Chapter 2: The Long Drive to Mark's
The rain started as a mist, then became a steady drumbeat on the roof of the Corolla. Each wiper swipe left a greasy smear, the streetlights bleeding into watery gold blooms on the glass. My hands, small and pale on the steering wheel, had begun to ache from clenching. Ten-and-two was impossible; my arms were too short, forcing a hunched, precarious grip.
Every sensation was a violation. The sports bra was a constant, sweaty compression, the underwire digging a furrow beneath the new, shocking weight of my chest. With every turn, every minor adjustment of the wheel, that weight shifted independently, a liquid, pendulous reminder. I couldn’t find a comfortable posture. The seatbelt cut across my neck, the shoulder strap riding up because there wasn’t enough…height. I had to guide it between my breasts, which only accentuated their presence.
My ass felt like it was perched on two separate, soft cushions. The thin material of the yoga pants and the thong underneath meant I felt every seam of the car seat, every vibration of the road. It was an intense, hyper-awareness of a part of my body that had once been just…there. Now it was a distinct, occupied territory.
The radio was on low, some pop song Sabrina must have liked. The singer’s voice felt like sand in my head. I turned it off. The silence was worse. It was just the swish of tires on wet asphalt, the patter of rain, and the ragged sound of my own breathing in this unfamiliar register—lighter, quicker.
I drove on autopilot, navigating the familiar route to Mark’s place in the hills through a fog of sheer disbelief. My old life—the mortgage, the unfinished model kits on my desk, the half-drunk cup of coffee I’d left on the counter that morning—felt like someone else’s biography. This body was the only reality. The chipped pink polish on my nails glinted under the dashboard lights. A silver bracelet, delicate and stupid, rattled against the wheel.
The gated community loomed. I pulled up to the intercom, the Corolla’s engine idling roughly. The security camera was a dark, unblinking eye. I rolled down the window. The rain was cold on my arm, my her arm, the fine blonde hairs standing up.
I pressed the button. It buzzed, loud in the quiet.
“Yeah?” Mark’s voice, filtered through the speaker, was a bass rumble. Familiar. A lifeline.
I opened my mouth. My voice, when it came, was a strained, feminine chirp. “Mark. It’s…you need to let me in.”
A pause. “Who is this?”
A frantic, cold energy shot through me. How do you prove you’re a ghost? “It’s Justin.” The name sounded absurd in this voice.
A longer pause. I could picture his face, the guarded skepticism. “Very funny. Look, I don’t know how you got this address, but this isn’t—”
“Port Townsend,” I blurted out, the words tumbling over each other. “Two years ago. The cabin. We got shit-faced on that terrible peated Scotch you insisted was an ‘acquired taste.’ You spent an hour trying to split logs with a hatchet at two in the morning.” My new voice cracked, rising in pitch with desperation. “You finally sat down in the mud, put your head in your hands, and told me your biggest fear wasn’t losing your money or your company. It was that you’d die alone in a big, empty house and nobody would find you for a week because your calendar was clear.”
The static from the intercom hissed. The rain pattered on the roof.
The gate emitted a sudden, jarring buzz and began to swing inward with a slow, metallic groan.
I drove through, my heart hammering against my ribs—a frantic, birdlike flutter in a cage that felt too thin. The mansion, a modernist slab of glass and steel, glowed like a landed spacecraft at the end of the winding drive. I parked haphazardly behind his Range Rover and just sat for a moment, watching the curtain of rain.
The front door was already open when I reached it, Mark silhouetted in the warm light from the foyer. He was exactly as I’d left him yesterday: a mountain of a man, six-four, wearing grey sweatpants and a faded university t-shirt, his dark hair messy. He held a heavy crystal tumbler in one hand. His eyes, sharp and assessing, scanned me—the dripping blonde hair, the ridiculous pink workout outfit clinging to every foreign curve, the sheer, shivering smallness of me.
“Prove it,” he said, his voice low. No hello.
I stepped inside, the polished concrete floor cold even through my sneakers. The warmth of the house, the scent of sandalwood and leather, was a visceral punch of memory. Of belonging somewhere. I was an intruder in it now.
“Your first girlfriend was Melanie Cruz in tenth grade,” I said, wiping rain from my face. My fingers touched plump, wet lips. “She dumped you because you tried to impress her by quoting The Matrix during make-out sessions. You still can’t eat lime green Jell-O because it reminds you of the stuff they used for your MRI after you blew out your knee freshman year. You keep a signed baseball from Ken Griffey Jr. in your safe, not because it’s valuable, but because your dad gave it to you the week before he left.”
I was talking too fast, the high voice spilling secrets like coins from a ripped pocket.
Mark didn’t move. His gaze was unreadable. He took a slow sip of his drink, the ice clinking.
“The password to your old gaming rig,” I pressed, the panic rising, “was ‘N7Slayer1’. You used it for everything until I made you get a password manager after the LinkedIn leak.”
He set the glass down on a side table with a deliberate click.
“Justin had a scar,” he said, his eyes locked on mine. “Where?”
“Right hip. From when he fell out of the oak tree trying to retrieve my stupid drone. Seven stitches. It looked like a tiny, jagged moon.”
Silence stretched. The rain lashed the glass wall behind him.
Then his shoulders slumped, just a fraction. All the tension bled out of his posture, replaced by a profound, bewildered fatigue. He ran a hand over his face. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
He believed me.
The relief was so immense my knees buckled. I stumbled, catching myself on a sleek console table. My hip hit the edge, a sharp bloom of pain. It felt different—a brighter, more superficial sting. Everything about this body was more immediate, less dampened.
“How?” was all he could manage, staring at me as if I were a bizarre artifact that had crash-landed in his foyer.
“I don’t know.” I hugged myself, a useless gesture. My hands felt tiny on my own narrow shoulders. The feeling of my own fingers pressing into the soft flesh of my arms was deeply unsettling. “The gym. I was finishing my set. There was this…snap in my head. Then I was on a treadmill. In this.”
I gestured down at myself, a jerky, awkward motion. The movement made everything jiggle. I flinched.
Mark’s eyes followed the gesture, then snapped back to my face, a flicker of horror and something else—pity, maybe—crossing his features. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m five feet tall and weigh about as much as a strong breeze,” I said, the old sarcasm filtering through the new voice, making it sound petulant. “I’m cold. And my…everything hurts.”
He moved then, finally, shedding his stillness. “Okay. Okay.” He was in problem-solving mode. I’d seen it before, when deals went south or systems crashed. It was a comfort. “First, get out of those wet things. I’ll…find you something.”
He led me upstairs, my small sneakers squeaking on the stairs. I had to take them two at a time, a childish, inefficient motion. His guest room was minimalist, all neutral tones. He dug through a dresser and tossed me a pair of his sweatpants and a long-sleeved henley. They were massive, pools of grey fabric.
“Bathroom’s through there,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “I’ll…be downstairs.”
The door clicked shut. Alone, I faced the full-length mirror on the back of the door.
The person staring back was a stranger. A drowned, beautiful stranger. The pink clothes were darkened by rain, plastered to a form that was all exaggerated curves and shocking youth. Water dripped from the ends of the long, tangled blonde hair. The face was achingly young, with huge, lost blue eyes and that full mouth parted in shock. I raised a hand. She raised a hand. I watched, detached, as those slender fingers with their chipped polish touched the reflection’s cheek.
I had to move. Mechanically, I peeled off the sneakers, revealing small, narrow feet. The socks were tiny. I peeled the yoga pants down. The thong followed. The feeling of cool air on my legs, on the bare skin of my hips and ass, was intensely private. I didn’t look down. I couldn’t.
The sports bra was a fortress. I struggled with the clasp behind my back, my new joints flexible but the mechanics alien. It finally gave, and the release of pressure was followed by an overwhelming, tingling sensation of weight and movement. I kept my eyes firmly on the wall as I pulled Mark’s clothes on. The henley fell to mid-thigh. The sweatpants I had to roll up multiple times, the waist cinched impossibly tight with the drawstring. I swam in the fabric. I looked like a child playing dress-up.
When I walked back into the living room, Mark was staring into the fireplace, a fresh drink in his hand. He glanced over. Seeing me swallowed by his clothes seemed to confirm the surreal truth in a way my words hadn’t. He let out a long, slow breath.
“They pronounced me dead,” I said, my voice small in the vast room. I told him about the body on the floor, the zipper, the drive. The words were flat, empty.
When I finished, he just nodded. “Okay. So Justin Zygarski is legally dead. And Sabrina Parker…” He finally looked directly at me. “Who is she? Where does she live?”
I’d been trying not to think about that. “I have her wallet. Her address. Her keys.” I pulled the phone from the backpack. The screen lit up with a notification: ‘Megan 💕’. A bolt of pure guilt, alien and sharp, lanced through me. “Her life is…just waiting for her to come home.”
Mark stood up and started to pace, his large frame dominating the space. “You can’t go there. You don’t know her. You don’t know her friends, her family, her…boyfriend, for Christ’s sake. You’d be exposed in five minutes.”
“So what do I do?” The question was a plea.
He stopped, turning to face me. His expression was grim, resolved. “You stay here. For now. We figure this out.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But we need a story. For my housekeeper. For anyone who sees you.”
“What kind of story?”
He looked at me, really looked at the young woman standing in his overlarge clothes, and a plan visibly clicked into place in his mind. “Jasmine Rodriguez has been…persistent. Thinks her being a VP at a rival firm is foreplay.” He shrugged, a hint of his old, wry smirk returning. “If people think I have a girlfriend staying over, it gets her off my back. Gives you a reason to be here, lying low.”
“A girlfriend.” I repeated the word. It tasted absurd.
“It’s cover, Justin. Just until we understand what the hell happened to you.” He came closer, his eyes softening. “My best friend is dead. But you’re…here. In this…situation. I’m not letting you navigate this alone.”
The simple loyalty in his words was the first solid thing I’d felt since the white snap in the gym. I nodded, a jerky motion. The momentum of the nightmare had stalled, for a moment. I was in a safe harbor, however bizarre. But as I looked down at the hands that weren’t mine, clutching fabric that wasn’t my size, I knew the stillness was temporary. Out there, Sabrina’s life was unraveling, and my old one was already cold. The storm hadn’t passed; we had just found a fragile shelter in its eye.