Finders Keepers

CHAPTER TWELVE

AMANDA WASN’T SURE IF she was frightened or furious or some combination of the two. Sitting on a bench, her back pressed against the wall, she tried in vain to calm down. This just wasn’t happening.

She was in jail. Amanda Beeson, the queen bee of Meadowbrook Middle School, was behind bars. OK, it wasn’t Amanda Beeson’s body in the holding cell, but it was Amanda Beeson who felt imprisoned.

She wasn’t alone. Serena was there too, pacing the floor, muttering to herself. And there were four other women, none of whom looked very nice. They weren’t pacing or shaking or acting nervous though. In fact they all looked like they’d been in prison before. One of them was even sleeping!

Serena-Cassandra glared at her. ‘Stop crying!’ she snapped.

Amanda hadn’t even realized there were tears running down Margaret’s face. She certainly had every right to cry. She didn’t deserve to be here! She’d even tried to stop Serena’s evil scheme from succeeding. The prescription Serena had given her. Amanda had had it filled at a pharmacy, but only so she could see what the pills looked like. Back at Margaret’s place, she’d emptied the pills into the sink and replaced them with similar-looking little white mints that wouldn’t do anyone any harm. While Serena would think Margaret was dropping a sleeping pill into the glass meant for Stevie, he would simply receive a glass of punch with a little mint flavouring. He wouldn’t fall asleep. Ken would tell him where the lottery ticket was, Amanda would reveal herself and expose the scheme, and she’d be a hero!

But instead she was one of the villains. A common criminal. Was this the kind of person Margaret was? She wondered if Margaret had ever been in jail before. Maybe Amanda should be acting a little more nonchalant about all this. But what did it matter now? She actually wanted the guards to know she wasn’t Margaret!

Unfortunately, she really didn’t know how she was going to convince them of that. Had anyone ever used bodysnatching as an excuse to be released from a prison? She seriously doubted it. No one would believe her.

There was only one way out of this mess. She had to get out of Margaret’s body and back into her own, which at that very moment was probably lying in her nice, soft bed being waited on and coddled by her mother.

She took some deep breaths and tried to think rationally. How had she got out of bodies before? Falling, hitting her head — it was usually something like that. When she had been invisible-Tracey, an accidental kick in the head had sent her back into herself. During the bank robbery, when she was Sarah, a slip on the floor did the trick.

Tentatively, she leaned back and tapped her head against the wall. Nothing happened. Her head didn’t even hurt. She forced herself to bang her head a little harder.

One of the other prisoners, a hard-looking woman with bright red hair, stared at her. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing,’ Amanda said quickly.

The woman sniggered. ‘It’s not going to work, you know.’

‘What?’

‘Hurting yourself to get out of here. You’d have to spill some serious blood. And even then you’d only end up in the clinic here. You’d still be behind bars.’

Amanda remembered another kind of shock that had worked in the past.

She thought back to when she occupied Ken’s body. During that time, she formed a — a relationship with a dead boy named Rick. When Rick had said he wouldn’t contact her any more, she’d been really upset. That strong feeling had pushed her out of Ken and back into herself.

But here she was in jail. Wasn’t that shocking enough to get her out of Margaret? Apparently not.

She tried banging her head again, but she was beginning to think she would never be able to hurt herself enough to provide an adequate physical shock. The red-haired woman glared at her.

‘Hey, stop that. I told you, it won’t work.’

Amanda ignored her and kept thumping her head.

‘You’re annoying me,’ the woman growled. ‘If you don’t stop, I’ll make you stop.’

The threat in her tone sounded very real. Amanda stopped. What else could she do to cause herself pain?

She tried pinching her arm. She dug her manicured nails in so hard, she actually saw a tiny drop of blood. But it didn’t hurt all that much.

Maybe she needed that mean-looking woman to carry out her threat. The thought of being attacked was so scary, for a moment she thought it might get her out of Margaret. But no such luck. She was going to have to get really and truly beaten up.

She started thumping her head again. The redhead turned to her with a look of fury. But at that moment, a guard appeared.

‘Hey, Cassidy.’

Cassidy turned out to be the red-haired woman.

‘Yeah?’

The guard opened the door. ‘Your lawyer’s here.’ The woman hurried out.

‘I want to make a phone call!’ Serena demanded. ‘I know my rights — I’m entitled to a phone call!’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll be back in a minute,’ the guard muttered.

Amanda noticed that Serena’s hands were clenched into fists. And it dawned on her that she could probably get Serena mad very easily, just by confessing who she really was.

And Serena would believe her. She’d been in their class, and even though she hadn’t paid much attention to Amanda when she was there, she must have learned about all the gifts. If Amanda could get her good and mad right now, Serena might just go over the edge and slug her — or at least slap her. Really, really hard. And as much as Amanda didn’t want to experience that, it could work.

‘Serena?’

‘What?’ Serena snapped.

Amanda got off the bench and came closer to Serena, within slapping distance. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

But that was as far as she got. The guard reappeared. ‘OK, Hancock, you can come and make your phone call.’

‘About time,’ Serena muttered. To Margaret-Amanda, she said, ‘I’ll get us out of here.’

Great, Amanda thought dismally. And then what? She had to get out of this body! She knelt down by the wall and started banging her head again, harder this time.

‘Hey, you’re going to hurt yourself!’ another prisoner yelled. ‘Guard! Guard!’

The guard reappeared.

‘I think you’d better do something about this nutcase,’ the prisoner said.

The next thing Amanda knew she was being dragged out of the cell by two guards, one holding each arm. And then she was in another cell, a smaller one, all by herself. One of the guards spoke to the other.

‘Keep an eye on her till I can find something to tie her to the bed.’

The other guard pulled up a chair just outside the cell. ‘Don’t move,’ she ordered Amanda.

Amanda didn’t move. She couldn’t. She was in a total state of shock. And yet the feeling still wasn’t strong enough to get her out of this body.

This couldn’t be happening.