onyx: poltergeist

fifteen

ADAM

I zipped up Jayda's pencil case before slipping it into her bag, followed shortly by all the homework I had to pull through throughout the week. I wasn't too good in Math or my sciences back in high school, and now having to relive the experience of facing them again after not touching them after such a long time was nothing short of daunting. I might have searched up how to solve trigonometric equations on Google just to answer one common question in her worksheet; someone remind me to clear my search history soon.

I rearranged Jayda's table properly before taking a step back to ponder for a while. I seem to be forgetting something, but what was it? I absent-mindedly picked up the phone lying on the table in front of me, where a message from Jayda greeted me at first glance.

Mr Lambert: Mr Lambert, don't forget about the necklace receipt!

Oh, so that's what I forgot. She said a few days back that it's either in the necklace box or with her mother, so my first instinct was to slide over to the side table and open the drawer. I fished out the box and opened it, fishing out the necklace that I didn't wear for quite a number of weeks ever since I was trapped in Jayda's body. I picked up the cushion nestled inside, in hopes I would see a smooth white receipt neatly folded up and lying underneath, but all I saw in return was the empty black base of the box itself.

Well, at least I could scratch 'in the box' off from my list of places where the receipt was kept. Now my only last hope to find that slip was glossy paper was to ask Mrs Julie Hudson, the lady I met during our parent teacher meetings for the past few years, the lady watching soap operas downstairs in the living room. In other words, Jayda's mother.

I stuffed the cushion back into the box before nestling the necklace along with it, slamming the lid shut before slapping in onto the base of the drawer and sliding it shut. I immediately tore down the stairs from Jayda's bedroom until I finally reached the living room. Time to bring my acting skills from my high school theatre to good use.

"Hi mom," I greeted Mrs Hudson as I casually took my seat beside her on the sofa. It still feels strange to me to call her 'mom', even though I've been doing that for the past few weeks or so, but even if it means addressing someone else as my mother, I still had to be as Jayda-like as possible until we finally switch back.

"Oh hello sweetheart," Mrs Hudson turned to me halfway through an episode on television, "what's up?"

"You know the necklace you gave Jay-me on my birthday?" I asked, hastily correcting the mistake that rolled off the tip of my tongue, "Can I take a look at the receipt?"

"Sure, but why?" she asked in return. Crap, I feel stuck.

"Um, I just want to know where the antique store is," I smiled nervously, "because the necklace you gave me looks cool and I want to find more stuff like this at the store." Hopefully Mrs Hudson would buy my lame excuse, what I actually needed it for was answers, answers to why I was stuck in my own student's body.

"It's somewhere on my crafting table somewhere, you might want to check there," she told me, gesturing to the stairs I just rushed down.

"Thanks mom," I nodded before hopping off the couch and heading up the stairs, heaving a sigh of relief at my leftover acting skills I had to use in front of Mrs Hudson.

I moped around the hallway until I found a room with what looked like a large table and a chair tucked in front of it. Hanging above the table was roll after roll of ribbons, each of them a different colour. Yep, I definitely found Mrs Hudson's craft room.