Page 119 of Switch!
“Don’t!”
“I’m only kidding. It would be way easier to break a window.” She leans forward to peer at the keypad. “A friend of mine had a similar setup. Did you hit the green button after typing in the code?”
I try that instead. And it works! The garage door jerks and then lifts, revealing the same tiny sports car I saw yesterday.
“Hey!” Trixie says. “Is that…” She turns to me, face alight. “This is his place, isn’t it? The racist dude!”
I told her about Gary’s inner dialog this morning, prepping for this moment in case she had any moral objections to what we’re doing. I should have known better. Trixie has already traipsed over to the sports car and opened the door so she can climb inside.
“It’s so cramped!” she says, plopping into the driver seat. “Why would anyone pay so much money to be so uncomfortable?”
I don’t answer, too concerned with figuring out how to close the garage door again so nobody will see us. I’m standing by the inner door that leads to the house interior and am about to poke one of the buttons there, when Trixie comes up behind me.
“I get it now,” she says. “He must be out of town. Or is he only at work? Are we robbing him?”
I cringe. Does she have to be so loud? “Out of town,” I murmur. “And we’re not robbing him. At least, I don’t think so.”
“Let’s not limit our options before we see what he’s got,” Trixie says. “Maybe you should pull Patrick’s car in so nobody can see it.”
“Shouldn’t we make sure the house is really empty? Some people don’t like answering the door.”
“Hmm. Good call. That way we can still pretend that we’re concerned citizens. We saw the open garage door, tried knocking, and when that didn’t work…”
“We decided to go inside to make sure everything is okay.”
“Flimsiest story ever, but it’ll confuse them long enough for us to escape.” Trixie turns the knob. “If we do run into someone, you sweep their legs, and I’ll roll them up in a rug. Don’t worry, there will be one. Rich people love big expensive rugs.”
I laugh nervously as we enter. This isn’t the first time I’ve walked into a stranger’s home and felt like I was intruding. Usually I remind myself that I belong there, to all outward appearances, but I’m not in the right body this time. I remain tense as I type in the same code to disarm the alarm system. Then we silently creep from room to room. We begin in an open kitchen which bleeds into the living area. I barely take in the multiple couches clustered around a fireplace, or the tasteful decorations, my senses prickling as I try to detect the presence of another person. We keep moving until we reach the entryway. I glance out one of the windows to make sure nothing has changed.
“So far, so good,” I whisper.
Trixie isn’t nearly as quiet in her response. “I can’t handle the suspense. Be right back.”
She takes the stairs two at a time on her way up to the second floor. Once she disappears, I can hear her running down the hall. She isn’t being stealthy. I tense when her footsteps return just as fast. I’m bracing to make a run for it when she bounds down the stairs. Trixie grins at me like she’s having fun and says “All clear!” before jetting off in a different direction. She’s barely left my sight when I hear her call out.
“Oh my god!”
Panic grips me. I race to catch up with her, returning to the living room and sprinting down the attached hall in an attempt to find her. I can see a bathroom ahead, stairs that must lead down to the basement, and on my left… I skid to a halt. Past a double doorway is a room with glass walls and a floor made of water. That’s my first impression. When I see Trixie turn around with a gleeful expression, I calm down enough to reassess.
An indoor pool! It isn’t very large, but few people have such a luxury in the privacy of their home. We’re standing in an extension to the house. Just outside the tall windows, trees quiver in the breeze. The tiles beneath our feet glow with sunlight that’s beaming down from the glass ceiling. I already want to throw off my shoes and most of my clothes so I can enjoy it all.
“This is going to be the best adventure-cation ever,” Trixie says. “We’ve gotta go skinny dipping.”
“What? No way!”
“Why not? It isn’t your body. Don’t tell me you’re shy about some other guy being nude.”
“You’re so weird,” I say with a chuckle. Then the smile slips off my face. “We need to check the rest of the house.”
Trixie perks up. “I bet there’s a bowling alley in the basement.”
She’s already marching for the door when I stop her.
“You’re always encouraging me to use my powers in unusual ways,” I say, getting down on the tile floor. “I can check the house real quick while completely invisible.”
She only needs a few seconds to understand what I’m suggesting. “Great idea!”
“Thanks.” I stretch out on the blissfully warm tiles and close my eyes. Then I let myself slip free of Patrick’s body. Even after I will myself to see in the void, there isn’t much around. I can see an ultra-violet version of Trixie sitting next to a cyan Patrick, a mass of pure white light outside where the trees are, and little else. I move toward the center of the house, or where I remember it being, and freeze. I see a figure, but it’s small and faint. I move toward it experimentally, thinking it might be a child, but it barely grows any larger as I approach. That’s when I realize that I’m seeing someone far away. In one of the neighboring houses maybe. That should make this easier. I glance upward and watch a little green form bound through the air. A squirrel running across the roof, I’d wager. And when I look down at the basement, I only see tiny pinpricks of light here, none of them big enough to be human.
