Page 32 of Switch!
“Oh! He’s in his room. Let me grab him.”
Wrong. He’s inmyroom. That’s an odd thing to consider. I worry that Caleb will discover my embarrassing secrets in the same way I’m learning his. Is he riffling through my most intimate memories and howling with laughter? Then again, I didn’t have any that were particularly interesting. Just humiliating.
I hear myself ask who it is followed by my mother’s muffled response. There’s more rustling and the sound of a door closing. A voice that sounds insecure and shaky says, “This is Travis.”
“Hey,” I reply. “It’s me.”
The line is quiet until he responds with, “Caleb?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But you know who I really am. Right?” All I get in return is silence, so I try again. “And who you really are?”
“If this is a prank,” Travis replies, “it’s a dumb one. What do you want?”
He sounds defiant! Is that Caleb shining through? Or maybe it’s how I would have reacted, knowing that my greatest enemy had left town and couldn’t do me harm. Which is it? I need to find out what he remembers. “I want to talk about what happened this morning.”
“When you attacked me?” Travis says, voice warbling again.
“Yeah,” I respond. “That was kind of confusing. Wasn’t it?”
“Depends what you mean.”
“What were you doing at my house?”
“Oh. I wanted to make sure you were really leaving.”
Which wasn’t my motivation at all. Is that the story he’s told himself to make sense of things? Doesn’t he have access to my memories like I do his?
“Is that the real reason?” I press.
He doesn’t say anything. Neither do I, refusing to speak until he answers me, which he finally does.
“I was playing a game.”
I don’t have a clue what he’s talking about. “What sort of game?” More silence. “Please. Just talk to me. I’m gone now. I’m never coming back to Cheyenne, so there’s nothing to lose. Let’s just talk.”
“Fine,” Travis says. “I was pretending to be you. I want your life. Laugh if you want, I don’t care. If you were getting beat up all the time, you’d want to be someone else too.”
My mind is racing. He seems to believe that he’s really me, and the only way he can explain my memories of possessing people is to pretend it was all a game. That might be for the best. I don’t want my mother living with a dangerous person, but I have to be sure without giving anything away. “Are you okay?” I ask. “When we fought this morning, did you get messed up?”
“Some scrapes,” Travis says. “You?”
“The same. But besides that, do you feel okay?”
“I had a headache that’s already gone. Why are you calling? I don’t get it.”
“Because…” I try to think of what I would have wanted Caleb to say if I ever found myself on the phone with him. “I wanted to apologize. For all of it. I know I put you through hell, but it’s not because there’s anything wrong with you. I’m the one who’s messed up.”
He doesn’t reply. I suppose I wouldn’t have known how to react either.
“If anyone gives you trouble next year,” I continue. “Maybe I can help. Call me. I could talk to Dean if he’s the one picking on you. Elliot too. They’ll listen to me. Or if you just need a sympathetic ear… Do you have a pen and paper?” I nearly tell him where to find it.
“I’m ready.”
I dictate my number to him. I don’t know what to say after that. If he has my memories, even a slightly altered version of them, he knows everything I once did. Including my concerns about Raymond. It seems pointless to warn him again, so instead I say, “Call me if there’s trouble at home too.”
“Anything else?” Travis asks, sounding impatient.
I can guess why. I would have assumed that Caleb was only doing this to absolve his own guilt or some other self-serving reason. I wouldn’t trust him.
