Megan Hart - Switch

natural, because heat and shame both rode the same bus

to school, so far as I was concerned. Sweat pooled in my

to school, so far as I was concerned. Sweat pooled in my

armpits and salted my upper lip. I licked it away, wishing it

were someone else's tongue on my mouth. Another

person's hand between my legs.

Why had I cared so much what a stranger thought of me?

I groaned and closed my eyes to push away thoughts of

anything but the sensations building in my body. It was

easier to pretend that way, to imagine I wasn't alone in my

brand-new bed with the clean, new sheets that had never

had another body in them. With my eyes closed, the

whisper of my hand moving against my skin tugged my

ears.

Why did I want so much to folow the commands of a

stranger not even meant for me?

The oil slid from my fingertips down my labia and into the

crack of my ass. I used my other hand to folow its path. I

could probably come from this, in a minute or two, but I

stopped, thinking of how it had been such a short time

since last I'd done this. It didn't take a genius to figure out I

was psyching myself out, losing my orgasm to too much

thinking.

Or maybe I realy was embarrassed?

She might not be too smart, but she's pretty enough.

One of Stela's friends had said it, not knowing I could

hear.

I groaned. I didn't want to be thinking about my father's

wife and her friends when I was trying to get off. Yet the

hotter the oil on my clit got, the less interested I became in

finishing what I'd started. I stopped trying.

She might not be too smart, but she's pretty enough. Just

like her mother.

They'd laughed, but not as though they found the subject

realy funny. More like it embarrassed them. As a kid I

hadn't understood why, exactly, just that it had made my

stomach hurt to know Stela thought I wasn't smart, even if

I was my mother's pretty daughter. As an adult, I figured it

out. It embarrassed Stela to admit she'd married a man

who'd been so swayed by some tart, he'd knocked her up

and then had the compassion to make the bastard child a

part of his life. Sort of.

To them, I wasn't Paige. I was some slut's daughter.

Thinking of that, I understood something else, too.

I wasn't embarrassed by the fact a man I didn't know or

like, a gay dude, for that matter, didn't want to jump my

bones. No. What had been most embarrassing was not

that he didn't want to fuck me, but that he'd believed I was

something I wasn't.

I licked my mouth, tasted the salt of my sweat. I listened to

the sound of my breathing stil coming fast. I roled to get

the tiny bottle from under my ribs and tossed it into the

trash can by my bed, and then I tucked my legs up toward

my chest with my extra pilow in my arms, hugging the

lover who wasn't there.

The notes started coming more frequently. Every morning

before I left for work, or sometimes when I came home,

there was another sleek card teling me how to go about

my day. Sometimes the list was short, a sentence or two.

Listen to your favorite radio station today. Sing out loud.

Sometimes the instructions were lengthier. More

demanding.

At eleven-thirty today you will stop what you are doing

and focus on one thing in your life that makes you

happy. For thirty seconds you will do nothing but

appreciate this reason for joy.

I'd spent the entire morning waiting for eleven-thirty to

arrive, half-afraid I'd forget and half-defiant, imagining I'd

refuse when the time came to folow the instructions. I did,

of course, helpless to resist in the same way someone

who's told not to think of the pink elephant can do nothing

else.

If there is someone in your life whom you've hurt, you

must make a true apology.

That one had been easy enough. I hadn't seen Kira in

weeks and arranged to meet her after work for coffee in

Hershey, halfway between Harrisburg and Lebanon. She

wasn't quite ready to forgive me.

"But can you blame me?" I asked over steaming mocha

lattes. "I mean…Kira…it's Jack."

"Jack Rabbit," she said. "Yes. I know."

I raised a brow. "I'm sorry. It wasn't when you were even

I raised a brow. "I'm sorry. It wasn't when you were even

close to being with him."

She sighed, then, and shrugged. "I know. I guess I'm just

pissed you got him and I didn't. But then, so what else is

new?"

That wasn't exactly what I'd expected to hear. "Huh?"

She pretended to be very interested in her new beige

manicure. "Just like every guy I ever liked, right?"

"What are you talking about?"

She leveled a look at me. "Austin?"

"What about him?"

Kira just stared, then looked away.

I had to laugh. I realy did. "You tried to get with Austin?

But you were mad at me for fooling around with Jack?

What a hypocrite!"

Her eyes flashed. "You knew how I felt about Jack! It was

different with Austin."

"How was it different?" I finished my coffee and picked up my purse to go, not because I was furious but because as

I'd said not so long before to the very man we were

discussing, that cake was baked.

"You left him! You didn't love him anymore." Kira

grabbed up her own purse, too, glaring. "Not that it

mattered."

"He turned you down, huh?"

Her expression was enough of a reply.

"That's why you were pissed off, isn't it? Not because I

messed around with Jack, but because you tried to get

together with Austin and he turned you down."

"He turned me down because he stil wanted you," Kira

said.

I didn't have an answer to that.

"And then you went and screwed around with him again

anyway."

"Kira. I didn't know you wanted Austin."

"Kira. I didn't know you wanted Austin."

But she couldn't have him, I thought, suddenly and

surprisingly. Because he was mine.

"Whatever. Does it matter?" She slung her purse over her

shoulder. "We shouldn't let boys come between us

anyway, right?"

I didn't tel her the reason I'd apologized had nothing to do

with our bond of friendship, which had been strained in

times past. Sometimes you stay friends with someone

more out of habit than anything you have in common. If not

for the note, I might not have caled her again at al.

"Right," I agreed.

"So, what's going on with you? You getting back together,

or what?"

"Oh, God, no."

We walked to our cars, parked next to one another in the

lot. I looked past her to the sidewalks overrun with

shoppers attacking the outlets in search of bargains. When

I was younger my mom had taken me to the real outlet

stores, places that sold seconds and out-of-stock items.

stores, places that sold seconds and out-of-stock items.

These stores weren't anything like that.

"Anyway. I think Tony's gonna give me a ring." She said

this with less coyness than I was used to from her. "For my

birthday. I thought maybe he'd get me one for Christmas,

but…"

It seemed suddenly outrageous and unlikely to me that

Kira could get married. "You want to marry him?" I hadn't

even met him.

She gave me a level look. "Yeah. I think I do. I'm not

getting any younger, you know."

It was such a cliché and yet fit her so wel.

"Marriage isn't everything, Kira." I was trying to make her feel better, but she fixed me with another steady look.

"Easy for you to say, sure. Because you gave it up."

"That's not why. That's not what I meant," I added. "I just meant you shouldn't feel like something is missing. That's

al."

"But something is. Hey, maybe you'l be my bridesmaid,"

"But something is. Hey, maybe you'l be my bridesmaid,"

Kira offered.

"Sure. Okay."

We parted with half a hug and brush of cheeks. I

wondered if she'd realy ask me. I wondered if I'd care if

she didn't. I drove home, glad I wasn't her. Glad I wasn't

missing something.

But I was missing something in my life, and those notes,

those lists, gave me something I needed. One waited for

me when I got back. My fingers shook a little as I opened

it. What next? I wondered. What fantasy would I be

asked to live out this time? I already imagined the paper

and pen I'd use to write it, this time. This time I would

write it.

Tomorrow you wil wear a blue shirt.

That was it.

I think I bared my teeth before composing myself quickly.

If someone was watching, I wasn't going to give him the

pleasure of seeing my disappointment.

Tomorrow you wil wear a blue shirt.

"Tomorrow," I muttered as I shoved the card through the

slot of 114, "I'l wear whatever color shirt I damn wel

please."

I refused to think of it al the way up the four flights of

stairs to my apartment, then al the way down again as I hit

the basement for an hour's workout. I refused to think

about the note and its simple, one-sentence instruction as I

sweated and cursed at the television and its bounty of

buxom, slim-hipped beauties on their mission to make al

other women feel inferior. I refused to think of it in the

shower as I lathered my body and deep-conditioned my

hair and shaved my legs.

"Damn it!" I cried to my empty room as I stood in front of my closet.

I had no clean blue shirts.

I put on a soft pair of sleep pants patterned with grinning

monkeys wearing Santa hats and twisted my hair up high,

clipping it out of the way so it would be wavy when it

dried. I turned the TV on, then off. I picked up a book

and put it down.

and put it down.

"Shit."

I lay on my bed, arms crossed behind my head, and stared

at the ceiling. The plaster had been laid in smal, even

swirls. There was a medalion with a metal cap in the

middle in the ceiling's center. The former tenant had taken

the ceiling light and fan when he left, and though

maintenance was supposed to replace the original fixture,

they never had. The metal reflected light from my bedside

lamp and the window outside when the room was dark.

Sometimes when I woke in the night I imagined it was the

moon's bright eye somehow transported into my room.

Watching me.

Was someone else watching me? Playing some sort of

game? I got up on one elbow to look around my room and

at my closet, where rows of shirts hung in every color but

blue.

I got out of bed and riffled through my laundry basket to

see what I could find. Blue wasn't my favorite color. I

preferred white shirts for work, since any stains could be

bleached. I did have a blue shirt, though it wasn't one I

would've worn to work. The neckline dipped a little too

would've worn to work. The neckline dipped a little too

low and the cut was a little too close. I held it up in front of

my reflection and turned this way and that. Paired with a

pair of black dress slacks, it would probably be okay.

With a blazer over it. Sure.

And I needed to do laundry anyway, I told myself as I

tossed socks and panties and towels into the basket to

make a ful load. If I did it now, I wouldn't have to do it

later in the week. And there was nothing on the tube.

Yeah.

There was no getting around it. I was hooked on those

lists. For whatever reason. Even if nobody was watching

me. But if someone was, he'd know I hadn't obeyed.

Tomorrow, I would wear a blue shirt.

But first, I had to wash it.

Chapter 17

Riverview Manor had the highest line of efficiency washers

and dryers, but never enough of them. Just another of the

quirks of this supposedly high-end building, and one about

which the T.A. had sent around many memos. Some of the