Airhead

I rinsed and wiped my mouth, then grabbed the first jacket my hands came into contact with — something made out of buttery soft brown suede.

I was about to walk out of Nikki’s room, when it hit me that I’d almost walked by her computer without checking it to confirm whether what Brandon had said last night was true. I mean, about me being dead. Sure, Justin was waiting — but Googling myself would only take a second.

And besides, if I’d really been in a coma for a month, I probably had a ton of emails. Sure, most of them would be spam, but it would only take a minute to check them and see if maybe Christopher had written…

But when I opened Nikki’s pink laptop, I saw right away something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that it was a Stark-brand PC, which frankly wasn’t what I’d buy if I was a millionaire supermodel with all the money in the world.

It was that the keyboard was sluggish, not responding to my commands quite as soon as it ought to have.

It only took a second for me see why. Every time I pressed a letter on the keyboard, the network activity light on Nikki’s modem flashed.

Which meant, I knew perfectly well from Christopher’s father’s obsessive belief that all our computers were being monitored by the government, that someone was tracking Nikki Howard’s keystrokes.

Her computer — unlike the Commander’s — was totally being spied on.

Someone who didn’t spend much time on computers — like, say, a world-famous supermodel — wouldn’t have noticed. But to someone who basically lived on one, like me, it was totally obvious.

And deeply, deeply sinister.

I pulled my fingers off the keyboard so fast it was like I’d been stung. I hadn’t clicked on anything except Google News. I hadn’t typed in my name or anything else that could have given me away.

Still. Talk about creepy. Who’d be spying on Nikki Howard?

And why? How interesting could a supermodel’s emails be anyway?

Just then I heard the elevator doors open, and I darted from Nikki’s room. The elevator operator — a different one from last night — gri

‘Shh,’ I said, and pointed at the sleeping Lulu and Brandon. They looked so angelic. No way would you guess they were a couple of lunatics who might kidnap someone in the hopes of curing her of brainwashing by ‘Scientologists’.

‘Oh, sorry’ the elevator operator whispered. He held the door open for me. ‘Going down?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, with one last and final look at my ‘captors’. And I stepped into the elevator…

… just as a tiny white blur whizzed past me and into the car.

‘Cosy,’ I hissed at Nikki Howard’s dog, who’d plopped down on to the elevator floor as if she owned it. ‘Get out. You don’t really belong to me. I’m not coming back. Go home.’

But Cosabella only whined softly.

‘Seriously,’ I whispered. ‘You can’t come. I’m going back to the hospital’ I scooped the tiny dog up and plopped her down on to the white carpeting just outside the elevator door, where I commanded her to ‘Stay’.

But one look at that sad, furry little face — not to mention hearing her pathetic whine — and my heart melted.

‘Oh,’ I said, realizing her desire to go with me might actually have nothing to do with her love for me and more to do with a call from nature. ‘Sorry. Come on then.’

And the dog leaped excitedly into the elevator after me, her stumpy tail wagging like a… well, I don’t even know what. Thing that wags a lot.

The elevator operator smiled at me (well, at Nikki Howard) and closed the door. Then we glided down to the lobby, where he slid the door open again and said, ‘Have a nice day, Miss Howard.’

‘I’m not —’ I began. But then I caught a glimpse of my reflection in one of the lobby’s mirrored walls. And I realized the futility of it all.

‘Thanks,’ I said instead. And stepped out of the elevator, with Cosabella at my heels.

The strangest thing of all? Even though all I’d done was wash her face and brush her teeth, Nikki Howard still looked gorgeous. Gorgeous enough, anyway, that the UPS guy delivering packages to the mail room dropped his electronic clipboard thingy when he saw me… then picked it up, all flustered.

Either that, or he was just freaked out to see a celebrity of my magnitude in jeans and Skechers.

Somehow I suspect it was the aforementioned gorgeousness.

Which might sound like it’s cool. I mean, being so gorgeous that you stop UPS drivers in their tracks.

But when it’s just something you were transplanted into? It isn’t really all that much of an accomplishment.

I hadn’t really had a chance to notice the night before — having been in the middle of being kidnapped and realizing I was trapped inside someone else’s body and all — but the lobby of Nikki’s building was huge, with a gigantic crystal chandelier hanging in the middle of the ceiling.

Standing directly beneath that chandelier was Justin Bay, looking as if he’d just stepped out from between the pages of one of my sister’s teen magazines. He was dressed casually in jeans, a grey V-necked sweater — and a brown leather jacket. When he saw me coming towards him, his darkly good-looking face twitched, and his gaze darted nervously past my shoulder as if to see if anyone else was getting out of the elevator with me.

When he saw it was just me though, he seemed to visibly relax. He even broke into a grin that showed all his white, impossibly even teeth.

‘You came,’ he said, in that voice I recognized from the awful Journeyquest movie, as I approached him.

‘Uh,’ I said. Cosabella had pranced away from me, heading straight towards the revolving doors outside. ‘Yeah… but I can only stay a minute. I have to go. Was there something you wanted me to give Lulu?’

Justin’s grin vanished. ‘Lulu?’ His handsome face looked perplexed. ‘Why would I want you to give something to Lulu?’

‘Um, I don’t know,’ I said. Cosabella was standing on her hind legs, dancing around in front of the revolving doors. I’d been right. She really needed to go. ‘I just figured that’s why you wanted to see me and not her. I thought you had a surprise for her or something.’

‘What is this, a joke?’ Justin reached out and grabbed one of my hands. And he wasn’t exactly shaking it. He clung to it, while gazing down meaningfully into my eyes with his own pleading and half-filled with tears — just like that scene in Journeyquest the movie when his character Leander pleaded with the evil sorceress not to kill his beloved Alana (played by Mischa Barton). ‘Nikki, where have you been, baby? I’ve been dying. You haven’t returned any of my calls or text messages. It’s been more than a month. Then I hear you’re finally back, and you don’t even call. What did I do wrong? Just tell me.’

As I stared at him in growing horror as his words sunk in, I became aware of three things at once. One, Justin Bay was in love with me. Well, not with me, but with Nikki Howard.

Two, Nikki Howard was apparently a total skank who was slutting around behind her best friend and room-mate Lulu’s back with her boyfriend, Justin. Not to mention behind the back of Nikki’s own boyfriend, Brandon.

And three, Nikki Howard’s dog was about to pee on the marble floor of the lobby of her building.

‘Could you just hold that thought?’ I said to Justin, slipping my hand out from his. ‘I just have to let my dog out.’

‘Nikki,’ Justin said, his face clouding over with frustration. ‘You can’t—’

‘Seriously,’ I said. Just hold on a minute.’

I hurried away from him, and over to the revolving door.

‘Here, Cosy,’ I called to the dog. ‘Here, girl —’

And the little dog darted after me as I pushed on the revolving door and went out into the cool autumn air. As soon as we got outside, Cosabella squatted next to one of the planters beside the building… and I realized she hadn’t just needed to pee.