Your Perfect Life (12 page)

“I saw you looking at the ring,” she says simply.

“It’s gorgeous,” Casey interjects. “When’s the big day?”

“Oh, we haven’t set a date yet. It’s my second marriage,” she says sheepishly. “We’ll probably do something low key, with my son.” She shuffles the tarot cards again and holds them out to us. “I’d love to tell you all about it, but I do charge by the hour.” She laughs. “Cut the deck.”

I turn toward Casey and she gives me a look as if to say,
you do it.

What I didn’t tell Casey earlier was that I had actually found Jordan on Yelp. Yes, she had come highly recommended, but not by anyone I
actually knew
. But after meeting her today, I felt okay about asking Casey to meet me here. What better person to help us than a well-dressed woman with a sense of humor who can see into the future? Plus, she didn’t bat an eyelash when we walked in. If she recognized Casey Lee, she didn’t let on. I liked that. Already craving anonymity after being famous for only a short while, I can’t imagine how Casey deals with someone always watching her. Like when you inhale that sushi for lunch or you leave the house without taking the time
to painstakingly blow out your hair. And dating? How is it even possible under this harsh spotlight?

But then I’m struck by another one of my panicked thoughts. What if this woman can’t help us and I’m in Casey’s body forever? Sure, being Casey has its perks, like having my coffee waiting for me each day when I get to work and the fabulous clothes I get to wear on air and off. And I can’t forget her tight abs. But what about my family? I know John and I haven’t exactly been connecting the past couple of years, but he’s still the person I chose to spend the rest of my life with. And the girls . . . I can’t even think about them. What if being a part of my own family isn’t an option anymore?

I realize Casey’s waiting for me to cut the deck. Jordan cuts it again and then instructs me to pick three cards. Trying not to think about it, I take three off the top and hand them to her. As she studies the cards I selected, I send her telepathic questions.

Do you know I’m in my best friend’s body? Can you help us?

She looks up quickly, startling me, and I half expect her to answer. But she doesn’t. Instead she looks at the cards again and shakes her head.

“What? What is it?” I scoot my chair closer to the table, hitting it and almost knocking over a glass of water.

“It’s just as I saw last night.” She pulls a sleek leather notebook out of her even sleeker leather handbag and turns the pages rapidly until she finds what she’s looking for. “Yes, here it is. These cards indicate what I picked up during my meditation.” Then she stops to explain. “That’s what I do, meditate the night before I see a client.”

I nod approvingly, not knowing what else to do, and she continues. “I got a strong feeling that you came here for my help.”

Casey gives me a look that says,
duh
.

“That you two aren’t what you seem,” she continues. “That there’s something going on here that’s . . .” She pauses, trying to come up with the right word. “Magical.”

Casey and I look at each other excitedly, effortlessly reading each other’s mind.
She knows,
we think.
And she’s going to help us
.

Please, God. And as I have so many times since becoming trapped in Casey’s body, I make promises to God.
I’ll be more lenient with Audrey. I’ll stop checking her Facebook account! I’ll be more tolerant of Sophie, I’ll even let her wear something semirevealing once in a while. Maybe even buy her a lacy bra from Victoria’s Secret. I won’t put Charlotte in front of
Sesame Street
so I can eat breakfast in peace. Shit, I’ll even start having sex with John again if you switch us back, God.

“So, then you know. You know what’s going on here.” Casey breaks her silence.

Jordan frowns. “Well, I only know what they want me to know.”

“They?” Casey and I say in unison.

“The spirits, the angels that guide you, I get messages from them,” she says matter-of-factly, as if this is totally common.

“So what are they telling you?” I ask, trying not to sound as impatient as I feel. Starting to watch the hope of switching back fade away.

“That you’re not at all what you seem, that you’re masquerading, that you’re stuck.” She looks up from her notes. “Is this making sense to you?”

“That’s all true,” I say.

“There was a party?” she asks.

“Our high school reunion,” Casey offers.

“There was a bartender there that we think is involved in
this.” I wave my hand back and forth in the space between Casey and me and start speaking quickly. “But he’s disappeared . . .” I trail off, realizing we haven’t yet spoken aloud about what’s
really
going on here. Will it help to tell this woman or does the fact she hasn’t mentioned it mean she’s just a hack with tarot cards she ordered off the Internet? But then again, she did know about the party and that we’re masquerading. Not exactly something you bring up in everyday conversation.

Masquerading. That word makes it sound like we’re playing dress-up, like we chose to disguise ourselves. But we didn’t . . .
did we
? Who would choose this for herself, let alone her worst enemy?

I look at Casey, suddenly appearing so fragile, the circles around her eyes deepening, her face pale. Each day we’ve been switched seems to be taking more of its toll on her emotionally. The last eight, nine—what’s it been?—maybe ten days that we’ve been like this. You’d think I’d know the exact amount of minutes, hours, days, but I don’t.

I decide to go for broke and trust Jordan. “We are masquerading. But it’s a little bit more literal than you may realize.” I hesitate. What do we have to lose by saying this out loud? The worst that can happen is she’ll laugh at us and kick us out of here for wasting her time. It does seem like she has higher standards than maybe most. “You see, the thing is, I’m her and she’s me.” I exhale for maybe the first time in days. It feels good to say it.

“Can you be a little more specific?” Jordan asks in a way that tells me she cares about my answer.

Casey jumps in. “I’m in her body and she’s in mine. We woke up like this the day after the reunion. We got in a fight, some jerk bartender named Brian brought us each a shot, and
after we drank them, we woke up like this.” She puts her arms out to her sides.

I jump in. “I’m really Rachel Cole. I have three kids. I live in the suburbs. I’m not famous unless you count my mean karaoke rendition of ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ by—”

“—Tiffany,” Jordan finishes. “I know the song. Some high notes there. Impressive.”

“Do you get what we’re saying here? We’ve switched bodies!” Casey raises her voice impatiently.

“And?” Jordan stares at us blankly.

“And what? Aren’t you the least bit fazed?”

“Look around, ladies. Think about what I do for a living. I’ve seen and heard it all. People talking to the dead, being married to the dead, dead people that reincarnate as their former spouse’s pet . . .” She pauses and I can’t help but think what if that happened to me? If I died unexpectedly and came back as John’s pet. The only pet he has is a garden snake that he keeps in one of those tanks at his office. How much would that suck? I didn’t consider until this moment that there could actually be a worse situation than the one I’m in now, a worse body to be in. I think of myself hissing, spitting out my long tongue, hitting it against the glass of the tank, desperately trying to let John know that I’m hungry for my next mouse. I make a sour face imagining it.

Jordan snaps me back to the moment. “The question is, what do you need from me?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Casey asks, not rudely, just more like a person who wants to make sure she gets her money’s worth.

“I can’t read minds. I can only get what I get when I meditate the night before I see a client. What I write down. What they—”

“We know. What they want you to know.” I think of the snake again and curtly finish her sentence and then rethink my attitude. “I’m sorry, we’re just frazzled here. We’re looking for answers on how to switch back, get our lives back, be who we were.”

Jordan frowns. “But they’re telling me you weren’t happy with who you were.”

I think about John. Our marriage. How our relationship has been strained. When did it start? When did we stop kissing each other good-bye in the morning? Sending playful emails? Sharing a glass of wine at the end of a long day? I think of Casey. I had never stopped to ask myself if she was happy. I had always assumed that she was. The life she lived, the success she has achieved, they were all things our society considers valuable. But I realize now that she’s been living an empty life for years. And I was so caught up with my own crazy world I hadn’t even noticed. She never even mentioned Charlie to me, a relationship that clearly upset her. What does that say about the kind of friend I am?

Jordan looks at me. “You. You, Rachel, not you, Casey, have a lot of angst inside of you. I wrote this down last night.” She consults her notebook again. “You’re confused about love. And stressed. Look here, I wrote the word
stress
in all caps. It’s at a higher level than I have seen in most people. I also wrote the name Jack. Does that mean anything to you?”

My eyes fill with tears. “That’s John, my husband, that’s his nickname. What I used to call him . . .”

Casey squeezes my hand. “Things haven’t been so great between them.”

For a moment I think about her and John and I’m panged. I try to erase the visual of them sleeping in the same bed, accidentally brushing up against each other. And I want to snap,
But things are going very well between you two lately, right?
But I think better of it.

Jordan gives me an empathetic smile, almost as if she relates, and then she looks at Casey. “And you, Casey, I didn’t get as much for you. It’s almost as if you’re . . .”

“Empty?” I offer without thinking, looking down to avoid the sharp look Casey throws my way.

“Yes, empty works,” Jordan says and looks at Casey sympathetically. “Care to talk about it?” she probes gently. “You can’t lock everything you feel down there forever,” she says as she points to Casey’s gut.

Casey is visibly uncomfortable but holds Jordan’s stare. “I’m okay,” she says simply and Jordan nods, unwilling to push the issue any further.

I change the subject back to the switch. “Well, if they’re so smart, then ask them how we switch our bodies back, what exactly we should do to reverse this spell.”

Jordan smiles sincerely. “I’m sorry, I know you guys want me to wave a magic wand, but I don’t have that answer for you.”

We both remain silent, waiting for her to reveal something,
anything.

“There is something that might help. They are telling me that
you already have the answer to switching back and it’s right in front of you. You need to think about why you switched in the first place and that will lead you to how you switch back.”

“Are they saying anything else? Anything? Do we have to pee in the same fountain? Do we have to drink from the same cup? There has to be something,” I plead.

Jordan closes her eyes and is silent for almost a full minute before she speaks. “There is something else. They’re saying the word
promotion.
”

“As in a promotion at work? Or promoting something, as in publicity? What exactly do they mean?” Casey asks eagerly.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know. They just keep saying it over and over. But I don’t know the context. I suppose that’s for you to figure out.”

Casey’s shoulders slump and I rub my temples.

“Doesn’t anyone get that we don’t know the answers here? That we’re not going to figure this out?” I say to no one in particular. “Can you at least tell us, or can they tell us if we’ll—”

Casey finishes my sentence, “—be able to switch back?”

Jordan closes her eyes for a moment and I hold my breath. This could be it, the moment that changes everything. When she pops them back open a few seconds later, she says apologetically, “When the universe is off balance it always wants to right itself. But whether that happens or not is up to you.”

CHAPTER 15

casey

I hang up the phone with the caterer and check one more thing off the list for John’s party. With Destiny helping out with the venue, I’ve been able to handle almost everything else, including getting the invitations out on time. I’ve tried to keep all of our interaction confined to email. Talking to her on the phone, pretending to be Rachel, makes me worry that I’ll slip up and she’ll realize whom she’s really talking to.

I’m both relieved and concerned that I’ve gotten so comfortable in Rachel’s life so quickly. While it makes the day-to-day much more bearable (I’m no longer asking the kids where everything is, causing them to wonder if early dementia has set in), I worry that the longer we’re in each other’s bodies, the harder it will be to get back to who we were. Although I think I can safely say no matter what happens, I probably won’t ever be the same after this experience.

I’d stayed up half the night trying to figure out what the word
promotion
had to do with switching our bodies back.
There wasn’t a chance I’d be up for one anytime soon—not with Dean and Fiona constantly bad-mouthing and sabotaging me. And I wasn’t exactly getting any younger. In fact, there was part of me that wondered if I was going to get axed when I turned forty. And Rachel didn’t even have a job. Well, a paying job anyway. Rachel’s kids make my job at
GossipTV
seem easy. And on top of it all, she’d been working for free for years. Bitch needs a raise!

I’m still sitting at the kitchen table, lost in thought, when Audrey bounds in the door with a huge smile on her face, Sophie stomping in behind her. Audrey’s always been quiet and sometimes sullen, even as a baby. I remember coming over to John and Rachel’s apartment when she was a newborn, watching Rachel struggle and silently counting the minutes until I could get back to being an irresponsible twenty-two-year-old. Now, having become a pseudo-mom to Charlotte, I feel terrible that I wasn’t helpful. I had no idea what she was going through and never made an effort to understand what it was like to give up everything she’d worked for to raise a family. I see now that she made a sacrifice. My
GossipTV
life seems so far away to me, and each day I feel a little more detached and find myself caring a little bit less about how long I can stay on top of the dog pile there.