

Perfectly

Normal
Perfectly Normal

Copyright © 2017

Amy Martin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, with express permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

## Photo credits: pixabay.com (user: darksouls1)

Other books by Amy Martin:

In Your Dreams (4 book series)

The Perfects (4 book series)

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

About the Author

Chapter 1

Nothing exciting ever happens in Ridgeview, Missouri. Nothing.

Well...nothing has for a very long time, anyway.

Years ago, waste from the Manford Chemical Company leeched into the ground and into Rocky Ridge Lake at the edge of town. The plant shut down and to avoid spending years in court, Manford bought up all the houses in the nearby neighborhood. People who lived in the Rocky Ridge subdivision either moved to other parts of Ridgeview or left town.

The "Rocky Ridge Incident" is, without a doubt, the biggest thing to ever happen in Ridgeview—it even made the national news. But Ridgeview eventually settled back into being the kind of place where a high school football game on Friday night counts as the height of excitement and a water main break flooding the cafeteria at the middle school is the talk of the town for days.

Then Janey Douchette, Dani Maguire, and I all disappeared on the same day in the middle of our senior year.

And things got a whole lot more interesting in Ridgeview, Missouri.

Wednesday, January 26

I've known Ellie Stengel for twelve years, which is a good thing because she's so bundled up against the cold I can only tell who she is by her wide hazel eyes and the few wisps of purple hair peeking out from underneath her knit hat. After I gather the last of my first and second period books from the bottom of my locker, I turn to her and pull her rainbow scarf down to her neck so it's no longer covering her mouth.

"And how are you this morning?" I ask, my cheery tone a definite contrast to her grumpy face.

"I despise winter. Remind me again why we didn't apply to colleges in Florida?"

"Because Florida's gross and humid and we don't have the money to go to school out of state?"

Ellie points at me with a gloved index finger. "Oh, yeah. That's it."

I clasp my books to my chest as we shift our conversation over to Ellie's locker. The planets aligned this year and the administration finally assigned us to the same homeroom, so our lockers are close together.

"Have you heard from Janey this morning?" I ask as Ellie peels off layers and hangs them up. Eventually, she's down to a black wool sweater and blue jeans. I happened to wear my gray wool sweater today with jeans, so my outfit resembles a faded copy of hers.

"Nope." Ellie bends down and retrieves some books and folders from the bottom of her locker, placing them in the crook of her arm. "What's up?"

I shake my head and some of my always-uncontrollable brown hair gets stuck in my lip gloss. "Nothing," I say, brushing the errant strands away. "It's just weird is all. I texted her last night before I went to bed and I never heard back from her. She almost always texts back right away. And I didn't hear from her this morning, either. I thought I'd ask if she wanted a ride since the weather sucks but she didn't answer."

Ellie stands up, gently squeezes her soft guitar case inside her locker—she plays three musical instruments and has been in both marching band and jazz band for the past four years—and slams the door. "Well, you know you're never going to hear from her in the morning," she points out as we make our way down the hall to our homeroom. To say our friend Janey Douchette isn't a morning person would be the understatement of a lifetime. Most mornings, Janey rushes into homeroom and takes her seat with only seconds to spare.

"Yeah. But, I mean, she always gets back to me if I text her at night. Always. Same with you, right?"

"Yup," Ellie says, her stub nose turning up a bit with concern before she tries to set my mind at ease. "She probably just fell asleep or got caught up doing homework or something. You're too paranoid."

"Probably," I say as we enter our homeroom. Mrs. Markham, who has been teaching business classes here since the dawn of time, peers over her bifocals and nods at us from the desk in the front of the room.

"Rachel. Ellie. How are you both this morning?"

"Good, thanks," I say.

"Good. Cold," Ellie grumbles, which elicits a tinkly giggle from Mrs. Markham.

"Well, it is January, as you may recall."

"Yeah. But why does January have to be so...January?" Ellie says, and Mrs. Markham laughs even harder as we take our usual seats in the back of the room. I'm about to ask Ellie if she finished reading our history assignment last night, but before I can, the Perfects enter the room.

Lexi Grayson. Alissa Lofton. Dani Maguire. They're the Perfects—Ridgeview High School's ruling triumvirate. As always, they're joined by Luke Nostrand, Dani's boyfriend and quarterback of the football team, who follows behind them as if he's their private security. Lexi and Alissa also have boyfriends, of course, but their boyfriends—football players like Luke—are in different homerooms and so we're not currently blessed with their presence.

On this morning, as on every other morning, conversations become a little quieter when the Perfects walk in. The room and everyone in it appear to fade to black-and-white as if to magnify the vibrant colors of their clothes, the highlights in their hair, the lipstick on their lips. The Perfects give off the impression that they're a little taller than everyone else, but I know for a fact Dani Maguire and I are the same height. Maybe the illusion is thanks to the shoes. While everyone else wears big-box store hiking boot knockoffs or discount store plastic boots lined with synthetic fur, the Perfects sport matching faux leather, high-heeled lace-up boots with real-looking fur peeking out the top.

Every day, I half expect the three of them to strut across the front of the room in slow motion, a breeze coming from...somewhere...to blow their locks out behind them into a perfect hair-halo like something out of a bad movie. But since this is real life, they instead glide toward their seats quickly with some sort of unstated purpose as if they own the room.

Which—figuratively, anyway—they do. The Perfects basically run Ridgeview High, wielding only slightly less power than the faculty and administration. Lexi, Alissa, and Dani hold three seats on the Ridgeview High Student Council, with Lexi being president. They're always princesses on the royal courts, and each of them has been queen of something at least once. Alissa is captain of the dance team, Dani is captain of the cheerleading squad and president of the senior class, and Lexi is president of the school's spirit organization. Anyone who wants anything done around here knows they'll need to go through the Perfects, one way or another.

After surveying the room as if to ensure everything and everyone are up to their high standards, the Perfects and Luke sit in their usual seats, Lexi and Alissa in the front row near the windows and Dani and Luke right behind. I wait for Janey to rush into the classroom as she normally does after the Perfects make their grand entrance.

But Janey doesn't show up. Ellie notices the concern on my face and whispers, "I'll text her," as the bell goes off. We're treated to several minutes of announcements over the school's public address system, and then we're left with five minutes to move around and talk before the first period bell. Ellie checks her phone and announces, "Nothing from Janey yet, but it hasn't been very long" as Dani slinks to the back of the room and takes the empty seat next to me.

"Hey, guys," she says, smiling as she tosses a few of her honey blonde curls.

Ellie leans forward in her desk so she can see around me. "What?" she huffs.

Dani ignores her and keeps her pale blue eyes trained on me. "That calculus homework last night was a bitch, huh?"

"Here it comes," Ellie mutters loudly enough only I can hear her. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Lexi and Alissa sitting sideways in their desks, mouths covered as they whisper and giggle to each other while keeping a close eye on Dani.

"Yeah. It was kind of tough, I guess," I say with a shrug.

It wasn't tough—not for me, anyway. I like math and always have. And Dani knows it.

"Yeah..." Dani fidgets in her seat and examines the blush-colored nail polish that perfectly suits her tanning bed-kissed skin tone. "Can you help me with the last few problems? The ones after number five really got me."

"Sure. We'll talk in study hall, okay?"

Dani clasps her hands together and stands up, smoothing down her blue plaid skirt. "You. Are. A. Lifesaver. I'll hit you up then." She glides back to her seat as the bell rings, and Ellie groans.

"What?" I ask, gathering up my books and folders.

"You know what. We've been through this, Rachel. Dani's not coming back. We're seniors now. If she didn't grow out of this whole 'Perfects' stage years ago, she's not going to no matter how much you let her use you."

Ellie and I walk down the aisle toward the front of the room. "She's not using me. She's asking me for help," I say.

"She doesn't need help. She's as smart as you are." Ellie steps aside to allow me to pass into the bustling hallway ahead of her. "Or, at least, she used to be smart before she started hanging out with the dipshit twins. Maybe her IQ's dropped by association."

"You're being too hard on her," I say, but I don't sound too convincing, even to myself.

"I tend to be hard on people who turn their backs on me. She ignores Janey and me just because Lexi and Alissa do. The only reason she doesn't ignore you is because she needs your calc homework. You shouldn't put up with it."

I'm grateful Ellie mentions Janey because it gives me the opportunity to change the subject. "Hey, has Janey texted you back?" I ask.

Ellie reaches into her messenger bag for her phone. "Not yet." Her forehead wrinkles. "She must be sick or something."

"Or maybe she's late and she's checking in at the office," I offer, taking up Ellie's positive stance of a little while ago. "I'll text her again before second period. If we don't hear from her, we can try to call her at lunch."

"Sounds like a plan." We're outside Ellie's Spanish classroom, so she waves and says "Later," before leaving me alone for the trek to my English classroom at the end of the hall. But as I attempt to ease back into the flow of student traffic—the student population at Ridgeview long ago outgrew the main building—I plow into Luke Nostrand, the force of our collision sending my books, notebooks, and folders to the ground.

"Oh, wow. I am sooo sorry," I say to the floor tiles and not to Luke as I drop to my knees and shove some papers back into one of my folders. At the edge of my vision, Luke's hands scoop up my books. He's obviously kneeling next to me but I'm too embarrassed to look.

"You're fine," he says, his voice deep and soothing. "Don't worry about it. The hall's sort of a zoo during class change."

I turn my face toward his and smile. Like most people my age in Ridgeview, I've known Luke since grade school, and he's always been a nice guy. And it's his nice guy demeanor that makes his status as Dani Maguire's boyfriend perplexing to me. If I'd plowed into Dani, she would have helped me pick up my stuff because of our history, but she probably would have sighed and rolled her eyes the whole time while doing it. And if I were Ellie or Janey or anyone else, she would have laughed, said "Watch it, loser" or something similar, and continued on her merry way down the hall.

But Luke's still the same easy-going Luke he's been forever, despite dating Dani and her superior attitude for nearly two years. I suspect Dani's with him mostly because of his status as one of the most popular guys in school. Dani's been all about status and not much else the last few years.

I get to my feet and Luke hands me the textbooks and folders he's retrieved from the floor. We're in the same English class, so we walk down the hall together toward our classroom, something we never do because I'm usually with Janey and he's with his friends.

"I'm surprised you're not with Janey," Luke points out as if he can read my thoughts. "You guys are always together."

I'm surprised he would have noticed Janey and me at all, but I don't let on. "She must be sick or something. I haven't talked to her since after school yesterday."

"Well, I hope she's okay," Luke says, slowing a bit so I can walk ahead of him into the classroom.

"Ellie and I are going to try to call her at lunch. I'll tell her you said so."

And if Janey isn't already sick, she'll fall over dead at the news Luke Nostrand, of all people, hopes she's okay.

Luke pushes some of his dark blond hair out of his blue eyes and nods at me before walking to his usual seat across the room. Maybe Luke stays with Dani because he's hoping one day they'll make impossibly beautiful children—blond, blue-eyed, athletically-trim children with round faces and dazzling smiles. Somehow, some way, the genetic sweepstakes winners of the world always manage to find each other.

I push any thoughts of Dani and Luke—and Janey, for that matter—out of my head so I can focus on my morning classes, although I keep checking my phone as I walk from classroom to classroom between periods to see if Janey has gotten back to me.

She hasn't. The text I send her after second period goes unanswered, just like all the ones I've sent since last night. And when I meet up with Ellie at our lockers before lunch, she shakes her head to indicate she hasn't heard from Janey, either.

"This is weird. She must be really sick," I say.

Ellie finishes gathering up her books for her afternoon classes and slams her locker. "Let's go to the lobby. It'll be quieter."

We rush down the hall toward the school's main entrance, which is near the cafeteria but far enough away we won't be forced to yell at Janey over the noise. Ellie leans up against the trophy case just inside the front doors and hits a button on her phone to dial Janey's number, but after a few seconds, she mouths "voice mail."

"Hey, girlfriend," Ellie says. "It's Ellie. Rachel and I are worried. It's not like you to miss an exciting day at Ridgeview High School."

I snort at Ellie's sarcasm.

"So, hit one of us up, okay? And tell us if you want us to get your homework or anything. We can stop by after school to check on you if you want."

Ellie raises her eyebrows at me as she makes her last statement since I'm her ride home today—she usually catches a ride with me in the afternoon if she doesn't have to stay after school for anything. I nod to indicate going by Janey's house is fine by me.

"So, we'll talk to you later, okay? 'Bye."

"I'm trying not to be freaked out about this, but I'm getting kind of freaked out about this. Is that weird?" I say as Ellie drops her phone back in her bag.

"No," she says, and my worried reflection stares back at me from the glass shielding the trophy case, "because I'm kind of freaked out, too."

Chapter 2

After school, Ellie and I trudge out to my car in the senior parking lot, which is right next to the faculty lot in front of the school. Thankfully, we don't have far to walk because snow started falling right after lunch and now the conditions are practically at white-out level.

"I can barely see," Ellie yells at me over the top of my used Chevy.

"No kidding. I hope school's called off tomorrow."

I unlock the doors with my keychain and we get in, Ellie immediately muttering "Heat, heat, heat, heat..."

"Working on it, Your Highness," I say, firing up the engine and cranking the heat and the defrosters to their highest settings.

"Have I mentioned how much I hate winter?"

"I believe it's come up once or twice."

Ellie sticks her tongue out at me as hot air shoots through the vents. She lowers her scarf from her chin and breathes in the warmth. "Ahhh...that's what I'm talking about."

"Do you want me to take you home so you can get warm or do you still want to go to Janey's?" I ask, laughing at her dramatic display.

Ellie sobers up. "Janey's—definitely."

Neither of us has heard from her all day, so despite the weather we're sticking to our plan to stop by and check on her. Luckily, Pleasant Valley Mobile Home Park is only a few blocks away from the high school in the northwest part of town.

I put the car in gear and check my mirrors before slowly easing out of my parking space, but I nearly have a heart attack when a black SUV comes out of nowhere and whizzes past my bumper, a horn bleating and then dying away. Twisting in my seat, I catch a middle finger extended out the window on the driver's side, and the license plate LEXI 1 leaves no doubt as to who's behind the wheel.

"Is it wrong to hope she plows into something on the way home?" Ellie asks, staring in the same direction. "I don't want Lexi to get hurt, mind you—I just want to witness that stupid tank of hers crushed into a worthless pile of metal."

"Was I seriously about to hit her?" I whip my head around and check my mirrors several times before I begin easing out of the parking space again so I don't risk anyone else taking me by surprise. "I mean, she came out of nowhere..."

"Not even close. And she was going way too fast considering the parking lot hasn't been plowed yet."

I drive at a crawl towards Tilletson Street, feeling my back tires slide a little bit in the slushy snow. A line of cars waits to make the turn out of the parking lot, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to inch forward rather than putting my foot down on the gas.

"Do you ever wonder what it's like being one of the Perfects?" I ask Ellie.

"If it means acting like Lexi, it must be sheer hell. I can't imagine being that much of an ass all the time."

"But that's just it." I lean forward to turn the heat down because now it's roasting in here, and when I look over at Ellie, she nods in agreement. "Lexi doesn't think she's being a jerk. She's just being...her. Don't you ever wonder what it must be like to live life like that?"

"Without regard for basic human decency? No, thanks."

We creep up another car length in line. "Without caring what anyone thinks about you," I explain. "And knowing ninety-percent of the time, people believe you're amazing, no matter what you do. I spend half my life analyzing my next move and being self-conscious about screwing things up. I wonder what it would be like to be so free."

Ellie laughs. "You are obsessed with the Perfects, you know that?"

"Oh, I am sooo not."

"Yes, you are. Ever since Dani dumped us, you've always wondered what it was like in their twisted little world."

I purse my lips and focus my attention out the windshield, but my cheeks burn with Ellie's words and what I'm guessing is her harsh stare.

"How much of your calc homework did you let her copy from you in study hall?"

"I didn't let her copy anything," I fire back. "I sat with her and explained how to do the problems and helped her while she worked on them." Ellie opens her mouth to say something, but I cut her off. "And she thanked me, too, before you ask."

Ellie narrows her eyes at me as I pull the car forward, look both ways, and accelerate out onto Tilletson Street as quickly as I can under the conditions. My car fishtails a bit, and Ellie grabs the dashboard as a worthless measure of added protection as I straighten my back tires and move us forward at about five miles an hour. I hope our momentary car drama will be enough to distract Ellie from berating me about Dani.

No such luck.

"I just don't get why you can't let it go. Dani made it clear in eighth grade we weren't good enough for her anymore. Janey and I got over it—why can't you?"

I sigh. Because I miss my friend, I say to myself. Because I miss her laugh and her energy and all the trouble she used to talk us into during sleepovers. Because I'm sad all the plans we made for The Most Awesome High School Experience Ever never happened—at least not for the two of us together.

Because I'm jealous my former friend gets to live this life full of magic, with everything out loud and in color, while my life is nothing but a boring black-and-white silent movie.

"Can we not talk about this anymore?" I beg. "A few more months and we'll be done with Ridgeview and off to college and we'll never have to deal with Dani Maguire again unless we run into her around town on holidays."

"Except I heard she applied to Riverton."

"Seriously?"

Ellie and I applied early decision to Riverton University which, along with the town of Riverton itself, sits on a bluff high above the Missouri River about an hour from Ridgeview. We found out two weeks before Christmas we'd been accepted. Now, we're just waiting for news on scholarships.

"I can't room with you if you're just going to talk about Dani all the time," Ellie says quietly.

"Are you for real right now?" I say, struggling to control both the car and my emotions. "Now who's obsessed? I don't talk about Dani Maguire all the time, but even if I did, you'd dump me as a roommate over it? You'd seriously trash our friendship over Dani, just like Dani trashed our friendship?"

"It's not the same thing and you know it." Ellie's voice has an edge to it.

"Whatever," I huff, wanting this conversation to end. "It's a big campus. Even if Dani goes to Riverton, we'll probably never run into her. And I swear I'll find someone else to obsess about, okay?"

My promise coaxes a smile from Ellie. "Okay. And I'm sorry to keep pointing out the whole Dani thing, but I worry about you sometimes, you know? The way you talk, it's like you're convinced your life is totally horrible compared to hers, but you've got so much going on. You volunteer, you organize all kinds of service stuff at school...you act like because you don't have a designer shoe collection and a quarterback boyfriend, your existence somehow doesn't matter as much as hers, which is absurd."

"I know. I know," I say through a sigh, making a right turn into Pleasant Valley Mobile Home Park. "And I'm sorry I talk about her so much. I just miss her sometimes, you know? And Lexi and Alissa are so horrible and I don't get how she could trash friendships like she did with us and Janey. I mean, I could never turn on you guys like that."

"Same here."

I pull to the curb next to Janey's trailer, which is five doors down from the main entrance. Somehow, even though the snow is freshly fallen, it's already dirty where the sidewalk meets the street, the white tinged with gray from car exhaust. Mr. Douchette's battered sedan sits in the narrow driveway. He's a science teacher at the middle school, so he probably beat us here by just a few minutes.

"I hope Janey's not asleep," Ellie says as she opens her door to the snow and wind. She hunkers down in her coat and scarves and I do the same as we leave the warmth of my car for the snow-filled hike up to the porch at the front of the Douchette double-wide. Once we're safely under the metal awning, Ellie and I stamp the snow from our boots.

"Janey's bike isn't here," Ellie says, tilting her head to the empty space near the front door where Janey's bike would normally be if she were home.

"This weather sucks to be out on a bike," I say, reaching out to knock on the door. Before I can, Mr. Douchette opens it, his glasses immediately fogging as the cold air mixes with the warmth of the trailer.

"Rachel. This is a surprise. And Ellie, too." He's bundled up in a red flannel coat and a goofy leather hat with earflaps. "I was just about to come out and shovel the driveway. Come in, come in."

He stands aside and Ellie and I enter the small, sparse living room containing a forty-inch television set and a lumpy couch covered by a sheet. On a knicked-up end table between the couch and the trailer's back wall sits Janey's senior picture, taken before she dyed her light brown hair blue over winter break. Cheap, cracked blinds cover the front and back windows and a painting of a small white house with rose bushes at the side—one of Janey's works—hangs slightly off-kilter over the couch.

The house is the Douchettes' old house in the Rocky Ridge subdivision, out by the lake. Janey, Dani, and I all lived on the same street in Rocky Ridge as little kids until Manford Chemical bought our houses. The area now sits abandoned, the houses and the plant in disrepair.

After the buyout, Janey and her parents moved about a block away from me in The Gales subdivision. She was leading a pretty normal life until Mrs. Douchette died in a car accident when we were in seventh grade. Afterwards, Mr. Douchette fell into a deep depression and lost his job at Virgil Tool and Die in nearby Bernardsville, where he worked with my dad. Eventually, he pulled himself together, got a part-time job at a grocery store outside town, and finished a teaching degree, which had always been his dream. But between paying for school and working only part-time, Mr. Douchette had to sell their house just to stay afloat, and he and Janey have lived here in Pleasant Valley Mobile Home Park since our freshman year.

Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think about Mrs. Douchette, with her wispy light brown hair that was just like Janey's and the kind smile and whispery voice Janey inherited as well. I think about how she used to dole out hugs to all of us kids as if we were her own, and I think about how Janey adored her mom, and how something seemed to break inside her once her mom was gone. She was never quite the same, becoming more moody and sullen than the average teenager and diving more deeply into her art. And Janey kept Ellie and me close to her like a protective barrier, hiding behind us and walling out everyone else as if she had some secret she was trying to protect—one she wouldn't even share with us.

"I'm surprised Janey's not with you," Mr. Douchette says, looking past Ellie and me out the front door before he closes it against the wind. "Did she stay after school for something?"

Ellie pulls her scarf from her face and we exchange confused looks. "No," she tells him. "Janey's not here?"

Now, the concern in Mr. Douchette's face mirrors ours. "No. Is she supposed to be? Her bike's gone, so I just assumed she was still at school. I tried to call and see if she wanted me to pick her up, but her phone went straight to voice mail."

"Janey wasn't at school today," Ellie explains. "And we've been texting her and we called her at lunch, but we haven't heard anything. We thought we'd stop by because we figured she was sick or something."

"If she was sick, I would have called her in." Mr. Douchette rubs the back of his neck. "I yelled at her to get up before I left for school this morning. I was in kind of a hurry and the weather was okay at the time, so I thought she'd be fine riding her bike. The cold never seems to bother her too much."

"So, you haven't actually seen her today," I point out, trying to keep my voice even.

"No. She went to her room around ten last night and I guess that's the last time I saw her. I went to bed not long after."

I'd texted Janey around 11:30 and then again at 7:00 this morning, but I don't share that with Mr. Douchette.

I'm sweating inside my black ski coat, but I can't tell if it's because the trailer's a little warm or if it's because I'm starting to panic. Mr. Douchette steps into kitchen and snatches up his phone from the table. Just a few days ago, we were sitting there with him as Janey blew out the candles on her birthday cake. She was laughing and happy—a rare occurrence for her—and as we gorged on cake, she teased Ellie and me as she did every year about being older than both of us.

"But this year's even better," I remember her saying. "I'm eighteen. I'm an adult, and I can do things you guys can't do yet. Like, I can vote—"

"And you can be tried as an adult," Ellie pointed out, which earned her a smirk from Janey.

"Actually, it's seventeen. And for some felonies, you can be tried as an adult even younger," I added.

"Okay, you big nerd. I'm not even going to ask where you found that out," Janey said.

"Hey, I read things. And anyway, there aren't any elections before my birthday, so you won't be special for long," I point out, my birthday being less than two weeks after Janey's.

Mr. Douchette reached out and ruffled Janey's blue-tinged bangs. "Aw, Janey's always special. Aren't you, honey?"

Janey brushed her curls back into place with her fingers and grumbled "Dad, come on."

I feel so bad for Mr. Douchette now as he taps his phone screen, raises the phone to his ear, and waits.

"Janey, hon?" he begins after a few seconds. "It's your dad. Ellie and Rachel are here, and they say you weren't at school today. And you're not home and...well, I'm not sure where else you'd be. I promise you're not in trouble, but...when you get this message, give me a call and let me know you're okay."

Mr. Douchette slides his phone into his back pocket. "I checked her room when I got home and she wasn't there," he says, almost to himself. "I didn't see her phone and everything looked...normal. Anywhere she might be come to mind to you girls? She wasn't supposed to work tonight, but maybe..."

Janey's a barista at Smiley Joe's Coffeehouse in town. And while she's been called into work at the last minute before, having to work after school wouldn't explain where she's been all day.

Ellie and I both shake our heads. "Usually if Janey's not with one of us or at work, she's here," Ellie says.

"How about other friends?" Mr. Douchette pauses and shuts his eyes. "Or a boy, maybe?"

Under any other circumstances, I'd be stifling a giggle at Mr. Douchette's behavior in thinking Janey's with a boy. But I'm too freaked out right now to do much more than eek out "No—just us."

"I can't think of who she'd be with," Ellie adds. "Janey doesn't really hang out with anyone but us. If she has other friends or if there's some guy..." Her voice fades and I finish her thought:

"Then she hasn't told us about it."

Mr. Douchette's eyes grow larger behind his glasses and his bushy red eyebrows rise above the frames. I wonder if he's thinking the same thing I am—Janey has no other friends, no boyfriend, nowhere to go, and only a bike to get her there even if she did. And the weather sucks and the only places on this end of town are the high school and a gas station.

"Um...for now, you girls should go home," Mr. Douchette says, staring at the worn living room carpet and not at us as if doing so will help him concentrate. "The police won't start looking for a missing person for twenty-four hours, so we're talking later tonight at the earliest...I'm going to drive around for a while and try to find her, maybe check at Smiley Joe's and see if she got called in and forgot to tell me..." He goes into the kitchen and bends over the table, coming back a few seconds later with two slips of paper, one of which he hands to Ellie and the other to me. "Here's my number. If you hear from her, I don't care how late it is, you call me, okay?"

"Of course, Mr. Douchette," I assure him.

His thin lips form a feeble grin, and he places one hand on my right shoulder and his other hand on Ellie's left as if giving us a weird, distant hug.

"And in the meantime, think good thoughts," he says.

Chapter 3

After I drop Ellie off, I head to my house two blocks away and park at the curb. I'm in such a daze over the fact Janey might really be missing I almost don't notice the tire tracks in the snow covering the driveway, which means one of my parents has beaten me home.

"Mom?" I call out once I'm inside the house. The TV's blaring in the kitchen, so I'm not sure anyone would be able to hear me. I pull off my boots and hang up my coat before heading to the back of the house.

"Mom?" I call out again.

"Rachel," Mom answers. "Jessica, turn the TV down, please."

As I enter the kitchen, my little sister fires the remote at the TV just inside the door. My mom's at the stove stirring something in a stock pot with a wooden spoon.

"You're home early," I note, flopping down in a seat at the kitchen table across from Jessica and dropping my messenger bag on the floor. My mom commutes to St. Louis County every day where she works at an accounting firm. She's never home before I am, and because of her schedule, she rarely cooks dinner during the week.

"Mr. Hewlett let me leave early because of the weather, but the roads really weren't too bad until I got to town." She sprinkles some oregano into the pot. "And the busses weren't running, so I had to pick Jessica up from school."

Mom turns away from the stove and trains her "annoyed face" on me—she always gets this crease in her forehead above the bridge of her nose when she's upset. "I called and texted you about picking her up, but you never got back to me."

She pauses, likely waiting for my excuse since the middle school is only a few blocks from the high school and Mom would have had to go out of her way to get Jessica. I reach into my messenger bag for my phone and find several missed messages from around the time Ellie and I went over to Janey's. Unfortunately, all the messages are from my mom and none are from Janey.

"Sorry. Ellie and I went over to Janey's. My phone was in my bag so I didn't hear it."

Mom's face relaxes a little, her plump cheeks soft rather than tense, her brown eyes a little warmer, and her annoyed crease disappearing. "Well, it was nice of you to give Janey a ride home in this weather," she says, turning back to the stove.

I debate whether to come clean about Janey's situation, especially since I'm not sure what her situation truly is, but I'm so scared my friend might be in trouble I can't hold it in.

"Janey wasn't with us. She...she might be missing."

Mom places the wooden spoon on the spoon rest next to the stove and whips back around, the annoyed crease evident once again. "Rachel," she says in the tone of voice she gets when she thinks I'm full of it.

"I'm serious, Mom. She didn't come to school today, and she's not responding to texts. Ellie and I went over to her house to check if she was sick or something, and Mr. Douchette said he hadn't seen her since she went to her room last night."

My mom folds her arms over her stomach, the sounds of whatever Jessica's watching on TV filling the kitchen during the lull in our conversation. "Jessica, turn that off, please," Mom says.

My sister, who just turned fourteen and may be an even bigger nerd than I am, responds with "But it's almost time for Jeopardy!"

"Jessica Kathleen..."

"Okay, okay." Jessica's eyes widen on Mom's first name-middle name double-whammy, and she can't get to the remote quickly enough. The kitchen plunges into silence before Mom says "Surely Janey just went somewhere in town and didn't tell anyone."

"Where would she go? It's too cold to ride her bike anywhere other than school. And if she went into a store or somewhere else in town during the day, they'd call into school to report her for ditching."

Mom purses her lips. She knows I'm right. And she's known Janey long enough to realize she probably wouldn't go anywhere without Ellie and me.

"So, did Mr. Douchette call the police?" Mom asks, but I don't get to answer right away. My dad enters the house through the door connecting the kitchen to the garage and booms "Well, all my girls are here. This is a surprise."

Mom explains how she was able to come home early, and she crosses the kitchen to give him a kiss before he gets out of his coat and boots. Bernardsville is the next town over to the south, so Dad's commute is much shorter than my mom's, and since his shift starts early in the morning, he usually beats her home.

"They're starting to plow the roads," Dad says, rolling up his shirt sleeves. "There are some slick spots but I didn't have any trouble getting home."

"Which means no snow day tomorrow," Jessica grumbles.

For once, I hope we don't have a snow day tomorrow. I want Janey to come running into homeroom with seconds to spare and for everything to go back to normal. If Janey doesn't resurface by tomorrow morning, a snow day will make everything seem that much weirder.

"What's for dinner?" Dad says, going to the stove and lifting the lid on the pot. He takes a whiff of what I can now smell is vegetable soup before turning to my mom standing next to him. "Thanks for—" He stops, apparently picking up on some tension in Mom's face. "What's going on?"

"Janey Douchette's missing," my sister says in the same blasé tone of voice she might use to inform him we're out of toilet paper. My mom says "Jessica!" at the same time I tell her "You are so annoying."

"What?" She pulls her long brunette ponytail over her shoulder and winds the split ends around her index finger. "Like we weren't going to talk about it anymore?"

"Wait, now...Janey's missing?" Dad says, coming over to the kitchen table and sliding into the chair next to me. I tell him the same story I'd just relayed to Mom, and Dad grazes the stubble on his chin with his knuckles as I talk, something he always does when he's concentrating.

"Has Tommy called the police?" he asks.

"Not yet. He said the police won't do anything until she's been missing for twenty-four hours. He was going to drive around town and then if he couldn't find her, he'd go to the cops." I glance at the clock on the microwave. "He said she went to her room around ten last night and that was the last time anyone saw her, so he's got a few hours."

I swallow hard once I'm finished talking, and Dad reaches out and touches my arm, his eyes flooding with warmth. "Don't worry, honey. I'm sure everything's okay. I'll call Tommy after dinner and see how he's doing."

"Thanks, Dad. He seemed kind of freaked out when Ellie and I left, so he'll probably be happy to hear from you."

An uncomfortable silence settles over the kitchen, and as if to get our minds off Janey, Mom tells Jessica she can watch TV. She's relieved she's only missed a few minutes of Jeopardy!, and the four of us play along with the contestants while Mom finishes cooking the soup. As expected, Jessica buries all of us with her trivia expertise.

After dinner, I help Mom with the dishes—the family chore chart on the fridge reminds me tonight's my turn to dry while she washes—and she attempts to distract me from thoughts of Janey by asking me if anything happened at school today. But since nothing ever happens at school, I'm back to talking about Janey in no time.

"You don't think someone...took Janey, do you? I mean, has anything like that ever happened around here?"

Mom rinses a bowl and hands it to me. "Not that I'm aware of. And I'm sure Janey wasn't kidnapped. She probably just decided to skip school."

"Janey never skips school." I put the bowl in the cabinet next to the stove after swiping at it with a towel a few times.

"Well, I guess there's a first time for everything...for her. Not you. Don't get any ideas."

"I promise I'm not going to start skipping school. I wouldn't want to miss one exciting minute of my last few months."

Mom bumps my hip at my sarcasm and I smile at her before getting serious again. "Maybe I should call Ellie and we should go look for her, you know? Mr. Douchette can't cover that much ground by himself," I say.

"Absolutely not." Mom wrings out the dishrag, the crease in her forehead threatening to emerge. "You heard your dad earlier. The roads are still a little slick, and some of the side streets probably won't be treated for a while. I don't want you and Ellie out there after dark when it's like this. There's not much you two could really do to help."

I close my eyes, hoping Janey's disappearance doesn't turn into an official Missing Persons case, but time's running out.

"How can I just stay here and do nothing, though?"

Mom wipes her hands on a towel next to the sink and puts a hand on the back of my head. "I know you're worried, but..." She sighs. "I'll finish up here. Why don't you get started on your homework? You need something to keep you occupied."

"Okay," I say out loud, but what I'm thinking is Right—homework isn't going to distract me.

I head to my room, but instead of starting on calculus or something else that doesn't seem to matter very much right now, I dig into my messenger bag for my phone, which is sadly message-free. Even though Ellie probably hasn't heard any news, I text her:

Anything?

A few seconds later comes the reply I'd anticipated:

No.

I tell her I haven't heard anything, either, and she texts back:

Ok. Keep me posted.

Flopping down on my bed, I decide to start on my homework and do something that's going to require a ton of my concentration: American literature. I roll onto my stomach and take Moby Dick out of my bag, placing my phone right next to me before I open the book and start reading.

About four pages in, I fall asleep. Hard. But I'm only out for a few minutes when my phone buzzes, causing me to jerk my head up from my lavender comforter. I scramble to a seated position against my pillows and activate my home screen, my heart racing when I see Janey's calling.

"Janey?" I blurt out after I answer.

I can't tell if the voice on the other end is Janey's because it sounds muffled and the connection keeps breaking up.

"Janey? Are you there?"

The line goes dead. I try calling her back, but her phone goes to voice mail almost instantly.

"Janey? You just tried to call me. Are you okay? Ellie and I have been trying to get in touch with you all day. Call me back, okay?"

A few minutes pass with no response, so I decide to try texting instead. I let out a ragged breath, my fingers shaking to the point I can barely type:

Where r u? R u ok?

A minute or so passes, the silence excruciating.

Nothing.

Another minute...

"Come on, Janey. Come on..."

Nothing.

In a blind panic, I call Ellie to relay the latest news. As I run my free hand through my hair, the strands tickling the back of my neck, I tell her about Janey's call and ask "What do I do? Call the police?"

"Call Mr. Douchette. He wanted us to get in touch right away if we heard anything, remember? If he's still out looking for her, he can call the police and go right to the station."

"Okay."

"Keep me posted on what happens."

I end the call and go to the front pocket of my messenger bag, where I'd stashed the slip of paper with Mr. Douchette's phone number. Since most people I call are in my contacts list and I can dial them with one touch, entering each individual number seems to take an eternity under the circumstances. Finally, his phone starts ringing, but after three rings, I get his voice mail.

"Oh, come on," I mutter to his recorded voice and wait for the tone:

"Mr. Douchette? It's Rachel Lord. Janey tried to call me—" I make an instant decision not to tell him about her lack of response to my voice mail or texts— "Give me a call as soon as you get this, please."

I sit on the edge of my bed, tapping my left foot against the carpet as I wait for my phone to ring.

It doesn't.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

I'm wasting precious time. Janey could be hurt or in danger.

I close my eyes so tightly my skin seems to stretch over my cheekbones. Assuming she hasn't been kidnapped, where would Janey go?

As if I've summoned the knowledge from somewhere distant, my eyes pop open and the white walls of my room, the art prints and the band posters and even the dry-erase calendar above my desk seem somehow sharper, clearer, as if I'm seeing them with improved vision.

I know where Janey is.

Chapter 4

Mr. Douchette still hasn't called me back when I make the decision to sneak out and act on my hunch about Janey's location. If I'm right about where she is, I doubt I'll get into trouble. The ends—finding Janey—will have justified my means.

At least, I hope my parents will view it that way.

I tiptoe out of my room and past Jessica's bedroom door, which is slightly open. She's at her desk with her back to me, already in her pajamas and doing homework, so I hold my breath and dance around the creaks in the old floorboards. Once downstairs, I only need to take a few steps to reach my coat and boots at the front door, but in those steps, I have to pass the entry to the living room, where my parents typically spend the evening watching TV.

At the bottom of the stairs, I glance over and see the back of only my mother's head just above the back of the couch, meaning my dad is in another room. I hope whatever room he's in isn't anywhere near where I am now as I practically jump from the last step to the mat at the front door, and I slide into my coat and boots with lightning speed.

Outside, the walk and driveway are clean, which means my dad must have shoveled after dinner. I'm grateful because I can get down the driveway to my car more quickly without worrying about falling. As I unlock my driver's side door, I notice a few black ice patches in the street lit by the street lamps overhead.

I'll need to be careful.

Once in the car, I start the engine and text both Ellie and Mr. Douchette to meet me at the bridge over Rocky Ridge Lake because I'm wondering if Janey's at the Douchettes' old house. Ellie, who teaches guitar lessons at her house on Monday and Wednesday nights for extra cash, texts back that her lesson is almost over and she'll meet me as soon as she can.

I have no idea why Janey would have chosen today, in the middle of winter, to go all the way out to her house on our old street in Rocky Ridge, but it's the only place left she might be. The last time she went there was in July, and the police picked her up on one of their semi-regular patrols after sundown. The cops have always maintained a regular presence in Rocky Ridge, at first to prevent people from looting and later, after the houses were all deserted, to keep squatters out.

The old subdivision and the lake are mostly blocked off, but Janey discovered a gap in the chain-link fence back in the woods near the north end of the lake. When the cops found her, she was sitting on her old front porch. Luckily, they didn't take her to the station or anything—they brought her home, and her dad wasn't there at the time, so Mr. Douchette never found out. And as far as I know, he's been in the dark about that time and any of the other times Janey's been out to Rocky Ridge.

One other time she went out there, last March, it started to rain. She tried to call Ellie and me to come get her, but since cell phones weren't as big a thing as they are now back when we all lived out there, there aren't any cell phone towers close by. Janey discovered that day calls tend to drop or if they go through, the reception is kind of bad. She had to walk all the way back to the bridge before she could get a decent signal, and by the time I got out there, she was so soaked she might as well have just ridden her bike home anyway.

Janey never had to explain to Ellie and me why she wanted to go to her old house. The place represents one of the happiest periods of Janey's life, long before her mother died and her dad lost almost everything trying to put the pieces of their existence back together. Rocky Ridge holds good memories for me, too, but the memories aren't enough to make me want to hang out in my old house, which I'm sure is pretty broken down and disgusting after all these years as Janey's must be, too.

I drive slowly out of my neighborhood, past the park and through Ridgeview's nearly deserted downtown. The library, movie theater, Burger Shack, and Smiley Joe's are the only places open and judging by the few cars around, none of them are doing much of a business tonight.

Turning right onto Tilletson Street, I hit a patch of ice and slide a bit, turning into the skid like I remember learning in driver's ed. Once I've straightened up again, I exhale and tap the gas pedal. Continuing to retrace my journey from earlier in the day, I pass the high school and Pleasant Valley Mobile Home Park a few blocks later. Finally, I reach the Gas Hut, the last representative of civilization on this edge of town. There used to be a small strip mall out here when we all still lived in Rocky Ridge with a grocery store, pharmacy, and some other stores, but those went under not long after everyone moved out—I can just barely make out their abandoned shells in the dark as I drive by.

The road isn't plowed as well out here, probably because few people ever drive through this end of town. As I approach the bridge over Rocky Ridge Lake, the slush forces me to accelerate a bit more. Once I'm across, I can pull off to the side of the road and wait for Ellie and Mr. Douchette to join me to go find Janey. Or, hopefully, Janey was once again calling me to come pick her up and I'll find her shivering by the side of the road with her bike.

I give the car more gas than I'd like under the conditions, but the road rises to a hill just before the bridge and I'm afraid I'll get stuck if I don't. My tires churn and make a sick sounding noise as the steel beams on either side of the bridge, barely visible out here in the dark, shift to the edge of my vision, then out of my sight completely.

I'm sliding, I realize, panic gripping me. I'm off the road...

I slam on the brakes, but the car has a mind of its own. All I can make out in front of me in the headlights are weeds poking through the slushy snow and above that, nothing but a dark abyss. The car bounces, bounces again, hits something, and flips.

And I'm upside down in the air...and I'm falling, falling, falling...

I awake under the covers with a start.

Maybe it was all a dream—being in my car, feeling like I'd overturned and I was falling. Maybe I didn't really go out looking for Janey. Maybe I fell asleep reading Moby Dick and woke up just enough to crawl under the covers.

And then I remember reading in some book about dreams that if you dream you're falling and you hit the ground before you wake up, then you're probably dead in real life. I don't remember the sensation of hitting the ground, and unless this is heaven, I'm still alive, although many times on cold winter mornings I've thought my bed was heaven.

I roll onto my side and pull my legs to my chest so I'm in the fetal position. Just five more minutes, and then I'll get up and deal with school and Janey and...

"Dani?"

My eyes pop open at the sound of a woman's voice outside my bedroom door.

"Danielle Lynn!"

Um...what?

I hear the door open and the woman says "I'm leaving. There's some money for lunch on the kitchen counter. You may not have seen the alert yet, but school is on a late start this morning, so you've got another hour." A pause. "You must have fallen asleep doing homework last night. Your books are everywhere."

Lying perfectly still, I shut my eyes again as if doing so will make the woman go away. And I don't dare pull the covers off my head.

"Danielle." The woman's voice is sharp. "Are you awake under there?"

Please don't pull back the covers. Please don't pull back the covers...

"Uh huh."

"Do you want me to call later to make sure you're up?"

"No."

"Okay. I'll see you tonight. Have a good day."

I hear the door catch in the frame and I count to ten before I peek out from under the comforter and sheets. What I find makes me sit up and draw in a breath so sharp it makes my lungs hurt.

This isn't my room.

My parents redecorated my bedroom for my birthday five years ago when I was going through this whole purple/lavender phase I quickly outgrew, and now I'm stuck with lavender everything—comforter, drapes, carpet, pillows—and white oak furniture. This room, on the other hand, feels more...mature somehow, with off-white walls, rich burgundy curtains over mini-blinds, and solid oak furniture. A dresser across the room holds mementos such as ticket stubs and football game programs crammed in every inch of the gap between the attached mirror and the mirror frame, and the posters on the walls are a strange mix of boy bands and art prints.

But, no matter how much I admire the interior decorating, this room isn't mine and I'm not sure why I'm here.

My head spins even though I'm still sitting in bed. My dad always tells Jessica and me when we're feeling dizzy or sick to find something familiar to focus on until the sensation passes. Since nothing in this room is familiar, I decide to focus on the backs of my hands.

Because if you know something well, you know it like the back of your hand, right?

I shift my gaze to the burgundy comforter where my hands are resting, palms down.

Except these aren't my hands.

I have freckles—these hands don't. The ones I'm looking at are slightly tanned, with long fingers and perfectly manicured nails painted with a blush polish I remember admiring yesterday in homeroom.

Still dizzy, I bound out of bed, scattering a few textbooks and notebooks to the floor in the process, and make it about halfway across the room before I'm able to view all but my lower legs in the mirror.

For the first time since I was a little kid, I have narrow hips, and when I twist slightly, I can tell, even through the silk sleeping shorts I'm wearing, that I possess a firm, round butt I definitely didn't have yesterday. My thighs don't show an ounce of fat, and I place my hands on a flat stomach, rather than on the little pooch of loose skin around my belly button I'm used to. As shock courses through me, I cross my arms to hug myself, an action that's a little more difficult than usual because I've apparently grown another cup size.

And my hair, which on waking up is typically a shoulder-length rat's nest of tangles, is instead a glossy surface of blonde, honey-highlighted waves framing my face and cascading down to the middle of my back.

I'm perfect. And I should be.

Because somehow, I've woken up the body of Dani Maguire.

Chapter 5

I've only been in this house once in my life, so after I've had a crying meltdown in front of the mirror over the fact I've been physically transformed into my former friend yet I'm somehow still me on the inside, I spend a few seconds searching for the bathroom. Because regardless of whose body I'm in, I still need to be at school by 9:30.

The thought of crawling back into bed and pulling the covers up over my head until I can deal with whatever's happening to me flickers through my mind, but then my typically nerdy Rachel thoughts take over, proving to me my consciousness is still intact. I could pretend I'm sick, except I'd need to have Dani's mom call me in, and I don't know where she is or how to contact her. Not to mention, whenever Dani's mom does get home, I would not only need to pretend to be Dani in front of her, but I'd need to pretend to be a sick version of Dani, which I'm not sure I could pull off.

And I never cut school, mostly because I'm responsible but also because with my luck, I'd probably end up busted and it wouldn't be worth it anyway. Dani could skip school and charm her way out of it, but to my knowledge, she never has. I can't remember a day since high school started that she hasn't been at school—all that cheerleading must keep her healthy, I guess. And, what if she has a big assignment due today, or a test? I don't want to be responsible for her missing something important and having to make it up later.

So, scared as I am, I'm going to school. If today's a complete disaster, I'll try to skip tomorrow.

I open Dani's walk-in closet and the door to the hallway before finally hitting the jackpot with Door Number Three—her adjoining bathroom. After stepping under the spray in a shower that could probably fit four people with plenty of elbow room, I think back to early eighth grade and the one sleepover Ellie, Janey, and I attended here, and the memories rush back in a flood stronger than Dani's rainstorm shower head.

Like Janey and I, Dani and her family originally moved to The Gales subdivision after the Rocky Ridge buyout. But when we were in seventh grade, Dani's dad was named vice-president of Liberty Federal Bank and the Maguires built a huge new home in the Grand Prairie subdivision on the southeast end of town. By the time Dani invited Janey, Ellie, and me over to her new house, with the hot tub, in-ground pool, and greenhouse in the backyard and a game room with a pool table, ping pong table, and pinball machine in the basement, things were already falling apart for our little clique. Mrs. Douchette had died about six months earlier and so Janey was always quiet and sullen, and Dani had started spending time with Lexi and Alissa, who also lived in monstrous houses in Grand Prairie.

About halfway through the evening, Janey called her dad to pick her up because she felt too guilty leaving him home alone. After Janey left, Dani suggested we do makeovers, and we ended up on the floor in this palatial bathroom I'm in now, painting each other's faces with Dani's newly acquired array of foundations, shadows, and lipsticks.

"You should see Lexi Grayson's makeup collection," I remember Dani saying. Ellie rolled her eyes at me; Dani had already brought up Lexi and Alissa several times that evening. "It's like she cleaned out a bunch of department store counters or something. It's incredible."

"Cool," I responded with somewhat fake enthusiasm. Ellie didn't say anything.

"Maybe you don't remember, but Lexi lost a bunch of weight last summer," Dani said directly to Ellie. "She told me how she did it. It was this whole big diet and exercise plan her mom found in some magazine. I can find out if you want."

There are some moments in life when you can see what's coming as clearly as a train rushing right at you. And sometimes, your feet are tied to the tracks and you can't get out of the way.

That's what watching Ellie's face was like as Dani mentioned Lexi's weight loss—the train was barreling toward me, but I couldn't get off the tracks fast enough.

"Why would I be interested in how Lexi Grayson lost weight?" Ellie asked, folding her arms across the front of her baggy gray sweatshirt.

"Well..." Dani licked her lips, and I had a sense she could now see the train coming for her, too, and was every bit as stuck as I was. "You know, I've always thought if you just lost a little bit of weight and maybe wore some makeup sometimes..."

As I stand here now, droplets of hot water from Dani's shower dripping down my body, I realize that conversation—or whatever it was—between Dani and Ellie was the tipping point for our little group. Ellie, Janey, and I didn't care about Dani's big house and new money our own families would likely never have, so long as we all stayed friends. But Dani clearly wanted her old friends to be more like her new ones, and Ellie, at least, wasn't having it. And I couldn't hang out with Dani and her new friends and keep Janey and Ellie—not like Dani, Lexi, and Alissa would have had me, anyway. I was too brainy, too plain, too dumpy, too...average.

I could never be perfect.

Stepping out of the shower, I grab one of the plush blue towels hanging on a rack next to the door and wrap up my new body before wringing out my hair—Dani's hair—over the sink. With the palm of my hand, I wipe a swath of steam away so I can assess my new self in the mirror, mostly savoring that for the first time in five years, I don't have a dusting of acne on my chin. I'm also struck by how normal I look, standing here with blonde hair darkened by dampness and wearing no makeup or designer clothes.

I guess even Perfect isn't something that magically happens; it's built on a relatively normal foundation.

Since I can't go to school naked, wet, and makeup free, I need to build on this foundation until I've transformed into the daytime perfection of Dani Maguire. But as I frantically open drawers and cabinets in the vanity, I realize I have no clue how to start the transformation. Every day, I view the final product—I don't get to see the process.

"Well, here goes nothing," I mutter, grabbing a bottle of keratin oil from its perch on the vanity and spraying it through my hair. Then I take the hair dryer from underneath the sink, plug it in, turn it on high, and start waving it around a few inches from my head like I have any idea what I'm doing. The Rachel Lord version of hair-styling involves stepping out of the shower and letting my hair dry into a limp brown mass at my collarbone before gathering it into a ponytail or braid. If I'm going somewhere special, I might wear my hair down and use a curling iron or hot rollers to shake things up. I'm not used to putting much effort into my appearance, and even if I did, I would probably never look as polished as Dani.

As I dry Dani's hair, I try to remember how she, Lexi, and Alissa came to be known as "The Perfects," and I can't call up a specific memory. Like everything with them, the name just sort of came out of nowhere, everyone accepted it as perfectly normal, and it stuck. By the end of freshman year, Dani had ascended from junior varsity cheerleading to the varsity squad, Alissa had been elected president of the sophomore class, and Lexi had risen to the presidency of the Spirit Squad faster than anyone in history. They were all dating juniors and were the only freshmen who went to prom that year, while the rest of us sat at home wishing our lives were so magical.

Clearly, Dani, Lexi, and Alissa were well on their way back then to Ridgeview High School's version of teenaged perfection. And even though we supposedly disdained the Perfects' existence, Ellie, Janey, and I would sometimes refer to ourselves as The Brunettes, the less-than-perfect version of The Perfects. But that joke went out the window this past winter break when Ellie and Janey both dyed their hair in what they termed their final act of rebellion before graduation. I, being the dork I am, decided to clear my plan to dye my hair bright red with my mom first, and she swore she'd ground me until college if I followed Janey and Ellie down the dyed-hair path. So, for the time being, I'm the last Brunette.

Or, at least I was. Now, I'm a honey blonde with smooth, but rather flat, hair hanging down my back. I click the "off" switch on the hair dryer and put it away before running my fingers through my new locks a few times. Apparently, Dani doesn't just wave a hair dryer around for a few minutes until the magic happens—even her hair requires a little more effort. I'm just not sure what that effort is. A curling iron? Hot rollers? An incantation to the gods?

What time is it, anyway?

Rushing into Dani's room, still in my towel, I desperately search for something to tell me how much time I have left before school. Luckily, my search ends quickly when I spot Dani's phone in a pink, jewel-encrusted protective case on her desk. I activate the lock screen to find I've only got about a half-hour before school, so whatever I've done to Dani's hair needs to work for today. I still have clothes and makeup to worry about.

I lower the phone back to the desk, but before I can slide my fingers out from under it, I get an idea, a tiny pang of guilt surging through me at what I'm about to do. My thumb hovers over the home button, part of me expecting nothing to happen when I press down.

The home screen activates. Of course, it does—the phone recognizes Dani's thumbprint, which is now mine.

I swear to myself I won't look through her email or texts. Not yet. But if I'm going to live through a school day as Dani Maguire, I need to be at least a little bit prepared.

Despite her outward appearance as someone who floats through life as if everything fell into place with the touch of a magic wand, Dani's a bit of a planner and was even before her time as a Perfect. And I'm banking on the fact her love of organization hasn't disappeared over the last few years.

It hasn't. I open her calendar and discover every class and activity laid out in color-coded blocks, which is going to make my day so much easier since I won't look like a brain-dead idiot wondering what class to go to next.

I also learn I have cheerleading practice after school.

Sinking down into Dani's desk chair, I close my eyes and let out a deep sigh.

"Yea team," I mutter to myself.

Chapter 6

I forgot the Maguires own a dog. Merlin, if I'm remembering his name correctly, is a beautiful black lab who was little more than a puppy the last time I was here. But now he's fully grown, dark and sleek, and the size of a small bear cub.

And he's having exactly none of me right now.

If I've learned anything in my hours of volunteering at the county animal shelter, it's that animals—dogs, especially—are about a billion times more perceptive than humans and can always tell when something's wrong.

And Merlin takes one look at me, with my hair not quite like Dani usually wears hers and my makeup that's not how Dani would apply it and my outfit that's probably the most Dani-like thing about me because it's hard to mess up with the wealth of options in her closet, and he senses something's rotten in the Maguire household.

At first, he merely barks at me. But the more I move around the foyer, putting on Dani's stylish winter parka and tucking her skinny jeans into her fur-lined boots and struggling with a messenger bag full of school stuff and a gym bag full of cheerleading stuff, the more agitated Merlin becomes. He mixes a few threatening growls in with his barks as he leans forward on his paws, seemingly ready to attack.

"Merlin, it's me. It's Dani."

Merlin isn't buying what I'm selling. I don't blame him—I'm not sure I buy myself as Dani, either.

So, there's two of us I'm not fooling. Can't wait to get to school and try to put one over on the entire student body.

"Okay...Merlin?"

He bares his teeth and growls.

"I'm not Dani. You seem to get that. I'm Rachel Lord. I was over here once when you were a puppy. I'm guessing you don't remember, but..."

Merlin barks and backs up just enough for me to ease my way through the living room, into the kitchen, and toward the door to the garage, where I'm assuming Dani's parked her hybrid since it wasn't out by the curb.

"We'll talk later," I yell out to Merlin as I slip through the door. The silver hybrid sits at the far end of the otherwise empty three-car garage, and once I'm inside with my stuff—Dani's stuff—in the backseat, I quickly find the garage door opener and take a minute to familiarize myself with the dashboard and other instruments before I turn on the engine and back down the driveway.

"I can do this," I mutter aloud as I put the car in drive on Rolling Hills Lane and head out of the subdivision, having to remind myself how to get to school from this end of town.

I'm naturally right-handed, but if I slow down and think things through, I can do some things with my left hand—eating, picking things up, even writing sometimes. So, I tell myself today will be like going through life only being able to use my left hand. I'll need to be slower, more deliberate, and I'll have to think about everything before I do it. But, after all, it's not like I woke up on another planet. I'm still in boring Ridgeview going to my boring high school. Things will be pretty much the same, other than the fact I'll be experiencing boring Ridgeview and boring Ridgeview High in someone else's body, the body of one of the most popular girls in town.

Once at school, I stop myself from pulling into my usual parking space and take a second, slowing down as I do, to remember where Dani's parking space is in the senior lot. The car behind me honks, and as if the sound triggers my memory, I realize Dani parks between Justin Brimley, who is Alissa Lofton's boyfriend, and Lexi Grayson. I ease the hybrid into the space between Justin's and Lexi's respective black SUVs and shut off the engine, taking care to pull my hood over my head before getting out to retrieve my stuff—Dani's stuff—from the backseat. Thankfully, it's freezing, so everyone has hats and scarves on or coat hoods over their heads. One thing about winter in Missouri—you're never sure who anyone is when they're bundled up, so I can bank on at least a few more minutes to myself.

I shuffle toward the side entrance of the main building, dreading the fact that once I'm inside I'll be forced to remove my hood and interact with others as Dani Maguire. As I follow a group of freshmen through the double doors, I want so badly to fade into the crowds swarming the halls and be anonymous, a feeling Dani's probably never had in her life. Everyone will recognize me—Dani, I mean—after I lower my hood, but I still hunch down into my coat collar, trying to make myself smaller and hopefully invisible.

And...I lose the hood.

"Dani! Hey—wait up."

Wow. Invisible lasted about five seconds.

A hand slips into the crook of my arm, and I'm immediately assaulted by the sound of Lexi Grayson's high-pitched voice:

"You didn't text me back last night, you whore. Why didn't you text me? Were you and Luke busy having some 'quality time?'" She flutters her eyelids at me.

"Um...no," I say, reeling from being called a whore first thing in the morning...or for the first time ever, actually. Having a nearly non-existent social life sort of takes the whole "whore" thing off the table, and even so, Ellie, Janey, and I don't throw that word around as a term of endearment, even as a joke.

Lexi tilts her head at me and raises her eyebrows, clearly waiting for me to elaborate on why I didn't text her. I realize I have no idea what Dani was doing last night, so I hope I'm not about to get caught in a lie already.

I also realize I have no idea where Dani...is right now, in a manner of speaking. And I have no clue at what point last night my consciousness took over her body, if that is in fact what's going on.

"I was just busy...that's all," I mumble.

"Whatever." Lexi flings some of her golden-brown hair off her shoulders and lets go of me as we come to a stop in front of her locker. "I kind of like what you've got going on with your hair this morning," she says, taking off her coat. She hangs it up and then waves her hands in the air in front of my face in a circular motion as if she's casting a spell. "You've got a...natural vibe today."

Lexi's bite on the word natural implies she isn't necessarily giving me a compliment, my fears about not getting Dani's look quite right coming true.

"And why are you all hunched over like an old lady or something?" Lexi piles on, and I sigh. Hearing Dani's voice in my head and imagining her demeanor, I stand up straighter and flick my hand through the air as if I'm batting away Lexi's critiques.

"Oh, you know, I'm just tired. No big deal," I say, uttering my longest set of words so far as Dani, and hearing her voice embody my made-up thoughts nearly knocks me back, but I don't let on to Lexi. "I thought I'd dial things down with the hair and makeup today, you know—try out a new look."

"Not sure if it's working for you, but whatever." Lexi moves right from her blunt statement to directing her attention down the hall. "Hey, chickie!" I turn slightly to discover she's yelling at Alissa. "Come check out our girl. She might be ill."

Alissa, her dark brunette locks with coppery highlights pulled into a curly ponytail at the base of her long neck, shoves her coat into her locker, gathers up some books, and flounces over to the two of us. "You know, you do look a little pale," she points out as she stares at me.

I put my hand on Alissa's shoulder and lean in. Alissa's a lot shorter than Dani, and I've noticed Dani literally talks down to her most of the time. I lower my head as I speak, thankful my hours of "obsessing," as Ellie would say, over Dani and the Perfects are paying off for me now.

"I'm fine, Lis. Just experimenting with some new makeup techniques. But, apparently, somebody doesn't like the new style." I narrow my eyes at Lexi, who simpers at me.

My observations of the Perfects over the years have taught me Lexi and Dani are perpetually locked in a battle to be the Alpha of the pack—the most Perfect of the Perfects, so to speak. Alissa, on the other hand, is a true sidekick, a follower, a backup dancer working her moves slightly behind the superstars. And while Alissa has always seemed perfectly fine following Dani's and Lexi's leads, Lexi strikes me, especially over the last few minutes, as desiring a solo role in the spotlight.

"I just thought maybe this wasn't the best look for you," Lexi says, adopting a concerned tone that doesn't strike me as entirely sincere. "It's winter. You don't want to look too washed out."

"Good point," I say as if I know what the hell I'm talking about. But I don't have time to contemplate the finer points of eyeshadow and blush because strong arms circle my waist from behind, and Luke Nostrand plants a kiss on my cheek and whispers "Hey, beautiful" in my ear.

My heart skips several beats, but not because I'm experiencing pangs of love and affection. What I'm feeling is fear—sheer, unadulterated fear. I'd forgotten I'd be required to deal with Luke Nostrand and all the things he probably does to Dani's body on a regular basis, things no one's done to mine save for an awkward makeout session with Rick Delacourt after a few too many wine coolers at a party last Valentine's Day.

My experience with Rick ended with me running to the bathroom to throw up. Luke will be lucky if his first physical encounter with the new Dani Maguire doesn't end the same way.

"Good morning," I mumble back to him.

"Walk you to your locker? These halls aren't safe."

I smile. "How chivalrous." And we barely pick up our feet to move to Dani's locker, just a few away from Lexi's. Reaching out to the built-in combination lock, I spin the dial in the direction of the first number of my combination without thinking.

My combination—not Dani's.

Shit. I don't know Dani's locker combination.

Luke watches me with a curious expression as I step back from the locker and fumble around in Dani's bag. "Just need to check my phone...for messages," I explain.

"Um...okay," Luke says through a little bit of a chuckle. I find Dani's phone and hope she has her locker combination in a note somewhere, but as I'm searching, Luke reaches out for the lock and spins it toward three different numbers before opening the locker door.

"Oh, thanks." I hope the relief I feel inside isn't obvious.

"Always happy to be of service." Luke kisses my forehead, and I hide my embarrassment by sticking my face inside my locker.

Or, I guess I'm hiding my embarrassment. Maybe external manifestations of internal feelings aren't a thing when your internal and external don't match. I sense the familiar burn of a blush rising in my cheeks, but without a mirror, I can't tell if the blush is showing up on my face.

I've been aware of being trapped inside Dani Maguire for less than three hours, and I'm already exhausted from overanalyzing things.

I take off my coat and gather up books for my classes as Luke leans against the locker next to mine and rubs his hand up and down my upper arm, my body thrilling at his touch. But I wonder how much of my reaction is me and how much of it is Dani.

I hadn't expected to find myself in the throes of an existential crisis before noon, but I guess that's just one of the hazards of inhabiting someone else's body.

"You know, my parents are going out to dinner with the Abramsons tonight," Luke says in a husky voice. "Those dinners always go late. You should come over and study."

His eyes sparkle as he says "study," leaving no doubt the word is code for something having nothing to do with homework.

Okay. We're going to get right to the sex, then. Awesome. I guess I have that to look forward to.

But, first, I need to get through this day. Before I can answer Luke's invitation, Alissa comes over and says, "Hurry up, or we'll be late for homeroom," and she and Lexi rush ahead of Luke and me as I slam the locker door. We walk a few feet to Mrs. Markham's room and I pause before entering, expecting time to slow down and the imaginary wind machine to kick up, blowing what Lexi has deemed my "natural" hair about my head like a wispy blonde cloud.

Instead, Lexi and Alissa walk into the classroom at regular speed like normal people, one boot-clad foot in front of the other, and Luke and I do the same. My hair doesn't move a millimeter, and while a few people stare at us, most of the students in the room are too preoccupied with their own conversations to pay the Perfects much attention. I take Dani's usual seat behind Lexi and glance over my shoulder. Ellie isn't in the back row and neither is Janey, although I hope somebody found her last night and she'll be rushing in here any second now.

The bell rings, a few seconds tick by, and the crackle of the public address system coming to life in the main office floats through the loudspeaker above the classroom door...

No Janey. No Ellie. I'd hoped seeing either one or both of them would help ground me on this morning when I'm feeling so untethered to reality. And even though I wouldn't have the first clue how to explain to either of them what's happened, just having them here would have helped.

Someone clears his throat, the sound amplified and tinny-sounding over the speaker, and like trained animals, we all stop our conversations just as Principal Kennerly says "Good morning, Ridgeview Raiders. As you're aware, we're on a shortened schedule today due to the late start, so each class period will end eight minutes earlier than usual."

"Thank god," Lexi mutters. Mrs. Markham shushes her, and she turns around to me and rolls her eyes. I give her a tiny smile in return.

"Before we turn to club and activity announcements, I'm afraid I must share some unfortunate news with all of you. One of our seniors, Rachel Lord, was gravely injured in a car accident last night."

Several people gasp, and a low rumble of conversation spreads throughout the room. Mrs. Markham stage-whispers "People...listen!"

"I'm sure most of you know Rachel from yearbook staff or the Raiders Spirit Squad, or from the many volunteer activities she's organized for the Ridgeview Service Club, from bake sales to raise money for refugees to letter writing campaigns on behalf of Amnesty International. Regardless, I'm aware hearing this news will be difficult for many of you, and the counseling office staff will be available throughout the day for any student who needs to talk. Rachel's family will be updating the administration when they have additional news about her condition. Now, I'd like to hand things over to Brittany Morse, who has some announcements about the basketball game tomorrow night..."

I squirm in my seat, uncomfortable with hearing Kennerly talk about me in such glowing terms as if I'm not sitting right here.

Which, of course, I'm not.

But my mind is here. My eyes flit around the room, observing my classmates as they stare at the loudspeaker in disbelief and whisper to each other with concerned expressions.

I'm here, I want to tell them. I'm okay.

But no one would believe me because my body, what they're used to as being Rachel Lord, is somewhere else. And it's gravely injured, whatever that means...

Chapter 7

Morning announcements end with no mention of Janey, and relief washes over me. If she were missing, Kennerly probably would have said something...

But she still doesn't rush into homeroom, out of breath and full of apologies to Mrs. Markham, her combat boots untied and her hair in a wild mess as if she had to fight off a tornado just to get to school. I remind myself Ellie's not here, either, and so I imagine they're both at the hospital, waiting for news about me.

But I'm right here...

"Are you okay, hon?" Alissa reaches out and grabs my arm.

"Yeah...I..."

"Because you look a little messed up."

Lexi stretches in her desk, raising her arms to the ceiling and arching her back. "She was, like, friends with Rachel Lord years ago, remember?" she says through a yawn. "The whole thing is really sad. Rachel's kind of a 'blah' human being, but she's a nice person. Nobody deserves to get hurt the way she did."

How generous of you, Lexi, I think, struggling not to let my disgust show on my face, assuming it even would. Again, I'm not quite sure how the whole "internal feelings versus external manifestations" thing works yet.

"Yeah. It's just really sad," I say, before realizing I might be able to use my strange situation to my advantage. "Did you guys hear anything about her accident? I didn't."

Alissa shakes her head. "No. Just now is the first I've heard about it."

"Me, too," Lexi adds.

Luke's warm hand covers mine on the desktop. "I've got English with Cody Trenton," he says. "I'll try to get some details."

Cody's dad is the local police chief, so if anyone at school has information about what happened to me, it's Cody. I almost ask Luke if he can fish for details about Janey, too, but I stop myself, realizing Dani wouldn't be aware of anything about Janey's situation yesterday.

The bell rings and everyone rushes toward the hall. Luke keeps his hand in mine until we're outside the room, but even when he lets go, I stay close to him because it seems like something Dani would do.

"Um..." he begins, stopping in the middle of the hall. I stop as well, and people flow around us on either side like a stream parting around a rock.

"What?"

Lexi's voice pierces the low hum of noise in the crowded hallway. "Uh, Dani? Did you eat a giant bowl of stupid for breakfast this morning?"

I turn in the opposite direction to find her standing just a few feet away with Alissa. Lexi puts her hand on her skinny hip and juts it out, a few people almost crashing into her as she does.

"Uh..." I look back and forth from Luke to Lexi, confused.

"Media arts is this way," Lexi says, jerking her head down the hallway in the direction of the library. "I understand how you'd rather spend the entire day with your lover, but I don't think Mr. Henchey would be on board if you cut class."

That's right—English is my first period class. Dani has media arts.

"Later," Luke says, giving me a kiss on the forehead. I scurry down the hall to meet up with Lexi and Alissa, and Alissa gives me a warm smile.

"I get it," she says. "The news about Rachel Lord...the late start...everything's kind of weird today."

"You have no idea," I mutter.

I get through the morning with relatively few mishaps. In second period English, Ms. Tankersly calls on me—calls on Dani—and I completely whiff. I'm so fascinated with writing Dani's name over and over in my notebook in Dani's handwriting, which is now sort of a hybrid of my feathery script and her giant bubble letters, that I forget to respond.

"Dani?" Ms. Tankersly says.

Alissa reaches across the aisle and shakes my shoulder. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she whispers, her pleasant demeanor from before media arts all used up, I guess. "Answer the question."

I jerk my head up as if I've woken from a deep sleep. "Um...I'm sorry. I didn't hear what you said."

Mrs. Tankersly frowns at me. "Obviously. Daydream on your own time, Ms. Maguire."

Thankfully, she moves on to someone else and I'm off the hook—for now. I've got to be more careful if I'm going to pull this off.

Luckily, Dani's helped me out in one area—she did her homework last night in the few classes requiring her to turn assignments in on paper, and so I don't need to come up with an excuse as to why I'm behind. I also luck out that no other teachers call on me after English, although I still need to remind myself to respond when my classmates or fellow Perfects call me "Dani."

"Sorry," I say to people's bewildered expressions when the silence between them saying my name and my response becomes oddly long. "I'm just not awake this morning, I guess." And I flash Dani's dazzling smile and toss her hair, hoping her usual awesomeness is enough to distract from the fact I'm just a Dani Maguire imitation and not the real thing.

By lunchtime, I'm exhausted. Pretending to be someone I'm not, even someone as fabulous as Dani Maguire, is taking a lot out of me. I drag myself from Dani's history class to the cafeteria, where Lexi and Alissa are waiting outside the double doors.

"Where were you, bitch?" Lexi says, but her voice is only slightly annoyed, so I guess "bitch," in this case, is a term of endearment in the same way "whore" was this morning. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

"Uh...I had to talk to Mr. Biondi about something after class," I lie, because I'm not sure where I was supposed to be. The Perfects must always meet in the same place before lunch, and I don't know where that place is.

"Well, let's get some food," Alissa says. "I skipped breakfast and I'm starving."

"You could stand to skip a few meals," Lexi says, looking Alissa up and down. "You're really packing on the poundage this winter."

I drop my bag into Dani's usual seat at the Perfects' table at the back of the cafeteria and try not to appear shocked by Lexi's attack on Alissa. Alissa's maybe a size two at most, and I'm guessing she'd weigh about a hundred and ten pounds even if she stuffed rocks in the pockets of her skinny jeans. Wherever she's packing on this winter poundage Lexi speaks of, it's not obvious.

"It's the sweater, whore," Alissa fires back. She's wearing a heavy, rust-colored cowl-necked sweater that compliments her hair and makes her deep brown eyes pop. "I'm trying to stay warm. You know I'm always cold."

"Whatever." Lexi tucks some hair behind her ear. "Dani, back me up on this."

I remind myself of Dani's and Lexi's struggles to be the Alpha in this little arrangement and use my status to come to Alissa's defense instead. "Alissa's fine, but I'd be watching the size of my ass until spring if I were you," I say, shooting her disdainful glare. "You're going to need your own zip code if you're not careful."

"Oooh...burn," Alissa sings.

"Whatever. I need food. Let's get up front before the line gets too long," Lexi says, a tiny shadow of hurt flickering across her face.

I've always liked Alissa better than Lexi—Alissa's just kind of harmless and ditzy while Lexi's straight-up mean—and so laying a smackdown on Lexi feels good.

And I hate liking how good it feels. Being mean isn't me—Rachel-me, I mean.

Lexi and Alissa hang back and allow me to take the lead in walking to the front of the cafeteria. I've witnessed this routine enough over the last four years to play my part without hesitation—the Perfects smile and wave at people as they use the main aisle between sets of tables as their own personal runway, and once they've reached the food line, they cut in to stand with their boyfriends. On a normal day, Janey, Ellie, and I would be sitting at our usual table by the windows groaning in disgust at the Perfects' display of cafeteria ownership. But today, as I stroll down the aisle smiling and waving to some of the junior cheerleaders, I take a second to glance over at the table where I should be. And in a weird, out-of-body moment, I'm almost surprised not to find myself there, but I'm even more surprised Janey and Ellie aren't there, either.

I swallow hard. It's like my little group of friends has been...erased somehow. And I don't understand why.

Mustering up another smile, I fall into Luke's arms in the food line as I've seen Dani do a million times. He, Justin Brimley, and Dean Somers are about two-thirds of the way through the line, and as Luke gives me yet another kiss on the forehead, I glance over his shoulder and find a few of the people stuck in line behind us are giving our group some serious stink-eye.

Guess my friends and I aren't the only ones who are disgusted with the Perfects' daily cafeteria antics. I almost forget and apologize to Win Tannen and his girlfriend Louisa Alvarez right behind us, but at the last second, I flash them a brilliant Dani smile and turn around.

Once we're all back at the table, Luke cracks open his soda can and taps me on the leg. "Hey, I've got some news about Rachel Lord. Cody told me she went off the road near the Rocky Ridge Lake bridge last night. Her car was upside down in the water when the cops found her. Once they got her stabilized at Ridgeview Medical, they airlifted her to a hospital in St. Louis County, and I guess she's in a coma."

"Oh," is what I say, but what I want to do is yell out A coma? I'm in a coma?

"I wonder what she was doing out by the lake?" Alissa asks, sneaking some fries from Justin's tray. "I mean, there's, like, nothing out there."

"Going to Donaldston, maybe?" Justin says. The road past Rocky Ridge Lake is the shortest distance between Ridgeview and the next town over, but most people take more populated main roads to get there rather than go by the Rocky Ridge toxic waste site.

"People from Donaldston don't even go to Donaldston," Lexi says.

Everyone at the table laughs—Donaldston is kind of a nothing town—and even though I join in, Luke senses something's a little off with me.

"You okay?" He places his hand on my shoulder. "You seem kind of sad."

"I'm just thinking about my—" I catch myself. "Her parents. And she has a little sister, too. I mean, I can't even imagine what they're going through right now."

Oh, god—my family. I need to be with my family...

"You know, maybe it's weird and maybe it's not, but her friends aren't here, either," Luke says. "Ellie and Janey. Janey wasn't at school yesterday, either, and Rachel seemed kind of concerned about it when I talked to her before English yesterday morning."

"Why were you talking to Rachel Lord?" Lexi asks.

Wow—now that I'm forced to spend time with her, I'm learning Lexi's even more awful than I thought.

"Because I'm a decent human being?" Luke fires back. "Rachel's a good person and she's nice. And I'll talk to whoever I want whenever I want."

I can't tell if it's the Dani in me or the me in me who's smiling right now.

"He sure told you, babe," Dean, a standard-issue meathead linebacker, says to Lexi, who snaps back "You know, if you were any kind of boyfriend, you'd take my side over Luke's."

"Geez, Lex—pull your panties out of your crotch. I'm just joking around," Dean says. This time, Lexi doesn't say anything but merely frowns and exhales so loudly I can hear it on the other side of the table. Those two must have an awesome relationship.

"Janey...is she that Janey person with the blue hair who works at Smiley Joe's?" Alissa asks. Janey's barista gig is about the only way anyone at school would be aware she even exists anymore.

"Yeah," Luke says. "Janey Douchette."

"She makes a really good cappuccino," Alissa says as if making a good cappuccino is a vital life skill.

"She's kind of a weird chick, though," Dean says through a mouthful of fries. Lexi is such a lucky girl.

"She's a total freak is what she is," Lexi says, stabbing her fork into her salad. "She walks around school all day like she's a ghost or something. She won't even look at or smile at anyone."

Without thinking, I let Rachel slip out.

"Lexi, shut up."

Everyone at the table stares at me, mouths open, but I keep going.

"Janey's had a rough life. You wouldn't get it."

I tell myself to stop talking so I don't say something I might regret.

"I can't believe you're defending Janey Douchette," Lexi says, her smile dripping with evil. "What happened to 'Eww—she's so poor?' 'Eww—she's such a weirdo?'"

Damn, Dani...you suck...

I exhale and try to muster up a typically-Dani Maguire response.

"She's still poor and she's still a weirdo," I say, hating myself. "But she's friends with Rachel Lord and she's probably having a hard time right now with everything going on. Cut her some slack."

Lexi rolls her eyes, mutters her go-to word—"Whatever"—and drags her fork through her salad. Luke, probably sensing we need to move on to less controversial topics, asks the group "So, what are we doing after the game tomorrow night?"

Dani's friends discuss possible plans while I retreat inside my head, the only place where I'm still me, and whisper a silent apology to Janey while hoping she's with Ellie and she's okay.

Chapter 8

Even though Janey, Ellie, and I have always thought of Ridgeview as sort of a clueless, backwards place to grow up and go to school, I've maintained my membership in the Ridgeview Raiders Spirit Squad for four years. My excuse to Janey and Ellie, who dropped out of Spirit Squad after freshman year in favor of artistic pursuits for Janey and musical pursuits for Ellie, was I was only doing it because some colleges like evidence of school or civic pride on applications.

In reality, though, I like Spirit Squad—going to football and basketball games is fun, and I've volunteered to go to both home and away games for some of the less popular teams, particularly because those usually involve girls' sports that don't get a ton of support around here.

And I like the fundraisers we do and the sense of community and learning all the goofy cheers...

Yes, I admit it—I'm a total dork.

But for once in my life, being a dork could actually pay off because learning all the cheers for Spirit Squad might help me fake my way through being a full-fledged varsity cheerleader this afternoon. Unfortunately, while I've memorized all the words to the cheers, what I'm less sure of are the moves. And as Dani Maguire, varsity cheerleading captain, I'm going to need to do both.

In the girls' locker room after school, I change into the tight yoga pants, sports bra, and cheer shoes Dani had packed in her gym bag before she went...wherever it is she went, and I try to respond to my teammates' questions and comments with as few words as possible.

"The halftime routine we've worked up this week is our best yet," says Nikki Bates, a tiny junior who's tying her shoes on the bench across from me.

"Yup."

I have no idea what the halftime routine looks like. The squad does a different one for nearly every home game.

"It will be our best routine if we can tighten up our basket tosses," Lori Ritchey adds with a smirk. "That whole sequence in the middle? Our tosses are, like, a half-second off and it messes up our catches. If our bases could just get their shit together, these would be some of our best stunts yet."

"Sure," I mumble. I don't understand most of what Lori's just said. We studied bases in chemistry last year, but I assume that knowledge won't help me now. And I can maybe guess at what a basket toss is, but doing one is another story—assuming I'm supposed to be doing a basket toss at all. Maybe I do something else?

I am so screwed.

As I wind my hair into a high ponytail, I flip through various escape plans in my head. Fake menstrual cramps? No—never used to get me out of gym class, so I doubt it would work here. Say I pulled a hamstring? Considering I'm not exactly sure where my hamstrings are located, I probably couldn't pull that off. Yank the fire alarm? Risky and illegal, and since I usually don't do risky and illegal things when in my own body, I'm not sure I'd be comfortable doing them while in someone else's...

So, okay...I can come up with only one thing that might work. I stand up quickly and start to wobble in a circular motion at my ankles, keeping my feet planted in place.

"Dani?" Nikki steps toward me as my hands fly to my eyes and I stop moving. "Are you okay?"

"Whoa," I lie. "I'm just a little...I'm not sure..."

"Here...you should sit..."

I move the heel of my hand from my left eye and see Nikki reaching out to steady me, so it's now or never...

Before Nikki can touch me, I drop to the floor like I'm nothing but dead weight, careful to land on my shoulder and not hit my head while shutting my eyes to the world around me.

"Oh, crap—she passed out," Lori says. "Somebody go get Mrs. Pond."

Someone's shaking me and lightly slapping my face to wake me up, and it takes everything in me to keep faking and not yell "Cut it out!"

Finally, I hear Mrs. Pond's voice at the end of the row of lockers asking, "Where is she?" and I decide my acting debut has gone on long enough. I open my eyes to a gaggle of cheerleaders hovering over me, their circle widening to include the cheer team sponsor.

"Dani?" Mrs. Pond asks. "What happened?"

Multiple hands help me to my feet and then down to the bench where Mrs. Pond, in her forest green nylon Ridgeview Raiders warm-ups, sits down next to me.

"I think I just stood up too fast or something. I'm kind of lightheaded."

"Did you eat today?"

"Yes."

"Did you hit your head?"

"No."

Mrs. Pond asks me a few more questions and puts me through a modified concussion protocol before determining I'm going to survive.

"You seem fine, but you should sit out practice today," she says, putting a comforting hand on my shoulder. "I don't want you to push yourself."

That, and you don't want the threat of a lawsuit against the school district if something happens to me, I think to myself, but I say "Okay," aloud. "I'd like to stay and watch, though," I add. "I wouldn't feel right about not being here the day before a game. This is my squad."

"Of course. Only if you're feeling up to it, though."

"Yeah," I say.

"Okay, show's over, ladies," Mrs. Pond says to the gathered spectators behind us. "Hannah, you sub in for Dani today. Let's hit the gym."

The cheerleaders practice in the gym's balcony since the basketball teams need the full floor below. When there are no games or other activities going on, the custodians fold up the bleachers against the back wall, leaving plenty of floor space for the squad to work out their routines. Lori helps me up the stairs and carries my bags so I don't fall in my "weakened" condition, and for the duration of practice, I sit next to Mrs. Pond on a folding chair, filming the squad on Dani's phone as they run through their time-out routines and the big halftime show.

"I want to be able to watch later to check if the timing's off," I explain to Mrs. Pond. What I'm really doing, of course, is creating a film archive I can study tonight in case I can't figure out a way to avoid cheering at the game.

"What a good idea. Let me know tomorrow morning if you find anything and we can make some adjustments during warm-ups tomorrow night."

Crisis averted—for now, anyway. My little improv routine may have gotten me out of practice, but I'll need an award-worthy performance to avoid cheering at the game.

After practice, I fly out of the gym and to Dani's car, relieved to be alone for the first time all day. I'm about to start the engine when I hear my phone buzzing, and I reach in my bag to find a text from Luke:

Don't forget. My house at 6.

Sighing, I send back several kiss emojis. Half the girls in school would be thrilled for the chance to hook up with Luke Nostrand without consequences. But half the girls in school weren't friends with Dani Maguire once upon a time. And faking a cramp or pulling a hamstring in this instance would only be postponing my inevitable ethical dilemma.

I forget and drive halfway to my house before I correct myself and alter my course to Dani's. When I pull into the garage this time, I park next to a Range Rover that wasn't here this morning.

A parent. Awesome. I've spent all day barely passing as Dani to her friends and classmates, and now, I've got to pull one over on her parents.

I drag myself and my stuff to the door and walk inside. Mrs. Maguire sits at the kitchen island, her attention focused on a hardback book.

Wow. Okay. So, I don't even get five minutes to adjust or come up with a plan. We're going to jump right into the whole mother/daughter thing...

"Hi, Mom," I say with probably a little too much enthusiasm as I drop my bags on the floor.

Mrs. Maguire doesn't look up from her book and holds a finger in the air to silence me. I freeze in place, and she continues staring at the book as I wonder what exactly's going on.

"Okay." Mrs. Maguire looks up at me at last, pushing some of her bangs out of her face as she does. The rest of her hair, which is just a little darker than Dani's, is gathered into a tasteful knot at the base of her neck, and I'm nearly blinded by the diamond on her left hand I don't remember from several years ago. Mr. Maguire must have upgraded her wedding set after his promotion.

She closes the book with a thud and pushes it away. "Just needed to finish that chapter," she explains. "Book club at the Petersens' tonight. I don't know why I even bother—all it ever ends up being is wine and gossip and about five minutes of discussing the book."

As she laughs, I walk toward her and then stop when I'm about a foot away because I'm not sure what to do. Kiss her? Hug her? Give her a high five?

Luckily, Mrs. Maguire doesn't appear to notice I'm not showing any kind of affection, and she doesn't offer any to me, either. "Practice after school, right?" she says, swiveling around in her chair to face me as she runs her hands down her wool skirt.

"Yeah. The routines for tomorrow night should look great."

"That's nice." Mrs. Maguire takes a nail file from a leather bag at the edge of the counter and goes to work on a manicured tip. "I'll be leaving in about a half-hour. Prudie Jackson and I are meeting at Smiley Joe's before book club to go over plans for the hospital fundraiser. It's a wonder how I get myself involved in these things." She waves a dismissive hand in the air just as I've seen Dani do so many times. "There are plenty of frozen dinners, or I can leave you money for pizza if you'd rather do that."

"Um..." I shift uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Luke asked if I could come over to his house tonight, so I wanted to check if it was okay?"

Mrs. Maguire's mouth twists before she answers. "Of course, it's okay. Why wouldn't it be?"

"Well...I don't know...I just thought I'd ask in case you wanted me to stay home or something."

At my house, my parents make me ask permission before I go anywhere, even if it doesn't involve a guy—which it never does. I'm sensing things don't work the same way here.

"Why would I care if you want to go to Luke's? You know I go to book club on Thursday nights and won't be here anyway. And your father and I adore Luke."

"Yeah," I say. "But I thought maybe you wanted me to wait until Dad got home before I left."

Mrs. Maguire's mouth does the twisty thing again. "Your dad's in Columbia until tomorrow night. How did you forget?"

I point at her. "Yeah. Columbia. That's right."

"Are you okay?" she says, leaning forward and squinting at me. "You're acting strange. And your hair's flat. Why is your hair flat?"

I curse myself for not leaving my hair in a ponytail after practice. "Ran a little behind this morning. Got confused with the late start and overslept."

"You should have had me call you to make sure you were up," she sings, wagging a finger. "What did I say?"

"You were right, Mom."

Mrs. Maguire arches a penciled-in eyebrow. "Okay, something's definitely wrong with you because you never believe I'm right about anything. I hope you're not getting that flu going around. Maybe you should go lie down before you head over to Luke's."

Anything to get me out of this kitchen and away from this conversation. "What an excellent idea," I say in my most Dani-like way. I grab my bags and am about to head out of the kitchen when Merlin pads in from the living room.

Oh, shit.

He doesn't notice me at first as he heads for his food bowl just inside the entryway. But then he stops, sniffs the air, turns around, and starts barking as soon as he sees me.

"Hey, Merlin," I say, my greeting drowned out by his deep roo-roo-roo-roo.

"Merlin, my goodness—what's gotten into you?" Mrs. Maguire gets up to pet him, and he steps in front of her in a protective stance, still barking at me. "That's just Dani," she says to him in a baby voice. "We wuv our Dani, don't we, Merlin? That's right, we do." She reaches into a drawer and grabs a treat, which subdues Merlin long enough for me to slip past him into the living room. I hear Mrs. Maguire telling him "Who's a good boy? Why, Merlin's a good boy, that's who..."

I dart through the living room and up the stairs as quickly as I can, considering I'm weighed down by a messenger bag and a gym bag. Once I've reached the safety of Dani's room, I shut the door behind me and take Mrs. Maguire's suggestion, flopping down on the bed.

Does Dani get this worn out living her life or is my exhaustion a by-product of pretending to be her for a day?

My eyes grow heavy and I've almost drifted off to sleep when a tap on my bedroom door jerks me fully awake. "Dani? I'm leaving. Have fun at Luke's, okay?" Mrs. Maguire says through the closed door.

"Sure."

I wait, expecting her to open the door, but instead, I hear footsteps down the hallway and, a few minutes later, the sound of a car pulling out of the garage.

No kiss, no hug, no real goodbye—just "Have fun!"

I haven't been around the Maguires in years, and I don't really remember what Dani's relationship with her mother was like when we were still friends. But if I didn't know better, I'd say Mrs. Maguire gets along with the dog better than her own daughter.

Chapter 9

Luke lives only two blocks away, but I drive over to his house anyway. Not only is it still freezing out, but also Dani doesn't strike me as the walking type.

I park at the curb in front of the Nostrand house and head to the front door, where I ring the bell twice before Luke answers.

"You're ringing doorbells now?" he says with a snicker as he opens the door just enough to let me in but keep the cold out.

At first, I'm not sure how to respond, but then I get it—

Luke's parents aren't home. Luke and Dani have been dating for nearly two years. Dani would probably walk right into the house like she owned the place, doorbells be dammed.

Luke takes my coat as I say "Oh, you know—just trying to be polite for once."

"That's different," he teases.

I give him a playful, Dani-like smack in the shoulder as he hangs my coat up in the hall closet. "You're so awful, I don't even know why I still go out with you," I tell him.

"I do." He backs me up against the wall next to the closet door in a manner that's more sexy than threatening and presses his lips to mine.

Okay. We're getting right to it.

My heart's pounding, but my head tells me to relax and part my lips. When I do, Luke's tongue darts in, spars with mine for a few seconds, and pulls back out just before he steps away. He's giving me a strange look, the wrinkles in his forehead telling me he's confused about something.

"What?" I whisper.

"Um...nothing. Want something to drink?"

"Sure."

He takes my hand and leads me to a kitchen at the back of the house resembling something out of a gourmet cooking magazine. Shiny, dark wood cabinets flank stainless steel, restaurant- quality appliances, and a skylight shines natural light down on the large kitchen island in the middle of the room. I stand next to the island, running my finger along a groove between two of the white tiles on top, as Luke opens the fridge.

"We've got soda, juice, sparkling water..." He turns to me, his forehead wrinkles emerging once again. "You can sit down, you know."

"Yeah." I'm such an idiot, acting like a guest. "Yeah. Okay." I pull one of the barstools out from under the lip of the island and ease myself onto the leather seat.

"So, what's your poison?" Luke asks.

"My what?"

"What do you want to drink?"

"Um...soda's good."

I don't drink a lot of soda because of all the sugar and preservatives, but I've seen Dani drink enough diet soda over the years to be reasonably sure soda would be her drink of choice. Luke slides a can of diet across to me, and I pop open the tab and take a hearty sip without hesitation—hey, it's not my body I'm pouring crap into, right?

This soda tastes good. Like, really, really good. And I'm concerned. Am I going to start liking everything Dani likes now, food- and drink-wise? Is that how this works?

I sure hope Dani likes the veggie burritos at Smiley Joe's. I'm not sure I could go on knowing I'll never eat another Smiley Joe's veggie burrito.

Luke grabs a regular soda and sits down next to me at the kitchen island. "Are you feeling okay?" he asks, placing a hand on my knee.

No.

"Yeah. Why do you ask?"

"Just..." He cocks his head to the side as if he's studying me. "The way you were acting this morning and at lunch...I don't know. You haven't seemed like yourself all day."

You haven't seemed like yourself...I put my soda can down and stare at my muted reflection—Dani's reflection—in the tiles.

And for the first time today, I laugh.

It's Dani's laugh, a kind of delicate noise coming from the back of her throat rather than her stomach like my laugh would. Laughing is a release I must have needed because I feel better than I have since yesterday.

And I decide to take a risk because I need someone to help me through this. I don't have the first clue how to figure out what's happened to me, and while I'm adjusting to my new reality, I'm going to need an ally—someone who knows the truth and understands what makes Dani tick and can help me tick in the same way.

"Um...Dani?" Luke says, tightening his grip on my knee. "You're really freaking me out."

I calm down and take another swig from my soda can. "This soda is sooo good." I move Luke's hand from my knee to his and dive in. "You said I haven't seemed like myself all day. And you're right—it's because I'm not myself."

"Okay."

"I am quite literally not myself."

Luke's forehead wrinkles to the point I worry his face might cave in on itself.

"Then...who...are...you?"

Deep breath.

"I'm not sure what happened, but I'm Rachel Lord. I woke up this morning inside Dani's body."

My shoulders relax as if I've just shoved off an oppressive weight. Telling someone is such a relief.

Luke, on the other hand, seems anything but relieved. He takes the hand that was on my knee and places it on my forehead. "Well, you don't feel like you have a fever, but you should probably lie down anyway," he says.

I reach up and yank his hand off my skin. "Look, I get how crazy this sounds. But I'm Rachel—I swear."

"Dani...come on."

"You said yourself I haven't been acting like myself all day," I point out. "So, think about it—who have I been acting like?"

"I don't know, but not like you."

Okay. I obviously haven't been behaving in a very Rachel-like way today because I couldn't. I'll need to try another tactic.

"Um...ask me something only Dani would know. Maybe something about your relationship."

Luke gives me a wry smile. "There isn't anything about our relationship only you would know. You tell Lexi and Alissa everything."

Well, that's unfortunate.

"Think, Luke. There's got to be something."

"I don't...there isn't anything." He pauses. "And what would it prove anyway? I mean, if you couldn't answer the question, you could just be lying about not knowing. It wouldn't automatically prove you're Rachel Lord."

"Yeah. I guess that's true."

"I can't even believe we're having this conversation," Luke says almost under his breath before raising his voice again. "Are you sure you don't want to lie down?"

"I'm sure." If I can't get through to Luke that I'm Rachel, then at the very least, maybe I can get him to help me with something else. "I want to go to the hospital," I blurt out.

"You just said you didn't want to lie down, and you don't have a fever..."

I shake my head. "No, no. Sorry. I mean, I want to go visit...Rachel."

Luke's doing the worried-forehead thing again. "You and Rachel barely speak unless it's about math problems. I get this whole thing with her is weird and upsetting, but..."

"Please? I promise I'll feel better if we just go. Have you heard what hospital I'm...she's in?"

I'm shaking, and Luke places his hands on my upper arms to steady me.

"Yeah." He studies my face. "This really means that much to you?"

"It does."

He leans in and gives me a quick kiss on the lips. "Then we'll go."

Luke and I speed down the back roads toward the highway without saying much. Occasionally, I come up with a question he could ask me so I can prove I'm not Dani, and every time, he correctly points out I—Dani—could be lying about not knowing the answer.

"Ask me where you and Dani went on your first date." I try.

"Nope. See, because you'll just lie and say you have no idea. Doesn't prove anything." He steers his SUV down the exit ramp and onto the interstate. "I don't understand why you're doing this."

"Trying to prove to you I'm not Dani? Because I'm not, that's why."

He shifts his eyes from the road to me for the briefest second after making the merge. "Is this, like, some hysterical thing?" he says.

"Um...excuse me?"

"Not hysterical—sorry. I guess I meant...traumatic. Like when people get these weird reactions to traumas in their lives? Maybe you're responding to the fact you and Rachel used to be friends and now you're not and she's hurt and you're kind of...I don't know...guilty about it, I guess? And that's why you keep saying you're Rachel and not Dani."

I sigh and rest the edge of my forehead against the cool glass of the passenger window. Luke thinks I need my head examined—which I probably do, but not for the reasons he suspects—and I have no idea how to prove to him who I really am.

And then, out of nowhere, an idea hits me. I've been going about the whole "proof" thing all wrong. Instead of trying to prove I'm not Dani because I don't know things she would know, I need to prove I'm Rachel because I know things only I would know.

"Okay," I say to Luke, as I lift my head from the window. "I can show you I'm Rachel Lord, but we need to wait until we get to the hospital."

"Sure." Luke nods, his expression even. He's humoring me.

"I'm assuming my—I mean, Rachel's—parents are going to be at the hospital. If we talk to them, look for a necklace...my mom—Rachel's mom—wears this 'Number One' necklace. It's got a number sign-hashtag thing with the numeral one next to it."

"Yeah?" Luke prompts.

"My sister Jessica and I pooled our money and gave it to her for Mother's Day last year. She thought it was the greatest thing ever." I grin a bit at the memory. "We told her we bought it for her because she's the best mom ever, like, she's the 'number one' mom."

Luke side-eyes me once again, probably wondering why Dani would go to such lengths to make up a story about Rachel Lord's mother.

"Ask her about the necklace. She'll tell you the whole story about what it stands for and how she's the luckiest mom to have two daughters who are tied for number one as the best daughters in the whole world."

I grumble out of habit as I relate this story. After so many months, Mom's routine about the necklace has gotten a little worn out, but I'm happy Jessica and I totally scored with our Mother's Day gift, even if it means we'll likely never top it.

"Dani probably hasn't seen my mom in years," I point out. "Or, at the very least, she hasn't talked to her. There's no way Dani would have heard that story."

Luke's head moves up and down slowly in understanding. I wonder if he's a little afraid his girlfriend has gone off the deep end and he's going to have to leave her at the psych ward after they visit Rachel.

"Promise me you'll ask about the necklace."

"I promise," he assures me, and I hope if we do run into my mom, tonight isn't the night she's chosen to wear a high-collared sweater or a turtleneck.

Once at the hospital, Luke and I rush inside and find out from the woman at the information desk that the intensive care waiting room is on the third floor.

"You know, we might not be able to visit her." Luke takes my hand as we get into the elevator with an elderly couple. "Sometimes when people are in intensive care, at least at first, the doctors will only let family back to visit."

"I don't care. I just need to be here." I pause and take my eyes off the bank of numbers above the elevator doors. "How come you know so much about intensive care?"

"My grandpa, remember?"

"No."

His face crumples—I've wounded him. But because I'm Rachel and not Dani, I have no idea what happened with his grandfather and can't fake my way through it as I've done with everything else today.

"I'm sorry," I whisper as the doors open.

We step out and glance at a sign directing us to the right to find the intensive care waiting room, which turns out to be a large area with couches and matching aquamarine-colored chairs along with multiple televisions playing at low volume. The couches and chairs are all arranged around the TV sets as if to create several tiny living rooms, offering a bit of privacy to the gathered families. Luke and I pass a few family groups, some people asleep on the couches while others talk or stare glassy-eyed at some primetime show.

We walk all the way to the back of the waiting area before I spot someone familiar—Jessica, curled up in the fetal position on a couch as she sleeps, her long hair obscuring her mouth and nose and her dark gray coat draped over her like a blanket. I whip my head around, trying to locate my mom and dad, but I can't find them.

"Do you want to wait or..." Luke begins, but he's interrupted by a voice floating toward me from my other side:

"What are you doing here?"

I turn to find Ellie in the same clothes she had on yesterday, staring at me with red-rimmed eyes and an expression filled with disgust.

Chapter 10

I brush off Ellie's attitude and move toward her with the intention of giving her a hug. Then I remember what I look like right now and hold back.

"She wanted to come," Luke says, a note of apology in his voice.

Ellie ignores Luke and aims more venom at me. "After all these years, you felt the need to be here. That's rich, Dani," she says.

I want to scream "I'm not Dani!" but I bite my lip instead. Having just figured out how I might prove my identity to Luke—and I'm not sure my plan will even work—I can't begin to wonder how I'll convince Ellie who I really am.

"How...how is...Rachel?" I ask.

"Not like you care, but she's in a coma."

"Principal Kennerly mentioned that at school," Luke tells her. "Is it bad? I mean, of course, comas are bad because they're comas, but have the doctors given any more details?"

Ellie buries her hands in the front pockets of her jeans, and some of her purple hair falls forward into her eyes as she stares at the floor and not at us. "She nearly drowned. Her brain was deprived of oxygen..."

My brain is fine, I want to tell her. It's just...somewhere else right now.

Or, I guess it is. Maybe it's not. Maybe my brain is still inside my body, and only my consciousness made its way to Dani Maguire. But can my consciousness exist without my brain?

I hadn't expected to be dealing with so many philosophical questions at such a young age. Ignoring my thoughts, I turn my attention back to Ellie.

"The longer she's in a coma, the worse things will probably be when she wakes up...if she wakes up," Ellie continues. Her lower lip quivers a bit, and she looks up at Luke and me. "So, she needs to wake up soon, basically."

I want to say something to comfort her, but under the circumstances, Ellie would likely throw any sympathetic words back in my face. Luke, ever the nice guy, reaches out and pats Ellie's arm, while I notice my mom heading toward us from the waiting area entrance.

Mom. I want to run over and throw my arms around her and tell her what a terrible day I've had. And because she's my mom, she'd understand. "Don't worry, honey," she'd say in her typical-mom way. "It's weird and confusing being stuck in someone else's body right now, but we'll figure it out. And, no matter what happens, I love you."

I'd guess no mother in the history of the world has had to have the "sorry you're stuck in someone else's body" conversation with one of her kids. And even though I can't tell her what's going on with me, I want to throw my arms around her anyway.

Mom heads for us slowly, deliberately, her footsteps dragging with a lack of energy. Her face appears worn and haggard as if she hasn't slept for days, even though fewer than twenty-four hours have passed since my accident. As she draws near, I see she's makeup-free and dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans with a rip at the left knee, likely the first clothes she grabbed when she found out I was hurt.

"Hello," she says, her voice raspy from crying, I imagine, as she comes up to our little group. "Do I..."

Mom's eyes search both my face and Luke's for a second before recognition takes hold—on me, at least.

"Dani Maguire?"

"Hi, Mm..." I almost say the wrong "m" word. "Mrs. Lord."

"It's been so long," she says, and Ellie shoots me a hateful look my mom can't see. "You're so grown up now, I almost didn't recognize you...of course, you all are. You're all so grown up—you, and Rachel..."

Tears strain at the corners of her eyes, and Luke breaks the awkwardness by extending his hand for Mom to shake. "Luke Nostrand, Mrs. Lord. I'm in Rachel's class, too. We were all really sorry to hear what happened."

"Thank you, Luke. I appreciate that. We didn't expect any of Rachel's friends to come by so soon. They're only allowing family in to visit right now."

Since it must be a little weird to my mom that Luke and I are here, I ask myself What Would Dani Do to come up with an explanation.

"I'm here representing the senior class...I'm president."

Ellie shoots me another disgusted look.

"I wanted to come on behalf of Rachel's classmates to tell you we're thinking of her and to ask if there's anything we can do to help. We weren't sure if we could send flowers to intensive care..."

"That's so nice," Mom says, reaching out to place a hand on my shoulder, and I want to burst into tears at her comforting touch. "But I can't think of anything you all could do right now besides keeping Rachel in your thoughts. I'll call the main office at school with any updates on her condition, but really, for now, you should probably all just go home." She moves to Ellie and drapes an arm across her shoulders. "Honey, you've been here all day. You really need to get some rest so you can go to school tomorrow."

"You're sure you don't need anything, Mrs. Lord?" Ellie asks, and Mom pulls her into a hug. I'm more than a little jealous.

"Thank you, but just having you here today meant everything." She breaks the hug and turns to Luke and me. "And thank you for coming, Dani. Luke, it was nice to meet you."

As she speaks, the light catches her necklace resting just below her collarbone. I squeeze Luke's arm and when he shifts his eyes to me, I put my hand to the base of my throat and scratch an imaginary itch. Fortunately, he takes the hint.

"That's a lovely necklace you're wearing, Mrs. Lord," he says, and I hold back a snicker on his use of the word "lovely." "I've never seen anything like it."

Mom reaches up and fingers the pendant. "Jessica and Rachel gave this to me for Mother's Day last year. They said it stood for 'number one mom' because I'm the best mom in the world. Isn't that clever?"

I'm still holding Luke's arm, and his muscles stiffen in my hand. "Uh huh," he says weakly.

"This is the most heartfelt present they've ever given me," she continues as I knew she would, only on this retelling, her eyes well up a bit under the circumstances. "And I told them I was the luckiest mom to have two daughters who tied for the title of 'best daughters in the whole world.'"

Mom starts to full-on cry, and Ellie, Luke, and I stand in front of her like idiots, not sure what to do. Luke seems a little preoccupied to do much anyway, his eyes bugging out of his head and darting back and forth between my mother and me.

After a few seconds, Mom collects herself and wipes her eyes with her fingertips. "I should get back to her room," she says. "Thank you again for being here."

"I'll come by after school tomorrow," Ellie tells her, and my mother flashes a sad grin as she turns to go, giving us a wave as she heads out into the hallway.

"Okay," Luke says to me once my mom's gone. "You win. I believe you."

He looks as if he's been punched in the gut.

Ellie crosses her arms beneath her chest. "Do I even want to know what's going on with you two?" she asks.

"I think you do," Luke says. He gives me a once-over, almost as if he's searching for physical signs of Rachel standing out on Dani's body. "I'm starving," he begins, turning his attention to Ellie. "Have you eaten?"

"Now that you mention it, no—not since a really gross hospital cafeteria lunch."

"And I'm guessing...you...didn't eat...at home...before you came over?"

Luke's talking to me like I'm brain damaged. Or, like he's brain damaged—maybe I just blew his mind with the whole necklace thing.

"No."

"I noticed a restaurant right by the hospital when we pulled into the parking lot. Dinner's on me if you guys are up for it," Luke says. "We should probably talk."

"Sure," I say, while Ellie shrugs an affirmative as if she's accepted tragedy brings with it all kinds of strange situations, eating dinner with Dani Maguire and Luke Nostrand included.

Luke drives the three of us through the vast hospital parking lot and across the road to P.J.'s Restaurant, which looks a little run-down on the outside but seems okay enough inside, with paintings of generic countryside scenes staring down on maroon vinyl booths and faux wood tabletops. A waitress is on us as soon as we seat ourselves in a booth at the back—only one other group of people is here right now, so she's probably glad for the possibility of another tip—and we take a few seconds to glance through the menu before ordering burgers and fries all around.

"So, you said we needed to talk," Ellie says to Luke as she fiddles with a loose thread on the sleeve of her sweater.

She won't even look at me. When we walked in, I almost slid into the seat next to her as if everything were normal, but then I remembered what I look like to her and sat down next to Luke instead. I'm sure Ellie only agreed to this dinner because Luke asked—everyone likes Luke. And, apparently, her hatred of Dani Maguire isn't strong enough to trump an invitation from Ridgeview's golden boy.

"Yeah," Luke says, before angling his body toward mine. "Do you want to tell her, or should I?"

I tuck a strand of Dani's hair behind her ear. "So, you're fully on board with this now?"

"I'm not sure if I'm on board with it, exactly, but the necklace thing...I mean, you were right. And you add in the fact you've been acting weird all day..."

Ellie leans forward across the table and gives us an exaggerated wave. "Um...hello? You guys want to let me in on what's up?"

Luke nods and folds his hands on the table. "Yeah, so..."

The waitress brings our drinks, postponing the conversation for a few more seconds. Once she's out of earshot, Luke continues:

"She's not Dani," he says, jerking a thumb in my direction. "I mean, she is on the outside, but on the inside, she's Rachel."

"Interesting." Ellie rips the paper covering from the top of her straw and blows the rest of the sleeve across the table, where it lands between my place setting and Luke's. "Because on the outside, I'm Ellie Stengel, but on the inside, I'm the Queen of England."

"Look, I didn't believe it, either—at first," Luke says. "But she's been acting bizarre all day, and then...I asked about Mrs. Lord's necklace at the hospital because she—" he tilts his head at me—"told me exactly what Mrs. Lord was going to say if I asked. That's not something Dani would know."

"So, okay, Rachel," Ellie says with sharp tone to her voice, which leads me to believe she's not buying what Luke and I are selling. "How did this whole Freaky Friday thing with Dani Maguire happen exactly?"

"I wish I knew. The last thing I remember is sliding off the road near the bridge, and then this morning I woke up in Dani's room in Dani's body. Beyond that, I have no idea what's going on."

Ellie shakes her head and lets out a bitter cackle. She grabs her coat from the seat next to her and slides out of the booth, standing in the aisle as she bundles up.

"What are you doing?" Luke asks.

"I'm walking back to my car and going home because I can't do this with you two right now. Rachel's in a coma and you guys are acting like it's some kind of joke."

She winds her knit scarf around her neck as Luke turns to me with a panicked "What now?" stare. I search the fake wood grain pattern in the table top, trying to concentrate. If Ellie stomps out of here not believing I'm Rachel, it'll be just that much harder to convince her of who I am later on.

"Freshman year, you had a thing for Cayden Grant..."

Ellie's leaning over to retrieve her bag from the booth, but on my words, she freezes.

"Actually, it all began the summer before freshman year when we used to hang out at the old Linden Park pool, but the whole thing really kicked up a notch when we started high school in August..."

I stare at her as she stands up straight again, her hand on the back of the booth.

"And, of course, because he was THE Cayden Grant and he was a sophomore, we were too scared to talk to him. And because we were who we were, he wasn't going to waste time talking to us. So, you got the idea that if he wouldn't talk to you, then maybe you could text him instead..."

From the corner of my eye, I spy Luke doing the crumpled-forehead thing again, most likely because he's remembering the Cayden Grant story from a slightly different perspective than the one I'm telling.

"But you knew he'd never respond to texts from Ellie Stengel, so you bought a prepaid phone so you could text him anonymously. Your plan was to get him to fall for you through your witty messages, and then you'd arrange to meet him somewhere and do a whole identity reveal. But then we overheard him talking to some of his football bros one day about how he had this stalker texting him from an unknown number and if the person didn't cut it out, he was going to the police. Then you tossed the burner phone over the fence at Rocky Ridge Lake and never spoke about your crush on Cayden Grant again."

By now, Ellie's covered her mouth and she's bent slightly at the waist as if she's about to puke. The waitress comes with our food, and as she's setting the plates on the table, she asks "Everything okay?"

Ellie drops her hand to her side and stares so vacantly at the waitress, she's almost looking through her.

"Yeah." Ellie's voice sounds like she's out of breath. "Everything's great. Just...peachy."

Chapter 11

The waitress leaves and Luke rubs his lips together, his body shaking. I wonder if he's about to be sick, but eventually, he starts laughing. The laughter escapes in small bursts at first as if he's investing a lot of energy in holding back. Finally, he gives up and indulges in a full-fledged guffaw.

"You were Cayden Grant's stalker?" he says to Ellie between laughs. Ellie, meanwhile, flops back into the booth with her full weight, not bothering to take off her coat.

"Would you shut up?" she orders him in a loud whisper.

"Somehow, I doubt the senior citizens on the other side of the restaurant care who you were crushing on freshman year," I point out.

"Rachel and Janey promised me they'd never breathe a word about Cayden," she says to me, her eyes practically shooting lasers, they're so intense. And now I get why she hasn't taken her coat off—she's going to kill me, the person she thinks is Dani Maguire, and then make a quick exit.

"We didn't tell," I insist. "Think about it, Elle. What motive would either Janey or I have to blab to Dani or the Perfects about the 'Cayden Incident?' No one even knows we refer to it as the 'Cayden Incident.'"

Ellie's face softens and even her cheekbones appear to be less sharp than they did a moment before.

"Plus, you've got plenty of embarrassing stories stockpiled about Janey and me we'd never risk the chance you might want to get back at us," I point out.

"Oh? Do tell?" Luke says, still laughing. Ellie and I say, "shut up" simultaneously before Ellie slumps back against the booth.

"I don't understand...I mean, this is just..." She closes her eyes and reopens them. "You swore we were never going to speak of the 'Cayden Incident' ever again."

"You didn't believe I was...me. I'm sorry, but I had to go nuclear." I point at my plate and the double cheeseburger with everything and full order of fries. "And, come on—when was the last time you saw Dani Maguire eating like this?"

"You're right. I should have known better."

Next to me, Luke is wiping away laughter-induced tears with the back of his hand. Ellie wads up a napkin and zings it across the table at him.

"And as for you, Mr. Nostrand, everything you just heard stays right here at this table. Got it?" she says.

"Yup."

"Because if I find out you've breathed even one word about this to anyone, I will personally castrate you."

"If I don't get to you first," I add in solidarity.

"Okay. Not a word. Promise." Luke grabs a fry, but before he can eat it, he drops it to his plate and starts snickering again. Ellie and I pick up knives from our place settings, and Ellie twirls hers between her fingers while I make a stabbing motion in the air with mine.

"Jesus. Knives down, okay? I'm taking the story to my grave. Now, can we stop talking about castration? I'm trying to eat here."

We all dig into our food, but after a few seconds, I notice Ellie staring at me with curious eyes as she eats.

"Yeah," I say, reading what I assume she's thinking. "Weird, isn't it?"

"Totally." Ellie pops a fry into her mouth. "You just woke up this morning and you were Dani?"

"Basically, yeah. Like I said before, I remember going off the road, and I kind of remember my car being in the air, and then...nothing. Next thing I know, I'm in Dani's room in Dani's bed and I'm...her."

"Did you go to school today?"

"Yeah."

Ellie sits back in her seat and cocks her eyebrows at me. "And what was that like?"

"Hard. Being Dani Maguire takes a lot of concentration."

"Well, I'm sure it doesn't for her," Ellie points out before asking Luke "So, how'd she do?"

"Speaking as someone who didn't realize she wasn't Dani Maguire until about an hour ago, I'd say she was a reasonable Dani Maguire facsimile. People just thought she was a little off—or at least, that's what I thought."

"Wait a minute," Ellie says. "If you thought she was Dani all day long..." She takes a crinkle fry from her plate and points it back and forth between Luke and me. "Have you two kissed and stuff?"

"Ellie," I say, my voice full of warning. Next to me, Luke blushes.

"Oh no." She leans forward and lowers her voice. "More than kissed?"

"No," Luke says emphatically, and I add "Elle, stop it."

"So, I wonder...is it cheating if you hook up with someone who's your girlfriend in body but not in mind?" Ellie says, popping the fry into her mouth and cupping her chin as if she's in deep thought.

"Let it go," I say, as Luke pretends to be very interested in his burger, picking at the bun and avoiding Ellie's eyes.

"Sorry," she says with a sugary smile that clearly indicates she's not sorry at all. "And...wait...did you go to cheerleading practice, too?"

"I faked a dizzy spell and sat out. I have no idea what I'm going to do about the game tomorrow night."

"Wow." Ellie picks up her burger and is about to take a bite when she sets it back down on her plate, her expression a few shades darker than before. "What a messed-up couple of days. First Janey goes missing and now this whole thing with you."

"What?" I say at almost the same time Luke chimes in with "Janey's missing?"

"Nobody told you? Didn't they say anything at school?"

"No." A pang of guilt seizes me for letting my own predicament distract me from the Janey situation. "Kennerly talked about my accident during morning announcements, but when nobody said anything about Janey, I figured she was okay and maybe she was at home or with you at the hospital or something. But she's officially missing now?"

"Yeah." Ellie grits her teeth for a second before continuing. "Figures they wouldn't say anything at school, though. I've been talking back and forth all day with Mr. Douchette, and he probably told the school too late for the news to make morning announcements. And I bet the administration's too stupid to come up with a plan for how to deal with a missing student."

"Well, it's not like kids go missing from Ridgeview every day," Luke adds.

"True." Ellie takes a sip of her soda. "And then you add in the fact the cops are looking for her, but they told Mr. Douchette when kids our age disappear, it's usually because they've run away from home. I'm betting the school isn't taking things too seriously, either."

"Janey wouldn't run away," I point out. "It's ridiculous. She loves her dad, and she doesn't have anywhere to go."

"That's what Mr. Douchette told the cops. But they've got surveillance footage of her at the Gas Hut last night buying all this stuff, and no one's found her bike, so they're thinking she was stocking up so she could meet up with someone to run away, and then that someone put her bike in their trunk."

"That's crazy. She's a runaway because they can't find her bike and she bought some candy bars and stuff?" I say.

"Candy bars, a lighter, a couple of magazines, and two bags of potato chips," Ellie says, ticking off items on her fingers. "Not exactly a runaway's survival kit, not like I'd know what one looks like. Anyway, Mr. Douchette started putting up 'missing' flyers around town today, and I think he's going to organize a search party."

I push my half-eaten meal away since I'm not very hungry anymore. Luke, who's sitting forward in the booth with his hands folded on the table, glances back at me with a sad expression.

"So, that's what you were doing last night when you had your accident, right?" he starts. "You were out looking for Janey."

"Yeah. I got a call from her, but I couldn't hear her voice all that well because the reception was bad, and then the call dropped. I left her a voice mail and some texts, but she never responded." I close my eyes—last night seems like such a long time ago. "It didn't make much sense since the weather sucked, but I thought maybe she tried to go to her old house in Rocky Ridge and was hurt or cold or something."

"When I got to the bridge, Mr. Douchette was already there and the ambulance was coming up behind me," Ellie says. "The dude who works at the Gas Hut heard all the commotion when you went off the road and through the fence, and he called for help. I was there when they pulled you out..." Ellie pauses and swallows hard. "Then I followed the ambulance to the hospital and Mr. Douchette stayed at the lake with the cops. Once you were stable enough to airlift to a bigger hospital, your parents told me to go home, but...I couldn't." Her voice shakes a bit. "I haven't been home since last night."

I reach across the table and grab her hand. "Thank you."

"You and Janey are my best friends in the whole world. Where else would I be?" Her warm smile slides into something more mischievous as she waves a hand in circles in front of my—Dani's—face. "Although, had I known about this, I might have come back to school today just to witness the awkwardness."

"Thanks." I smirk at her, and she laughs but quickly sobers up.

"All kidding aside, though, I'm wondering if we're not asking some important questions here."

"Such as?" Luke prompts her.

"Such as, if Rachel's inside Dani, then where the hell did Dani go? Is this truly a body switch situation and Dani's inside Rachel right now? Or is Dani's soul or consciousness or brain or whatever just floating around in the ether somewhere?"

"And if Dani's...whatever...is inside my body, how would we find that out?" I add. "I'm...my body...is in a coma. I...she...whatever...can't talk." I shut my eyes. "I can't believe we're talking like this. Nothing makes any sense."

"And does it strike anybody as a little weird that the morning after Janey Douchette disappears, you wake up in Dani's body?" Luke asks, but all I can do is shrug.

"I hadn't really thought about it. I mean, it's definitely a coincidence, but I don't get how the two things could be related."

"Me, neither," Ellie adds. "Although the weirder thing is probably how two big events occurred in Ridgeview on the same day. Nothing ever happens in Ridgeview."

"Well, that's sort of what I'm getting at," Luke says. "Think about it. The last big thing to happen in Ridgeview was the cafeteria flooding at the middle school, but now, suddenly, a girl goes missing just before one of her best friends jumps into someone else's body? It's too messed up not to be significant."

"Tell me, Luke," Ellie begins, folding her arms over her stomach. "Do you believe in alien abductions, too? Paranormal activity? The government monitoring your activities through a camera installed your microwave?"

"Shut up," he snaps at her sarcasm. "It's just more than a little strange—that's all I'm saying."

"Well, all I'm sure of is we're not going to figure this out tonight," Ellie says, pointing at an old analog clock on the wall near the cash register. "I haven't slept since yesterday, and my parents aren't going to let me miss school again. I need to get home."

"Yeah, me, too," I say. "I need to learn everything there is to learn about cheerleading before tomorrow night."

Ellie snorts, and I shoot her a dirty look.

"You should ride back to Ridgeview with her," Luke says, bumping elbows with me. "Keep her awake. I'll follow and then drive you back to my house."

"Sounds good," I say, while Ellie says "Thanks, Luke—that's really nice of you."

"No problem." He pauses. "Is there anyone on your street who might be suspicious if they saw you with Dani? Like anyone from school?"

"No. And it's dark, so we can ride through town pretty safely without anyone seeing us together."

I sigh. This is all so crazy. Ellie reaches across the table to squeeze my hand just as I'd done for her a few minutes ago.

"Buck up, Rach," she says. "Maybe we'll wake up tomorrow morning and Janey will be home and you'll be back in your own body and the planets will be back in their proper orbit."

"And if everything isn't back to normal tomorrow morning?"

Ellie gives me a wry grin. "Then you can enjoy another day of being Perfect."

Chapter 12

I'm still in bed the next morning when Dani's mom knocks on her bedroom door.

"Dani, I'm leaving."

I try to remember what Mrs. Maguire does for a living but I can't, and since it's been a few years since I've been around her on a regular basis, whatever her job was back then may not be what she does now.

"Okay."

"Lunch money's on the counter. Have a good day. Love you."

At least I get a "love you" this time.

I put a little more effort into my appearance this morning. After finding a curling iron under the sink, I'm able to fix my hair into something more closely resembling Dani's usual style, and with the aid of a selfie on her phone, I do a decent job with my makeup if I do say so myself. Maybe Lexi will lay off the veiled insults about my appearance today, although given my experience with her yesterday, I'm guessing she'll just find something else to pick on.

Walking into school this morning isn't quite as scary as it was yesterday, which scares me in and of itself. Although my posture's perfect and my shoulders are back rather than slightly hunched as I walk, my inner thoughts threaten to derail my outer confidence. What happens if I can't figure out why I'm trapped inside Dani Maguire? Do I just become her?

Do I want to?

At what point, if any, will I cross the line from being "Rachel Lord trapped inside Dani Maguire's body" to simply being Dani Maguire? Will I get so used to pretending to be Dani I won't even notice once I've completely morphed into her?

And what happens to me in that case?

I'm so lost in my existential crisis I'm barely shocked when someone comes up next to me and yanks me sideways into a janitor's closet. Before I can scream, a dim lightbulb turns on over my head, and I discover Luke and I are wedged into the tiny space with barely enough room for the two of us between the dingy sink and the door.

I wiggle a finger at him and grin. "Is this some kinky morning thing with you and Dani? Janitor closet sex?"

Luke shakes his head because he can thankfully tell I'm joking. "Okay, first of all, it smells like ammonia in here, so that's gross," he starts. "And, second, Dani thinks the back seat of my car is too dirty half the time, so there's no way she'd do it in a janitor's closet."

"I could definitely see her not wanting to risk contact with a mop."

"And I'm sorry about the drama," Luke says, "I just wanted to talk to you alone before Lexi and Alissa swoop in on you."

"Texting wasn't an option?"

"It's complicated." He rubs the back of his neck. "Anyway, I'm really glad you trusted me enough to convince me you weren't Dani, and I'm sorry I didn't believe you at first."

"Luke, I don't blame you. This is weird stuff. If the tables were turned, I'm not sure I would have believed you, either."

He shifts his gaze to the concrete floor. "You know, when I thought about it late last night, it wasn't just the thing with your mom's necklace that told me you weren't Dani," he begins.

"Oh?"

Luke still won't meet my eyes. "Your kiss. When you came over to my house and we kissed in the hallway...it was different. You don't kiss like Dani does."

Now I get why he's acting kind of embarrassed because I'm embarrassed, too. "Is that a good or a bad thing?" I ask.

"It's neither. It just...is. I guess I never realized it before, but girls don't all kiss in the same way. Guys probably don't, either."

I wouldn't know. I've kissed three guys in my life, and two of those came when I picked "dare" playing "Truth or Dare" at some party in middle school.

"Well, I apologize if my kiss was...inferior," I say, assuming Dani's probably got some mind-blowing lip-lock abilities. Now I'm training my stare on the floor as well.

"You were all right," Luke says. "Little too much tongue. If you start practicing on pillows or something, I'm sure you'll get better."

I'm shocked Luke would take the opportunity to critique my kissing technique, but when I look up at him, I find he's smiling just short of a laugh.

"You're an ass, you know that?" I say, giving him a grin as I push him in the shoulder.

"Sorry. Couldn't help it. You walked right into that one." He pauses. "Anyway, since this is such a strange situation...well, I wanted to tell you I've got your back today. I can't imagine what yesterday was like for you having to pretend to be Dani with no help whatsoever."

Luke Nostrand, Super Nice Guy, strikes again. I really hope Dani appreciates what she's got in him.

"Thanks," I tell him, smiling.

"It'll be kind of like...have you ever seen My Fair Lady?"

My smile slides into a frown at the bizarre topic change. "Have you?"

"My mom's big into musicals. Don't judge me."

I hold my hands up, palms out, to indicate my lack of judgment.

"I guess what I'm saying is, it's sort of like you're Eliza Doolittle, and you need to learn how to do certain things and behave in certain ways to pull off being Dani. But Eliza didn't do it alone."

"Okay. What you're saying is you're going to Henry Higgins me right through this?"

"Exactly."

I reach out and give Luke another friendly jab in the shoulder. "You're a real pal, Luke."

"I do what I can."

"But, seriously though, I can't thank you enough. Any tips before homeroom?"

He gives me a once over. "Well, you look a little more like Dani normally does today. And you're standing up straighter like you've got more confidence."

"Okay."

"Dani always walks into a room like she owns it—back arched, head high, and she doesn't really walk, but instead she kind of..." Luke pauses as if he's struggling for the right word.

"Glides?"

He points at me. "Yeah. Like that. And, basically, when you deal with people...just be kind of a bitch. People expect it."

"Which leaves open all sorts of questions we don't have time for right now," I say. I've never heard a guy flat-out admit his girlfriend is a bitch, which doesn't make me wonder any less than I always do as to why he's with her. "We should get to our lockers."

Luke opens the door to find Lexi waiting out in the hall for us. "Looks like somebody couldn't resist getting in a quickie before homeroom," she says, her eyes sparkling. "Although I would have chosen somewhere a little more...clean."

"Which must be why you never sleep with Dean," Luke says, and I bite my lip to keep from laughing as the three of us start down the hall.

"Shut it, Luke," she says, and to me: "You need to rein in your boyfriend."

"Sure thing, Lex," I say, shooting Luke a knowing glance and he laughs. Lexi ignores him and slides an arm through mine.

"So, bitch, are you allergic to texting people now or what's the deal?"

"What are you talking about?" I fire back.

"Alissa and I both sent you, like, a million messages last night, and you didn't respond to any of them. Lis thinks you're pissed at us."

"I'm not pissed. I'm..." Think fast, Rachel. "I'm giving up texting for Lent."

"Okay, your settings must be stuck on 'dumbass' because it's still January," Lexi points out.

"I'm practicing. Only an idiot would give up texting cold turkey." I pause. "So...who's the dumbass?"

"Whatever," Lexi mutters as Luke and I leave Lexi at her locker and walk the few additional feet to mine.

"How am I doing?" I whisper. Luke gives me a thumbs-up. We stop in front of my locker and I reach out to the combination lock, once again turning the dial in the direction of my first combination number and not Dani's before I stop myself. When Luke notices my hesitation, he places a hand on my arm and whispers "Ten, twenty-four, eighteen."

I exhale. "Thank you."

When I stroll into homeroom with Luke and the Perfects, I'm relieved Ellie's sitting in her usual seat in the back of the room. She gives me an almost imperceptible nod before I sit down in the second row.

Yesterday was hard enough without her here, but today might be even harder knowing she's at school with me but I can't talk to her.

The loudspeaker crackles and Principal Kennerly greets us with "Good morning, Ridgeview Raiders. I'm afraid once again, I must share some unfortunate news with you about one of our students. Senior Janey Douchette has been reported missing as of Wednesday night. Anyone with information is encouraged to contact Ridge County Police, and a search party is being organized for her this evening starting at 6:00. Those interested in participating should meet at the south end of the Rocky Ridge Lake bridge..."

In an almost identical replay of yesterday, people gasp and mumble amongst themselves, but this time, Mrs. Markham doesn't bother to shush anyone. Luke holds my hand and I steal the briefest of glances at Ellie, sitting all alone and gnawing on her bottom lip while people stare at her as if she's the unluckiest girl in the world with tragedy befalling her two closest friends in as many days.

"What the hell is going on in this town?" Alissa says once announcements end. "First Rachel Lord and now that Janey girl from Smiley Joe's?"

"Yeah. It's weird," Lexi says, unusually subdued. "Nothing happens around here in forever, and now suddenly everything's happening." She tilts her head at me. "You were friends with that Janey girl back in middle school, weren't you?"

"Uh huh," I tell her. I love how to Alissa and Lexi, Janey is "that Janey girl."

"Well, remind me to stay on your good side. Apparently, it's a bad week to be one of your former friends. Ellie Stengel had better watch her back."

"Shut up," I tell her, and she rears back in her seat, hands up in a defensive stance.

"I'm just saying, Dani. That's all."

"You know, we should check out that search party happening tonight," Luke says as if searching for a missing person would be the hottest activity in town on a Friday night in January.

"The JV basketball game starts at six," Alissa points out. "We can't."

"What do you mean 'we can't?' A missing girl is a little more important than basketball," he says, and I'm touched he's trying to get Dani's friends to help.

"Lexi's president of the Spirit Squad, so she has to be at both games. Dani's a cheerleader, so she has to be at both games, and we're both members of the Spirit Squad, so we have to be at both games," Alissa says.

"I'm not on Spirit Squad," Luke tells her.

"By virtue of being on a varsity sports team, you're a member of the Spirit Squad," Lexi explains, an annoyed tone to her voice. "It's in the bylaws—duh."

"Football season's over. I'm a senior. This school doesn't need my spirit anymore. I'm going to Rocky Ridge to search for Janey," he says, and I want to stand up and applaud. "I can make sure I'm back by halftime of the varsity game if it makes you guys feel better."

"Whatever," Lexi says.

Luke squeezes my hand as the bell goes off, and before we head for the hall, I say "Thank you."

"No problem." He leans in so no one else will hear. "I can drop you off before for the JV game and head out to the search party. Then I can drive us to Alex's after the game."

Alex Bryson is having a party at his house in Grand Prairie tomorrow night. His soirée was the big topic of conversation yesterday at lunch, and most of the texts I received from Lexi and Alissa last night—that I ignored—dealt with possible outfit choices.

"Sounds good," I say, just as Ellie walks past us into the hall, dropping a slip of paper on the floor at my feet but not saying a word. I make sure Lexi and Alissa aren't watching, which they're not because they're both already in the hall, and I bend down to pick up the paper, which has "Text me" and a phone number written on it.

Hooray for modern technology. Ellie and I may not be able to act like best friends so long as I'm trapped in Dani's body, but we can definitely text like best friends. She wouldn't have Dani's number so she needs me to text her first, and Ellie knows me well enough to be sure I've had her on one-touch dialing for so long I've forgotten her number. As Luke and I walk out of the classroom and I head down the hall to catch up with Lexi and Alissa, I enter Ellie's digits into Dani's phone for future use.

The day rolls along at a much faster pace than yesterday, mostly because I'm a tiny bit more comfortable in Dani's skin. I respond to all teachers when they call on her, and I turn in each of her assignments with the confidence I've done them at least as well, and probably better, than she would have considering my class rank is slightly higher than hers. By the end of the day, I'm almost confident I can survive as Dani Maguire, as much as I hope I'm not forced to for very long.

Then again, I haven't survived the role of "Dani Maguire—Varsity Cheerleader" yet, and unless I can devise a way to get out of going to the game tonight, I'll be playing that role in front of the entire school.

At Dani's house, I pull into the empty garage, relieved to have the place to myself. But, once again, I've forgotten about my canine nemesis, who's dining in the kitchen when I walk in. On hearing me, Merlin turns and growls.

"Hey, Merlin," I say through a sigh. "Let's be friends, huh?"

He barks repeatedly.

"Guess not," I mutter. Facing him, I slide along the perimeter of the kitchen until I reach the drawer I'm now aware contains a packet of dog treats. I slide the drawer open slowly and take out the shiny silver bag, waving it in Merlin's face.

"Hey, buddy. How 'bout a treat?"

His barks turn into a low growl.

"Yeah?" I take a bone-shaped snack from the bag and hold it out to him. He sniffs at it for a second before he starts eating it out of my hand.

"Good boy," I say, petting his head and scratching him behind the ears. I kneel in front of him and give him another treat, and after he devours the second one, he lets me pet him as he licks my face.

"So, are we cool now or what?

His tongue slurps across my nose, and I give him one final pet before heading upstairs to review the cheerleading videos I shot yesterday like I'm cramming for a test. I keep an ear out for any signs of Mr. or Mrs. Maguire, but I'm still alone when Luke honks in the driveway at 5:30.

"Ready for your cheerleading debut?" He smiles at me as I buckle myself into the passenger seat.

"Ugh. I'll be lucky if I don't seriously hurt myself or someone else."

He backs down the drive and out into the street. "I promise I'll be there by halftime. You're going to be fine."

"Cheerleading is a competitive sport, you know—like football. Would you tell me to take over for you on the football field and just say 'Hey, you'll be fine?'"

"Depends. Ever played quarterback before?"

I groan.

"Sorry," he says. "But maybe you'll get lucky and muscle memory will kick in."

"Muscle memory?"

"Yeah. Like, sometimes when I'm on the football field, my body does things and I'm not even consciously aware of it. My body and my muscles just understand what to do. Maybe since you're in Dani's body, her cheerleading muscle memory will kick in."

"I hope so."

He reaches out and rubs my shoulder. "My advice? Don't overthink it. I mean, you've watched the routines and you've memorized all the cheers, so just go out there and let your body take over. If you overanalyze things, you're going to be more likely to screw up."

I snort. "Apparently, you've never met me because I overanalyze everything."

We pull up to a stoplight on Main Street a few blocks from school, and when I turn my attention out the window, I see one of the flyers Mr. Douchette's put up around town about Janey's disappearance hanging in a store window. All I can read from this distance is the word "Missing" at the top of the page, just above the black-and-white scan of her senior picture.

"Heard from Ellie?" Luke asks, noticing where my eyes have wandered.

I'd texted Ellie from Dani's phone just before lunch so she'd have the number, and she told me she was going to the hospital right after school. "I was bingeing on cheerleading videos, and she texted me she was leaving the hospital for Ridgeview. My condition hasn't changed," I tell him. "And there's no news on Janey. Ellie's heading straight for the search party when she gets back to town."

"I'll try to check in with her when I get out there," Luke says, pulling through the intersection after the light turns green. I don't say anything else for the few minutes it takes us to get to the school parking lot because I'm too busy thinking about how Janey and I both are running out of time. The longer we're "gone," so to speak, the less likely I imagine we are to come back.

At school, Luke pulls up in front of the gym steps. "I'll try to be back by halftime," he says. "Don't want to miss your big routine."

I frown and make a disgusted noise, and he surprises me by putting his hand on the back of my neck underneath my ponytail. "Remember—don't overthink it. Let your muscle memory take over."

"Got it."

He pulls me close, and I jerk my head back out of instinct.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

"We've got an audience." He shifts his gaze out the windshield without moving his head, and I follow his eyes to the stream of people heading up to the gym entrance, most of whom are our fellow Ridgeview students who would be wondering why one of the school's golden couples isn't all over each other for the whole world to see. I lean in until Luke's lips are on mine, and we cling together for a few seconds before I part my lips and let my tongue drift inside his mouth. But then the guilt overwhelms me, and I pull back.

Perhaps sensing how uncomfortable I am, Luke bobs his head and says "Not bad. You're getting better."

"I've been practicing on pillows," I quip, and he laughs as I open the passenger door.

"Later," he says as I retrieve my bag from his backseat. "And good luck."

"Thanks." I shut the door and jog up the gym steps. In the girls' locker room, I shove my bag with my clothes for Alex's party in a locker along with my coat and the sweatpants I wore underneath my cheerleading skirt. Before heading to the gym, I go over to the full-length mirror near the sinks for one final look at myself in Dani's cheerleading outfit—a forest green sleeveless top trimmed in black with a black "R" and a matching skirt with black pleats—and I mutter a nearly inaudible "Let's do this" to myself as I join my fellow squad members in running to the gym.

Thankfully, the varsity squad always sits in the bleachers and watches the JV cheerleaders during the JV basketball game, which gives me another hour and a half to cram some of the finer points of cheerleading into my brain by watching the freshmen and sophomores run through cheers and routines. I make small talk with the girls on the squad during the game, but all too quickly, our JV team goes down to defeat and my squad and I take our places with the dance team on either side of the double doors leading from the locker room. Each member of the varsity basketball team runs between us as the public address announcer introduces them to the crowd, and I follow the lead of my fellow cheerleaders, clapping and cheering as they pass. At one point, I kick a leg up in the air as some of the other girls are doing, and my foot nearly comes in line with my head. The shock almost makes me stop everything for a second.

I've never kicked my leg that high in my life. Freshman year, we did an aerobics unit in gym class involving some kickboxing moves, and I couldn't come close to getting my foot on level with my shoulder.

Luke was right. Muscle memory—Dani's body isn't going to betray me.

Or, at least, I hope it isn't.

After the team introductions, my fellow cheerleaders and I take our places behind the end line near the gym doors. I stand and watch the players wander out to the court for tipoff, and Hannah Pierson elbows me.

"Are you going to start a cheer or what?"

That's right—I'm captain. I pick the first cheer that comes to mind and start running through the motions.

"Hey...okay...Ridgeview Raiders gonna win to-day..."

The rest of the squad joins me, and I get through the cheer without a hitch, smiling to myself as the Spirit Squad members in the stands mimic our hand and arm motions. At the first timeout, I lead the girls onto the floor and stand in front of the entire school, my heart pounding, and lead the squad in the "Ridgeview Raiders, green and black. Ridgeview Raiders on the attack" routine I've watched so many times and that I've been studying closely since last night. By the time the horn sounds at the scorer's table, I'm so pumped up I could almost cry, but unlike yesterday morning, the tears would be happy ones.

I'm doing this. I...am...doing...this....

I'm generally not an attention-seeker, and I'd never volunteer to give a speech or stand up in front of the whole school and do anything. Whenever I've organized fundraisers or volunteer campaigns, I've had to make a few announcements over the school's PA system and then stand on stage at a school assembly afterwards to announce how much money we'd raised or how many canned goods or pounds of clothing or whatever we'd collected. But those public moments come around once or twice a semester, they don't last long, and they're not showy. Even the activities themselves are pretty low key.

But this—cheerleading—is like jumping out of an airplane as far as I'm concerned. I fall and fall until my parachute opens just in time to keep me from splatting against the earth. The whole thing's a massive rush, but it's a rush that comes with the knowledge that death, which in this case means a monumental screw-up in a routine, could reach out and snatch me away at any second.

The horn sounds to end the first half, and now death is staring me in the face in the form of the halftime routine.

I swallow down my fear and lead the squad onto the floor, even performing a round-off on the way out, something I haven't done since I was a little kid and never did well. The music starts and I begin moving through the routine as if I've performed it over and over throughout the past week in practice rather than simply watching film of it on my phone for the last twenty-four hours.

Muscle memory...muscle memory...don't overthink...you're thinking...

Luckily, I'm a base, which I've learned in cheerleading has nothing to do with chemistry and has everything to do with helping the flyers perform their airborne stunts and making sure they don't fall. When the time comes for the big stunt, I move into position and help my fellow bases lift our flyer overhead. The flyers do some move that involves them sticking a leg in the air and then we push up, the flyer jumps into the air, and my fellow bases and I catch her when she lands and scoop her back onto the floor to her feet.

We did it. No one fell and now everyone's safely on the ground, moving through the final cheer sequence of the routine.

And just as quickly as the routine began, the music stops and it's all over. I'm on my knees in the front of the formation, my arms down to my sides, when the crowd erupts in applause and cheers. Nearly out of breath, I stand up, yell, "Go Ridgeview," and clap as I lead my squad members off the floor. As I lean against the wall and try to breathe, I gaze up in the stands and find Luke sitting at the end of a row. He claps and points at me and I wave to him, ignoring whether anyone might be watching us and mouthing "Janey?"

He shakes his head, and my heartbeat slows with disappointment.

Chapter 13

Despite my sadness that Janey's still missing, my adrenaline remains at what feels like a superhuman level throughout the second half. I'm so alive—more alive than usual, anyway—but nailing a cheerleading routine isn't the only thing responsible.

Yesterday, I faked passing out to avoid trying something I've never done before and possibly failing. Probably failing.

But tonight, with a little advance preparation, I faced my fears and beat them down. And while I'm not sure I ever want to do a basket toss or work up a stunt ever again, just knowing I can succeed at something so far out of my comfort zone fills me with confidence.

It's a confidence that makes me believe we'll find Janey and I'll come out of my coma and Dani will once again re-inhabit her body. Anything's possible now.

The Raiders win the game on a last second shot and the gym practically explodes from the tension and excitement. Luke finds me on the floor in the crush of people swarming down from the stands to congratulate the players, and he gathers me into a hug.

"You were great," he says against my ear. "I wouldn't have known you were merely masquerading as a varsity cheerleader."

"Seriously?"

"Yup."

"Good to know." I smile. "I haven't prepped so hard for something since my trig final last year."

He laughs and says "Go get changed. I'll wait for you in the lobby."

I bounce off to the locker room to make myself party ready, receiving congratulations on the halftime routine from people along the way. As I change into a black mini skirt, leggings, an expensive red sweater and leather boots, I feel a bit guilty at accepting all the compliments that should be headed Dani's way, but under the circumstances, I can't really do anything else. As I'm leaning over the sinks touching up my makeup, Alissa comes up and throws her arms around me from behind to deliver some congratulations as well.

"Great routine, girlfriend," she says, giving me a squeeze and then letting go. She digs into her bag for a lipstick and traces her lips.

"Thanks. You, too," I lie. I'm sure the dance team's routine, which they did right after ours, was just as good, but I was so jacked up from surviving the cheerleading routine I wasn't paying much attention.

"And I saw Luke finally showed up."

"He was out with the search party for Janey Douchette," I remind her. "He said this morning he was going, remember?"

"I didn't really believe he was serious," she says, wiping some stray lipstick from the corner of her mouth. "Lexi's totally pissed he missed the first half. She's talking about kicking him off Spirit Squad."

I doubt Luke will be devastated over getting kicked off Spirit Squad, especially considering this morning, he didn't even realize he was on Spirit Squad.

"Where is Lexi, anyway?"

"She and Dean took off for Alex's already." Alissa leans in and gives me a kiss on the cheek, leaving a deep red stain in the shape of her lips. "And I'm off to meet up with Justin unless you want me to wait for you."

"Nah. Go ahead. I'll catch up with you at the party."

Alissa bounces away and I take a paper towel and wipe the lipstick from my face. I primp a bit more and head out to the lobby area, where Luke is waiting for me with Rick Delacourt—the same Rick Delacourt I nearly threw up on last year when we were making out. Luckily, Rick didn't hold that little incident against me and we're still friendly, but I can't help but be kind of embarrassed any time I'm around him. Fortunately, this time I'm with him while appearing to be someone else.

"Hey, Rick," I say, sidling up to Luke, who puts an arm around me.

"Hi, Dani."

Rick, who I've found irresistible since middle school with his dark eyes, jet black hair, and a strong, square jaw, usually has an arresting smile to top off his looks, but right now his mouth is turned down into a frown.

"You okay?" I ask.

"Luke was telling me about the search party for Janey Douchette," he says. "I kind of wish I'd gone now. Stuff is so abnormal around here lately, you know? First Rachel Lord and now this." He shakes his head. "Has anyone heard how Rachel's doing?"

I almost tell him what Ellie said to me earlier about there being no change in Rachel's condition, but I stop myself just in time. "No," I say quietly.

After a brief silence, Luke wisely changes the subject. "So, you heading to Alex's?"

Rick shoves his hands into his letterman's jacket. He's a tall, lanky baseball player, but he hunches down into his jacket collar like a scared little boy, his dark eyes cloudy. "Nah. I think I'll just go home. I'm not really up for a party with everything going on." He reaches out and gives Luke a quick fist bump on the arm. "I'll catch you later, man."

"Later."

Rick gives me a little wave as he walks by us and through the front doors of the gym lobby.

"Wow. He's really messed up over Janey and me." I say as Luke takes my gym bag from me and we head out to the parking lot. Luke snickers and I ask "What?"

"You have no idea, do you?"

"About what?"

"Rick has a thing for you. Rachel, you, I mean," Luke says as if his information should be obvious.

"What? Oh, he sooo does not."

"Oh, he sooo does. He talks all the time about how cool you are."

I'm stunned. "How could he possibly like me like that? I almost threw up on him at Courtney Donlan's Valentine's party last year—which is classified information, by the way."

Luke laughs. "Well, apparently, he's into that sort of thing because he mentions you a lot. I bet he asks you to prom."

I lower my head and raise my eyebrows at him. "No."

"Uh huh. It's still early, but give it another month or so and I bet he asks."

I did kind of believe Rick Delacourt and I could be a good couple when we were making out, but I assumed the near-vomitous ending to our night together killed any hope. Hearing Luke say Rick and I could have a chance fills me with excitement.

Then it fills me dread.

"Assuming I'm still alive in another month or so," I say. "Assuming I'm back in the right body in another month or so."

Luke doesn't respond, but simply drapes his free arm over my shoulder and guides me to his car.

A low, rhythmic bass pulsing from a stereo system greets us as we approach Alex Bryson's front door. We head inside without knocking—not like anyone could hear us knocking or ringing the doorbell—and we are immediately swallowed up by a crush of people in the front entry. After we toss our coats on one of the growing piles in the corners of the living room, Luke grips my hand and we shuffle our way through the crowd.

"The kitchen's back here," he says, pushing past the hordes with their red cups who are either standing against the walls or dancing in the hallway and the adjoining rooms. The crowd eases up a bit once we're at the back of the house and in the kitchen, which opens onto a large dining area where most of the football team has commandeered the table for beer pong. Dean and Justin stand at the side of the table facing the kitchen with Lexi and Alissa dutifully by their sides.

"Nostrand!" Dean yells out. "Beer pong. Now."

Luke waves him off. "Can't. Driving."

"Dude, you live, like, two blocks from here. Don't be such a puss."

Luke responds by taking his car keys from the inside pocket of his letterman's jacket and shaking them at Dean for emphasis. Dean shoots him an annoyed look while Lexi and Alissa blow me kisses, which I make a big display of blowing back, hoping I don't look like an idiot because I've never blown anyone a kiss in my life.

"Want a drink?" Luke asks as we make our way to the makeshift bar on the kitchen counter.

"Um..." I say, surveying the vast array of bottles in front of me. Behind us, two junior guys pump the beer keg.

Luke leans in. "You're kind of a vodka and soda girl," he says quietly enough only I would hear.

"Really? Yuck."

"Yeah. But it's all going into a red cup, so no one will be able to see what you're drinking anyway. I'm having plain soda, for the record."

"I'll join you."

"Here," he offers, filling a red cup with clear soda. Then he grabs a bottle of vodka, but before I can object, I realize what he's up to—he obscures the lip of the cup with one hand and pretends to pour vodka with his other, but he doesn't tip the bottle far enough for any liquor to spill out.

"One fake vodka and soda for you," he says, handing the cup to me.

"Thanks."

He pours a soda for himself and we bump cups. "Cheers," he says.

"Right back at ya."

Alissa bounces over from the beer pong table. "Vodka?" she asks, leaning over the counter.

"You know it."

Without asking, Alissa grabs my cup and downs a hearty swig while I watch in horror, about to be outed as a soda-guzzling wimp. But, instead, Alissa hands my drink back to me and giggles. "Oh, that's sooo good. You almost can't even taste the alcohol."

Wow, Alissa—you are so dumb.

"Make me one," she orders Luke.

"Get your boyfriend to be your bartender," he snaps, but she gives him a heavy-lidded smile that suggests she's already well on her way to buzzed, and the party's barely begun. Guess she started drinking in Justin's car on the way over.

"Pleeeease? All Justin ever gets is beer. I hate beer."

Judging by her breath, she doesn't hate beer enough not to drink it.

Luke gives in and pours her a soda with a tiny shot of vodka. Alissa takes the drink, blows him a kiss in thanks, and flounces back over to the beer pong area.

"Should we go watch the carnage?" Luke asks me, nodding toward his friends.

"Why not? It's a party," I say.

By now, Justin and Dean are playing against each other, and we join a crowd of football players and their girlfriends on the opposite side of the table from Alissa and Lexi. Every time Justin gets a ball in a cup and Dean has to drink—which is frequently—Lexi looks at me and heaves an exaggerated sigh evident in her body movements but that I can't hear due to all the noise.

"Luke, you've got next," Justin says once he sends Dean down to defeat, but Luke shakes his head.

"I told you guys, I'm not playing. Besides, I've got better things to do." He whispers in my ear. "Want to go upstairs?"

"Uh..."

"To talk," he adds after cupping his hand around his mouth so no one will see what he's saying.

"Yeah." I hope my relief isn't obvious. "Sure."

We turn for the hallway, and I notice Alissa and Lexi shooting me knowing looks. Luke leads me by the hand through the crowd once again, only this time, we head up the staircase to the second floor. Luke raps his knuckles on the first door we come across and someone shouts back "Occupied!" so we step to the next closed door, where no one responds when he knocks.

Luke opens the door and switches on the light. "This is Alex's room," he says, obviously having been here before. And the room certainly looks like it belongs to a male teenager, with clothes in a heap in one corner, various odds and ends of sports equipment in another corner, football and band posters on the walls, and a slightly pungent smell wafting throughout the room I can't put my finger on which falls in the general category of "boy."

"This is romantic," I say with some snark as Luke closes the door behind us.

"Yeah, Alex is kind of slob, but I've seen worse." He sits down on the floor and rests his head against Alex's worn comforter. "And I guess we're not really going for romantic anyway, so..."

"True."

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and says, "Although I can call room service and ask them to send up some champagne if that would help set the mood."

"Very funny." I sit down next to him and take a swig from my cup. "So, is this what you and

Dani usually do at parties? Head right for the makeout rooms?"

"Sometimes yes, sometimes no." He shrugs. "If I'm not driving, sometimes I'll play beer pong while Dani talks to people. Sometimes we just dance and hang out. But, I guess, we always eventually end up going upstairs."

Luke's so honest yet so nonchalant about his relationship with Dani, and I don't believe it's completely because he's trying to be the Henry Higgins to my Eliza Doolittle.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" I say.

"Depends on the question."

"Well, I've just been listening to and observing you over the last couple days—purely for research purposes, of course, given my current situation..."

"Of course." He smiles.

"And...well...you don't seem to like your friends very much. And you basically called your girlfriend a bitch this morning."

"I told you to act like a bitch if you wanted people to believe you as Dani. Not quite the same thing."

"Kind of a distinction without much of a difference."

He takes a drink and doesn't say anything.

"I just get the sense you're not really into the whole scene with the Perfects and their gang of admirers, so I was wondering what your deal is, I guess."

Luke sets his cup aside and angles himself so he's facing me. "My deal is high school's almost over and who cares anymore? I'm so bored with everything and I'm ready to move on to the next phase."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I mean, I've been 'Luke Nostrand, Ridgeview quarterback' for a long time. But once the season ended in November, that part of my life was done. I'm not good enough to play ball in college, and I'm not sure I'd want to anyway. And over winter break, I sent out all my college applications and got more excited about my next step in life than I was about what was still waiting for me here. Other than prom and all the fun stuff around graduation, what's left other than going to boring classes every day?"

"Sounds like a raging case of senioritis, which I totally understand," I tell him. "Still doesn't explain why you don't like your friends."

"I guess I'm tired of the expectations," he says, playing with a loose thread in the carpet. "We've been in school with the same people since sixth grade, and all the friend groups have solidified and everyone has their unwavering images of everyone else. Like the Perfects—everyone expects those three to run everything at school and be totally superior and hot while doing it. And everyone expects Dean, Justin, and me to follow them around like dumb jock idiots. It's not just us, either. It's everybody. Like, everyone knows Ellie's thing is being in school bands and playing bunch of musical instruments, and nobody knows anything about Janey anymore because she won't talk to people and wants to be left alone. And everyone expects you to do all your do-gooder stuff..."

"My do-gooder stuff?" I'm not sure I like his tone.

"I didn't mean that in a bad way—not at all. It's awesome. Like when you organized the clothing drive for those Sumatran immigrants who moved to Riverton..."

"Somalian," I correct him and struggle not to giggle.

"Yeah. Sorry." He wraps his arms around his legs and rests his chin on his knees. "But it's like I said, everyone has their images of everyone else and it's like now we're stuck with them until graduation."

"Or until we all end up inside other people's bodies," I point out, and he laughs a little.

"Or that. But you know what I mean. You're having to do all these things you'd never normally do so you can live Dani's life and meet everyone's expectations, and I'm guessing it's not a lot of fun."

"I haven't decided how I feel about it yet," I say before quickly shifting the focus away from me. "So, if you're so bored with everything, then why don't you break up with Dani and tell your friends to go to hell?"

He stops fiddling with the loose carpet and stares at me. "For the same reason I'm bored. High school's almost over. We've only got a few more months. I mean, I push things with my friends sometimes. Like downstairs—I could have played beer pong and left my car here and the two of us could have gotten a ride with someone. But people want me to hang out and be Mr. Awesome Football Guy and play drinking games and sometimes I don't want to."

"And Dani?"

"Dani...it would just be cruel to break up now. I mean, prom's coming."

"So, you don't love her?"

He hesitates. "Dani's a great girlfriend."

"Wasn't the question."

Luke hesitates again. "I love Dani, but I don't love love her anymore, I guess. She'll always be my first love, but over the last few months, the more I see people for who they really are..." He shakes his head. "I suppose sometime this summer, we'll have 'The Talk' and we'll go our separate ways, you know?"

"Not really. I'm not big on dating."

He cocks his head to the side. "Yeah. Why is that?"

I lift my shoulders toward my ears as I think and then let them droop. "I...I'm not sure. Too much other stuff going on, maybe? And, I mean, I've been in school with the same people since middle school just like you. I guess I've just never been too interested in anybody and no one's been interested in me."

"Except Rick Delacourt."

I roll my eyes. "Yeah—we'll see. I'm not as convinced as you are."

Luke smiles and then quickly gets serious once again. "I hope you don't think I'm a bad person because I'm still with Dani even though I'm not into the whole thing anymore. It's not easy to break up with someone when you're one of the only good things in her life."

"Okay," I say with a thick layer of sarcasm. "Dani has nothing good in her life besides you. Right. She lives in a palatial house, has an awesome car her parents gave her for her birthday, runs everything at school—"

"And her parents are so preoccupied with their own lives, they barely make time for her," Luke interrupts. "Maybe you've noticed in the brief time you've been stuck inside her. Her dad's always traveling around visiting bank branches and her mom spends her time running off with her friends doing charity stuff or going out. Think about it—did either of them offer to come to the game tonight to watch you cheer?"

"No," I say. "Mr. Maguire's been out of town, and Mrs. Maguire didn't come home before I left. But when we talked yesterday, she didn't say anything about going to the game."

"And now you kind of understand how hard Dani works on her cheerleading stuff. Imagine if there was something you'd worked really hard on and your parents didn't give a shit?"

I can't. My parents have always taken an interest in anything I've done at school, almost to the point of annoyance. But I wouldn't trade the times my dad's helped me take clothing drive stuff to a shelter or when my mom's parked her car in the driveway so I could store food pantry items in the garage because we ran out of room to keep everything at school.

"The Perfects aren't so perfect, Rachel," Luke continues. "They've got four more months together before graduation and no one will care who ran what at Ridgeview anymore. And then what happens? Take, Alissa, for instance. Her grades aren't good enough to get into college, so what does she do after graduation if all her friends move away? And Lexi's constantly trying to one-up Dani—you've seen it, and Alissa is too oblivious to care. But no matter where she goes off to school, nobody's going to care whether Lexi was the Queen of Ridgeview High or not, right? She'll be just another college freshman like the rest of us."

"Right."

He leans forward as if to drive his next point home. "I'm the only person who's cared about Dani for Dani since she was friends with you, Ellie, and Janey—me, and maybe Alissa. That's why it's not so easy to break up with her. Not yet."

I don't get the chance to say anything because I hear my phone buzzing in my purse. "Sorry," I say before I activate Dani's home screen to find a text from Ellie:

U still at the party?

"It's Ellie," I tell Luke as I text back that we are. She informs me she's outside in her mom's car, which I interpret to mean she wants us to join her.

"She's here...outside," I say.

"Did something happen with Janey?"

"She didn't say, but..."

Luke puts a hand on my shoulder. "I'll get our coats and meet you at the front door."

Downstairs, I don't wait for Luke and rush outside to the front steps, searching for Ellie's mom's Subaru. But Alex's street is like a parking lot because so many people are at the party and I can't find her car.

"Here," Luke comes up behind me and helps me into my coat as he asks, "Do you see her?"

"No, we'll need to walk around."

Thankfully, once we're out in the street we head in the right direction and Ellie flashes her lights at us. I climb in the front next to her while Luke slides into the backseat, and Ellie starts the engine. "I'm going to drive around the block a few times so we don't freeze to death," she says. "I've been freezing all night." She turns the heat on full blast and nods up the street at Alex's house. "Sounds like there's a really bumpin' party going on in there."

Her tone indicates she doesn't believe she missed much.

"That's one word for it," I say. "Did anything happen with Janey?"

"One of the search party groups found her bike just off the road near the bridge. It was stuck in a snow bank, so the cops were wondering if the plows kicked snow over it the other night." She turns to glance at Luke for a second before turning her attention back to the road. "After you left, we didn't stay out much longer because of the cold. I think the cops are starting to give up hope. The longer she's gone, the less likely it is she'll be found—dead or alive."

We all let that sobering news sink in for a moment, the only noise some air wooshing out from the car's vents.

"So, I'm out there tonight, freezing my ass off, calling Janey's name over and over, and I started thinking about how this is the worst thing ever," Ellie says out of nowhere. "I might lose both my best friends in the span of, like, no time at all because we're still not sure what's happening and could happen with you."

I squirm a little because I don't even want to dwell on my body dying and my consciousness being stranded inside Dani.

"And then I started thinking about something you said last night," Ellie continues, pointing over her shoulder into the backseat at Luke, "about how weird it is Janey went missing and Rachel ended up in a coma less than twenty-four hours apart. And, I mean, on the surface, there's no reason the two things would be connected." She turns her attention back to me. "Like you said, it's just a coincidence, right?

"Right," I mumble, wondering what the punch line is going to be to Ellie's ramblings.

"But the whole thing kept nagging at me. So, I started thinking about what you and Janey had in common, other than being friends..."

I gasp as I realize what she's getting at. "Rocky Ridge. We both lived in Rocky Ridge as kids."

"And, Dani, too. I mean, we technically have no idea where she is right now."

"So, you're thinking the whole toxic waste situation at Rocky Ridge has something to do with this?" Luke asks.

We've already gone around the block once, but rather than circling again, Ellie parks in front of a house, turns off the lights, and keeps the engine idling.

"It's the best theory I've got," she says. "Rocky Ridge is the only common denominator I can come up with that might cause something out of the ordinary." She swivels in the driver's seat to face me. "I don't understand enough about what went on out there to get what all those chemicals might have done."

"Well, me, neither," Luke chimes in, "but I doubt chemicals caused this." He tilts a hand in my direction.

"I get that it doesn't make any sense, but I'm wondering if there are things about Rocky Ridge we don't understand. Or maybe things didn't go down out there the way everyone's always thought they did. I mean, we were little kids back then."

"Elle, come on," I start. "This sounds like some bizarre conspiracy crap. Weird chemicals in the water caused me to end up in Dani's body and made Janey disappear?"

"Trust me—I get what this sounds like. It's crazy, but..."

Ellie's voice fades out, and I say "Okay. So, assuming Rocky Ridge is somehow involved in all this, what do we do about it?"

"Well, I was thinking about that on the way over here, too," she says, drumming her fingers on the dashboard. "Since we appear to be veering into some bizarre paranormal territory here...you know how in, like, almost every science fiction movie there's some weird old dude who knows all and helps the kids defeat the aliens or the ghosts or whatever?"

"Yeah?" Luke and I say almost at the same time.

Ellie takes off her hat and exhales, angling her breath so she can blow some of her purple bangs off her face.

"I think I might know who our weird old dude is."

Chapter 14

Our "weird old dude" turns out not to be a dude at all, and really isn't all that old. But when Ellie suggests we take a trip to the Ridgeview Public Library on Saturday morning to visit the librarian and local history expert everyone in town calls Hippie Lucy, I'm all in because there's nowhere else to turn.

First, I just need to get out of the house, which proves to be a little more difficult than I'd anticipated—

Daddy's home.

I'm in the kitchen scarfing down a bagel before meeting Ellie at the library when Mr. Maguire strolls in wearing sweatpants and a long-sleeved t-shirt, fully ready for a lazy weekend.

"There's my girl," he says, walking over to where I'm standing at the kitchen island with his arms outstretched. I put down my bagel and let him envelop me in a hug. He smells freshly-showered but in a slightly different way than my own dad usually does, and a stab of sadness pierces my heart.

"Hi, Dad," I mumble against his shoulder.

"How was your week?" he says when he pulls back, his blue eyes twinkling behind his glasses.

"It was...interesting. How was..." Think, Rachel, where did Mrs. Maguire say he was? "Columbia?"

Mr. Maguire sits down at the kitchen island. "Good, I think. The new branch is off to a solid start, and I've got high hopes they'll do well."

"That's nice," I say, although I don't really care whether the new Columbia branch of Liberty Federal fares well or not.

"You're up early on a Saturday. And dressed to go out, too," Mr. Maguire notes. Apparently, Dani's a 'lounge around in your pajamas' sort of person on the weekends, at least during the day.

"I'm going to the library."

His eyebrows lift. "The library? On a weekend?"

"Yeah. Um...group project for school. Needs to be done by early next week." I check the time on my phone. "In fact, I'm running late so I should probably go."

I'm not running late. I just don't want to spend any more time with Dani's dad than I need to, considering I'm not really his daughter.

"Okay, sweetheart. Your mom and I have that dinner tonight in Ladue, so we may not be here depending on what time you get home."

"Sure, Dad." I put the rest of my bagel in a napkin and grab my bag from the floor. "See you later."

"Have a good day," he calls after me as I walk into the garage. Once I shut the door, I lean against it for a second and breathe.

I don't know how much longer I can do this. I sure hope Hippie Lucy can help me, but I can't imagine how she could.

Saturday morning isn't exactly a popular time for anyone from school to visit the local library, so Ellie and I figure we can safely meet up without people questioning why she and Dani are together. I park Dani's car in the tiny lot behind the library and walk around the building to the front entrance, where Ellie's waving at me from behind the glass doors.

"I already did a sweep of the building, and there's no one here from school," she tells me as I take off my gloves and jam them into my coat pockets.

"You 'did a sweep?' What—are we secret agents now?"

"Hey—you don't want someone from school to catch you hanging out with loser me and then Alissa and Lexi are forced kick you out of the Perfects."

"I'm not in the Perfects, but I'm also trying not to screw up Dani's life while I'm living it. So, thank you for checking."

"No problem." She links her arm through mine as if I'm back in my Rachel body. It feels good to be behaving like best friends again, although, with Janey missing, something's still off.

We walk toward the library's main area, where Hippie Lucy—or Lucy Langlois, as the placard on the desk calls her—is at her usual station behind the reference desk. Her nickname among Ridgeview's youth stems mostly from how she dresses and wears her hair, and she's in full-on hippie mode today, clad in a blue batik print-dress under a navy cardigan with her tight graying curls pulled back into a ponytail. As she peers at us over wire-framed glasses, her delicate silver earrings swing back and forth, the ovals dangling from her ears and catching the light.

"Wait." I stop walking while we're still far enough away Hippie Lucy wouldn't be able to hear us. "What's the plan here? I can't just stroll up to her and say 'Hi, I'm stuck in someone else's body. Is there any reference material pertaining to what I should do?'"

"Follow my lead," Ellie whispers, pulling us forward to the reference desk. "Um...hi," she says to Hippie Lucy as she leans against the desk's edge. "We're working on a school project and needed some information."

"Information is the name of my game," Lucy responds with a broad, toothy smile. "What's your project about?"

"Manford Chemical and the Rocky Ridge buyout," Ellie says.

Lucy's smile disappears and her expression shifts to something...darker. "That's an...interesting project topic. Might I ask what class this is for?"

"History," I tell her. "We're supposed to focus on some aspect of local history."

"I see. You two must be getting a head start. No other students from the high school have been in here asking about local history projects."

"We're very conscientious," Ellie says.

"And I used to live in Rocky Ridge as a little kid, so we were interested in learning more about it," I chime in. "My parents have told me some stories, but we need actual research sources for our project."

Hippie Lucy leans in and rests her elbows on the lacquered counter. "So, you're one of the Rocky Ridge kids," she says.

The Rocky Ridge kids. I've never heard anyone refer to those of us who lived there like that before. She's making us sound like we contracted some rare disease and people need to organize fundraisers for us.

"Um...yeah," I say.

"Then you must know that poor missing girl, and the girl who was in the car accident at the lake the other night."

"We go to school with them," Ellie says.

"But you must know them well," Lucy says, nodding at me. "There weren't too many families in the old Rocky Ridge development, and only three families with girls: The Douchettes, the Lords, and the Maguires."

I jerk my head back a little. "Wow. You really know your stuff."

"I'm not the library's local history expert for nothing." She grins. "So, you're obviously not Janey Douchette or Rachel Lord, which means you must be Jessica Lord or Dani Maguire."

I don't say anything because I'm in shock—Hippie Lucy seems like she's a little more than just a local history expert. Ellie elbows me in the ribs and I pull myself together.

"I'm Dani Maguire."

Hippie Lucy squints and examines me as if she knows I'm hiding something and I pull my coat more tightly around me.

"Well, it's nice to meet you, Dani Maguire. And your friend is?"

"Ellie Stengel."

"Nice to meet you as well, Ellie Stengel. Now, for information about Rocky Ridge..." She rounds the counter and waves for the two of us to follow her. "You'll need to research in our local history section."

She leads us to a back corner of the library set off by a glass wall; I've walked past this area probably a million times over the years but never paid much attention. Inside the glassed-off section are several tables and metal cabinets, a microfiche reader, a computer, and some low bookcases with ancient looking volumes. On closer inspection, I find some of the books are old Ridgeview High School yearbooks.

"Oh, I should totally look up my mom," I say to Ellie, and Lucy laughs.

"You wouldn't be the first Ridgeview student to do that," she says, walking over to a cabinet and opening the middle drawer. "Most of the microfiche tapes with newspaper articles about Rocky Ridge are in here. If you have any questions or run into trouble finding what you're looking for, just ask—I've done a lot of research into what happened out there and, of course, I was alive then, so I remember it well."

"I don't," I say, shrugging. "I mean, I remember living out there and playing in the lake as a little kid, but none of us really understood what was going on with Manford Chemical. We were too young—all we knew was suddenly, we had to move."

"You were little. About six, correct?"

I'm a little creeped out that Hippie Lucy knows so much about me...Dani...us, I guess.

"Yeah. We moved the summer after I turned six."

"So, you're eighteen."

"Yeah...I mean, basically."

I flinch even before the words are completely out of my mouth. I'll be eighteen in a few days, but Dani won't turn eighteen until mid-March, nearly a month and a half from now. Hippie Lucy would have no reason to know either of our birthdays, though, and "basically" is probably close enough as far as both our birthdays are concerned, so I brush off the confused look she gives me as a figment of my imagination.

"Well, as long as you're back here, I'll just ask since you know so much about Rocky Ridge," Ellie starts. "Would the chemicals in the ground and the water out there...do things to people? I mean, obviously, they were dangerous enough Manford felt they had to buy everyone out..."

"Well...I...don't...I don't completely understand the science. But there was some fear people could get sick, although there's been no indication anyone ever has." Lucy pauses. "So, you're wondering if the chemicals could harm people? I thought you said this was a local history project?"

"Well...it is," I insist. "But we were just curious about the nature of the chemicals they dumped in the ground. That's what started everything out there."

Hippie Lucy purses her lips before speaking. "Well, like I said, I've spent a great deal of time researching the Rocky Ridge Incident and I'm an expert on local history beyond what's here in the library," Lucy says. "I may not know much about chemistry, but I'm willing to bet I have information that could be quite valuable to your project, whatever it is."

I give Ellie a sideways glance and she covers her mouth as if she's either trying to send me some kind of signal or hide her expression from Lucy.

"What I'm saying is, you can trust me with whatever you're really trying to find out," Lucy continues. "And if I'm right about what's going on here, I might be able to help you track down Janey Douchette if you tell me what you already know. I hear the police are concentrating their search around the Rocky Ridge area, so I'm assuming the poor girl's disappearance is why one of the other Rocky Ridge kids would be in here digging for information for a non-existent local history project for school."

"How would you be able to help find Janey?" Ellie asks, ignoring that our school project cover story has gone down in flames. "And if you have some clue about what happened to her, why haven't you gone to the police?"

"My theory isn't quite something you can take to the police and ask them to investigate."

"And do you want to let us in on that theory?" I say, my attitude definitely more Dani than Rachel to the point Ellie stares at me in open-mouthed surprise.

Hippie Lucy rubs her lips together. "No," she says, shaking her head. "If you don't already have some idea of what I'm talking about, then I've said too much. You should ask your mother about this."

"What would my mom know about Janey Douchette's disappearance?" I ask. Not like I'd feel comfortable asking Mrs. Maguire to relive the old days at Rocky Ridge under the current circumstances.

"Mrs. Maguire probably hasn't spoken to Janey or her dad in years," Ellie adds.

"Well, Janey just turned eighteen," Hippie Lucy begins, and I marvel once again at how much information she's racked up about those of us who used to live at Rocky Ridge. "I take it you two are friends of hers?"

Ellie answers for both of us, which is a good thing because I'm worried the more I say, the closer I'm getting to revealing I'm not really Dani Maguire. "Janey's one of my best friends," Ellie says.

"And did she mention anything significant happening to her on her birthday or in the days since?"

"Other than she can vote now? No," Ellie tells her, but Hippie Lucy turns her attention back to me.

"You're suspiciously quiet," she says, and I lower my eyes to avoid her stare.

"I'm...just..."

"I'm assuming Janey didn't tell you anything, either? Or maybe your mom said something about Janey turning eighteen?"

"Janey and I...we're...we're not close," I say, stumbling over my words. "And, like Ellie said, Mrs. Maguire probably hasn't seen or spoken to Janey in years."

Hippie Lucy rests a hand on her chin. "Why are you referring to your own mother as 'Mrs. Maguire?'"

Wow—I am sooo bad at this. I open my mouth to say something to cover my tracks, although I'm not sure what that something is going to be, but before I can get anything out, Hippie Lucy motions for Ellie and me to follow her to a table in the back corner of the local history section.

"Sit," she says, and Ellie and I pull out two wooden chairs next to each other and sit down. She slides into a chair across the table from us and point-blank asks me "Who are you? Because I'm starting to believe you're not Dani Maguire."

I open my mouth even though I'm not sure what to say, but Ellie responds first: "Who do you think she is?"

"I'm going to hazard a guess and say you're Janey Douchette, and you've royally screwed up."

Ellie and I exchange looks, and I figure so long as Hippie Lucy already suspects somebody's in Dani Maguire's body—even if she's thinking it's the wrong somebody—I might as well take some steps toward honesty. And it's not like lying is working out too well for me today, so...

"Well, I'm not Janey Douchette and as far as I know, I didn't screw up anything."

Hippie Lucy's hand flutters to her mouth. "Oh...oh, no. So, are you...are you Rachel Lord?"

Ellie and I exchange glances, and Ellie nods at me. "Yes?" I say to Hippie Lucy in the form of a question, partially because I'm not sure I should be revealing the truth to her and partially because I guess I'm still Rachel Lord, although the weirdness of the last few days makes anything seem possible.

Her hand moves to the area near her breastbone. "You're sure?"

"As sure as I am about anything," I say, which isn't too sure at all.

Her eyes widen and her hand drops from her chest. "Oh...oh, no," she repeats. "This...this is so much worse than I suspected."

Not quite what I wanted to hear.

"And what exactly did you suspect to begin with?" Ellie asks.

Hippie Lucy stands and moves to one of the shelves behind her, eventually returning to the table with a few large, leather-bound volumes. "Well, we've gone too far, so there's no turning back now. Apparently, I need to start from the beginning," she says, flipping pages in one of the books. Once she lands on the page she's looking for, she turns the book around to us. We're looking at a reproduction of the first page of an old edition of the Ridgeview Gazette, the town newspaper that no longer publishes in print. In the grainy photo are a few houses on a dirt road with grass and trees in the background. The headline reads: NEW DEVELOPMENT SET FOR LAKE AREA.

"Do you recognize those houses?" Lucy asks me.

"They look sort of like my old house, Janey's house, and Dani's, and one kind of looks like my grandparents' old house, but..."

"Yes. These houses pre-date the Rocky Ridge development and the construction of the Manford plant. The rest of the subdivision was built mainly to accommodate the influx of people moving to town." She points to the date on the newspaper's masthead. "This picture was taken about two years before you were born." Lucy grabs another volume and flips it around toward Ellie and me. "And here's a picture of the land before the houses were there."

She points to a picture on a page with other old pictures of the town and surrounding areas. This photo looks just like the one she had shown us previously, but without the houses. "This photo is from a long time ago," Lucy explains. "It's taken from the edge of the lake. There are some cabins set back in the woods, but obviously, you can't see them here."

"How does all this relate to Janey and how she's royally screwed up?" Ellie asks.

"Patience. I'm getting there," Lucy says, turning back to me. "The land the Rocky Ridge development was built on was the ancestral land of the Clairvoix family. Their presence here goes back well over two hundred years, long before Ridgeview was settled. Janey Douchette is the last direct descendant of the Clairvoix family, and you and Dani Maguire are her relatives—distant cousins."

I had no idea, but then again, I've never really done much exploration of my family's genealogy on either side.

"You and Dani and Janey are all related?" Ellie asks, and as my mouth twists in confusion, Lucy says to me "I wouldn't blame you for not knowing. The family connection isn't close, but it's there, which is significant."

"So, because you've studied the Clairvoix family, that's how you knew about Janey's birthday?"

"Yes, and birth announcements in the paper. It's not hard to find out anyone's birthday in this town. And, as I said, I've invested a great deal of time in studying Rocky Ridge and the people who lived there."

"Okay." I pause, trying to figure out what to ask next. "So, you said it was significant Janey, Dani, and I are related. Does the three of us being family have something to do with why Janey disappeared and why I'm stuck in Dani's body?"

"It might. My guess is Janey tried a spell and it went horribly, horribly wrong."

Once again, Ellie and I exchange looks. As if being trapped inside someone else's body isn't trippy enough, talking to Hippie Lucy is just making everything more bizarre.

"A spell?" Ellie asks for the both of us. "You mean, like, magic and stuff?"

Lucy leans against the edge of the table and puts her hand over mine where it rests next to the leather-bound book with the ancient photo of the area near Rocky Ridge Lake.

"I shouldn't be the one telling you this. I'm not family. But you girls wouldn't be here if you didn't feel you had no one else to turn to, and like I said, we've come too far in this conversation for me to turn back now. These are extraordinary circumstances—I'm sure your mother will understand." She takes a dramatic pause and I suck in a breath, fearful of what's coming. "The Clairvoix women are witches."

And now things don't just seem trippy. They are trippy...

"So, I'm..." I can't even say it aloud.

"And Janey," Ellie adds once she realizes speech is failing me. "Janey's a witch?"

"Oh, yes. If the Clairvoix coven became active once again, she'd be their leader since she's a direct descendant of the main bloodline."

"So, I'm..."

My voice catches in my throat. Yup—still struggling with this.

Lucy's fingers curl around my hand and I appreciate the warmth and sensation of her touch as if it's the only thing tethering me to reality right now. And it very well may be.

"Like I said, I'm sorry I'm the one telling you this. On the one hand, I've overstepped a boundary, but on the other hand, lives may be at stake," Lucy says almost more to herself than anyone else.

"So, Dani Maguire's a witch, too?" Ellie asks.

"Yes."

"That explains a lot."

"Very funny," I say to her before asking Lucy "So, if the Clairvoix women are all witches, then that means Janey's mom, and Dani's mom..." Lucy starts nodding as I finish my thought. "...and my mom..."

I swallow hard. Yeah—so not dealing well with this news.

"You know, I'm going to give you girls a few minutes to digest this," Lucy says. "It's just occurred to me I've abandoned my post at the reference desk for quite a while. Let me go find someone to cover for me and I'll be back shortly."

Lucy gives my hand a quick pat and rises from her chair. She shuffles out of the local history area before disappearing behind some bookshelves on her way to the front. I, meanwhile, groan and put my head down on the table forehead first.

"So, if you're a witch, could you conjure up some egg and cheese burritos right about now? I skipped breakfast," Ellie says.

"You are sooo not helping," I say, lifting my head. "There's no way this is real. Hippie Lucy must be wearing her hippie headbands too tight or something. I am not related to Janey and Dani Maguire, and we are not witches."

"Oh, come on." She reaches forward and rumples my hair, which I smooth back down in Dani Maguire-fashion. "Let's assume Hippie Lucy hasn't smoked too many funny cigarettes over the years and she knows what she's talking about. How could you not be a little bit excited about this? Witches in movies and on TV always kick ass. If this is real, think of the possibilities."

"Right now, I'm just thinking about the fact the local history librarian told me I'm a witch when I don't even believe witches are real. And then there's my mild-mannered mother, who's evidently a witch masquerading as an accountant and never bothered to tell me, not to mention my grandma in Florida, who's a retired witch, I guess. Wonder what kind of pension plan witches get?"

"I guess it does kind of suck finding out your mom was keeping a pretty big secret from you. Do you think your dad knows?"

"Doubt it, since witches are not real." I glare at her.

"And Jessica...this means Jessica's a witch, too. That's weird."

"Jessica's a nerd." I push my chair out and rest my chin on the edge of the table. "I'm a little clueless about the rules at this point, but her nerdiness might cancel out any kind of awesome that goes along with being a witch because, by the way, witches are not real."

"I'm guessing nerdiness doesn't cancel out witchiness."

"Well, who knows how any of this works?" I grumble. "Witches are not real. And I can't even think about Jessica right now because physically, I'm still Dani Maguire and Jessica isn't my sister."

"Do you suppose Janey did something to put you into Dani's body?" Ellie asks, still taking Hippie Lucy's words as the truth. "I mean, it sounds that way, right? Hippie Lucy used the word 'spell,' so Janey must have known she was a witch."

"And didn't tell us?" I ask. "Oh, wait. I know why she didn't tell us—because witches are not real."

Ellie ignores me. "Obviously, your mother left out crucial information about your family history, so maybe Janey's mom never told her, either. Maybe she just found out from her dad and he told her not to tell or something." Ellie glances to her left. "Wait...Lucy's coming back."

I look over at Lucy shuffling toward us. "The reference desk is safe for another hour," she says, rejoining us at the table. "I told my colleague I had some girls working on a very important project in the local history section who were in need of my help. Now, where were we?"

"You'd just told me I and all the women in my family are witches," I say, curious to hear the remainder of her explanation.

"Ah, yes. I'm sure you have questions."

"I have one," Ellie says, raising her hand as if we're in school. "Are you a witch?"

Lucy lets out a sliver of a laugh. "Oh, no. No. I'm a witch...sympathizer, let's say. I'm very interested in the history of the covens in this area and what they do, but I'm not a witch myself. My passion for local history stems from the fact my family was one of the original families in Ridgeview. My people have been here as long as the Clairvoix family. But, no witches in my line."

"You said 'covens,'" I point out, wondering how much sillier this conversation is going to get. "There are other witches around here?"

"It's likely, yes. This area was once a hotbed of coven activity, although things have gradually died down over the years. That's one of the reasons I'm worried about your friend Janey. The covens were friendly with each other, but there was tension sometimes —politics, you know, and general irritations from living so near to each other."

"Of course," I say sarcastically, and when Ellie glares at me, I hunch up my shoulders as if to say "What?"

"If someone from another coven is actively practicing magic again, they may have sought Janey out for some reason and maybe she's with them. Or if she's committed some offense against them in practicing her magic, they may want to retaliate against her. I'm not aware of any history of violence among the covens but, again, most of them have been inactive for a while. I can't speak for what younger members of the covens might do if they choose to begin practicing again."

I'm still laughing inside at the fact the greater Ridgeview area could be crawling with witches—both good and bad—but I collect myself enough to ask, "How would Janey have even learned witchcraft?"

"She didn't, apparently," Lucy says, sweeping a hand out toward me in a gesture toward my current predicament. "And there's a crucial bit of remaining information. Clairvoix witches don't come into their powers until they turn eighteen. Even if Janey's mother had told her about her family history before her death, Janey wouldn't have been able to practice magic until just this week. Ideally, a Clairvoix witch would train her female offspring in the ways of magic until her eighteenth birthday, at which point, the new witch would be able to practice on her own."

"Sort of like a witch internship?" Ellie asks.

"I believe the term they used was 'apprenticeship,' but yes," Lucy tells her. "And Janey has no one. Her mother is dead, and the only Clairvoix witches left in this area don't practice anymore." She turns her attention to me. "So, unless your mother or another Clairvoix has taken up magic again—"

"Again?" I blurt out. "I can assure you my mother has never whipped up a magic potion or turned anyone into a frog."

"That you're aware of," Lucy says, folding her arms over her stomach. "Part of the point of magic is that regular mortals usually don't realize it's happening. And, for the next few days, at least, you're a regular mortal."

That shuts me up pretty quickly, whether I believe in witches or not.

"If you ever need a fun science project, sneak into the Rocky Ridge development sometime. Take a water sample or a soil sample and send it off to a lab for testing. You might be surprised at what you find," Lucy continues.

"What are you talking about?" I ask.

"That's what I did, years ago, but well after Manford bought everyone out. I had a hunch, so I took some samples and sent them to a friend of mine who works at a lab in St. Louis. And the samples came back clean."

"Clean?" Ellie asks.

"Free of any chemicals that weren't already supposed to be there. Nothing supposedly dumped by the Manford Company showed up in the tests."

"I don't understand," I say. "Everything out there was contaminated. Manford agreed it was potentially unsafe for anyone to live or work there." I realize I'm not saying anything that isn't common knowledge, but relaying the story like some sort of an incantation helps me delay my acceptance of what Lucy may be getting at. "They bought everyone out rather than risk lawsuits. It was in all the papers. I've read about it on the internet."

"And, as I've told you, that land is the ancestral home of the Clairvoix, and no one likes having strangers wreck their home," Lucy says, peering at me over her glasses. "So, you may want to reconsider what you believe your mother has or hasn't done."

Chapter 15

I try to picture my mother—my mother—in a dark flowing robe and one of those pointy witch hats, standing with Stella Douchette and Charlotte Maguire and chanting or waving their magic wands or whatever they did to poison Rocky Ridge Lake just long enough to drive Manford Chemical out of town. And I can't see it, but not just because witches are not real. My mom barely has time to make dinner during the week, much less put a hex on a corporation and drive it out of town.

And then Ellie asks Lucy the million-dollar question:

"How did you find out about all of this? Other than being a Clairvoix witch aficionado, I mean." She sweeps her arm out at the shelves behind Lucy. "Is all of this written down somewhere?"

"Some of it. Some of it has been passed down to me from previous generations—my mother, my grandmother. My grandmother, especially, was a great friend and ally of the Clairvoix. But what I don't have access to are any of the Clairvoix spell books—only the Clairvoix themselves have those. I held a spell book once as a little girl, one that belonged to Janey's great-grandmother. And when non-witches hold a Clairvoix spell book, the spells and incantations disappear, so I was holding a book with a very ornate cover and nothing but empty pages." She pauses. "But I understand the word of 'Hippie Lucy' might not be good enough."

Ellie nudges me under the table, and I cast my eyes away from Lucy's glare.

"Oh, come on," Lucy says. "You think I'm not aware of what people call me? I pay attention to most things that go on in this town."

When I look up, Lucy's eyes are dancing.

"It's a nickname I wear with pride," she continues. "At any rate, I can understand you might want to take a look at some of this history. Any plans this evening?"

"Two high school nerds on a Saturday night?" Ellie says. "We're completely free."

"Speak for yourself. Dani has to go out with Lexi and Alissa tonight," I tell her.

"You can't get out of it?"

"How?" I ask Ellie. "I'll just tell them 'Sorry—found out I'm a witch and I need to learn more about that. And, oh, by the way, I'm not really Dani.' That'll work."

"Yeah. Guess you still need to pretend to be Perfect until we can figure this out."

"Is this some high school clique thing I wouldn't understand?" Lucy asks.

"Basically," I tell her. "Let's just say Dani Maguire has a few more social obligations than I do."

"Brunch tomorrow, then?" Lucy suggests. "I don't work on Sundays. The two of you can come over and look through my materials on the Clairvoix, and I can make my famous bacon-and-egg casserole."

"I could do tomorrow," Ellie says. "As long as I'm invited to look at all this stuff?"

Lucy grins. "Every witch needs a few non-witch allies."

"Then count me in."

"Me, too," I say, mostly because going to Lucy's gives me somewhere to be that isn't the Maguire house. The Maguires don't seem to care too much where Dani is at any given moment, so I'm sure I won't have any trouble getting away.

"It's a date, then." Lucy gives us her address in town, and the three of us walk together toward the front of the library, which is still nearly empty save for a few of Ridgeview's senior citizens using the computers just inside the main reading room. Before Ellie and I head for the lobby, Lucy places a hand on my back. "Chin up, Dani. This is a lot to take in, but I promise to help you in any way I can."

"Thanks, Ms. Langlois." Even though I don't believe in witches, I can still be grateful for her help.

I trot to catch up with Ellie, linking my arm with hers as if everything's normal. "You okay?" she asks.

"For someone who's supposedly turning into a witch on Wednesday? I'm great."

"Seriously, though."

"Seriously? Hippie Lucy telling me I'm a witch and I'm related to Dani and Janey are only the second and third weirdest things to happen to me this week. I'm good."

Ellie gives me a mournful look. "It's bizarre, but I almost forgot you were Dani there for a second. I mean, it's kind of impossible to forget you're Dani because—" She waves a hand in front of my body—"but today's the longest amount of time we've spent together since everything went down. It's almost like you're Dani but how Dani used to be, back when we were all friends."

I nod but don't say anything, scared once again the line between Dani and me is disappearing the longer I'm in her body and the longer my body is in a coma.

"You know, I wasn't kidding earlier about skipping breakfast. I was thinking about heading over to Smiley Joe's for some hot chocolate and a breakfast burrito. Wanna come?" Ellie asks.

"Elle, I can't. People can't see us together. Even if you're able to forget I'm Dani, the rest of the world isn't." I gaze out the front door of the library—Rick Delacourt and Chris Baker, another baseball player, are talking together in front of the bookstore across the street. "People are out walking around now," I tell her, gesturing toward them.

Ellie's nose crinkles as she thinks. "We can still have breakfast together. Give me a five-minute head start, then come over to Smiley Joe's." She digs into her bag and pulls out her phone. "We may not be able to sit at a table with each other and talk, but thanks to modern technology, we can talk anyway."

"True. Sad, but true."

"See you in five minutes?"

"See you in five."

Ellie pulls her scarf around her neck and heads out into the cold, and I track the time on Dani's phone and wait for five minutes to go by before stepping out onto the sidewalk myself. Fortunately, Smiley Joe's is only two doors down, so I'm not forced to brave the chill for long. I walk in and search around, spotting Ellie sitting at a table in the corner and playing with her phone while she waits for her order. Smiley Joe's is a popular place, especially on Saturday mornings, so I wait in line for a few minutes before I can place my order of a breakfast burrito and a large coffee. The woman working the counter, who most Saturday mornings would be Janey but this morning is Smiley Joe's manager, gives me a plastic number tile with my order number to take to my table and a coffee cup to bring to the line of pots behind me. I fill my cup with coffee and half-and-half and sit at the open table furthest from Ellie. We trade a few texts back and forth before Chris Baker walks in.

"Hey, Dani. What's up?" he says as he approaches my table. "You hang out here?"

I put my phone down on the table and press the button that darkens the screen. From across the coffeehouse, Ellie gives me a pained look as she realizes Chris has just shut down any further conversation between us, at least for a while.

"Yeah, I really like this place," I say, flashing him a dazzling Dani smile, but feeling lonelier inside than ever before.

I spend a good chunk of the day hanging at Smiley Joe's, then at the local bookstore—somewhere I would go but Dani probably wouldn't. Finally, I end up just driving around to avoid going back to the Maguires and spending quality time with Dani's parents. My timing works out as they're getting ready to head out for the evening when I come home, and they're too engrossed in rushing around at their end of the hall to do much more than say hello to me. I find some earbuds in Dani's desk drawer and flop down on the bed, sampling her interesting taste in music—boy bands mixed with indie tracks I've never heard before along with some classic rock thrown in for good measure. I keep the volume turned down low enough to hear Dani's mom knock on the door to tell me she and Mr. Maguire are leaving.

"Pizza money's on the counter," she tells me after she enters the room and stands at the end of the bed.

"Okay. I might be going out later or Alissa and Lexi might be coming here. We're still working things out." I've been fielding texts from the other Perfects all day, and I've concluded the three of them together can't come to a consensus about anything.

"That's fine, sweetie. It's so nice of you to ask, but whatever you decide to do is fine. I'll leave a little more money in case the girls come over and you want to order for all of you, okay?"

"Thanks."

"We'll probably be home around midnight, maybe eleven if I can drag your dad away." Mrs. Maguire moves her head from side to side as if she's exasperated with Mr. Maguire already. "Call if you need anything."

"I will."

From down the hall, Mr. Maguire yells "'Bye, sweetheart."

"'Bye," I call back.

Mrs. Maguire closes my door and I exhale, thankful for surviving another interaction with my not-parents. Before getting up to get ready for the evening, I take some time to address the texts that have built up from Alissa and Lexi while I've been lying here listening to Dani's music. I try to convince them to hang out at Dani's house—I don't want to be out somewhere interacting with a ton of people like I do at school, and at their houses, I run the risk of having to pretend to be Dani in front of their parents. Since I can barely pull off pretending to be Dani in front of Dani's parents, I'm relieved when they grudgingly agree to come over.

And Lexi shows just how grudgingly she's into hanging out at Dani's as soon as she and Alissa are through the front door. "This night better not be lame," she snaps, taking off her coat and throwing it on the back of the couch. I grab it up and signal for Alissa to hand hers to me.

"It's Ridgeview, bitch," I say as I walk over to the hall closet, my voice stumbling a bit on the "b" in "bitch." I'll never be comfortable throwing that word around as a casual nickname for one of my supposed friends. "Every night is lame."

"True." Lexi flops down on the couch and drapes her smooth locks over her shoulder to examine some non-existent split ends. "At the very least, we could have gone out to the Burger Shack like I suggested, but nooo."

I hang up the coats and come over to the couch, resting my hands on the back near Lexi's head. "And I told you, my mom left us a ton of money for pizza," I say. "We don't need to go out."

"Except the only person who will see us will be the delivery guy," Alissa grumbles from her perch in an easy chair across the room. "And pizza delivery guys in this town are never hot. All this will be wasted." She sweeps her hand in front of her body to indicate her black mini skirt, tights, high-heeled mini boots, tight white sweater, and full makeup and styled hair should be viewed by more than just Lexi and me.

Of course, I think to myself. No wonder my fellow Perfects resisted spending an evening here and no wonder they want to go to the Burger Shack. Their whole goal in life is to be admired by others, as if they're a living, breathing Ridgeview Beautification Society.

"Can we at least invite the guys over?" Lexi asks, still examining her hair. "I hate that Dean'll have to wait until Monday to see this new eyeshadow I bought."

She flutters her eyelids, showing off a shimmery purple shade. I want to tell her Dean wouldn't care about her eyeshadow unless it were something he could eat or have sex with, but I restrain myself, saying "You know what, sluts? You're right. We are way too hot to be sitting around here alone." I grab my phone from the coffee table. "Let's text our men and find out what they're doing."

Video games—that's what they're doing. We each find out through a flurry of messages the guys are at Justin's playing the latest version of Space Doom Shooter, which sounds a hell of a lot more exciting than watching movies in Dani's living room or going out to the Burger Shack to lord our popularity over Ridgeview's teen population. But once they find out we're planning on ordering pizza after Luke laments the lack of food at Justin's house, getting them to join us for the evening is a done deal.

I order as much pizza as I can with the money Mrs. Maguire left, and the guys show up not long after I make the call. "We're not going to watch some lame romantic comedy, are we?" Dean grumbles almost as soon as I've opened the door. I'm starting to wonder if any of these people ever say "hello" or if they always start every conversation by blurting out whatever's in their heads.

Luke enters after Justin, and he plants a chaste kiss on my forehead. "Hi," he whispers.

At least someone in this group knows how to greet someone.

"Hi," I say back. I want so much to tell him everything I found out today, but I'm not sure what I should reveal to him, especially since I don't believe much of anything I've learned. Looking at everything from Luke's perspective, I can't imagine what it must be like for him to pretend to be dating someone who isn't really his girlfriend. Finding out the local history librarian thinks his girlfriend is a witch—both his actual girlfriend and the one who's currently playing the role—might be too much to take.

We join the guys and the Perfects in the living room and all of us proceed to argue about what movie to watch until the pizzas show up. "I'll help you," Luke offers, jumping up to follow me to the door. The delivery guy hands him four pizza boxes as I fork over the money, and then we head for the kitchen. Thankfully, the rest of my guests don't follow right away, still trying to settle on a flick now that they've narrowed down the genre—horror.

"You okay?" Luke says to me, placing the pizza boxes on the counter while I open cabinets in search of plates. He senses my confusion and says quietly enough no one in the other room could hear him "Next to the sink."

I open the cabinet he's indicated and find several sets of plates. "I'm good," I say, responding to his question with something that's not quite the truth.

"Did you and Ellie find out anything at the library?" he asks, but I'm saved from responding right away by Justin walking into the kitchen. "Looks like we've decided on Blood Ceremony 2 if it's okay with you guys," he says, opening one of the pizza boxes, grimacing at the vegetables, and then opening another. His face lights up at the sight of pepperoni.

"Sounds good to me," Luke says, opening another pizza box and grabbing a slice of sausage.

"Me, too," I say, hoping I'm masking my disappointment. Ellie, Janey, and I saw the first Blood Ceremony at Ridgeview's two-screen movie theater two years ago because the three of us can never pass up a cheesy horror movie, and with a title like Blood Ceremony, we knew the flick was going to be terrible. We ate candy bars we snuck inside in our coat pockets and laughed together throughout the whole movie.

I'm guessing the viewing of Blood Ceremony 2 won't be nearly as much fun.

Justin stacks his plate with pizza and then grabs another plate on which he places one narrow slice of veggie. "Hey, babe," he yells into the living room. "Diet or regular?"

"Like you need to ask," Alissa yells back.

Justin grabs a diet soda for Alissa from the fridge and tucks it inside the pocket of his letterman's jacket before tucking a regular soda in his other pocket and taking their plates to the living room. "Yo, Somers," he yells to Dean, stepping over the threshold between the kitchen and the living room. "Pizza's gonna get cold if you don't stop making out with your girlfriend."

On that image, I stick my finger in my mouth and pretend to puke as Luke tries not to laugh. Dean rushes into the kitchen and prepares plates nearly identical to Justin's—a load of pepperoni for him and a single slice of veggie for Lexi. He heads back into the living room without sodas, and I grab a solitary slice of veggie for my plate when I'd normally grab at least two or three.

"When in Rome," I grumble to Luke, and he gives me a knowing smile as Dean trots back in after sodas. Once Luke's grabbed another slice of sausage and we both get sodas from the fridge, we head into the living room for our viewing of Blood Ceremony 2, joined by Merlin, who comes in from somewhere on the first floor and falls asleep at Luke's feet.

At first, things are perfectly normal. I dim the lights enough to create some atmosphere but not so much we can't see our food. As we chow down, we watch the first half of the movie, in which the hapless hero from the first film, who survived marrying a girl who turned out to be a succubus and went full-on bloodbath nuts at their wedding thanks to an ancient curse, appears on track to wind up with yet another succubus as a love interest in this film. Good to know the sequel is just as high quality as the first.

Alissa and Lexi, of course, are scared—or at least, they're pretending to be. Every time Succubus Girl bares her teeth or kills another innocent, they squeal and snuggle closer to their guys. Once he's done eating, Luke puts an arm around me and I snuggle into him, too uncomfortable to do anything else, although I'm certainly not going to squeal. I can pretend a lot of things, but I can't pretend this movie is good enough to elicit anything resembling fear.

By the time the hero makes his ill-fated marriage proposal, I've noticed the room is quiet, other than the conversations on the screen. I take my eyes off the movie to find both of our fellow couples making out, with Alissa shooting me looks over Justin's shoulder every now and then as if I'm supposed to be doing the same.

Oh, no.

I elbow Luke, whose attention is fixated on this mess of a movie in front of us, and when he looks down at me, I jerk my head in Lexi and Dean's direction, although Dean's so big and he has Lexi so wedged into the corner of the couch, I can only see her legs.

"Pretend to fall asleep," he whispers.

I nod and shift my eyes. Alissa's still shooting occasional glances my way, so I make a big play of yawning and twisting so I can place an arm over Luke's torso. I allow my eyes to flutter a few times before closing them completely.

At least my ruse is saving me from some bad cinema. But Luke is so warm and his shoulder is so comfortable, I almost fall asleep for real, the only thing keeping me awake being my crushing guilt over draping myself all over someone else's boyfriend.

Mercifully, the movie ends, Luke nudges me "awake," and I turn down the volume on the TV, prompting the matching sets of lovebirds to stop grinding against each other all over the Maguires' furniture.

"I'm hungry," Justin announces out of nowhere, his hair disheveled thanks to Alissa's roving hands.

"Amazing. How can you possibly be hungry after all that pizza? I'm still full," Alissa says.

"I'm a growing boy. I need dessert."

"Dessert sounds awesome," Dean chimes in. "What time is it? Smiley Joe's is open 'til eleven."

Luke checks his phone. "It's a little after ten," he says, and then, as if he can read my mind,

"Why don't you guys go? I'm not very hungry."

"Yeah. Me, neither," I say, trying to project my best Dani imitation on the situation. "And I'd better get the kitchen cleaned up before the parental units get home. I don't want Charlotte to lose it if her kitchen isn't spotless."

Lexi, who has her bag on her lap and is fixing her lip gloss, trains her eyes on me, and I can't help but chuckle to myself over whether Dean was dazzled by her new eyeshadow. "Party pooper," she says. "You have such a stick up your ass lately."

"Lex, I'm sure these two just want some alone time so they can get biz-ay," Dean says, sticking out his tongue at Luke in a way that nearly makes me retch.

"You know, if you guys want dessert, you're wasting precious time," Luke points out.

"Okay, okay," Dean says, standing up and reaching down to help Lexi from the couch. "Let's leave Mr. Suave over here alone with his girl."

Justin makes an obscene gesture at Luke which he gives right back and Alissa says, "Gross," as they follow Dean and Lexi to the hall. I head over to help people retrieve their coats and Lexi blows me a kiss. "Text me," she whispers.

"Me, too," Alissa says.

"I will," I tell them although I probably won't.

Once the Perfects and their guys are outside, I shut the door and turn around. Luke and Merlin have followed me into the hall, and Luke shoves his hands in his pockets and hunches his shoulders up to his ears as if he's embarrassed over being teased about his relationship by the Perfects and their boyfriends.

"Sorry," he says. "They can be a little obnoxious."

"Or a lot obnoxious," I say with a smile. "It's okay. Comes with the territory, I guess. And, you know, it's not like I don't want to make out with you." I try to keep my tone light so he will hopefully read that I'm kidding. "But under the circumstances..."

"Yeah." He laughs. "I guess us hooking up would be awkward at best."

My next words are a little more serious. "Thanks for saving me during the movie, by the way.

Regardless of what's going on with Dani, she's still your girlfriend and I'm, for all intents and purposes, just pretending to live her life. But I'm only willing to pretend so far."

"I get it," he says. "Doesn't mean I haven't been dying to be alone with you since I came over, though."

My heart seizes. "Um..."

"So you could tell me what you and Ellie found out from Hippie Lucy."

I grimace. "Very funny."

"Gotcha." He winks and points at me. "But, seriously, was she able to help you out?"

We head back into the living room and start picking up plates and empty soda cans while Merlin shuffles around at our feet. "Maybe," I say. "We're going over to her house tomorrow to look through some of her local history stuff."

"She keeps local history stuff at home?" Luke says as I follow him into the kitchen.

"Yeah. She's...different."

I hate not coming clean with Luke, but I don't think I should. This witch thing is so far-fetched, I don't even believe it, so I don't want to risk him wondering if I've gone completely crazy.

Luke evidently senses I'm being evasive because he sets the plates he's carrying in the sink and says "Look, if you and Ellie found out something you don't want to tell me, or that you can't tell me, it's cool. This whole situation isn't exactly normal." I squeeze one of the soda cans I'm holding, my eyes darting around the kitchen. He senses my confusion and says, "Recycling goes in that white bin over there," pointing to a plastic garbage can near the door to the garage.

"It's not like I want to keep stuff from you," I say, dumping the cans into the bin. "I'm just not sure we found out anything worth sharing. It doesn't make sense, but—"

He holds up a hand to stop my babbling. "It's fine. Really. Whether you can ever tell me or not, it's more important that you're finding a way to get back to being yourself again."

I almost want to hug him for being so cool about this—about everything—but instead, I ask him a question.

"So, I guess you've been over here a lot in the last couple of years?"

"You could say that." He rinses off the plates and loads them into the dishwasher as if he were in his own home, practically emphasizing how comfortable he is in the Maguire house.

"If someone wanted to hide something here, where would they hide it?" I ask, adding Something like a book of magic spells to myself.

"In the house? Never thought about it. I think Dani might hide stuff under her mattress. Why do you ask?"

I wasn't referring to Dani, of course, but Luke wouldn't get that. And Luke likely wouldn't have any idea where Mrs. Maguire would hide something in this house, so pressing him further would be a waste of my time.

"No reason," I say, internally cursing myself for even entertaining the idea Mrs. Maguire would have a spell book hidden in this house and that she and Dani are witches. "I was just wondering if I needed to hide something from the Maguires where Dani might put stuff."

He doesn't say anything, and a slightly weird silence falls over the kitchen.

"So," I say.

"So." He shoves his hands into his pockets again. "You know, I don't need to be anywhere, and the Maguires never care if I'm here with Dani alone when they're out. We could watch another movie if you're up for it."

I smile. "Beats hanging out here alone with the dog. And it would be nice having you around when they get home. For some reason, it's harder to be Dani with them than anyone else. It's like I'm...lying to them or something...which I guess I am...but it's different with them than it is with people at school."

He puts a friendly arm around me and guides me back to the living room. "Another movie, it is, then. I'd even be willing to watch a mushy romantic comedy."

"Yuck. No way. It's cheesy horror or nothing."

"Awesome," he says. "But we've got to find something better than that last movie. That sucked on about seven different levels."

I giggle. "You've got a deal."

Chapter 16

On Sunday, I sleep in and then use the "school project" excuse again to go over to Hippie Lucy's house, a tiny bungalow in the northern part of town not far from Pleasant Valley Mobile Home Park. When I arrive, I park behind Ellie at the curb and she gets out of her mom's car to join me on the front walk.

"Been here long?" I ask.

"Just pulled up a few minutes ago." The weather today is warmer than it has been in a while, but it's still cold enough for Ellie to drop her chin almost to her chest and hug her arms around herself. "Let's get inside."

We walk up onto a front porch decorated with Christmas lights and paper lanterns, and Ellie uses the knocker on the front door to summon Hippie Lucy. "Hello, girls. You've got good timing," she says as she opens the door and ushers us inside. "The casserole's almost done. Do you two want juice? Coffee?"

"Coffee's good," Ellie says.

"Yeah. Sounds good to me, too," I say.

Hippie Lucy walks down a short hallway to the kitchen, which is close enough we can still hear her from where we are just inside the house. "Make yourselves at home," she calls out. "I'm not formal, so feel free to toss your coats on the couch. We'll be eating in the dining room."

The dining room is an open area just off the living room, so Ellie and I shed our winter wear and take seats at the table, which looks as if it and the accompanying chairs were carved out of tree trunks and tree branches. Hippie Lucy's décor is as eclectic as I thought it might be, with stained glass artwork hanging in every window, old maps in frames on the walls, and antique furniture both in the living room and dining room, where a giant oak sideboard clashes with the rustic table and chairs. An old jazz record plays on a turntable in the hallway, further adding to the free-spirited vibe.

Lucy delivers steaming cups of coffee to Ellie and me and nods at the sideboard. "I'll bring in the casserole, but go ahead and start looking through some of these books while we eat. Like I said, I'm not formal. Cream and sugar are on the table if you need it."

As she goes back to the kitchen, I turn around and find stacks of leather-bound books on the sideboard. I get up and grab one and hand another to Ellie. I can't tell what's in the book Ellie's paging through, but I find out once I've sat down that I've grabbed something resembling someone's diary, with pages written out in long, sloping letters. But just as I'm about to start reading, Lucy enters with the casserole.

"Ah. You're both checking out my grandmother's notes," she says, placing the dish on a hot pad and reaching for a large spoon. "You read, I'll serve."

"Your grandmother's notes?" Ellie asks.

"I believe I mentioned my grandmother was a great friend of the Clairvoix. They very graciously let her observe the Clairvoix coven at work." Lucy scoops a healthy serving of bacon-and-egg casserole onto my plate, and the steam floats up and tickles my nose.

"So, she was sort of like a coven groupie?" I ask.

Lucy lets out a hearty guffaw as she serves some casserole to Ellie. "More like a coven anthropologist. The way my mother and grandmother explained it to me when I was young was some of the Clairvoix were worried descendants of the coven would abandon the craft and nothing about the previous generations' lives and history would be preserved. And they were right, to some extent—by all indications, your mother's generation hasn't practiced since the Rocky Ridge Incident, and I don't believe they were too active before then. Your grandmother's generation was fairly active, but there was fear as the world grew more modern, there would be less tolerance for magic."

"And what did they even use magic for anyway?" I ask, hoping my skepticism isn't coming out in my voice.

"The Clairvoix are fundamentally good witches, so they were committed to using their magic to right wrongs or to help people. For example..." She walks over to me and signals with a flick of her hand she'd like to see the book next to my plate. I hand the book over and she flips a few pages until she finds what she wants. "In the forties, when Janey's great-grandmother was young, the community was seriously impacted by World War II. At one point, there weren't many men left in this town over the age of eighteen who weren't too old or infirm to keep things running, and women were left to keep the town and surrounding farms afloat. The witches would intervene in subtle ways, so as not to call too much attention to themselves—helping the crops grow despite bad weather or maybe temporarily inhabiting someone's body so they could help out on the farms or in town."

"But when Manford was driven out, that wasn't all good," Ellie points out. "I mean, yeah—people thought they were poisoning the land and the water, but now we know they weren't and the witches just drove them out to take back the area. But people got hurt. People lost their jobs and they had to move. How is that just?"

"Well, you've hit on the exact conundrum the Clairvoix often faced. One person's justice can be another person's burden." Lucy turns to me. "I'm sure your mother and her friends were doing what they thought was right. After all, they were taking back their ancestral land. But, obviously, from the perspective of those at Manford what they did wasn't just. And driving Manford and the other Rocky Ridge families off the land wasn't a complete victory for them. To maintain the ruse that the area was contaminated, they had to move off the land themselves. Sometimes, using magic means making sacrifices."

Ellie thumbs through the book next to her plate. "Hey, Lucy?" She looks up as Lucy loads her plate and takes a seat at the table opposite me. "What's this? It looks like genealogy charts or something."

Lucy takes the book from her and sits back, resting the book's spine against the edge of the table. "Exactly." She turns a few pages and then hands the book across the table to me. "Rachel, meet your family."

I take the book from her and study the page, finding my mother's and grandmother's names at the bottom just above mine and my sister's. Beyond my grandmother, the names aren't familiar. As if it will help me to connect with my ancestors, I follow the lines connecting each generation with my finger all the way to the top of the page and my great-great-great-great grandmother who came to the United States from France. Turning another page, I find Janey's lineage, and then Dani's.

"Your grandmother, Janey's grandmother, and Dani's grandmother are cousins. That's what I meant when I said the bloodlines are diluted, but they're there nonetheless, which means the powers are within each of you. The connections may be tenuous, but the magic isn't."

I turn another page and skim someone else's genealogy, following the lines and the names to the bottom of the page to discover that someone else is Alissa Lofton.

"Wait...Alissa Lofton?" I ask Lucy, and Ellie starts laughing.

"All the Perfects are probably witches," she says wryly, while Lucy asks "The Perfects? I believe you mentioned them yesterday."

"Yeah. Alissa Lofton, Dani, and Lexi Grayson are the three most popular girls at school and they sort of run everything," Ellie explains.

"Ah," Lucy says after swallowing a forkful of casserole. "I understand. And to answer your question—yes, Alissa Lofton is a Clairvoix witch. Her connection to the line is more distant than yours, but it's there nonetheless. Lexi Grayson doesn't sound familiar to me, but you might want to look. Obviously, there are a lot of names to keep track of, and I don't always remember them all. There's another genealogy book on the sideboard if you want to check."

Ellie practically leaps from her chair and finds the volume matching mine. Together, the two of us flip through our respective books, examining the lines of Clairvoix witches.

"No Lexi," I say with relief as I close the book I've been working with, although I don't know why because witches are not real. Just because Hippie Lucy has some genealogy books that show Janey, Dani, Alissa Lofton, and I are related way back in our bloodline doesn't mean we can all do magic or whatever.

"She's not here, either," Ellie says.

"You two don't like this girl," Lucy says with a note of humor in her voice.

"Not really," I admit. "Finding out Dani and Alissa are related to me is weird enough. Lexi would take the weird to a whole other level."

"Besides, if the Clairvoix are fundamentally good witches, Lexi Grayson would automatically be disqualified. She's not capable of being a good witch," Ellie says, which elicits a hearty guffaw from Lucy.

I take another book from the sideboard and start paging through it, but I close it just as quickly and push the remnants of my casserole around on my plate. Lucy watches me for a few seconds as she eats before she says, "It's all a bit overwhelming, I'd imagine."

"'Overwhelming' is one word for it." I pause. "So, if Alissa and Dani are witches, do they...do they know that?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. No one told you. But somebody obviously told Janey just enough to make her dangerous. So, who knows?"

Even though I don't believe in magic, I can only imagine Alissa with a little bit of magic at her disposal. Whatever messes Janey might make, ditzy Alissa would get into them ten times worse.

"Do you have any pictures of the spell books?" Ellie asks Lucy, as I shake thoughts of Alissa and Janey out of my head. "Rachel, you should look for one somewhere in the Maguires' house."

"And you'll need to find one somewhere if you want to get back into your rightful body," Lucy says to me, grabbing one of the leather volumes and leafing through it. "The Clairvoix wouldn't allow my grandmother to photograph anything, but she once drew a picture of a spell book somewhere in here...yes...here it is."

Lucy turns the book around so it's facing me, and Ellie stands next to me as I study the drawing of the book's cover, which looks to be intricately designed with fleurs de lis at the top, bottom, sides, and in each corner. In the middle of the book is a letter "C" drawn with curlicues.

"What you can't tell here is that the book itself is a sort of purplish-eggplant color, leather-bound, with purple silk lining the inside covers," Lucy says as I examine the design. "And it's about as big as a large paperback book. Your friend Janey must have had one to do whatever it was she did to get you into this predicament."

"Any idea what kind of spell she did for me to end up in Dani's body?" I ask, going along with the witchcraft angle for the moment. I may not believe in witches, but right now, magic is the only explanation I've got.

"Potentially, yes." Lucy grabs another book, flips a few pages, and then spins the volume back around toward me, tapping the page. "Here's a general description of one that might have done the trick. Witches can project their spirits or others' spirits into new bodies, and I suspect that's what Janey was trying to do."

"Why would they want to put themselves or someone else into another body?" Ellie asks.

"A variety of reasons. As I mentioned before, the Clairvoix sometimes put themselves into available hosts during World War II so there would be additional people to work on the farms and in town. Other reasons to project into another body might be to hide from enemies or to avoid serious illness."

"But does the person whose body they're jumping into need to be unconscious? The person in this example here is unconscious," I point out, my finger on the page with the description of the spell. This is so nuts.

"Yes, or at the very least, they need to be in some altered state of consciousness. Or long dead."

"Dead?" I ask, feeling my eyes bulge.

"Oh, yes," Lucy says as if raising people from the dead is the most normal thing in the world.

"But long dead is the caveat here—at least a generation. The Clairvoix wouldn't want to risk raising a body that could be easily recognized. And projection is meant to be temporary. Putting a spirit inside a host alters the natural order."

I try to picture my great-grandmother projected into the body of some long-dead woman and pretending to wander into Ridgeview from another town to help out on local farms or businesses. But I can't, and not only because I've never seen a picture of my great-grandmother. I hug myself, wondering what the last few days of my life would have been like if Janey had accidentally projected me into the body of some dead person.

Which she wouldn't have been able to, of course, because witchcraft is not real. Witches are not real.

"I'm guessing whatever Janey did to mess up her spell, she did it while Dani Maguire was asleep and that's how she accidentally projected you into her body," Lucy says, bringing me back to reality from my morbid thoughts.

"So, could either Dani or Janey be in my body right now since I'm in a coma?"

"It's entirely possible. But first, we need to find out if Janey was, in fact, attempting a spell. The search for her has concentrated on the area around the Rocky Ridge area, correct?"

"Yeah. I was headed out there when I had my accident. I thought there was a chance Janey went to her old house."

"And she was last seen at the Gas Hut, and a search party found her bike out there the other night," Ellie says. "She used to go out there all the time. I think she felt close to her mom at their old house, but she never went out there when it was this cold."

"Are the police still trolling around the area?" Lucy asks.

"I heard they're focusing on the other end of the woods now," Ellie says. "When I went out with the search party, it sounded like the cops were planning on scaling back the search after a few more days. There's no trace of her anywhere, so they believe they either aren't going to find her alive or she's a runaway."

"And with you in a coma, we may be running out of time," Lucy says to me. "If your body dies and you're not in it..."

Lucy doesn't finish her sentence, and I grip the edge of the table with both hands. I'm not sure I believe any of this witchcraft stuff, but I don't like the direction this conversation is taking.

"Then what?" I ask. "I'm stuck in Dani's body?"

"Unless you can project yourself into another body, yes," she says matter-of-factly. "And you're not eighteen yet and, like Janey, you haven't apprenticed. So, as I said, we're running out of time. Would you girls be able to go out to Rocky Ridge so maybe we can figure out what Janey was up to? With my knowledge of the Clairvoix, I may be able to notice things the police wouldn't."

"I've got nothing but time for the rest of the day," Ellie says, glancing at me.

"And I'd kind of like to be back in my body if there's a body to get back into," I say, trying to brush off the fact my consciousness could soon not possess a body other than the one I'm in now.

"Then let's go," Lucy says.

Although the snow has almost melted and the road is completely clear, I can't help but feel a twinge of panic as we approach the bridge over Rocky Ridge Lake in Lucy's Volkswagen bug. I glance out the passenger side window and suck in a breath as I see the battered fence at the lake's edge where I assume I went into the water. Apparently, rather than replacing the fence, the town just put the old one back up, car-sized dent and all. How very Ridgeview.

We cross the bridge and park at the side of the road. "Can you lead us to the break in the fence?" Lucy asks me.

"Yeah. It's kind of low to the ground, so we might get a little dirty."

"Anything worth finding is worth getting a little dirty for," Lucy says, getting out of the car. I glance at Ellie in the backseat before I get out and she smiles at me.

"I kind of love her," Ellie whispers.

"Me, too."

"So, do you still believe all this witchy stuff is fake?" she says, sliding over toward the door. When she crawls out and stands next to me, I shake my head at her.

"Ask me once we've seen Janey's house."

The three of us trudge off along the lake's edge near the fence, the ground still soft thanks to the melted snow, and I whisper a silent prayer that I'm not ruining Dani's expensive boots. Once we pass the lake shore, I take the lead, walking us a few more yards until we're in the woods. The trail near the fence barely exists because it isn't supposed to be here; it's nothing more than a narrow path of worn dirt—mud, now—made by years of looters and, later, curious teenagers wanting to explore somewhere they weren't supposed to be. I keep my eyes on the trees to my left until I find the one I'm looking for, the tree with a smiley face carved into its trunk. Janey put the smiley face there to mark the break in the fence because it's not obvious to the naked eye.

"Here." I lead Ellie and Lucy to the fence and pull on the metal links near the bottom. The links that should be stuck in the ground come up and the middle links move apart, allowing us to crawl through to the other side. Lucy grumbles and gathers her skirt around her waist, crawling through the mud and leaves in her leggings, and Ellie follows. She stands on the other side and holds the section of fence away from me as best she can at that angle, and I crawl through to join them, wet mud soaking through my jeans at the knees.

"We'll do some laundry when we get back to my house," Lucy says, leading the way back toward the lakeshore on the Rocky Ridge side of the fence. We walk for what seems like an eternity until we reach the remnants of the Rocky Ridge subdivision, the abandoned houses gaping at us like children with lonely, dirty faces. Some houses are without their front doors, and all are missing their front lawns, the grass long ago choked out by leaves and harsh weather leaving nothing but patches of weeds and mud.

We turn down what used to be Lake Street, and at the far end stand the houses that belonged to Dani's family, my family, and Janey's. Dani's old house still has its front door, although it's off the hinges at the top and swings a bit in the breeze. When we were kids, the house was a sort of eggshell blue color, but now the shade has faded to a sickly, dirty gray. My house next door was painted gray to begin with, but with the addition of dirt and time, the gray has turned more depressing than welcoming and homey.

Sometimes, I miss my old house, even though the one we live in now is slightly larger and so I have a bigger room and more closet space. Even though the Rocky Ridge house looks like it hasn't been inhabited in a million years, my memories of living here are still fresh, and they're all happy. Christmas morning when I was five years old is one of the good memories that jumps into my head for some reason. After I'd opened all my presents, my parents told me in nine months, Santa was going to bring me another present in the form of a baby brother or sister. After having a slightly awkward conversation with my parents about why Santa couldn't bring the new baby right now—a conversation I'm guessing my parents weren't quite ready to take on—I was really excited about the prospect of having a sibling.

And then I got Jessica, the nerd sister from hell.

"Is this it?" Lucy says, nodding at the house next door to my old one and rousing me from my memories.

"Yeah," I say.

Janey's house also looks the same as it did years ago, save for the missing rose bushes and the lack of grass. Her house was white with a picket fence bordering the lawn, but the fence must have fallen apart long ago, the loose boards lying in the mud where the grass used to be. We tromp through what remains of some slushy snow to the front porch where Lucy pushes the front door open since there's no doorknob and no lock, both probably stolen long ago by looters right after the buyout.

Inside, the house is even more depressing, with torn and stained wallpaper peeling from the walls and dirty carpet throughout the first floor. The place stinks of mold from years of rain and snow seeping in through cracked windows and holes in the roof, and some of the staircase spindles are missing. I can't believe Janey used to sneak out here, and I'm kind of glad I've never gone back to my old house—seeing it in ruins would be too sad.

"I don't see any immediate signs of Janey being here," Ellie says. "What should we be looking for?"

"Drawings, candles, anything that looks like it's not part of the house," Lucy says. I, meanwhile, wander to the kitchen at the back of the house, the only room on the first floor without carpet.

Drawings, candles, anything that looks like it's not part of the house...

"Um...there may be something back here," I call out. Ellie and Lucy rush to join me, Ellie stopping next to me as if she's hit a brick wall once she views what's in front of us.

"Whoa," she whispers.

In the middle of the faded, cracked linoleum floor in the otherwise empty kitchen lies a small pile of ash and stones. Votive candles sit on the dingy countertops, some upright, some knocked over. I count them and come up with ten candles in all.

"Lucy? Does this look like something?" I ask.

"This definitely could be the remnants of a spell. If the cops searched this house, and I'm assuming they searched every house out here, they probably thought this was left by some kids just fooling around. Which, in a way, it was—Janey's essentially a kid fooling around at this point. She hasn't apprenticed. She doesn't know what she's doing." Lucy looks around. "For starters, there's no circle. I suppose maybe it blew away, but—"

"Circle?" Ellie asks.

"Circles are used quite frequently in spells. Witches use something natural to draw a circle as a place to focus energy," Lucy says before pointing toward the candles. "The candles are used to summon the energy."

"And the stuff in the middle of the floor?" I point to the ash and stones.

"That's where I'm lost. There's some ash in the fireplace in the living room that looks relatively fresh, but the ash in here is different. In a spell used to project a spirit, the witch would need to place something in the middle of the circle belonging to the person whose spirit she's trying to project, like a necklace or a book or a lock of hair. I can't figure out—"

Lucy goes silent, and she puts a hand to her mouth.

"What?" I ask, a little afraid.

"When Janey's mother died, did they bury her or—"

"Yeah," I say, thinking back to the awful day of Mrs. Douchette's funeral. "She's buried in Ridgeview Cemetery."

"But they cremated her and buried her ashes," Ellie says, her information either something I'd forgotten about or I never knew to begin with.

"And did Janey or her father keep some of the ashes?" Lucy asks. "Because that looks like—"

She doesn't finish her thought, but merely points at the pile in the middle of the room and the meaning behind the mess on the floor becomes clear to me.

"Janey was trying to project her mother's spirit into someone, wasn't she?"

"That may be what we're dealing with here." Lucy stands up and brushes some dirt from her broomstick skirt. "What I'm guessing she didn't understand is a spirit needs a host somewhere. You can't project a spirit unless there's a destination to which it can project."

"Maybe she was trying to project her mom into your body? You know—considering you weren't using it," Ellie says to me, but I shake my head.

"But she wouldn't have known about my accident. She wouldn't have known my body was an available host. And, anyway, we don't know what time she did this," I say, gesturing to the candles and the ash.

"She had to have done the spell sometime after Dani was asleep for you to have ended up in Dani's body," Lucy says. "And you're sure there's almost no way she would have known about your accident, correct?"

"We'd both been trying to text her all day, but after Rachel's accident, everything was so chaotic..." Ellie says to Lucy. "I went to the hospital and Mr. Douchette stayed with the cops. I didn't text Janey about the accident. Maybe Mr. Douchette did, but Janey hadn't been responding to texts all day, so I doubt it," Ellie turns to me. "And, now that I think about it, Janey probably wouldn't want to use you as a host. Then you'd be walking around with Mrs. Douchette's spirit inside you, which would be even more bizarre than having you walk around inside Dani. I mean, surely Janey thought about that, right?"

"We probably shouldn't speculate on how well Janey thought any of this through," Lucy says. "But I think we can safely assume Janey wasn't aware Rachel's body was available as a host. What I'm wondering now is what of yours and Dani's Janey had on her to project you both somewhere other than your rightful bodies. The projection spell needs the representational element, but spells also require witches to stay outside the circle. So, the ashes and rock obviously represent Stella Douchette, but for you and Dani to end up in other bodies, Janey needed something important to each of you, something she obviously didn't realize she had with her, and then she needed to break the circle with those materials on her."

"Janey and I have been friends since we were in the womb, basically," I tell Lucy. "It's possible she had something that had some meaning to me because we've always borrowed each other's stuff. I mean, there are probably clothes in my closet that are hers and I don't even remember that they aren't mine anymore."

"But what about Dani?" Lucy asks. "My understanding is Janey and Dani haven't been friends for a while."

I shift my gaze to Ellie, who just shrugs and shakes her head, apparently as lost as I am as to what of Dani's Janey could have had with her. "I guess Janey could still have something of Dani's after all this time," I say to Lucy with strong note of uncertainty in my voice. "It's not like our friendship with Dani ended suddenly, you know? It kind of happened over time. There wasn't some dramatic incident that ended everything where we were giving stuff back to each other."

"I still have a few of Dani's books from back then," Ellie says, sounding guilty put proving my point.

"Well, what she had on her of Dani's and Rachel's is less important right now than figuring out how to undo the mess she's made," Lucy says, glancing around the kitchen. "I don't see a spell book anywhere around here, so wherever Janey is, the one she used must be with her." Lucy looks at me. "You need to find a spell book, and you need a Clairvoix witch to help you undo Janey's spell. And the only able Clairvoix witches still in this area are Charlotte Maguire, Kathleen Lord, and Danica Lofton."

None of whom sound like great options, for various reasons, not the least of which is I'm not sure any of this is real.

Lucy glances around the kitchen once more and says "I think we've found all we're going to find here. We should go." Ellie and I obediently follow her out of the kitchen and toward the front of the house. "When we get back to my house, we'll throw your clothes in the wash and clean up your boots so you don't get in trouble when you get home."

"Thanks," Ellie says, but I don't respond. Projection spells, raising the dead, revealing myself to a Clairvoix witch—one of whom is my mother and one of whom thinks she's my mother...

It's all a little too much, and the fear inside me must show on my face because once we're out on the front porch, Lucy stops and places her hands on my cheeks.

"You're going to be okay, Rachel. You haven't come into your powers yet, but you need to believe they're there and they're strong. And you need to keep the faith you'll find a Clairvoix spell book and you can find a way to reveal yourself to a witch for help and for your apprenticeship."

"Okay," I mumble, not sure I have faith in any of that at all.

"And you," Lucy begins, keeping her hands on me but turning her attention to Ellie. "You need to stand by her. Even witches need help sometimes. We mere mortals can be powerful allies."

Ellie reaches for my hand. "I've got your back, Rach—don't worry. I'll come up with a plan to buy us some time to find the spell book tomorrow. Once we've got it, we'll focus on getting you a witch to work with."

"Okay," I mumble. Ellie makes everything sound so simple.

And there'd better be a simple explanation for all of this because we may be running out of time.

Chapter 17

I've never been good at faking sick, so when I wake up Monday morning I don't even try. But I want nothing more than to skip school and spend the day tearing the Maguires' house apart until I find a Clairvoix spell book, which I'm still only sort of convinced is a thing that actually exists. Funny thing is, the fact I'm running out of time to get back into my original body is almost enough to make me sick for real, but I decide to trust Ellie's coming up with a plan.

Like Lucy said, even witches need help sometimes. And, technically, I'm not yet a witch, assuming witches are even real.

Just as she did on Thursday and Friday, Mrs. Maguire knocks on the bedroom door to tell me she's leaving, and I reply to assure her I'm awake. With a feeling of dread growing in the pit of my stomach, I get dressed and primped to head out for another day as Dani Maguire.

After I pull into Dani's space at school and shut off the engine, I hear my phone vibrating in my bag. I check my messages to find a series of texts from Ellie:

Got a plan.

At the side steps.

Follow my lead.

I shoot back a quick "ok," and get out of the car. As promised, Ellie's waiting at the bottom of the steps near the side entrance, standing off to the side by the bushes so people can walk past and into the building. When I'm a few feet away from her, Ellie marches up and stands in front of me, blocking my path.

"You are such a bitch, Dani Maguire," she says loudly.

"Wha—what?"

I hope I'm following her lead. Mostly, I'm confused, and I whip my head around to discover people are stopping in their tracks on hearing someone insult one of the Perfects.

"You heard me." Ellie steps in and pushes me in the shoulder. Since she's bigger than I am, she doesn't need to use much force for me to stumble backward a few steps.

"What are you doing?" I screech in what I hope is a very Dani Maguire manner.

Ellie raises her hands and flicks her fingers toward her. "Come on!" she yells.

Okay...so I guess we're fighting...

I drop my bag and march toward her, pushing her in the chest with both hands. She falls on her butt and my first instinct is to run to her and help her up, but she's on me so quickly I don't have time to stop and remember I'm Dani and I wouldn't. She pushes me again and as I stumble, she reaches out and yanks my hair.

"Ow!" I scream. A circle of people forms around us, and I note no one's making a move to stop this. Vultures.

Ellie and I step to each other at the same time, hands alternately pulling hair and pushing each other around. At one point, Ellie gets clear of me enough to fling her hand out, catching me in the face with a violent slap. To the chorus of "Ooohs" from the crowd, I rush at her again, but arms circle my waist and I ping backwards as if caught by a giant rubber band.

"What the hell are you doing?" says Luke's voice in my ear, but before I can answer, Mr. Denning, the school's vice-principal, breaks through the circle. He grabs Ellie by the arm and turns to the assembled crowd. "Show's over. All of you inside. NOW."

Still in Luke's arms, I watch as people grumble and shuffle off toward the building. I catch sight of Lexi and Alissa, both wide-eyed, and Lexi holds her phone up to her ear and mouths "Call me" as they walk by.

"Luke, I've got this," Mr. Denning says. "Get to homeroom."

Luke bobs his head at Mr. Denning and lets me go, squeezing my shoulder before he walks off. Thanks to Ellie's strength, his kind gesture hurts a little.

"In the office, both of you," Mr. Denning barks, and we walk around the building to the school's main entrance with him following us. I catch a glimpse of myself reflected in the glass of the front doors—my hair's a mess and a red spot stands out on my cheek from Ellie's slap.

"Wait here," Denning commands once we're inside the main office, and he nods at the bench outside the principal's office. Ellie and I sit an appropriate distance apart from each other and keep our heads down, avoiding the administrative assistants' stares, as Denning ducks into Principal Kennerly's office. About a minute later, Denning leans halfway out the door and signals with his hand for us to come in.

I've never been summoned to the principal's office before, and I don't believe Dani has, either, or I probably would have heard about it. This is Ellie's first trip as well, and we both walk into Kennerly's office, heads down in the picture of contriteness. Principal Kennerly stands behind the metal desk spanning nearly the entire length of his office, his arms folded across the girth of his stomach. Denning, meanwhile, closes the office door behind us.

"Girls, sit down," he says.

Ellie and I do as instructed, taking the two seats in front of Kennerly's desk.

"So, I'd like an explanation for why the two of you chose to start the week by brawling in the parking lot. Neither of you has caused trouble before, so to say I'm shocked is an understatement," Kennerly says.

Ellie doesn't say anything, so I don't, either—not like I have an explanation in mind, anyway.

"Really?" Denning says from behind us. "Nobody wants to explain what this was about?"

"No, sir," Ellie mumbles, and I say "No, sir" as well.

Kennerly paces back and forth. "Well, we don't really need to know the 'why.' I don't care who started it or what it was about. I'm sure you are aware of Ridgeview's 'no tolerance' policy with regards to fighting, but since this is a first offense for both of you, I'm willing to be lenient. Rather than the standard one-week suspension, I'll let you off with a three-day suspension, effective immediately. I'll be calling your parents shortly."

I close my eyes. While I understand Ellie's grand plan—we've bought ourselves a few days to focus on finding a spell book and setting the world right again—I'm still forced to live as Dani until we figure out how to get me back in my body. Now, I've gotten her suspended, and while Kennerly and Denning are willing to let this go with no explanation, I'm guessing Dani's parents won't be so understanding.

"Both of you, get out of my office and off my campus immediately."

Denning steps aside and allows us to pass out of the office. The administrative assistants turn back to their computers as if they hadn't been listening to whatever they could hear through the door, and Ellie and I leave the office for the empty school entryway just as the homeroom bell rings.

"Go to your car," she says to me in a low voice. "I'll be out in a few minutes so we don't risk anyone seeing us together."

I nod and head out to the parking lot. Some late students run through the lot toward the main entrance, but after a few minutes, I'm alone in Dani's car until Ellie nearly makes me jump out of my skin—Dani's skin, rather—by banging on the passenger window. I unlock the door and she gets in, adjusting her knit hat and cranking up the heat like nothing's happened.

"Got some pent-up aggression against Dani, do we? I'm surprised you haven't spontaneously combusted walking around with so much anger since eighth grade."

She smirks. "Good thing it's you and not me trapped in that body or I'd be beating the shit out of myself all the time."

"Funny."

"So, are we off to Dani's house to search for a spell book?" Ellie asks.

"Guess so," I say, backing out of the parking space. "You know, I appreciate your plan to get us out of school, but I'm trying not to ruin Dani's life while I'm stuck in her body."

"Getting suspended isn't a big deal," Ellie says. "It's second semester senior year. We're both in college already. We'll just smooth things over with our parents and—"

"We're both in college already. You said Dani had applied to Riverton, and she's probably applied other places, too. She might not have been accepted anywhere yet. And you may be able to smooth things over with your parents, but I'm the one who has to smooth things over with Dani's parents, all while pretending to be someone I'm not."

Ellie slumps down in the seat a bit as I pull out onto Tilletson Street. "Sorry," she says. "I guess I didn't work the plan out all the way. But we had to do something."

I've never been able to stay mad at Ellie for very long, and I hate being mad at her even more now. With Janey missing and Ellie and me unable to talk to each other at school, I don't need to be searching for more ways to be alone.

"I know. And like I said, I appreciate the plan. It's not like I came up with anything. I can figure out how to deal with Dani's parents—I've been doing okay with it so far, I guess."

"You've been doing better than okay, in my opinion. I would have had a nervous breakdown already if I were you."

"I've come close a few times, but I'm trying to stay sane. Luke's been a big help."

Ellie gives me a side-eye. "Yeah. What's up with that, anyway?"

"With what?"

"You and Luke. You've been pretty cozy lately."

I shrug. "Because we have to be. As far as everyone knows, I'm Dani Maguire, half of one of Ridgeview's golden couples. I can't exactly act like Luke has the plague."

"True. It's just that I noticed the other night when you came to the hospital, the two of you together seemed kind of...I don't know...natural. I mean, I get you're only pretending to be Dani, so I can kind of make out bits and pieces of Rachel still there in your behavior. But things with you and Luke are...effortless, I guess."

"Luke's a nice guy—always has been. And he's always been better than the Perfects and all the crap that goes along with hanging out with them. He said he was going to back me up and he has. He's made this whole crazy experience a lot easier."

"Well, if that's all it is," Ellie sings.

"That's all it is." I don't tell her about my conversation with Luke at Alex's party and how sick he is of everything Ridgeview and the Perfects—including Dani.

We pull into the garage at Dani's, and when we walk into the house, Ellie takes a breath. "It's been a long time since I was here," she says.

"That sleepover in eighth grade. I was thinking about it the first morning I woke up as Dani."

Ellie gasps. "You're right. That was the night Dani called me fat." Her mouth twists into a frown. "And you were wondering about pent-up aggression."

Merlin pads into the kitchen and barks repeatedly, stopping a few feet away from us.

"Oh, wow," Ellie says. "Is this the Maguires' puppy? He's so big now. What's his name?"

"Merlin." I walk across the kitchen as Merlin barks more loudly on hearing his name. He gets excited as I open the drawer, only calming down after he eats one of the bone-shaped treats out of my hand. "We've come to an understanding," I tell Ellie. "I feed him treats, and he doesn't maul me for not being Dani."

"He knows you're not Dani?" she asks, coming over to pet Merlin as I scratch behind his ears.

"It's the only thing I can think of. The morning I woke up as Dani, I wasn't sure I'd get out of the house, he was so aggressive."

"Dogs are smart," Ellie says, giving Merlin a kiss on the top of the head, and he licks her face. We let him go, and he takes a few steps over to his water bowl and loudly washes down his snack.

"So, where around this house do you think Mrs. Maguire's hiding her spell book?" Ellie glances around the kitchen.

"No clue." I lean against the counter. "I'm not convinced she has one."

Ellie puts her hands on her hips. "You still don't believe witches are a thing, do you? Even after seeing Janey's house yesterday?"

"I know it's the best explanation we've gotten so far for what's going on with me," I say, shaking my head. "But it's so insane. Witches are something people dress up as for Halloween. They're not walking around on a daily basis in the greater Ridgeview area. And I refuse to believe my mom's been keeping this secret from me my entire life. It just doesn't make any sense."

"Rach, you need to accept witches might be real. Even if Janey didn't get you into this with a magic spell, we might need one to get you out of it," Ellie says. "So, if there's a spell book here, we should get to work on finding it."

I sigh. "I feel kind of icky doing this. I mean, we're going to be rummaging through someone's house looking for something that isn't ours. It's like we're criminals."

"Well, for the time being, this is your house. It's not like we can go over to your real house and dig around without risking an arrest record. Once everyone's back in the body they should be in, we can figure out how to put the book back where it belongs."

I hadn't even thought about how we're going to return the book to the house once we take it, assuming it's even here to begin with.

"Okay, so if we're going to do this, let's work it through," I start. "You're a woman and you want to hide something from your husband and daughter. Where would you put it?"

"Jewelry box, maybe? Or a lingerie drawer?"

"Both of which are going to be in the Maguires' bedroom," I grumble. "Let's head upstairs."

The Maguires' bedroom suite is at the opposite end of the hall from Dani's room behind two double doors. I open the door on the right and we enter a spacious bedroom area with a solid oak California king bed and matching dresser, chest, and end tables. Like Dani's room, the Maguires' room has an attached bathroom, but their bedroom also has two walk-in closets and a sitting area just off the bedroom with an easy chair and a window seat in front of a bay window.

"I'll take the dresser and you take the chest to start?" Ellie asks.

"Deal."

We go to our assigned pieces of furniture, and after a few minutes of opening drawers and feeling around, we both come up with the same result—nothing, although I'm now more familiar with Mr. and Mrs. Maguire's underwear preferences than I'd ever wanted to be.

"What next?" I ask.

Without a word, Ellie moves to the bed, lifts the silvery gray comforter, and starts feeling around underneath the mattress. Following her lead, I do the same on the other side of the bed.

Still nothing. I kneel and look under the bed, but I find nothing but carpet.

"Closet?" Ellie asks.

"Lead the way."

We first open the wrong door into Mr. Maguire's closet, so we quickly backtrack and open the one next to it into Mrs. Maguire's, which is so big it's almost another room. The area in the middle of the closet contains another chest of drawers, this one lower to the floor with drawers on three sides and several jewelry boxes on top. The walls on both sides of the closet and at the back are hidden by hanging clothes.

"How does one person wear all this stuff?" Ellie asks, rifling through a set of hanging dresses.

"There aren't that many places to go in Ridgeview. Even if you throw in everywhere in Ridge County, the city of St. Louis, and every St. Louis suburb, I bet she has enough clothes to wear a different outfit every time she leaves the house."

"A little help here?" I say, opening one of the drawers on my side of the room.

"Yes, Your Highness."

Ellie opens a drawer and feels around as I return to the drawer I'd been working on. "Rach, come here," she says after a few seconds. "I've got something."

I join her on the other side of the dresser, where she's up to the middle of her forearm in panty hose and stockings. "What's up?"

"Feel the back edge of the drawer. There's, like, a seam or something."

When I stick my hand inside the drawer and do as she says, I discover the bottom of the drawer appears to end before it hits the back. "Yeah..." I try to get my fingers under the seam, but they slip out.

"Try to get your fingers under there," I tell Ellie and she goes in once again, grimacing as she maneuvers around. "Wait...it's moving."

She lifts the bottom of the drawer, panty hose sliding to the front. "It's a false bottom...here..."

We scoop up panty hose and stockings and dump them on the floor so the drawer is empty the next time Ellie lifts the false bottom. Without Mrs. Maguire's footwear in the way, Ellie's able to easily remove the bottom. And, there, lying on the drawer's real surface, is a book with a dark purple cover and an ornate "C" in the middle surrounded by fleurs de lis. I lift the book as if I'm afraid it might disintegrate in my hands and place it on top of the dresser as Ellie reassembles the drawer and replaces the stockings.

I open the book, and just as Lucy said, the inside cover is lined with purple silk. The facing page contains nothing but the name "Clairvoix" written in calligraphy on the faded off-white page. When I turn the page, the material feels brittle in my hand. The words written there are in a beautiful calligraphy just as my family name was on the facing page:

You look for me

But find you cannot

I exist now

Only in thought

To you and others

Who I deem

Are not worthy

Like a ghost I seem

"Wow," Ellie whispers, examining the words over my shoulder. "That's so cool." She places her hand on the edge of the book, and the words on the page dissolve like an aspirin in a glass of water until they disappear completely.

"And that's even cooler," Ellie says, taking her hand from the book. I place my hand in the middle of the page and, gradually, the words reappear again.

"It's like the book's alive," I say, almost more to myself than Ellie. "Like how some animals can camouflage themselves for protection. It's like the book protects itself from falling into the wrong hands."

"Now do you believe you're a witch?" Ellie says.

I run my hands over the delicate page. "I...I think I might."

"So, we've found the spell book. Now what?" she asks. "You can't use anything in there until Wednesday."

"Lucy said I need to apprentice if I want to get the spells right. And, as far as we know, the only Clairvoix witches around here are my mom, Dani's mom, and Alissa Lofton's mom, none of whom strike me as great options for an apprenticeship. I've never met Alissa's mom and Alissa and I aren't even friends, and my own mom thinks I'm unconscious. Then there's Dani's mom, who's already going to be pissed at me for getting suspended. I'm not sure how she'll deal with finding out I stole her spell book, too, and, oh, by the way, I'm not really your daughter, Mrs. Maguire."

Ellie walks out of the closet and I follow. "Yeah, this whole situation kind of sucks for you. Like Lucy said, every good witch needs a coven, but without Janey and Dani, the only way you're going to get one is by revealing yourself to someone."

We take a few minutes to make sure we're leaving the room exactly as we found it, and then we head downstairs to the kitchen, where we'd dumped our coats and bags. I check my phone to find several angry texts from Dani's mom about my suspension in addition to texts from Lexi, Alissa, and Luke wondering why Ellie and I were fighting. Ellie checks her phone as well, and when I look up from my screen, I find her normally ruddy skin has turned ashen white.

"Elle? You okay?"

"I got a text from your mom. Your real mom, I mean—Mrs. Lord. She wants me to call her."

"Okay," I say, my calm demeanor masking the fact that on the inside, I'm gripped by panic.

I'm dying...maybe I'm already dead. This is over—I'm stuck in Dani's body forever, and we'll never find out what happened to Dani and Janey...

Ellie calls my mom and I watch her side of the conversation unfold, trying to figure out what's going on:

"Mrs. Lord? It's Ellie...Uh huh...Yeah...Oh..."

Ellie shoots me a quick glance that tells me nothing, and she's silent for a long time as she listens to my mom on the other end of the phone.

"Okay," she says at last. "I was planning on coming to visit her today if it's okay. Yeah...okay. I'll see you soon."

She hangs up and lets out a breath.

"Come on, Elle—I'm dying here."

"You have no idea how accurate that statement is," she says. "The doctors aren't holding out much hope you're going to wake up due to your lack of brain activity—"

"I don't have any brain activity because I'm right here," I nearly yell. And I guess we've solved one mystery once and for all—neither Dani nor Janey projected into my body. I'm nothing but a shell with a barely working brain and no consciousness.

"Well, yeah. I know you're here, but nobody at the hospital does." Ellie pauses, and the suspense is killing me. "Rachel, your parents are thinking about taking you off life support. Your grandma is flying in this afternoon from Florida so she can be here just in case."

I sink down onto one of the barstools at the kitchen island and take a minute to process what Ellie's told me.

Then, I shake it off. I don't have a choice.

"I guess that decides which of the Clairvoix witches I'm going to reveal myself to," I tell Ellie. "We need to get to the hospital."

Chapter 18

Ellie texts my mom that she's arrived at the hospital as soon as we get on the elevator to ride up to intensive care. By the time the doors open on the third floor, my mom, looking just as haggard as she did when I was here with Luke the other night, is headed down the hall toward us.

"Ellie," Mom says, gathering her into a hug while I stand behind them like an idiot. Once my mom realizes Dani's here as well, her brows knit and she pulls away from Ellie.

"Dani. I'm surprised you're here. Thank you for coming, but—"

"Is there somewhere we can talk?" Ellie asks. "Somewhere a little more private than the waiting room?"

Ellie's statement doesn't do anything to ease the confusion on Mom's face. "We can talk in Rachel's room. The staff will let you come back now as long as you're with me since they understand people will be coming to...say goodbye."

Mom swallows and I ball my fists, my only defense against the mixture of rage and sadness bubbling up inside me. This shouldn't be happening. Whatever stupid shit Janey was trying to do, whatever dumb decision I made trying to look for her and getting myself hurt, I don't deserve to die because my family and the doctors believe I'm not coming back.

I don't know how I'm going to go out eventually, but it's not going to be like this.

Ellie and I accompany Mom down the hall toward the ICU, Ellie walking next to Mom with me following awkwardly behind. "Rachel's dad left not too long ago to pick my mom up at the airport, but now it turns out her flight's been delayed. They're going to Ridgeview first to drop off her things and pick Jessica up from school. So, we'll be alone for quite a while unless someone else comes to visit." Mom casts a glance back at me, obviously still confused as to why Dani Maguire's here with Ellie but, nonetheless, she makes a guess. "It's so nice to see the two of you together again. Reminds me of old times."

Neither Ellie nor I says anything to explain, and regardless, we've reached the ICU doors. Explanations will be coming soon enough.

"She's right down here," Mom says after pressing a button on the wall that automatically opens the double doors to the ICU. The rooms all have glass front walls so the patients are visible to the nurses' station, and we pass four rooms on our way down the hall. Out of respect, I don't stare and keep my eyes focused forward, but curiosity gets the better of me as Mom enters my room and I glance at the patient in the room next to mine, an elderly man who's wearing an oxygen mask and is hooked up to what must be every conceivable machine found in a hospital. I avert my eyes again and follow Ellie into my room, where what waits for me is so much worse than the man I just saw.

There I am, lying in bed behind a privacy curtain, tubes taped around my mouth and sticking out of what appears to be every available patch of skin on my arms. My hair, always a mess anyway, is messy in a different way than usual, hanging limp and oily after so many days without a shower. My skin is an ashy color save for the scratches and bruises on my face and arms, which I assume are from the accident. Machines next to my bed beep and boop and display lines and numbers that mean nothing to me other than they must mean I'm alive, at least for the time being.

I've never liked hospitals, to the extent I only volunteered at the hospital in Ridgeview once and never went back. The antiseptic smell, the sounds of people moaning, coughing, and retching, and the fact hospitals are strangely loud and buzzing with activity for places full of sick people all conspired to make me sick to my stomach, and I couldn't handle it.

And I can't handle it now. My stomach lurches, my throat constricts and opens again, and my eyes search wildly for a bathroom, which I thankfully find in the back corner of my room. I rush in and shut the door, tossing Dani's bag on the floor and throwing up the bagel I ate for breakfast this morning

Someone taps on the door as I'm waiting to find out if Mount St. Dani is going to erupt once more or if my consciousness has decided to calm down the body I'm in.

"Dani?" Mom asks. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. I'll just be a second." I stand and count to ten, focusing on the marbled tile in the shower until the nausea goes away completely, and then I wash my hands and rinse my mouth before heading back out to Mom and Ellie.

"Sorry," I mumble. Mom puts her hand on my back and I nearly burst into tears at her touch.

"Nothing to be sorry about. Rachel's always said hospital's make her sick, too." Mom blinks back the tears in her eyes. "She'd hate knowing she was in one right now."

Yeah...she knows. She's not thrilled...

Ellie shoots me a look and nods to indicate it's go time. I unzip Dani's bag.

"M...Mrs. Lord, I need to show you something." I reach inside and pull out the spell book. Mom looks from it to me, the slow shock of recognition spreading across her face.

"Is this..." She's wide-eyed, almost as if she doesn't believe, but as she takes the book from me and opens it, her expression slides into something almost threatening. "Where did you get this?"

"I found it in the Maguire house...Ellie and I found it, I mean."

"It can't be real. It just can't," Mom says as she examines a spell in the middle of the book, but Ellie walks over and places her palm in the middle of the page. The spell disappears and then reappears as soon as Ellie removes her hand.

"And you said you found this in your house?" Mom asks me.

"I said I found it in the Maguire house." I glance at Ellie once more, and she gives me another nod for encouragement. "We're not sure what happened exactly, but we think Janey Douchette was trying to perform a spell and screwed up."

"Royally," Ellie adds.

"I don't..." Mom begins.

"Mom, it's me," I say, placing my hands on her upper arms as if doing so will somehow allow her to sense me inside Dani's body. "It's Rachel. Somehow, Janey projected me into Dani's body. And we don't know where Janey and Dani are right now, but I'm sure I'm not in there." On the words "in there," I point to my nearly lifeless body in the hospital bed.

Mom's hand flies to her mouth, and she slumps down into a chair just behind her. Then she surprises me by laughing, even as tears fill her eyes. "No. No, no, no, no, no. This isn't happening."

"Mom, you know Janey just turned eighteen. You gave me a card to take with me when Ellie and I went over there to eat cake last week. She must have found Mrs. Douchette's old spell book and—"

"Impossible," she blurts out. "We made a pact to burn our spell books after—"

She stops herself.

"Well, anyway, we made a pact," she continues, tilting her head at the spell book in her lap. "But evidently Charlotte didn't follow it, so I guess Stella could have backed out as well." She studies the spell book for a moment before blinking and moving her head back and forth. "Wait—how did you even find out we were...that Charlotte might have a spell book?"

"Hippie Lucy told us," Ellie says sheepishly.

"Hippie Lucy?"

"Lucy...the reference librarian? Local history buff?" I say.

"Lucy Langlois," Mom says. "Of course." She pauses and gazes up at me. "And you're not Dani?"

"No."

She turns to my motionless body in the hospital bed. "My daughter's spirit is inside you?"

"If 'spirit's' what we're going to call it, then yes."

Mom rubs her lips together and shakes her head. "I'm not...I'm not sure about this."

Obviously, I need to be a little more emphatic.

"Yes, you are. You know it's possible for a spell to put someone's spirit inside someone else's body. And you know that without help, Janey Douchette could screw one up. And you know I was born at 6:25 in the morning, and you also know when Jessica was little, I used to call her "Jessicrud."

"Really?" Ellie laughs. "I never knew that."

"It's not exactly something we wanted shared outside the house," Mom says, tears straining at the corners of her eyes. I seem to be convincing her I am who I say I am, but I keep pushing just in case.

"And you know hospital smells make me sick," I continue, tears starting to form. "And you know I believe you're the number one mom in the whole wide world—Jess and I bought you a necklace that says so."

Mom's ugly crying now, and she stands up and takes my face in her hands, examining me as if she's trying to find the Rachel trapped inside.

"Mom, help me." Now I'm on the verge of bawling. "Help me get back inside my body before there isn't a body left to get back into."

Mom kisses my forehead. "Don't worry, baby. Mom's going to make it all better." She wipes away her tears with the back of a hand, and her jaw sets, almost as if she's angry about something. "I take it you've been using Dani's phone the last few days?"

"Yeah."

"Do me a favor and call your mom...Dani's mom, I mean."

I'm not sure where this is headed, but I do as I'm told—willingly. It feels kind of good hearing my mom order me around again.

"Is it ringing?" Mom asks after I call, and I bob my head. She signals for me to hand the phone to her, and she brings it to her ear.

"Hello, Charlotte?" she says after a pause, and I'm amazed she's able to compose herself so quickly after her tears from just a minute ago. "No, this isn't Dani. It's Kathleen Lord...never mind what I'm doing with Dani's phone. We need to talk."

A pause and a sigh.

"I appreciate you're concerned about Rachel, but we need to meet—face-to-face...immediately, if possible. Are you home alone?"

Another pause.

"Good. I'll be there in about forty-five minutes."

Mom hands me the phone and the spell book. "Put those in your bag. We're going to the Maguire house." She checks her watch. "Your grandmother's flight won't land for a while, and then there will be traffic getting back to Ridgeview, so we should have time. How did you two get here?"

"We drove Dani's car," I say.

"Okay." She digs into her purse and comes up with her keys, which she hands to Ellie. "Here are the keys to my car, just in case. You can stay here?"

"Yeah. I'll call you immediately if something happens."

Mom nods at and then squints at Ellie. "Wait...what are you two doing here on a Monday anyway? Shouldn't you be in school? There's not some holiday I'm forgetting about, is there?"

"We sort of got suspended," Ellie says.

"What?" Mom asks through a shocked laugh.

"Long story," I tell her. "Expect Mrs. Maguire to be all freaked out about it when we get to her house. You'll be doing me a favor if you can convince her I'm Rachel."

"Well, then." Mom turns her attention back to Ellie. "You'll call?"

"The second something happens if something happens."

"Okay." She holds my hand, and my body—Dani's body—floods with warmth, my consciousness thrilled my mom's looking out for me again. "Ready?"

"Ready, Mom. Let's go."

Forty-five minutes would be a long car ride without saying anything, but I'm sure Mom has questions and I have about a million of my own as well. We're barely out of the parking lot and headed to Ridgeview on the highway when Mom gets us started.

"So, Lucy Langlois told you I was a witch?"

"Yeah."

"Why were you talking about it with her to begin with?"

"Ellie and I were kind of at a loss about what had happened to me, but we thought it might be related to Rocky Ridge Lake and the contamination since that's where my car ended up. We figured my accident had something to do with how I wound up in Dani's body since there wasn't anything else to go on. And Hippie Lucy's the person to go to if you need to find out something about Ridgeview, so we hoped she might be able to help."

"Please tell me you don't call her Hippie Lucy to her face."

"Not to her face, no."

"Good." Mom taps her fingers on the armrest. "So, you were somehow able to explain to her what had happened to you?"

"Yeah," I say, and I tell her about how I tipped Hippie Lucy off to my real identity and how she was hesitant to tell me about my family history but felt she had no choice. And I fill Mom in about skimming Lucy's grandmother's histories and genealogy charts of the Clairvoix, and I share how we went out to Rocky Ridge and saw the remnants of Janey's failed spell. I also mention Lucy related her theories to us about what really happened at Rocky Ridge when I was a little girl, and my mother's initial silence confirms Lucy was right.

"That was the last time Charlotte, Stella, and I ever did magic on any kind of large scale," she says after nearly a minute passes, her eyes fixed on the stretch of highway in front of her. "The land around the lake had been in our extended family for generations, back before Ridgeview even existed. And the town had always allowed our family to live mostly in peace. Some townspeople are aware of the Clairvoix and are sympathetic, like Lucy Langlois, while others likely either don't know or they do but aren't big fans of the fact there are witches in the area. There's sort of an ebb and flow to it."

"And what sort of a phase are we in now?" I ask.

"That's a good question, since no one's practiced magic in the area in twelve years, and Charlotte, Stella, and I weren't too active to begin with. We did some goofy spells in college sometimes for fun, but nothing serious. I don't recall even hearing rumors back then that people thought there were witches in Ridgeview. Your grandmother's generation, on the other hand, was very active and open in the community, but they didn't do anything to disturb the order."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean any magic was confined to the area around Rocky Ridge and had nothing to do with the town or townspeople," Mom says. "I remember Mom—your grandmother—used to use magic to grow her garden or help your grandfather out around the house when he was sick, but townspeople didn't bother the Clairvoix to do magic for them, and the Clairvoix left the townspeople alone. There was even a brief time when Dani's grandfather served on the town council, which is an example of what I meant when I said your grandmother's generation was active in the community. But for the most part, the Clairvoix and their families have kept to themselves, and people in Ridgeview didn't disturb us."

I narrow my eyes as much as I can while keeping them on the road. "So, Grandpa knew Grandma is a witch?"

"Oh, yeah," Mom says as if such knowledge is the most commonplace thing in the world. "Like I said, Mom practiced magic around the house all the time, and because of that, I was able to apprentice out in the open because I knew I was a witch from the time I was a little girl."

Unlike me, I think, and I can't help but hold some anger inside that Mom kept my witch status a secret. But I try not to let on, asking "Have you told Dad, then?"

Mom shakes her head. "By the time I left home to go to college, things in Ridgeview had changed. The town council had new members, and sympathies toward the Clairvoix had swung back in the other direction. When I met your dad, I hadn't done any serious magic for a long time, and when we moved back here, I didn't plan to. So, I never told him about my abilities. It was like a part of my life that was over, or maybe didn't exist to begin with. Even when Charlotte and Stella moved out to the old family land, we didn't talk about how we'd practiced magic when we were younger. It was almost like we'd made an unspoken agreement to live our lives as normal people."

"But then you and Stella and Charlotte came out of retirement after the Manford plant moved in," I prompt.

"The town made a deal letting Manford build on the adjacent land, and when Janey's grandparents, whose names were on the deed for the Clairvoix land at that time, objected to having a chemical plant close by, those on the town council who knew about us threatened to expose the family to the rest of the town and drive us off the land for practicing witchcraft," Mom says. "Then, once the plant was finished, a developer wanted to come in and build houses for plant employees on the land surrounding the Clairvoix houses. Janey's grandparents said no, and they had the legal right to, but once again, the town council threatened to expose the coven. And by then, there were family members who weren't aware they were living amongst a coven of witches—your dad, Janey's dad, Dani's dad, and all of you kids. Janey's grandparents were trying to preserve a lot of secrets." Mom pauses, folding and unfolding her hands in her lap. "Looking back now, preserving secrets probably wasn't the best course of action."

I don't judge her statement one way or the other, and so she continues. "We tried the path of least resistance for a while. New houses went up all around us, and the plant was, frankly, just an eyesore—this monstrosity sitting out there in the field belching who knows what into the air and land and ruining the view whenever we'd sit at the lake with all of you kids. I don't even remember whose idea it was at first..." Mom's voice grows quiet. "It all just started with a 'what if?' What if we used our magic to take back our land?"

"You couldn't just move the coven somewhere else?"

"You don't understand, sweetie. The earth has power, and our magic is stronger on our ancestral lands than anywhere else. We didn't want to just pull up stakes and go somewhere else, not to mention the fact that, again, we were hiding our powers from some of our own family members. And even though Stella, Charlotte, and I had given up practicing magic, our mothers weren't going to allow that land to be completely taken over by someone else. So, one night, Stella, Charlotte, and I and our mothers went down to the edge of the lake and performed a spell contaminating the ground and the water. Then Janey's grandmother reported to the town she saw a mysterious film on the lake's surface, the town arranged for tests, and the rest is history."

"And now, no one can move back there without someone questioning why they'd want to live in a toxic dump."

Mom nods. "Our plan was a bit short-sighted in that regard, but at least we've ensured no one else wants the land, either."

"Sort of a 'if we can't have it, no one else can have it' thing, huh?"

"Something like that."

We are quiet for a moment as I move into the left lane to pass a car going about five miles under the speed limit. "Were you ever going to tell me I'm a witch?" I ask her, keeping my eyes on the road both because I should and because I don't want to see her face when she gives me the answer I suspect she will.

"No," she says softly. "After we cast the spell to drive out Manford, Stella, Charlotte, and I made a pact to burn our spell books, a pact they obviously didn't stick to. We felt we were flirting with evil, driving out Manford and putting those people out of work, and that was the final straw for us—our spell casting days were over. The grandparents all moved away from Ridgeview, and I didn't see any need to tell you or Jessica what you were. Again, Charlotte and Stella and I had made a pact—"

"So, you were willing to let the coven die out?" I ask, strangely upset for someone who just found out about her destiny and who only accepted that destiny earlier today. "What was the point of taking back the land, then? Who cares if the land has magic if no one knows about it?"

"I...I don't know." Mom's voice cracks a little. "The grandmothers wanted the land kept in the family for future generations, even if my generation wasn't going to practice. And there are many Clairvoix who moved away long ago...even if they don't live in the area, the land is their home, too."

"Their falsely contaminated home," I point out, but Mom ignores me.

"Obviously, Stella Douchette had no intention of letting the coven die out and that's why Janey's gotten you into the mess she did. And I can't speak for Charlotte."

"But your intentions were to deny me something without asking me if I wanted it," I point out, my voice sharp. "You and Grandma are witches and you had no choice in that, but at least you knew what you were. And you eventually made the decision not to practice, but you were aware you could. I didn't even have the opportunity to make a choice about what I am or could be. You kept that from me."

"I was trying to protect you," Mom says, on the verge of tears. "Magic isn't fun and games, as much as Charlotte and Stella and I tried to pretend it was when we were younger. Witches possess great power, and not all witches want to use that power wisely. The Clairvoix always tried to use their powers for good, but when we cast the spell that drove out Manford, we crossed a line. People got hurt—not physically hurt, but hurt all the same—and I wasn't comfortable with that. I felt it made us no better than some of the other covens in the area who only use their powers for personal gain and to hurt people. I didn't want you to have to make those decisions. I wanted you to lead a normal life, and I thought Charlotte and Stella felt the same way about their daughters, too."

"Maybe I don't want to lead a normal life," I say, ignoring for the moment her statement about other covens in the area. I recall Lucy had said something about other covens as well, and neither she nor my mom makes these covens sound friendly. "Maybe I want some magic every once in a while. And maybe I don't. But the point is, you didn't give me the chance to find out what I want and that's not fair. How do I know if I want to do magic or not if I've never been given the opportunity? I want to learn what it's all about and make the decision for myself."

Mom turns in her seat and places a hand on my shoulder. "Well, assuming Charlotte and I can reverse Janey's spell, you're about to find out what magic's all about. And then you can tell me how you feel."

Chapter 19

At Dani's house, I pull into the garage and head into the house with my mom following. Mrs. Maguire isn't in the kitchen—and neither is Merlin, thankfully—so we head straight for the living room. Likely having heard the kitchen door, Mrs. Maguire yells from the top of the stairs "Dani, is that you?"

"Yeah." Answering in the affirmative is awkward with my real mother right behind me.

"You're in big trouble, young lady." In a flash, Mrs. Maguire, in a baby blue track suit, is halfway down the stairs. "Explain to me why I would be getting a call from the high school in the middle of my spin class telling me my daughter's been suspended. And then you don't return my texts—"

Her rant ends when she glances into the living room and finds my mother standing next to me. She calmly descends the remaining stairs and walks through main entry toward us.

"Hello, Charlotte," my mom says, her voice pure ice.

"Kathleen. I didn't hear the doorbell. I know you said we needed to talk, but as you probably heard, I have some issues to discuss with my daughter. Now isn't a good time."

"Sweetie, show her what's in your bag," Mom says, and I open the flap to Dani's messenger bag and take out the spell book, handing it to Mrs. Maguire.

"Dani, where did you get this?" she asks, her hand curling around the spine.

"Your closet."

Mrs. Maguire's mouth drops open, and she shifts her eyes to my mother.

"We agreed to burn these, Charlotte. We made a pact to stop practicing magic—you, me, and Stella. Although Stella evidently didn't burn hers, either."

"What are you talking about?" Mrs. Maguire asks my mom before turning her ire on me. "Why did you go to her with this?"

"Because she's my daughter," Mom answers for me.

Mrs. Maguire belts out a harsh laugh. "You need some sleep. I understand you've been spending some late nights at the hospital, and I'm so sorry for your family, but—"

Mom stands behind me and places her hands on my shoulders. "It's been a while since either of us has done a spell, but this is what one looks like when it goes wrong. Janey Douchette turned eighteen last week, and it looks like she's gone rogue."

"She projected a spirit without having done an apprenticeship?" Mrs. Maguire's entire body seems to droop as if she's a balloon slowly losing air. "There's no way you can pull that off without supervision the first time. My mom made me do five of those spells as practice and she still wasn't comfortable when I did my first one on my own and..." Her voice fades as something occurs to her. "Wait—if Rachel's inside Dani, then where's my Dani?"

"Always were a little slow with the details, weren't you, Charlotte?" Mom asks, giving Mrs. Maguire the same face she gives me when she's annoyed, and I'm shocked at the snark my mom's dishing up. This is a side of her I've never experienced before.

"We have no idea where Dani is," I explain. "All I know is I've been trapped in her body since the morning after my accident. And Ellie Stengel and I went out to Rocky Ridge with Hippie Lucy and there was all this stuff on the floor in Janey's old house that Lucy said looked like a spell."

Mrs. Maguire's face wrinkles up. "Who the hell is Hippie Lucy?"

"Lucy Langlois. You remember—the local history librarian?" Mom says.

"Oh, right—Lucy. I don't get to the library much." Mrs. Maguire shifts her attention from Mom to me. "How is ol' Lucy anyway?"

"Not the point right now, Charlotte," Mom snaps. "Now that we've got ourselves a spell book, we need to set this right. Rachel's body is weakening and we're running out of time."

"Do you know how long it's been since I've done a spell like this?"

"Oh...I'm guessing a little over twelve years, just like me. But now's not the time to worry about how out of practice we are. We'll go out to Rocky Ridge. Our magic will be stronger there."

"Okay." Mrs. Maguire rubs her lips together. "Just let me run up to Dani's room and grab something...she has a necklace her dad gave her that means a lot to her...we can use that."

"And we'll stop off at my house on the way and get something for Rachel."

"Good." Mrs. Maguire looks up the stairs. "And we can take Merlin for a lookout."

"Merlin?" Mom asks.

"The dog," I fill her in.

Mom arches her eyebrows at Mrs. Maguire. "You named your dog Merlin? A little on-the-nose, don't you think?"

"I thought it was cute, and it's not that on-the-nose, considering I haven't practiced in years." Mrs. Maguire fires back. "Now, just let me wake him up and grab Dani's necklace, and we'll be ready to go."

She turns to head upstairs, and I can see tears in her eyes.

After leaving the Maguires', we head to my house, where Mrs. Maguire parks in the driveway and Mom runs inside to grab whatever personal object she plans on using to represent me during the spell. Mom insists I stay in the car because she'll only take a minute, and so I sit in the back seat of Mrs. Maguire's Range Rover with Merlin's head in my lap, staring at the house I drove away from five days ago as if it's somewhere I've never been before. Everything on this end of town appears a little hazy and out-of-focus somehow like I've been on vacation and now I've come back and while everything's still the same, my memory is tricking me into thinking it's different.

I don't get much time to dwell on the fact my house looks like a fun-mirror version of the place it should be because my mom's back outside and in the car in under a minute. "Okay," she says, her voice a little wheezy because she's out of breath. "Let's hit Myers' Pharmacy and then we should be ready."

"What do we need from the pharmacy?" Mrs. Maguire asks.

"Pillar candles. We'll need them to summon energy, and we don't have any in the house. Do you? I forgot to ask before we left."

"No." Mrs. Maguire backs out of our driveway and speeds us toward Main Street, which will take us through downtown and out to the Rocky Ridge from my neighborhood. "And Myers' isn't going to have any. That store is so small, I can never find anything."

"They sell those little votive candles," I offer. "Ellie and I were in there last week buying candy and I saw some in the aisle with the lightbulbs and stuff."

"Can we do a spell of this magnitude with votives?" Mrs. Maguire asks Mom.

"I'm not sure. I think I pulled off a spell with votives once in college, but that's been ages ago."

"I propose, just to be sure, that we go out to Ridgeview Plaza and circle back to town," Mrs. Maguire suggests, referring to the strip mall with a large grocery store and several big box stores just outside town on the highway. "One of those stores will have pillars, and I'm not sure we should risk trying to pull this off with votives. We're both out of practice."

Mom checks her watch. "That shouldn't slow us down too much. I can run in real quick and grab some pillars and a lighter, just in case we can't light the candles on our own. Can you come up with anything else we need?"

Mrs. Maguire snaps her fingers and points at my mom. "Salt. Sea salt. We need it to make the circle."

"Oh, gosh—you're right. I almost forgot. It has been awhile, hasn't it?"

I squirm in the backseat, my hand resting on Dani's bag containing the all-important spell book. "Casting spells sounds kind of complicated," I tell them.

Mom swivels around in her seat to face me. "It is when it's been a long time."

We ride in silence to the Ridgeview Plaza Shopping Center, where we drop Mom off in front of the Wal-Mart and circle around the parking lot for a few minutes until she comes back out with our bag of supplies. Mrs. Maguire just barely slows the Range Rover enough for Mom to jump in and she speeds out of the shopping center lot, taking back roads outside the town limits in order to come up on Rocky Ridge from the opposite direction than if we had driven through town. I'm thankful because we'll be on the other side of the bridge from where I had my accident and I won't feel the need to look at the site.

Mrs. Maguire parks near where Hippie Lucy did the other day, and as we get out of the car, my mom stomps the frozen ground with her boot. "Damn, I forgot about the fence," she says.

"Mason put some emergency tools in the back of the car," Mrs. Maguire offers, referring to Mr. Maguire. "Maybe I have something that will help."

"No need. There's a break in the fence just past the edge of the lake," I say, walking off along the fence, and Mom and Mrs. Maguire follow. I'm starting to feel like the official Rocky Ridge tour guide.

"I'm not going to ask how you know that," Mom says.

"Good," I tell her.

Just as I did with Ellie and Hippie Lucy the other day, I find the smiley face carved in the tree and lift the section of broken fence for Mom, Mrs. Maguire, and Merlin to crawl through. Merlin goes through first, and he's the only one who appears to enjoy dragging himself through the muck.

"And now these pants are ruined," Mrs. Maguire says after crawling through and examining her stained track suit once she's upright.

"Kind of a minor inconvenience if it brings your daughter back," Mom points out as she gets to her feet and brushes some leaves off the bag with our supplies.

"One has nothing to do with the other. I was merely stating a fact."

Mom and Mrs. Maguire obviously don't like each other much, and I'm wondering if it has something to do with the pact they made to burn their spell books after the Rocky Ridge Incident. But that's a question for another time. I crawl through the break in the fence, metal scraping across the bag on my back, and take the lead again as we follow the narrow shore of the lake toward the old neighborhood.

"So, where are we going to do this spell?" I ask.

"There was a wood floor in our old dining room," Mom says. "We can do the spell there."

Mrs. Maguire nods in approval of the plan. "First, we should check out what's left of Janey's spell, though. I'd like to see with my own eyes she was trying to practice magic. If it looks like something else, we may need to adjust our plan."

"Good thinking," Mom says, and I'm happy she's being pleasant to Mrs. Maguire since the two of them hold my life in their hands.

We reach our old street and both Mom's and Mrs. Maguire's faces fall on seeing the houses.

"Oh, Kathleen," Mrs. Maguire says. "What did we do? This is our fault. These were our homes."

"We didn't do this." Mom waves a hand in the air, her gesture encompassing the houses and the cracked asphalt in the streets and old driveways and the broken-down fences. "Time did this. We just took back what was ours."

"And a lot of good that did us. We can't live out here."

My mother narrows her eyes. "Like you'd still want to live out here anyway. This isn't exactly Grand Prairie."

Mrs. Maguire doesn't respond but merely sighs as we pass the old Maguire house and continue by my old house to Janey's. We march up onto the front porch, where Mrs. Maguire tells Merlin to stand guard and to bark if anyone comes. Having been subjected to his barks when he didn't know who I was, I have no doubt he'll warn us if we have company.

The three of us make our way through the rickety door, and I lead Mom and Mrs. Maguire back to the kitchen and the remnants of Janey's spell.

"Well, she has the candles sort of right, at least," Mom says, looking around.

"No circle, though," Mrs. Maguire points out.

"And what's in the middle of the floor?" Mom asks, pointing to the pile of ash and pebbles.

"We weren't completely sure, but Lucy thought it might be some of Mrs. Douchette's ashes," I say. "She thought Janey might have been trying to bring her back."

"Oh, that poor girl," Mrs. Maguire says in what's the first genuine expression of sympathy I've heard from her in the past week.

"Let this be the first lesson of your apprenticeship, if we're going down that road," Mom says to me. "Don't try to bring back dead family members. That's a magic too forceful for even us to handle."

"But I thought you could project spirits into people who had been dead for at least a generation," I say. "Or, at least, that's what Lucy said."

"True," Mrs. Maguire says, leaning up against one of the dusty old kitchen counters and quickly standing up straight again, probably realizing she's getting dirt on the back of her wool coat. "But the Clairvoix never try to raise their own. It risks disrespecting the natural order."

"And putting someone into someone else's body doesn't?" I ask.

"Projection is meant to be temporary, and Clairvoix trying to resurrect Clairvoix breaks the natural order of our line," Mom explains.

Mrs. Maguire walks forward, resting the toe of her muddy tennis shoe just millimeters from Stella Douchette's ashes. "If Janey didn't realize she needed to draw a circle, then anything inside the candles was acting as a circle and she technically broke it—typical rookie mistake."

"Next lesson: know which spells require a circle, and never break a circle once a spell's begun," Mom says to me. "A circle holds magic intact, but without one, Janey was breaking a circle from the moment she lit the candles and started her spell. She must have had items on her that were significant to you and Dani, but didn't realize it. That's how we're in the mess we're in."

I wonder if I should be taking notes.

"Lucy mentioned Janey would have needed objects on her representing Dani and me," I say, filing the knowledge about breaking a circle away for later.

"We'll come back later to collect the ashes," Mom says. "Janey will want those. But, right now, we need to get to our old house and see if we can project you back into your body."

We rush out of the Douchette house and head next door to our old house with Merlin following. The door is completely off its hinges, and like Janey's house, the carpet and walls are stained and musty with mold. As we walk back to the dining room, I hear Mom sigh, and I may understand what she's feeling even as I'm kind of mad at her for feeling it.

This was our home, and now it's in ruins. And as much as I don't want to agree with Mrs. Maguire, I do—my mom, Mrs. Maguire, and Mrs. Douchette did this. And now that I understand what this land really means to our families, I wish I could find a way to take it all back.

Mom places a lock of my baby hair tied with a pink ribbon next to Dani's necklace on the warped and water-stained floorboards and takes a container of sea salt from the plastic bag. She kneels on the floor and makes an almost perfect salt circle of about two feet in circumference around the lock and necklace.

I've always been good at drawing symmetrical circles. I had no idea it was because the ability was in my DNA.

"Candles," Mom says to Mrs. Maguire, and the two of them place thirteen candles around the circle. They stand next to each other, and Mom asks me for the spell book, which I take from my bag and hand to her. "Rachel, stand on the other side of the circle where we can see you, just inside the salt ring."

"Okay." I take my place as Mom leafs through the spell book. She and Mrs. Maguire clasp hands, and the candles spontaneously light.

"Whoa," I mutter.

"Guess we didn't need that lighter after all," Mrs. Maguire says.

"Nope." Mom smiles at her. "Maybe we've still got it."

Mom and Mrs. Maguire close their eyes recite the spell:

Out of one and into the other

Your spirit will fly like child to mother

Find your old home, a body so warm

Will protect you and keep you safe from harm

Fly, o spirit, to this protected place

Fly, o spirit, assume your rightful space

The candles flare up and a forceful, humid breeze sweeps through the room as Mom and Mrs. Maguire chant the spell once again.

Out of one and into the other

Your spirit will fly...

My feet are somehow still planted on the floor, but I don't understand how as the breeze becomes more of a violent wind.

"Mom?" I call out. I'm nearly blinded because the wind is making my eyes burn and water.

"Hold on, Rachel," she yells back over Mrs. Maguire murmuring the words of the spell. Her voice joins Mrs. Maguire's once again.

I squeeze my eyes shut, certain my brain is about to explode. My entire body feels as though it's caving in on itself, and while I trust my mom and Mrs. Maguire to get me through this, a tiny part of me wonders if this body—Dani's body—might end up just as dead as my body in the hospital could be.

Fly, o spirit, to this protected place

Fly, o spirit, assume your rightful space...

My breath catches in my throat as the wind rushes through my ears. I can no longer hear the rhythmic chanting of the spell.

I drop to the floor, the last noise I hear the thud of my body against the cracked floorboards.

When I regain consciousness, everything is quiet save for a beep...beep...

I open my eyes, but I can't focus enough to make out anything. I shut my lids again and squeeze, and when my eyes flutter open once more, Ellie's standing above me. She grasps my hand and I blink rapidly, my vision still a bit blurry. My sight shifts from her to take in the white-tiled ceiling and bare white wall in front of me, then I look downward at the tubes coming out of my arms. I try to speak, but a tube in my throat connected to one taped around my mouth prevents me from doing so.

Lifting my free hand as much as I can—I'm so weak—I continue blinking in a panic as if I'm trying to tell Ellie to help me in some made-up Morse Code.

"Hey, friend," Ellie says, smiling as she takes my hand. "Everything's going to be okay. You're back."

Chapter 20

My throat is on fire, and every time I try to talk, I end up coughing.

"Here." Ellie leans over from the chair at the side of my bed and angles a straw to my mouth. "This should help."

I drink down the cool water and try to speak. "You called my mom?"

"Yeah—a while ago, right after you woke up. You keep drifting in and out. She should be here any minute now."

"I'm so tired."

"You should be. You've had kind of a rough few days."

My mom rushes in and Ellie moves out of the way to allow her to stand over me. "Oh, my baby. You're back. You're back," she whispers.

"Hi, Mom."

Mom runs her hand through my hair, which I imagine is pretty disgusting after all this time. "Has the doctor been in?" she asks Ellie.

"Yeah—right after she woke up. She took the breathing tube out and did kind of a preliminary exam. She said on first glance everything appears to be normal, but they're going to run some tests and keep her here for a few more days."

"Makes sense," Mom says, almost to herself. "Looks like the spell worked." She closes her eyes almost as if she's praying. When she opens them again, she tells me, "I called your dad. He and your grandmother are on their way to Ridgeview to pick up Jessica. They should be here soon."

"And Dani?" I cough, and Ellie points to the cup of water on the table next to my bed. Mom grabs the cup and angles the straw to my mouth. The water going down my throat feels sooo good.

"Dani's back in her rightful body," Mom says, placing the cup back on the table. "But don't worry about all that now. You need your rest."

"But where was she?" I can hardly get the words out because my throat hurts so badly and I'm so tired. "And where's Janey? Did they find Janey?"

Ellie leans in at the edge of my bed, seeming every bit as interested in the answer as I am.

"No. And the situation with Dani is...complicated."

"Complicated? What—"

"The doctor should be here in a few minutes." A nurse peeks around the privacy curtain, interrupting our conversation. "And then we'll take her downstairs for some tests."

The last thing I hear before I drift off again is Mom thanking the nurse for the information.

I wake up to someone holding my hand. My Grandma Lorraine's sitting at my bedside, about to nod off herself. Her head lolls forward, her chin nearly resting on her chest, and then her head jerks back and her eyes pop open.

"Grandma," I say, and immediately start coughing. She reaches for my water cup and lifts my head so I can take the straw into my mouth.

"Sweetheart," she says, taking the cup away once I'm done. "You gave us all a bit of a scare."

"Yeah. Sorry about that."

I search Grandma's face with my new knowledge of what she is, but she looks like the same old Grandma to me—kind blue eyes, brown hair streaked through with gray and white strands, lines pulling at the corners of her mouth and eyes but the rest of her face remarkably wrinkle-free. Other than the lack of wrinkles in someone who's nearly seventy years old, I don't see any telltale signs she's a witch, although now I'm wondering if her amazing skin is due more to witchcraft than a healthy diet and a good cleansing regimen.

Any questions about Grandma's witchy past will need to wait, however, because my dad's here, too. He leans over the edge of my bed and squeezes my right foot.

"How you doing, kiddo?" Dad asks.

"Sore. Tired. At least when I was in a coma, I wasn't in any pain."

Of course, when I was in a coma, I was Dani Maguire. If some pain is a necessary part of the trade-off, I'll take it.

"Well, we'd rather have you back and be sure you're okay, even if it means you'll be in a little bit of pain for a while. How about we put you on a strict ice cream diet once we get you home?"

I smile. "I could live with that."

Grandma shakes her head. "Oh, Trevor. I don't believe Kathleen could live with that."

"We'll see." Dad's eyes twinkle at me, and I sense a tiny pang of guilt over all the things I know that he doesn't. Right now, he's in a room with one woman who's a witch and another who's about to be. And the witch he's married to is...

"Where is everybody?" I ask, casting my eyes around the room.

"Your mom took Jess and Ellie home. She's on her way back right now, and once she gets here, I'll go home so I can get up for work tomorrow. And your grandmother..."

Dad's voice trails off and he glances at Grandma, who finishes his sentence with "...is staying right here with you and your mom."

"Lorraine, are you sure that's a good idea? You've had a long day, what with the traveling and the delays and all."

Grandma looks at me rather than my dad as she answers. "I want to spend time with my granddaughter. I haven't seen her since Christmas, and we nearly lost her."

Dad simply nods and I start coughing again. Grandma gives me some more water as my mom emerges from the other side of the privacy curtain, out of breath and her hair mussed up.

"Trev, you should probably get going," she tells my dad, leaning in to give him a kiss. "It just started snowing and the wind's really kicking up out there."

"Will do." Dad rounds the end of my bed and comes to my side, careful to avoid the various tubes attached to me and leading to machines behind me and next to the bed. "Get a good night's sleep, okay?" he says, bending down to give me a kiss on the forehead. "We want you up and moving around again soon."

"Sure thing, Dad," I say. He says, "good night" to my mom and grandma and disappears behind the privacy curtain. Mom leans back against the wall and watches out the door for a few minutes as if she wants to make sure he's gone.

"You slept for a long time," she tells me, moving over to the side of the bed where Dad just was to give me a kiss on the cheek. "You were out like a light when I left."

"I probably need the rest," I say, looking back and forth from Mom to Grandma. "Although, I guess you guys could just do some witchy stuff and heal me right up."

"Well, you know—" Grandma starts, but Mom cuts her off.

"Mom, no. Not here. She's healing the natural way."

"But think of your insurance premiums." Grandma waves her hands at the machines next to and behind my bed. "And all these machines...it's not natural."

"You know what I meant by 'natural,'" Mom says, shooting Grandma one of her patented annoyed looks. "We're not going to do anything here that might draw attention to ourselves."

"So, she spends her eighteenth birthday in the hospital," Grandma says, folding her arms over her stomach in a defiant pose. "She comes into her powers with all these...tubes hooked up to her."

"Unfortunately, yes. Remember—we agreed only to use magic to keep her alive for as long as we could after they turned off the machines. We don't need that now. So, no magic, and that's final."

Grandma unfolds her arms and throws up her hands. "Fine. Fine. This is what I get for trying to help."

"And this is what I get for trying to keep us undercover—a guilt trip."

"I'm your mother. It's my job."

Mom sighs and I ask, "Don't I get a say in all this?"

Grandma says "yes" at the same time Mom says "no," so I shut my eyes and make a grumbling noise in the back of my throat that causes me to start coughing again. Grandma gives me some water as Mom points out "She's too weak for magic anyway. She'll be stronger in a couple of days, sure, but not strong enough to do real magic."

"But her apprenticeship needs to begin immediately if she's going to do magic at all. We should have begun it years ago," Grandma argues.

"Yes—if she's going to do magic."

"Um, again, don't I get a say in this?" I ask. "You're both talking about me like I'm not here."

"Sorry, sweetheart," Grandma says, stroking my hair. "Of course, you have a say in this."

She glares at my mother and my mom glares back. Take away the twenty-five-year age difference, and they'd practically be twins right now.

"You told me to see how I felt about magic after you and Mrs. Maguire brought me back. And, truthfully, since I've only seen that one spell, I don't know enough about magic to have any idea whether I'd want to do it or not," I say. "So, it makes sense I'd need to learn some magic, or at least see some more, before I could make an informed decision. I mean, the spell you and Mrs. Maguire did was pretty cool and kind of scary, but besides that and living the results of the spell Janey screwed up, I'm kind of in the dark here."

"And we don't want her to end up like Janey," Grandma points out. "Practicing magic with no one to guide her. She'll get hurt—or worse."

"Is there any news about Janey?" I realize once the words are out of my mouth I'd already asked this question earlier in the day. With nothing to do but just lie here in this hospital bed, time seems sort of elongated.

"No, sweetie," Mom says. "Dani said she didn't know where she was."

"Dani?" I try to sit up, but the pain in my side won't let me. "Why would Dani have any idea where Janey might be?"

Mom and Grandma exchange looks. "Because Dani was trapped in Janey's body all this time," Mom says quietly.

"What?" Again, I attempt to sit up, but the pain forces me back down. I start coughing, and Grandma fills the water cup from a pitcher on the side table and hands the cup to me.

"When Janey messed up her spell, she projected you into Dani and Dani into her," Mom explains.

"And she projected herself into..." I prompt, but Grandma just shakes her head.

"No idea," she says. "She's still missing."

"Well, can't you guys do some hocus pocus and find out?" I say, trying not to get agitated and failing. I have another coughing fit and gulp down some more water—at least I'm staying hydrated right now.

"It's not that simple," Mom says. "I've been in touch with Charlotte off and on all afternoon, but Dani hasn't remembered where she was while she was trapped in Janey's body. And Charlotte tried to cast a spell to find Janey, but it didn't work."

I'm surprised to learn there actually is some kind of hocus pocus that could have led us to Janey since I was being sarcastic, but I put my surprise aside and ask, "Why didn't it work?"

"Well, Charlotte's out of practice, for one thing. And it's possible Charlotte's spell to locate Janey was blocked if there's a spell on Janey to hide her. Wherever Janey is, she likely has Stella's spell book with her," Grandma says. "Either Janey put a spell on herself to hide, or someone else put one on her."

"Someone else? Wouldn't that someone else be another witch?"

Grandma and Mom exchange looks once again, but don't say anything. My eyes droop, and I curse inwardly at being so exhausted.

"Hippie Lucy...said...there were other witches."

"There are," Grandma says. "It's a long story. You're tired."

"No!" I protest, instantly getting a second wind on Grandma's attempt to brush me off. "I'm tired of not knowing things."

Grandma reaches out and squeezes my hand as she turns her eyes to my mom. "Kathleen," she says, and Mom inhales deeply.

"There are others," Mom says as she lets out her breath. "We're not really sure who they are anymore since most of the covens have gone dormant, but there were other covens in the area with their own spells and their own powers."

"But the Clairvoix were always the most powerful and, at one point in time, we were the largest coven in the area," Grandma adds. "Our power sometimes caused some...friction with the other families."

"Lucy mentioned something along those lines," I say.

"Obviously, given some of the things that have happened to witches throughout history, covens don't want to expose themselves to a large number of people," Grandma continues. "So, it's to everyone's advantage for the covens to be friendly and work to protect each other. But, with the Clairvoix being the most powerful coven, we wielded quite a bit of influence over the covens as a whole as far as how witches should behave when living amongst regular mortals. For example, in my day, the covens agreed not to practice magic anywhere but the ancestral lands belonging to each family. The towns around here gradually became less sympathetic to witches, and we all thought, for our safety, not practicing magic in town or anywhere else not expressly our land would keep the peace."

"So, is it possible Janey made someone mad or broke some old rule when she tried to cast her spell? Lucy said maybe she could have riled up someone in another coven. Maybe they're trying to punish her or something?"

Mom and Grandma exchange glances yet again, and Mom just shrugs. "Maybe, but I'm not sure how," Grandma says. "Janey did that spell on our land, land that now belongs to her directly. Unless she accidentally projected herself into someone from one of the other covens, I'm not sure what she would have done to set the others off."

"Unless maybe she was kidnapped," Mom says. "Charlotte mentioned something about Dani remembering being in the woods, but she hasn't been able to recall anything else about her time in Janey's body. With her grandmother and mother dead, Janey's the only direct descendant of the original Clairvoix. She's technically the leader of the Clairvoix now, such as we are. That might make her valuable to any coven who's looking to cause trouble."

"The Dumonts were always a bit persnickety," Grandma says. "And the Moreaux, from around the Bernardsville area."

"I mentioned those names to Charlotte earlier. She's trying to figure out what do with what little information Dani's been able to give her," Mom says.

"And I assume they can't go to the police?" I ask, and Mom shakes her head.

"It's too difficult. We have no allies on the police force and the town council anymore, partially because times have changed and partially because the coven's been dormant since the Rocky Ridge Incident. We can't exactly go to the police and explain how we believe Janey might be out in the woods somewhere around one of the nearby towns without some kind of a rationale."

"So, Janey could be in trouble and we can't do anything about it?" My tone gives away how incredulous I am. "I mean, we're witches."

"And we're in hiding, for all practical purposes," Mom says. "Since Dani's suspended from school, she and Charlotte are going to take the day tomorrow and look around some of the old coven lands in the area and see if anything stands out to Dani as familiar. Otherwise, unless Janey comes out from under her spell—if she's under a spell— then we're just as clueless as the police would be when you think about it."

"And what if Janey has been kidnapped?" I say. "And what if Dani and her mom find her? Does Mrs. Maguire, like, curse the other witches involved or something?"

"In over two-hundred years, there's been no violence or retribution among the covens," Grandma says. "We may have had our differences, and some covens may have practiced magic with motives that were less pure than others, but the covens never turn on each other. If Janey has been taken by another coven for some reason, it would be unprecedented, and Charlotte would be foolish to take them on by herself."

"Hopefully, she's smart enough to understand that," Mom adds.

"She'd need to consult with us—including you, after Wednesday—and we'd all decide what to do. I don't know the lay of the land in this area like I used to, but I would imagine other towns are just as unsympathetic as Ridgeview has become. Turning another coven over to the police would be viewed by all as a massive betrayal." Grandma's voice is stern.

"And kidnapping a member of another coven isn't a massive betrayal?" I ask.

"You see the problem," Grandma says, and I shut my eyes, exhausted. Mom senses I'm tired and says "But we're getting a little ahead of ourselves. We aren't certain Janey's been kidnapped, and Dani isn't exactly clear about what happened to her. Let's not worry about taking on other covens until we get some proof as to what happened to Dani while she was in Janey's body."

Grandma makes a kind of clucking sound in the back of her throat.

"Mom, what is it?" my mom asks.

"I just thought of something. You said Dani's having trouble remembering what happened to her, correct?"

Mom nods. "Charlotte says she remembers bits and pieces of things, but not much. I'm not sure if maybe she was hurt, or—"

"This is just one more piece of evidence that other witches were involved. Think about it, Kathleen—she's been spelled."

"Spelled?" I ask.

"She's under a spell," Grandma explains. "I'm guessing she's under some kind of a spell that's making her forget what happened."

"Can we reverse it?" I ask.

Grandma moves her head slowly from side to side, which isn't quite the response I was looking for. "Perhaps," she starts. "Covens don't share spells unless it's absolutely necessary, so we can only hope one of our memory retrieval spells might counteract what's been done to her." She looks up at Mom. "You should call Charlotte and tell her. Reversing the spell might be our best shot at finding Janey."

Mom nods, taking her phone out of her purse and stepping on the other side of the privacy curtain while still in the room. She speaks to Mrs. Maguire in a low voice as I ask Grandma "Shouldn't someone tell Mr. Douchette about all of this? I mean, we sort of have some leads on what went on with Janey, and he's totally in the dark."

Grandma sighs. "Things were always so much easier with your grandfather knowing what I was. But, then again, he grew up around here and heard stories of the witches, so it wasn't much of a leap for him to accept my abilities when I told him. And it was the sixties—everything was a little crazy back then." Grandma waves her hand in the air and I giggle. "But, as we've said, things change. The world changed, and in more modern times, witches became cute folk stories to some people and dangerous legends to others, and that's the world your parents' generation grew up in—yours, too."

"So, what does this have to do with not telling Mr. Douchette anything?"

"When the girls started showing signs they didn't want anyone to find out about their powers, I respected their unspoken decision, as did Stella's mom and Charlotte's mom—we're all cousins, you know."

I nod. "Lucy told me. I saw the genealogy charts."

"And while we respected their wishes, I, at least, wondered if they weren't making things harder on themselves. Not sharing what you are with the people you care about, hiding magic or not practicing at all...it can be a burden. Hiding from your dad is one thing, but when you and Jessica came along, I thought one day Kathleen might be forced to confront what she's been trying to deny all these years."

"And you believe Mr. Douchette might not be able to handle finding out his wife and daughter are witches after all this time?"

"I think Tommy is very fragile—we all saw what happened after Stella died. His wife is gone and now his daughter is missing. Think about how bewildered you've been after finding out what you are. I'm not sure how Tommy would react to learning his wife and daughter hid this secret from him, and that secret may have put Janey in danger. I'm not sure your dad or Mason Maguire would react well to finding out there are witches in their families at this point, either, but I wonder whether Tommy is especially vulnerable."

My mind wanders back to my fateful decision to go looking for Janey and what I told myself before I left—the end would justify the means. If we can get Janey back to Mr. Douchette, how we did it probably won't matter much to him, nor will he need to know.

As if she can read my mind—and maybe she can, because I still don't get how all this witchy stuff works, Grandma says "If we can get Janey back, we can reverse engineer a story about how she was found to cover up any magic we might use. My guess is if we can bring Janey home, Tommy won't be too concerned with the details of how she got there."

Mom comes back from the other side of the privacy curtain and drops her phone in her purse. "Charlotte's going to try a memory retrieval spell on Dani. With any luck, we'll be closer to finding Janey soon."

I sigh and my eyes droop once again. Mom comes over to the side of the bed and places her hand on the top of my head, her thumb rubbing my forehead. "You should get some rest. If we're truly going to do this apprenticeship, then we need to get started. You've got a big day tomorrow."

Tomorrow—my last day of being seventeen and the first day of my crash course in what's ahead.

Because on Wednesday, apparently, everything changes.

Chapter 21

Mrs. Maguire calls my mom the next morning and tells her she's tried the memory retrieval spell on Dani three times, but it's not working.

"What now?" Mom asks Grandma.

"We hope Charlotte and Dani turn something up in the old coven areas," Grandma says. "And in the meantime, we can think about alternative spells to bring Dani's memory back and work on getting this girl here started on learning what magic is all about."

She nods her head in my direction and I say, "I'm ready when you guys are. Go ahead and give me my pointy hat and magic wand."

Grandma laughs. "Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work like that."

Mom and Grandma spend all day, in between interruptions from doctors and nurses, walking me through Grandma's Clairvoix spell book she brought with her from Florida and explaining to me what each spell does.

"There's so much that isn't written down in the books," Grandma tells me. "And so much more to the spells than the incantations themselves. That's where Janey likely got herself into trouble—she knew just enough to be dangerous."

Since my dad and Jess are heading to the hospital after Dad gets off work, we need to wrap up my first apprenticeship day a little earlier than I'd like. So, for our last trip into the magical world for the day, Mom decides to show me a special skill.

"Tomorrow morning, you'll be able to do this, too," Mom says, reaching for a pad of paper on the table next to my bed. She rips off a sheet embossed with the hospital's name and logo and starts tearing the paper into pieces no bigger than a thumbnail. Once she's finished tearing the sheet, she places the pieces on the blanket covering me and holds her hands over them, moving her fingers as if she's trying to gather them up without touching them. The pieces of paper start to rise and Mom raises her hands over them. The pieces follow as if she's coaxing them upward, but when she stops moving, the papers fall back on my blanket.

"Okay—that's kind of awesome," I say, staring wide-eyed at the scraps of paper. I hover my hands over them and start moving my fingers just as Mom did, but nothing happens.

"As I said—tomorrow," she says, smiling at me. She moves her right hand in a circle over the torn pieces of paper and they reassemble into a complete page, with the hospital name and logo back in the correct place. As she takes the paper and places it back on the table, Grandma says,

"And you'll be able to do this tomorrow, too."

She stands next to the tiny closet in my room, points at the closet door, and snaps her fingers. The door flies open, and I gasp.

"Just wait," she continues, and she raises a hand and holds her palm out, facing the closet. She begins moving her fingers just as Mom did with the paper on my bed, and out flies a pillow, which Grandma catches with both arms. "Pillow?" she offers.

"Um...no, thanks. I'm good." I stare at my mom, then Grandma, then Mom again in amazement. "So, do you guys do stuff like this all the time?"

"Almost never," Mom says. "Maybe sometimes when you and Jess and your dad aren't home. But, remember, I'd pretty much given up magic for good."

"Not me," Grandma chimes in. "Trust me, when you're an old lady, some of these skills come in handy. It sure beats standing on a chair to get things off high shelves."

I laugh. "So, how does it work? I mean, you said I'd be able to do this stuff tomorrow, but how?"

"Concentration," Mom says. "You clear your mind of everything except what you're trying to accomplish. I wanted to lift those torn pieces of paper off your blanket, so I cleared my mind of everything except accomplishing that task."

"Focus is key to good magic," Grandma adds. "You'll learn. And it's possible something disrupted Janey's focus that night and threw off her spell." Grandma looks from me to my mom. "When we find that girl, we need to help her. She hasn't apprenticed, and she has no one to guide her through this."

"Can we do that?" Mom asks, and I'm surprised there's something about the "witch rules" she doesn't know.

Grandma nods. "There have been several orphaned Clairvoix throughout history. Ideally, witches want to apprentice with someone from their direct line because individual spells and tweaks are handed down through the ages, but so long as she apprentices with another Clairvoix, she should be fine. We don't know what Charlotte and Dani are up to at this point, so we should take it on ourselves to bring poor Janey under our wing."

Mom sighs. "I'm not sure how involved I want to be in any of this. I've had a good life without magic. Trevor's always been in the dark, and I'm not sure I want to risk telling him after all these years."

I reach for Mom's hand. "You're involved, like it or not. I want to learn as much as I can about everything so I can decide whether I want to practice magic or not. If Janey's decided to practice, then somebody owes it to her to help her out so she doesn't screw up another spell."

"And I suppose that someone is me?" Mom asks.

"Kathleen, I'll stay as long as you like to help out," Grandma says. "Trevor doesn't need to find out what we're up to. Janey obviously wants this or thinks she does, and Rachel at least wants to learn. We owe it to these girls to make sure they understand the full scope of their powers."

"Fine." Mom says, her voice curt and her "annoyed face" in full effect. "I need a cup of coffee. Anyone else want anything?"

Grandma and I both tell her "no," and Mom walks out of the room at a brisk pace.

"Is she going to be okay?" I ask as Grandma takes Mom's seat next to me.

"She'll be fine. This'll just take some getting used to for her. She and Charlotte and Stella made the pact to burn their spell books after what we did at Rocky Ridge to drive out Manford, and I imagine she's feeling a little betrayed right now. She didn't want to be a part of the supernatural world anymore, and now she's being pulled back in."

"Because I want to learn to be a witch," I say quietly.

Grandma takes my hand. "Don't feel guilty. This is your birthright, and you deserve to understand what you are so you can make the decision about what you want to be for yourself going forward. My feeling has always been that your mother had no right to take that away from you and Jessica, but I'm not the one who's raising you, so I don't get a say in the matter."

"Oh, wow. Jessica." I'd nearly forgotten that if I'm going to be a witch, then it means my sister is going to be one, too. "Has anyone told Jessica about this yet?"

"No. I think your mother feels like she has her hands full dealing with you, and once you decide if you're going to practice or not, she'll tell Jessica. Ideally, Clairvoix witches start their apprenticeship when they're around twelve, so both of you are behind."

"Which means?"

"Which means your magic might not be very strong at first, and there may be some spells you won't be able to do correctly. Janey's spell is a good example. But, there is also strength in numbers. If you, Janey, and Dani decide to learn together, you'll be more able to do spells correctly. Every good witch needs a coven, and your mom knows it. She'll come around."

I place my other hand over Grandma's hand holding mine. "I'm glad you're staying for a while. I think I'm going to need you."

"Me, too."

I'd always thought my eighteenth birthday would be significant somehow, maybe with a big party with all my friends or a day trip somewhere. But even though I'm in the hospital, which is no one's dream no matter what birthday they're having, I still wake up anticipating the day.

After visits from the doctor and the nurses, I wait until after the staff comes to clear away my breakfast to be sure I won't be disturbed by anyone else. Once I'm confident I'll get at least a few minutes alone, I reach out to the table next to my bed and grab the loose piece of paper my mom tore up yesterday. Just as she did, I rip the page into small pieces and scatter them across my blanket. Taking a deep breath, I hold my hands over the papers, clear my mind of any other thoughts, and start moving my fingers.

The pieces lift, following my hands as I raise them higher. When I stop wiggling my fingers, the papers drop.

I laugh—just a small giggle at first, but then I erupt into full-on laughter. I did it.

Despite my weakened state, a surge of adrenaline floods through me to the point I almost want to get out of bed and run down the hall. I don't—I'm wearing a backless hospital gown for one thing, and I might not have the strength, for another. But my mind tells me I'm mentally strong, and, soon, I'll be physically powerful...I'll be able to do so much more than I ever have before. The sensation is kind of like what I experienced after conquering Dani's part in the halftime cheerleading routine—it's the sensation of facing a fear and beating it down.

I've performed my first magic. I'm not afraid of anything that comes next.

When Mom and Grandma come in, I'm still laughing to myself.

"Well, this is nice," Mom says, coming over to the side of the bed and giving me a kiss on the forehead. "I'm glad you're in a good mood."

"I did it, Mom," I tell her, wiping some laughter-induced tears from my eyes.

"Did what?" she asks as Grandma notices the torn paper on my lap.

"You levitated the paper?" Grandma asks.

"Yeah. It was amazing. Can I try the thing with the closet and the pillow now?"

Grandma laughs. "Let's take this one step at a time. A good rule of thumb is not to project objects from too far away. If you try to send that pillow over here, it might come at you a little more quickly than you'd like."

"Good to know."

Grandma's carrying a shopping bag from which she takes two wrapped boxes, both from her. "I was able to do a little shopping before I left Florida," she says as I tear the paper from the boxes and find a pearl necklace in one and matching earrings in the other. As I thank her and give her a hug, Mom says "Your dad and Jessica are bringing presents from us this afternoon, just in case you thought the fun was over."

"I can always handle more fun."

Just after lunch, the nurses get me up and walk me around a bit outside my room. I'm like a newborn colt wobbling around on unsteady legs, but I'm happy to be up and moving for the first time in a long time. The doctor comes in after I walk, wishes me a happy birthday, and gives me the best present of all—I'll be able to go home tomorrow, although she wants me to stay home from school and recuperate until Monday.

But the birthday surprises don't end with my doctor—later in the afternoon, Luke and Ellie come to visit and bring Dani along with them.

For the first time since I've been back in my own body, I'm slightly uncomfortable when Dani strolls in behind Ellie, holding hands with Luke. She's wearing the stylish black parka I'd grown used to wearing along with a pair of dark jeans, but her hair and makeup are flawless, miles away from what I'd been able to accomplish during my time in her body. As I watch her smiling at Luke, a stab of guilt pricks at me, thinking about kissing him and about the secrets he shared with me.

"Happy birthday," Ellie sings, placing a bunch of helium balloons on the side table and giving me a hug. "Isn't this how you always dreamed turning eighteen would be?"

"Busted up and in the hospital? What more could a girl ask for?"

Mom and Grandma slip out of the room as Luke walks to the other side of my bed and surprises me by letting go of Dani so he can hug me. "Nice to see you're looking a little more like yourself," he says.

"It's nice to be a little more like myself." I glance up at Dani, who's lingering near the end of my bed. "I'm guessing I'm not the only one who feels that way."

"Oh, wow—you have no idea," she says, tossing her hair. "I was so freaked when I figured out I was trapped in Janey's body."

I shift my eyes to Ellie and she's giving Dani a slightly disgusted look. It's comforting, I guess, to know everything's back to normal on that front, at least.

"I mean, not like Janey's a bad person or anything," Dani says, acknowledging Ellie's disgust. "But, when you've been used to being one person for almost eighteen years, it's not the easiest thing to be somebody else all of a sudden."

"I totally get that," I say.

"I guess you would." Dani stares down at her feet for a moment, acting uncomfortable and out of place for the first time I can remember since we were kids. "Luke's been filing me in on some of the details. Sounds like it wasn't exactly easy being me."

"It took some work, but I did it." I shrug. "Did he tell you Ellie and I got you suspended?"

"Yeah," she says through a tiny laugh. "But he also told me you kicked ass as a cheerleader, so I guess you didn't totally screw up my life while you were in my body."

"I tried to leave you something to come back to." I shift my eyes briefly to Luke and wonder what other details about my time in her body he's shared with Dani.

"Would you guys mind if Dani and I talked alone for a minute?" I ask Luke and Ellie.

"Nope," Luke says, while Ellie adds "Sure. I guess you guys have a lot to talk about." She turns to Luke. "How about you buy me a coffee?"

"My pleasure," he says, laughing, and the two of them leave while Dani sits down in the chair next to my bed.

"How are you feeling?" she asks.

"I've been better. I'm sure I've probably looked better," I say, self-consciously patting my disgusting hair.

"You're fine." Dani fidgets in the seat, rubbing one hand over the other. "So, it's weird, but I guess we're witches."

"Yeah. And we're related, which is just as weird in some ways."

"And we're related to Janey, too," she adds before pausing for a moment. "Funny how things ended up that way. When we were little kids, we all used to pretend we were sisters, remember?"

I do, even though those memories are painful now in light of everything that went down with our friendship.

"So, how are you with all this?" I ask. "The witch stuff, I mean?"

Dani gathers her hair in her hands and pulls it over her right shoulder. "I'm kind of confused by it. Mom and I have talked a lot about it the last couple of days. We've had some of the best talks we've had in years, actually. When you wake up back in your body after turning into someone else, and then you find out your mom is one of the people responsible for bringing you back, you kind of have to confront some things, you know?"

I nod, thinking about how Mrs. Maguire was mostly indifferent to me as Dani over the last few days.

"Mom's been telling me all the history of the Clairvoix witches and we've been looking at her spell book. And she told me all about what happened to the old neighborhood and how she was supposed to burn the spell book afterwards, but didn't."

"Yeah," I say with a cynical smile. "My mom seems like she's a little pissed about that."

Dani shrugs. "Mom said she quit practicing magic but didn't want to get rid of the spell book in case she needed to do magic again someday. I guess she made a good decision given everything that's happened."

"Guess so." I pause. "So, you don't remember anything from the last few days?"

She shakes her head. "Not much. I was doing homework last Wednesday night when I got kind of sleepy, so I thought I'd take a power nap. Next thing I know, I'm waking up on the floor of this dingy house next to a pile of dirt, and there are candles everywhere and next to me is this book of poems, which I now know is Janey's spell book. And the clothes I'm wearing aren't mine, and I've got this gross looking messenger bag, and I have no idea where I am. So, I wander around outside the house, and I realize I'm in the old neighborhood and I'd woken up inside Janey's house. And, I'm basically freaking out at this point, right?"

"Right. Yeah, of course," I say, remembering my own meltdown once I'd discovered I was her.

"So, I start walking off towards the woods because I remembered people always said there was a break in the fence back there somewhere. But I'm, like, freezing, so I start looking through the messenger bag, and I find Janey's phone. And before I left the house, I'd caught a glimpse of myself in one of the windows, but the window was kind of dirty, so I told myself it wasn't real, you know? I just couldn't deal with the fact I'd turned into Janey."

"Yeah. The whole 'couldn't deal' thing sounds familiar."

"But then I find Janey's phone and I'm like 'Okay—something's really wrong here.' And I knew it was her phone because she had all these texts and voicemails from you and Ellie and her Dad. But I couldn't quite get my head around the fact I'd become her, you know?"

"Yup. That sounds familiar, too."

Dani nods. "The last thing I remember is thinking I should call someone to come get me. Not like I'd know how to explain how I got out there in the first place, of course, but I figured I'd freeze to death if I kept wandering around trying to figure out a way to get out of there."

"And then what happened?"

"No idea. Somebody came up behind me on the street. The next thing I remember is I'm waking up on a dingy floor again, but this time, your mom and my mom are there and I'm me again. I get these weird memory flashes of being out in the woods, but that's it."

"My grandma's theory is Janey might have done something when she screwed up her spell to aggravate one of the other local covens."

"Yeah, Mom told me. We went out to where she said some of the old covens were located, but all we found were a bunch of empty cabins. If they were holding me...Janey...whatever, out there, they're not there now. Mom's going to try that memory spell again when I get home, but if it hasn't worked so far..."

Her voice trails off and I heave a sigh, wondering if we'll ever find Janey and hoping Grandma's statement about the covens not committing violence against each other holds true.

"So how are you readjusting to being you?" I ask. "I mean, other than getting hit with the news you're going to become a witch?"

"It's been okay. I don't really remember anything about being Janey, so other than finding out you've been living my life for the last week, it's been a pretty smooth adjustment. And, like I said before, Luke's been updating me on everything."

I shift my eyes to the blanket covering my legs and midsection. "Yeah. So, he told you about the suspension and the cheerleading routine. What else did he tell you about?"

"He told me you're a good kisser." I look up, and Dani's mouth has slipped into a grin, so she doesn't seem mad.

"Dani, I—"

"You're cool, Rachel. Don't worry about it." She shrugs. "You had to do what you had to do to convince people you were me, right? I mean, I would've done the same thing if I were you—not like you have a boyfriend, but..."

Good ol' Dani, I think. She's definitely back.

"It's not like he was cheating on me or anything," she continues. "And, anyway, things have been kind of 'blah' between us lately. I kind of wonder if we're both just killing time until graduation, and it's all weird because we might not end up at the same school, so then what do we do?"

"Yeah," I say, even though I can't relate to her situation in the slightest. "Well, he did a good job of helping me make sure people believed I was you. Lexi and Alissa probably just thought I was kind of sick or something."

Dani smiles, but it quickly fades. "Look—about Lexi and Alissa. I'm probably four years too late for this, but I'm sorry we drifted apart. You and Janey and Ellie were the best friends a girl could want but, like, Lex and Alissa have been good friends, too. It's hard, and I've always felt kind of bad we couldn't all be friends, but it was like you guys were one clique and we were another one and we were all into such different stuff. And then Ellie was pretty much a total bitch to me the whole way here and—"

"I was kind of wondering how the two of you ended up coming here together," I say.

"It was Luke's idea. Ellie called and told him she was coming to visit for your birthday and asked if he wanted to come along, and I can't go to cheerleading practice because I'm suspended. And Luke and I are always together and so he offered to pick Ellie up and I just kind of came along and..." Dani pauses. "Ellie's not happy."

"No, she wouldn't be."

Dani's mouth twists into a frown. "I might not ever be able to patch things up with Ellie, but I want you to know I want to be friends if you'll let me. I mean, we're, like, distant cousins or whatever, so we're family. We should get along."

"I guess that's true."

"And if I'm coming into all these powers next month, I want to learn all I can before it happens. And, sure, I've got my mom, but it would be nice to be around someone else who's learning everything for the first time, too."

I almost want to cry. I've waited four years for Dani to come around to the fact she can be friends with me and be one of the Perfects as well. I'm not sure how Ellie—and Janey when we find her—will deal with it, and I can't imagine how Lexi Grayson and Alissa Lofton will respond to our renewed friendship, either. But I guess we'll take everything as it comes.

"Can you do anything yet?" Dani asks me in a low voice. "I mean, like, spells or tricks or anything?"

I smile and turn to the table next to my bed, grabbing the pad of paper and tearing off a sheet. "Watch," I say, tearing the paper into pieces and levitating them off my blanket as Dani starts laughing.

"Okay, that's kind of—"

"Awesome, right?" I finish for her. "I think you'll be able to do that one, too. Mom and Grandma made it sound like levitation is pretty much standard-issue magic."

"Cool," she says, and then gets serious once again. "Too bad we can't come up with some magic that will bring Janey back."

"Maybe the memory spell will work the next time your mom tries it," I say, mostly as a way to comfort Dani and not because I really believe. "Or maybe your mom or my mom or my grandma will come up with another way."

"Maybe." Dani pauses and then shakes her head, her blonde hair moving about like a golden cloud. "But, anyway, it's your birthday. Luke and Ellie didn't come here just to sit in the cafeteria and drink coffee." She takes her phone from her leather crossbody bag and jabs her thumbs at the screen. "I'll tell them they can come back upstairs so we can get this party started."

"And by 'party,' you mean all of us sitting around talking while I lie in a hospital bed?"

Dani laughs at my assessment of our sorry conditions for celebrating my eighteenth birthday. "Exactly," she says. "It's bash of the year."

Chapter 22

I'm at home by noon the next day, but Mom and Grandma put me right to bed so the experience isn't much different than being in the hospital. My room, which I haven't been in for a week now, is just as I'd left it, right down to my messenger bag on my bed next to a dog-eared copy of Moby Dick.

I groan as Mom helps me into a t-shirt and sleeping shorts, not so much from the pain of my bruises but because Moby Dick reminds me I'll need to work my butt off to get caught up at school. And now I've got spells to learn on top of everything else, so I figure I'll be doing nothing but studying between now and graduation.

"So, more apprenticeship stuff?" I ask as Mom helps get me situated while Grandma moves my bag and books to my desk chair.

"Not right now," Mom says. "You need to rest. The longer it takes for you to get your strength back, the longer it'll take for you to be able to do magic. And you need to recuperate so you can go back to school Monday."

"Fine." I sigh as they head out of my room. Grandma gives me a wink before she shuts the door, and something about the gesture reminds me: At least I can still levitate.

Everything I want is on my desk across the room, so I clear my mind until the only image there is of my new phone—Dad bought me a replacement for my birthday since my old one was ruined in the accident. I hold up my palm and draw my fingers in like the tail of a swimming jellyfish. My phone rises from the desk, suspends in the air, and whips across the room. I remember what Grandma said in the hospital about objects coming at me quickly, and I drop my hand as soon as the phone reaches the bed. The phone falls to the comforter next to my leg.

"I could definitely get used to this," I say to myself, clearing my mind once again. This time, I imagine the Clairvoix spell book—Grandma left hers on my desk—and the book flies to me, dropping onto the comforter after I lower my hand.

I text both Ellie and Dani to tell them I'm home, and Ellie shows up right after school.

"How does it feel to be home?" she asks, crawling onto the bed next to me.

"Good. And strange. It's like a million years have passed," I say, looking around and wondering when my room—my life—will start to seem familiar again.

"Well, that's about how much homework you're going to have to catch up on."

I make a puking noise. "Mom went up to school today to talk to some of my teachers. She hasn't hit me with the damage yet."

"I guess you could just magic your way out of it," Ellie suggests.

"Even if I knew how, it wouldn't be fair. And I'm committed to using my new powers for good."

"Okay, do-gooder," Ellie says as someone knocks on my bedroom door. Assuming it's either my mom, Grandma, or Jessica, I say "Come in."

It's Luke. And he's carrying a vase filled with a dozen white roses.

"Hey," I say to him. "Um, wow...that's really...they're beautiful."

"A delivery guy just brought these, and I offered to bring them up for your mom," he says, glancing around the room. "Do you want them on your desk or—"

"Here on the end table is good," I say, reaching over and moving some stuff around so there's room for the vase. He sets the flowers down as my feelings morph into some weird mixture of flattered and disappointed. But I push my confusion aside and while Luke still has his eyes on the roses, I flip over the spell book lying on the bed next to me so the dark purple back cover is showing. Hiding the book in plain sight probably isn't necessary—Luke wouldn't recognize the book even with its ornate front cover showing—but I don't want him noticing the cover and asking questions I'm not sure I can answer.

"Check the card," Luke says, pulling a tiny envelope from a plastic stake in the middle of the flower arrangement and handing it to me. "I bet I can guess who they're from."

I open the card and discover the flowers are from Rick Delacourt, with a message from him telling me to get well soon and he can't wait for me to be back at school.

"Rick Delacourt?" I look up at Luke. Meanwhile, Ellie covers her mouth as if she's trying not to lose it.

"He told me last night he was thinking about sending flowers, but I wasn't sure if he had the guts to go through with it. Guess I underestimated him."

"Well, tell him I said, 'thank you.'"

"Hand me your phone, and I'll give you his number so you can tell him yourself," he says before asking, "How are you?"

I pat the comforter next to me and give him my phone. "Sit down. Make yourself comfortable." He takes off his letterman's jacket and puts it on his lap as he sits. "And I'm a lot better today, thanks. Bored, mostly."

Ellie slides to the end of the bed and stands. "You know, I'm gonna...go somewhere...

that's not...here," she says, and I glare at her obvious but awkward attempt to leave Luke and me alone. "Is Jessica home?"

"She should be. If not, she'll be home any minute."

"Okay." Ellie shuffles toward the door. "I'm going to go talk to her about...something." And she slips out into the hall as Luke turns to me with a smile.

"Is Ellie okay?" he asks.

"Yeah, she's just..." I shake my head. "Ellie doesn't talk to my sister. I barely talk to my sister. I guess she figured we'd want to talk alone since we didn't get the chance to yesterday."

"Yeah." He pauses. "You and Dani were alone for a while, though. She didn't say much about it."

"Not much to say, really. We just had some stuff to work out."

"She's pretty happy the two of you are going to try to be friends again." He takes a breath. "Um...you didn't mention anything to her about the stuff I said at Alex's party, right? Because I didn't specifically say not to talk about it with anybody and—"

"Luke, no," I say, impulsively reaching out to put a hand on his arm and then jerking it away. "I wouldn't do that."

He lets out a breath. "I thought so, but I just wanted to make sure. I mean, like I said, everything's so up in the air with Dani and me, and I have no idea what's going to happen."

"You're fine. Dani and I just talked about this crazy week," I tell him, and then I realize I'm lying, thinking back to how unenthusiastic Dani seemed about things between the two of them. Now, I'm basically in the middle. Wonderful.

"So, roses, huh?" Luke says, tilting his head toward the bouquet on the night stand. "I told you Rick had a thing for you. Guys don't buy roses for just anyone, even white ones."

I blush. "Okay, Mr. Nostrand. You win on this one. Maybe somebody has a crush."

"It's a lot more than a crush. He's probably realizing how close he came to missing his chance with you since you could have...you know." He shifts his eyes to the floor as if he's embarrassed.

"Died. It's okay to say it."

He shrugs. "Doesn't mean I like saying it. Or thinking about it. It scares me how close you came to not being here anymore. Or being stuck inside Dani."

Now, I'm the one who's unsure of what to say.

"Any news about Janey?" Luke asks, filling the silence. "I asked Ellie earlier at school and she said the cops had scaled back the search to almost nothing, but I was wondering if you'd heard anything."

"No," I say, and I almost mention Dani and her mom searching the woods when it hits me—

Luke doesn't know Dani was looking for Janey—or for anything that would jar her memory—or he'd be getting his updates from her. And Dani must not have told Luke that Dani, Janey, and I are witches and that Janey screwing up a spell was the catalyst for all the weirdness of the past week.

"Has Dani told you..." I wade in slowly. "...where she was when I was in her body?"

"She says she doesn't remember." He searches my face, almost as if he expects me to clear up Dani's whereabouts for him. He doesn't say anything else but only stares at me, waiting. I shut my eyes to avoid his steely gaze and strategize as much as I can in this tense moment.

I want to tell him everything—I really do. Without him, I wouldn't have made it through the last week. Hippie Lucy said a witch can always use a few good friends, and I'm sure I can trust Luke not to take out a billboard announcing my newly-discovered status to the world after I tell him.

On the other hand, I can't really come clean to Luke without revealing Dani, Janey, and all the women in our families are witches as well. And while Luke's my friend, he's Dani's boyfriend. I'm outranked—Dani needs to be the one to tell him.

I open my eyes. "I want to tell you everything," I begin.

"But..." he prompts.

"I can't. Not all of it's my story to tell. And don't think I don't feel like crap for keeping you in the dark because there's no way I would have survived this without you. I owe you forever for everything you've done."

"Rachel, you don't owe me anything," he says, placing his hand on my arm and keeping it there. I try not to let the warmth of his touch distract me.

"Trust me—I do," I say. "Even that night we were all watching movies at the Maguires, you knew I'd found out something from Hippie Lucy but I couldn't tell you. And you didn't turn your back on me. So, I'm just asking you to hold out a little longer. You're probably going to find out everything eventually, but like I said, some of it isn't my story to tell."

"Okay," he says. "Thanks for being honest with me. I can respect you don't want to tell someone else's secrets."

"I can tell you this," I start, deciding to give him something. "Dani wasn't lying when she said she doesn't remember what happened to her. It's complicated, but she's telling the truth."

He nods. "Good to know. And I won't push for any more information until someone decides it's time to tell me." He takes his hand from my arm, and my skin goes cold. I don't recall having these sensations with Luke when I was in Dani's body.

"Thanks, Luke," I say, brushing off the strange feelings I'm having. "You're truly an amazing guy, you know? I'm not sure anyone else would be so patient."

"Hey, that's me—Mr. Patient," he says, and I can't tell if his smile is genuine or masking disappointment that he came here and is leaving without knowing what truly happened to Dani and me. "I should go. Your mom said I probably shouldn't stay too long since you're still recovering."

"My mom's being overprotective," I grumble. "But thanks for coming. And thanks for bringing the flowers—I'll text Rick to thank him."

"He'll be psyched to hear from you." Luke gives me a cheesy grin. "Did I mention how excited he is you're going to be back at school on Monday?"

"Goodbye, Luke," I say, rolling my eyes at him as he stands and backs his way toward my door.

"Later," he says, and ducks out of my room. Less than a minute later, Ellie comes back, shuts the door behind her, and belly flops onto my bed.

"So, are you and my sister all bonded now?" I tease.

"Very funny. She's not even home. I was talking to your mom." She nods over at the roses. "Admit it—you were a little disappointed Mr. Nostrand wasn't the buyer and was merely the delivery boy."

"He's Dani's boyfriend."

"So? Doesn't mean he can't buy you a dozen roses if he wants to, even if it's a little skeezy. And white roses stand for friendship, so kudos to Rick for hedging his bets."

"Oh, stop it."

"I'm just pointing out that if you've got a thing for Luke, Rick might want to get used to being just friends."

I sigh and snuggle more deeply into my pillows. "I don't know what's going on. I had no idea how Rick even felt about me until the other day, and Luke's a whole other story. Right now, I'm trying to get used to being me again, but even that's different. I'm not the same me I was a week ago—I'm a witch. Guy stuff is the last thing I want to worry about right now."

Ellie rolls over and sits up against some pillows, letting her head rest against my shoulder. "I'm here for you, you know? Whether it's witch stuff or guy stuff or whatever."

"Thanks, Elle. Now tell me what I need to get caught up on in history."

Ellie gives me a preview of the chapters and assignments I've missed in our history class, but after only a few minutes, someone knocks on my door. "Come in," I call out.

To my surprise, my next visitor is Dani, fresh from cheerleading practice in yoga pants and a hoodie underneath her open coat. "Hey," she says, shutting the door behind her and leaning against it. "Your mom said I could visit for a while. She said I just missed Luke."

"And that's my cue to leave," Ellie says, sliding to the end of my bed. She stands and walks over to Dani at my bedroom door. "Move. I'm outta here."

"Ellie, come on. Don't be like that, okay? After everything that's gone down over the last week, Rachel and I are trying to forget the past and be friends again. I want that for us, too."

Ellie whips around to face me. "Is this true? You're just going to forget what an asshole she's been the last four years?"

"Things are different now, Elle. Dani and I are both witches. We're related."

Ellie's face crumples with what I imagine can only be hurt and betrayal. She turns around to Dani again. "You basically called me fat and ugly in eighth grade, and then you've ignored me or giggled with the Perfects about me for years. Hell—you ignored me at school today."

"I didn't want to," Dani says. "We hadn't talked yet. I don't want things to be like this anymore, Ellie. Like Rachel said, everything's different now."

"Oh, is it? And what happens tomorrow at school when Lexi and Alissa see you talking to me and wonder why you're bothering with that loser Ellie Stengel?"

Dani closes her eyes. "I haven't figured out what I'm going to do about Lexi and Alissa yet."

"Of course not."

"Dani, there's something you should know," I say, hoping to shift the conversation somewhere else. Ellie turns around again and Dani opens her eyes. "Alissa's a witch."

"What?"

"Ellie and I saw the genealogies at Hippie Lucy's house. She's an even more distant cousin than you and me and Janey are, but she's still a Clairvoix."

Dani looks from me to Ellie, who nods to corroborate my information. "Does she know?" Dani asks.

"No clue," I say.

"Is Lexi a witch, too?"

"In Clairvoix terms, no," Ellie says. "Is she just a witch in general? Yes, absolutely."

Dani exhales, seemingly relieved Lexi isn't a witch. I guess maybe she's happy there's at least one area in which she has the ultimate authority over Lexi.

"So, should we ask Alissa if she knows?"

I shake my head. "I'm not sure what we should do. I've been so concerned with Janey and with getting myself back into the right body, I haven't even thought about what to do with Alissa. I just thought you should know there's another witch in Ridgeview—two, I guess, counting her mom."

"Okay," Dani says, and yet another someone knocks on my door. Ellie and Dani back away as Grandma opens the door and peeks her head in.

"Hey, Grandma."

"Hello, girls," she says, entering the room and turning to Dani. "Kathleen told me you were here. I may have found a way to bring back your memories of your time in Janey's body. I brought my mother's old spell book with me from Florida, and I found a spell your mother isn't likely to have."

"Seriously?" Dani says, and I sit up from my pillows.

"Yes. And part of why your mom has been having so much trouble with the memory spells, besides being out of practice, may be because she was trying them at your house. Witches always carry magic within them, but our magic is going to be stronger on our ancestral lands."

"So, we need to go back out to Rocky Ridge?" I ask.

"Yes. How are you feeling, sweetie?"

"I'm fine. A little tired of everyone asking me how I'm doing, though."

Grandma comes over and kisses me on the forehead. "Are you up for a field trip to Rocky Ridge?"

I look around Grandma to Dani, who raises her eyebrows. "If it's going to help Dani recover her memories and get Janey back, then I'm up for going anywhere," I say.

"Good. Get dressed quickly—there isn't much time. Thankfully, there's a basketball game at the middle school tonight, so Jessica's with her friends. But your dad will be home soon. Your mom just sent him a shopping list to buy us some more time, but we still need to hurry."

Ignoring my bruises, I bound out of bed and head to my closet, while Grandma tells Dani "Your mother is meeting us there. And, Ellie, feel free to come, too. You can observe what happens and take some notes for us we might be able to use later."

"So, I'm playing the Hippie Lucy role in this scenario?" she asks.

"Something like that," Grandma says. I slide on a pair of jeans and a Ridgeview Raiders sweatshirt before putting on a pair of socks and tennis shoes stashed next to my bed.

"Ready," I announce.

"Me, too," Dani says.

"Me, three," Ellie chimes in.

"Good," Grandma says, putting an arm around me as Dani opens my bedroom door. "Let's go do some magic."

Chapter 23

We cross the bridge at Rocky Ridge Lake in Mom's minivan and pull off to the side of the road behind Mrs. Maguire's Range Rover. Mrs. Maguire gets out of the driver's side of her car with a backpack slung over her shoulder and Merlin at her feet and heads over to the passenger side of our minivan, helping Grandma out once Mom's shut off the engine.

Our little group trots out into the woods as quickly as we can, with me bringing up the rear since I'm still pretty weak. Mom puts an arm around me and kind of half-drags me until we reach the fence, where I ignore the bruises on my legs and crawl through the opening after everyone else.

A few more minutes of walking and we've reached the old neighborhood. Our group heads to Dani's old house and into the kitchen, where Ellie crouches near the refrigerator in the corner, takes a notebook from her bag, and starts scribbling. Meanwhile, Mrs. Maguire opens her backpack and places candles on the counters and on the floor, while Mom grabs a few candles as well and sets them around the room. While Mom and Mrs. Maguire move about arranging the candles, Grandma stands in roughly the middle of the kitchen and holds her arms out, first east-west and then north-south as if gauging distance.

"This should be pretty close to the center of the room," she says, almost to herself. "Charlotte, did you bring the potion?"

"Yes." Mrs. Maguire places another candle and then walks to her backpack over near Ellie, retrieving a plastic vial with a muddy liquid from inside. She hands the vial to Grandma and says, "This is what I've been using on Dani the last few days, so I'm not sure how effective it is."

"Probably ginko and sage," Mom says to me.

"Sure," I reply as if her words mean anything to me.

"Well, we're on our land now," Grandma tells Mrs. Maguire. "And there are four witches here instead of one. The sheer force of our power might be enough to overcome any inadequacies in the potion."

I wonder for a second who the fourth witch is and then I remember—it's me. I'm so not used to this yet.

"Dani, lie down here," Grandma says, sweeping her hands out in the middle of the room. Dani does as she's told, lying down on the dirty vinyl floor. "Rachel, kneel at her feet and grab her by the ankles. You're the newest witch, and you're still not well, so your power will be the least effective—we'll put you at the foot of her body. Charlotte and Kathleen, sit next to her and hold her hands."

I kneel at Dani's feet and clasp my hands around her ankles while Mom and Mrs. Maguire sit on either side of her, each holding a hand. Dani inhales and exhales deeply, while Ellie remains at her post in the corner, her pencil scratching against her notebook as she records what's happening.

Finally, Grandma lowers herself to the floor behind Dani's head. "Everyone, clear your minds and concentrate—that includes you, Dani," Grandma commands. She opens the vial and holds her thumb over the top as she turns the vial upside down. Then she places the vial on the floor and drags her thumb, wet with liquid, across Dani's forehead. Taking the vial up again, she pours liquid into both palms, rubs her hands together, and begins massaging Dani's temples with closed eyes. If I didn't know better, I'd believe Grandma was giving Dani some kind of awesome spa treatment.

"What is lost shall now be found/Days and nights come back around," Grandma begins. "Once again into your mind/Memories you are sure to find."

The candles flicker and the heavy, humid breeze I felt when Mom and Mrs. Maguire performed the spell to bring me back from Dani's body blows through the room. Mom and Mrs. Maguire close their eyes and chant "What is lost shall now be found," and Grandma joins them. Mom opens an eye to peek at me and, taking the hint, I close my eyes and chant along with them.

What is lost shall now be found...What is lost shall now be found...

We go on like this for about a minute until the breeze stops, and I open my eyes to find the candle flames have died down to a low flicker.

"Anything?" Grandma asks Dani.

Dani opens her eyes and pauses for a beat as if searching her mind. "No," she says at last.

"Damn," Mrs. Maguire says.

"I thought for sure we'd do it," Grandma says, checking her watch. "There's no time to continue trying spells right now. I'll keep searching my mother's spell book to find something else."

Dejected, we pack everything up and head outside into the gray late afternoon. Once again, I bring up the rear with Mom helping me along, but we've barely turned to walk back up the street toward the woods when Merlin, who's trotting along between Dani and Mrs. Maguire, stops and sniffs the air.

"What is it, boy?" Dani says to him.

Merlin turns back in the direction of the houses, barking furiously, and when I crane my neck to look over my shoulder, I see Janey drop to the street in front of her old house.

Dani and Ellie drag Janey into her old living room and rest her on the stained, musty carpet. They move out of the way as my mom kneels next to her, grabbing her upper arms to shake her and, when that fails to revive her, tapping her cheek lightly with her palm. Slowly, she comes to, her eyes flitting around as she takes in the group of women hovering over her.

"Can you sit up?" Mom asks.

"Yeah...yeah, I think so," Janey says. She raises to sitting position, her body wobbling a bit at the torso, and Ellie slides behind her so Janey can sit back with her upper body in Ellie's lap. "Where's my messenger bag?"

I pat the bag I'd slung over my shoulder when Ellie and Dani picked Janey up off the street. "I've got it right here."

"Do you know where you are?" Mom asks.

Janey looks around. "My old house, right? In Rocky Ridge?"

"And do you know who we are?"

Janey brushes some of her blue-tinged bangs from her face and surveys the group. "Ellie and Rachel. And you're Mrs. Lord, and..." A pause. "And Dani Maguire?"

"Janey, sweetie," Grandma starts, kneeling next to Janey and taking her hand. "I'm Rachel's grandmother."

Janey licks her dry lips. "Okay...yeah...I remember you."

"Do you recall how you got here? We found you passed out in the street."

She nods. "I woke up here in my old house, and I thought I heard people outside, so I went to look and saw all of you. That's when I passed out."

"But how did you get here to begin with?" I ask. "People were looking for you all over this area. Some of us were here the other day. You woke up here just now?"

"Yeah," she says as if it's the most natural thing in the world. "I was somewhere else and then...I wasn't. It's...kind of...hard to explain."

"Janey, we understand—trust me," Grandma says. "It's okay, sweetie. You're in good company."

"And as much as we all want to hear the details of how you got back, we also need to get you out of here," Mom says to Janey. "Rachel and her grandma and I need to be home before Mr. Lord gets there, and we need to figure out how to get you back to your dad without raising suspicions. Can you walk?"

"Yeah, I should be able to."

Ellie helps Janey to her feet and we head out of the house, the six of us surrounding her both to make sure she stays upright and so we can pepper her with questions.

"So, where were you?" Ellie starts.

"I'm...I'm not sure."

"That sounds familiar," Dani says, and when Janey gives her a quizzical look, she adds "I woke up one day last week as you."

"How—"

"For the same reason I spent six days as Dani," I tell her. "We're guessing it's because you botched a spell."

Mom reaches out and rubs Janey's back as she says, "I knew I'd messed up that spell, but I didn't think I'd messed it up that bad."

Grandma says to Janey "It's fine, dear. I imagine you've been through quite a lot in the last week. Maybe you should start from the beginning and tell us everything you can remember."

We start walking again and Janey says, "So, on my birthday, my dad gave me this box of things that belonged to my mom he'd been saving since she died. He said he'd never even been through it. He just stuck it out in our storage shed and decided to give it to me when I was an adult because he thought enough time would have passed and I could deal with it. After you guys left—" she glances at Ellie and me—"I went through the box, and one of the things I found was this book."

"A Clairvoix Book of Spells," Mom says, training her annoyed face on Mrs. Maguire. "Once again, I'd like to thank you and Stella for keeping up your end of our pact."

Janey gives me a confused look and I say, "Long story."

"Sure." She shakes her head. "So, anyway, I just thought the book was this cute book of poems or something. And then, last Tuesday night, I was going through the book and I read one of the poems aloud just to hear how it sounded, and I ended up on the front porch. Naturally, I was a little freaked out, both because I was out on the front porch and because I didn't want Dad to come out and wonder how I got out there. So, I thought about my room and said the poem again, and boom—I was back in my room."

Janey can teleport. I wonder if we all can do that, and I glance at Grandma to gauge her reaction to what Janey's just said, but her expression remains even.

"I knew witches used magic spells, and so I wondered if my cute book of poems wasn't something else. I looked up witches and magic spells online and thought maybe my mom had stumbled across a spell book somewhere and thought it was cool, so she bought it or whatever. I had no idea Mom and I were actual witches."

We're at the fence now, and one by one, we crawl through the opening to the other side. When Janey stands up, she wobbles a little and Ellie steadies her.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," Janey says, blinking. "Just kind of...weak and lightheaded, I guess."

I glance at Grandma again, and this time, she's regarding Janey with an expression that appears a little more concerned, the few wrinkles in her face more prominent than they usually are. We walk a bit further as a group before Grandma suddenly turns on Janey, grabbing her shoulders to stop her from moving.

"What—" Janey starts, but Grandma puts a hand to her forehead and starts muttering, moving her hand back and forth across Janey's skin as she says words I can't hear.

"Mom?" my mom says as the rest of us stand dumbfounded. After a few seconds, Janey slumps forward against Grandma.

"Can you two drag her the rest of the way?" she says to Ellie and Dani, who both respond in the affirmative and grab Janey under the arms. We start walking again, this time with Ellie and Dani bringing up the rear thanks to their heavy load.

"What was that all about?" Mom says.

"I spelled her. She'll wake up in about twenty or thirty minutes with no recollection of anything that's happened to her in the last week."

"What? Why?" I protest. "Dani's memory's already fried and we can't get it back. Janey's the only one who might be able to explain everything."

"I know. But I also know I can undo Janey's spell because I'm the one who spelled her," Grandma says. "We still have no idea who spelled Dani or how to undo it. And by spelling Janey, she won't be lying when she tells the police she has no memory of how she went missing or what happened afterwards. Right now, I don't trust her not to say things to the police she shouldn't. She said when she was looking through Stella's spell book, she had no idea she and Stella were witches. The only way she would have learned that during the last week is if someone told her she and Stella were both witches." Grandma shakes her head. "I have a bad feeling about this. Wherever Janey was, someone told her about the Clairvoix and that she was one, and we can only hope that someone is friendly."

"So, what's the plan?" Mrs. Maguire asks. "You mentioned the police?"

Grandma nods. "You and Dani are going to take her to the police station in your car and say you were out running errands when you found her wandering on the side of Highway 15. Again, she'll be awake but she'll have no memory of being found or of anything else that's happened over the last week until I bring her out. Kathleen, Rachel, and I will go home, and I'll keep looking for ways to unspell Dani. And, now, I may have some additional help." Grandma looks at me. "Is Janey's spell book in her bag?"

I lift the flap on her messenger bag and move my hand around until it comes to rest on an embossed book cover. "Yeah," I say, pulling it out, and Grandma signals with her hand for me to give it to her.

"Janey is the last direct descendant of the original Clairvoix line," Grandma says, clutching the book to her chest. "She is THE Clarivoix witch, likely more powerful than any of us when she gets things right. This spell book may contain some tricks mine do not."

"Like how to teleport?" I ask. Behind me, I can hear Ellie and Dani breathing heavily as they drag Janey along.

"Like how to teleport. Janey would be strong enough to do that, but only over relatively short distances. If my theory is correct, she teleported herself to her old house from wherever she was before, and the strain of doing so is why she's so weak now."

"Another lesson about magic," Mom says to me. "Know your limits."

Finally, we've reached the cars. Mom and Mrs. Maguire help Dani and Ellie load Janey into the backseat of the Range Rover, and I place Janey's bag in the floorboard. The Maguires speed off toward town, and Mom checks her phone to find Dad had texted a few minutes earlier with a question about the shopping list—Dad always has to double-check with Mom about something when he grocery shops.

"We should just beat Trevor home," Mom says, texting him back as she walks to the driver's side of the minivan.

"You need to tell him, Kathleen," Grandma says after we're all inside and settled. "Charlotte needs to come clean, too, but I have no say in her life."

"And you have no say in mine, either," Mom says, starting the engine. "Not about this. I can't go to Trevor after twenty years of marriage and tell him I neglected to mention I'm a witch. No—I'll help you unspell Dani and Janey if you need me and I'll get Rachel though her apprenticeship. Then, I'm out."

"And what about Jessica?" I ask. "You said you were going to tell Jessica."

Mom lets out a sigh that nearly shakes the van. "And I'll get Jessica to eighteen and then I'm out. Four more years."

We beat Dad home, and I'm so exhausted from our little field trip and from rushing around I nearly fall asleep as soon as Ellie and I get up to my room and I'm back in bed.

"Well, today wasn't weird at all," I say, snuggling under the covers and fighting to keep my eyes open.

"Nope. Everything's perfectly normal," she says. "And speaking of normal, I rescheduled a guitar lesson for tonight, so I need to get home." She leans in and gives me a hug. "Keep me posted on everything, okay?"

"Yeah.

Ellie leaves and I drift off. I'm faintly aware of my dad coming into my room and giving me a kiss on the forehead, but not aware enough to wake up completely. When my phone starts buzzing on the comforter next to me, I'm not sure how long I've been out.

I don't recognize the number, so I let the call go to voice mail and check the message. It's Luke, asking me to call him back.

"Hey, I was asleep," I say when he answers. "What's up?"

"You're not going to believe this, but Dani and her mom found Janey Douchette wandering around on the side of Highway 15 about two hours ago."

"Oh." I swallow hard. "No way. Seriously?"

I hate myself.

"They took her to the police station and stayed with her until her dad got there. She can't remember anything. Dani said when she and her mom left, they were talking about taking her to the hospital to make sure she isn't hurt."

"I...I should call Ellie." Still hating myself. "She'll want to hear about this."

"Yeah, of course." Silence, but he doesn't hang up. "Are you okay?

"Yeah. Just tired. And overwhelmed."

"I guess this has been a crazy week, huh?"

"Understatement of the century, Luke."

He laughs a little. "Well, at least Janey's back. I'll let you go so you can call Ellie."

"Thanks."

"I'll text you later to check in on you," he says, and my heart flutters a little while my head tells me what a horrible person I am. "'Bye, Rachel."

"'Bye." I hang up and fall back against my pillows.

At least Janey's back.

If only Luke had any idea how crazy Janey's return truly is...

Chapter 24

Since homework will probably keep me busy from now until graduation, I don't have much trouble distracting myself from what Grandma did to Janey in the interest of keeping Clairvoix secrets safe.

But there isn't enough homework in the world to make me feel good about it.

I exchange texts with Janey throughout the day once she's released from the hospital after a night in observation, and she gives no indication she remembers anything before waking up in the back of the Maguires' Range Rover. She does beg me to come over, and I exchange a few texts with Ellie to see if she'd be interested in going over to the Douchettes' after school. She texts back she'll be over once her mom gets home so she can borrow the car.

I'd forgotten I was usually Ellie and Janey's ride everywhere and my car is permanently out of commission.

Around the time school would normally be getting out for the day, Mom knocks on my bedroom door for the first time since she brought up lunch. On this visit, she's carrying a plate with some brown bread-looking stuff. "From Lucy Langlois," Mom says, holding the plate out to me. "She stopped by earlier to check on how you were doing, but you were asleep."

Homework can only do so much to hold off my still-frequent catnaps.

"Sorry I missed her," I say. "I'll stop by the library after school Monday and thank her—for everything." I hold the bread, which my mom has coated with a layer of peanut butter, close to my nose and give it a sniff. "What is this?"

"Banana flaxseed," Mom says, and I make a face. "It's actually not bad with peanut butter."

I take Mom's word for it and nibble at the corner of one piece. It's edible, but not something I'd want to eat every day.

"I came up to make sure you weren't studying too hard," Mom says. "You've been at it all day in between naps. I don't want you to overexert yourself."

"I'm fine—the naps help. Just making sure I get everything done. I'd hate not to graduate on time. Summer school is not an option." I take another bite of bread and swallow a few times because of the peanut butter before I can speak. "I was thinking about taking a break for a while and going over to Janey's once Ellie can get her mom's car, though."

Mom gives me a relaxed version of her "annoyed face," which is probably best described as "concerned face." "Honey, maybe you shouldn't," she says. "You're supposed to be resting so you can go back to school on Monday."

I cross my arms over my stomach. "Was I resting yesterday when I went out to Rocky Ridge to help unspell Dani?"

Now, I get the "annoyed face."

"Fine," she says, leaning forward to touch my cheek. "You can go for a little while. Janey just got home, too, so I'm sure Tommy won't want you wearing her out. And you may not want to stay too long anyway under the circumstances."

"You mean Grandma's spell?"

"I would think it would be a little awkward for you and Ellie," Mom says. "Having to pretend you two don't know what happened to her."

"Well, we kind of don't, other than she ended up with someone who told her she and her mom were witches," I point out. "But pretending we don't know she's under a spell will kind of suck."

Mom nods.

"How do you do it?" I ask, and then wish I could take my question back because I don't want to insult my Mom with my next words.

"Do what?"

"Pretend. Move through life keeping secrets from everybody. I was alive for almost eighteen years and had no idea about everything you were hiding."

Mom shifts her eyes to the floor. "You just do it, I guess. I decided when I was dating your dad I didn't want magic—of the supernatural kind, anyway—touching my life anymore. So, I put that part of me in a little box and put it away, so to speak. And I got married and got a job and had you and Jessica. Most of the time, I would forget I was a witch unless I was around Mom because she would always remind me. But I had plenty of magic in my life with you and Jessica and your dad—I didn't need more." She pauses. "Although I'm sorry now I didn't tell you about your heritage. I'm your mom, so I try to make the decisions I believe are best for you. In this case, though, I should have thought ahead. I should have realized long ago I was depriving you of something you might want in the future, and I'm sorry."

"It's okay," I tell her, taking her hand as she turns her eyes back to me. "You did what you thought you had to do, I guess."

I don't sound convincing, even to myself, so I can only imagine how I sound to Mom.

"And I promise we'll tell Jessica," she says. "I just want to get us through this whole thing with Dani and Janey before we get her involved in any apprenticeship. But after we get everything cleared up, we'll tell her together, okay?"

"Okay."

Mom stands up and heads for the door, but before she leaves, she turns back around. "Rachel?"

"Yeah?"

"You think it's easy for me to pretend I'm not what I am. It's not. But keep in mind, even if you embrace being a witch, you'll do your fair share of pretending, too. Choose wisely who you share your identity with. I've said it before, but I'll say it again—not everyone's sympathetic."

I nod as she leaves my room, and my mind drifts to Luke. Of all the people who are in the dark about what I am, he's the one I would most want to share my secret with, other than my sister. He came so far with me through the whole "being stranded in Dani's body" thing, it's unfair he doesn't know the whole story. But I can't tell him the whole story without revealing to him Dani's a witch, too, and I have no idea if she wants to share that information with him.

I want to tell Luke my secrets, but they're not completely mine to tell, and he's not mine for me to tell them to—he's Dani's.

I need to keep reminding myself of that.

Ellie picks me up after her mom gets home from work and leaves her the car, and we head straight for Janey's. When we arrive, Mr. Douchette welcomes us inside the trailer, which smells of a heavenly tomato sauce.

"I'm making my famous spaghetti with homemade sauce in honor of Janey's return," he says, taking our coats and hanging them in a tiny closet just off the kitchen. "You're both welcome to stay for dinner."

Ellie looks at me and I say "Thanks, Mr. Douchette, but I can tell you without asking my mom won't go for it. I practically had to beg her to be let out of the house to come visit Janey."

"Understandable," he says, placing a hand on my shoulder. "You've had quite the week as well."

You have no idea, I think, and Ellie raises her eyebrows at me.

"Well, Janey's in her room taking it easy, so go on in. We'll do a rain check on dinner sometime in the near future, okay?"

"Sure thing," Ellie says, and the two of us turn and walk through the living room to Janey's bedroom at the front of the trailer. I can't help but wonder if Grandma was right about how Mr. Douchette would react to Janey's return—he doesn't appear too concerned with the details of how and why she disappeared, but he's just happy she's home and seemingly unharmed.

Ellie knocks on Janey's door and she calls "Come in." When we enter, she's sitting on her bed, digging into a large box next to her.

"Hey, guys," she says as I gather her into a hug and sit down on the bed. Ellie hugs her as well and pulls Janey's desk chair out from underneath her desk, turning it around so she can sit facing us.

"We're glad you're back," I say. "We were so worried."

"You look great for someone who's been missing for a week," Ellie chimes in, and Janey laughs.

"Thanks. Maybe I ended up at a spa or something. Who knows?"

Ellie and I exchange looks. "So, you really don't remember what happened?" I ask. "That's what we heard."

She moves her head back and forth. "Nope. The last thing I remember is getting out of bed last Wednesday morning, which I guess is the day I went missing. Next thing I know, I'm waking up in the backseat of Dani Maguire's mom's car, which was next-level bizarre." Her body twitches as if she's shivering in disgust. "Everything in between is a big blank."

"Weird," Ellie says, shifting her eyes to me and back to Janey so quickly, Janey wouldn't notice unless she knew something was wrong.

"Totally, right?" Janey says. "They brought in this shrink when I was at the hospital last night, and he said he thinks I've got some kind of hysterical amnesia—not 'hysterical' like 'ha, ha, funny' but like 'traumatic.' He said something could have happened I'm basically choosing to forget so I can protect myself, but I might start to remember what happened to me later. So, I've got that to look forward to maybe."

I so want to tell her what her memory loss is really all about, and I end up digging the fingernails of my right hand into the palm of my left, using the pain as a reminder not to let the secret slip.

"Although I guess you would understand what it's like to lose a week of your life," she says to me.

"What?" I stop digging my fingers for a moment, confused.

"You know. The accident? The coma?"

"Right. Yeah. It's been weird the last few days since I woke up," I say. From the corner of my eye, watch as Ellie's jaw sets as if she's trying to keep her emotions in check.

"Yeah. How weird is it that on the day I go missing, you get into a serious car accident?" Janey says.

"It's some coincidence," Ellie says, and I glare at her.

"Are you getting caught up on homework?" Janey asks me.

"Just started today. I'm so behind."

Janey shudders. "I'm going to go around to teachers on Monday and find out what I missed. Dad wants me to cut back on shifts at Smiley Joe's so I can get caught up, but we need the money. I'm so happy they didn't fire me, I'll work whenever they want." She exhales. "But getting caught up with schoolwork isn't optional. There's no way I'm not getting my diploma until after summer school. I want to graduate with you guys."

I'm wondering if she'll still want to graduate with us once she finds out all we're keeping from her, but I brush the thought aside.

"So, what's been happening around school since we've been gone?" Janey asks Ellie. "Any good gossip?"

"Gossip," in Janey's world, usually means stories about the Perfects, stories we use to remind ourselves how awful they are as we snicker and run them down behind their backs. Now, given our new relationship to Dani that Janey isn't yet aware of, the topic of the Perfects seems more dangerous than fun.

"Not really," Ellie says. "Everything's been pretty much status quo."

"So, the Perfects are still perfect?" Janey asks, tossing her hair in an uncanny imitation of Dani.

Ellie lets out a chuckle only I realize, under the circumstances, is a little forced. "Yup. They're still perfectly bitchy," she says.

Janey smirks and I, desperate to stop talking about the Perfects or my accident or Janey's supposed memory loss, place my hand on the side of the box sitting between Janey and me on her bed. "What's with the box?" I ask. "Packing up some old stuff?"

"More like getting some out," she says, reaching inside and pulling out a sketch pad so worn and old the pages are curling at the bottom edges. "After you guys went home on my birthday, Dad gave me this box full of some of my mom's old things she packed up a long time ago. I guess he'd never even looked through it before, but he just shoved it in the storage shed after Mom died."

I glance over at Ellie, who's rubbing her lips together as we listen to Janey relate a story she has no idea she's already told us.

"He thought maybe now that I'm eighteen, I'm old enough to handle whatever's in here since I'm an adult and so much time's passed since she died or whatever...who knows what he was thinking? But, anyway, now it's mine." She hands the sketch book to Ellie. "Here's some of her old artwork."

Ellie thumbs through a few sketches. "She was good. It's obvious where you got your talent."

"Thanks." Janey blushes a little. "I never even knew she liked to draw all that much, so it's kind of cool to have it now." She reaches into the box and pulls out a couple of old necklaces, the silver faded and darkened with time. "Most of the stuff in here is total junk, so there's probably a reason my mom packed it away in a box and didn't do anything with it. But, I was sitting around in here trying to draw this afternoon and I couldn't get into it, and I started looking through the box again because I was bored or whatever." She shakes her head. "And there's something missing."

"Oh, yeah?" I say, my eyes flitting to Ellie and then back to Janey.

"Yeah. There was this pretty book with these crappy little poems written in, like, calligraphy or something. I wondered if maybe my mom bought a journal and tried her hand at writing. I asked my dad if he'd seen it, and he had no idea what I was talking about. But it was here the last time I looked in the box, which was right before I went missing, I think."

"Huh," Ellie mumbles, and I hold my breath. Apparently, Grandma's spell on Janey didn't go back far enough.

"I need to tell you guys a secret about this book, though," she starts, lowering her voice as if her dad could hear us through the closed door and all the way into the kitchen. "You can't tell anyone—especially my dad."

"Of course," I say, and Ellie says, "Cross our hearts," before making an "X" motion over her chest with her index finger.

"Well, one night after my birthday I was sitting in here looking through the poems, and I read one aloud to myself just to hear how it sounded. And then suddenly, I'm standing on the front porch."

"Wow. What? That's crazy," I say, trying to muster up as much shock as possible for information I've already heard once before.

"Insane," Ellie adds.

"I know, right?" Janey waves her hands in the air in front of her, obviously excited and freaked out by the memory. "What you think it means?"

I shrug while Ellie eeks out a feeble "No clue."

"I mean, is the book enchanted? Or am I enchanted or something? And, now, I can't find it." She moves her hands in the air once again. "So, did I, like, make it disappear or something? Or maybe I took it with me wherever I was that I can't remember and I lost it."

"Yeah. That's..." I search for the right word under the circumstances. "...strange."

"Totally. I don't even believe in witches and spells and enchantment and that kind of stuff, but I didn't believe in teleporting, either, and I think I did it." She pauses to dig through the box once again before continuing. "But now, I can't find the book and I'm starting to second guess myself. Like, maybe I didn't teleport at all and I was just sleepwalking or something. I mean, I already can't remember anything from the past week, so maybe I'm fooling myself about things that happened a few days before I went missing, too."

"I don't know, Janey," Ellie says. "I wish I knew what to tell you, but—"

Janey waves her off. "It's okay. I don't even care if you guys believe me or not. I just needed to tell someone, you know? I totally get how crazy this all sounds."

"We believe you," I say, wishing I could tell her just how much we believe her. I close my eyes, and Janey bumps my arm with hers.

"Hey—you okay?"

"Yeah. Tired, I guess. Still recovering." I open my eyes, realizing my exhaustion—which I'm not faking—gives Ellie and me an out from faking everything else. "I hate to do this, but we should probably go. My mom didn't want me over here for too long, and you know how overprotective she is."

Janey grins. "Yeah. Dad's the same way. He probably wanted you guys to stay for dinner just because he's been alone for the last week and he's not used to it."

I stand up and give Janey a goodbye hug. "Call or text if you want to talk, okay?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

Ellie makes the same offer and we leave Janey alone, saying goodbye to Mr. Douchette after he gets our coats and ushers us out of the trailer.

"So, how bad do you feel about everything right now?" Ellie asks as she zips up her coat on the front porch.

"Probably at least as bad as you feel if not more," I say.

"Good," she says, fishing in her pocket for her keys. "Because I feel like shit. Glad I have company."

We tromp down the sidewalk through a dusting of snow to Ellie's mom's car. "Hopefully, once Grandma's able to unspell her, she'll understand and won't be mad at us for lying to her," I say.

"I hope you're right, but I don't know. This is a big deal. She remembers the spell book and that she teleported herself. How is she going to react when she finds out she confided in us and we already knew everything?" Ellie unlocks the car and we get in. "The longer this goes on before your grandmother can unspell her, the worse it's going to be," Ellie continues. "I can't imagine how mad she'll be at us if it takes a while to unspell Dani and figure out why Janey disappeared."

I buckle myself in and sigh. "Then we'd better hope Grandma can unspell Dani sooner rather than later."

Chapter 25

By the time Ellie drops me off, I'm so tired I might have to crawl upstairs to my room. Mom hears me kicking off my boots and hanging up my coat by the front door, and she rushes down the hall toward me.

"It's you," she whispers.

"You were expecting someone else? And why are we whispering?"

She points down the hall. "Your dad's home. He and Jessica are in the kitchen. We can't talk here."

I'm wondering what there is to talk about as Mom jerks her head toward the living room. Without a word, I follow her through the living room to the den, which Grandma uses as a guest room when she visits. When we slip through the double doors, we find her sitting on the convertible sofa surrounded by Clairvoix spell books.

"Did you tell her?" Grandma asks Mom.

"No. We were in the hallway. I didn't want Trevor and Jessica to hear."

"Tell me what?" I ask, looking back and forth between the two of them.

"There may be a spell that can recover Dani's memory," Grandma says, patting the cover of the book closest to her. "I've been looking through Janey's spell book, and I believe she has her grandmother's spell book and not her mother's. Some of the spells are old and fell out of use over time, while others are universal spells I haven't seen in years."

"Spells have a shelf life?" I ask, wondering if I'm ever going to learn everything I need to learn to become a successful witch, whatever that means.

"In a manner of speaking, yes. We draw our power from the earth, and magic, like the earth, is constantly evolving. Sometimes we devise new, better magic to replace the old, although no one in our coven, at least, has been devising new magic for a long time."

Grandma shoots my mom a pointed look, and Mom trains her annoyed face on Grandma in response. In order to sidestep a conflict, I ask another question. "And you said 'universal spells.' What does that mean?"

"Maybe I mentioned before that covens don't share spells?" Grandma asks, and I nod. "Well, some spells contain universal components—portions of incantations, actions, potions—that cut across covens. Usually, the universal components aren't written down as such, and the fact the elements are universal has been handed down as lore through the ages."

I'm not sure I'm following, but I don't interrupt Grandma's explanation.

"When I was looking through the spell book we took from Janey, I found an old memory spell that reminded me of one I remember from when I was a little girl. I'm fairly certain some of the lines in the spell are universal, meaning they cut across coven lines." She picks up Janey's spell book and leafs through it. "I might be able to piece together a spell from these old lines that would undo the spell on Dani, regardless of who cast it."

"This is where we hope your grandmother's memory is as good as it used to be," my mom says to me, and I say, "Low blow, Mom."

"Yes, Kathleen—low blow," Grandma adds. "I dare say my memory, at least where magic is concerned, is better than yours."

"Just teasing you," Mom says with a smile. "So, what's the plan?"

Grandma rubs her lips together. "Tomorrow's Saturday, which puts a bit of a kink in things. We need a cover story to get the three of us out of the house so we can go to Rocky Ridge with Charlotte and Dani."

"Shopping?" Mom suggests, putting an arm around me. "We can say we're taking Rachel shopping as part of her eighteenth birthday celebration. Jessica won't be interested in going, and Trevor definitely won't be interested."

My sister has yet to catch the shopping bug—she's far too interested in books and trivia to care about fashion, and Mom usually has to drag her to the mall every August to shop for school clothes. I'm not much of a fashionista, either, but I would never turn down a chance to get some new threads, especially if someone else is paying.

"You know, we're actually going to have to go to the mall at some point tomorrow, then. Dad'll never buy it if the three of us come home empty-handed," I point out.

"If we pull off this spell and bring Dani's memory back, I'll buy the two of you whatever you want," Grandma says.

"We'll hold you to that," Mom says. "I'll text Charlotte after dinner to make sure she and Dani can get away."

"And I'll text Ellie to find out if she can come with us and take notes on the event," I add.

"Sounds like a plan," Grandma says, and I can't help my guilt over leaving Janey, who's the most powerful witch among us according to Grandma, out of the loop.

Then again, Janey doesn't realize there's a loop to be left out of at this point.

We hear a knock and, as she so often does, Jessica opens the door and sticks her head into the room without being invited.

"Mom, the chili's boiling. Do you want me to turn the stove down or—"

"Yes. Set it to 'low' and stir it, please. We'll be out in a minute."

"Okay." Jessica shuts the door, and I inhale sharply, realizing she would have seen Grandma surrounded by Clairvoix spell books. And I'm instantly confused as to why my normally curious sister didn't ask about the ornate books all over the couch.

But when I turn towards Grandma, the books aren't there.

"How did you—" I start, and Grandma snaps her fingers. The books appear again, scattered across the couch.

"Some spells are easier than others," she says.

"I'll have to remember that."

After lunch the next day, Dad and Jessica wave us off to the "mall," and Mom, Grandma, and I pick up Ellie and meet up with Dani, Charlotte, and Merlin once again just past the Rocky Ridge Lake bridge. We troop our way into the woods—there's been another cold snap, so at least the ground's frozen this time—slip through the break in the fence, and make our way to the old Maguire house.

As if we're all more practiced at this now, we arrange the kitchen for the spell in no time, and just a few minutes after we've arrived, we've all taken our places without being told. Merlin's outside the front door standing guard, and Ellie's in the corner of the kitchen taking notes. I'm gripping Dani's ankles as she lies in the middle of the room, Mom and Mrs. Maguire are kneeling on either side of Dani and holding her hands, and Grandma's sitting on the floor with Dani's head in her lap. Once again, Grandma takes the vial of liquid, rubs some in her hands, and passes her hands over Dani's forehead before massaging her temples. But this time, Grandma utters words in a language I don't understand and so I can't join the incantation. I notice Mom and Mrs. Maguire aren't chanting, either.

I glance over at Mom who whispers, "Concentrate," and so I ignore the fact I can't join in the incantation, clearing my mind and closing my eyes as I hold onto Dani's ankles. Grandma chants the full incantation two more times before Dani's legs jump around despite my grip, and my eyes fly open to the sight of her entire body shaking. Around us, the candle flames rise to the point I'm afraid the house might catch fire, and across the room, I spy Ellie staring at us with a concerned look, even as she keeps scribbling notes.

A humid breeze blows through the house and tamps down the candle flames to a normal flicker as Dani's body stops moving. I panic for a second until I see the steady rise and fall of her chest. Ellie comes over and crouches on the floor next to me, and even she's showing some concern on her face for Dani's well-being.

Grandma pats Dani's cheek with the palm of her hand. "Dani? Dani, sweetie, are you with us?"

Mrs. Maguire bites her lip and then exhales when Dani opens her eyes.

"Can you sit up?" Grandma asks.

"Yeah...just..." Dani squirms, lifts her head from Grandma's lap, and pulls herself upright. She's sweating and breathing heavily, and her normally perfect hair is stuck to her cheeks and forehead. "Woah," she says, taking a deep breath and lying back in Grandma's lap.

"Is she okay?" Mrs. Maguire asks in a panicked voice.

"She should be fine," Grandma says before looking down at Dani. "How are you feeling, sweetie?"

"I'm good." Dani's still breathing heavily. "Just exhausted for some reason."

"This spell likely took a lot out of you. It took a lot out of me," Grandma says. "Give it a few minutes and you'll feel better."

Dani nods, and Mrs. Maguire jumps in and asks the question we all want answered: "Do you remember anything?"

"The woods...and a basement..." Dani squeezes her eyelids shut. "I'm in a basement or a cellar or something...and there are people, but I don't know who they are..."

"Do you remember anything they said?" Grandma asks.

"No," Dani says as her eyes flutter open. "Nothing...I'm sorry."

Mrs. Maguire reaches out to touch Dani's cheek. "It's okay, sweetie," she says.

"Again, it's a powerful spell," Grandma explains almost more to the rest of us than to Dani. "More memories may come back to her as she recovers her strength. Can you stand?"

"I can try." Dani pushes herself up again, and Grandma signals to Ellie and me to help. Mrs. Maguire and my mom move out of the way and Ellie and I fly to her sides to grab her arms as she gets to her feet. "Thanks, guys," she says, brushing some dirt off her jeans. "I think I'm okay."

Ellie and I step back a little as Dani takes a few deep breaths and holds her hands out to her sides, just a few inches from her legs, as if she's steadying herself. "Yeah—I'm good," she says to no one in particular, but all the same, Ellie and I stay on either side of her as Mom, Mrs. Maguire, and Grandma grab the candles and pack them up in Mrs. Maguire's backpack.

We retrace our steps back to our cars in near silence, and before the Maguires and Merlin get into their Range Rover, Grandma says to Dani "You'll call us if you remember anything?"

Dani nods and Mrs. Maguire says "Of course," as she puts an arm around Dani. I'm happy for Dani that she and her mom appear to have grown closer over the last few days, but I also feel sorry for her that it took Mrs. Maguire almost losing her to make a difference.

The Maguires get in their car and drive away, and Mom says, "Who's still up for the mall?"

Ellie and I raise our hands and Grandma laughs, thrusting a hand in the air as well. "I'll even spring for ice cream at the food court if everyone's up for it," she says.

"I'm not turning down free ice cream," Ellie says.

"Me, neither," I say.

We pile into Mom's minivan and zip along the back roads toward the highway. "Grandma, I'm just curious," I begin. "What language were you speaking in the spell you used on Dani?"

"French, sweetie. It's the ancestral language of all the covens in this area. A spell with universal elements will have a better chance of working if the incantation is in French." She pauses. "I don't recall—what language are you taking at school?"

"Spanish," I say sadly, because now that seems like the wrong choice.

"Well, you should be able to pick up French as an elective at the university easily enough. I learned from my mother, but it was so long ago I'm lucky I remembered as much as I did to get through the spell."

"I took a few French classes when I was at Riverton," Mom says. "But it's been so long, I probably wouldn't be able to put a sentence together anymore."

I make a mental note to check into French classes when Ellie and I go for orientation at Riverton this summer, and then I shift the conversation topic slightly.

"So, how long do you think it will take for Dani to get her memory back?"

Grandma doesn't answer right away. "Can't say," she tells me finally. "It's a spell I haven't done before, so I can't predict the outcome. It's a good sign, though, that she was remembering more than she had previously."

"But there's still a chance Dani's memory might not come back, right?" Ellie asks. "I mean, there's a chance the little bit she remembered today is all we're going to get?"

"Elle, come on," I say, wishing she weren't so negative sometimes, but when I look to the front seat, Grandma's pursing her lips.

"So, we may never find out what happened to Dani," I say rather than ask because I may already have my answer without hearing it.

"Possibly," Grandma says. "If nothing comes back to Dani over the next few days, our only choice will be to unspell Janey and work the mystery from her angle, but I worry we'll be missing important parts of the story if we don't find out what happened to Dani as well. If Janey was being held by another coven, she wasn't with them for as long as Dani was with them in her body. Janey might not have all the information we may need to find out if another coven is upset with us. And bringing Janey out will be a delicate operation. Once she learns she's the most powerful Clairvoix witch and we kept the information from her, she likely won't be too happy."

I glance over at Ellie and recall our visit with Janey yesterday. "There's something you should know about Janey," I say.

Mom looks at me in the rearview mirror. "Oh?"

"She has no memory of anything that happened from the day she disappeared until now," I start. "But she remembers finding the spell book in her mother's things on her birthday, and she remembers teleporting herself."

"Because the spell doesn't go back far enough," Grandma says before covering her mouth. When she drops her hand, she asks "That's what I get for improvising. But, if she remembers teleporting, what does she believe is going on?"

"She's confused," Ellie says. "I got the sense she didn't know what to think, but she just wanted to tell someone. And she thinks maybe she lost the spell book sometime during the week she can't remember."

"And she thinks the spell book is just a book of goofy poems," I add. "The teleporting thing made her wonder if the book isn't enchanted or something, but she doesn't really understand anything for sure."

Grandma sighs. "We'll have a lot of work to do with that girl once she's fully aware of what she is," she says to Mom.

"And in the meantime?" Mom asks.

"And in the meantime, we hold out hope," Grandma says to her before angling her head toward Ellie and me. "We hope Dani regains enough of her memory to tell us why Janey went missing for a week. Otherwise, we may never know about what possible danger we're in from another coven."

I slink down into my seat. "I vote we hit the ice cream place in the food court first once we get to the mall. I think we all kind of need it."

"Good idea," Mom says.

Chapter 26

By Monday morning, everything's drifting back to its usual boring state in Ridgeview, Missouri. Mom returns to work for the first time since my accident and I head to school as myself after spending days trapped in Dani Maguire's body.

But things aren't quite normal yet. Since my car's totaled, I have to take the bus to school for the first time since I got my license, and Ellie joins me in solidarity. We sit up front near the driver, which is as far away as we can get from the freshmen and sophomores, most of whom would prefer to sit closer to the back and goof off.

"Please tell me you plan on conjuring up a car sometime soon." Ellie says to me over a group of freshmen guys behind us singing some TV commercial jingle at full volume and cracking themselves up, even though no one else is laughing. "The maturity level on this bus might kill me if we have to do this until graduation."

"I probably don't have the ability to conjure up a car. And I'm lucky I'm not grounded for life for wrecking the car I had."

"I'm guessing the coma bought you some good will on the whole 'grounded' thing," Ellie notes, and I give her a little smile.

"Hadn't really thought of it that way. Regardless, I doubt I'll be getting a car anytime soon."

Thankfully, we're at school in under ten minutes and Ellie and I are the first ones off the bus and inside the building. As we walk to our lockers, several people stop me to welcome me back or ask how I'm doing, and I restrain myself from pointing out I was here all last week.

"Look who's Miss Popular," Ellie teases as I open my locker, marveling to myself how everything inside appears the same as I left it nearly two weeks ago, although logically, it would.

"I should have been getting into car accidents this whole time. Maybe I'd have been voted Homecoming Queen."

"Not even funny, Rach."

I gather up my books and am about to shut my locker when a hand clasps my shoulder. Turning away from Ellie, I look up into the handsome face of Rick Delacourt.

Rick Delacourt—who I completely forgot to text and thank for the dozen white roses he sent me.

"Hey—I'm so glad you're back," he says with a dazzling smile. "Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah...now, I am, anyway. And thank you for the flowers, by the way—that was a really nice surprise. I was going to text you, but—"

"No big deal," he says, his hand sliding from my shoulder and down my arm, coming to rest near my wrist. "Ellie said you've been sleeping a lot the last few days, so I'm sure talking to me was pretty far down on your priority list after everything that's happened. We'll have plenty of time to talk now you're back."

Ellie smiles and raises her eyebrows at me before heading to her locker.

"Just ask if you need any help getting caught up in calc or history," he says, naming the two classes we're in together. "I can give you all my notes if you want."

"That would be great, Rick," I say, all too aware his hand is still touching the outer part of my wrist.

"Well, I should get to homeroom," he says, pointing down the hall. "We'll talk later, okay?"

"Sure," I say as he walks off. I join Ellie in front of her locker and she elbows me in the ribs.

"Somebody's getting asked to prom," she sings as head for Mrs. Markham's classroom.

"Shut up. I'll probably still have so much homework to catch up on by the time prom rolls around, I won't have the time to go anyway."

"Who knew nearly throwing up on a guy was the way to his heart?" Ellie says through a sigh, and I put my finger to my lips as she laughs.

I enter Mrs. Markham's room ahead of Ellie, and Mrs. Markham surprises me by rising from her desk and strolling over to me, gathering me into a hug.

"Rachel," she says, breaking the hug but still gripping my arms. "You were in my thoughts every day. It's so good to welcome you back to my classroom."

"Thanks, Mrs. Markham," I say, wondering if she's ever going to let me go. She gives me a teary smile, squeezes my upper arms, and finally releases me from her grip. I walk to the back of the room, fielding stares and "Welcome back," statements from some of my classmates, and take my usual seat next to Ellie.

"Did not expect that from Mrs. Markham," I say, keeping my voice low.

"Just another perfectly normal day at Ridgeview High." Ellie gives me a wry smile as the classroom door opens.

The Perfects glide in—Lexi and Alissa in front and Dani and Luke behind—and while I'm kind of relieved this part of my morning is just as normal and boring as it's always been, even their entrance is somehow more normal and more boring now having lived it from their side. And as they sit down, Dani gives Ellie and me a tiny smile while Luke nods at me so quickly, I'm almost not sure he did.

The loudspeaker crackles and the bell rings just as Janey flies into the classroom, out of breath and with her blue hair covering her face. As Principal Kennerly kicks off morning announcements, Mrs. Markham rises from her desk again, pulling Janey into a hug and whispering to her before releasing her to head to a seat in the back of the room on Ellie's other side. Ellie leans over to give her a hug, and she sits forward in her desk so she can see around Ellie to wave at me.

Announcements end, and we get some time to talk before the bell. "How are you doing this morning?" I ask Janey.

"Great. Other than losing a whole week of my life, never better. How are you?"

I swallow down my guilt over Janey's memory loss. "I'm good. Never thought I'd be happy to be back at school."

"Me, neither," Janey says, just as I shift my eyes to the front of the room. Dani stands up, smoothing down her red wool miniskirt as she walks toward us.

"Ugh. What does she want?" Ellie says, her lack of enthusiasm not entirely fake.

Janey's started sketching in her notebook and doesn't look up. "I guess some things didn't change around here while I was gone," she says.

"Hey, Rachel," Dani says, sliding into the seat in front of me.

"Hi, Dani."

"So—calculus," she says, holding her hands in the air, palms up in a clueless pose.

"Yeah," I say, struggling to keep up the act. "You know, I'm really behind right now. I'm probably not the best person to help you."

Dani grabs one of my notebooks from the pile of school materials on my desk and leans over past Ellie to snag a blue art pencil from the set at the edge of Janey's desk. "I'm just going to borrow this for a sec, okay?" she says.

Janey shoots her a murderous look but doesn't say anything, which Dani apparently takes as an open invitation to do whatever she wants. "I'm glad you guys are okay, by the way," she says, absentmindedly making some doodles of her own on the back of my notebook. She seems more subdued than usual today as if her perfectness has been muted somehow. Maybe disappearing for a week will do that to a person. "Everyone totally missed you," she continues, looking up at me. "Things weren't the same at all while you were gone. Like, everyone seemed different in this weird sort of way."

The glimmer in her eyes tells me I'm not imagining the double meaning behind her comment. "Thanks, Dani" is all I say, not wanting to give anything away to Janey. Janey, meanwhile, doesn't say anything at all.

"No problem. Just glad everything's back to normal around here," Dani says in typically Dani fashion. She glances over at Janey, who continues to draw in her notebook and completely ignore everyone in the room. Dani trains her eyes on the back of my notebook once again and continues her doodling.

"So, anyway," she starts, not looking up. "I guess I can find someone else to help me with calculus until you get caught up. I hear Rick Delacourt's really good at math."

"Yeah. I'll probably hit him up for help, too."

She nods and rises until she's kneeling on the desk seat. "Well, see you in study hall," she says, reaching over to put the blue pencil back on Janey's desk. "Thanks for the pencil, Janey."

Janey once again doesn't look up from her drawing but merely gives Dani the finger with her free hand. Two weeks ago, Dani would have huffed and maybe muttered "loser" or "weirdo" under her breath before flouncing off. But now, I can see the genuine hurt in her eyes. "Later," she says, her flounce as she returns to her seat not quite as flouncy as it used to be. I glance at Ellie out of the corner of my eye and she's biting her lip as she checks social media sites on her phone.

"Like I said, I guess some things stayed the same around here while I was gone," Janey says, still not taking her eyes off her drawing.

"No kidding," I say, picking up my notebook from the edge of the desktop. I'm about to slide it back into my pile of books, notebooks, and folders, but I stop to look at Dani's doodles before I do. And in between the smiley faces and daisies and crooked leaves are three words:

I remember everything.

I lean forward to look around Ellie at Janey, and thankfully, Janey's still occupied with her art. But the bell's going to ring any second, so I'm almost out of time. I nudge the notebook toward the edge of my desk and tap Ellie on the arm.

"What?" she says, putting down her phone.

"Nothing. Just..." I bob my head at the notebook. Ellie leans over a bit, and she blinks several times as she reads the message and the meaning sets in.

And things were never boring again in Ridgeview, Missouri.

END OF BOOK ONE

Other books by Amy Martin:

In Your Dreams (4 book series)

The Perfects (4 book series)

Want to be the first to know about Amy Martin's new releases? Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, check out her website at www.theamymartin.com, or sign up for her mailing list.

About the Author

Amy Martin wrote and illustrated her first book at the age of ten and gave it to her fourth grade teacher, who hopefully lost it in her house somewhere and didn't share it with anyone else. She lives with her husband and a ferocious attack tabby named Cleo, and when not writing or reading, she can usually be found watching sports, drinking coffee, or indulging her crippling Twitter habit (and, sometimes, doing all three at once). You can find out more about her books at www.theamymartin.com

