Free Premeditated by Josin L. Mcquein

pointing to a picture of a chocolate cat with licorice whiskers. “They put pudding in it,” she said.
    “I think rich people must be obsessed with windows, because Lowry has them in every room, even the principal’s office.”
    “Now I want pudding,” Tabs announced behind me. That was her way of telling me that if I could hear her, she could hear me, and she didn’t want to eavesdrop.
    “Don’t be mad at me for using your clothes,” I told Claire. “I didn’t so much as spill a soda on them or drop ketchup atlunch. I was careful.… Well, there may be grass splotches on your socks, but we’ll just call it an even trade for all the times you stretched out my stuff with your insanely mature figure, okay?”
    Though if she’d wanted to wake up right there and argue the point, I wouldn’t have minded.
    According to the doctors, that’s what we were waiting on. The waking-up part, not the yelling. Claire hadn’t done enough damage with her razor to actually kill herself. When she cut her wrists, she did it like they show on TV—a side-to-side slash over the blue line. It only took a few stitches to close, and she barely nicked the vein at all. Anyone who really wants to end it knows that won’t work.
    Sometimes it’s tempting
.
    At least, it used to be. If I cut myself now, everyone would blame Claire for it. They’d say I got the idea from her, that I was so upset I didn’t know what I was doing. But if anyone hadn’t known what she was doing, it was Claire. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been barefoot, and she wouldn’t have slipped when her blood pressure crashed. She wouldn’t have bounced her head off the sink, then the tile, hard enough to crack her skull.
    When Uncle Paul called and told Dad that Claire was in the hospital with a subarachnoid hemorrhage, I asked him if it was a brown recluse, because they get into the houses around here and hide in the corners. I thought she had a spider bite.
    “They keep giving me your stuff at school; it’s weird. All the papers and forms they gave me to get signed say ‘Claire Reed’ on them, like we’re interchangeable or something. Don’t worry, I’m not going all changeling on you. I don’t want your life.”
    Truthfully, I wouldn’t have minded a time-share on it sometimes, but I didn’t want it all to myself. I wanted my Cuckoo back.
    “I’m going to steal pudding. I can’t plot with low blood sugar,” Tabs blurted.
    In her head, I’m sure that sounded better than “I’m going to escape awkwardly while you talk to the vegetable.” She darted out the door before I could agree or argue or even ask her to remember that I hated chocolate.
    With Tabs out of the way, I went to the table and upended my school bag.
    “I brought you some cherry lip gloss. They said your lips could get all cracked being in here so long, and they don’t have any good stuff.” I uncapped the tube and held it close to her nose. “Smell familiar?”
    There was no answer, but I kept hoping. She didn’t even flinch when I ran the gloss over her lips.
    “Please hang around to yell at me for doing something so stupid as trying to pull this off, Cuckoo. I’ll never learn my lesson if you don’t, and who knows … I might decide to make it a habit or something. Going around, pretending to be random people.”
    It was kind of nice not having to be myself, or even try to figure out what that meant, but it was frustrating, too. It had only been one day, but I thought if I made myself as close to a copy of Claire as possible, Brooks would at least give me a sign that he was interested. I should have been his type.
    “He’s not taking the bait as quick as I’d hoped. I thought I did everything. I changed my hair and my clothes. I’m workingon the personality, I swear. I even try to smile when I think about it—”
    “Mission accomplished.” Tabs popped back in with a dinner-tray consisting of three pudding cups, a bowl of blue Jell-O, and two plastic-wrapped