Let Me Walk In Your Shoes- Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Mr. Brookes’ photo shows his perfect, straight row of white front teeth. However, what is different about the photo in comparison to the person in real life is the fact that the photo shows a much younger, quite handsome young man. It must be Mr. Brookes himself, no doubt. He does not have any other siblings nor cousins, the only younger sister he had had died when he was young. I had felt sympathetic for him when he talked about her death at the age of 4 as I had experienced the loss of family members myself. Although he had claimed that he did not have many memories of his sister so he does not feel sad or anything, the expression on his face had betrayed him.

The steps leading up to the church entrance seem harder to climb with the high heels that keep making me feel as if I will sprain the ankles any second. With so many questions flooding my mind, it is hard to even concentrate on the ground I am walking on.

I spot some kids running around the flower gardens at the top of the steps and wonder how much energy they have in them that are keeping them going. I am sure feeling tired out. I suddenly wish I can be back in my own body, doing the things I am supposed to be doing. This thought leads to a more terrifying one: what is this lady supposed to be talking about with Mr. Brookes? The thought gets pushed to the back of my mind as quickly as it came out, when I am greeted by the man himself.

“Long time no see, Tori Henderson Leo,” he says formally, walking out from the entrance and stops when he is about 10 feet away from where I am standing above the steps. He had been waiting for me. No, not me. It’s Tori Henderson Leo is who he had been waiting for. 

I nod, trying not to look stunned, “Yes, it’s uh… been a while.” As soon as those words are out of the mouth, I know that I am messing up.

I catch a frown on Mr. Brookes’ face, before he smiles immediately to cover it, “You have changed.” 

Let Me Walk In Your Shoes- Chapter 3

Chapter 3

When I first moved into town when I was five, mum had taken me around the buildings and houses, pointing out each one of them and saying things like how I should remember the streets so that I don’t get lost. My good memory was brought to work. In a few years’ time, I had remembered almost everything. When we were eight, our parents had gotten us to walk ourselves to our first week of Sunday children’s church service. They entrusted me to know the way to and fro and had told Luke to follow me. I was delighted to be given such a big responsibility but Luke did not see it as something to be proud of, to which I grunted at before leaving him behind in the church after the service.

Luke, who obviously did not share the same good memories and direction sense as me, was lost as soon as he stepped out of church.

Mr. Brookes was the one who sent Luke home that afternoon. Luckily, our parents were out so I did not get scolded for leaving my brother back at the church. Luke was red-faced when I opened the door and Mr. Brookes, being clueless about Luke’s decreasing pride, told me that Luke was lost and was panicking when he was found looking around the church, about to break down in tears. I teased my brother for a whole week after that.

My parents became good friends with Mr. Brookes throughout the years because of our weekly visits to the church. He had been invited to dinner at our house a couple of times and had always brought delicious snacks for me and Luke. After hearing him talking to my parents about his early years of being a history teacher in Paris, I had asked him to help with my history homework a few times. He was the best teacher I had ever had and I looked up to him. I had quite enjoyed the two times of being in his body, looking through his large collection of the books on Ancient Rome.

When I was fifteen, I had learnt that he had never been married before and still lives a single life by himself in his house close to the church.

“Mr. Brookes, why have you never married someone?” I asked him one afternoon when he helped proofread my assignment on medicines that were used in the ancient times. He stopped reading and looked up from the laptop.

“I never intended to,” his words sounded like they were carefully chosen.

“Hmm,” I put my hands on my cheeks and leaned on the desk with my elbows, “Why not?”

“Well, I've never had those types of feelings for someone, I guess. I once kind of liked this lady, but things kept us apart and we just never got a chance.”

I sat up. “I’m sorry,” I murmured.

He scratched his head, “It’s alright. I didn't see a future in us anyway. It was not like a crush, I figured that I looked up to her than liking her in more than a friendly way.”

The thing I liked about Mr. Brookes was that he talked like a teenager, which made it a whole lot easier to talk to him. Even though he is around the same age as my parents, he is way more fun than the old folks I live with. 

Let Me Walk In Your Shoes- Chapter 2

Chapter 2

The alarm goes off and makes me jump. I quickly turn it off and place it back onto the bedside table, looking around for something to give me an idea of what this lady usually wears. This room doesn't seem to have much furniture, as expected of a new person in town, but with the photos on the wall, it seems that she is intending on staying for a while. I open up the wardrobe, checking myself again in the mirror and feel the side of my mouth curling up. I like her night gown. It is lucky for me today that it is a Saturday as I cannot afford to miss a day of school especially around the end of semester with all the tests right around the corner of the semi-prom. As much as I dislike school, I quite enjoy the subject of history. I am happy that I have it on every school day.

I choose a blue long-sleeved dress that flop down to the knee of the body. The fabric feels nice against the skin. I check to see that there are other dresses in the wardrobe of the similar style before deciding that this is what the lady will probably choose to wear. I nod at the reflection in the mirror and silently whisper a sorry to the owner of the body. Looks like I will be borrowing her for a while to see who she is and what her business here in town is. Not that I can go back into my own body any time I want to anyway.

I look around the room and open the drawers, finding a small journal to my relief. Taking a deep breath and whispering another sorry to the owner, I open the pages up to this week. She has a meeting with the church owner at 10 in the morning today followed by a tour around the town at 2. She did not write who she is going to the tour with, but I tell myself that it does not matter right now. I need to find out why she has a meeting with the church owner, Mr. Brookes. Looking back at the last few days of the week, it seems that she had arrived in town just yesterday morning. I think I have no time to check where she had come from, as I notice that I probably should get going for the 10 o’clock meeting. I place the journal back into the drawer and leave everything the way they were before I got up. There is no feeling of hunger inside the body; instead, it feels extraordinarily tired. I decide that the lady must have missed quite a lot of sleep from too much work.

The kitchen did not hold much food that I was interested in anyway so I poured myself a glass of water and drank it down before heading out. I need to find out where I am first. Grabbing the lady’s bag that I find on the table, I make my way out.

As soon as I walk out the apartment that she lives in, I find out, from my memory of every street I know in this town, that I am about 15 minutes’ walk away from the church. I have plenty of time. I head towards my own house which is about 10 minutes’ walk away in the opposite direction. My parents are out of town for the month –they are almost always out of town because of their business- and my twin brother, Luke, is at a football camp thing, so I am safe to go into my own house as a stranger. I also know that my own self will be heading out in a few minutes to go shopping with Alison and some other friends, so I am safely away from bumping into myself. You see, when I am exploring in someone else’s body, my own seems to move and act exactly how I would, except without me in it. I still haven’t figured out the big mystery of who or what controls my body and makes it so perfectly, exactly as if I am the one in it at the same time that I am actually in someone else’s body. I have spoken to and made conversation with myself before while being in someone else, and had never failed to end up being astonished and a bit freaked out that I was as if my mind had never left.

The door is locked, meaning that no one is home. I lift up the doormat and dig out the spare key. It is actually a good hiding place for a key considering that no one would bother thinking of it being hidden in the most common place. The stairs are a bit tough to climb in the black leather-laced high heels I chose to wear which I thought matched the dress.

As soon as I get into my room upstairs, I turn on my laptop and opened up a new word document.

Subject 245. I type, making those words bold with an underline then undoing the bold and underline settings and pressing enter twice. This lady seems to be in her late 20’s. She lives alone in room 41 in the apartment next to The Seafood Store. She has a meeting with Mr Brookes and I am about to go and find out what this meeting is about.

As much as I understand that this is unacceptable behaviour and that I should not disrupt someone’s life and peek into their business, I cannot help it. I have little to no control of my power and as much as I am aware of, one moment I can be myself and the next I can be in someone else’s body. However the only thing I am sure of, after so many experiences, is that I don’t just go into some totally random person on this planet- to my biggest relief. The people whom I shift into are always the ones who I have stared at, thought about, got some interest in, or at least have seen them in real life.

I remember the 50th subject I was in, whose name was Jonathon King. Jonathon was a drop-dead gorgeous basketballer in my school who was a senior a few years ago. The thing that lost points for him was the fact that he was a total dick head. I did not have a crush or anything on him unlike many of the other girls but because of my hatred of him being a player who had crushed many girls’ hearts including Alison’s, I had thought about him. This led to me shifting into his body. After that, me and Alison had laughed about my description of his small private part, not that I had wanted to see it, I was stuck in his body for a total of two days so I gave up the idea of not showering. “Oh Lucia, of course he has a small “D”, it all went into his head!” Alison had snorted.

I save the document and shut down my laptop before heading out. It is a longer walk than I had expected, with the high heels that I am wearing. Bad choice. I try to slow down, walking a lot slower than my usual walking speed. To distract myself from the uncomfortable shoes, I think back at what I remember about this lady whom I had just noticed yesterday. I suddenly recall seeing her open her wallet and frowning at something. Thinking about this, I open up her bag and take out the wallet. I turn it in my hand a few times, feeling the leather case, before opening it when I am a few feet away from the church entrance. As soon as I look inside, my eyes catch the photograph. Confusion take over my thoughts.    

Let Me Walk In Your Shoes

Summary

Lucia Wakefield has hardly been able to control her power of shifting into someone else’s body. However her talk with the mysterious new lady in town, who seems to know more than Lucia does, has given her hope of finding out more about what she is capable of. As she digs deeper into the features of the power she possesses, she does not know that she is soon standing next to danger.

Now that Lucia’s best friend Alison Decker’s secret crush on Lucia’s twin brother is no longer a secret, Alison turns to blame Lucia. With the town wrapped up in gossip, Lucia finds herself shrinking into the corner and wondering about the safety of her own secret. At the semi-prom, the lonely looking Lucia is asked for a dance by a new face in town that every girl has the hots for. With jealousy of Lucia’s life which seems perfect in Alison’s eyes, she blurts out Lucia’s ability and soon the news spreads out, having people start tracking Lucia down.

Will Lucia be able to grab control of her power before things get worst? Or is she going to be trapped in someone else’s body forever? 

Story/novel- Let Me Walk In Your Shoes

Hi hi! I have decided to write a story... hope you readers enjoy ^^ the title is Let Me Walk in Your Shoes and I will write a brief summary of the whole thing in my next post. 

Chapter 1

I am not at home. Not in my room. I am nowhere near being in the bed that I am used to waking up in. I have woken up in someone else’s bed, in someone else’s room. In someone else’s body. This is the first thing I realize the moment I open my eyes and observe the surrounding. Unfamiliar pictures on the walls stare back at me. It is all like a dream, yet I can feel that the body I am in is very tired and worn out. This person probably had a rough night, I decide. And I am having a rough morning.

I have shifted into another person’s body, yet again without having intended to.

I get up and look at myself in a mirror hanging on the wardrobe sliding door to check who I have shifted into. This person looks familiar, and I search my memory to remember having studied her yesterday in Coco Bar.

I watched her take a sip out of her cup as she sat there at a table next to the back wall. Alison Decker, my best friend since I first moved to California in grade school, snapped me out of my gaze. It was a Friday in the middle of spring and the café was busy like any other afternoon of a school day. Alison and I had taken our usual spot in our favorite hangout place.

“What are you looking at, or should I say who are you looking at?” She asked, lifting up her medium glass of Coco Special (iced latte with whipped cream) to her lips as she searched the direction I was staring at with her light brown eyes. She had finished flipping through the daily copy of GirlGame magazine and had started to study my distant gaze. There were at least six choices of subjects I could have been looking at and as soon as she realized that, she gave up searching. “I don’t suppose you’re worried about your powers again?” Her voice had a slight edge of concern mixed with a whole heap of curiosity.

“Nah,” I shrugged, taking a sip of my own large glass of Coco Special. It was clear that Alison knew I was lying, but she does not say anything. We were both tired. It had been a stressful; yet exciting week for us second year seniors as the preparations for our semi-prom has started taking place. Semi-prom was eagerly suggested by a group of representatives from our year level and it had been approved by the principal to take place in less than a fortnight from now. Both me and Alison have been dress-hunting in local malls since the news was announced a couple of weeks ago. At least shopping for ‘the perfect dress’ have been keeping me in this normal world.

The person I had been interested in for the afternoon stood up after emptying her glass and opened her wallet to pay. Her expression turned into a frown and I could see that she was holding onto what looked like a photograph. It was too small for me to see what or who the photo was of. She dumped the photo back into her wallet and picked out some change and left them on the table before making her way out the shop. The table where she sat at was on the other side of our usual spot near the door so as she walked past, I quickly looked down at my drink. Alison seemed to have noticed.

“Is she new here?” She whispered as soon as the lady was out of hearing range. I gave her a nod. Alison is the only one who is in on my secret, I can tell her anything and everything with all my trust. I haven’t seen this person around before so I was sure that she was new in town. Either for a short visit or for a long term living.

I am the one who secretly keeps an eye on each of the 1958 individuals in town, knowing almost every one of them, or at least knowing their faces. I know about most of their backgrounds and whether they are a short term or long term citizen. The small town consists of very few people and it is rare to have a visitor or a new person in town so as soon as a new face shows up, I will know that they are not a local. People in this town are like neighbors whether they live close or at either end of town because there is only one grade school, one high school, one college, one library, one church and one town hall. Every Saturday afternoon the adults would meet up at the town hall with their prams and babies, sipping on tea while chatting about recent gossip. The large ceiling fans would be on during hot summer days while the heaters would be on during cold winter days. While this event is taking place, young people who are not yet considered adults stay inside their homes or are out having parties with friends. Sundays are church days and at least a fifth of the town would be crammed in the church. On school days, students go off to school or college and the adults would not be seen on the streets as they would be staying under roofs of their workplaces or homes. 

People are friendly in this town, or at least to the people they know well. They would smile and nod and give respect to those they do not know well when walking past each other. To me, everyday life of a high school student is boring so I spend my time trying to control my powers while learning about each and every individual in town.

It looks like today is a day where I learn about this new lady in town... As the lady herself.

How my holiday life has been so far

Shopping for presents these days have been keeping me busy... mainly... and of course, money is flying away -__- I have visited so many shops countless times and still haven't gotten some good presents :/ so hopeless. 

So to catch up on some recent stuff that has been happening, last weekend I went to do some volunteering work for a Special Children's Christmas Party that was held for disabled kids and their parents. Saturday was set up day and about 30 volunteers turned up and we made sandwiches mainly of Vegemite (I'm not a fan of Vegemite :/), cheese, Vegemite & cheese, ham & cheese, and butter. Hundreds of sandwiches were made before we had lunch (Subway xD) and went home. Sunday was party day and a lot of people turned up and from 10a.m. onwards, I was being kept busy face painting lots of smiling faces. It was an awesome party even though the majority of my time was spent on painting things such as Batman, butterflies, sharks, puppies, lions, and such. One kid asked me for a "Happy clown" which I had to search up on Google images on my phone and asked him to chose one for me to copy... while another asked me for "Joker" and I was like,,,,,,,,,, what was worse was that he had also chosen the toughest looking Joker face face painting image which consisted of having the whole face white with black angry wrinkles, a wide red mouth outline with white teeth and pink gums... so that Joker face spent me around 20 whole minutes :/ and I'm pretty sure I failed at it however the kid was happy about the result so it was all good ^^.

Apart from the shopping days and the volunteering days, my family has been busy with stuff that are involved in buying a house. I'm not sure about which house we are going to buy yet so I cannot say much on this subject other than the fact that these days have been quite occupied with us making decisions, visiting people and stuff.

Okay, back to shopping news, on one of the many shopping days, I visited a Kmart store and was wondering around the cosmetics section. I wondered off to the next aisle (women's underwear) and poked my head in while thinking maybe I could find something for mum. Instead, I caught a man (in his 30's maybe) also poking his head in for a long look. He did not notice me standing there at the other end at first while I watched him looking at the underwear stuff with interest. As soon as he saw me; however, the redness crept up to his face and he immediately 

walked away. It was awkward as I had just stared at him blankly so I too, was a bit caught off guard. That one second eye contact between us was awkward and embarrassing for us both as at the same time he was being caught checking out women's underwear, I was being caught staring at him doing so. To be honest, I didn't know why I was standing there staring... maybe it was the humour of the whole situation of me catching a man at a moment like that. 

What built onto the humour was that a few minutes after that encounter, as I wondered back to the cosmetics section having gotten nothing from the women's underwear place, I saw the man with his girlfriend/wife. They were looking at some shower stuff as he noticed me and quickly hid his face. I just silently walked out of the store. It was enough shopping for that day. 

Exams make me cry :,(

OMG!! exams are FINALLY OVER!!! so happy~~~ xD but seriously, they have killed me many times that I have become a cat with 9 lives -.- Anyways, let me share some awkward moments in exam situations that I had experienced in the last few days. Feel free to share your own exam awkward situation stories ^^ 

1. That moment when you space out in an exam and when waking up, finding yourself staring at someone's test paper, with the supervisor glaring at you suspiciously. 

OK, now this ALWAYS happen to me no matter what exam I do. I always have this mini mind blank and upon waking up from that, have been misunderstood as someone who's trying to cheat. But seriously, I do not have that good an eyesight to see what others have written -.-

2. That moment in an exam when your test paper flies halfway across the room :/ 

This have happened to me only once, (that I can remember anyway) which was during my Maths C exam. Because of the ceiling fan and some wind from outside, one of my papers flew out of my hands and slid across the floor about 5 metres away from me. Like, I never wanted it anyway -.- So... let it go~~ let it go~~~ I never wanted you anyway~~~~ but then, i realised it was one of the papers I answered on so uh... (some people had to pick the paper up and pass it to me, so thankyou if you're reading this) 

3. That moment when you flip your exam paper to the next page. 

This can be the best feeling ever I swear! Just the feeling and sound of the paper turning over to the next page is like, ahhhhh~ xD But on the other hand, it can be annoying as!! Just like, in the middle of a dead silence room with everyone focused on their exams and your paper just decides to make a huge sound like cleeeerrrrrrr. (I remember once ripping the paper when I turned over too quickly and that one second of satisfaction was replaced by a shocking whole hour of WTF HAVE I DONE?!) Even though I would love to rip the papers apart into as tiny pieces as possible and chuck them put the window, I'd rather not get in trouble or anything. 

4. That moment in the exam when your stomach rumbles loudly.

Exams take a long time nowadays and sometimes I forget to eat before them. I swear, having your stomach rumble in the middle of class is ok, however in the middle of an exam?!?! Oh gosh. Total embarrassment! 

5. That moment when your calculator dies in the middle of a Maths exam.

I don't know about you guys but I have had a few times where my only calculator just decides to die on me during an exam. This is fine if it's an exam that requires easy maths calculations however this is hell if it happens during a maths exam with full on calculations involved. Once I spent half the exam time working on this question manually but in the end still got the answer wrong. -.- 

Well, I can't be stuffed writing more~ this is it for now. Have a good holiday and those who are travelling overseas, SCREW YOU!