“So what are you planning for this weekend, Matt?” Brooke asked hopefully, squeezing Matthew’s shoulder lightly as she caught up with him en route home.
“I dunno,” Matthew said honestly. He rubbed the back of his red head thoughtfully, wondering what he could come up with to keep him busy over their two days off. Not that he would likely need to, if his homework load that day foreshadowed his after school schedule for the rest of the year, but that did not mean he had to postpone all other activities for the rest of his life. “I don’t think there’s anything going on—but I’ll probably have a lot of homework. Why?”
“Well,” Brooke said, straightening her posture and flipping her hair slightly, “I was just thinking you and me could get together sometime—maybe catch a matinee and a bite to eat?” She smiled her million dollar, got-him-in-the-bag smile.
Matthew flinched. She had pronounced “matinee” incorrectly, sounding the two es the way one normally would when sounding the word “see”.
“That’s matinee,” he responded, sounding the word properly. “And it would be ‘you and I’, not ‘you and me’.”
“Oh, spare me the English lecture, I only just escaped one,” she whined. “Could you please focus on my question?” She batted her mascara-laden eyelashes and tucked a lock of her blonde hair behind her ear.
“Look, Brooke…” Matthew began—giggling internally at the rhyme—but he was unable to finish his potential poetry. His stomach had started to squirm and warm, and his fingertips to tingle with pins and needles.
No, no, not now! he thought frantically. He tried to force off his stupor, but it had already set in too deep to escape. His limbs would not move of his own will, his brain the only thing that would function properly. He felt his eyes blink without making the cognitive decision to do so, and he knew that there was nothing else he could do.
“ ‘Look, Brooke’ what?” Brooke asked, staring at him quizzically. She seemed to notice his change in attitude and posture—Matthew would have cursed under his breath had been in control of his respiration or voice. Suddenly, another voice spoke, though Matthew was sure it was not his own.
“Look, Brooke, I’m just not one for your femme fatale attitude about everything, that’s all,” the new voice explained calmly, and Matthew finally grasped in horror that it was Ira speaking to Brooke now, using his body as a channel. “I think you’re great, but maybe you should stick to someone on more on your level—as in, your reading level, okay?” Matthew felt his mouth curl into a cold smile, then watched Brooke’s face change from puzzlement to shock to despair. Her huge blue eyes shone with tears for only a few moments before they spilled over her marble cheeks. She covered her face with her thin-fingered hands and ran sobbing past Matthew down the sidewalk.
“You asshole!” he heard her scream as she dodged oncoming passersby. “I changed everything about myself for you and can’t even acknowledge the fact that I tried! I hate you, Matthew Thorne!”
All Matthew could do was exist within the body he could not control, with Ira’s cruelly satisfied smile on his face.
“Matt!” she called, grasping the handle of the coffeepot and beginning to pour. “I’m in the kitchen, sweetie, come on in here and tell me how your day went.”
Instead, as she began to stir heaping spoonfuls of sugar into her coffee, she heard his footsteps turn right and ascend the stairs. She looked toward the kitchen doorframe, half hoping that Matthew might suddenly leap through it and shout, “Fooled you!” But he never came.
Sarah walked out of the kitchen and stood at the bottom of the stairwell. “Matt?” she called softly. She stood staring at the edge of Matthew’s closed bedroom door, puzzled and concerned.
“Did he have a bad first day?” she mumbled to herself, unconsciously touching her lips with her fingers as she did so. “I hope everything’s all right.” Eventually, years of trained patience made her turn and walk away from the stairs, pausing only for a moment before proceeding through the kitchen door.
He’ll come to me if he needs me, she told herself reassuringly. He always does.
“Ira! Get out of me right now! I need to talk to you!”
Suddenly his skin began to pull and stretch, as though it was trying to rip away from the flesh below it. In one quick, painful swoop, Matthew watched Ira detach himself from his body. He stood before him, the same face he remembered from the age of eight when they had first met.
“Did you need something, Matthew?”Ira asked, acting as though he had not been called in ages.
“What is your problem?” Matthew shouted, completely furious. He could feel his cheeks flushing over his light freckles. “Why would you jump in and say something like that to Brooke? I mean, I don’t want to go out with her, but she’s a nice enough person! Why would you do something that would make me lose a friend?”
“She was your friend?”Ira asked coolly. He was behaving like he was an outside party in Matthew’s complaint instead of the reason for it. “I was under the impression that you couldn’t stand to be around her—I believe what you told me was that all you care about is school and sports, not girls. Or am I mistaken?”
“ ‘Mistaken’ doesn’t even begin to cover it! How could you think that I thought of Brooke that way?”
“Maybe because all I ever hear from you is whining about how stupid she is? Or how she’s so fake that she signed up for higher classes just in hopes that she might see you in one of them?” He smiled coldly. “What did you expect me to think?”
“I…” Matthew could not find words for it. Ira had a point, but it would not be enough to get him off the hook. “What am I supposed to tell Brooke, then?” he asked lamely.
“Why do you care?”Ira responded. “Think of it this way, Matthew—at least now she won’t be around to distract you from what’s important to you, right?”
“But still—” But Matthew was cut off by a knock at his bedroom door. His body tensed and his stomach clenched uncomfortably at the sound. Had his mom heard them arguing downstairs and gotten worried? He stared at the door for a few moments, hoping that his mom would give up and walk away, but she knocked again.
“Matt, Josh is on the phone and needs to talk to you,” she said through the painted plywood. “He says it’s an emergency.”
Matthew heaved a sigh of relief. “Coming, Mom,” he called back. He started to walk to the door, then looked back over his shoulder at Ira.
“Not a word,” he mouthed.
He opened the door just enough to peek out at his mom and reach for the telephone she was handing him. When he noticed her quizzical expression, he quickly whispered, “I’m changing.” He shut the door as quickly as he could and put the phone to his ear. “Yeah?”
“What the hell, man?” came Josh’s reply through the receiver. The quality of the call was terrible—Josh must have been using his cell phone.
“What d’you want? I’m busy right now,” Matthew said quickly. He needed to finish his talk with Ira.
“What did you do to Brooke, Matt?” he asked. Matthew was surprised at Josh’s tone—he actually sounded concerned. “She came over to my place after school, bawling about how she hates you and how you’re such a jerk. She only just left, like, five minutes ago.”
“Josh, I swear I didn’t mean to offend her. I wasn’t even trying to talk to her! I just—” What could he say? That it was not him telling Brooke she was an idiot, it was his friend who lived inside of him and controlled him? That would go over well.
“I don’t really give a damn what you said,” Josh said, sounding like he cared quite a bit. “I’m just worried about her—once she stopped crying she started throwing herself at me, and then at my brother when he got home. She seems really desperate—I mean, my brother’s a freshman!”
“Then why didn’t you calm her desperation?” Matthew really wanted this conversation to end.
“What do you take me for? I’m not that big of an ass!” He paused for a moment, as though trying to choose the exact words for the situation. Matthew tapped his foot in impatience. “I just…knew it wasn’t me she wanted, I guess.”
Matthew was floored. Normally, Josh would have taken Brooke’s invitation quite to heart, but he was respecting her feelings and keeping his distance. Matthew checked the caller ID to make sure it was Josh.
“Will you just talk to her or something?” Josh burst suddenly. “I don’t want to see her like this!”
“Wow, Josh, you’ve grown,” Matthew said, only half-sarcastically. “I’ll call her in a bit and talk to her, okay? I promise.”
“Thanks.” Josh hung up. As he pushed the “end” button on the phone, Matthew knew that his friend was smiling.
“As for you—” Matthew turned back to his bed, where Irahad been sitting before the call.
He was gone.
He rolled over to find a more comfortable position. Amazingly, Ira was not the only thing on Matthew’s mind—he was also curious about the happenings with Brooke and Josh. He understood Brooke’s confession, but why had she gone to Josh after being rejected by Ira? And, more importantly, why did Josh care what had happened?
Matthew squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could. Questions or no questions, he still had school at eight o’clock in the morning, which—he glanced at his clock and groaned—seemed impossibly soon.