Though if Stark Enterprises really thought amnesia was a rational explanation, they needed a major reality check.
I’d told Mr Phillips right away that there was one problem: I might have already mentioned to Lulu Collins and Brandon Stark that I wasn’t Nikki Howard.
But Mr Phillips didn’t look worried. He said, ‘The amnesia story will take care of that.’
And I realized he was right. Lulu and Brandon would totally believe I had amnesia. They were already prepared to believe I’d been the victim of brainwashing by Al-Qaeda or a spirit transfer. They’d believe anything.
That wasn’t what I was worried about. Really worried about, I mean. What I was really worried about was… well, Stark Enterprises. I mean, they already had my family in an iron grip there was no way we could squirm out of — how were two professors ever going to come up with two million dollars (and fines)?
But someone was also tracking Nikki Howard’s keystrokes on her Stark-issued computer. Someone who hadn’t thought Nikki — or I — would notice. And I didn’t want to be paranoid or anything, but I had a pretty good idea who that someone was.
And that was her employers at Stark Enterprises.
So, yeah. I didn’t want to say anything, but that was concerning me. Stark Enterprises and their sudden omnipresence in our lives.
And one other thing. What had happened to me. The me Christopher had said so long ago looked fine.
‘So… where’s my body?’ I asked my parents as we sat waiting for Dr Higgins to come and escort me to the testing lab. ‘I mean… the one I was born in?’
I saw them exchange glances. Then Mom said carefully, ‘Well, honey… we had it cremated.’
I stared at her in horror.
‘We had to,’ she went on quickly, seeing my expression. ‘We had to have a memorial service. We couldn’t keep what happened to you a secret, there’d been paparazzi at the Stark Megastore, following Nikki Howard around. They got the whole thing on film — it was on CNN moments after it happened. Everyone saw that plasma screen land on you. There was virtually nothing else on television for days — it was a slow news week. We had to have a service. We didn’t have any other choice.’
‘You’ll be happy to know it was very well attended,’ Dad said, as if this was supposed to make me feel better. ‘Stark Enterprises paid for Grandma to come all the way from Florida—’
Suddenly, tears filled my eyes.
‘Grandma thinks I’m dead?’ I asked. No more T-shirts with World’s Greatest Grandchild printed on them for Christmas. No more birthday cards with twelve dollars tucked inside.
‘Well, honey,’ Mom said, chewing the inside of her lip. ‘Yes. I’m sorry. But you know what a gossip she is around the pool where she lives. We really couldn’t tell her the truth.’
I couldn’t believe it. It turned out rumours of my death hadn’t been exaggerated.
I was dead. Legally. Medically. Technically. In every — ally, really, except the one way that mattered: literally.
I was dead, and I hadn’t even been able to attend my own funeral.
‘Was anybody from school there?’ I asked. ‘At my memorial service, I mean?’
‘Of course,’ Dad said, sounding a little hesitant for some reason. ‘Christopher, and his father—’
Now, for the first time since I’d woken up in Nikki Howard’s body, I really lost it.
‘Christopher?’ I gasped. ‘Oh my God. You mean you didn’t tell him? Christopher thinks I’m dead?’
Mom and Dad exchanged panicky glances. Suddenly, I was crying so hard I couldn’t even see them. I guess it wasn’t any wonder they thought I was losing it. I saw Mom signal Dad to leave the room — no doubt to search out Dr Holcombe and ask him for more of those coma drugs to calm me down.
‘Honey, you know we couldn’t tell him the truth,’ Mom said, coming to sit down beside me on the bed and putting her arms around me. Cosabella, who’d been busily grooming herself at my feet, hurried over to give me a few concerned licks as well. ‘We felt terrible about it, but… well, you heard what Mr Phillips said.’
Oh, I’d heard what Mr Phillips had said, all right. Thanks to Mr Phillips, the mystery of why Emerson Watts, eleventh-grader, had been saved using the incredibly rare and expensive lifesaving technology of whole-body transplant had been cleared up.
She hadn’t. Stark Enterprises had used it to save Nikki Howard.
Not me.
‘I know it’s awful to say,’ Mom went on as she hugged me, ‘but… Christopher will get over it. Eventually. With time. He really will.’
‘G-get over it?’ I wailed. ‘My best friend th-thinks I’m dead, only I’m not, and I c-can’t even tell him — and you think he’ll just g-get over it?’
Frida chose that moment to stroll into my room. Her brown eyes were practically crackling with rage, and her chin was sticking out — sure signs she wanted to have a confrontation with me about something.
But she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw that I was crying.
‘What’s with her?’ she demanded.
‘She just found out about Christopher,’ Mom said, gently rocking me. ‘You know, thinking she’s dead.’
‘Oh.’ Frida stared at me. ‘So? Don’t worry about him. I saw him in school the other day and he was fine.’
This just made me cry harder. It also caused Mom to say, ‘Frida!’
‘Well?’ Frida sauntered over to where my television’s remote control sat on the bedside table and picked it up, switched on the TV and began flipping channels. ‘It’s true. He was a little upset at first, but he’s already over it. I don’t know why you’re freaking out. You said he’s not your boyfriend anyway. Remember?’
Mom got up, let go of me and snatched the remote from Frida’s hand in one fluid motion.
‘May I have a word with you in the hallway, young lady?’ she asked briskly.
The two of them left the room. While they were gone, I tried to pull myself back together. I couldn’t believe how selfish I’d been, not having given Christopher a second thought since I’d woken up. Except for the whole wishing-he’d-been-the-one-kissing-me-instead-of-Justin-or-Brandon thing, I mean.
What could Christopher have been going through all this time, thinking I was dead? Was he all right? How had he handled it, those moments after that TV had fallen on me, right in front of him? He must have been so freaked out. Who was he eating lunch with now that I wasn’t in school? He didn’t have anyone else to make fun of the Walking Dead with, or to play Journeyquest with, or to watch surgery shows on the Discovery Health Channel with. Poor Christopher!
Unless… unless some other girl had snatched him up for herself. Only who? What girl at TAHS (besides me) had the sensitivity to look past all that long hair and see the potential hottie that lay beneath? What other girl was fine enough?
God. Surely there had to be one. She could be sitting down next to him in the cafeteria right now, complimenting him on his avoidance of the tuna salad…
Suddenly Frida was back, this time by herself. She looked sullen.
‘I’m supposed to apologize,’ she said. Her gaze was on Cosabella, the now black television screen, the window behind me — anywhere but on my face. ‘So… sorry if what I said upset you. It’s not true anyway. Christopher’s not fine. I guess. But then… he was always so weird anyway, it’s kind of hard to tell.’
I had already dried my tears — or Nikki’s tears, I guess, although Dr Holcombe told me not to think of my new body that way. It’s YOUR body, Emerson, he’d said. Not hers. Not any more.
Right. I just had her name. Her face. Her loft. Her boyfriend(s). You name it.
‘I don’t get it,’ I said to Frida. I still felt like crying every time I thought about Christopher, and how a new girl might be getting to play Journeyquest — or sit around and watch surgery shows — with him right this very minute. Although truthfully, the allure of surgery shows had sort of waned for me. But I was trying to deal with it. As Dr Holcombe had pointed out, at least I was alive. ‘What’s eating you?’