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Chapter 8

  Well, you’d probably have screamed too, if the face you saw looking back at you from a mirror belonged to someone else. Not just someone else, but someone whose face happened to be plastered on magazines and the sides of buses and phone booths all over town. Wearing nothing but a bra and a pair of panties. Seriously. I looked into the limo’s rear-view mirror, and I saw Nikki Howard’s face staring back at me. Only when I raised my hand to cover my mouth in horror – Nikki raised her hand too. And when I dropped my hand away – so did Nikki. That’s when I started to shake. And I couldn’t stop. ‘How . . . ’ I asked no one in particular. ‘How could this have happened?’ ‘That’s what WE’VE been trying to figure out,’ Lulu said. ‘Now do you see why we had to kidnap you? I mean, stage an intervention on you?’ I lifted trembling fingers to my hair . . . I mean, to Nikki Howard’s hair. It cascaded from the top of my head (or Nikki’s head) from a sloppy ponytail, which was how I hadn’t noticed the long blonde strands around my shoulders: because they’d been just out of my sight line. And there hadn’t been any mirrors in my hospital room. ‘I’m . . . I’m a model,’ I wailed to my reflection. And now, finally, the reason my voice sounded so strange made sense. Because the voice I was hearing wasn’t my own. It was Nikki Howard’s voice, breathy, high-pitched and girlie . . . completely unlike my own. ‘Right,’ Lulu said slowly. ‘Do you remember me now? Lu-lu. Lulu Collins. Your room-mate? I mean, loft-mate?’ I looked at her. She appeared to be genuinely concerned about me. I mean, despite the ridiculous Mission: Impossible black catsuit – obviously her idea of how a kidnapper would dress . . . if any kidnapper in her right mind would put on black suede thigh-highs with five-inch stiletto heels – she looked vulnerable and sort of sweet, with her kohl-rimmed eyes, bird-like bone structure and sparkle lipgloss. But then I remembered. It wasn’t ME she was concerned about. It was Nikki Howard. Whom I – despite what the mirror was telling me – most definitely was NOT. ‘Come on,’ Brandon said, gently taking my arm. ‘Let’s go up to the loft to talk about this. You probably want to change into your own clothes, right? Have a little something to eat?’ In spite of everything – the fact that I was wearing someone else’s face; the fact that Brandon Stark, voted one of People magazine’s most eligible bachelors, and Lulu Collins had just kidnapped me; the fact that my parents had no idea where I was and were probably worried to death about me; the fact that my entire family had apparently been lying to me this whole time, not to mention keeping me from seeing my reflection – I couldn’t keep my stomach from giving a massive, angry gurgle at the word eat. The truth was, whoever I was . . . I was starving. Everyone heard it. Brandon put a hand on my wrist – or should I say Nikki Howard’s wrist, which, now that I was looking at it, looked nothing like my own wrist, being both bony and devoid of not only a yellow Live strong band but also the forever bracelet Frida had made for me last summer when we’d both been camp counsellors – and said gently, ‘Come on inside and we’ll get you some food. ’ ‘Yeah,’ Lulu said, suddenly seeming to perk up. ‘There’s some leftover blackened sea bass from Nobu. Your favourite. I just have to pop it in the microwave. ’ The next thing I knew, we were crossing a colossal marble lobby – Lulu Collins and Nikki Howard, it turns out, share a loft in a converted nineteenth-century police station in SoHo, not five blocks from my own apartment building – and getting into a brass and mahogany elevator, with a uniformed lift operator, who tipped his gold-braid-trimmed hat at me and said, ‘Miss Howard. Nice to see you. Been awhile. ’ ‘Yeah,’ I said queasily. It was a really good thing Brandon Stark was holding on to my arm, because otherwise I was pretty sure I’d have fallen down. Not just from hunger, but because I was so completely freaked out by everything that was going on. Not to mention the fact that I was walking around in someone else’s body. Barefoot. In a hospital gown. Which the lift operator didn’t seem to find at all unusual, if the way he threw open the door when we got to Lulu and Nikki’s loft and went, ‘Have a good night, Ms Howard, Ms Collins and Mr Stark,’ in a totally nice way was any indication. And then my bare feet sank into deep, impossibly soft white carpeting. And I found myself standing in a gargantuan loft space, with a huge marble fireplace (fire unlit) at the one end and a high-tech kitchen – all black granite and stainless steel – at the other, with ceilings that towered ten feet over the top of my head, and windows all along both sides, looking out over the rooftops of SoHo on one side and the Lower East Side on the other. The overall decor theme seemed to be expensive. And modern. Above the fireplace was a massive flat-panel TV that was showing a video of the inside of an aquarium, to make it look like the TV was really an aquarium and not a TV. Scattered throughout the place were long white couches that looked as if they’d swallow you whole if you sat on them. On the coffee tables in front of the couches were magazines. On the cover of each of the magazines was Nikki Howard’s face. Or, should I say, my face. Brandon steered me towards one of the couches and then gently pushed me down on to it. Immediately I was engulfed in softness. ‘Sit right there, Nik,’ he said concernedly. ‘Lulu, you got something for her to eat?’ ‘Coming right up,’ Lulu said, pulling open the door to the Sub-Zero refrigerator. ‘And maybe something hot to drink,’ Brandon added, looking down at me. ‘She’s shivering. ’ Brandon looked around, then found a cream-coloured blanket that had been tossed down at one end of the couch. He pick it up, then settled it over my shoulders, gently tucking it around me. It felt soft as dandelion down. I glanced at the tag attached to one end of it. One hundred per-cent cashmere. It figured. As he arranged the blanket around me, I looked up and happened to meet his gaze. He really was extremely good-looking. I mean, if you happened to like the totally cut, perfect-looking type, which I myself do not. I prefer the loose-limbed, long-haired, computer-genius type. At least, I always thought I did. I had to admit, though, that Brandon Stark’s eyes, in the light from the crazy modern chandelier overhead, looked very appealingly green. ‘Hey,’ he said to me softly, when our gazes met. ‘Hi. ’ I had no idea what was about to happen next. That’s because no guy had ever been that close to me before . . . except Christopher, of course. But Christopher has never thought of me as a girl. And then there was also Gabriel Luna. But that had been a hallucination. Hadn’t it? In any case, how was I supposed to know that when a guy leans in that close, he’s planning on trying something? I just assumed I had something on my face that Brandon was going to brush off. Except that I didn’t. Unless he was planning on brushing it off with his lips. Which suddenly landed on mine. Since the next thing I knew, Brandon Stark was kissing me. Kissing me? I’m sorry. Brandon Stark was performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on me. Which I found, to my surprise, that I thoroughly enjoyed. Or at least, Nikki Howard’s body thoroughly enjoyed it. How else can I explain the fact that I was totally kissing him back? And I had never even kissed a guy before. Still, I could totally see why everyone was so crazy about kissing. In the romance novels that Frida left lying around the apartment all the time (and which I occasionally picked up when I had nothing else to read), the heroines were always going on and on about what it felt like when the guy they were in love with kissed them. They talked about their mouths burning like ‘liquid fire’, and their loins being all aflame. My loins definitely didn’t go up in flames when Brandon kissed me. And my lips didn’t burn like liquid fire (whatever that was). But they felt pleasantly toasty. Really pleasantly toasty. And I wasn’t even in love with Brandon. Imagine what it must feel like to be kissed by someone you actually liked. Imagine what it would have felt like if, say, Christopher had kissed me . . . Which was when I realized, however much my body – or Nikki’s body – might have liked what was going on, I totally couldn’t let it go on a second longer. Especially since it seemed like kissing could very, very easily turn into something else if I didn’t put a stop to it, tout de suite. ‘Mmph,’ I said, pushing Brandon away so hard our mouths disconnected with a sucking sound.
And Brandon ended up losing his balance and almost careened face first into the sofa. ‘What?’ he asked, looking hurt as he stumbled back to his feet. ‘I missed you! Is that so wrong?’ I guess for a lot of girls, getting kissed by Brandon Stark – who is, admittedly, a known heart-throb – would be a total thrill. Frida, for instance, undoubtedly would have freaked (in a good way) over Brandon kissing her. She’d even have enjoyed being kidnapped by him too, I’m sure. And I wasn’t unappreciative of the fact that Brandon was super handsome, and seemed really very interested in me. But that was the problem. He wasn’t. Interested in me, I mean. He was interested in Nikki Howard. And I wasn’t interested in him. ‘I . . . I’m sorry,’ I said to him confusedly. Because I did feel sorry, when I saw his hurt expression. And also when I felt the rush of cold air that swooped in between where our warm mouths had been attached. A part of me wished I had just let him go on kissing me. Because kissing? Totally not overrated. At all. ‘It’s just that . . . I don’t even know you. ’ ‘We’ve been going out for two years,’ Brandon cried, looking even more hurt. ‘I mean, on and off. How can you not remember?’ I pulled the blanket around me more tightly. I didn’t know what else to do. Or say. My mouth felt all weird from where his lips had been pressed up against it. His stubble had felt all scratchy. It kind of hurt. But like . . . in a good way. There was no denying that my lips felt super tingly where his had touched them. And I was sort of starting to detect some fire in my loinage area now. Oh my God! Nikki Howard is a total slut! Or maybe I am, and I had just never had an opportunity to discover it until now! What is wrong with me? Why had Christopher never made a move on me before, the way Brandon just had? We could have been making out this whole time, instead of playing of stupid Journeyquest! Oh, wait . . . did I just think that? God! What’s happening to me? Fortunately, Lulu appeared just then, holding a pile of clothes. ‘Here,’ she said, depositing what looked like jeans, a T-shirt and some frilly underthings on to the couch beside me. ‘I thought you might want to put this stuff on. I mean, that dress isn’t exactly doing anything for you, you know. ’ ‘Um,’ I said. ‘It’s a hospital gown, not a dress. But thanks. ’ I picked up the pile of clothes, then hesitated, looking around the loft. Lulu heaved a sigh. ‘I can’t believe you don’t remember. Your room’s down there,’ she said, pointing towards a door off to one side of the kitchen. ‘The food’ll probably be ready when you’re done. ’ I thanked her and got up, a little unsteadily, still clutching the blanket around me. I didn’t look at Brandon as I made my way down the length of the loft. For one thing, walking in my new body was . . . well, weird. For another, I could feel his gaze boring into my back the whole time. I couldn’t exactly blame him. If his lips felt anything like mine did, it was really hard not to go running right back over there and smack them right back on to his. How do couples not just go around kissing all the time? Kissing is fantastic. Oh my God. I’ve known I’m a model for five minutes, and this is how my thought process erodes? I’ve got to get a hold of myself. I opened the door to Nikki Howard’s bedroom, relieved to be out of Brandon’s sight line – and was hit in the face by the overwhelming fragrance of roses. I soon saw why. The ‘basket’ of red roses Lulu had told me had been delivered to the loft – the ones from Gabriel Luna – sat on top of Nikki Howard’s vanity table. Only the ‘basket’ was actually a wooden crate . . . a wooden crate filled to the brim with roses. Jeez. Gabriel didn’t mess around, did he? Nikki’s bedroom, I saw, was a lot like her living room . . . all white, with a thick furry carpet and a vast, soft-looking bed. In fact, the only colour in the room came from Gabriel’s roses. The floor-to-ceiling windows were covered with white satin curtains. A huge mirror – half hidden by Gabriel’s crate of roses – hung over the white vanity table in one corner. In the mirror, I could see my reflection – a pale, skinny blonde girl in a hospital gown, wearing a terrified expression and clutching a pile of clothes to her chest, and a cashmere blanket around her shoulders. Right. A pale, skinny blonde girl who, if Frida’s CosmoGIRL! was right, earned something like twenty grand a day. Unlike in my own room, back home, Nikki hadn’t decorated her walls with postcards of paintings or posters of movies she liked. Nor were there piles of science-fiction and fantasy books and journals and mangas lying around, threatening to topple over at any moment. In fact, there wasn’t even so much as a photo on her nightstand. Although Nikki did own a computer – a Stark-brand laptop (in a hideous shade of pink) which sat on the vanity table near her bed – she didn’t appear to own much of anything else, really, except a Stark-brand flat-screen television, which was affixed to the wall across from her bed. And make-up. At least, that’s all I found in every drawer I pulled open, looking for . . . I don’t even know what. But all I found? Mascara. And lipgloss. A LOT of lip-gloss. Which I supposed she needed, considering all the kissing she was apparently doing. She probably had to reapply a lot. And, when I opened another door, I saw that while Nikki didn’t appear to own any books, she did own a lot of clothes. There was a whole walk-in closet full of them – what looked like thousands of shirts, blouses, jackets, jeans, trousers, dresses and skirts of every description and colour, each item hanging neatly on a wooden hanger. Some of them were so new they still had price tags on them. I found more than one pair of $400 jeans, and a pretty plain-looking dress with a tag that said $3,000 (which had to be a mistake). Beneath and above the hanging clothes were shelves containing literally hundreds of purses, bags, totes and shoes of every type imaginable . . . boots, sneakers, flats, heels, sandals, pumps, even, for some reason, wooden clogs, like the Dutch Boy wears. Frida, I knew, would have felt as if she’d died and gone to heaven if she’d walked into Nikki Howard’s closet. All I felt, however, was confused. What kind of teenaged girl could afford $400 jeans? Who even needed $400 jeans? And who kept her stuff so . . . neat? It was kind of freaky in a way. I didn’t like being in that closet. Not one bit. I hurried out of it and tried the other door . . . and found myself in Nikki Howard’s bathroom. Unlike the rest of the loft, this room wasn’t white. The walls were made of a taupe-coloured marble – the ones that weren’t mirrored, that is. There was a walk-in shower and a separate Jacuzzi tub. The mirror above the double sinks was surrounded by lights, dressing-room style. The reflection I saw blinking back at me in that mirror looked scared. I put down the pile of clothes Lulu had given me and reached up to undo the ponytail someone had put my (or, more accurately, Nikki Howard’s) hair into. It came tumbling down my shoulders, looking as unlike my own hair as any hair ever could. Instead of being stick straight and brown, Nikki Howard’s hair was silky and golden and hung in perfectly curled waves . . . even though it clearly hadn’t been brushed – or washed – in a while. And when I reached behind me to undo the hospital gown, and it fell away to land in a puddle at my (I mean, Nikki Howard’s) feet, I saw a body as unlike my own as the hair was. It was the same absolutely perfect – by the Walking Dead’s standards – body I’d seen in countless Victoria’s Secret ads featuring Nikki Howard. There were no surprises there. None at all. Except the main one – that suddenly, that perfect body appeared to be my own. I looked away from the mirror and hurried into the clothes Lulu had given me – a pair of frilly pink knickers and an equally frilly bra first. Then jeans, which slid on to fit like a second skin, and the T-shirt – which, disappointingly, bore the words Baby Soft across the front, in pink curlicue writing – which did little to hide what the under-wire bra was emphasizing. This was certainly unlike the shirts stocked in my own closet back home, which I’d selected based on their ability to HIDE what Nikki Howard apparently appeared to prefer to flaunt. Hurrying from the bathroom and into the closet to grab a pair of Skechers, the lowest-heeled shoes I could find, I threw them on. Then, giving a last look at this room that supposedly belonged to me – but that, in a million years, I’d never have been able to keep that clean – I staggered back to the bedroom door, threw it open . . . And was attacked all over agai
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