CHAPTER TWO

When dinner's finished, Sarah's the first to leave the table. I follow her with my eyes as she walks out of the dining area and down the hall, and when I look back, I see that Caden's watching as well.

"I don't get it," he says. "Why would she want to be home-schooled?"

I look down at my hands, all too conscious of my mother's eyes burning into the top of my skull.

Katherine sighs. "She has her reasons."

"She's told you?" Caden asks.

"No, but I have a pretty good idea."

I can't take this. "Excuse me," I say, standing up. I'm not questioned as I leave the table, nor spoken to before I leave the room. They let me go, and I slip down the dark hallway, my feet leading me to Sarah. I don't even look as I pass our room; I know she won't be there.

Down, down, down, further and further, until I'm at the back door, on the steps, in the sharp night air, melting into the dark. There by the fence – an oak with thick, steady branches. And attached by a pair of knotted ropes, a two-seater wooden chair hangs, rocking gently in the breeze. It's too dark to make much out, but I can just see the shadow of her form, sitting silently in the cold.

I approach the tree, already shivering in the fierce evening weather. "Mind if I join you?" I ask, and the darkness is so thick, so heavy, that I imagine my voice getting lost in the night, stumbling through the blackness as though blind. There's the slightest hint of movement, caught by the dull glow emanating from the house, and I take it as a yes.

I sit down beside her. In the darkness, it's easy to trick my mind into seeing Sarah as I always have: blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair and happy. I see her smile hanging like a ghost in the air before me. I see her eyes, light with laughter. I see her happiness, like a tangible presence, brushing its fingers across the sky.

Then the ghost of her face morphs ever-so-slightly into something different, something new: me. Me, standing in front of the mirror, tears turning my eyes red. Me, curling my hair around my fingers and staring aghast at the ash blonde colour. Sarah's face, now mine, stares back at me from the night and I flinch. Nothing has ever looked so wrong.

The wind blows, the trees above us chattering like a crowd of people, and I watch as the image scatters, frightened off by the breeze. Sighing, I look down at my feet, or what I think is my feet – it's too dark to tell – and let go of the words building up in my mouth like rocks. "I'm sorry."

She doesn't reply for what seems like a long while, but just as I'm about to repeat myself, assuming my voice got lost on the wind, she speaks up. "For what?" Her voice is a whisper, and it reminds me of leaves tumbling across the earth.

"For everything. For stealing your body. For giving it back. For being the reason your life is so screwed up."

"It's not your fault. You didn't ask for this."

"You're right, I didn't. But if it wasn't for me, none of this would have happened."

Silence.

A good minute later, I say, "I'm the reason you want to be home-schooled."

"No," she says.

"But I am. You want to be home-schooled because your face is too recognisable, because anyone who saw you would automatically associate you with me, the girl who chased away the summer. Who freezes people to death and acts like she doesn't have blood all over her hands. You know it's true."

"No."

"Come on, Sarah. I ruined your life – I stole your life. I killed your real mother, sent your real father into depression and just left him to deal with it. I completely destroyed your reputation. I'm a complete and utter bitch and I'm not going to deny–"

I stop, suddenly realising that Sarah's crying, tears rolling slowly down her cheeks and sparkling in the light from the house and the moon. "Sarah?" I say. "I–"

"Don't, okay?" she interrupts sharply, and finally I see her face, turned towards me now, her eyes glossy with emotion. "Just don't."

I frown. "Are you alright? I don't understand."

She laughs bitterly. "Of course you don't understand! Melissa, you don't know anything about me. We've been separated for more than a decade. A decade. Did it ever occur to you that I've lived those years as well? That I've gone to school and made friends and grown up? I'm not the same person I was when we were five – and neither are you."

"...I...I'm not sure what you're getting at."

"Things happen, okay?!" she yells, jumping to her feet. "I can't help it! One moment everything's fine and then before you know it you're totally and completely screwed."

I lean back, stunned. "Sarah, what are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about me, for Chrissake! Not you – it's always about you – but me. I messed up! Alright? I messed up and then I went and made it worse. And then once you've started something, you can't stop it. You just gotta keep going, let it take you where it wants. I didn't mean to do it – I didn't mean to do any of this – but I couldn't help it. I had to."

As she's been speaking, a bad feeling has been growing in the pit of my stomach, and now it courses through my bloodstream, setting off every warning bell in its path. "What do you mean 'you had to do it'?" I ask slowly, fearfully.

"I'm sorry," she says, backing away now, her face growing darker and darker. "I'm so, so sorry."

-:-:-:-:-

The sun is high in the sky when they arrive, suitcases strapped onto the top of their four-wheel drive. Younger-me watches from the back patio as their car snakes down the solitary road which leads to our property and the newly built house a couple yards over. Mum sold off some of our land last year because the drought put a dent in our finances, and the new owner started construction on their property almost immediately.

The house is done now, but even in all its splendour, it still feels like a weed growing in our back yard.

"They're early," mum remarks, her frown lines deepening. "I was told they wouldn't be here until four."

"Maybe the drive didn't take as long as they expected," dad offers.

"But I only just pulled their welcome gift out of the oven. It's still cooling."

Dad laughs. "Just throw it in any old container and send it over. Cake is still cake, whether it's hot, cold, or packaged in tin foil."

She sighs, and at the same time, a good half-kilometre away, our new neighbours pull up in front of their new house, cutting the engine. "I'll be right back," she says.

She runs back inside, and five minutes later returns with a basket filled with still-steaming cake. I watch as she kneels down before me, smiling.

"Now I'm going to give you a very important job," she tells me. "I want you to take the cake to our new neighbours. Do you think you can do that?"

Younger-me nods excitedly, thrilled by the idea of being the first to greet our neighbours.

Mum smiles and hands me the basket. "I'm sure you'll do great, Sarah."

When I wake the next morning, Sarah's bed is empty and untouched. Her outburst last night swirls through my mind, awakening troubles and questions I didn't realise I had. What happened in her past that she isn't telling me about? Has she been lying to me? How well do I really know her?

These are just a taste of the sheer quantity of questions I can't answer, the ones that swirl through my mind constantly, keeping me up during the night and giving me headaches during the day. Why is it always cloudy? How and why did I die for a day and come back? Where did Patrick go after That Day? What does he want from me? Why was I swapped in the first place? How did my real father die? Why is there a society of people out to kill me? What are the 'Origins'? The 'Anarkk' and 'Avexyr'? What are Caden and Katherine and Ethel not telling me? Do I even really know them?

There are so many questions that if I don't hold them back, I fear I could lose myself in them, in the sheer madness of it all. How is one meant to cope with so many troubling thoughts, buzzing constantly at the back of her mind? Too much is unanswered and it's driving me insane.

Sarah certainly isn't helping either. Just last night, she managed to add another dozen questions to my already massive pile. I look over at her empty bed again, and in order to save myself unnecessary worry, come to the conclusion that she just didn't want to spend the night in the same room as me. She probably slept on the couch, unable to face up to me after she ran off into the darkness last night, leaving me with virtually no explanation.

Forgetting about Sarah, I let out a breath, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and slipping out from under the bedcovers. On top of the questions I now face, day in, day out, it seems my memories of the time before I was swapped have decided to come back to me in small, fragmented pieces. They first started coming to me in dreams before I swapped back, but now the dreams are more frequent, the memories more vivid, more detailed, and easier to hold on to when I wake from a restless night's sleep. And even after receiving these dreams for weeks now, it still feels strange to wake with a new piece of myself tagging along behind me. A month ago, I didn't even know I was missing pieces of my memory. Now that it's started returning to me, all I can feel is the gaping hole.

I dress quickly, tossing on my standard jeans and hoodie, and head out down the hall. The house is comfortably quiet at this time in the morning and I pad around the kitchen to the sound of the birds singing and chirping in the trees. Sun streams in through the windows in the kitchen and I strategically place myself in the sunlight while I prepare my breakfast, enjoying the warmth on my skin.

Every now and then, memories from last night try to overtake my mind, but I push them away, choosing instead to focus on the good feeling coursing through me. A few weeks ago, I could never have imagined being here, eating cereal in my mother's sun-drenched house. But here I am.

Soon the noise level of the house rises, and I hear the tell-tale sounds of others waking up, bumping around in their rooms as they get dressed and ready. Maybe only ten minutes later, my mother appears in the entrance to the living room.

"Have you seen Sarah?" she asks.

"Isn't she in there?" I reply around a mouthful of cereal. I swallow. "I thought she was sleeping on the couch."

"Why would she be sleeping on the couch?"

"Well, she wasn't in our room when I woke up this morning and I just assumed that's where she'd be. She wasn't in a good mood after dinner, I thought maybe she just wanted some space."

My mother steps away from the living room and approaches where I'm seated at the dining table. "I can't find her anywhere," she says, and I can see the worry unrolling itself across her features.

"Maybe she left early," I suggest with a shrug, vaguely aware that I'm just trying to dodge the truth in order to save myself the worry. "She could have gone for a walk or something. Have you checked to see if she left a note?"

She shakes her head and goes looking, but comes back five minutes later empty-handed. Leaning on the kitchen bench top, she closes her eyes and squeezes the bridge of her nose, sighing. "It's just not like her to do this. She usually always finds some way to let me know if she's going somewhere."

Somewhere deep inside me, alarm bells go off, but they're too distant and too small for me to pay any real attention to them. "It'll be fine," I say. "I'm sure she just wants some time to herself. Just you watch, as soon as dinner rolls around, she'll be back and begging for food."

Finished with my breakfast, I go to pick up my bowl. Instead, it shoots towards me, careening off the table and smashing into the floor, its various pieces scattering around the room.

"Woops," I say.

My mother sighs. "I'll go grab a broom."

-:-:-:-:-

After lunch, I sit at the table by the front window, reading a book I picked up at the library. The sun dipped behind a cloud earlier and hasn't reappeared since, but still I sit in full view of the sky, just in case a couple sunbeams decide to show.

Beside me, Katherine fusses over our enrolment forms, flipping through the pages as she fills them in.

"What school are we going to?" I ask out of interest, lowering my book and looking over at the forms.

"Ashwell College," she replies. "It's a good hour drive from here, so I hope you don't mind the long commute."

"No, that's good. Distance is good."

She nods, and I watch on, suddenly interested as she finishes filling in Caden's form and moves onto mine. My eyes trail down to the bottom of the page where it asks for family details and I feel a sense of unease swirl around inside my stomach.

"Who will you be putting as my guardian?" I ask.

"Me, of course. You look like Sarah now, so as far as anyone's concerned, you're my daughter. I'll be using all of Sarah's records to fill in your form."

The unease grows to sickness. I'm practically stealing Sarah's identity.

"It's just as well she doesn't want to go to school," I say quietly. "I don't have any of my records with me. They're all at my old house with my fa–" I stop, the word dying in my mouth as his face appears in my mind, shadowed and hollowed out by grief. He's still there in that house, probably worried and wondering where I am, where I've gone. I'm honestly surprised he hasn't filed a missing person's report yet.

"You really need to see him," Katherine tells me, meeting my eyes. "You and Sarah. He deserves to know what's going on. He deserves the truth."

I nod sullenly. "I know. I'm just...I'm scared to go back there. And I don't want Sarah to see how I've hurt her father."

Katherine swallows, and the weirdest expression passes over her face, disappearing a moment later. It's gone so quick that I don't have time to identify it, and then she's speaking. "It's not your fault. You didn't ask for any of this. What happened to him and your mother couldn't have been helped."

I only nod, her words failing to make me feel better.

Moving on, I ask, "What are you going to put my name as?"

"I'm not sure. I was going to ask you."

I let out a breath. "I doubt Sarah would take well to me stealing her name."

"It would make things a lot more confusing," she says, skipping past the box that asks for a name and instead filling in my address.

"I can't use Melissa, though. I don't want anything that links me to my old self."

"Well, it will have to be some sort of derivative of Sarah's name, otherwise it won't match up with Sarah's records."

I look out the window, thinking. "Does she have a middle name?"

"Maya."

When I don't respond, Katherine says, "You know, technically that's your middle name. When I named you, you were still my daughter."

"Then I'll use that," I say.

"Are you sure that's what you want? Once I send in these enrolment forms, there's no backing out."

"I'm sure. Besides, it's not like I have much of a choice."

She nods, writing Maya in the box. "You might want to start getting used to it," she says as she fills in the rest of the form. "Practice writing it, saying it. It has to come to you automatically or people will get suspicious."

I nod. "Maya," I say, rolling the name around on my tongue, testing how it tastes in my mouth. "At least it starts with the same letter."

She looks up for a moment and gives me a small smile. "At least."

Later I sit on the front steps of the house, my eyes trained on the street as I wait for the first glimpse of Sarah. To pass the time, I say my new name over and over, using a different tone each time. I feel stupid, but nevertheless understand the importance of getting used to it. If it's not familiar, I won't respond to it, and people will realise something's up.

"So should I call you Maya now?"

I spin around to see Caden standing in the doorway. "Katherine told me," he explains, coming to sit down beside me on the steps.

"Oh. Yeah," I say, turning back around to face the road. "You should probably start. Everyone will be calling me that at that the new school."

"Sarah won't like it," he says simply.

"I can't say I like it all that much either," I reply. "But at least it means I get a fresh start."

I look up. Overhead, dark clouds loom with the promise of a storm and I notice that the breeze has picked up, blowing threateningly down the eerily quiet street.

"She's been gone for a day," I say, my eyes on the dark grey horizon.

"She'll be back," Caden replies.

"That's what I said this morning. I'm not so sure now. What if something bad has happened to her?"

"It'll be fine," he says absentmindedly, and I look sideways at him, at the way he stares off into the distance as if he's not really here. "She knows what she's doing."

I turn away from him, feeling alone even as his warmth brushes up against my skin. "I hope so," I whisper, just as the first drop of rain falls from the sky, a glistening speck up against the dark grey of the clouds. It makes a solitary descent all the way down to the cold, hard pavement, and the second it hits, the sky breaks open. Water rushes down to meet us, and in the space of a second, the rain increases in intensity tenfold. My feet are getting wet, the water splashing up off the ground and grazing my shins, but I don't move, not even when Caden heads back inside. Not even when the light starts to dim. Not even when the rain calms, slows, stops.

I stay there all the way up until I feel I no longer can, until I'm shivering and starved and tired. I know have to head back inside, but I can't bring myself to do so. And so instead I wait, as the night thickens and the air sharpens its knives. As the wind plays a tune in the gaps between houses and the world tucks in for another winter night. As the moon rises over the suburban skyline, a white luminescent sphere pressed up against the darkness, like a spirit making a slow crawl to the heavens. I wait.

I wait. And then I don't.