Chapter 2: The Wrong Baggage Claim
The walk from the plane to the terminal was a disorienting stumble through a gauntlet of normality. Every step felt wrong. My center of gravity was higher, my stride shorter. The carry-on I pulled behind me—a small, hard-shell lavender suitcase that was decidedly not mine—wobbled on its wheels as if sensing an imposter at the handle. Chloe, walking stiffly beside me in my body, moved like a marionette with its strings tangled. She held my leather briefcase as if it were a live animal.
The noise of the arrivals terminal hit us like a wall. A distorted voice announced a baggage carousel. A child wailed. The squeak of luggage trolleys echoed off the high, impersonal ceiling. The fluorescent lights were unbearably bright, bleaching the color from everything.
“Act normal,” I muttered under my breath, the words mostly for myself. My new voice was lost in the din.
“How?” Chloe hissed back, my voice strained. She kept glancing down at my shoes, as if unsure how they worked. “What’s normal? I don’t know how to be you.”
“Just don’t talk too much. Walk with purpose.” I was giving executive advice to my own body. The absurdity was a cold knife twisting in my gut.
We merged into the river of people flowing towards baggage claim. I became acutely aware of space. Men seemed larger, their movements more expansive. I found myself automatically shifting my path to avoid bumping shoulders, a subtle yielding I never used to think about. A man in a hurry brushed past me, his arm glancing against mine, and I flinched. The contact felt different. Electric, and threatening.
“Okay, baggage claim three,” Chloe said, reading a sign. She sounded like I did on a conference call: calm, declarative, a facade over panic.
We found the carousel, a slow oval of chaos. Suitcases began to tumble onto the belt. I spotted my own sleek, black Tumi roller and pointed. “That one. The black.”
Chloe nodded and moved forward to grab it, her—my—movements awkward. She wrestled it off the belt with a grunt. “It’s heavier than it looks.”
“Laptop. Files. Gym clothes.” The mundanity of the inventory was a small anchor.
Her own suitcase, a larger pink one, came around next. I maneuvered to get it, feeling the strange lightness in my limbs. I hefted it. It was deceptively heavy. What did a twenty-one-year-old pack? Books? Shoes? I didn’t want to know.
We stood there for a moment, a mismatched pair with swapped luggage, adrift in the sea of reunions. A woman hugged a soldier. A driver held a sign. The air smelled of coffee and floor cleaner. This was the threshold. Once we walked beyond these automatic doors, we entered a world where this was real.
“Okay,” I said, taking a breath that felt too shallow in this smaller chest. “We find a quiet corner. We swap phones, wallets, keys. We figure out the next step. A hotel, maybe. Somewhere neutral to—”
“Chloe! Hey! Over here!”
The voice cut through the ambient noise, bright and familiar. Chloe in my body went rigid. Her eyes, my eyes, widened with a fresh, pure horror. She was staring past my shoulder.
I turned.
A guy was waving, weaving through the crowd towards us. Late twenties, wearing a too-tight polo shirt and a grin. He had the look of a former athlete starting to soften.
His eyes were locked directly on me.
On Chloe’s face.
On my face.
“Jeff,” Chloe whispered beside me, the sound a stranded breath. “That’s Jeff. The bride’s brother.”
The world tunneled. The noise faded into a dull roar. Jeff’s grin was broadening as he closed the distance. He was looking at me with an expectation of recognition, of shared history.
My mind sprinted, tripped over itself. Options flashed and died. Run? Explain? My muscles tensed, but running in this body, in these shoes, felt impossible. Explanation was insanity.
He was in front of us now. “There you are! I was starting to think you missed your flight.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder. The touch was friendly, firm. It felt proprietary. “Everyone’s at the house. Liv is driving us all nuts with last-minute flower drama, you know how she gets.” He barely glanced at Chloe, standing frozen beside me in my form. Just a flicker of a nod. “Hey, man.”
Chloe made a sound, a choked, non-committal grunt that was nothing like my voice.
Jeff’s attention snapped back to me. “You okay, Chlo? You look kinda pale. Flight rough?”
He was talking to me. He was seeing her. He was seeing the short blonde hair, the blue eyes, the slight frame in the jeans and tank top. He was not seeing Justin Hayes, finance executive, at all.
I had to speak. I had to be Chloe.
I opened my mouth. My tongue felt thick. “Yeah,” I managed. The voice that came out was higher than I intended, thready with stress. I cleared my throat, tried to inject some life into it. “Yeah, just… tired. Long flight.”
It was the most generic thing I could say. It seemed to work. Jeff nodded sympathetically. “Red-eyes are the worst. Come on, my car’s in short-term. We’ll get you fed. My mom’s already making a fuss.”
He reached for my lavender suitcase. His hand closed over mine on the handle. His skin was warm, dry. I let go as if burned.
“I got it,” he said, cheerful, already turning and starting to walk, assuming I would follow.
I stood rooted. Chloe was staring at me, my face a mask of sheer panic. Her lips formed silent words: What do I do?
Jeff looked back over his shoulder. “You coming, Chlo?”
The name was a hook in my skin. I had no choice. If I protested, if I argued, it would create a scene. Scenes led to questions. Questions led to places we could not go.
I shot a desperate look at Chloe. In a low, rapid mutter, I said, “Go to my apartment. The address is in the wallet. Key card in the inside pocket. Do not talk to anyone.”
“But—”
“Just go.”
I turned my back on my own body and followed Jeff. My heart was a frantic bird in Chloe’s ribcage. Each step away from Chloe felt like stepping off a cliff. I was leaving my life, my identity, in the hands of a terrified college student. And I was walking into hers, guided by a stranger who called me by a name that wasn’t mine.
Jeff chatted easily about the wedding, about his sister’szilla tendencies, about who was in town. I offered monosyllabic responses, my mind racing. I was in a woman’s body. I was going to a house full of people who knew Chloe intimately. I had no backstory, no emotional memory, no instinct for these relationships.
The automatic doors sighed open. The night air was cool, a shock after the recycled plane atmosphere. Jeff led me to a parked Jeep.
“Hop in,” he said, tossing my suitcase into the back.
I fumbled with the passenger door handle. The action felt clumsy. Getting in, I was acutely conscious of the way I had to move my legs, the swing of my hips. I pulled the seatbelt across my chest, the strap passing between my breasts—a sensation so profoundly alien it made my skin prickle.
Jeff started the engine, the radio blaring to life with some aggressive hip-hop. He turned it down slightly. “So,” he said, pulling out of the parking spot. “You excited for tomorrow? Big day for Liv.”
He looked at me, expecting a specific reaction. A shared joke, a sisterly eye-roll, something.
I looked out the window at the retreating airport, at the terminal growing smaller. Somewhere in there, Chloe was hailing a cab in my body, heading to a home she’d never seen.
“Yeah,” I said, the word hollow. “Big day.”
The city lights streamed by, blurring into ribbons of color. I was trapped in a moving vehicle, hurtling towards a life that wasn’t mine, played by rules I didn’t know, and the only person who understood the truth was now miles away, wearing my skin. The control I cherished was gone, replaced by a terrifying, absolute freefall.