Switch (excerpt)
Chapter Two
Don’t freak out: it probably wasn’t you I woke up in on that stormy night last July. Well, unless you’re about five-foot four, with pretty brown eyes and long, dark hair. Then it might have been you. (You might want to rethink that white-blond streak in your hair, by the way. It makes you look like a skunk.)
Notice I said that I “woke up” in your body (or, you know – somebody else’s body). I didn’t jump in or sneak in or steal in. I am not a body snatcher or a ghoul. I am a body switcher, which is totally different. I don’t take over other people’s bodies on purpose. And I always give them back.
So don’t picture me as some bizarro Goth girl with dyed black hair, black lipstick, and a pierced eyebrow. I don’t even own any black clothes. I am just a normal fifteen- year-old kid with normal fifteen-year-old problems: an overworked mother, a missing father. I worry about the usual stuff. Like: will a boy ever admire me for anything other than my killer butterfly stroke? And: will I survive the first day of tenth grade without saying something stupid or losing my schedule or getting detention because I forgot
© Carol Snow
to turn off my cell phone?
This is me: Claire Martin, fifteen years, five months old. I’m a Pisces, the sign of the fish, which is totally appropriate since I’m in the water about as much as a person can be without growing gills. My birthday is March 9-10; my birth certificate says March 10, but I was born on the stroke of midnight, so I think it should count as two days. My hair is brown, straight, shoulder-length and utterly resistant to anything resembling “a style.” Mostly, I just pull my hair back with a plain elastic when it’s still wet. My eyes are okay: hazel bordering on green but never quite getting there. I am five feet, seven inches tall. I will not tell you my weight because it is a big number, though I’m really just “solid,” with virtually no body fat, even in places where it would be nice to have some. My best feature? My powerful shoulders. My worst feature? Ditto.
So, as you can see, aside from the occasional body switching (I mean, really occasional – a few times a year, tops), I am a completely normal, average, boring kid.
Okay, unless you factor in all of those conversations with my dead grandmother.
