Free Unscheduled Departure by T.M. Franklin

hung up on Lindsay, not wanting to hear anything more.
    "Something's wrong," I muttered, scrolling through my contacts with shaking hands.
    "What is it?" Finn asked.
    "I think Lindsay's switched too," I said, cursing when I dropped the phone on the couch. I snatched it up and searched my contacts for my mother's number. "Where is it?"
    "What are you looking for, Ro?" Finn's voice was quiet, tentative.
    "My mom's number!" I all but shrieked, desperation racing through my veins, pounding and harsh. "Someone deleted her number."
    "Ro—"
    "No!" I shouted as the phone tumbled from my fingers, bouncing on the couch before it hit the floor. "Don't say it."
    "Ro, she's gone. She died when you—"
    "No," I screamed. "No, that's not right. No." Finn got up and took a step toward me and I held up my hands. "No!" I backed away . . . around the couch, down the hall. "No!" Into his bedroom and back, back, into the closet. They were wrong. They had to be wrong. How many of them were switched? More than Finn and Lindsay? What about the rest of my family? My other friends? What if nobody was who I thought they were?
    I dropped to the floor and pulled in my knees, curled up on my side in the closet amidst Finn's— the wrong Finn's— shoes and discarded clothes. My mom was fine. She was alive. She was waiting for me to call, and probably would give me hell when—"
    "Ro?"
    It was Finn. The wrong Finn. The false Finn. But I didn't have to listen to him. This was wrong. It was all wrong.
    Tears streamed down my face, dampening the carpet under my cheek as I clenched my eyes shut against the world, against the wrongness of it all.
    "Rowan, please!"
    I opened my eyes, the world blurry until I blinked, and the edge of the closet door came into focus, the corner of the chest of drawers, its wooden legs pressed into the carpet, and . . . something stuffed underneath.
    Something fabric. Something . . . white.
    I crawled forward a bit and reached out for it, Finn's voice fading to the background as blood rushed in my ears. I pulled out the mass of fabric and stared at it, my mind racing to make sense of what I was seeing.
    A shirt.
    A white shirt.
    With a coffee stain on the cuff.
    Finn dropped to his knees before me, hands twitching on his thighs like he wanted to reach out and touch me, comfort me, but didn't know if he was allowed.
    "You found it," he whispered.
    I nodded jerkily.
    "That means . . . " I could hear him swallow and looked up to meet his gaze, drawing a heavy breath as I brushed the tears from my eyes.
    "It means it's not you who's in the wrong place," I said, words raspy, as if struggling to leave my throat. "It's not you, and it's not Lindsay."
    "Ro." He reached out to take my hand and I held it tightly, needing the comfort.
    "It's me," I said finally.
    "Yeah."
    He tugged on my hand and I fell into his embrace, shuddering when he stroked my hair, murmuring words of consolation.
    "I want to go home," I mumbled against his chest, the stained shirt still clutched in my fingers.
    "I know." He pulled back and grabbed my shoulders, looking into my eyes. "We'll figure this out."
    "How?"
    "Finn will call in the morning."
    "Maybe," I muttered. "He's pretty angry at me for not meeting his flight."
    "He's going to figure out something's wrong when he sees you— the other you," Finn clarified, shaking his head. "He’ll track her down and when she has no idea what he's talking about, he'll figure it out. He’ll figure it out and he'll call."
    "Then what?"
    He shrugged. "I think we had the right idea the first time— just the wrong people. We try it again, with you and the other Rowan. But to do that . . ." He winced when he met my gaze.
    "Crap," I mumbled.
    "Yeah," he said, sitting back on his heels. "We've got to go back to the airport."
     
    12:21 PM
     
    First, we had to wait for Finn to call. After another nearly-sleepless night, we sat on Finn's couch, pretending to watch daytime television between bouts staring at my cell phone.