Page 102 of Switch!

I consult the rows of bills and do a quick mental calculation. “Really big. Bordering on huge.”

“Oh. Maybe he has a credit card we can shift some of it to. Do you have his wallet?”

We move the pizza box out of the way and team up, but even with her help, I’m soon discouraged. Patrick neglected more than just his body. He let his entire life fall apart, and if I’m honest, I don’t know if I can put it back together again. Especially when I never learned those skills on my own. I don’t know how to live an adult life, so how can I expect to fix his?

“This laptop is high spec,” Trixie says. “We could sell it in a pinch. The TV too. I think it might be OLED. Those are pricey. I’m surprised considering how sparse the rest of the apartment is.”

“Patrick is super into electronics,” I say. “He used to build robots. You know, the kind that battle in arenas?”

“Awesome!” Trixie says. Then she glances around. “Where’s all his gear? We had a neighbor like that whose garage wasfullof stuff—a whole wall of tools and meters and wires. I didn’t know what any of it was for. Except the police scanner. He’d always tell me what went on that day. Oh! He had a ham radio too. That was cool. I liked talking to truckers.”

A flash of a memory hits me. Just an image really. A little girl is seated at a kitchen table, a boxy electronic device in front of her. She’s gripping a microphone and laughing into it. The family resemblance is unmistakable. A little sister?

“Patrick used to have one of those radios,” I say. “Are they worth any money?”

“No idea. We can check, but we’d have to find it first.”

We both look at each other. Then we leap to our feet and rush down the hall. Trixie rattles the knob of the locked door with her ear pressed against the white surface.

“Must be a spare room,” she says with an air of authority. “The echo is too strong for it to be a closet.”

“What echo?” I ask.

Trixie sniffs vainly. “You’ve gotta have an ear for these things.”

She moves aside so I can try, but I don’t hear anything significant while rattling the knob. “You can really tell just by doing this?”

Trixie snorts. “Of course not! You can see light coming through the crack by the floor, and most closets don’t have windows so…”

I shove her playfully and she laughs, but it’s good detective work. I try to prove how clever I am by feeling along the top of the doorframe for a key, but without result.

“A paperclip will do,” Trixie says. “See the little hole in the knob? If we poke something inside—”

“Got it!” I rush back to the bills on the coffee table and return wielding a paperclip. I hand this to Trixie, who straightens the metal out and shoves that end into the knob.

“I used to lock my bedroom when leaving it,” she says, her tongue sticking out as she pauses to concentrate. “Usually after Halloween when I didn’t want anyone stealing my candy. There we go!” The click is barely audible. Trixie stands and gestures to the door. “Would you care to do the honors?”

“Thanks,” I say, grinning at her as I grab the knob. My smile becomes a grimace as my hand clenches involuntarily. After a subtle shift, I realize that I’m merely a spectator.

“What are you doing?” My mouth snarls these words, but I didn’t choose them.

Trixie looks confused. “What do you mean?”

“Give me that!” My body lurches forward to swipe the paperclip away. I don’t want to. This isn’t me. It’s Patrick! He opens the door, keeping his attention on Trixie. He lets the paperclip fall to the floor inside the room. Then he feels around until he can push the button that locks the knob. After slamming the door shut, he balls his hands up into fists. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” Pain hits us both, sudden and fleeting like an ice cream headache. Patrick presses his palms to his temples. “Trixie,” he groans.

The past few days come back to me in a flood of flashes and impressions, similar to what I experience when digging through another person’s memories. His brain is processing everything that happened while he was away, and it’s intense.

I take advantage of his confusion and mentally grab him. I pull us both into the black box, only vaguely aware of the real world as Patrick’s physical legs crumple and he begins to fall. I can’t deal with that, because in a room with obsidian walls, I find myself under attack.

Patrick is flailing at me, the slaps weak and ineffective, like a child throwing a tantrum. “Don’t go in that room! You can’t make me go in there!”

“Okay okay!” I shout while shielding myself. “We didn’t know. How could we when you never want to talk?”

“I can’t go in there,” Patrick sobs, his anger giving way to sorrow. He pulls away to cover his face with his hands. “Please don’t make me. I’m begging you!”

“No problem, just… Just give me a second. I’ll make sure my friend knows.”

He doesn’t respond. When I leave the black box and return to consciousness, I’m looking up at the ceiling. A concerned face framed by two purple pigtails is staring down at me. It takes me a second to reorient and realize that I’m lying on the floor, my back against the carpet, my head resting in Trixie’s lap.