Excerpts

Day 1FRIDAY,29 FEBRUARY1980Holly4.16 pmThis is what Holly Fitzgerald knew for sure: She'd beenout for lunch. She'd come home. She'd gone inside. Endof story.So she was having trouble figuring out what she wasdoing lying on a nature strip, staring up at the sky,blades of grass pricking against her wrists and thebacks of her legs. Her bones felt bruised. She suspectedthere was a very big chance she would tip out the entirecontents of her queasy stomach if she lifted her head offthe ground.There was a gap where her memory was supposedto fit.A young guy leant into her field of vision. 'Trinity?'he said. 'You okay?'Add strange person calling her a strange name tothe mix.Holly looked down the length of her body. She waswearing a faded pink T-shirt with 'Disco Sux' writtenacross the front of it. Her legs poked out of a pairof cut-off denim shorts, and she was wearing blackConverse runners. But none of them were hers. Thecanvas runners, the T-shirt (she liked disco), the shorts,the legs . . . all of them belonged to someone else.She sat all the way up and went to put her head inher hands, to cover her eyes, to think for a moment,but her hands weren't hers either. These ones weresmaller than she was used to. The nail polish wasbaby blue.She'd just turned forty. She didn't do baby-blue nails.Holly wiggled the fingers to make sure she couldoperate them; turned the palms towards her, then awayagain.'What are you doing?' the young guy asked her.She'd forgotten he was there. Time felt clunky andpulled out of shape, as if one thing didn't necessarilyfollow straight on from another.'My hands,' she said, holding them up to him inexplanation.'What about them?' the young guy asked.'Look at them.'He clasped them for a couple of seconds. 'They'reclammy,' he said, staring at her. 'Trinity, are you okay?What happened?'She had no idea why he was calling her Trinity, butas she stared back at him a name came into her brain.She had insight. Clarity. Knowledge.'Lewis,' she said, clicking her fingers and pointingthem gun-like at him.'Yeah?''You live next door.''Yeah.' He stretched the word out like bubblegum,stalling for time, before asking again, third time lucky,'Are you okay?'Holly thought for a moment, giving the question dueconsideration. 'Uh . . . no, not really.'Understatement of the century. Or technically (as itwould turn out), understatement of two centuries.'You wanna stand up?' Lewis asked, hauling her uponto her feet.As she stood up, a hank of long blonde hair fellforward, the tips dyed black. She grabbed it and broughtit up in front of her eyes; turned the hair over, watchedthe light catch on it. It was cut into layers, soft, shiny,pretty, pale, the black edge in stark contrast.'My hair,' she said, holding it out to him.'Yeah?''It's not mine.'Lewis shook his head as if he didn't quite get thejoke.In fact, now that she was starting to get her bearingsshe noticed that her voice didn't sound like hers either.Dizziness overwhelmed her and she sat back downon the nature strip, her legs not fit to hold her upright.Lewis squatted back down beside her, concern all overhis features.There was a lag between what she was seeing andhearing, and the fact of it settling into her brain. Howcould her hair not be hers? Her legs, her hands, herfingernails. Her voice. Why were the cars on the wrongside of the road? Where was she? How had she got here?Lewis reached over and picked up a fringed suedeshoulder bag that was lying on the ground close by.Handed it to her. Handed her a pair of mirror-lensedAviator sunglasses that had been lying next to it. Shetook them both, simply because she didn't have theenergy to explain that they weren't hers, and opened thebag. Inside was: a leather purse with flowers embossedon it, a pack of cigarettes (without the gruesome healthwarning or accompanying photo), a Zippo lighter, aRay-Ban glasses case, and a thin book of poetry by WaltWhitman.No phone.And by the way, going back to the fact of cigarettes . . .this definitely wasn't her bag.She put her hands up to her eyes, pushing blacknessinto her vision. She just wanted to be home, surroundedby things she recognised. Her own hands and legs, atthe bare minimum.'I'm sorry, I don't know what's going on. Can youcall me an Uber?' she said, keeping her hands over hereyes, trying to steady herself.'A what?''An Uber. I just want to get home.''Home?' Lewis said, then nothing more.Holly looked up to see him pointing to a house acouple of doors down the quiet street. He seemed tobe indicating that it was her house, but it wasn't. Itdefinitely wasn't. For one thing, it wasn't on her street,and surely your most basic expectation was that yourhouse would be on your street.Lewis stood up and held out his hand to bring herback up level with him.She looked up at him, frustration overwhelming her,wanting to yell, No, you don't understand, that's not myhouse, this isn't my neighbourhood, it's not my name, whatare you talking about, you don't even know me.But it was exhausting to even contemplate sayingso many words out loud. Besides, there was somethingabout Lewis that this body trusted. Holly could feel itin her slowly settling guts.So she abdicated all responsibility over to theunfamiliar body she found herself in, and let him bringher back up to standing. Together, hand in hand, theywalked towards the house he'd pointed at.There was a neat green lawn with a concrete pathcutting straight through its centre, from footpath toverandah. The verandah was big and breezy and casta deep shadow over the front windows. The roof wasbroad and shingled, with a large attic window. Risingout of the lawn on the right-hand side was an enormouspine tree with a gnarly trunk, and down the left rana driveway.It was not her weatherboard Victorian with tinyfront yard and no room for a driveway.Absolutely not her house.4.28 pmHolly knew, even before Lewis pushed open the door,that the entrance hall would be decorated in tones ofburgundy and brown. A teak hallway table wouldhave an owl lamp on it (whenever letters arrived foranyone in the house, they'd be put under the owl's feet).A black plastic telephone with a push-button dial wouldbe sitting beside the owl lamp, a curly cord connectingto its receiver. Beside the phone would be a Teledexcontaining handwritten phone numbers and addressesfor friends and family, school and work. There'd be alounge room with a fireplace and a couch covered withgeometric gold-and-cream fabric; a dining table andchairs with matching skinny black spider-legs. Alongone wall would be an upright piano, and on the floor,burnt-orange carpet. Stairs would lead up to the secondstorey, where the bedrooms would be.She followed Lewis into the house, and there it allwas: the teak table, the owl lamp, the black phone,the Teledex, burnt-orange carpet, spider-leg table andchairs, piano. Everything utterly familiar and utterlyunfamiliar, all at the same time.Lewis was watching her reaction. 'There was a guy,'he said. 'When I came out of my joint, he was trying tolift you into his car. Do you remember?'Off the lounge room would be a kitchen with bright-orange laminate cupboards, a breakfast table with benchseats, a fridge with a pull-out handle. She could evenpicture the box of Frosted Flakes that would be insidethe cupboard above the sink.A bowl of cereal with ice-cold milk would reallyhit the spot right about now. Except Holly didn't dosugary crap. Didn't rely on cartoon tigers on cerealboxes for her dietary choices.'I asked him what was going on,' Lewis was saying,'and he said you'd fainted and he was going to drive youhome. But I pointed to your house and said, "Exceptshe lives there," and then he just dumped you on theground and got in his car and drove off.'Holly approached the staircase and started climbingit, slowly, feeling like an intruder but knowing no onewould stop her. This was her home. Even though itwasn't. The banister felt well-worn and comfortableunder her hand. There was a slight nick in the woodthat her palm recognised.She could sense Lewis's eyes at her back; his con-fusion, knowing something was wrong, but unable topinpoint exactly what it was. Of course he couldn't.Who could?'You want me to make some toast or something?'Lewis called up after her. 'I'll make us toast,' he decided.At the upstairs landing was a hallway. Holly knewthat to her left were the bedrooms. To her right was thebathroom. She turned left, feeling a fluttering inside herchest like a bird was trapped in there.In the first bedroom, the wallpaper was an assaultof oversized yellow sunflowers, red and orange tulips,green leaves. Ditto the curtains and the lampshade,with the same pattern. A poster of Debbie Harrywearing sunglasses and a black beret was stuck toone wall, along with cut-outs from magazine pages.There was a single bed, unmade. Yellow carpet - notthat you could see much of it, considering the clothesand books and general crap strewn everywhere. A blue-and-white striped bath towel dumped on the floor.A milk crate tipped onto its side, vinyl records spillingout. A bashed-up acoustic guitar in the corner. And thenthe one thing that Holly was not expecting to see: on thedesk under the window, an orange enamel typewriter.A shiny, new orange enamel Brother 210 typewriter.The one familiar thing in all this strangeness. Excerpted from It's Not You, It's Me by Gabrielle Williams All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.