CHAPTER TEN

"What truth?!"  I yell over the roaring wind, tucking my flying hair behind my ears. Caden doesn't' respond, and instead makes his way towards the parking lot. I look back at the school before running off after him.

"You can't just say something like that and then not give an explanation!" I say. Still, he refuses to answer. "Aren't we going to sign out?" I ask.

He shakes his head. "No time. Besides, it doesn't matter."

I consider yelling back that it does matter, since I definitely don't want a detention for leaving the school without telling anyone, but something in his voice stops me. He sounds almost...terrified.

Before I get the opportunity to consider what that might mean, I'm half running-half walking through the empty parking lot to the road where an old black car is already waiting for us, its engine barely loud enough to be heard over the wind. My hair flies in front of my face and I pull a band off my wrist, tying it up in a messy ponytail to keep it away from my eyes as we move. When we near the car, I come to a stop a couple of metres away. Caden yanks open the door and turns, a light frown passing over his face as he notices that I'm not right behind him.

But his frown shifts from my face to a spot slightly to the left, and suddenly, the fear is evident on his face, his features melting into a puddle of terror. He doesn't bother to clean up his mess of emotions as he waves me over, panicked eyes settling on mine. "Come on! We have to go."

I send a look over my shoulder, but there's nothing there except a bunch of cars, the bland exterior of the school, and beyond that, a small section of the lawn. I turn away just as movement catches my eye and I get the impression of a dark shape slipping between cars. I don't look back, but fear still starts to pool in my stomach, and suddenly, the urgency seeps into me like an airborne disease and everything in me is desperate to get into the dark car that just a few seconds ago seemed like the second worst thing in the world, the first being a heat attack surrounded by my peers.

And so my feet take me forward, into the black car, and I've barely shut the door behind me when we speed off. I struggle with the seat belt for a second as the school disappears behind us, along with the terror on Caden's face.

Caden now stares out the back window, his eyes on the road behind us, searching. I look to the driver, who seems to be in his mid-forties from what I can see, with slightly greying brown hair and worn and wrinkled hands which are tightly gripping the steering wheel.

Without even giving thought to what I'm doing, my eyes drift to the review mirror and I nearly jump upon seeing the brown eyes of man already watching me through it. The edges of his eyes crinkle as he smiles.

"Melissa," he says. "It's good to see you. It's been awhile, hasn't it?" But it hasn't. I've never seen him before in my life.

I fumble for words, only slightly conscious of the calming wind outside and Caden's eyes, which are burning a hole in the side of my neck.

"I, um... I don't know you are. Am I supposed to?"

The man laughs, and then spins the steering wheel, turning the car roughly to the right. I grip the door handle before I topple into Caden. "No. We've met, but it's unlikely you'd remember. I'm Randall. But you can call me Rand."

I nod slowly before asking, "We've met?"

"I knew you as a baby. I was, uh..." he pauses for a moment, looking at his hands, "a friend of your uncle."He seems almost sad for a moment, but he snaps out of it, pressing down on the car horn and whizzing onto the other side of the road to pass the slow driver in front of us.

My uncle? I'm tempted to ask, But I hold my tongue. My uncle died a year after I was born. I never knew him, and he never knew me. My mother – his sister – never told me anything about him. I don't even know his name.

A truck blares its horn as it drives straight towards us, coming from the opposite direction. I grip the seat tightly, my heart beating out of my chest. Just before the truck collides with us head on, Rand jerks the car back to the left, throwing me against the door.

"Can you tell me what's going on? Where are we going?" I try to keep the panic from oozing into my voice, but my words still come out shaky and a little too high.

We whizz around another corner, and this time I keep a firm hold on the door handle.

 "My place," Rand says quickly, his knuckles turning white as he tightens his grip on the steering wheel.

"Why? What's going on?"

Rand doesn't answer.

I try again, not bothering to hide how much my voice is shaking. "Tell me. Please. Why can't I stay at school?"

My right hand sits quivering in my lap, my heart beats out of control, and my emotions – a mixture of irritation and anticipation – waits to dissipate.

"At the current time," he says slowly, and I can tell he's choosing his words carefully, "my house is the only place that will be safe for you, especially after today."

"What is that supposed to mean? I barely know who you are. And why wouldn't I be safe? Have you discovered that an axe-wielding murderer is coming after me?"

"Something like that."

I swear I've never wanted to scream in irritation more than at that very moment.

We stop at a set of lights and Rand turns in his chair to look at Caden, lightly smiling. "She really doesn't know anything, doesn't she?"

Caden shakes his head, a smile tugging at his lips. "Unfortunately not."

I look back and forth between the two of them, frustration taking up residence in my mind. "I'm sorry, but is this meant to be amusing? Am I missing something here?"

I'm completely ignored.

"And she doesn't know about the swap?" Rand asks, sending a curious look in my direction.

Caden gages my reaction, which is becoming increasingly unstable, before saying, "No."

My frustration takes over. "Can someone please just tell me what the hell is going on?"

"Can it wait until we reach my place? I don't like to talk while I drive." At that very moment, the traffic light turns green and Rand, after turning back around, presses down on the accelerator, sending the car racing down the road.

Silence descends as I give up on the questions, and when I look out the window again, the wind has calmed and is barely noticeable, only able to be traced through the fluttering leaves on the trees and the softly swaying grass.

We arrive at Rand's place – a two story suburban house that blends in with the rest of the grey houses on the street – shortly after. Rand parks in front of the garage and gets out. I swing open my own door, step onto the concrete driveway and follow Caden and Rand as they make their way over to the front door.

Rand unlocks the door and I step onto light wooden floorboards and a faded green mat. White, slightly grey, walls surround me in a small corridor before opening up to a living room and staircase to my left, and a kitchen and dining room to my right. The house is extremely modern looking with lots of sharp angles and white and grey surfaces, but the furniture and possessions look like things you'd buy at a second-hand shop. My eyes pass over a floral painting on the wall and I raise an eyebrow. A man living in a house full of feminine touches. Interesting.

Rand notices my expression and quickly explains. "It's my wife's. She was a painter."

"And I suppose you're wife knows me too?"

"Knew," he corrects me, and I realise that she must be dead. "And, yes, she did know you, but not in person. She only knew you through what everyone told her."

I resist the overwhelming urge to ask who 'everyone' is and following Rand to the living room where I take a seat on a worn used-to-be yellow couch. Caden makes himself comfortable on the two-seater couch opposite mine, leaving the space in front of me vacant for Rand.

"Do you want anything to drink, Melissa?" Rand asks from the kitchen, the sound of glass clinking together and cupboards opening and closing echoes loudly in the silent house. Even the ticking of the clock hanging on the wall above the television seems to shout with every passing second.

"No thanks."

"I'll get you a glass of water."

Caden is staring down at his hands, looking incredibly far away from the present. My racing pulse slows as I wait and In my head, I add boredom to my steadily growing list of emotions, which already includes anticipation and foreboding.

Rand returns with three glasses of water and a small sliver packet. After sitting, he rips off a corner and pours a white powder into his water. He catches me looking and says, "Prescribed medicine." He doesn't elaborate.

We sit in silence as Caden continues to stare at his hands and Rand watches the powder dissolve in his glass. I wait for one of them to say something, but when it becomes apparent that neither of them is going to start talking anytime soon, I open my mouth and ask, "So will you tell me what's going on now?"

Rand swallows a mouthful of water and places his cup back down on the table. "Where do you want me start?"

The question strikes me as ridiculous. "I don't know. With an answer? Isn't that where you're meant to start?"

Rand shrugs, has another drink of his water, puts the cup back down. "We'll start with a bit of history."

My eyes flick yet again to Caden, who doesn't look as though he'll be joining to conversation anytime soon, and I wait for Rand to start speaking.

"Your mother, from a young age, possessed these abilities. She tried to keep them a secret, but it didn't exactly work, and after having you, she stopped using them completely. When you were two or three your mother started to notice that you too possessed some abilities. They were only small things, like if something was just slightly out of you reach you could make it move those last couple of inches into your hand and you could heal really fast." I tense up when he mentions my fast healing ability. Did he find out through the doctors? Surely he isn't telling the truth? "I saw you move something without touching it once, too, when I was with your uncle at his house and you and your mother stopped by.

"Anyway, a few months later, you went missing. It was only for a few hours – six at the most – and your mother found you in her garden before she had the chance to call the police. Except you were different. You no longer had any odd abilities and you were normal – at first." Rand looks rather uninterested in what he's saying, but I'm far from it. All I can think is: If this isn't just a joke, why hasn't my mother told me about this?

"Now let's skip to another family that lived on a farm next to yours. They had a daughter almost the exact same age as you, and you were good friends with her. You two were alike in almost every way, except she didn't share your odd abilities."

A name enters my mind as he speaks: Sarah, my childhood friend. And then: What does she have to do with anything?

My dream of her with cold hands and of her words, "I don't feel the cold," tries to push itself to the forefront of my mind. Is it possible that my dreams of her were trying to tell me something? That Rand is telling the truth? Just thinking about those two questions is overwhelming. When did my life become so crazy?

"The day, or rather afternoon, that you went missing, so did she. She was found an hour later than you, and even though she appeared and acted exactly the same, she soon turned out to be different.

"One afternoon, a couple weeks after you had gone missing, your mother found you crying in your bedroom. As she neared you, she felt a change in temperature. The closer she got to your cot, the colder the air grew and when she went to pick you up, she had to snatch her hand back – your skin was freezing cold."

My disease, I think.

"It passed after a minute and she brushed it off. But then, a month later or so later, it happened again, and again a month after that, and again a few weeks later and so on. At that point, only your parents, your uncle and I knew about it, and we kept it to ourselves.

"As it so happened, in a house on the farm next to yours, the exact same thing was happening to that friend of yours. The parents of your friend didn't tell anyone about their child's strange ability to make the air grow cold once a month and you two still played together, each of you ignorant of the fact that you were both slowly freezing the world around you, extracting the heat from the air.

"Two years later, it began to snow. In the middle of summer. The parents of your friend knew that she had something to do with it and decided to move elsewhere. And they packed up their stuff and left. Your parents thought they were leaving because they had discovered what you were doing to the air, and after they left, it was only a couple of weeks before you moved too."

I can feel the frown on my face. I was the one to move first. And Sarah didn't share my disease. She couldn't have. Could she? Suddenly everything is way too confusing, way to overwhelming. I have to take in deep breaths, but even that doesn't calm my racing heart.

Rand eyes land on mine, tinted with understanding.

"I don't understand," I manage to say. "I left first, not Sarah. I – my mother never mentioned me going missing or anything. This – it didn't, Sarah wasn't..." I fade out, unable to form words.

Rand continues on slowly. "Something happened to both of you when you went missing that afternoon. You were both taken – kidnapped. The people who took you had been watching your mother for years because of her abilities – powers, you could say – when they noticed you. They'd seen your abilities and they'd seen the similarities between you and Sarah. I'm not sure why exactly, but you posed a threat and they decided to fix the problem before your powers could develop further." He focuses on my eyes as I prepare myself for what he's about to say. "That afternoon, they took you spirit – which is basically your soul – and swapped it with Sarah's – well, Melissa's actually. You were Sarah, but you became Melissa."

A dark room, a man with a sweet voice, a cold hard object and excruciating pain.

It was a memory. A memory of being pulled out of my own body.

And suddenly it's all too much and I do what I've never done before:

I faint.