The Switch Read online

  “Then why is the light on?” I parried.

  “Hmm,” he said. “You got me on that. Anyhow, I just want to see what it feels like.”

  Without any expectation that the front door would be unlocked, he turned the knob. It swung open with an eerie, frog-croak groan. We were on the threshold. “Now,” I said, with a catch in my throat, “We’re into it.”

  We entered the room, the wooden floorboards making mouse-like sounds beneath our feet. And then, we stood before it. It looked even bigger up close, and the Latin words on the plaque seemed to glow like a highway warning sign. Connor grabbed the upper handle, which had been polished smooth by many hands. The switch was in the “up” position. We had no way of knowing if that meant on or off.

  He gave it a yank. It wouldn’t budge. Another with both hands, and it moved just a bit from its resting position. But he wasn’t going to be able to do it alone. I could see the heavy springs that held it in place. I put my hands with his and said, “Let’s count to three, then give it all we’ve got, okay?” All it took to get me in the game was a challenge.

  The first time, we got it almost there, and then the damn thing snapped back up and the wooden handle whacked me on the side of the head. I staggered back, feeling like I might pass out.

  “Aw, Jeez,” said Connor. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” I held my head. My anger was bigger than my pain. “Let’s try it again.”

  And with the combined muscle of two fifteen-year-olds, we did it. No sooner had we gotten it halfway down than we jumped back with a shout, because the springs were so powerful, they snapped it into its new position without any help from us. After the echo and vibration of the metallic SNNNAPPP! had died down, we looked around. Something was off.

  And then, I noticed. That one lonely, bare light bulb had gone out. We looked at each other and cracked up, from both the built-up tension and the ridiculousness of the whole thing.

  “It’s a light switch! What kind of weirdo puts in a gorilla switch like that to turn off the lights?”

  “Prob’ly someone too weird for us to wanna know,” said Connor. “Let’s book.”

  I agreed without hesitation. Home, even with all its drawbacks, sounded good. But something tickled my brain. Scratched at it like a cat trying to get in a door.

  No action, as they say, is without consequences.

  Ask yourself these questions:

  Have you ever come home after a long trip and thought things looked different?

  Have you ever said a word you use all the time and it felt foreign on your tongue?

  Have you ever suspected that your parents might not really be your parents, but clone parents or imposters imitating them?

  he last one of these, I’ll admit, is a little extreme. In fact, I have learned that there is actually a mental condition called Capgras Syndrome where people think that family members and friends are not who they say they are, and Capgrassers do sometimes get put in the nuthouse.

  But if you’ve only felt the first two, or even one of them, it will give you a taste of what I’m talking about. Only a taste. Because what I am about to describe is in a whole different category of weird.

  Connor said he had to go because he had homework, and he bolted off after giving me a look I hadn’t seen before. That puzzled me a little, but I didn’t let it break my routine. I continued along my normal route to our apartment building on Hudson Street. It was, as I mentioned, April Fool’s Day, and when we’d begun the walk from school, it had been cold enough for me to zip up my jacket. Now, Chicago weather in the spring can be all over the place. Blizzards one day, t-shirts and skateboards the next. But as I turned onto Hudson, I realized I was sweating and had to stop to remove my backpack and peel off my jacket. As I did this, I noticed the buds breaking out on the bushes that make a border around our building. I’m not always the greatest observer of nature’s ways, but I was sure they hadn’t been there that morning.

  For an instant, I felt a little dizzy, like you do when you’re coming down with the flu. I started to walk, then had to stop and shake off this sense that I was a character in the movie of someone else’s life. Things felt that off.

  When I got to the front door, I punched in the security code. That, at least, was the same, and so was the look of lobby. Our condo building had once been a Catholic Girls’ School, and some things, like the lobby, had been kept pretty much the same. I began to think that the whole business with the house had just shaken me up a little. All I wanted to do was get inside, get online, and get forty-five minutes of gaming in before Mom started hassling me about my homework. I was also hungry. Specifically, for that stash of Oreos in the cupboard.

  I had a key for those days when my mom was out shopping or having coffee with her friends, so I let myself in. Mom was what they call a homemaker, which is to say she didn’t have a regular job, and my dad worked for WGN-TV as some kind of producer, but they were “downsizing” the staff, and he’d been really worried lately about losing his job, especially since he got along with his boss about the same way I got along with Ms. Furbel. We both had, quote-unquote, problems with authority. Anyhow, because of this, he worked too much and was perpetually late for dinner, which usually got the evening’s fighting started. Sometimes, it lasted way past my typical bedtime, and because of this, I was hardly ever asleep before one.

  But as soon as I stepped inside, I heard his voice, and he was laughing. It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and as far as I could remember, my dad hadn’t laughed that way in a long time. Okay, I told myself. He got off work early. That happens. And he wouldn’t be laughing if he’d been fired, right? Then, my mom joined in.

  They were laughing together. A first?

  Or no, I did remember them laughing together, but it was when I was really little and all three of us used to split our sides over the “adorably cute” expressions I’d come up with, like telling my dad I was going to send him to Mars without a helmet if he didn’t stop teasing me. But that was a long time ago.

  The hilarity was coming from the TV room, and I figured that they must be watching some goofy movie or maybe one of those grown-up, R-rated talk shows. I tiptoed over to the threshold and beheld a sight that my eyes could not make sense of.

  Mom had her head on Dad’s shoulder and one leg thrown over his knees like some teenager on a date. They were holding the iPad and looking at something that was making them crack up like a couple of lunatics. What it was, I couldn’t guess, but I was damn sure it wasn’t the latest stupid cat video because my dad hated them even more than he hated reality TV. He hated them so much, in fact, that he’d sometimes make these long-winded speeches at the dinner table that would somehow end up with my mom slamming the bedroom door. How she could take it personally that he didn’t like cat videos or reality shows I don’t know, but she did.

  “Oh my God,” tittered my mom.

  “I don’t believe this,” snorted my dad.

  The two of them laughed like cartoon characters. My jaw dropped. Some sound of disbelief must have escaped my lungs because my mom looked up and with this incredibly chipper voice said, “Oh, hi, honey.”

  “Are you guys high or something?” I said.

  They giggled some more.

  “Hey, Sport,” said my dad, who as far as I know had never, ever called me ‘Sport.’ “Your mom just showed me this video. You wouldn’t believe what this guy—” He looked at me funny, then pointed to his forehead and said, “Hey, what happened to you? You’ve got a heck of a lump there.”

  Only then did I remember getting smacked by the switch. “Oh, it’s just—I fell on the playground. Soccer.”

  “What did I tell you about playing soccer on concrete?” my mom, who had never said a single word about playing soccer on concrete, said. “I’ll get some ice for it.”

  “No, it’s okay.” I backed away. “I’m…just gonna get a snack. Yeah.”

  I made a beeline for the kitchen. I realize I have said some harsh things abo
ut my parents. They fight all the time, usually about stupid things. But the thing is, they’re not stupid. Mom reads all the time and can speak three languages, and Dad is kind of a genius when it comes to computer graphics and the whole history of western civilization, which he says is on the decline. They just don’t seem like a great match. Maybe it’s their astrological signs or something. One thing they do agree on is phoniness. They hate it. So the feeling I got when I saw them lolling on the sofa and saying, “Hi, honey” and “Hey, Sport” in those weird cartoonish voices—the feeling of, well—phoniness—was disturbing to say the least.

  I pulled open the snack cabinet, ready for an Oreo fix, and found…Gluten-free Rice Rondelles with Seaweed Bits.

  I didn’t know exactly what a panic attack felt like, but I thought for sure one was coming on at that moment. I pushed the rice things aside and ransacked the cupboard. The closest thing there was to junk food was unsweetened granola. Get a grip on yourself, Jacobus, I told myself. There must be an explanation. What was it I learned about Aristotelian logic in school? My dad is home early. My dad likes cookies. Therefore, he ate the Oreos. That would make me angry, but at least it would not make me think I was going insane.

  I stomped out of the kitchen and back into the TV room.

  “Dad,” I said in my lowest, most authoritative voice. “What happened to the Oreos?”

  A strange expression passed over his face, which was not guilt, or denial, but something odder.

  “What Oreos, dumpling?” my mom asked, wide-eyed. “I never buy Oreos. Or any of that junk. You know that. Have a rice cake.”

  “Dumpling?” I repeated, my voice rising and not so authoritative anymore. “Dumpling!”

  “Honey, is everything all right?” Her leg slid off Dad’s knee, her fingers going to her throat.

  “Mom, there was a full package of Oreos in the cupboard this morning.” I puffed out my chest, doing my best to hide my panic. “I want to know who ate them.”

  My parents shared a look of concern, and then my mom walked over and felt my forehead, the universal parental response to kids acting weird. She inspected the lump, then turned to my dad. “You don’t think he could have a concussion, do you?”

  “Nah.” He frowned. “How’s his temperature?”

  Again, she put the back of her hand to my head.

  Now, remember I said my mom worried about my heart, even though the doctor said it was no big deal? Normally, she would have put her ear to my chest the way she’d been doing since I was not much more than a baby. It was a habit. But she didn’t do it.

  “I think he’s feverish,” she said. “I heard there was something going around at school. That place is a breeding ground for bacteria. I knew we should have homeschooled him.”

  And then my dad said something that gave the whole game up. He said, “Maybe you were right, sweetheart.”

  “All right!” I shouted. “Enough. You guys never agree on anything. April Fools, right? It’s April first and you totally punked me. Now, where are the Oreos?”

  “Listen, Sport—” said my dad.

  “Stop calling me Sport.”

  “Aw, Dumpling—” said my mom.

  “Stop calling me Dumpling. What do I look like? The Pillsbury Doughboy?”

  Just to be sure, I looked down at my waist. It was as thin as ever. When I was about four, I might have been a little bit round, but not anymore.

  “Listen, Jacobus,” my dad began. Ah, finally. My name. “First of all, it’s May first, not April first. I don’t know what happened at school today, but why don’t you sit down here for a minute and relax. You did take a knock on the head. Hmm. Maybe we should have it looked at.”

  “You guys have totally lost it,” I said.

  Mom took my arm. “Should we call the Karamadjians?” she asked my dad.

  “What?” I blurted out. “Why would you call them?”

  “Well, honey,” she said, like she was talking to a three-year-old. “Hartūn is your best friend. Maybe his folks know what hap—”

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “I’m going over to Josh’s condo to check out his new game. And when I get back, everything better be back to normal. I’m sure you guys think this is hysterical, but you’re really freaking me out. I’m not emotionally mature enough for this.”

  They just looked at each other.

  I didn’t go to Josh’s place. I paced around the building’s interior courtyard for a while, my brain twitching like crazy. I went back and forth between being really angry, really confused, and—I’m a man enough to admit this—scared. There had to be an explanation, but the only explanation I could come up with was too crazy.

  Then I remembered something my dad had once shared with me in his saner self. It came from the classic British mystery series Sherlock Holmes, and it was something that Sherlock, the weird but genius detective and cocaine addict had said to his less weird and less brilliant sidekick, Dr. Watson.

  “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

  It was not possible that I had suddenly lost a whole month. It was not possible that I had imagined the Oreos. It was not possible that my parents had done a one-eighty. Not unless something had caused things to flip. And there was only one thing that had occurred this day that made it different from any other day. The switch.

  They call it superstition when you believe, for example, that stepping on a crack will break your mother’s back, or that if you go into a dark bathroom, close the door, and look in the mirror for long enough, you’ll see the ghost of a dead relative or something. And superstition is supposed to be primitive and irrational. But if you dance and shout “Hey-ya! Hey-ya!” to the sky and it rains, it’s really not all that irrational to believe that there’s a connection. Still, I didn’t fully believe it.

  Worlds don’t change with the flip of a switch.

  I ran the six blocks back to that corner, back to that once-empty lot. My chest felt tight the whole way because all I could think was, what if the house is gone? When I sprinted around onto Cleveland Street and saw the first flash of red, I stopped to catch my breath and whispered, “Oh, thank you, God, whoever you are. Thank you for making it real.”

  I scrambled up onto the truck bed. The little house swayed and moaned. The front door was still open a crack. I entered and tiptoed over to the switch. It was still in the down position where we’d left it, so I squatted like the weight lifters do in the gym, took hold of the handle, counted to three, and pulled up with as much strength as I could summon. My desire to be back in a familiar world knew no bounds.

  It moved maybe two inches and snapped right back into place. I tried again, and then repeatedly, until I was completely spent. It was no use. I was going to need help. And help would not be available until tomorrow, which meant that unless this whole thing turned out to be a huge practical joke, I was going to have to spend the night in a different world.

  ry to imagine my situation. After discovering that my parents weren’t who I thought they were, and then failing to correct the situation, I had to face coming home to this alien environment. My insides weren’t just in knots—they felt as if I’d gone as high as I could go on the rollercoaster and then gotten stuck up there with my stomach still on the ground.

  “Where did you run off to?” my imitation mom asked when I came in. My dad wore that look of fatherly concern, his hand on her shoulder. “We were worried.”

  “This is just so wrong!” I clamped my hands to my ears.

  “We checked with Josh’s parents,” he said. “They said they hadn’t seen you.”

  “I know, I know,” I stammered. “I was going, and then I remembered I left something over on Geneva Street. You know, around the corner from school.”

  “Left what?” my sort-of dad asked, like he was prosecuting me for a war crime.

  “Uh…” Come on, brain. Work. “My science notebook,” I said, smooth as all hell. “Connor forgot his assignmen
t, and I—”

  “Connor?” My mom’s eyes literally bugged out. “What were you doing with Connor?”

  “Yeah,” said my dad. Instead of arguing with everything Mom said, he had become her goddamned clone. “I thought you and Connor were mortal enemies.”

  And that was the way it went. It was as if I had to keep hitting balls from a batting machine on infinite repeat. The more curves they threw at me, the more I had to lie to keep from striking out. Pretty soon, I had created a whole new fictional version of things just to match the way they thought things should be. It made me dizzy, so I finally said something I am rarely known to say.

  “I’m gonna go do my homework.”

  “Okay, dumpling, er…honey,” Mom said, still with that little bleat of worry in her voice.

  Now that’s weird, I thought. I’m making up stuff to match her version of the world, and she’s correcting ‘dumpling’ to ‘honey’ to go with the world I think I’m in. If we keep going like this, maybe we’ll end up in the same reality!

  But I discovered it wasn’t that simple.

  My bedroom was still my bedroom, but with a few very unwelcome changes. For example, there were three Little League trophies on my bookshelf, and I had quit Little League years ago after less than a month on the team. One of them was for “Most RBI,” which was pretty much impossible since I had quit because I was terrible at bat. I bent over to inspect the trophies. Sure enough, they all said JACOBUS ROSE.

  “What the hell is going on here,” I whispered.

  I went back over everything. After we’d pulled the switch, the only thing we’d really noticed was that the light had gone out. And though Connor had acted strangely, we’d split up before things had really started to change. Maybe it was all in my head. There was only one thing to do. I had to call Connor and find out if things were just as messed up for him as they were for me.

  I fished around in my backpack until I found the cheap cell phone my dad had bought me after I’d given him endless grief about how all the other kids had them. It was too small and it had a crap touchscreen, but it worked. I punched in the speed dial for Connor’s house. My heart was racing, but I wasn’t sure exactly why.