June 2001

I awoke to the sound of tires on asphalt. I felt the thrum in my head as my cheek rested on the rear seat of the car. From the front of the car I heard hushed voices, held conspiratorially low. I was groggy and didn't have my bearings yet. A kind of realization came to me then, and I sat up to regard the two strangers in the front bench seat. The man who was driving glanced up at me in the rearview mirror, and I saw his eyes smile before he looked over at the woman in the passenger seat. He nodded once, and I looked over at her. She turned toward me and greeted me warmly, "Welcome back." I remained silent, but she had already turned back anyway. The passenger window was partially rolled down, and the woman's white scarf flapped freely in the breeze. The car was a metallic blue gray, with the fins and rococo of the progressive 50s view of the future. The dashboard was inlaid with wood, and was angular and deco. I was taking the whole nostalgic experience in, but as strange as it was these people weren't exactly strangers. In fact they were my next door neighbors. But then again, so was I.

Parked outside an immense house, the man, my father, inspected the damage to the front of the car as my mother made our way up the stone walk. We were self-conscious and fidgety. The damage to the car... it now came to me that we weren't completely innocent, that there was a reason we were now inhabiting the bodies of our otherwise missing neighbors. Would a dent in the fender be indictment enough? I felt nervous, and not in the state of mind to acknowledge the particulars of the situation. Still, deep down there was excitement that couldn't be denied - the feeling of having gotten away with something. The woman who was my mother fished a set of keys from her purse and examined them for the first time. "This must be it," she said, selecting the likely candidate. She was right: the key slid into the lock fluidly, but the door swung open as she pushed. It hadn't been locked. From inside I heard the muffled sounds of a television. My mother and I looked at each other, thinking the same thing. My father joined us in the doorway, pausing as he sensed it. "What's happening?" Mother and I looked at him and said in unison, "David."

So a member of the original family remained, and had somehow slipped through a seemingly foolproof plan. But at that point it was not as if we had a choice. There was nothing to do but go ahead with the plan. The younger brother of this family had no counterpart in ours, and so he now was the interloper. In the foyer we split up, and it struck me as funny. Was it now a matter of keeping up appearances? If so, I had no idea how I would pull off convincing anyone, let alone a legacy brother. Still, it might not be so hard. Phantom memories began to seep in as I explored the house. The house itself was much larger than our previous one, with plants and a glass corridor lined by pebbles and a running stream. I couldn't believe our good fortune. Had we really pulled this off? Would we really be able to assume the lives - as well as the bodies - of our wealthy neighbors? The repercussions of failure had no place in my heart. I came to a bedroom that I suspected might be mine. It was very spacious, and the contents were brightly colored, as those of an adolescent several years my junior.