Ritual Magic

Miss Yu. Lily Yu. The FBI agent she’d met yesterday . . . no, not yesterday. Two days ago. Sam said he’d spent twenty-six hours fixing her, then she’d slept, and now it was morning. So it was two days since she found herself outside the restroom in the wrong body.

Miss Yu lived here, too. She was Mr. Turner’s fiancee.

Julia’s stomach felt sort of clenched and curious at the same time. Miss Yu was living in sin with Mr. Turner. He said people didn’t think of it that way anymore because the sexual revolution had changed things. Well, he hadn’t said those exact words, but she thought that’s what he meant. Julia’s mother had not approved of the sexual revolution. She said it was just a bunch of silly hippies who thought they’d invented sleeping around, when really people had been misbehaving that way for thousands of years only they didn’t talk about it all the time.

Miss Yu was trying to find the bad guys who’d hurt Julia, which meant Julia ought to like her. But she was going to marry Mr. Turner, which made Julia not like her very much, even though that was silly. Julia was either too old for Mr. Turner or too young, depending on if you went by her body’s age or her real age, so there was no point in being jealous. But that wasn’t what made her straighten away from the door, rubbing her stomach.

Miss Yu was supposed to be Julia’s daughter.

This body . . . this too-tall, too-old body . . . had had sex. Had borne children. Three of them, she’d been told. Three daughters. This body knew about those things and Julia didn’t, and when she thought about that her stomach felt weird, like it couldn’t make up its mind if it was sick or excited.

She wished she was still sleepy so she could go back to bed. But she wasn’t, not even a little bit. And she really did need to go to the bathroom. She might as well get dressed. She sighed and looked around the room.

It was small and clean and didn’t look finished. The bed she’d slept in was a double, and it had sheets and a blanket, but no bedspread. No rug on the scuffed wooden floor, either. No curtain on the window, and only that TV tray for a bed table, and no mirrors. She was glad of that. She didn’t like looking at herself.

There was a chest of drawers, though. With a bunch of stuff on top. Familiar stuff. Julia’s feet took her there without her even thinking about it.

There was her Magic 8 Ball and the little porcelain figure of a Chinese girl that her grandmother on her mother’s side had given her for her ninth birthday and the silver-plated mirror her grandmother on her father’s side had left to her when she died three years ago. Forty-eight years ago, now. Next to them were two books—the little-kid storybook her mother used to read to her, with stories about Peter Rabbit and the Little Red Hen, and The Secret Garden, which she’d read three times. On top of the books sat the white New Testament she’d been given when she was confirmed in the church, and below them were two photo albums.

When Julia was nine, her parents had given her a Polaroid camera for Christmas and a photo album. After Christmas, she and her mother had put the snapshots in the album together. That was the album on top, with a pink velvet cover. The other album was from their trip to Disneyland last year, or forty-six years ago, depending on how you counted. She’d bought that album with her own money and had embroidered “My Trip” on the green brocade cover ever so carefully, but she wasn’t very good at embroidery. The letters leaned all over the place.

Everything looked old. Old and tired. Except for the sheet of folded white paper on top of the books. She picked it up and opened it. The writing was small and precise, almost like printing:

When I met you, you were twenty-one and long past needing help to ward off the darkness. We dated for several weeks before you trusted me enough to tell me that you used to sleep with a flashlight under the covers. Perhaps the darkness has become frightening again. If not, please forgive me for guessing wrong.

You’re obviously past the age for needing Fluffy, yet I know you cherished him. I hope having him and a few other familiar things nearby will help a little as you adjust to what has to be a very strange new life.

It was signed Edward.

It hadn’t been Mequi who thought of the flashlight. It had been him. Edward. The man she was married to. The man she’d made those three daughters with. Her stomach felt tight and anxious, but some other part of her felt easier. She didn’t understand.

He sounded like a nice man, though. Maybe that was why she felt a tiny bit better. She didn’t want a husband, nice or not, but Edward Yu seemed to know that.

Still, she didn’t want to think about him. She folded the note up again and tucked it inside the Christmas photo album. She was not ready to look at the pictures in either album. She was glad she had them, but she wasn’t ready to see how faded and old those pictures looked. She picked up the Magic 8 Ball and thought hard: Will I get all of my memories back? And shook it.

First it said, “Reply hazy, try again.” When she did, it said, “Better not tell you now.” That made her mad enough to throw it across the room, but she didn’t. She didn’t have many things from before. She wouldn’t break one just because it made her mad.

Her bladder reminded her that she still needed to get dressed, so she opened the top drawer. Pajamas. Panties. Bras. She grimaced. She’d started wearing a bra this past summer, which was really a whole bunch of summers ago. She hadn’t especially needed one, but all the girls wore them, so she had to, too. But these bras were bigger than what she’d been wearing.

Of course they were. She had boobs now. When she’d gone to the bathroom at the hospital she’d checked them out. They were not very good boobs, being kind of droopy. That made her mad. At some point she’d probably had great boobs, but now she didn’t remember it.

Funny. She didn’t exactly like her body, but she didn’t hate it as much as she had at first. Maybe Sam had done something about that, too.

A bra would help with the droopiness. She sighed and took one out.

Even though she didn’t remember this body, it seemed to know what it was doing. It was taller than she remembered, but that didn’t make her trip over things. Muscle memory, one of the doctors had called it. Her muscles remembered how to walk, and it turned out they remembered how to put on a bra, too.

The panties were not the plain white cotton she was used to. These were grown-lady panties, several of them with lace, a couple of them nothing but lace. She pulled out a pair of black ones and put them on the bed, then looked for stuff to wear on top of the bra and panties.

The next drawer held shorts and tops. Good enough. She got out some khaki shorts and a green top.

Someone knocked on her door. She jumped. “Yes?”

“It’s Lily Yu,” a female voice said. “The FBI agent. Rule says you’re awake, and I . . . may I come in?”

A little thrill of panic shot through her. “If he knows I’m awake, how come it’s you instead of—” She flushed. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”

“It’s okay. I know you’re more comfortable with Rule, but I wanted to talk to you before I leave.”

“I’m not dressed.”

“There’s a robe in the closet.”

Lily Yu wasn’t going to go away. She lived here. Reluctantly Julia went to the closet. It was small and full of clothes, but not like anything she’d ever worn. Grown-up clothes. They made her sad, so she was glad when she found the robe. That was pretty—lots of fuzzy watercolor flowers all over, and silky. Maybe it was real silk. She slipped it on and stroked the slinky fabric. Real silk was expensive. Was she rich? Or maybe her . . . maybe Edward was.

Julia scowled. She was not going to think about him. “Okay,” she said to the stranger on the other side of the door.

It opened. The woman who was supposed to be her daughter was wearing black slacks and a stretchy black shirt under a bright blue jacket. Her hair was long and shiny, but she’d pulled it back in a plain old ponytail. It didn’t look like she’d used any makeup. She really ought to. With a little effort she’d be gorgeous. Right now she mostly looked tired.

She did not look anything like Julia. Julia had a heart-shaped face. Lily Yu’s face was more oval, plus she had a better chin. Julia hated her chin. “Hello,” Julia said cautiously.

“Hi. I, ah . . . this is pretty weird, isn’t it?”

“It is super weird! I mean, I’m supposed to be your—your—” She couldn’t even say it.