Disclaimer: Meg Cabot is amazing. Though I aspire to be similar to her, I am, most unfortunately, not. It sucks. I'll get over it.
A/N: So I needed to write this. Desperately. It's really rough, I guess, and the ending feels a bit rushed. Please review, if you want to tell me just that, or anything else...
Being
The last bell had rung at Tribeca Alternative. I had stayed behind talking to Mr. Greer about a project he had assigned today. Being Nikki Howard hadn't been doing much for my public speaking skills, anyway.
"Um, Nikki?" The voice sounded weak and rough.
When I remembered this was now my name, I turned. I knew the voice. I knew the face. I just wish he knew mine. Well, I mean, he knew my face and my voice. But not as mine. Not as Emerson Watts'.
"Christopher," I breathed, really looking at him now. Strangely, I hadn't seen him all day, but, under these circumstances, I wasn't too disappointed by that. His face looked strange in a way I had never seen it before. He looked flustered, out of breath . . . blotchy? His eyes looked red and, upon closer examination with the assistance of Nikki's perfect vision, I saw tear marks. Christopher had been crying.
Right then, I knew. He figured it out. He knew.
I never should have done it. I never should have done it. Two million dollars! I never should have done it. Two million dollars!
Looking at Christopher's face like that, I couldn't help but think, what was that worth? Two million dollars? When I could have Christopher? Couldn't I spare two million?
"I, well . . ." he swallowed, more like gulped, and held up the stickers. The glow-in-the-dark dinosaur stickers
"Christopher," I said again, in a quiet voice.
He looked choked and said, "Well, were these a . . . coincidence?"
Two million dollars, I reminded myself, or Nikki's self.
Actually, no, it wasn't Nikki's self. I was my own self, and this was Christopher, and he knew who I was, and I was in love with him. Two million dollars!
"Chris." Tears were forming in Nikki's eyes and starting to spill over onto her expensive dress Lulu had picked for me from what was now my closet. My head shook slightly and slowly, unsure of its movements.
"Em?" he looked so freaked out. And so confused.
Part of me wanted to scream "No, you freak! I'm Nikki! You're insane! It was a coincidence!" Two million dollars.
But the stronger, largely irrational voice inside me took control and, instead, I nodded and, just as I had wanted to in the computer lab the day before, I threw my arms around his neck, clinging to his polo shirt. "You can't . . . call me that. You can't tell anyone that you know! I'm not allowed to tell anyone," I rattled, most likely incoherantly.
He hugged me back hard, but then pulled me into the computer lab. "Em? You're not . . . you're Nikki? Howard? What?"
I looked him in the eyes and hoped he was seeing me. "Remember that documentary, Christopher?"
"I've watched a lot of documentaries." He looked wary and untrusting.
"You know the one with the, um, the brain transplant? Well, technically, it was a full-body transplant," I rambled on hurriedly.
Realization dawned frighteningly in his eyes and I knew he couldn't believe me. I helped him sit on the nearest chair because I knew he was collapsing anyway.
"Nikki . . . she's dead. Em is dead. I don't know if you're trying some sort of new charity thing where you're nice to lesser people, but this, pretending . . . this is just sick!" he screamed, his face screwing up and tears hanging precariously from his face. I couldn't remember why I had been so excited when Frida confirmed that Christopher was indeed sad I had purportedly died. Now that I was seeing it, it was really just . . . unsettling, and, well, the worst feeling ever. "I don't know what you're thinking, but . . ." One tear hit the floor and I looked at it. It was mine, not his. We were such messes. This was such a screwed up mess!
I sat in the chair next to his and saw a trace of what appeared to be hope on his features. I couldn't bear to see him lose that, so I didn't push him. I sat there. We sat there for a long time. I know because a bell started ringing, one that, by a glitch of some sort in the school's system, rang about forty-five minutes after school ended.
Weirdly, yet somehow rightly, I grabbed his hand. "I am Emerson Watts. I promise. I'll tell you anything. But I have to be Nikki. I have to be her. Remember on the documentary, about the bioethical reasons? I am legally dead. I mean, Emerson is legally dead. If anyone finds out, my family will owe two million dollars – plus legal fines. Just, pretend I'm Nikki."
He looked happy at first, gloriously happy, but then settled on being outraged. "Em, this can't happen! It isn't right! This, this is what's unethical! You're still you! What kind of shallow, deranged person would do this to you? You have to be you."
"I have to be Nikki, Christopher. I can't be me," I urged him tritely, mostly trying to convince myself. "I mean, not around you. But, everywhere else, I have to."
"This isn't right!" he persisted.
But then he looked at me, and finally said slowly with just a trace of desperation in his eyes, "Will you just please be you with me?"