Rollins looks relieved, too. “Should we rewind? We missed the best part.” It takes me a moment to realize Rollins is talking about the movie.
“Oh, yeah.” I find the remote control under a pillow on the floor. I find the part we were watching before we were so rudely interrupted and push Play.
I settle back into the chair and pull the blanket up to my chin. After a while, my eyelids start to droop. I shake my head, trying to wake myself up.
“Vee? Are you okay?”
I hold up a finger and take deep breaths, but it does no good. I feel that I’m about to go. Quickly, I take inventory of what I’m touching. Chair, blanket, clothes. So I could slide into anyone who’s sat in this chair recently—my dad or Mattie. Shit.
I jump out of the chair, not wanting to slide into my father in the middle of some gross medical procedure, but it’s too late. I feel myself falling to the floor. Rollins cries out.
Wherever I am, it’s not the hospital. I’m not at the movie theater, either. I’m in a bedroom—a girl’s bedroom, it looks like.
The girl I’ve become cries as though someone ripped her heart in half. She sobs, clutching a lacy blanket, wiping her snot on it. Someone rubs her back. The pressure against her skin moves in circles, this way and that. It feels so good. It feels like everything I should have but don’t.
The sensation calms me, but it does nothing to stop the noise coming out of the girl I’ve slipped into. She wails like a banshee for ten seconds, then gulps in air until it feels like her lungs are going to explode. The pink walls, punctuated with framed pictures of ballerinas, seem to be closing in.
A middle-aged woman, presumably the back-rubber, comes into view. Her cheeks are full and flushed, and she reaches out a soft hand to tousle the girl’s hair.
This is what a mother is.
“Honey, those girls are no good for you. I’ve been telling you that all along.”
The girl just cries harder. I can barely see through her tears.
“Sophie,” the woman says.
The realization creeps up on me: I’m inside Sophie Jacobs. What could I have been touching that would have Sophie’s imprint on it? I suppose she’s been over at our house enough times. She’s probably sat in that recliner.
The scene in the locker room this morning comes rushing back to me. Amber and Mattie. Who else could “those girls” be? They betrayed her somehow, went forward with their plan to “put her in her place.” But how? What did they do to her?
“I don’t understand,” Sophie says. “How could they be so mean? They’re supposed to be my friends.” She wipes her eyes with the comforter, clearing my vision for the moment. Her mother hovers inches away. She hooks one finger under Sophie’s chin and tilts her head up, looks her straight in the eye.
“Sophie, listen to me. True friends would never do what they did to you. Do you understand me? And on your birthday, no less. What kind of monsters do that? The best thing you can do is cut them loose. Be strong. You’ll be so much better off.”
What did they do? What did Mattie and Amber do that was so terrible?
Sophie sputters. “Mom. I’m not strong. I’m not.”
An image slices through my mind: Sophie, on her hands and knees in the bathroom. I wonder if that’s what Sophie’s thinking of. I wish I could reach in, pull out her thoughts, examine them like a roll of film. But I don’t have that kind of power. I am only a passenger. A witness.
Sophie’s mother speaks firmly. “You’re stronger than you’ll ever know.”
Sophie’s breath gradually becomes more even. Her mother holds out her hands, and Sophie grasps them. They feel soft. I don’t want to like it so much, this feeling of a mother. I don’t want to know what I’m missing.
“Come on. Let’s go have some chocolate-chip ice cream. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how skinny you’ve been getting.”
Sophie tenses. Again, I remember Sophie curved around the toilet. Something within her breaks. Her body relaxes, her decision made. She lets her mother lead her out of the room.
“Sylvia?”
Rollins’s face is inches from my own. I’m sprawled on the floor, and he’s leaning over me, his brow furrowed. He pulls me into a sitting position, and his fingers catch on something around my wrist.
Sophie’s bracelet, meant for Mattie. That’s what made me slide. She must have imprinted on it while she was braiding it. I slip it off and toss it onto the coffee table.
“What’s that? You joining the cheerleading squad?”
I rub my temples. “Ugh. No. That’s for Mattie. Argh. My head.”
Rollins rubs my shoulder sympathetically. “Twice in one day. You must be exhausted.”
“Yeah.” I sigh. A part of me, small but growing every day, wants to come clean to Rollins. I mean, Rollins knows everything about me. Everything but that. Rollins is ruled by logic, though. If I told him I slid into other people’s minds, he’d laugh at me.
Wouldn’t he?
Peering into his brown eyes, I wonder if I’ve misjudged him. Maybe I could tell him. Maybe I could make him understand.
“Would it sound crazy if . . .” I trail off, not sure where to go from there. I remember my father’s expression when I told him about sliding—as if I’d just said an alien had visited me in the night.
“I’m sorry,” I say, pulling away from him. “Really. I’m fine.”
Rollins looks disappointed. I feel like I’ve let him down. I know he wants me to open up, confide in him—but I can’t. I just can’t.
“I should go,” he says. He grabs his leather jacket off the back of the couch. I follow him out of the living room and into the darkness of the front entryway, my mouth opening and closing like a fish. I’m afraid this is it—if he leaves now, our friendship will never go back to normal. I want to say stop. I want to say stay, but nothing comes out.
We stand near the door. Rollins’s face softens for a split second, and he reaches out and gently brushes my hair back, revealing the bump on my forehead. I don’t like the way it feels, so exposed. Wincing, I push his hand away.
He shakes his head and turns to open the door.
“See you later,” he says, his jaw firm, and he disappears into the crisp night air. After a moment, his car flares to life and roars away. I stand there, watching his taillights get smaller and smaller. There’s a bitter taste in my mouth. Finally, I hit the switch for the porch light so my sister will be able to see when she gets home.
I wander into the middle of my room and just stand there for a minute, not knowing what to do with myself. There’s something about being alone on a Friday night— it’s more lonely than any other night, I think. It’s like my loserishness has been highlighted by the simple fact that I’m standing here by myself at nine p.m. on a Friday.
I have to put on some Weezer to make the space a little less quiet. I stare at the walls, at the Nine Inch Nails and Green Day posters hanging over my bed. They remind me of Rollins—he’d call me every time something he thought I’d like came in. “You and your old nineties music,” he’d say, grinning, shaking his head.
The way he walked out tonight, though—it makes me scared I’ve lost him for good. I’ve shut down his every attempt to find out what’s really going on with me. I know what Dr. Moran would say—I’m pushing him away before