Life Swap

Coincidences

"I think we got more homework in one day than we had the whole of last term?" Louise said as the twins sprinted out of the back door, heading for their beloved swings. We had just arrived home, with Louise invited for tea, and Caroline had said that we could get some fresh air and stretch our legs before starting our prep. "Some of which is really hard...I can see why we had to drop down now...no way are we ahead of the rest of that class?"

"It was a bit intense as well...my half day in year seven was mostly tests, but Miss Clarke is a real slavedriver?" I sighed, feeling a bit tired again. It was not quite four o'clock, but I would happily have climbed into my cot for a sleep. "Being Olivia is going to be hard work!"

"I know it's difficult for you...and talking to you in a different body is really weird...but I am so glad you're here...Olivia," Louise grinned, almost calling me Kelly as she took hold of my hand and gave it a squeeze. "It would have been awful being the new girl without you and the twins...I was scared enough as it is!"

"Same here...Felicity is great, and she believes me...which meant a lot...but you really know the old me, and understand what I am rambling on about...Felicity doesn't have a clue about the world outside of this...bubble?" I suggested, squeezing back. "Maybe we can actually help each other survive all this madness?"

"I never thought I would ever get to Deepdene...Mummy is over the moon...and she is really into her new friends?"

"Caroline really likes your mum...and she is delighted I've made another friend, too...even though I have known you for like eight years!" I laughed, because it was insane. Every time I stopped to think about it, I had to question my own sanity. "And if my latest theory is right, I was sent here partly to make things easier for you...and don't forget that it was Kelly/Olivia who was going to make your life a misery for you, if you stayed on at Redstone?"

"But wouldn't that mean that the Dream Stone is thinking for itself?" Louise asked, returning to the conversation we had both had with Felicity at lunchtime. "Kelly/Olivia wished for a new life...that is our assumption...but she didn't know anything about you, so she did not ask for a straight swap, did she? I mean, if you expected touching the Stone to work, you wouldn't ask to jump into the body...and the life...of a complete stranger? You would want to know what you were getting into...or rather, who you were getting into, surely? So...that means that the Stone had to select a suitable victim for her...it had to choose you? And think for itself?"

"Sir Randolph Hoyte wrote that the African people who showed him the Stone said it was of the Spirits...he thought it was of God, and would only work for righteous and moral people...so it has to have the power to decide on the suitability of any wish...deciding means thinking if I am right?" I mused, thinking out loud to an extent, because it was only a theory. "And when I asked it to reconsider, Chloe said the Stone was busy, but she still felt the warmth...I think the warmth was the Stone scanning her, just like it scanned me. When it scanned the twins, and Caroline, it found out how happy I was making them...so it refused to change me back?"

"Sir Randolph was no scientist though, was he? You said he was an explorer...and a school teacher, didn't you? A Victorian school teacher at that?" Louise frowned, remembering my report, because she and Felicity had both read it, over the holidays. And she had a point, of course. But I was really no longer in any fit state to consider it, because I had just remembered something important, and the revelation hit me like a ton of bricks, knocking me sideways all over again. "Olivia...what's wrong?"

"I...it's...you see...I'm an idiot," I stammered, moving to sit on the bench where I had told Felicity my secret, before I collapsed in a heap on the terrace. "Caroline wants me to see some sort of psychologist...an educational psychologist, I think she said...because Kelly/Olivia saw him before, and she actually liked him...she thinks he will help me understand why dropping down another year is a good idea..."