Better Late Than Never

Her one slip-up came when some guy at lunch announced he'd seen a mouse run across the cafeteria floor.

'Ew, gross!' she shrieked. The other boys stared at her.

She managed a feeble grin. 'I'm just making up for the fact that we don't have any chicks at the table.'

It wasn't a very good excuse, and the boys still looked perplexed, but within seconds they were talking about something else and seemed to have forgotten her outburst. Which was another thing she decided was different about boys--if a girl did something uncool, her friends never let her forget it. At least, that's the way it was with her friends.

By the time lunch was over, she was feeling pretty satisfied with the way she'd pulled off her Ken behavior with his friends. No one was acting strangely around her or staring at her. Getting along as a boy with other boys wouldn't be all that difficult, she decided.

But getting along with girls might be. She was on her way out of the cafeteria when Cara Winters cornered her.

'Hi, Ken,' she said coyly. 'Are you feeling okay?'

'Sure. Why wouldn't I be?'

'You were out yesterday.'

'Oh, yeah. No big deal---just didn't feel like going to school.'

Cara looked surprised, and Amanda realized that Ken was not the type to cut classes whenever he was in that sort of mood.

She amended her remark. 'I had a sore throat. But I'm fine now.'

'Oh, good. I was just wondering . . . could we get together before French today and go over some conjugations?'

So Cara was in the French class. 'Uh, well, I haven't really studied.'

Now she looked really surprised. 'You haven't?'

'I completely forgot we were having the test today, and then I wasn't feeling good, so . . .' She let Ken's voice trail off, and Cara nodded understandingly. She moved in closer.

'I'll arrange the paper on my desk so you can see my answers,' she whispered. 'Of course, I know you don't like to cheat, but . . .'

'Maybe I could make an exception this time,' Amanda replied.

Cara looked positively thrilled. And Amanda remembered a time when she'd been flattered that a guy had wanted to copy her paper. Boys really had it made.

Of course, her real test would come in the gifted class. Could she pull off her Ken act there? Last month, when she was Tracey, Madame could tell something was up after only a few days. And now she'd be sitting in the same room with her robotic other self. Would anyone sense that something was just slightly off?

She timed her entrance just like Ken did, at the last minute. And so did Other-Amanda. They practically collided at the door of room 209.

'Hi, Ken.'

Could there be anything stranger than hearing your own voice speaking to you? Yes--seeing yourself through someone else's eyes. She couldn't even bring herself to look.

'Hi,' she mumbled, just like Ken would have, and hurried into the room. Taking Ken's seat, she let Ken's silky blond hair fall into his eyes and peered out in a way that she hoped was unobtrusive.

Madame rose from her desk. 'Yesterday we were talking about the ways in which you might be able to use your gift in your chosen career. Martin had just finished telling us that he wanted to hire himself out to people who wanted an enemy to be hurt. Does anyone have a question to ask him?'

Emily raised her hand. 'Martin, you have to get really angry at someone before your super strength comes out. How are you going to get angry at the people you're hired to beat up if you don't have any personal connection to them?'

Amanda wasn't particularly interested in Martin's reply, which she knew would be long and rambling. She tuned him out and spent the time looking surreptitiously at herself.

She knew some girls who actually believed they were prettier than they really were. She was not one of them. Last month she'd seen herself through Tracey's eyes, and she knew she was extremely cute. Now she looked even better. She wasn't sure if it was her last haircut or the fact that she was looking through a boy's eyes, but she was even more impressed with herself. What she couldn't understand was why Ken wasn't more interested …

Ken . . .

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere. Literally. Madame was giving Martin a long, stern lecture on nonviolence, and no one else in the class was speaking.

Ken?

It was in her head, she realized. The voice was coming from deep inside. She wasn't hearing it in the ordinary way, through her ears. It was something else.

Are you there? Can you hear me? It's Rick.

And suddenly, she understood. It was one of Ken's dead people, trying to communicate.

She didn't know whether to be intrigued or annoyed. On the one hand, the voice wasn't frightening at all. It was young and male and pleasant. On the other hand, she realized that this was why Ken always seemed so distracted.

She wasn't sure if she could talk back to the voice, but she tried. In her mind, she thought, What do you want?

Nothing special. Just wanted to talk.

She replied, I don't want to talk. Go away.

There was a moment of silence, and then the voice, softer this time, said, Okay. And her head was silent.

She couldn't believe it. It was so easy! All Ken had to do was tell the voices to go away, and they would obey! At least, this one did. It occurred to her that while she was inside Ken's body, she could do more than just ask herself out. She could lose Ken's gift for him! Then the two of them could unite, confront Madame, and drop out of the class together. And even if he wasn't madly in love with Amanda, he'd be eternally grateful, they could act like a couple, she'd be back on top--everything was falling into place.

And she'd be helping Ken, just like she'd helped Tracey Not that helping other people was a high priority for her, but she had to admit (only to herself and never to anyone else) that it gave her kind of a nice feeling.

The discussion of Martin's aggressive instincts took up the whole class session, which was fine with Amanda. Madame never called on Ken or Other-Amanda, and the other students had no problem picking on Martin for 50 minutes. Amanda was beginning to understand why the little guy was an eternal victim.

She'd planned to approach herself as soon as class was over, but Other-Amanda took off the second the bell rang. It didn't really matter--she needed more time to prepare what she was going to say, and there wasn't much time between classes for a conversation. She'd meet up with Other-Amanda at her own locker after the last class.

Ken's next class was French, and even though she'd never cheated on a test before, she didn't feel the least bit guilty copying the answers from Cara. She reasoned that she wasn't really Ken or herself either, so the rules didn't count. The only problem would be if Ken got caught--but he didn't.

She got through the rest of the day without any real problems--she just never raised her hand and none of the teachers called on Ken. The only class she now had to worry about was the last one--gym. If she didn't perform well, she could blame it on having been sick the day before, but changing in and out of the gym outfit could be tricky, especially surrounded by all those boys.

But once again, she lucked out. Ken's gym class was having a lecture day on nutrition. She could sit in the back of a normal classroom and zone out.

She used the time to revise her original plan. She'd meet Amanda at her locker and set up some kind of date for after school that day or the next. Saturday at the latest. Once they were alone together, she'd take back her own body and let him have his. How she was going to do this, she wasn't quite sure, but she'd worry about that when the time came. Then she'd tell him how she'd lost the voices for him, he'd be grateful, and everything would fall into place.