Becoming Sarah (3 page)

“Look, um, Matt, I’ve got to --”

“Oh, yeah, sorry to keep you. Y-you probably have a million things going on right now. Okay, sure. But if you're upset about something and you ever want to, you know, talk or anything. . . .well, I’m here.”

“Thanks.” I forced a smile. “Really, thanks.”

I let myself into the apartment. Sarah’s phone was wringing again. I turned it off. God, I felt wretched. My eyes felt dry and itchy from all the crying I’d done. My throat was still sore, my stomach muscles strained, and I was dizzy with hunger.

In Sarah’s refrigerator I found a few cartons of yogurt, an apple, a case of Evian, an unopened bottle of champagne, and a takeout carton of Thai food – chicken with basil – that didn’t smell too bad. I threw the chicken in the microwave, then ate it straight from the carton, scraping out the last of the sauce with my fingers.

When I’d eaten, I dragged myself to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. I kicked off my shoes, but fell asleep even before I could wriggle out of my jeans.

I slept long and deep, then woke gasping from a dream where
Ricky’s hands circled my
throat again.

It took me a few moments to realize where I was. I lay there gasping in the dark, frightened and alone. I’d never slept in a house by myself before. Even when my mother worked the night shift as a nurse’s aid, she was home before I got up for school.

The sleek glow-in-the-dark clock on the dresser told me it was 4 a.m., but I couldn’t get back to sleep. I turned on the lights, pulled down the shade, and slowly undressed in front of the full-length mirror.

I’d never imagined having a body like this. I admired my reflection, vain for the first time in my life. I had to remind myself that this wasn’t truly my body. I didn’t choose the butterfly tattoo on my left shoulder blade. I didn’t remember why I had a long white scar on my right shin. I wasn’t the one who’d had my pubic hair waxed down to a heart-shaped patch in front --
acutally
, I couldn’t even think about that process without blushing. So I had no right to revel in the long, slender legs, the toned arms, or the effortlessness with which I executed a graceful pirhouette.

Food and sleep had improved my mood, and my outlook. So Maria hadn’t believe me right off. Well, she was in shock. In a few days I’d try again. Maybe I’d talk to my mom, too. I’d think of a way to make sure Ricky didn’t get away with murder. It would all work out, I was sure of it.

Meanwhile I had work to do. If I was going to live in Sarah’s body, as Sarah, I needed to know more about her life. I’d gotten away with it with Matt, who barely knew her, but what about Sarah’s parents, her friends, her boyfriend if she had one?

In the bathroom, I grimaced at the ripe smell of booze and vomit. I cleaned up the mess, then showered. In a pair of stretchy black pants and a tank top that left my midriff bare and showed off the ring in my navel, I set to work.

First,
messages. The light at the base of the house phone was blinking
twice to indicate two messages
; I pushed play.

A male voice, older and faintly worried. “Sarah, this is Dr. Shin. I see you’ve missed your last two appointments, and frankly I’m concerned. Give me a call.”

A doctor? Just my luck that there would be something seriously wrong with my new body. But I felt fine. Tired
,
but fine.

A deep male
voice. “Sarah? Sarah, pick up. Why aren’t you answering my texts? Or your cell phone?” Long pause. “
All right, if you want to play it that way. Look, we both said things we regretted the other night, but you know how I feel about you. Come on, honey, be reasonable. What we have is too good to just throw away. Just think
about it, baby.
”

Sarah’s boyfriend, apparently. I wondered what they’d fought about.

I picked up Sarah’s iPhone and stared at the screen, which asked for a password. I figured I’d have to reset it to even be able to use it, but it was worth a try. I typed in “1234”. Bingo, I was in. Oh, Sarah. I didn’t know her, but I was starting to get the picture. I dialed her voicemail.

A woman’s voice, high and irritated. “Sarah, this is Shelley. It’s, uh, it’s 12:45 and you’re still not here. This is the last straw, just the last straw. I’ll tell you what – don’t even bother coming in next week, okay? Obviously you don’t actually need this job.”

Well, that was one more thing I didn’t need to worry about – figuring out where Sarah worked. Apparently she’d burned all her bridges recently.

An older woman with a cultured drawl. “Sarah, sweetheart? It’s Mother. Your father and I were wondering how you’re doing these days. We never hear from you. Oh, I think your father wants to say hello. Just a minute.” A pause. “Oh, he says never mind, he’s on his way to the club. Anyway, he and I would love to have you come to the Hamptons this summer, and Dorrie Peterson – you must remember her daughter Madison from school? – said Madison might join her for a week if you were coming to keep her company, so we need to know. . .oh, we'll discuss this later. Just call me back when you can. I know you’ve got a busy life out there in California, but we worry about you. Bye now, darling.”

So that was a start.

I'd always been good at research, and as the sun rose and the muted sounds of the morning commute filtered in through the windows, I buckled down. First, I opened the mail.

Mostly bills -- Sarah bought tons of clothes and shoes, shockingly expensive stuff. I gulped at the $500 Coach bag billed to her Visa. Did people really spend that much on accessories? Apparently so. Nordstrom, Bebe, Saks Fifth Avenue, Guess, Nieman Marcus, Benetton. . .if there was a clothing store, she had their credit card. Some junk mail, a few magazines -- Vogue, Elle -- and a bank statement from the past month. I scanned the long list of withdrawals, mostly $80 to $100 at a time. She'd written quite a few checks, too. The largest I guessed was her rent, three times what my mother and I paid.

So now I knew how Sarah had spent her money. But where did she get it? There was only one deposit, on the first of the month, but it was a big one:
nine
thousand dollars, to the penny.

I needed more information. Sarah hadn't kept any files or folders, but in her closet I finally found a shoebox stuffed with old mail and documents. I sorted out half a dozen bank statements for the past year, all the same.
Nine
thousand dollars deposited like clockwork; most or all of it spent the same month. Finally, a letter buried deep in the shoebox helped me put it all together. It bore the letterhead of a law firm, Percy, Norris & Weigelman, at an address in New York City.

Dear Ms. Winslow,

I received your correspondence dated January 14 of this year. Unfortunately, I am unable to grant your request for an increase in your monthly allowance. Your grandmother, in setting up your trust, was very specific as to the amount of the funds to be disbursed to you.

While she did allow for the occurrence of extraordinary situations, those situations are limited to medical emergencies and the like.

As you know, you will receive the full amount of your grandmother's
gift
on the day of your 30th birthday. Until that time, therefore, I am unable to alter the monthly deposit to your account.

Please do contact me if I can be of any further assistance.

Sincerely,

Charles Norris III

So Sarah was a trust fund kid. That took care of my money worries.
Nine
thousand dollars sounded like an obscene amount of cash. It was just a few days past the first of the month, so Sarah's account balance should be high. I could live like a queen on that kind of money and take care of my mother, too.

Also in the shoebox I found a handful of pay stubs, postcards, and photos. The pay stubs showed that Sarah had worked a few hours a week at a bookstore downtown, for just above minimum wage. The pictures showed her with female friends, mostly - at a nightclub, in Halloween costumes, in caps and gowns at a graduation ceremony. Several showed her with an older couple, the woman bony and expensively dressed, the man silver haired and sophisticated. Her parents? No siblings - apparently she, like me, was an only child.

“I got the perfect daughter already,” my mother liked to say, “so who needed more kids?” Anyway, maybe she hadn’t had the chance. My dad took off when I was two and though she’d had boyfriends she never remarried.

A wave of homesickness swept through me, but I pushed it away.

Also in the shoebox was Sarah’s passport. I flipped through the pages and studied the stamps. She’d been to Mexico, Thailand, the Bahamas, Italy and France. I’d always wanted to go to France. I watched an old Audrey Hepburn movie on TV once, when I was 10, and ever since I’d daydreamed about Paris. It looked so romantic with all the narrow streets and little shops. I wanted to walk along the Seine, to wander through the Louvre. On my bedroom wall, I had a poster of a bunch of people sitting outside a little French bistro. I liked stare at it and imagine I was there with them.

I’d even picked French to study in school, though everyone told me I was crazy. “You live in California,” my mother said, shaking her head. “You’d use Spanish every single day. It might help you get a job. Who on earth are you going to speak French with?”

I could be stubborn, though, and on that issue I was. I couldn’t get that picture out of my head: me drinking coffee at a little table outside a bistro in Paris, just watching the people walk by.

I put the shoebox back where I’d found it and crossed the room to the bed. On the bedside table, in silver frames, were several photos. Sarah, laughing, her arm around a guy with blond hair and rock-star stubble on his jaw. The blond guy again, grinning into the camera lens. He’d rolled up his sleeves to show bronzed and muscular forearms. In the photos, they looked like the perfect couple.

In the spare bedroom, I switched on Sarah’s
MacBook
and went through her files, but I didn’t find much, just a few grocery lists, downloaded photos and music files. If only she’d kept a journal. More than anything, I wanted a peek inside Sarah’s head.

I went to Facebook, but it asked for a password, and after a few attempts at guessing, I gave up. Whatever she’d used, it wasn’t as simple as her phone password. I guessed she’d have a lot of friends, but unless she’d decided to broadcast her deepest thoughts, I wouldn’t get to know her better on Facebook anyway.

I wandered through the apartment, poking into drawers and opening cabinets. What else could I learn? I found a leather-bound organizer and set it aside to look through later. In the spare room, above a bookshelf, I found a framed diploma from Ithaca College in New York: a bachelor’s degree in English. I let my fingers walk over the spines of Sarah's books. Novels, mostly mysteries. A few college textbooks: short story collections, classics, lots of poetry. The spines were creased and broken. She’d read most of them, then; maybe she was rich and spoiled, but she wasn't stupid.

At random I pulled out a volume of poetry by Sylvia Plath. The book fell open to one dog-eared page. “Lady Lazarus” was the name of the poem. Someone, I assumed Sarah, had highlighted a few lines:

Dying

Is an art, like everything else,

I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.

I do it so it feels real.

I guess you could say I've a call.

I read the rest of the poem. Dark, depressing stuff, all about suicide and death.

The bathroom was revealing, too. The medicine cabinet held several prescriptions - antibiotics, past their expiration date; a skin cream; eardrops; sleeping pills; and Zoloft
, an antidepressant
, prescribed by a Dr. Shin. Her psychiatrist? It made sense. She’d skipped her appointments. Maybe she’d stopped taking her pills. If she was depressed, it explained why she might have tried to kill herself. I closed the medicine cabinet. I’d had plenty of problems, before, but I’d never considered suicide, not seriously.

She’d had it all, Sarah had. Beauty. Money. Two parents. A gorgeous boyfriend. A college education. Yet, apparently, it hadn’t been enough.

I took myself out to lunch at a café on Haight Street. As shell-shocked and awful as I felt, there was something to be said for being 24 years old, fashionably dressed, with money burning a hole in my pocket. The waitress ushered me immediately to a big table by the window; had I been 16, in my usual baggy jeans and hooded
navy blue sweatshirt, overweight and plain, I doubt
I would have gotten such good service.

I craved a burger and fries but ordered a sandwich and salad. I didn't buy the idea of a higher being; I never had. But if some force had put my consciousness into Sarah, whether as reward, punishment or random chance, it made sense to treat this body well.

I soaked up the sunshine, savored my lunch, and watched the parade of life outside on the sidewalk. A girl with hot pink hair. A guy on a skateboard. Two middle-aged women, holding hands. A dreadlocked mom with a stroller. A homeless man, leading a cat on a leash.