? But she still didn’t put out, did she? Two days left, sucka.”

I clench the phone tight and try to keep the shock out of my voice, “What are you talking about?”

Bryce laughs like I’ve just told a joke. “Nice try. Hey, don’t forget we’ve got extra practice tonight. Coach’ll string you up if you’re not there.”

After hanging up, I stare down at the phone. I don’t believe it. I
can’t
believe it. Kevin’s a decent guy. He wouldn’t have made a bet to ...
No. Not possible.

I look at my reflection in the glass doors of the hospital. Kevin looks attractive and honest. Even doubly honest with the glasses. But if I think about it, with that face, I could dupe anyone. I just hope Kevin didn’t dupe both me and Cassie.

I step inside the hospital and ask the lady behind the desk for Sylvie Sydell’s room number.

“Visiting hours don’t start until eleven.” She snaps her gum and stares at me.

“Yes,” I say, trying to milk my attractive and honest look. “I realize that. But I was on my way to school and she’s in my class. I just thought if I knew the room number we as a class could send her flowers or something.”
Yeah. Right. That’d be the day.

It works. She softens and types something on her computer. “Sydell. 216.” Now she looks up at me, her eyes hard again. “But says here NO VISITORS. Clear?”