In My Shoes (7 page)

“Thank you,” she replied.

“Sure. Okay, so I cook for my mom usually
about three times a week. If we are still switched…”

“No problem,” she responded back. “My mom
does most of the cooking, but she’s taught me quite a bit. What do
you cook for your mom?”

“I’m not a great cook,” I said, “but she
always appreciates the effort. I can make just about anything with
instructions on the box. Feel free to prepare anything you see. If
she acts surprised, tell her you are trying something new. She’ll
tell you it’s great…and she’ll mean it.”

“Got it.”

“Okay,” I continued, “as you can see, the
kitchen not only opens back to the living room and the hall, but
around the island it opens to the dining area and den. We either
eat at the dining area table or we eat at the island, and we watch
TV in the den. There is a bathroom against that wall next to the
television.”

We circled back around the island to the
hallway we entered from, facing the front door. From where we were
standing, we headed left down the main hallway.

“Everything else is straight down this
hallway here. On the right, there is a guest bedroom and then the
door to the garage. The washer and dryer are in the garage. Sorry,
but I do my own laundry.”

“I’m sure I can figure it out. I know the
basics. Do you…do your mom’s laundry?”

“Sometimes, to help her out. She won’t ask
you to, and she doesn’t expect it, so don’t worry about it.” She
seemed to show a bit of relief on her face, not that I could blame
her. I wouldn’t want to do some strange woman’s laundry either.

“On the left, here, is my mother’s room.” We
headed into my mother’s room.

“What is your mom’s name?” she asked.

“Oh, sorry. Her name is Angela. Matthews,
same as mine.”

“What about your dad?”

“I don’t know much about my father. My mother
doesn’t say a lot about him, and I’ve never pushed the subject
much. It’s not that she says anything bad about him. It’s more that
she seems really sad and angry when I mention him. I know his name
is Steve Matthews, and he left when I was one or two years old. You
won’t really need to know anything about him. It’s not a subject
that comes up with my mother or my friends.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. I’m not feeling sorry for myself.
This is what I know. It’s not like I knew him when he was here, and
then he left.”

“I…guess that’s a good way to look at it.
It’s just hard for me to imagine. So…this is your mom’s room, you
said?”

“Yes,” I replied. “She has a small walk-in
closet at the far end of the room. Straight ahead and to the right
is her dressing room and bathroom. I’m not in here very often.
Usually, I am just bringing laundry in or out.”

We headed out of her room and made a left.
“Straight ahead is my bathroom, and my bedroom is on the left.
First, the bathroom. Not much to it. There’s a shower. No tub,
sorry.”

“I’ll live,” she said. She sounded put out,
but it seemed like she was teasing.

“So, the bedroom is here. I have a standard
closet. No walk-in. Bed is there and my clothes dresser is at the
far wall there. Feel free to look around.”

She started walking around the room, opening
drawers and memorizing the contents. “Is there anything in here
that I should stay out of?”

“No,” I replied, “I don’t have anything to
hide.”

After a while, she turned to me and asked,
“Do you have my purse with you? I need my cell phone.”

“I think I left it in the car, but you can
use the phone on my nightstand,” I said.

“Girls never leave their purses laying
around. I never leave my purse in my car. It is either on me, or
put in a safe place like my desk or my room.” She seemed annoyed
that I left her purse in the car.

“Sorry. I’ll go get it.”

I went out to the car, grabbed her purse and
brought it in to her. “Here you go.”

“Thanks. By the way, do you have a cell
phone?”

“No, I don’t have the money for a cell
phone.”

“Well, if things don’t go back to normal
tomorrow, we are going to have to go out and get you a phone. We
are going to have to be able to communicate.”

“I’m kind of on a strict budget.”

“I will buy it for you. We will get you a
prepaid phone.”

“I don’t want you to have to buy it for
me.”

“Look, if we are apart for some reason, we
will need to be able to contact each other to get answers. You
have
to have a phone. My parents gave me a credit card to
use in case of emergency. I think this qualifies.

“There,” she went on, “I just texted Jessica
to collect my schoolwork so I can work on it this weekend. I asked
her to bring it by my house tomorrow. I told her that I was
sick.”

“Good idea,” I said. “I should call Mike and
ask him to bring my homework over.”

“Well, you can’t really do that. If you call
Mike, he’s going to wonder why ‘Nicole’ is calling him. I’ll call
him. What do you want me to say?”

“Right. Just tell him you are sick and you
want him to bring my homework over tomorrow. Although, he probably
still thinks I’m mad at him. Oh man, we just left him passed out on
the floor today! I can only imagine what’s going on in his head. I
hope he’s okay.”

“I will use that. If he mentions this
morning, I will tell him it never happened. How do you talk to
him?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, do you call him Mike or Dude or Hey
You?”

I smiled. “Well it depends on my mood. I’ve
called him all of those before. Mike is not really…what would be a
good word…eloquent? Try not to speak so proper.”

I dialed the number and handed the phone to
Nicole. She started talking and I realized that she was leaving a
message. She told him she was sick and asked that he bring the
homework by my house tomorrow.

“Well, that was easier than I expected,” she
said. “Okay, I think for the rest of the day we should stick to the
basics. Let’s just get familiar with our houses and immediate
family. We will recite it until we know it.”

“My mother will be home in a couple of
hours,” I offered. “We can stay here until five, but then we should
definitely head over to your house. It’s Friday, so my mother won’t
expect me tonight. I’ll just leave a note that I’m staying the
night over at Mike’s. She won’t call. I spend a lot of Fridays at
Mike’s house. Then, when you come home late tonight, if you run
into my mother, you can just tell her that you started feeling
sick.”

“That’ll work,” she said. “We can spend the
evening at my house, and you can get more familiar with my house.
You can drive me back to your house at about nine. That will give
you time to get back to my house before my parents arrive. You can
just stay in my room with the lights out, and they will leave you
alone.”

Over the next few hours, she walked through
my house, opening more drawers, simulating things I do when I am in
my house. She had changed into some of my clothes and we washed her
brother’s clothes so we could return them when we got back to her
house. When five came, we packed up our stuff, piled into the car,
and headed back to Nicole’s house.

“I’m getting hungry,” I said. “Do you want to
stop and get a pizza? We can take it back to your house.”

“Yeah, I guess that would be okay.”

We stopped at Giovanni’s Kitchen and ordered
a pizza. We took it back to Nicole’s house and ate while we recited
her immediate family’s info.

I repeated the same steps that Nicole took at
my house. I walked into the kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets.
She would ask me for a drink and I would have to go to the cabinet
to get her a glass and pour her a drink. When I was able to
maneuver throughout the kitchen without making any mistakes, we
moved to other parts of the house. She showed me how to work the
theater. We went upstairs and walked through each of the rooms. We
spent most of the remaining time in her room. She would tell me to
get something and I would go retrieve it.

“It’s almost nine,” she finally said. “You
need to take me to your house now.”

She started walking down the stairs and we
headed into the garage. “Tomorrow, if things aren’t back to normal,
we have to work on your walk. You so don’t walk like a girl.”

“I actually take that as a compliment.
Current situation excluded, I’m not supposed to walk like a girl.
While we’re on the subject, you’ll need some pointers
yourself.”

“Fair enough,” she said.

“So,” I thought aloud, “what happens if
things
are
back to normal tomorrow?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, are we going to be…friends?”

“Jake,” she said, “you may not be as bad as I
thought, but that doesn’t mean we have anything in common.”

We both got in the car and I started the
engine. “Yeah, I guess swapping bodies doesn’t give us much in
common,” I said sarcastically.

She looked at me for a minute, seeming to
consider the thought. Neither of us said anything for the rest of
the trip. I pulled up in front of my house and she opened the door.
As she started to get out, she turned back to me.

“Whatever happens tomorrow, we should meet to
talk. What are you going to do when you get back to my house
tonight?”

“I’m going to take a shower, follow all of
your directions and go to bed. I’m actually exhausted,” I
admitted.

“Me too. I’m going to drag myself into bed
and pray to wake up a girl.”

“You may want to be more specific. You don’t
want to wake up as some other girl.”

“Thanks for the advice. Hopefully I’ll see
you
tomorrow.”

I waited while she walked into my house, and
then I took off for Nicole’s house. This night couldn’t end fast
enough. I hurried back to her house, went up the stairs, undressed,
jumped in the shower and followed Nicole’s routine as well as I
could remember.

I got out of the shower, dried off, got
dressed into underwear and a night shirt and returned to the
bathroom to blow-dry my hair. If I weren’t so exhausted, I would
probably have taken a few minutes to enjoy the view. As it was, I
wanted sleep more. I turned the lights off in the house and crawled
into Nicole’s bed. I was going to be asleep before my head even hit
the pillow.

“Jake? Honey. Wake up. Are you feeling better
today?”

I knew already that I wasn’t feeling better.
If Jake’s mom was waking me up and calling me Jake, then I was
still in his body. “Not really,” I said. “I’m still feeling pretty
strange.”

“Is it your stomach? Try taking some
Pepto-Bismol,” she replied.

“I don’t think Pepto is going to help what
I’ve got. Thanks for the advice, but I’ll be okay.”

“I’m sure you will,” she said as she turned
to walk away. “Oh, I almost forgot, there’s a girl on the phone for
you.” She handed me a cordless phone. “She says her name is Nicole.
Isn’t that the girl you were arguing with the other day?”

“Yeah…it’s the same girl.”

“Did something new happen between you
two?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“Good,” she said with a smile. “I know you
really like her,” she whispered away from the phone.

I’m sure Jake’s mom would feel bad to know
she was giving away insider trading secrets. We’ll spare Jake about
this. Well, we’ll spare us both. “Thanks…mom,” I said as she walked
out of the room and shut the door.

“Hello?”

“Hey Nicole, it’s Jake,” he said in my
voice.

“Hello Jake,” I sighed. “It looks like we’ve
got more work to do.”

“Looks like,” he said. “I’ll get dressed and
come get you. Your mom said that she and your dad are going out for
the afternoon, so we can come back and work on things here.”

“Okay, I’ll get in the shower now and see you
in a bit. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I grabbed the clothes I was going to wear
today and headed into the bathroom. I turned the shower on so it
would warm up, undressed and went to the bathroom…sitting down, of
course. That was different. It’s easy to see how boys can make a
mess. Those things are unpredictable.

I jumped in the shower and got myself cleaned
up. Five minutes later I was out of the shower, drying off and
doing my hair. I don’t want to tempt fate, but I could get used to
this getting ready as a guy thing. On a bad day, it can take me two
hours to get ready as a girl. I was done in 30 minutes today.

Once I was finished dressing, I decided I
would wait in the family room for Jake to pick me up. I figured I
would likely spend some time with his mom, but I should be okay if
I was polite and didn’t talk much. If she seemed concerned, I would
just play up the fact that I wasn’t feeling well.

I headed down the hall and into the kitchen
where I would fix a bowl of cereal and some orange juice, Jake’s
breakfast of choice, and then eat at the kitchen table. As I came
into the kitchen, I saw his mother sitting in the family room
watching television and writing something on a notepad.

“Morning,” I said with a smile.

She returned the smile. “Are you feeling any
better yet?”

“Actually, I’m feeling a little bit better,”
I said truthfully. “I guess the shower helped.”

I reached to grab a bowl out of the cupboard
and found the glasses. Oops!
Concentrate harder Nikki!
I
grabbed a glass, as though I had intended it, and placed it on the
counter. I opened the bowl cupboard and pulled a bowl out.

Jake’s mom continued on as I finished in the
kitchen. “Good! A shower always helps me feel better.”

I nodded.

“So,” she said with an inflection of
curiosity, “what did that Nicole girl want? Did she apologize for
the other day?”

Oh great. What did Jake say to his mom about
the other day?