Becoming Sarah

chapter ONE


I woke with my throat on fire and sour vomit in my mouth. With great effort, I raised my head. I was lying on a chilly, unfamiliar tile floor, in an unknown bathroom, with a puddle of puke in the bathtub and a half-empty bottle of vodka within arm’s reach.

“Oh, God,” I moaned, and the voice in my ears was a stranger’s voice, lower and deeper than my own. I wasn’t dead, but my head throbbed to the tempo of jungle drums and my body felt bruised, pummeled, abused beyond repair. I grabbed the edge of the sink to pull myself up. My fingers brushed a plastic prescription bottle and sent it clattering to the floor. I caught it before it rolled behind the toilet. Xanax, according to the label, prescribed for a Sarah Elizabeth Winslow. Empty.

I set the pill bottle back on the sink, turned on the faucet, and cupped my palm to catch the spill of cold water. That’s when I realized, staring at my hands, that they weren’t my hands at all.

My own fingers were short and stubby, with bitten-down nails and peeling cuticles. These were long, tapered, and elegant, with pretty oval nails painted a deep blood red. These hands wore several and turquoise rings.

Okay, then. I stared at the strange nails, the jewelry, the pale, smooth fingers and delicate wrists. So I’d been unconscious after what had happened in the alley. A shiver shook me as the images swarmed back – the smell, Ricky's mouth twisted with fear and rage, the impact of his closed fist on my cheekbone, his hands tight around my neck. But I was alive now, wasn’t I? So I’d been in a coma. My nails had grown out. Someone had given me a manicure, and slipped the rings onto my fingers. Sure.

But this was all just a way to delay the inevitable. More than anything, at that moment, I didn’t want to raise my head and look into the mirror above the sink. Because I already knew, on some level, that I wasn’t me anymore. After 16 years, you know your own body and what it feels like to wear it.

Slowly, reluctantly, I lifted my chin. There she was, the stranger in the mirror. Early twenties, I guessed. Brown eyes. Creamy skin, sooty lashes. Black hair, cut in a bob short enough to frame a flawless face and a model’s sultry pout. It was a breathtakingly pretty face. Chic. Sophisticated. The opposite of the old me.

I looked down. I wore a pair of pale blue silk pajamas, the fabric fine and soft that it floated on my skin. The pajama bottoms hung on slim, almost boyish hips. In a daze, I unbuttoned the top to reveal breasts were small enough to cup in my palms. A small silver loop pierced my belly button. I touched it tentatively, as if it might hurt, as if the true owner of this body might slap my fingers away. I ran my palms over a belly flat and taut as a movie star's.

I couldn’t argue with the truth. I was somebody else.

And Sarah Elizabeth Winslow, if this was her body and her bathroom – where was she? Waking up in a hospital room, wondering why the nurses kept calling her Jamie Lumley? Why she now wore glasses and had red-brown hair hanging limply to her shoulders?

Cold water still gushed from the spigot. I scooped up enough to wash the foul taste from my mouth, then turned off the flow with a sharp, angry twist of the handle. My throat still felt as if I’d swallowed a knife with jagged edges. My stomach hurt; my whole body ached as if I’d been beaten, but from the inside out. Part of me wanted to lie down again on the cool tile floor, close my eyes, and sleep until I could wake up in my own bed at home, under my fuzzy pink blanket, with my clock radio tuned to my favorite pop station. I’d hit the snooze button once or twice, curling deeper into my warm cocoon, before reluctantly swinging my feet over the edge of the bed and into frayed but comfortable Bugs Bunny slippers. I would pad out into the living room, where my mother slept on the couch, and – if she was working – shake her shoulder until she groaned and muttered, “All right, all right, I’m getting up.” I’d turn on the coffee maker, and pry my eyes fully open once the smell of brewing java filled every nook and cranny of our tiny flat.

But no, that wasn’t an option now. I washed my face and dried it on an impossibly fluffy towel hung next to the sink, then pushed open the bathroom door. I moved through the rooms, quiet as a cat burglar, touching nothing. I was half certain that someone would come storming in and ask what I was doing where I didn’t belong. It was clear I didn’t belong here, in this apartment with its hardwood floors, white leather couch, high ceilings and a view of a quiet, tree-lined street bathed by early-afternoon spring sunshine. On the kitchen counter I found an iPhone, a set of keys and a wallet next to a stack of mail thrown carelessly on a counter. The counter shone so white and clean I couldn’t believe anyone had ever cooked a meal there.

I fumbled the wallet open. It held stack of twenties crisp from the ATM, and so thick my stomach turned somersaults. For sure, more money than I earned in a month of shelving books. A platinum Visa in the name of Sarah E. Winslow. American Express, ditto. A membership card for a gym downtown. And – bingo – a California driver’s license. Same name, and a photo of the girl in the mirror, her eyes rimmed with black kohl, her expression sulky. According to the date of birth, she’d turned 24 just last month. Her address was on Hayes Street, San Francisco, apartment No. 4.

So now I knew who I was, and presumably where. I figured I could find out a whole lot more by going through the mail, or checking the files on the computer I’d glimpsed in the spare room, or listening to the messages on the frantically blinking answering machine. But while I’d accepted – for now – that I was no longer in possession of my own body, I wasn’t nearly ready to let go of myself, of Jamie. For all I knew, this Sarah person could show up any minute and demand her life back. I’d be happy to give it to her, too, in return for my own. My mother must be going out of her mind right now. And Maria. I checked the clock on the wall. She would wonder why I’d skipped out on our geometry class, and whether I’d be around to eat lunch with her on the wall in front of the school.

Except maybe Sarah was now in my body. One sure way to find out. I grabbed a cordless phone from its stand on the counter and dialed my home number.

“Hello?” My mother’s voice. My throat went tight with longing.

“Um, hi.” That low, throaty voice again. “Can I talk to Jamie?”

A long silence. Fear blossomed in the pit of my belly. Please, no, I thought. Then another voice came on, one I recognized. Our neighbor, Janelle. Aunt Janelle, I’d called her since I was a child. Den mother to the whole block. Always at her house there with extra plate of spaghetti, a leftover slice of cake, especially at the end of the month when the Lumley family’s food stamps where long gone.

“Who’s this?” Aunt Janelle demanded.

“I’m, ah, a friend of Jamie’s. From school. From French club.”

Another silence, too long. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to speak to her,” Aunt Janelle said. The suspicion lacing her voice had gone, leaving a weariness I’d never heard before. “She’s – something’s happened.”

“But she’s okay, right?” I tried to swallow down the note of desperation. “I mean, she will be, right?”

“No. I’m sorry, no. She’s not okay. She’s. . .dead.”

In the background I heard my mother’s wail, like the shriek of a wounded animal. I dropped the phone; it clattered on the kitchen floor, skidded under a cabinet, and lay still.