Read Trylle 1 - Switched for Free Online

about it.”
    “Definitely,” I gave him a plastic smile.
    He started to lean out the window, and I walked closer to him so I’d be able to shut the window behind him. Then he stopped and turned to look at me. He felt dangerously close to me, his eyes full of something smoldering just below the surface.
    When he looked at me like that, he took all the air from my lungs, and I wondered if this is how Patrick felt when I persuaded him.
    “I almost forgot,” Finn said softly, his face so close to mine I could feel his breath on my cheeks. “You looked really beautiful tonight.” He stayed that way a moment longer, completely captivating me, then abruptly he turned and climbed out the window.
    I stood there, barely remembering to breathe, as I watched him grab onto a branch of the tree next to my house and swing down to the ground. A cool breeze fluttered in, so I closed the window and pulled my curtains shut tightly.
    Feeling very dazed, I staggered back to my bed and collapsed on it. I had never felt more bewildered in my entire life.
    I barely got any sleep. What little I had was filled with dreams of little green trolls coming to take me away. I lay in bed for hours after I woke up. Everything felt muddled and confusing.
     I couldn’t let myself believe that anything Finn had said made sense, but I couldn’t discount how badly I wanted it to be true. I had never felt like I belonged anywhere. Until recently, Matt had been the only person I had ever felt any connection with.
    Lying in bed at six-thirty in the morning, I could hear the morning birds chirping loudly outside my window. Quietly, I got up and crept downstairs. I didn’t want to wake Matt and Maggie this early. Matt got up with me every day to make sure that I was awake and drove me to school, so this was his only time to sleep in.
    For some reason, I felt desperate to find something to prove we were family. All my life I had been trying to prove the opposite, but as soon as Finn had mentioned that it might be a real possibility, I felt oddly protective.
    Matt and Maggie had sacrificed everything for me. I had never been that good to either of them, but they had loved me unconditionally. Wasn’t that evidence enough?
    I crouched on the floor next to one of the cardboard boxes behind the couch in the living room. Maggie’s pretty cursive had scrawled across it the word “memorabilia.” She never actually unpacked any of the pictures or anything, because the last time she had Matt had smashed all the picture frames. That had been almost ten years ago, but I was betting that his reaction now would have only lessened slightly.
    Underneath Matt and Maggie’s diplomas and lots of Matt’s graduation photos, I found several photo albums. Based on the covers, I could tell which ones had been Maggie’s purchases. Maggie picked albums covered in flowers and polka dots and happy things. My mother had only had one with a faded brown non-descript cover.
    Below the oldest photo album, there was a damaged blue baby book. Carefully, I pulled it out, along with my mom’s photo album.
    My baby book had been blue because all the ultrasounds had said I was a boy. Tucked in the back of the book there was even a cracked ultrasound photo where the doctor had circled what they had incorrectly assumed was my penis.
    Most families would have made some kind of joke about that, but not mine. My mother had just looked at me with disdain and said, “You were supposed to be a boy.”
    Most mothers start out filling the beginning of the baby book, but then forget as time went on. Not mine. She’d never written a thing in it. The handwriting was either my father’s or Maggie’s.
    My foot prints were in there, along with my measurements and a copy of my birth certificate. I touched it delicately, proving that my birth was tangible. I had been born in this family, whether my mother and I liked it or not.
    “What are you doing, kiddo?” Maggie asked softly from behind me, and I