The World Through Various Eyes

[28] Planning for Help (Jade's POV)

On Thursday, December 19th, Leslie fell ill.

At first, it started off slow: a cough here, a sneeze there. But it soon picked up, and ended up so bad that it left her bedridden.

Alex had texted me the news. Seeing as Leslie was in Christopher's body, she had access to his cell phone and its contacts. And apparently, it had my number in there, since Alex was using my phone. I couldn't remember giving my number to Christopher, though.

Leslie had texted Alex how about she was feeling. She told him she felt incredibly nauseous, pretty delirious, and had an ear-splitting migraine.

Life is weird. It's the longest thing we'll ever know, yet it's still so short and fleeting. Once in a while, I'd grab onto anything I could hold and I'd grip it tightly, just to reassure myself that this was actually happening. That it was indeed me, in that moment, who was there.

Things lately seemed to contradict this, but I was determined to hold onto my identity. I had no control over whose body I was inhabiting, but I did have control over what I made of it. I didn't have to make changes in myself just because so much of them were going on all around me.

On Friday, December 20th, I decided it was time to take action. We heard increasingly less from Leslie, and our nerves got the best of us. Alex and I decided he would go over to Christopher's house. I would go to Leslie's, since I knew Chris better. But to a certain extent, those details didn't matter. Who we really needed then was Leslie.

Both Alex and I had stopped coughing up blood. It left as quickly as it came, and thank God for that! But what about Leslie? Was she alright? Was her recent state a continuation of what we had all experienced but recovered from? Or was it something new?

The questions were stacking up, and rather than get answers, all we did was get more questions. It was time to get those answers. We didn't just want them-- we needed them.

Alex and I had decided to crack this mystery by any means, whatever those would be. Little did we know, the mystery truly would be solved today.

So I paced around my house on that Friday, anxiously trying to decide what to do next. My mother was focusing on getting out of the house for work, and I was focusing on concocting some sort of plan. Alex and I had switched houses for that day, concentrating on trying to solve this mystery.

The two of us had spent plenty of time in each other's houses by then, but neither of us had really investigated our own. He went to his house to retrace his steps and I planned on visiting Leslie to check on her. Though the plan was originally for him to go to help Leslie, I planned on sneaking over there just in case. It was just too much to expect Alex to take care of a painfully ill girl all by himself, and when it came to caring for others, Alex wasn't exactly your go-to person.

My own mom was giving me a weird look as I continued to walk nervous laps around my own house. It no doubt was weird for her to have what she thought to be her daughter's friend in her house without her daughter, and it was almost as if she was keeping a close eye on me. I never knew she was that skeptical of Alex. On the outside, Alexander Swaltz struck many (including myself at times) as a bit of an acquired taste, but you'd think she'd be used to him by this time.

His short temper. His cynicism. They were all parts of him. One might argue that they were negative traits, but they were still his. I don't know, I even found them endearing at times. I knew that underneath that exterior was a boy who truly cared about others. He wasn't fake. He didn't try to pretend he was fine or something else he wasn't. He was just himself.

He had a tendency to cuss at inappropriate times, and just had a bit of a negative outlook. To call him an optimist would be the lie of the century, but I loved him anyway. He was unapologetically him, which I truly appreciated, and his "take me as I am" attitude was pretty admirable. Sometimes I wished I could be more like him. Sure he could be dark cloud in the light of the sunshine, but he had no time for fake people.