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“You think I enjoy yours? That Brayden kid keeps going on about how smokin’ Joules Adams is—did you know he had the hots for me?”

“Of course!”

She shudders. “And those short people with the diapers! Why do I have to do all the changing from the time I get home? Sam completely reeks of some kind of candy floss lip gloss. And the stuff in your closet—seriously. You have almost nothing to wear. I swear to God, if I have to
live one more day in your life I’m offing myself.”

“And now when we switch back, Will’s going to think I’m a slut!”

She smiles coyly. “He won’t. I’ll keep him so busy he’ll never think of you again. There. Problem solved.”

“What about Bray? Did Mom ground him for the office break-in?”

“Are you kidding? Your dad gave him some yard work but your mother thinks he just needs counseling. She keeps saying things like, ‘You are better than your past, Brayden. You can only rise above it if you choose to.’ Crap like that. He totally takes advantage.”

“It’s his friends. I don’t trust them, you know?”

She nods. “Tomas and Dillon? They’re not so bad. Neither is the little one—Ace, is it?”

“I’ve seen the way they look at our things when they’re over. And Mom’s bracelet went missing a few months ago. I swear that Tomas kid took it.”

Joules starts laughing. “You’re such a dreamer, Birchie. Like anyone in their right mind would want to grab anything from your house. The whole place is covered in crushed Cheerios and vomit and work charts, and all your freaking TV plays is The Weather Show. Believe me, your belongings are safe.”

It’s too much. I can’t take hearing about any of it. I want my life back. My eyes tear up and now I feel sick about being willing to swap my entire family for a moment with a boy.

Joules looks at me and hisses, “Stop it. Joules Adams does not blubber at school.”

I step behind a huge arched column and lean over the
rail so no one can see me. “I’m tired of this. I want to switch back.”

“People will see you.
Me.
Cut it out!”

“I can’t stand it any more. And what if we never figure out how to undo it?”

“We will. We totally will.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know you have to think positive. Believe it.”

“Yeah, I tried that the last time and look where that got us.”

She thinks about it a minute, then brightens. “I know. What if we do the
Wizard of Oz
thing. Tap our heels together and say ‘No place like home,’ like Dorothy and Toto.”

“This isn’t a movie, Joules. It’s real life.”

“It’s worth a try. You don’t seem to have any better ideas.”

“Don’t be an idiot! That story is pure fiction. And Dorothy had the witch’s ruby slippers.”

She laughs sadly. “Yeah. We need some glittery red shoes.”

Glitter. Wait a minute.

Gran’s gloves—I’d forgotten all about them. I was wearing them when I made the wish.

She picked up those crazy rubber gloves in Africa—that much I know. But Gran never did tell the whole story. Maybe there’s more to it. Maybe there’s some reason for the gloves to have some sort of freakish special abilities. Who am I to say the wish didn’t come from those froufrou-ed dishwashing gloves that smelled like old tires?

I need to talk to Gran. Now.

“What?” asks Joules. “You want to try?”

“No.” I motion toward her black T-shirt and my yellow one. “Switch tops with me.”

“What? Forget it. I like this one.”

“I have to go someplace and I don’t want the photographers to follow. And give me your headband and sunglasses.”

“Seriously? You’re going to screw up my term if you miss class.”

“Like you ever cared about that.”

“I do! And anyway, I’m not changing tops …”

“You want your life back, Joules? Or would you rather live out your life in dirty diapers and vomit?”

She looks around and motions for me to follow her to the little alcove where the custodian parks his truck. The place is covered on three sides and private enough, as long as no one happens along. There, she pulls off her top and motions for me to do the same. “Where are you going? I want to come.”

“You can’t. I can’t get an absence right now. I have the Stanford interview soon and I cannot afford to have another strike against me. Besides, there’s the paps.”

Joules snorts and pulls the black T-shirt over her head.
“Paps.
I swear, Birch Tree, you are the un-coolest girl ever. Even in my body.”

As I race down the hallway in my old shirt, she calls after me, “Aren’t you going to tell me where you’re going?”

“I’m going to see someone about a pair of ruby slippers.”

T
urns out I didn’t need the disguise. I stayed within school grounds and exited onto the street from the gym building—way on the other side of campus from where the paparazzi were posted—and jogged along a short alleyway until I got to Harbor Boulevard.

Gran’s apartment is almost alarmingly normal. She lives in one of these Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs cottages in town, complete with pretty white curtains in the window. She has flowers in her garden and a straw mat in front of a glossy blue front door. I don’t know what would be more fitting for her—maybe an African baobab instead of the lemon tree, and a scattering of poisonous frogs instead of impatiens.

I knock on the door, and right away she flings it open. “Yes?”

“This is going to sound weird.”

She squints at me. “Is this about my newspaper? Because I’m on the Internets now.”

“No.” I step closer. “Gran, it’s me. Andrea.”

“Excuse me?”

One of her neighbors, a woman carrying a baby boy, looks concerned and calls from her porch, “Are you okay over there?”

Gran waves that she’s fine, which sort of annoys me. I mean, she doesn’t know Joules at all. How does she know Joules isn’t working with some gang of home invaders who are hiding in the bushes, about to pop out and storm the house? Gran says, “I think we’d better go inside.”

Inside, the house is even more normal. The walls are white and the tiny foyer has a sensible gray mat for wiping your shoes and a sturdy bench so Gran can put on her sneakers “without falling over and breaking a hip like some kind of old wrinkly.” She leads me into the living room and motions for me to sit on her long, striped sofa.

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.”

“Gran, I know it’s weird, but I’m Andrea.”

She drops into a chair and examines me. “My granddaughter?”

I nod.

Her eyes, blinking confusedly, travel from my shoes, up my legs and torso to my face. “Andrea Birch?”

“Yes. It makes no sense but, see, I was really upset. I’d missed the model tryouts and getting the free jeans and Mom was mad at me and Cici and Sam took my lip gloss and then Michaela was in my room and I couldn’t even talk to Will—”

“I don’t understand. Who’s Will?”

I sigh and look up at the ceiling. “Only the greatest guy who ever lived. So there I was, and Mom told me to do the dishes and, well, I just took off. I ran as far as the bridge where the trains go overhead and, you know, Joules’s life looked so unbelievably good—I mean, she actually kissed him right there in front of me, and I did a
really stupid thing. Gran, I wished we could switch lives. And now I have my Stanford interview coming up. So stupid! It’s not like I thought …”

“Oh dear.” Gran holds her hand up for me to stop so I do. “You really are Andrea.”

“Yes! I am. And I’m stuck in Joules’s body.”

“Well,” she says with a snort, “there are worse bodies to be stuck in.”

“Gran.”

“Mine, for instance.”

“Gran! Can we focus? Do you think the rubber gloves could have done this? Because I was wearing them at the time.”

She leans back in her chair and folds her arms. “Of course it’s because of the gloves. I bought them from a roadside fortune teller in Africa. She was doing psychic readings from a fairly dinged-up crystal ball.”

I’m so relieved. Because if we know how the switch happened, we know how to make the switch unhappen. “Good. This is good.”

Then my stomach drops. Because I have no freaking idea where they are.

“You have them with you, I assume,” Gran says, dead certain I am not stupid enough to let them out of my sight.

Only I am that stupid. I mean, they have to be back at the bridge, right? When I woke up, I was in Joules’s room and they were nowhere to be seen. Then again, I’ve been back to the bridge—twice—and there was absolutely no sign of them.

“No. Not actually with me.”

“Andrea. I told you when I gave them to you—you
have to take good care of them. Are you keeping them in a safe place?”

“Totally.” I nod way too fast. “I … totally. I keep them in a totally safe place.”

Crazy to check the top of the slope beneath the bridge. You’d think I’d have noticed something as eye-catching as feather-and rhinestone-covered gloves. But I check anyway. It doesn’t seem possible anybody could have taken them—who would hang out here except for an idiot like me?

I try a quick wish when a train thunders overhead—no surprise when it doesn’t work—and once the last railway car has passed, I start to work my way back and forth along the grassy area beside the bridge. It’s not easy, the hill is made of dust and rocks and gopher holes, with long patchy grass and bushes that have been scorched by the sun into tumbleweeds about to break loose and roll across town. The whole time I pray I don’t find a rattlesnake or a scorpion or a nest of hairy tarantulas.

Pill bugs I can handle. Tarantulas … not so much.

There was this foster kid who came to us just over a year ago. I can’t remember his name but he was twelve years old and obsessed with spiders—I don’t know why, maybe he was never allowed to wear a Spider-Man costume as a kid. You know how kids are; you hold something back from them too much and it’s for sure going to fester.

Anyway, this kid totally spooked me about tarantulas. Said that, when frightened, they can jump five feet in any
direction, just like that. Splat. Hairy spider on your face. And they bite, too. But they have no venom. Being bitten by a tarantula is no worse than being stung by a bee. But still. It’s no bee, it’s a massive hairy spider.

The thing about this kid—Christopher was his name—was he’d lived in and out of group homes his entire life. His parents checked out of parenthood when he was about three but not by choice. I don’t know what happened to his dad but his mom wound up getting multiple sclerosis and could no longer take care of him. And here’s the kicker: he had relatives but not one stepped up. I guess none of them answered the phone or something when it came time to place Christopher in proper care. That’s the kind of thing that kills you, imagining a three-year-old with a sick mother and no one answers the phone.

Eventually, after he placed in the nationals for math—the kid was smart—some relative claimed him. An uncle living up in New Jersey all of a sudden missed him enough to take him in. He wasn’t too excited about going there, though. He said “They don’t have nearly as scary spiders on the east coast.”

The roadside is a disappointment. I find exactly what a person might expect to find. Plenty of candy bar wrappers and empty cigarette and gum packs, a greasy McDonald’s bag and broken beer bottles in a wide variety of colors—light brown, dark brown, green, clear. There’s one of those tiny Lego figures which I almost take home for our Lego bin but leave for the ground squirrels to have some fun with, a twisted cloth—really filthy—that was probably someone’s T-shirt that flew out the back of a pickup, and a greasy dead crow that’s had its eyes
pecked out but otherwise looks pretty fresh.

I find a piece of skinny plastic hose (stained with what could definitely be blood) that some serial killer probably dropped between victims, and more broken beer bottles. This patch of land really is the home of the wasted. You wouldn’t want to wander around here without thick-soled shoes, that’s for sure. Even with such a treasure trove at my feet, no sign of the gloves.

I cross beneath the bridge again and go check out the other side. This area must be way less popular than the first. Even though it’s in the sun, there’s no broken glass whatsoever and hardly a speck of garbage. Maybe one gum wrapper, but that might have come over here on the bottom of my shoe. It’s weird; right away I notice there are fewer weeds here, too. Like no one can stand this side of the bridge—not even the dandelions. It is a bit steeper, so, okay, maybe it’s less popular as a get-drunk hangout. Or, if you’re a serial killer, you might have more worries over here when it comes to solid footing. And I think—I stand up taller and push my face up into the breeze—yes, I’m sure. It’s the windy side of the bridge. The side Dad would say “takes the brunt of it.”

I sit down for a minute and stare at the cars passing by, surprised by the number of black SUVs on the road. Three pass me by in a span of about five minutes. They’re never going to catch the guy who hit Michaela’s parents. Plus, you’ve got to assume the driver would have had the car fixed after. What kind of idiot would he be to drive around in it right now with a dented hood and broken windshield?

Without even the shelter of the few struggling trees
on the other side, I get hot fast. It’s brutal. I feel like my skin is blistering before my eyes. I’m sweating and, maybe because I skipped breakfast, maybe because I forgot about Joules’s caffeine addiction, I feel like I could faint.

That’s when I see it. Way over to my right, just beneath the concrete barrier that separates someone’s yard from the busyness of Harbor Boulevard, a teeny, tiny sparkle of light. I take off at a run and drop to my knees when I see first one crazy, dust-covered rubber glove, then, about ten feet away, the other.

Laughing, skipping in place, I pull them on and stare at them in wonder. That’s it. I have the answer now. I can run beneath the bridge and change everything back. I can jump out of Joules’s crummy life and back into my own. I can sleep in my bed and stop drinking coffee and tickle the Ks and get bossed around by Mom. I can ask Dad about the weather and tell Cici and Sam yes, I’d love to go jogging with them.

I can call Gran and say,
“Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease
don’t bring me back any more gifts from any more places you travel.”

I can be me.

Still wearing the gloves, I crawl back up to the base of the bridge and flop backward in relief as I wait for a train. I have no idea if a train is necessary or if rain is necessary or if all I need is the gloves. I’m exhausted, I feel it now. People aren’t meant to switch bodies, switch worlds. It’s too hard to catch up, seventeen years into the trouble another person has created for themselves. What I’ll do when I’m me again, I’ll sleep for as long as I want. Just sleep and sleep and sleep.

Then I’ll wake up and never covet someone else’s life again.

The ground starts to rumble and I sit up, wrap my arms around my knees and stare at the gloves. Some of the rhinestones have fallen out—or maybe were pecked out by the same beast that swallowed the crow’s eyes. I guess the glue didn’t hold so well in the hot sun because many of the feathers are gone as well.

The train is closer now, the piercing whistle hurts my ears. A few more seconds and it thunders over my head, spraying me once again with grit.

I hold up the gloves, but before I make my wish, the feel of Will’s leg over mine hits me. The touch of his fingers pushing hair off my face. The smell of his breath. I came so close. Closer than I’ll ever come to kissing him again.

I took too much time. I should have rushed it. Kissed him before Joules appeared. I mean, he likes me, I can see it. He knows there’s a difference now, he knows Joules has changed. It’s the me in her he’s attracted to.

As the train crashes overhead, I have an idea. The gloves are mine again, to use as I please. What’s the rush?

I could put them in a safe place and wait. Not for long. Just until I can experience that kiss.

It’s why I made the wish in the first place, right? To live, just once, the kiss I saw in the music room. To turn my back on that wish coming true could anger the … the wish-granting gods. It could send the message that I’m toying with the universe. Playing games with life.

One kiss.

And then.

The rattle overhead fades as the last cars pass and, as quickly as it arrived, the train is gone. One rubber finger at a time, I pull off the gloves. I stare at them, lying in my lap, fake gemstones winking up at the sky. With no backpack or purse to stash them in, I’m not sure what to do. Tuck them in my shirt, maybe, and when I get to school, stuff them in Joules’s locker. Then hide them in her backpack after school.

I hear footsteps to my left and glance up the road to see my own body, dressed in gym clothes, jogging along the sidewalk toward me. Joules.

“Andrea!” she shouts.

I have to ditch the gloves. Fast. I run back up to the concrete wall and, using a rock, madly dig a small hole in the ground. Once the gloves are tucked safely into it, I cover them over with dirt.

Joules is scrabbling up the embankment beneath the bridge. Closer now, but not close enough to see what I’m up to. “Andie! Did you find any ruby slippers?”

The girl actually thinks I have access to some sort of sparkly red pumps plucked from the striped-stockinged hooves of some witch felled by a bungalow in Munchkinland. For the zillionth time, I wonder about Joules’s grades. Either a whole lot of rocker swag is being passed around this school or she’s one of those book-smart/lifestupid people you sometimes come across.

Leaving the gloves in the ground like this is dangerous. I might forget where they are. I reach for the first bit of trash I see—the serial killer’s hose—and coil it overtop of the gloves’ temporary burial site, then saunter back down the hill toward her, all disappointed-looking.

“Nope. It’s officially a ruby slipper–free zone.”

“The photographers are gone—the police chased them away from campus.” She walks up to me, then leans over her knees as if exhausted. “So get my butt back to school and make sure Will stays in love with me. Okay?”

I sigh, all weary, and think about the kiss that needs to happen. “Okay, okay. I’ll do my best.”

On the way back, Joules whines about the magic slippers and I assure her I’ll have them anytime now. And that she can relax in the knowledge that she’ll be back to sharing her caffeinated body with boys in the bushes before too long. (Although who am I to talk? I hadn’t been in her body two days before I got pretty busy in the bushes myself. Wait, strike that. Tried. I tried to get busy in the bushes.)

Joules was right about the paparazzi—they’re gone. Unfortunately, so is Will. And he’ll be out for the rest of the day—the soccer team left at lunchtime for some sort of tournament in Chino Hills, so there’ll be no chance of my lips being anywhere near his anytime this afternoon.