365 Days (Part 1) | ✓

195. Changing Places

195. Changing Places: Imagine living the day as someone else.

An excerpt?

*

Holy cheese fries, this wasn't good.

He was staring at me. At me. I was being stared at. As in, his overwhelmingly delicious eyes were on my plain old self and his brain (however small Derek insisted it was) was registering my existence. Or maybe not, because his staring at me was causing me to have an existential crises.

I almost laughed, which probably wouldn't have been good, since I was standing alone in the middle of the hallway, trying not to stare at him staring at me. I didn't want to look crazy, even though I was partially convinced I was clinically insane, or at least suffering from severe and disturbingly realistic hallucinations.

It was funny because I was having an existential crises -- as in, where did the girl once known as Diana Miller go? Because waking up in a different body that did not belong to me, who had been known as the aforementioned Diana Miller up to this date, did not bode well for her continuing to exist.

Not that I had any complaints with my new body. (Or my temporary body? I hadn't yet figured out the terms of this deal that the universe had forced me into.) It was kind of perfect, a fact I didn't know how to deal with, having lived in an noticeably imperfect body before now. No, my panic came from the overall weirdness of my situation. I mean, really -- what the heck had happened?

But here I was, trying to pretend I was Diana and luckily having college professors that didn't care and probably didn't even know who Diana was, anyway.

Why was I speaking of her in the third person? I was Diana. Something had just gone a little askew.

I'm definitely losing it.

And now, in the middle of my breakdown -- proven by the evidence of me not recognizing the body I woke up in -- an incredibly cute guy was looking at me. Guys didn't look at me. They actually tried to avoid looking at me. But there he was: Bryan Ross, in all his sportishness glory and popular glow, staring at me with undeniable interest.

I was still in a numb sort of soundless freak out, but I couldn't deny the thrill that went through me.

Then he started walking toward me. And that's when I instinctively turned away to hide the utter shock in my face. Was this really happening? I was dreaming, right? But if so, then I really should take advantage of it. Mom always did call me an opportunist.

It's not like I particularly liked Bryan. I had a longtime crush on his best friend, not him. But he was still male and when he stopped in front of me with a confused expression on his adorable face and said "hey," he still made my heart pound a little faster.

It's a dream, Diana, I told myself. Act ridiculous.

"Hey," I said, my tone trying to hover between aloof and interested.

He frowned, like he wasn't sure of me. What? I wondered. Everyone else had taken me for an entirely new person... even my best friend, who acted like we had just met and hadn't once dressed up as Peter Pan and his shadow for Halloween. (Surprise: I was the shadow.)

But Bryan stared at me and after a pause where my assumed confidence wavered, he asked, "I know this is crazy, but... You've switched bodies, have haven't you?"