Another Day (16 page)

I get a rushed email from A as I’m driving to school. I read it in my car, before I go inside. A tells me he (she?) spent yesterday in the body of an immigrant girl who had to clean toilets to make a living, and the day before A wasn’t feeling well, so he stayed home at this other girl’s house and watched TV. Today A’s another girl who has this big track meet, so she has to stay where she is. Even though I told him not to come here, I’m disappointed.

I want to contradict myself. I want to overrule my hesitations. I want A to be here.

But I can’t steal that girl from her track meet. And when I picture A as some runner girl, I slow myself down. What if she’s another Ashley? Or even just normal-looking. What would we do then?

I think about writing back to A, but if I’m not telling him (her?) to drop everything to see me, I don’t have much else to say. I am not going to tell A about Justin—not about the fight, not about the making up. And what else do I have in my life that’s worth talking about?

I turn off my phone and head into school.

I go through the motions. I try not to talk in class, but talk when I have to. I say hello to friends, but not much more. I give Justin what he wants—enough distance to be himself, but enough closeness to know I haven’t gone far. I eat lunch without tasting it.

I find myself thinking of Kelsea, about her notebook containing all those ways to die. Not because I want to kill myself. I am nowhere near wanting to kill myself. But I can understand feeling so detached from your own life. To feel that your connection to everyone else is so thin that all it would take is one decisive snip to be separated completely. If I don’t cling, I drift. I feel that no one is holding me. In my life, I am the only one who holds.

Except for A. But A is not here.

Rebecca and Preston try to reach me. They see the thin thread and tie messages to it, sliding them my way. Preston invites me to another round of buyless shopping. Rebecca tries to bribe me into a coffee excursion after school. Both of them remind me that Daren Johnston is having a party tomorrow night. I’m sure I’ll end up going.

Plans. I realize I’m not making plans because I want to see where A is living tomorrow, if A will be free. It’s the weekend. I can drive far if I have to.

No. I see Justin and I think,
Stop it.
He asks me if I want to go to a movie. He even lets me choose.

Once upon a time, this would have made me happy.

I can’t be bothered to tell my mother I’m not coming home for dinner. This will make it two nights in a row, and she’s going to give me hell for it. So I figure I might as well do what I’m going to do and get the hell after, instead of getting the hell before and not being able to go.

We drive around for a while, then get some Taco Bell and head to an earlyish movie. As we’re waiting for the coming attractions, I find myself looking at all the other people in the theater. Most of them are my age, and I can’t help but wonder if one of them might be A. Her track meet would be over by now. Maybe she decided to go to a movie with friends afterward. It’s not impossible.

A few girls catch me watching. Most turn away. A couple confront me, staring back to make me feel uncomfortable.

Justin is fidgety, maybe sensing how my attention is wandering. I lean into him, hold his hand. He shifts the popcorn in his lap so this can happen. But when the previews start, he pulls away.

I don’t think the movie is what he expected it to be. The posters promised it was a horror movie set in space. But soon it’s clear that the most horrific thing the astronaut is fighting is the endlessness of his boredom and the pointlessness of his life. Justin’s eyelids start to flutter. I want to use his shoulder as a pillow, but he told me once that if I lean there for too long, it kills his circulation. So I go back to looking at the audience as much as I can, picking out which person I’d be most attracted to, if A were inside.

I know the answer should be
all of them.

It is not
all of them.

It’s not as simple as saying all the guys are yes and all the girls are no. It’s more complicated than that. Although mostly it’s the guys I consider.

The answer—the real A I want—is sitting right next to me.

When I get home, it’s my father who’s waiting in the kitchen, looking disappointed. He tells me Mom’s already gone to bed, and that it was inconsiderate of me to ditch dinner without a call. I lie and say I told Mom ages ago that this was going to be a date night with Justin. I call it a “date night” so my dad will imagine we went for ice cream sodas and gazed lovingly into each other’s eyes the whole time.

He falls for it completely.

I check for a new email from A, but don’t find anything. And I don’t write back, since I still don’t have anything interesting to say.

The next morning, my mother says she isn’t speaking to me. I know I’m supposed to feel bad, but mostly I’m happy not to deal with her.

I’m worried that they won’t let me go to the party tonight, so I make a big production of doing my homework and completing some random chores. It’s very easy to win my father over this way.

Before I leave the house, I consider emailing A and letting him (her?) know where I’m going to be. Then I remember what happened to that poor guy Nathan the last time this happened, and I decide to stay silent. Still, I wonder where he (she?) is. I also wonder why I haven’t heard anything.

I pick Justin up, because I know he’s planning on drinking. I ask him what he did all day and he barely remembers. I think maybe his life is as uneventful as mine, and that’s why we’re together. To be each other’s eventfulness.

Or maybe that’s why we go to parties, to find some eventfulness there. Or wastedness. Or both. Preston’s also driven, so he and I sip Diet Cokes as I tell him about the movie, which is more interesting to make fun of than it was to watch. While I’m talking, Preston keeps his eye on the door, waiting for his gaydar to go off. It stays silent for a while until this James Dean wannabe strides in. Preston comes to attention like a hunting dog that’s spotted the prettiest duck to ever fall from the sky.

“Really?” I say. “Him?”

Preston nods once. Twice.

“Do you want me to find out who he is?” I ask.

Preston shakes his head once. Twice.

A minute later, Dirk Nielson bounds in, car keys dangling in his hand. He looks around, spots James Dean, heads over, and kisses him hello.

“Shit,” Preston says.

“Sorry,” I tell him.

“Well, it was nice for the five seconds it lasted.”

James Dean looks over at us—looks over at me. For a brief second, I feel connection. But then I really look into his eyes and I know: It’s not A. It’s nothing.

I talk to Preston some more, then Rebecca and Ben come join us. I’m telling them about the movie when Stephanie comes tearing out of the kitchen, looking like she’s on fire. Steve follows her for a few feet before stopping and yelling “WHAT THE FUCK?” at least three times at her back.

“Who wants to take this one?” Rebecca asks. When no one else makes a move, she sighs and bolts after Stephanie. Ben and Preston head over to Steve.

I walk around them and find Justin doing shots with Kara Wallace and Lindsay Craig, the girl who was so certain I was up to no good with the guy I was taking around school.

I steel myself and walk over. “So what happened with Steve and Stephanie?” I ask.

I am clearly asking Justin, but Lindsay answers. “She saw him eating pepperoni and said it was really rude of him because she’s been vegetarian for, like, the past three minutes.”

Kara finds this funny. Justin just shrugs at me, like he stopped trying to figure Stephanie and Steve out years ago.

Lindsay’s staring at me in a way that makes me wonder whether I wore the wrong thing, said the wrong thing, or am just the wrong person. I decide not to ask.

Justin seems taken care of, so I head back out of the kitchen. Once again, I find myself wandering around all of the conversations, avoiding all of my friends.
I am this body,
I think. When my friends see this body, they assume they know a lot about the person inside of it. And when people I don’t know see it, they also make assumptions. No one ever really questions these assumptions. They are this layer of how we live our lives. And I’m no different from them. When I saw James Dean walk in, I felt I knew as much about him as I’m sure he felt he knew about me when he looked my way. It’s like an instant form of reading, the way we define each other.

The house isn’t that big. There’s no dance floor in the basement—I’m not even sure there is a basement. There’s a line for the bathroom off the living room, so I walk upstairs, hoping to find a bathroom there. And also because it’s quieter upstairs.

All of the doors on the hallway are closed. I open the first and see it’s a bedroom. I’m about to close it when a voice says, “Hello? Can I help you?”

I poke my head in and see Daren Johnston cross-legged on his bed, reading
The Outsiders.

“Oh, hi, Rhiannon,” he says. “The bathroom’s the second door on the right. I left it open, but I guess someone closed it. I mean, there might be someone in there, so you should probably knock.”

“Thanks,” I say. But I don’t leave. “Why are you up here reading? I mean, it’s your party.”

Daren smiles slightly. “I guess I like thinking about throwing a party more than I actually like having people over. Lesson learned.”

“Why don’t you tell everyone to go home?”

“Because they’re enjoying themselves, I think. They shouldn’t have to suffer just because I’m feeling antisocial. I needed to leave, so I allowed myself to leave.”

I nod to the book. “First time?”

“Nah. More like my twelfth.”

I remember when I read it—Justin and I were in the same English class last year, and we read it together one Sunday afternoon, lying in his bed. It was a race to see who would finish first, but I slowed myself down because I loved the feeling of us turning the pages at the same time, being in the same part of the story. When we were done, he said how he was blown away by the line “Nothing gold can stay”—he really felt it was true. Then he smiled and said, “So I guess we’ll have to be silver,” and he called me Silver for days after.

“Do you think gold can stay?” I ask Daren now.

His smile is different from Justin’s—a little more knowing, a little less eager. “I don’t think anything can stay,” he tells me. “Good or bad. So I think the important part is to not get caught up in worrying about whether something will stay, and instead enjoy it for the time it’s here.”

A door opens in the hallway and a guy calls out, “Daren! Where are you hiding?” He sounds like a construction foreman calling workers back from lunch.

Daren doesn’t move. “For the record,” he says to me, “I’m not hiding.”

“DARRRRRREN!” the voice bellows. Then the door to the bedroom opens wider and James Dean walks in. I had imagined his voice would be…sexier.

“There you are!”

“Here I am,” Daren admits.

“Come party!”

“I will when I’m finished with this book. I only have a hundred pages left.”

James makes a move to manhandle Daren up. Then another voice calls, “Charles! Where are you, Charles?”

“It was so much more enjoyable when people used telegraphs,” Daren says with a sigh.

“I guess Dirk wants me,” Charles/James says. “I’ll see you when your book is done.” Then he turns to the door and hollers, “COMING!”

Daren hasn’t put down the book.

“You see, Rhiannon,” he says after Charles has left. “Nothing dumb can stay.”

After using the bathroom (which Charles has left surprisingly tidy, even putting down both seat and cover), I return to the kitchen. When I walk in, I find Kara’s disappeared and only Lindsay is with Justin now. He looks drunk and she looks determined. As if she can sense me coming, she reaches out and puts her hand on his shoulder, then moves it down to his chest. His reaction is so fast you could almost call it instinct—in one smooth move, he’s removed her hand and pushed her away. There’s no way for her to save face, the rejection is so complete. And the best part is I know he hasn’t seen me yet. He didn’t do it because I was watching.

He did it because he’s true to me.

I let a minute pass, and let Lindsay slither off. Then I make my presence known. Justin doesn’t exactly light up to see me, but he doesn’t dim, either.

I tell him how I found Daren reading
The Outsiders
upstairs.

“I love that book!” Justin says.

“Remember when we read it?” I ask.

He’s probably had too many shots to know what I’m talking about. Or at least that’s what I figure. Then he calls out, “Heigh-ho, Silver!”

Not quite as romantic as its origin. But I’m happy he remembers.

He steps away from the kitchen counter. “Let’s see what’s going on,” he says.

I follow. We find our friends, we shoot the shit, and I no longer feel like the hidden girl in the visible body. Now I am Justin’s version of me—that’s who I am, and that’s who people see. And it’s okay. It helps me navigate the party. It helps me know what to do. It helps me see who to be.

I stop looking for A. I turn back to these people, because they’re my life.

On Sunday, I give in and write to A. I’m worried that I haven’t heard anything.

A,

Just another weekend here. Went to a party. Talked to some people, but none of them were you. Got in trouble with my mom, but survived. Did some homework. Slept a lot this morning, then saw a better movie this afternoon with Rebecca than I saw on Friday night. (Warning: VAST is boring.)

Where/who/how have you been?

R

I hit send even though it doesn’t sound right, because I can’t imagine how to make it sound better. He doesn’t want to hear the details about Justin, and I don’t want to tell them. So I’ve flattened my weekend before mailing it to him. I haven’t given him any reason to be interested.

Which is maybe for the best.

The next morning I wake up and feel off. At first I think it’s because I fell asleep in my clothes. That doesn’t happen very often, so it’s weird to see my T-shirt, my jeans. But that’s not the only thing. It’s like I’ve woken up in an unfamiliar bed, even though this is my bed, in my room. I expect to look at my clock and find it’s four in the morning, to explain the disorientation. But it’s the normal time to wake up. My alarm is going off.

It must be because it’s Monday,
I think.

But then I correct myself.

No, it’s Tuesday.

When I go to hit off the alarm, I find a folded piece of paper on top of it. Even before I open it, I have a vague idea it’s a letter I wrote. But I don’t remember what it says.

Dear Rhiannon,

Before I say anything, or explain anything, I want you to stop reading and try to remember everything you did yesterday.

It’s my handwriting—but I know immediately that I didn’t write this.

I know immediately.

A.

Here.

A.

Me.

I start to shiver uncontrollably. I want to yell out, but I’m afraid my parents will hear.

I cannot believe this.

But I
can
believe this.

I know I will only have one chance to remember what happened before whatever is written on this piece of paper colors my memories or fills in the blanks. So I put the letter down. I sit back in bed.

Yesterday,
I tell myself.
What was yesterday?

I remember climbing. I’m outside, on my own. And I am climbing up a mountain. I am looking out over all of these trees.

It’s peaceful.

I didn’t skip school. I was in school before that. I had lunch with Justin. He called me Silver again. He ate pizza and complained about Stephanie and Steve. I remember that Stephanie and Steve had a fight—but that was Saturday night, at the party. It was not yesterday. I don’t think I saw Stephanie or Steve yesterday. I can’t remember.

I also can’t remember what I said to Justin. I can remember him talking to me. But nothing that I said.

Maybe I didn’t say anything.

I remember leaving dinner early. Coming up here.

I remember writing the letter.

But it’s not me writing the letter. I remember the pen in my hand. The paper underneath. But I can’t remember deciding what to say.

I don’t remember thinking. But I also don’t remember someone else thinking for me.

I pick up the letter again.

I would have never chosen to do this. I hope you know that. I had no idea it would happen until I woke up and opened your eyes.

I have tried to respect your day as much as I know how. I could have stayed in bed, stayed at home—but that would have driven me crazy, to be alone with you like that. I had to go out into the day like it was any other day.

I hope I have not changed anything for you. I hope that I did not alter your life in any way. If I did, please know it was not my intention. I have done the best I can.

I have tried to leave your memories alone. I have tried not to learn anything you would not want me to know.

I hope this doesn’t scare you. The last thing I want is to scare you.

I must say to you again: This was not my choice. If it had been my choice, it would be unforgivable.

What do you remember? I am about to tell you the course of your day. This is the last chance for you to have memories uninformed by this account.

When I woke up, I was in shock. In all of my years, I’ve never woken up in the body of someone I care so much about. I wanted to respect your privacy as much as possible, so you are wearing yesterday’s underwear, and in moments when anything I had not seen already was exposed, I kept my eyes closed.

I met your parents over breakfast, then drove to school. Since I had been there before, it was not hard to navigate. I don’t think anyone knew something was wrong. I went to class and kept my head down. I tried to take good notes for you. If you want details about classes, you can find them in your notebooks.

I tried to avoid Justin. I knew you would have wanted me to avoid him. This was effective until lunch, when he suggested we go for pizza. I couldn’t find a way out of it. Nothing more than conversation happened. He is annoyed with Stephanie and Steven for fighting.

I did not see him again until after school. He wanted to do something but I told him I had to pick up your mother from a doctor’s appointment. Just in case he mentions it.

(I realize it is strange that I keep saying “I” here—by “I,” I of course mean “you.” You have to understand: As I did these things, it didn’t feel like you were doing them. It felt to me like I was doing them. I wonder if you will feel the same.)

Because we had already been to an ocean and a forest together, I felt it would be best to head to a mountain. I also wanted us to be alone…and we were very alone as we climbed. (If you want to know where we were, the search should still be on your phone. I haven’t erased anything.) It felt good to be solitary, to feel an exertion that was purely physical. I wanted you to remember that, and to remember me there with you. I don’t know if this is possible. But—and I know this sounds strange—I felt like I was feeling it for both of us.

Not wanting to get you in trouble, I made it back in time for a very cordial dinner with your parents. Then I retreated to your room, attempted as much of your homework as possible, and decided to write you this note.

I have no way to know how you will react to this, nor would I presume to say there is a right or wrong way to react. Even if I haven’t caused any damage, I know this breach may still be irreparable. I will understand if you never want to see or speak or write to me again. But I will also hope desperately that you will want me to remain in your life. I leave that up to you.

I know it is neither my fault nor my choice, but still I am sorry. I know it must be as hard to read this as it has been to write it.

Yours,

A

My mother knocks on the door, making sure I’m awake. Do I remember telling Justin I was taking her to the doctor? Yes, I do. I remember saying that, and when I think harder about it, I even remember telling him it was an appointment for a sleep doctor. He joked to me about stealing some of her pills.

How can I know this, if I wasn’t there?

I can only know this because A left it for me. It doesn’t matter which of us was in control of my body, as long as the memory was made and stored away.

I want to be angry. I want to be freaked out. I want to be able to laugh at this, to find it ridiculous. These would all be rational responses. But instead I feel…sad. Sad that A had to go through this. Sad that there was no way it could be avoided. Sad that it complicates things even more. I know with all my heart that A isn’t lying to me—my body and my life were safe when he was in control of them. I know A wouldn’t have done anything to hurt me.

I also realize—in a way I couldn’t have realized before—how easy it would have been for A to destroy everything. A could have made me do anything. Break up with Justin. Take naked photos of myself and email them to A’s account. Run away.

But nothing like that happened. I know nothing like that happened.

Still, it can’t all go back to normal. No, this thing has happened to me. I can’t just shrug it off like all the other people whose bodies A inhabits. They don’t know how they missed a day. But I know. I can’t help knowing.

I imagine A waiting to see if I will ever be in touch again, if this is enough to make me walk away.

I write:

A,

I think I remember everything. Where are you today? Instead of writing a long email, I want to talk.

R

Almost immediately, I get a response.

R,

I am so relieved to hear from you. I am about two hours away, a boy named Dylan. But I will go wherever you want me to go.

A

I don’t want to wait. But I know I have to go to school to see if A did any damage without realizing it. So I tell A to meet me back at the bookstore, after school. We’ll have to wait until then.

His response is a simple

Thank you.

I don’t say anything back. I don’t need to. All I have to do is be there later on—and prepare to see what happened with everyone else on the yesterday I missed. I am expecting it to be a minefield—to have to account for something I said or didn’t say, someplace I went or didn’t go. I’m ready for the people in my life to be angry with me or upset with me or confused by me.

What happens instead is even worse:

Nobody seems to have noticed I was gone. Or wasn’t myself.

It starts with my mother, sitting in her usual chair. I ask her if I seemed off yesterday.

“No, you were perfectly pleasant,” she says. “We had a nice dinner.”

I don’t point out that a “nice dinner” should have seemed odd to her. Suspicious.

But she lives in her own world. I’m not surprised she didn’t notice.

My friends, though—I think they would have noticed something. Maybe not everything. But at least something.

I don’t feel them treating me any differently, though. I don’t feel any daylong gap in my friendship with them.

So I ask.

“Was I weird yesterday? Different?”

Rebecca tells me I was fine.

Preston says he didn’t really see me.

Ben pretends he didn’t hear the question.

Stephanie says, “Do you want to know who’s different?
Steve’s
different.”

And Justin—Justin says, “Yeah, you were weird, but that’s not exactly
different.
”

He’s joking. I can tell he’s joking. And I can tell from his joking that it was a good day, that we had a good time, that he didn’t mind me going to my mom’s doctor’s appointment instead of going home with him. A didn’t do anything to make things worse between us. If anything, A made it a little better.

I am relieved to have avoided being caught. And I’m pissed that no one noticed the difference.

I leave school a little early. Before anyone can stop me and ask me where I’m going. Before no one can stop me and ask me where I’m going.

As I drive to the bookstore, I reach for more of yesterday. Mostly I see the trees beneath me. I feel what it was like to be standing on that mountain. I breathe in as I remember breathing it in.

I feel better.

A hasn’t told me anything about Dylan, the boy whose body I’m about to meet. But when I step into the bookstore’s café, there’s no question who I’m looking for, because it’s so clear he’s looking for me. Our eyes meet, and our eyes have already met. I head over.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” he says back. He’s chosen the same table as last time. And this, of all things, overwhelms me. Everything that’s happened since last time—it’s like I’m feeling it all at once.

“I need coffee,” I say to him. I need to gather my thoughts. And I really do need coffee.

He doesn’t seem to mind. “Yeah, of course,” he says. He’s really geeky today, with a geeky voice. Like something from
Big Bang Theory.
His T-shirt doesn’t have anything on it—it’s just a blue T-shirt. I wonder how hard A had to look to find one without a joke on it. Then I yell at myself for jumping to so many conclusions just because the guy looks like a geek.

“Do you want anything?” I offer.

“Sure.”

He doesn’t try to come with me, and I’m glad to have the two minutes of waiting and ordering and waiting. I stare at my hands and think of him staring at my hands yesterday. Did they look like the same hands? Or does familiarity somehow alter them? The girl behind the counter calls out my order and hands it over. I carry our drinks to the table and for a few seconds—a few too many seconds—we sit there awkwardly. He’s waiting for me to say something. I’m waiting for him to say something. We’re not saying anything.

I break the silence and tell him, “It feels like the morning after.”

He looks at me kindly, nervously. “I know.”

The morning after.
I can’t believe I said that. Because what does he know about a morning after? Isn’t he always somewhere else?

He’s looking at me—at all of me. My hands. My face. My eyes. Even though I do it every day, I wonder what it was like to be inside me, to see the world like this when you’re not already used to it.

Calm. What I feel right now is a strange calm. A and I have just done something it’s possible that nobody else has ever done. I am sitting across from someone who has seen through my eyes. And A is sitting across from someone who can tell him what it was like to have vanished for a day.

“I woke up and I knew something was different,” I tell him. “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.”