Sharon watched helplessly as the paramedic touched the driver of the car. The paramedic was still for a mpoment; then he looked around and said, "Where am I? Where's my car?" A few seconds later, Sharon heard squealing tires and another loud crash. She winced. The paramedic who had switched, meanwhile, was beginning to panic; and in his panic, he bumped against the other paramedic. The second parademic suddenly seemed to lose all the strength in his body and fell to the ground. A minute later, the paramedic was on his hands and knees, squealing and crawling around in the street. Turning, Sharon saw a man jogging down the sidewalk who tripped over the woman in spandex; a moment later he stood up, looked at his body, and screamed.
This was getting out of hand. Already it was getting out of hand. And as more people swapped, there was a good chance that the switches would spread. Sharon pictured the swaps creeping slowly over the city, starting from this very spot, from ground zero as it were.
She had to let someone know. The police... the police should know about this. Of course, she couldn't drive while she looked like Sally. A phone... she he had to get to a phone...
Sharon turned on her heel to run back to the house... and immediately crashed into someone else. She and the other person went tumbling to the ground.
Lifting herself from the ground and spitting freshly-mown grass, Sharon looked at the person she'd bumped into. It was Britney, one of Sally's friends who lived down the road. Sharon expected Britney to start calling her "Sally"... instead, though, Britney said, "I'm sorry, little girl, I..." Then she looked around. "Where am I?"
Birtney hid her eyes from the bright light. She didn't like bright like. And this light scared her; it had appeared so suddenly.
When the light went away, Birtney expected to see her best friend, Sally. She had come over to Sally's house so that they could play together. Instead, though, Britney saw that she was in a house. She was sitting on a bed, and she had something in her hand. Looking at the thing she had in her hand, she saw it was a telephone.
She stared at the phone. How had she gotten it? And where had Sally gone, and how had she gotten in this room?
Lifting the phone to her ear, she said, "Hello? Hellooooooo?"
"Suze, you there? Can you hear me?" It was a man's voice, speaking from the phone.
"My daddy told me not to talk on the phone without his permission," Britney said, and she put the phone down on the bed.
As she stood up from the bed, Britney saw that she was dressed in jeans and a tank top. That was weird... she'd been wearing shorts and a t-shirt. She couldn't remember changing clothes... but then she saw something even weirder. There was a mirror over a vanity table against the wall, like the kind her mommy had in her bedroom, and in the mirror, Britney didn't see her reflection, like she should have. Instead, she saw a grown-up, wearing the same tank top and jeans she was wearing. The girl in the mirror was very pretty, and she moved at the same time as Britney, like they were playing a copycat game. After a minute, Britney realized that she was this girl! She had turned into a grown-up!
"Coooooool," she said...
Brad signaled to the waiter that he needed a refill. The waiter walked over to Brad's table and poured water from the pitcher in his hand into Brad's waiting glass. Brad smiled and mouthed, "Thank you."
He tapped his foot impatiently and rolled his eyes. Checking his watch, he saw that he only had an hour and twenty minutes left until his date with Emily, and he still had to get back to his apartment, take a shower, shave, and change. All the more reason to get off the phone and finish eating. Instead, he was trapped in an interminable conversation with his sister, Susan.
It was like this every weekend... had been like this every weekend since he'd moved to New York City. Saturday morning he would grab his cell phone and make the rounds like the dutiful son and brother he was. First he called his parents. His mom talked to him for twenty minutes, his dad for five. Then he called his brother Bill. Fifteen minutes, and boom, they were done talking. Then he would call Susan. And they would talk. And talk. And talk. He'd been on the phone with Susan for an hour and forty-five minutes now; she had been monologuing for half an hour straight about her latest boyfriend. Brad didn't find any of it the least bit interesting... but he liked to think of himself as a good brother, so he indulged her.
Suddenly, Susan broke off in mid-sentence. There was a moment of uncharacteristic silence. At first Brad thought he'd lost his connection, or maybe that his batteries had died (not unprecedented when he talked with his sister). But then he heard Susan's voice, saying, "Hello? Hellooooooo?"
"Suze, you there?" he asked. "Can you hear me?"
"My daddy told me not to talk on the ph--"
But then Susan's voice vanished. And so did the rest of the world, in a brilliant, blinding flash of light.
