‘Oh.’ Brandon lowered his hand. ‘You scared us. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Help me over to the couch.’
Brandon pulled me up, and then chivalrously carried me over to the couch. Once I was settled on to it, Cosabella came running over to jump in my lap and gave me a few more restorative kisses.
‘What happened to you?’ Lulu wanted to know. ‘Was it hypoglycaemia? Do you have low blood sugar? Do you want some TaB energy drink or something? Brandon, go pour her a TaB.’
‘No,’ I said weakly, refraining from pointing out to her that TaB is sugar free, not really useful for hypoglycaemics. ‘I’m fine. Really.’
Lulu shook her head. ‘Do it anyway, Brandon. Nikki — Em — whatever your name is. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. We never should have… we were only trying to help. What can we do? What can we do to make it up to you?’
‘Nothing,’ I said tiredly. Because that’s all I felt. Not outrage over what had been done to me. Not anger. Not even wonder.
They’d done it. They had done it.
I was the world’s first brain transplant…
‘Oh, here,’ Lulu said. She took the can of TaB Brandon had brought over, and waved it under my nose. ‘I think you should drink this.’
The drink actually smelt great. Which made no sense, because it was diet. And I hate diet. I reached up and took hold of the can, then took a sip. It was cold and sweet and delicious.
‘Look, Nikki,’ Lulu said. ‘Or Em. Or whatever your name is. Do you want us to call someone? Your agent, Rebecca? Or your publicist, Kelly? Should we call Kelly and see if she can tell us what’s going on?’
‘Don’t call anyone yet,’ I said. I wasn’t ready to go back to the hospital. Not now. Not knowing what I suddenly knew. Or was fairly certain I knew.
Why hadn’t they told me? What had they been waiting for?
‘I’m really tired,’ I said, handing Lulu the empty can, which I’d drained. ‘Can I just hang out here, and maybe rest a little before I decide what to do next?’
‘Of course you can,’ Lulu exclaimed. ‘I mean, this is your loft. I’m the one who pays you rent.’
‘Nikki Howard,’ I corrected her. ‘You paid Nikki Howard rent.’
I was the world’s first brain transplant…
… and the body they’d chosen to transplant my brain into was one of the planet’s most famous supermodels.
Seriously. The Hulk would have been better.
Eleven
I woke to the sound of a buzzer.
At first I couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from. That’s because, for a minute or so, I thought I was in my own room. I reached out, fumbling for my alarm clock. But instead of my fingers coming into contact with hard plastic, all I felt was warm skin.
This was unusual, to say the least.
What was even more unusual was that when I opened my eyes, I saw I wasn’t in my room at all. Or even in the last place I remembered waking up, the hospital. No, I was in Nikki Howard’s downtown loft, where I’d apparently fallen asleep on the living room couch — with my head on Brandon Stark’s chest, no less.
When I jerked myself to an upright position — completely startled by the intimate way in which I’d curled myself up to a complete and utter stranger — I got a head rush. Not just a head rush, but a headache.
It only took a second or two to remember why.
And when I did, I groaned and dropped my face to my knees, Nikki Howard’s long blonde hair falling all around me like a tent. Cosy — Nikki Howard’s dog — didn’t seem to like that very much. She wiggled her way past my hair and on to my lap so she could give me a good-morning lick.
Then the buzzer went off again.
‘Oh God,’ I groaned, and, lifting Cosabella, I staggered across the living room, looking for the source of the sound so I could make it stop.
It was morning. The sky outside the floor-to-ceiling windows was already a bright autumnal blue.
But that didn’t seem to trouble the two FONs who’d fallen asleep beside me and who continued to doze undisturbed. Lulu Collins looked like a little angel, with her pageboy all messed up and her mascara smudged.
And Brandon Stark, all six and a half feet of him, lay half on and half off the couch, snoring lightly, the television remote in his hand. On the screen over the fireplace flickered soundless images of famous faces. It was MTV, on mute.
The buzzer sounded again and Lulu, over on the couch, groaned and pulled the cashmere blanket we’d all been sharing over her head. I realized the sound was coming from some sort of intercom located to one side of the door to the elevator. Not knowing what else to do — but desperate to make the sound stop — I lifted the handset that was connected to the wall where the buzzing seemed to be coming from.
‘Hello?’ I croaked into the handset.
‘Sorry to wake you, Miss Howard,’ said a man’s voice I didn’t recognize (of course), ‘but Mr Justin Bay is here, and he’s asking to see you.’
Justin Bay? The star of the Journeyquest movie (which blew)? Justin Bay wanted to see me?
Then I remembered. He wasn’t there to see me at all. He was there to see Nikki Howard.
But wait. Why? Wasn’t he Lulu Collins’s boyfriend? I remembered the pink sapphire she’d shown me that time she’d visited me in the hospital, when I’d hoped she’d been a hallucination. Hadn’t she said that ‘Justin’ had given it to her?
Yes. Yes, that’s exactly what she’d said.
‘He must mean Lulu,’ I said. ‘But she’s asleep—’
‘No, Miss Howard,’ the doorman — because that’s who it had to be, right? — said. ‘Mr Bay says to tell you he’s here specifically to see you, and that he’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell Miss Collins, and if you’d come down to meet him. He says it’s important.’
I stood there staring at the intercom in confusion. Justin Bay wanted to see Nikki Howard, but he didn’t want her to tell Lulu. What was going on here?
‘He also says,’ the doorman went on in a slightly bored voice, ‘that he’s not leaving until you see him, and that this time he really means it.’
Whoa! I stared at the intercom some more. Why did Justin Bay need to see Nikki Howard so badly, but didn’t want Lulu to know? I tried to remember what I knew about Justin Bay, which — beyond what I’d read in the pages of Frida’s Us Weekly and that he’d been horrible in the Journeyquest movie as Leander — wasn’t much, except that he was incredibly good-looking.
Oh, and rich. Because his dad, Richard Bay, had also been an actor, star of the mega-successful Sky Warrior franchise when he was younger. Now he produced heartwarming family friendly television shows on prime time and raised buffalo (why did Frida keep leaving her celebrity gossip magazines lying around for me to find? Worse, why was I always picking them up and reading them?) on a huge ranch in Montana.
Maybe Justin had a surprise for Lulu. Sure, that had to be why he wanted to see Nikki and not her. Right?
‘Do you want me to call the police, Miss Howard?’ was the doorman’s next surprising question.
‘What?’ I squawked in astonishment into the intercom’s handset. ‘No! No, that’s OK. I’ll be right down.’
‘Sure thing, Miss Howard,’ the doorman said. ‘I’ll send the elevator up for you.’
I hung up the handset. OK. Great. I was going to have to talk to Justin Bay. As Nikki Howard though, not as me, because I couldn’t tell him I wasn’t Nikki. It had been hard enough to convince Lulu and Brandon that I wasn’t Nikki Howard. Forget Justin Bay. His portrayal as Leander in the Journeyquest movie had pretty much proven he was the dumbest guy on earth…
Fine. I could do this. I could –
