Every Day (8 page)

Finally, the body wants to sleep.

I let it.

My mind is thoroughly wrung out, but I can tell Nathan Daldry has gotten a good night’s sleep.

Nathan is a good guy. Everything in his room is in order. Even though it’s only Saturday morning, he’s already done his homework for the weekend. He’s set his alarm for eight o’clock, not wanting the day to go to waste. He was probably in bed by ten.

I go on his computer and check my email, making sure to write myself some notes about the last few days, so I can remember them. Then I log in to Justin’s email and find out there’s a party tonight at Steve Mason’s house. Steve’s address is only a Google search away. When I map out the distance between Nathan’s house and Steve’s, I find it’s only a ninety-minute drive.

It looks like Nathan might be going to a party tonight.

First, I must convince his parents.

His mother interrupts me when I’m back on my own email,
rereading what I wrote about the day with Rhiannon. I very quickly shut the window, and oblige when she tells me that today is not a computer day, and that I am to come down for breakfast.

I very quickly discover that Nathan’s parents are a very nice couple who make it very clear that their niceness shouldn’t be challenged or pressed.

“Can I borrow the car?” I ask. “The school musical is tonight, and I would like to go see it.”

“Have you done your homework?”

I nod.

“Your chores?”

“I will.”

“And you’ll be back by midnight?”

I nod. I decide not to mention to them that if I’m not back by midnight, I’ll be ripped from my current body. I don’t think they’d find that reassuring.

It’s clear to me that they won’t need the car tonight. They are the type of parents who don’t believe in having a social life. They have television instead.

I spend most of the day doing chores. After I’m done with them and have had a family dinner, I’m good to go.

The party’s supposed to start at seven, so I know I have to wait until nine to show up, so there will be enough people there to hide my presence. If I get there and it ends up being open to only a dozen kids, I’ll have to turn back around. But that doesn’t strike me as Justin’s kind of party.

Nathan’s kind of party, I’m guessing, involves board games and Dr Pepper. As I drive back to Rhiannon’s town, I access some of his memories. I am a firm believer that every person, young or old, has at least one good story to tell. Nathan’s, however, is pretty hard to find. The only tremor of emotion I can find in his life is when he was nine and his dog April died. Ever since then, nothing seems to have disturbed him too much. Most of his memories involve homework. He has friends, but they don’t do very much outside of school. When Little League was over, he gave up sports. He has never, from what I can tell, sipped anything stronger than a beer, and even that was during a Father’s Day barbecue, at his uncle’s prodding.

Normally, I would take these as parameters. Normally, I would stay within Nathan’s safe zone.

But not today. Not with a chance of seeing Rhiannon again.

I remember yesterday, and how the trail that got me through the darkness seemed to be attached in some way to her. It’s as if when you love someone, they become your reason. And maybe I’ve gotten it backward, maybe it’s just because I need a reason that I find myself falling in love with her. But I don’t think that’s it. I think I would have continued along, oblivious, if I hadn’t happened to meet her.

Now I’m letting my life hijack these other lives for a day. I am not staying within their parameters. Even if that’s dangerous.

I’m at Steve Mason’s house by eight, but Justin’s car is nowhere in sight. In fact, there aren’t that many cars out in front. So I wait and watch. After a while, people start arriving. Even
though I’ve just spent a day and a half at their school, I don’t recognize any of them. They were all peripheral.

Finally, just after nine-thirty, Justin’s car pulls up. Rhiannon is with him, as I’d hoped she’d be. As they head in, he walks a little bit in front, with her a little behind. I get out of my car and follow them inside.

I’m worried there will be someone at the door, but the party’s already spiraled into its own form of chaos. The early guests are well past the point of drunkenness, and everyone else is quickly catching up. I know I look out of place—Nathan’s wardrobe is more suited to a debate tournament than a Saturday-night house party. But nobody really cares; they’re too caught up in each other or themselves to notice a random geek in their midst.

The lights are dim, the music is loud, and Rhiannon is hard to find. But just the fact that I am in the same place as her has me nervously exhilarated.

Justin is in the kitchen, talking with some guys. He looks at ease, in his element. He finishes one beer and immediately goes for another.

I push past him, push through the living room and find myself in the den. The instant I step in the room, I know she’s here. Even though the music’s blaring from a laptop connected to some speakers, she’s over by the CD collection, thumbing through cases. Two girls are talking nearby, and I have a sense that at one point she was a part of their conversation, then decided to drop out.

I walk over and see that one of the CDs she’s looking at has a song we listened to on our car ride.

“I really like them,” I say, gesturing to the CD. “Do you?”

She startles, as if this is a quiet room and I am a sudden noise.
I notice you
, I want to say.
Even when no one else does, I do. I will
.

“Yeah,” she says. “I like them, too.”

I start to sing the song, the one from the car. Then I say, “I like that one in particular.”

“Do I know you?” she asks.

“I’m Nathan,” I say, which isn’t a no or a yes.

“I’m Rhiannon,” she says.

“That’s a beautiful name.”

“Thanks. I used to hate it, but I don’t so much anymore.”

“Why?”

“It’s just a pain to spell.” She looks at me closely. “Do you go to Octavian?”

“No. I’m just here for the weekend. Visiting my cousin.”

“Who’s your cousin?”

“Steve.”

This is a dangerous lie, since I have no idea which of the guys is Steve, and I have no way of accessing the information.

“Oh, that explains it.”

She is starting to drift away from me, just as I imagine she drifted away from the girls talking next to us.

“I hate my cousin,” I say.

This gets her attention.

“I hate the way he treats girls. I hate the way he thinks he can buy all his friends by throwing parties like this. I hate the way that he only talks to you when he needs something. I hate the way he doesn’t seem capable of love.”

I realize I’m now talking about Justin, not Steve.

“Then why are you here?” Rhiannon asks.

“Because I want to see it fall apart. Because when this party gets busted—and if it stays this loud, it
will
get busted—I want to be a witness. From a safe distance away, of course.”

“And you’re saying he’s incapable of loving Stephanie? They’ve been going out for over a year.”

With a silent apology to Stephanie and Steve, I say, “That doesn’t mean anything, does it? I mean, being with someone for over a year can mean that you love them … but it can also mean you’re trapped.”

At first I think I’ve gone too far. I can feel Rhiannon taking in my words, but I don’t know what she’s doing with them. The sound of words as they’re said is always different from the sound they make when they’re heard, because the speaker hears some of the sound from the inside.

Finally, she says, “Speaking from experience?”

It’s laughable to think that Nathan—who, from what I can tell, hasn’t gone on a date since eighth grade—would be speaking from experience. But she doesn’t know him, which means I can be more like me. Not that I’m speaking from experience, either. Just the experience of observing.

“There are many things that can keep you in a relationship,” I say. “Fear of being alone. Fear of disrupting the arrangement of your life. A decision to settle for something that’s okay, because you don’t know if you can get any better. Or maybe there’s the irrational belief that it will get better, even if you know he won’t change.”

“ ‘He’?”

“Yeah.”

“I see.”

At first I don’t understand what she sees—clearly, I was talking about her. Then I get where the pronoun has led her.

“That cool?” I ask, figuring it will make Nathan even less threatening if he’s gay.

“Completely.”

“How about you?” I ask. “Seeing anyone?”

“Yeah,” she says. Then, deadpan, “For over a year.”

“And why are you still together? Fear of being alone? A decision to settle? An irrational belief that he’ll change?”

“Yes. Yes. And yes.”

“So …”

“But he can also be incredibly sweet. And I know that, deep down, I mean the world to him.”

“Deep down? That sounds like settling to me. You shouldn’t have to venture deep down in order to get to love.”

“Let’s switch the topic, okay? This isn’t a good party topic. I liked it more when you were singing to me.”

I’m about to make reference to another song we heard on our car ride—hoping that maybe it’ll bring her back in some way—when Justin’s voice comes from over my shoulder, asking, “So who’s this?” If he was relaxed when I saw him in the kitchen, now he’s annoyed.

“Don’t worry, Justin,” Rhiannon says. “He’s gay.”

“Yeah, I can tell from the way he’s dressed. What are you doing here?”

“Nathan, this is Justin, my boyfriend. Justin, this is Nathan.”

I say hi. He doesn’t respond.

“You seen Stephanie?” he asks Rhiannon. “Steve’s looking for her. I think they’re at it again.”

“Maybe she went to the basement.”

“Nah. They’re dancing in the basement.”

Rhiannon likes this news, I can tell.

“Want to go down there and dance?” she asks Justin.

“Hell no! I didn’t come here to dance. I came here to
drink
.”

“Charming,” Rhiannon says, more (I think) for my benefit than his. “Do you mind if I go dance with Nathan?”

“You sure he’s gay?”

“I’ll sing you show tunes if you want me to prove it,” I volunteer.

Justin slaps me on the back. “No, dude, don’t do that, okay? Go dance.”

So that’s how it comes to pass that Rhiannon is leading me to Steve Mason’s basement. As we hit the stairs, we can feel the bass under our feet. It’s a different soundtrack here—a tide of pulse and beat. Only a few red lights are on, so all we can see are the outlines of bodies as they meld together.

“Hey, Steve!” Rhiannon calls out. “I like your cousin!”

A guy who must be Steve looks at her and nods. Whether he can’t hear what she’s said or whether he’s trashed, I can’t tell.

“Have you seen Stephanie?” he yells.

“No!” Rhiannon yells back.

Then we’re in with the dancers. The sad truth is that I have about as much experience on a dance floor as Nathan does. I try to lose myself in the music, but that doesn’t work. Instead, I need to lose myself in Rhiannon. I have to give myself over
entirely to her—I must be her shadow, her complement, the other half of this conversation of bodies. As she moves, I move with her. I touch her back, her waist. She comes in closer.

By losing myself to her, I gain her. The conversation is working. We have found our rhythm and we are riding it. I find myself singing along, singing to her, and she loves it. She transforms once again into someone carefree, and I transform into someone whose only care is her.

“You’re not bad!” she shouts over the music.

“You’re amazing!” I shout back.

I know that Justin is not coming down here. She is safe with Steve Mason’s gay cousin, and I am safe knowing that nobody else will interfere with this moment. The songs collide into one long song—as if one singer is taking over when the previous one stops, all of them taking turns to give us this. The sound waves push us into each other, wrap around us like colors. We are paying attention to each other and we are paying attention to the enormity. The room has no ceiling; the room has no walls. There is only the open field of our excitement, and we run across it in small movements, sometimes without our feet leaving the ground. We go for what feels like hours and also feels like no time at all. We go until the music stops, until someone turns on the lights and says the party is ending, that the neighbors have complained and the police are probably coming.

Rhiannon looks as disappointed as I feel.

“I have to find Justin,” she says. “Are you going to be okay?”

No
, I want to tell her.
I won’t be okay until you can come with me to wherever it is that I’m going next
.

I ask her for her email address, and when she raises an eyebrow, I tell her again not to worry, that I’m still gay.

“That’s too bad,” she says. I want her to say more, but then she’s giving me her email address, and in response I’m giving her a fake email address that I’ll have to set up as soon as I get home.

People are starting to run from the house. Sirens can be heard in the distance, probably waking up as many people as the party has. Rhiannon leaves me to find Justin, promising me that she’ll be the one to drive. I don’t see them as I run to my car. I know it’s late, but I don’t know how late it is until I turn on the car and look at the clock.

11:15.

There’s no way I’ll get there in time.

Seventy miles an hour.

Eighty miles an hour.

Eighty-five.

I drive as fast as I can, but it’s not fast enough.

At 11:50, I pull over to the side of the road. If I close my eyes, I should be able to fall asleep before midnight. That is the blessing of what I have to go through—I am able to fall asleep in minutes.

Poor Nathan Daldry. He is going to wake up on the side of an interstate, an hour away from his home. I can only imagine how terrified he’ll be.

I am a monster for doing this to him.

But I have my reason.

It’s time for Roger Wilson to go to church.