Swapped For Love

Chapter 1.2

Vincent's POV

My first instinct to solve this mess was to head to the library, so I headed to the closest one. Right behind Bay Street, around three junctions away the old library stood proudly like a rusty giant. They really needed to clean those windows.

I remembered the library clearly. I'd gone there with Joy many times before, and even with the bad blood between us, there was a fondness for this place that I shared with her. Upon reaching the library, I asked several librarians for help to find non-fiction books on switching bodies, to which I received bewildered looks. One librarian totally ignored me as if she was used to teenage boys—I mean girls—asking for books on magically switching bodies. I huffed.

Why was she so...insufferable? Why couldn't she do her job?

The thought unnerved me, and so I used my anger to search. But nothing came up.

I tried searching for books on scientifically impossible situations occurring in real life, but to my utter disappointment, I couldn't find anything on switching bodies after having looked through tons of books. Conspiracy theory books, top ten mysteries of the world, the book on miracles - I looked at all of them and even after three hours, only failure greeted me.

I strayed, dejected. I continued to wander around clueless, all the while wondering what the hell I was going to do with my life now. I stopped short when I was passing by Lincoln Park. I had spent hours playing there with Steven when I was a kid.

I sighed heavily again and my eyes fell on a little kid playing with her dad. Instantly, my thoughts went to Joy's dad. Why had he acted so strange towards the person he thought was his daughter? She'd told me they were close, that they loved each other. Had he seen right through me? Could he know why or how we switched bodies?

No matter how hard I thought about it, it still felt as if I was living in a nightmare. An honest-to-God nightmare. I still remembered her father's glare when Joy introduced me to her family as her official boyfriend. To say it had been unnerving would be an understatement....

Like all of this was.

Bored, I tapped my feet against the ground, making the gravel rustle as it rubbed beneath my shoes. I made up my mind to call Steven and dialed what I thought was his number on Joy's phone. I was both relieved and shaken when I found it.

How does he know her number? Didn't she change her number after we broke up? Since when were they this close?

Steven picked up the phone on the third ring.

"Joy?'' he answered.

A pause.

I tried to stay in character.

"Can you come to the park near your house? I have something important I want to talk to you about."

"Uh...we just met yesterday, right? Is this about Vincent again?" He sighed. "Look, I already told you everything I can. Vincent would kill me if he found out about this."

I shuddered at the very thought of Steve and Joyceleen together, alone, yesterday. My thoughts instantly began to wander. Great.

If me waking up in Joy's body wasn't enough, all of the sudden she was buddies with my best friend and they were meeting behind my back, to discuss me? What fresh hell was this?

Being the smart Vincent I was, I put on my most 'bitchy Joy' voice, ''Yeah...you don't want Vincent to know, so you better be here.''

''Jo-''