I sit right there across from him and listen.
He doesn’t recognize me.
I am not the devil.
This thought is what echoes through my mind the rest of the day.
I am not the devil, but I could be.
Looking at it from afar, looking at it from a perspective like Nathan’s, I can see how scary it could be. Because what’s to stop me from doing harm? What punishment would there be if I took the pencil in my hand and gouged out the eye of the girl sitting next to me in chem class? Or worse. I could easily get away with the perfect crime. The body that committed the murder would inevitably get caught, but the murderer would go free. Why haven’t I thought of this before?
I have the potential to be the devil.
But then I think, Stop. I think, No. Because, really, does that make me any different from everyone else? Yes, I could get away with it, but certainly we all have the potential to commit the crime. We choose not to. Every single day, we choose not to. I am no different.
I am not the devil.
There is still no word from Rhiannon. Whether her silence is coming from her confusion or from a desire to be rid of me, I have no way of knowing.
I write to her and say, simply:
I have to see you again.
A
Day 6009
There’s still no word from her the next morning.
I get in the car and drive.
The car belongs to Adam Cassidy. He should be in school. But I call the office pretending to be his father and say he has a doctor’s appointment.
It may last the entire day.
It’s a two-hour drive. I know I should spend it getting to know Adam Cassidy, but he seems incidental to me right now. I used to inhabit lives like this all the time—testing the bare minimum I needed to know in order to get through the day. I got so good at it that I made it through a few days without accessing once. I’m sure these were very blank days for the bodies I was in, because they were extraordinarily blank days for me.
Most of the drive, I think about Rhiannon. How to get her back. How to keep in her good graces. How to make this work.
It’s the last part that’s the hardest.
When I get to her school, I park where Amy Tran parked. The school day is already in full swing, so when I open the doors, I jump right into the fray. It’s between periods, and I have all of two minutes to find her.
I don’t know where she is. I don’t even know what period’s starting. I just push through the halls, looking for her. People brush by, tell me to watch where I’m going. I don’t care. There is everyone else, and there is her. I am only focused on her.
I let the universe tell me where to go. I rely purely on instinct, knowing that this kind of instinct comes from somewhere other than me, somewhere other than this body.
She is turning in to a classroom. But she stops. Looks up. Sees me.
I don’t know how to explain it. I am an island in the hall as people push around me. She is another island. I see her, and she knows exactly who I am. There is no way for her to know this. But she knows.
She walks away from the classroom, walks toward me. Another bell rings and the rest of the people drain out of the hall, leaving us alone together.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I say.
“I thought you might come.”
“Are you mad?”
“No, I’m not mad.” She glances back at the classroom. “Although Lord knows you’re not good for my attendance record.”
“I’m not good for anybody’s attendance record.”
“What’s your name today?”
“A,” I tell her. “For you, it’s always A.”
She has a test next period that she can’t skip, so we stay on the school grounds. When we start to encounter other kids—kids without classes this period, kids also cutting—she grows a little more cautious.
“Is Justin in class?” I ask, to give her fear a name.
“Yeah. If he decided to go.”
We find an empty classroom and go inside. From all the Shakespearean paraphernalia hanging on the walls, I’m guessing we’re in an English classroom. Or drama.
We sit in the back row, out of sight of the window in the door.
“How did you know it was me?” I have to ask.
“The way you looked at me,” she says. “It couldn’t have been anyone else.”
This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.
I take her hand and she doesn’t pull away. Is this because something between us has changed, or is it only because my body has changed? Is it easier for her to hold Adam Cassidy’s hand?
The electricity in the air is muted. This is not going to lead to anything more than an honest conversation.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” I say again.
“I deserve part of the blame. I never should have called him.”
“What did he say? Afterward?”
“He kept calling you ‘that black bitch.’ ”
“Charming.”
“I think he sensed it was a trap. I don’t know. He just knew something was off.”
“Which is probably why he passed the test.”
Rhiannon pulls away. “That’s not fair.”