I keep walking. It happens again and again. People look me in the eye. People smile at me. It’s actually unsettling.
I want to smile back, but my face stays frozen. I can’t force myself to say hello back. I can only frown and feel this hot discomfort.
When I reach the market, I walk up and down the aisles, observing all the packaging, relishing the feeling of being in a store with money in my pocket. I have forty dollars. I could buy anything.
In the end, I buy what I need.
“Wow!” The checker says. “Zip ties! Trash bags! Bleach!” I am going to jail. “Where’s the body?” He smiles at me. He is making a joke.
“Ha!” I cough. I quickly toss People magazine on the counter, just in case.
I shouldn’t have bothered. He is happily packing the items away for me. Of course, he doesn’t think I killed someone. He can’t even conceive of it. Can’t conceive of a situation that could lead to that conclusion.
He bags everything up and hands it over. “Have a nice day! Love the coat!” It is a gorgeous coat.
Once I leave the store, I sit on the stone benches at the center of the square, waiting for my legs to stop shaking. I end up staying for over an hour, not just people-watching but people-watching people watching me.
Because people see me. They acknowledge me. They used to look over my head, through me, around me. Now they are looking for me. Their eyes are sharpened on my expensive coat, my protein-laced hair. They want something from me, instead of fearing I might take something from them.
I still can’t smile. I feel like a fraud. But all the way home I wonder, Could I smile? Could I get used to this? Could I smile back if I was smiled at long enough?
I am walking up Demi’s street when I spot a man standing outside a garage. I know immediately that he is Graham Herschel, even though I had never heard of him before last night. He is the type of person you know on sight, like he has always existed in the back of your mind, in your wildest dreams.
He is gazing toward the castle on the hill. He’s the most gorgeous man I have ever seen up close. He looks like a billboard come to life. He has an image quality, like he could be anything you want him to be, on the other side. The sunlight smears his profile. His suit is cut in caressing lines. My ears are hot. I feel this drowning sensation.
I want to cry. I think I’m going to cry, break down right there in the street, start pleading: All I ever wanted was to be as pure, as blameless, as you are. That’s all I ever wanted. But the closer I get, the farther I am. The fight for YOUR life is littered with death, like I caused it, like I am the common denominator to all the tragedy in my life. Like it was all my fault.
He is the kind of beautiful that makes you feel like a sinner.
He turns suddenly, smiles slowly. His smile is a present he is unwrapping. “You must be Demi. I’m Graham.” He puts his hand out. “I live upstairs.”
I feel this sudden, panicked urge to confess. Of course I’m not Demi! I can’t even smile when people smile at me!
He slips his hand in mine. His skin feels like money.
They’re so beautiful; he and Lyla both are the toys you keep on the high shelf. Don’t touch them! You might break them! And I am the toy you let your toddler play with. The one you bring to the beach. The one you draw on and cut up and leave at the park and think, Good. Now I don’t have to bother throwing it away.
“God,” he says. His voice has a rugged deep. My heart almost collapses. “You’re gorgeous.” And I see a schism, another life in his smile. I live downstairs. He lives upstairs. We have barbecues, drinks in the courtyard; we sit by the fountain and drink wine. He tells me I’m gorgeous. Lyla does, too. I become a billboard, an image with nothing behind it.
“Thank you.”
“Welcome to the neighborhood.” He presses a button, makes the garage beep.
DEMI
Demi’s body is still by the door. It hasn’t moved, hasn’t jumped back to life. She isn’t waiting for me in the kitchen, pouring me a glass of wine, grinning. Gotcha!
Did I kill her? The sun is setting again already, or else it’s always setting in this apartment, shadows dropping into the trees, sucking out the light.
Did I want her dead?
I think of the exhaustion that came over me like a stupor, how it settled in my bones. When I should have been panicking, when I should have called the police, I went to sleep.
Did my body betray me? Did it draw me to that swing to sleep? Was it hatching a plan, letting it blossom in the back of my mind all along?
You must be Demi.
I can be her. She can be me. We can switch places. I can die so she can live.
I am smart enough to know there is an expiration date on this plan, but I am also, unfortunately, smart enough to know that this may be the best of a bunch of bad options.
Option one: I go back on the streets, with a new coat and no prospects, no future. I leave LA and hope I don’t get caught.
Option two: I go to jail, where there is shelter, where I will be fed.
Option three: I borrow her life just for a little while. It’s not every day a perfect stranger leaves you a fortune.
But there are so many variables. What about her friends? Won’t people come looking for her? But she’s just moved in; her neighbors don’t even know her. They both thought I was her.
Last night she said she had a job in tech. And I have a degree from a technical college that I’m pretty sure is not technically a college. Still.
I find her laptop in the dresser next to my bed. She doesn’t have a lock screen. She does have a history. I find the company she works for, Alphaspire. I use her fingerprint to unlock her e-mail. Then I change all her passwords.
I put on Fleetwood Mac to give my resolution atmosphere. I light candles but leave the lights out.
I take stock of everything she has.
It’s amazing what one person can own. She has hundreds of pairs of shoes lined on the white shelves, some still in plastic, tissue stuffed. One closet is dedicated to camping equipment: a sleeping bag, a tent, all tagged and brand-new. Another closet contains thin rows of drawers that pull out to reveal patterned jewelry, some carefully separated, some twisted into an unholy mass: chains as thick as teething rings, strands of pearls, scattered diamond tennis bracelets. It’s a mess worth more than my life.
Six watches. Seven bottles of perfume. Two hundred and eighty-three books. Two computers, one laptop, one tablet, one Kindle. Fourteen bottles of wine. Seventy-two rolls of toilet paper.
I have never loved math this much. I will have to be careful selling some things—the idea of selling anything makes me nervous—but there is a lot of money to be made inside these walls.
The woman upstairs crosses the floor over my head. I will have to be extra careful. But everything I need is here. Everything is laid out for me, like the wish granted by a twisted fairy godmother.
There is just one major stumbling block: the body. I glance at it laid out next to the door. Is it taking on a grayish cast? Is it starting to look more dead?
When I was twelve or thirteen, our next-door neighbor died. They found the body in summer, but he had been dead since January. The police came to speak to us to try to find his next of kin, but we didn’t know him, and he didn’t know us. They advised us to stay somewhere else that night while they removed the body. Someplace else wasn’t a possibility. My dad got drunk; he smoked cigarettes. He turned up his music, Led Zeppelin, the perfect dead-body music. And we tried not to hear, we tried not to see, we tried not to know as they opened the door.