The Switch

Charlie Skinner

I look around the room. I do not stand out in this group whatsoever. I’m sitting in a circle of blue plastic chairs, like the ones I’d sat in in high school, with the grated texture and the holes in the back for no apparent reason. Right across from me is a girl around my age, maybe thirty-two, dressed in all black, with the most convex nose I’ve ever seen, and stringy, fake blonde hair, in desperate need of some hydration. She stutters when she talks, telling a story of waking up on Mars last year, discovering an underground human population, and returning to Earth via a wormhole. She’s clearly nuts. Everyone else in the circle nods along as though she’s the most credible space explorer to have ever existed. I attempt to make eye contact with a young man sitting next to the girl. He’s short and scruffy and has a neck tattoo I can’t quite make out. Besides this one characteristic, he’s almost as normal-looking as I am. Surely, if I could lock eyes with him, we’d share a look that says what is this lunatic talking about? But he’s listening respectfully to the Martian woman and seems genuinely interested in what she has to say.

My mother had found this support group online and had pretty much forced me to go. AGDI, or, Anonymous Group for Disbelieved Individuals. The name turned me off almost as much as the idea of sharing my story with a group of complete strangers. That, and the fact that my story now feels like just that, a story. Memory’s funny that way. It’s unreliable and biased and subjective, and a bunch of other words that basically translate to: you can’t trust anyone, not even yourself.

 ***

Ten Years Earlier…

I paused to look at myself in one of the mirrors. This particular mirror seemed to reflect all the other mirrors, and a hundred pairs of blue eyes blinked emptily back at me. It had been a long day of roller coasters, haunted houses, and funnel cakes. The mirror maze was the last amusement on Jenny’s checklist for the day. It had been Jenny’s idea to go to the theme park, specially set up for Halloween. For her, the idea of tricking your mind into thinking you’re falling to your death was fun. The park was cheap and hadn’t done much for the spooky occasion, besides sticking a couple of ghost stickers to the side of their biggest roller coaster, The Minotaur. The theme of the maze was Minotaur too, which was very clever to anyone who’s studied Greek mythology. Unfortunately, the connection had mostly been lost on the current generation.

Jenny and I had split up in the maze, and now I was completely alone.

“Jenny!” I called out. I heard nothing back. I wanted to whine and cry, like I did when I was a kid, and I got separated from my mom at the mall. I remembered little from that traumatic experience except that my mother had been shocked that no one stopped me, a tiny child wandering the halls of a major shopping center for four hours on a Saturday afternoon. I remember thinking she was silly for thinking that because, by my recollection, I hadn’t seen a soul in the mall the entire time I was lost. But my mother had said that was impossible and that I must be remembering the story wrong.

        I started walking quickly through the maze, trying to make my way out as fast as possible. My charcoal black hair flew behind me and swished around my shoulders in all my reflections. I felt like I was walking for twenty minutes. Suddenly, I heard Jenny. I couldn’t make out her words. It wasn’t until the second time she yelled that I was even sure it was her, because I’d never heard her voice so full of pure terror.

“It’s alive!” she screamed.

I quickened my pace.

Whack!

I ran straight into one of the mirrors, fell back, and hit my head on the wall behind me, sending splinters of glass to the ground. I crumpled to the floor, scared I might black out. After a few moments, I felt alright. This is ridiculous, I’m not going to get lost in this maze.

I stood up and started walking, very slowly, down the hall. I couldn’t hear Jenny anymore. It was then I noticed there’s something off. It took me a moment to realize exactly what it was. The floor. It used to be concrete, but now it was glass, with orange LED strips running along both sides. When had that changed? I must not have noticed the switch when I freaked out looking for Jenny.

I finally came around a corner and saw the theme park at the end of a long black hall, framed by a square of warm light. It looked like something out of a postcard; a merry-go-round and happy children eating ice cream. I was out of the maze in seconds. Right outside the entrance, leaning against the statue of the Minotaur, was Jenny, checking her watch and looking impatient.   

I was the first one to speak. “Are you okay?” I stumbled out of the maze towards her.

She looked confused and then concerned. “Are you?” she asked, reaching to the back of my head. When her hand came away it was smeared with blood, except the blood looked black now that the sun had gone down.

“I fell, but I’m alright. Were you not screaming just now?” I asked.                    

Jenny’s brow furrowed. “No? I’ve been out of the maze for ten minutes. I’ve just been waiting for you,” she replied. “I was getting worried, the attendant says most people are out in under five minutes.” She was slightly teasing. 

“I must have hit my head harder than I thought. Maybe I’m concussed.” Jenny’s pre-med schooling took over and she perked up at the word “concussed.”

        “Let’s find a first aid hut,” she suggested.

I groaned. “I’d really rather not. The park’s almost closed. Can we just go home? My mom can check it out once we’re back.”

        “Okay, but I’m driving,” Jenny insisted. Jenny didn’t have her full license yet but in lieu of getting behind the wheel with a concussion or calling my mom to come pick us up from an hour away, I figured it was worth the risk. We made our way to the parking lot, Jenny a few steps ahead of me, texting my mom that we were on our way back. Her phone lit up her face and her curly near-black hair fell forward. I instantly stopped and grabbed her shoulder. She was startled. “What?” she asked.

        “Did it rain while I was in the maze?” I asked urgently.

        “No,” she shrugged me off. “Why?”

        “Your hair,” I pointed. “It’s curly. You straightened it when we left this morning.”

        “No I didn’t, Cassady.” Jenny sounded so sure and looked more concerned than before.

        “I could’ve sworn…” I trailed off, suddenly unconvinced. Jenny started walking again.

        “Do you remember where we parked?” she asked. I shook my head.

        “Section F, but that’s all I remember.”

        “You sit here. I’m gonna go find it.” She took the keys out of my pocket and sat me down on a cement divider. I slumped forward, feeling completely defeated. Something wasn’t right. I watched as the park emptied out, almost everyone in costume. A group of young boys dressed as ninjas walked past me. I thought they must be siblings because they all looked so much alike. One of the little ninjas stared at me for a good five seconds before his chaperone turned his head and pushed him to keep walking. I looked up to smile at whoever was leading this ninja troupe, but a grimacing mother met my stare before they rushed off. I glared at their receding figures. What had I done? Maybe I looked rougher than I thought.

        Fifteen minutes went by, and Jenny still hadn’t come back. I was just starting to wonder if I should go look for her when she drove up in my car. I knew it was mine because of the major dent in the bumper, from two years earlier, when I’d crashed it the day after I got it. It was my mom’s old Toyota Camry, and my eighteenth birthday present.

It had just been my mom and me since I was thirteen. My dad had moved to Germany to be with his mistress, and I hadn’t heard from him since. She wasn’t your stereotypical mistress. She wasn’t blonde or younger. She wasn’t shallow or sexy. She was just Mallory, my mom’s childhood best friend. After he left, I replaced Mallory as my mom’s best friend. We were like the Gilmore Girls, except sometimes R-rated, and my mother’s about two hundred pounds heavier than Lorelai, a repercussion of her unhappy marriage. My mother gave me her old car and bought herself a brand new BMW with eyelashes on the headlights. The eyelashes weren’t really her style, and she’d tried to pull them off, but whatever the previous owner had used to glue them on, wouldn’t give. Whenever I picture my mom in my head, it’s always her bent over her car in our driveway, trying to pull those damn eyelashes off, sweat dripping down her cheeks.

        Jenny stopped the car in front of me.

        “What took you so long?” I asked.

        “You said F. It was nowhere near F.” Jenny sounded annoyed. I mumbled an apology and loaded my tired limbs into the car. I could’ve sworn it was F. We sat in silence on the way back. The drive usually took over an hour, but Jenny did it in 52 minutes, going 140 kph down the highway. There was almost no traffic, and the road was lit up by streetlights, all the billboards and street signs reflecting and whizzing by us like colorful comets shooting through the night sky. I wanted to drift off and put this peculiar day behind me, but I knew I shouldn’t, in case I really did have a concussion. For a moment though, I almost fell asleep, flashes of minotaur statues come to life, dancing and roaring behind my eyelids. Jenny shook me awake.

        “We’re here,” she said. I rolled my head to look out the passenger window. Sitting on my porch step was a woman. I didn’t recognize her, and it was too dark to make out her features. I jolted upright and aggressively wiped my eyes, thinking I must be dreaming.

        “What’s wrong?” Jenny asked.

        “Who is that? Why is there a random lady on my porch?”  I was exasperated.

Jenny’s face went from concern to confusion, and back to concern again.

        “It’s just your mom, Cassady, what's your issue?”

I gaped at her.

        “That is not my mom.” The woman got up from her spot on the porch and started to walk towards the car. I struggled to unbuckle my seatbelt, suddenly frantic. The woman reached the car before I could get out.

        “You’re home, Sady. Are you okay?”  It was my mom! I recognized the voice instantly. In the dim glow of the car’s overhead light, I got a good look at her. She was barely recognizable. She was at least a hundred and fifty pounds skinnier than the last time I’d seen her, earlier that morning. But her nose was the same, and her brow furrowed in the same way it always did when she was worried. Her eyes were blue, and her makeup was done the same as always. Panicking, I pushed the car door open, shoving the woman, my mom, out of the way, and I started to run. I didn’t know where to, so I just booked it.

Jenny and my mother called out after me. I ignored them and ran towards the main downtown street. As soon as I was off my block, I spotted trick-or-treaters. Princesses and pilots, monsters and Frankenstein’s, nurses and knights in not-so-shining armor. A group of twenty-somethings passed me, inebriated, and clearly on their way to some sort of party. I started to head towards them, but I stopped when I realized I had no idea what I would say to them. Hi, my mom just lost weight! I could scream. Or, Help! I forgot where I parked my car. And my best friend didn’t straighten her hair today! I’d sound ridiculous.

I stopped running and started walking instead. I went to the old church where I had youth group. I decided this was as good a place as any to just sit and process. There was no one around. I could hear kids laughing and screaming from a few blocks away but there was no one nearby. I tried to hold back the tears, but they were relentless. I sobbed, writhed, and struggled to catch my breath.

“This can’t be happening…This isn’t real…What the fuck, what the fuck, what the actual fuck!” I rocked back and forth in the fetal position until I was all cried out.

Eventually, after about an hour, I came to the decision that my confusion was just a symptom of my concussion. I’d be fine once I’d healed. Soon, I’d put all this behind me. It’s at this point that my mom, still thin, came running down the street. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her run before. 

“Sady, my baby, thank god!” She wrapped her skinny arms around me and hugged me close. She smelled the same as she always did. “Are you all right?”

I nodded quietly, determined to just ride out this nightmare, as long as it took.   

“Okay sweetie. Let’s go home.” She helped me up. “Your father’s worried sick, he’s got the dog out looking for you.” This took me a moment to register. My father? What on earth would my father be doing in our house? Tears started to fall from my eyes again, but this time, I didn’t make a sound.

       The next morning, I woke up and walked down the creaky stairs to the dining room. Turning to face me were three pairs of blue eyes, just like mine: my mother, my father, and a little boy around five years old I’d never seen before. They all sat around our dining table eating pancakes, smiling back at me as if my whole world hadn't just flipped 180 degrees.

“Sady!” The little boy squealed, except he pronounced it “Thady.” He jumped into my arms, and I had no choice but to catch him.

“Blueberry or chocolate, Sades?” My dad asked. I blinked at him for a moment, looking him up and down. He was older than the last time I’d seen him, seven years ago. He held up a plate of pancakes.

“Blueberry,” I said. I sat down for breakfast and stared across the table at my dad, unable to accept his presence in our home.

“How’s Mallory?” I blurted out, dropping my eyes to my plate. It was my mom who answered.

“She’s great! She’ll be joining us for dinner tonight with her new boyfriend.” She said, I mumbled an acknowledgment, but I didn’t prod any further. Nothing made sense.

***

Days pass, then weeks, then five years. Drunk one evening, on Christmas break, back from my semester at Cambridge University, my mother asked me why Jenny and I had drifted apart all those years ago. I told my mother the truth. I told her that one day, everything had switched. I told her she used to be fat. I told her I was an only child. I told her Dad wasn’t around anymore, and that somewhere, in another universe, someone was living my life, and I was living theirs. I told her that for a long time I just waited for the switch to happen again, and now, I didn’t even think I wanted it to. I’d decided that whatever Jenny was screaming at right before I fell in the maze, was something horrible. I decided that the switch saved my life.

 ***

Now, ten years after the fact, I think maybe everything that happened to me was just something I fabricated in my youth. Some story I told myself enough times that I actually believed it. I go back and forth between being sure of the switch and praying every night I won't ever have to go back, to convincing myself I made it all up. Either way, I know I don't belong here in this circle, alongside these spacewalkers, animal interpreters, and time travelers. These people are lunatics. I stand up to leave, making a scene so everyone knows I’m not like them. I turn abruptly and slip, falling to the ground. My head crashes against the linoleum floor. 

When I look up the chairs are empty. The whole room is empty. I panic, looking for the door. I go to all the rooms in the building, hoping to find the group but the building is abandoned. NO NO NO, this can’t be happening. I run outside the building into the chilly November air. I pull out my phone to dial my dad’s number, my now go-to contact in case of emergencies, but I can’t find it. I search for my mom’s name. No result. I go through my contacts and find no names I recognize. I’m not in my reality anymore, and I’m not in my old reality either. I look around at the deserted streets, and I’m reminded of that day at the mall, all those years ago, when all the people vanished.