I try to avoid Justin at lunch, but I fail.
I’m in a hallway nowhere near either of our lockers or the lunchroom, and he ends up being there, too. He’s not happy to see me or unhappy to see me; he regards my presence as a fact, no different than the bell between periods.
“Wanna take it outside?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say, not really knowing what I’m agreeing to.
In this case, “outside” means a pizza place two blocks from the school. We get slices and Cokes. He pays for himself, but makes no offer to pay for me. Which is fine.
He’s in a talkative mood, focusing on what I imagine is his favorite theme: the injustices perpetrated against him by everyone else, all the time. It’s a pretty wide conspiracy, involving everything from his car’s faulty ignition to his father’s nagging about college to his English teacher’s “gay way of talking.” I’m barely following his conversation, and following very much feels like the right word, because this conversation is designed for me to be at least five steps behind. He doesn’t want my opinion. Anytime I offer something, he just lets it sit there on the table between us, doesn’t pick it up.
As he goes on about what a bitch Stephanie is being to Steve, and keeps shoving pizza into his face, and looks at the table much more than he looks at me, I must struggle against the palpable temptation to do something drastic. Although he doesn’t realize it, the power is all mine. All it would take is a minute—less—to break up with him. All it would take are a few well-chosen words to cut the tether. He could counterattack with tears or rage or promises, and I could withstand every single one.
It is so much what I want, but I don’t open my mouth. I don’t use this power. Because I know that this kind of ending would never lead to the beginning I want. If I end things like this, Rhiannon will never forgive me. Not only might she undo it all tomorrow, she would also define me by my betrayal for as long as I remained in her life, which wouldn’t be long.
I hope she realizes: The whole time, Justin never notices. She can see me in whatever body I’m in, but he can’t see she’s missing. He’s not looking that closely.
Then he calls her Silver. Just a simple, “Let’s go, Silver,” when we’re done. I think maybe I’ve heard him wrong. So I access, and there it is. A moment between them. They’ve been reading The Outsiders for English class, lying on his bed side by side with the same book open, she a little farther along. She thinks the book’s a relic from when weepy gang boys bonded over Gone with the Wind, but she quiets herself when she sees how much it’s affecting him. She stays there after she’s finished, starts reading the beginning again until he’s done. Then he closes the book and says, “Wow. I mean, nothing gold can stay. How true is that?” She doesn’t want to break the moment, doesn’t want to question what it means. And she’s rewarded when he smiles and says, “I guess that means we’ll have to be silver.” When she leaves that night, he calls out, “So long, Silver!” And it stays.
When we head back to school, we don’t hold hands, or even talk. When we part, he doesn’t wish me a good afternoon or thank me for the time we just had together. He doesn’t even say he’ll see me soon. He just assumes it.
I am hyperaware—as he leaves me, as I am surrounded by other people—of the perilous nature of what I am attempting, of the butterfly effect that threatens to flutter its wings with every interaction. If you think about it hard enough, if you trace potential reverberations long enough, every step can be a false step, any move can lead to an unintended consequence.
Who am I ignoring that I shouldn’t be ignoring? What am I not saying that I should be saying? What won’t I notice that she would absolutely notice? While I’m out in the public hallways, what private languages am I not hearing?
When we look at a crowd, our eyes naturally go to certain people, whether we know them or not. But my glance right now is blank. I know what I see, but not what she’d see.
The world is still glass.
This is how it feels to read words through her eyes.
This is how it feels to turn a page with her hand.
This is how it feels when her ankles cross.
This is how it feels to lower her head so her hair hides her eyes from view.
This is what her handwriting looks like. This is how it is made. This is how she signs her name.
There’s a quiz in English class. It’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, which I’ve read. I think Rhiannon does okay.
I access enough to know she doesn’t have any plans after school. Justin finds her before last period and asks her if she wants to do something. It’s clear to me what this something will be, and I can’t see much benefit to it.
“What do you want to do?” I ask.
He looks at me like I’m an imbecile puppy.
“What do you think?”
“Homework?”
He snorts. “Yeah, we can call it that, if you want.”
I need a lie. Really, what I want to do is say yes and then blow him off. But there could be repercussions for that tomorrow. So instead I tell him I have to take my mom to some doctor for her sleep problems. It’s a real drag, but they’ll be drugging her up and she probably won’t be able to drive herself home.
“Well, as long as they give her plenty of pills,” he says. “I love your mom’s pills.”
He leans in for a kiss and I have to do it. Amazing how it’s the same two bodies as three weeks ago, but the kiss couldn’t be more different. Before, when our tongues touched, when I was on the other side of it, it felt like another form of intimate conversation. Now it feels like he’s shoving something alien and gross into my mouth.
“Go get some pills,” he says when we break apart.
I hope my mom has some extra birth control I can slip him.
We have been to an ocean together, and a forest. So today I decide we should go to a mountain.
A quick search shows me the nearest place to climb. I have no idea if Rhiannon’s ever been there, but I’m not sure that matters.
She’s not really dressed for hiking—her Converse don’t have a whole lot of tread left on them. I plunge forward nonetheless, taking a water bottle and a phone with me, and leaving everything else in the car.
Again it’s a Monday, and the trails are largely clear. Every now and then I’ll pass another hiker on his or her way down, and we’ll nod or say hello, in the way that people surrounded by acres of silence do. The paths are haphazardly marked, or perhaps I’m just not attentive enough. I can feel the incline as it’s measured by Rhiannon’s leg muscles, can feel her breath shift into more challenging air. I keep going.
For our afternoon, I’ve decided to attempt to give Rhiannon the satisfaction of being fully alone. Not the lethargy of lying on the couch or the dull monotony of drifting off in math class. Not the midnight wandering in a sleeping house or the pain of being left in a room after the door has been slammed shut. This alone is not a variation of any of those. This alone is its own being. Feeling the body, but not using it to sidetrack the mind. Moving with purpose, but not in a rush. Conversing not with the person next to you, but with all of the elements. Sweating and aching and climbing and making sure not to slip, not to fall, not to get too lost, but lost enough.
And at the end, the pause. At the top, the view. Grappling with the last steep incline, the final turns of the path, and finding yourself above it all. It’s not that there’s a spectacular view. It’s not that we’ve reached the peak of Everest. But here we are, at the highest point the eye can see, not counting the clouds, the air, the lazy sun. I am eleven again; we are atop that tree. The air feels cleaner because when the world is below us, we allow ourselves to breathe fully. When no one else is around, we open ourselves to the quieter astonishments that enormity can offer.
Remember this, I implore Rhiannon as I look out over the trees, as I catch her breath. Remember this sensation. Remember that we were here.
I sit down on a rock and drink some water. I know I am in her body,
but it feels very much like she is here with me. Like we are two separate people, together, sharing this.
I have dinner with her parents. When they ask me what I did today, I tell them. I’m sure I tell them more than Rhiannon would, more than the day usually allows.
“That sounds wonderful,” her mother says.
“Just be careful out there,” her father adds. Then he changes the conversation to something that happened at work, and my day, briefly registered, becomes solely my own again.
I do her homework as best I can. I don’t check her email, afraid that there will be something there that she wouldn’t want me to see. I don’t check my own email, because she’s the only person I’d want to hear from. There’s a book on her night table, but I don’t read it, for fear that she won’t remember what I’ve read, and will have to read it again anyway. I thumb through some magazines.
Finally, I decide to leave her a note. It’s the only way she’ll know for sure that I’ve been here. Another palpable temptation is to pretend that none of this has happened, to deny any accusation she makes based on whatever remnant of memory remains. But I want to be truthful. The only way this will work is if we are entirely truthful.
So I tell her. At the very beginning of my letter, I ask her to try to remember the day as much as possible before she reads on, so what I write won’t taint what’s really left in her mind. I explain that I never would have chosen to be in her body, that it isn’t something I have control over. I tell her I tried to respect her day as much as I knew how, and that I hope not to have caused any disruption in her life. Then, in her own handwriting, I map out our day for her. It is the first time I’ve ever written to the person whose life I’ve occupied, and it feels both strange and comfortable, knowing that Rhiannon will be the reader of these words. There are so many explanations I can leave unsaid. The fact that I am writing the letter at all is an expression of faith—faith both in her and in the belief that trust can lead to trust, and truth can lead to truth.
This is how it feels as her eyelids close.
This is how sleep will taste to her.
This is how night touches her skin.
This is how the house noises sing her to bed.
This is the goodbye she feels every night. This is how her day ends.
I curl up in bed, still wearing my clothes. Now that the day is almost done, the world of glass recedes, the butterfly threat diminishes. I imagine that we’re both here in this bed, that my invisible body is nestled against hers. We are breathing at the same pace, our chests rising and falling in unison. We have no need to whisper, because at this distance, all we need is thought. Our eyes close at the same time. We feel the same sheets against us, the same night. Our breath slows together. We split into different versions of the same dream. Sleep takes us at the exact same time.
Day 6016
A,
I think I remember everything. Where are you today? Instead of writing a long email, I want to talk.
R
I am roughly two hours away from her when I read this email, in the body of a boy named Dylan Cooper. He’s a hardcore design geek, and his room is an orchard of Apple products. I access him enough to know that when he really, really likes a girl, he creates a font and names it after her.
I write back to Rhiannon and tell her where I am. She writes back immediately—she must be waiting by her computer—and asks me if I can meet her after school. We arrange to meet at the Clover Bookstore.
Dylan is a charmer. He also, from what I can tell, has crushes on three different girls at the same time. I spend the day trying not to commit him any closer to any of them. He will have to figure out for himself which font he prefers.
I am a half hour early to the bookstore, but I’m too nervous to read anything but the faces of the people around me.
She walks in the door, also early. I don’t need to stand or wave. She looks around the room, sees me and the way I’m looking at her, and knows.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I say back.
“It feels like the morning after,” she tells me.
“I know,” I say.
She’s gotten us coffee, and we sit there at the table with the cups sheltered in our hands.
I see some of the things I noticed yesterday—the birthmark, the scattering of pimples on her forehead. But they don’t matter to me nearly as much as the complete picture.
She doesn’t seem freaked out. She doesn’t seem angry. If anything, she seems at peace with what’s happened. When the shock wears off, you always hope there’s understanding underneath. And with Rhiannon, it seems as if the understanding has already surfaced. Any vestige of doubt has been swept away.
“I woke up and I knew something was different,” she tells me. “Even before I saw your letter. It wasn’t the usual disorientation. But I didn’t feel like I’d missed a day. It was like I woke up and something had been … added. Then I saw your letter and started reading, and immediately I knew it was true. It had actually happened. I stopped when you told me to stop, and tried to remember everything about yesterday. It was all there. Not the things I’d usually forget, like waking up or brushing my teeth. But climbing that mountain. Having lunch with Justin. Dinner with my parents. Even writing the letter itself—I had a memory of that. It shouldn’t make sense—why would I write a letter to myself for the next morning? But in my mind, it makes sense.”
“Do you feel me there? In your memories.”
She shakes her head. “Not in the way you’d think. I don’t feel you in control of things, or in my body, or anything. I feel like you were with me. Like, I can feel your presence there, but it’s outside of me.”
She stops. Starts again. “It’s insane that we’re having this conversation.”
But I want to know more.
“I wanted you to remember everything,” I tell her. “And it sounds like your mind went along with that. Or maybe it wanted you to remember everything, too.”
“I don’t know. I’m just glad I do.”
We talk more about the day, more about how strange this is. Finally, she says, “Thank you for not messing up my life. And for keeping my clothes on. Unless, of course, you didn’t want me to remember that you sneaked a peek.”
“No peeks were sneaked.”
“I believe you. Amazingly, I believe you about everything.”
I can tell there’s something else she wants to say.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s just—do you feel you know me more now? Because the weird thing is … I feel I know you more. Because of what you did, and what you didn’t do. Isn’t that strange? I would have thought that you would’ve found out more about me … but I’m not sure that’s true.”
“I got to meet your parents,” I say.
“And what was your impression?”
“I think they both care about you, in their own way.”
She laughs. “Well said.”
“Well, it was nice to meet them.”
“I’ll be sure to remember that when you really meet them. ‘Mom and Dad, this is A. You think you’re meeting him for the first time, but actually, you’ve met him before, when he was in my body.’ ”
“I’m sure that’ll go over well.”
Of course, we both know it won’t go over at all. There’s no way for me to meet her parents. Not as myself.
I don’t say it, and neither does she. I don’t even know if she’s thinking it in the pause that ensues. But I am.
“It can never happen again, right?” she eventually asks. “You’re never the same person twice.”
“Correct. It will never happen again.”
“No offense, but I’m relieved I don’t have to go to sleep wondering if I’m going to wake up with you in control. Once, I guess I can deal with. But don’t make a habit of it.”
“I promise—I want to make a habit of being with you, but not that way.”
And there it is: I had to go and bring up the issue
of where we go from here. We got through the past, are enjoying the present, but now I push it and we stumble on the future.
“You’ve seen my life,” she says. “Tell me a way you think this can work.”
“We’ll find a way,” I tell her.
“That’s not an answer. It’s a hope.”
“Hope’s gotten us this far. Not answers.”
She gives me a hint of a grin. “Good point.” She takes a sip of coffee, and I can tell another question’s coming. “I know this is weird, but … I keep wondering. Are you really not a boy or a girl? I mean, when you were in my body, did you feel more … at home than you would in the body of a boy?”
It’s interesting to me that this is the thing she’s hung up on.
“I’m just me,” I tell her. “I always feel at home and I never feel at home. That’s just the way it is.”
“And when you’re kissing someone?”
“Same thing.”
“And during sex?”
“Is Dylan blushing?” I ask. “Right now, is he blushing?”
“Yeah,” Rhiannon says.
“Good. Because I know I am.”
“You’ve never had—?”
“It wouldn’t be fair of me to—”
“Never!”
“I am so glad you find this funny.”
“Sorry.”
“There was this one girl.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Yesterday. When I was in your body. Don’t you remember? I think you might have gotten her pregnant.”