It’s Paul’s job—self-appointed or otherwise—to get us up and out. Our father’s not home from the night shift yet, and our mother’s already on the way to her job. Our two sisters are about done with the bathroom. We’re next.
I access and find that I’m in the town next to Nathan’s, over an hour from Rhiannon’s.
This is going to be a hard day.
The bus ride to school takes forty-five minutes. When we get there, we head to the cafeteria for free breakfast. I am amazed at James’s appetite—I pile on pancake after pancake, and he’s still hungry. Tom matches him bite for bite.
Luckily, I have study hall first period. Unluckily, there’s still homework that James needs to do. I push through that as quick as I can, and have about ten minutes of computer time left at the end.
There’s a message from Rhiannon, written at one in the morning.
A,
I want to believe you, but I don’t know how.
Rhiannon
I write back:
Rhiannon,
You don’t need to know how. You just make up your mind and it happens.
I am in Laurel right now, over an hour away. I am in the body of a football player named James. I know how strange that sounds. But, like everything I’ve told you, it’s the truth.
Love,
A
There’s just enough time for me to check my other email address. There’s another email from Nathan.
You can’t avoid my questions forever. I want to know who you are. I want to know why you do what you do.
Tell me.
Again, I leave him unanswered. I have no idea whether I owe him an explanation or not. I probably owe him something. But I’m not sure it’s an explanation.
I make it through to lunch. I want to go immediately to the library to check the computers again. But James is hungry, and Tom is with him, and I am afraid that if he doesn’t get his lunch now, there won’t be anything for him to eat until dinnertime. I checked, and there’s only about three dollars in his wallet, including change.
I get the free lunch and eat it quickly. Then I excuse myself to the library, which inspires no shortage of taunts from Tom, who claims that “libraries are for girls.” A true brother, I shoot back with, “Well, that explains why you never find any.” A wrestling match ensues. All of this takes away time from what I need to do.
When I get to the library, all the computers are taken. I have to loom large over a freshman for about two minutes before he freaks out enough to give me his space. Quickly I check out public transportation, and find out I’ll need to take three buses in order to make it to Rhiannon’s town. I’m ready to do it, but when I check my email, there’s another message from Rhiannon, dated just two minutes ago.
A,
Do you have a car? If not, I can come to you. There’s a Starbucks in Laurel. I’m told that nothing bad ever happens in a Starbucks. Let me know if you want to meet there.
Rhiannon
I type:
Rhiannon,
I would appreciate it if you could come here. Thank you.
A
Two minutes later, a new email from her:
A,
I’ll be there at 5. Can’t wait to see what you look like today.
(Still not believing this.)
Rhiannon
My nerves are jangling with possibility. She’s had time to think about it, and that hasn’t turned her against me. It’s more than I could ask for. I am careful not to be too grateful, lest it be taken away.
The rest of the school day is unexceptional … except for a moment in seventh period. Mrs. French, the bio teacher, is hectoring a kid who hasn’t done his homework. It’s a lab assignment, and he’s come up blank.
“I don’t know what got into me,” the slacker says. “I must have been possessed by the devil!”
The rest of the class laughs, and even Mrs. French shakes her head.
“Yeah, I was possessed by the devil, too,” another guy says. “After I drank seven beers!”
“Okay, class,” Mrs. French intones. “Enough of that.”
It’s the way they say it—I know Nathan’s story must be spreading.
“Hey,” I say to Tom as we head to football practice, “did you hear about that kid in Monroeville who says he was possessed by the devil?”
“Dude,” he replies, “we were just talking about that yesterday. It was all over the news.”
“Yeah, I mean, did you hear anything more about it today?”
“What more is there to say? Kid got caught in a crazy lie, and now the religious crazies want to make him a poster child. I almost feel sorry for him.”
This, I think, is not good.
Our coach has to go to his wife’s Lamaze class, which he bitches about to us in detail, but it forces him to end practice early. I tell Tom that I’m going to make a Starbucks run, and he looks at me like I have been totally, irredeemably girlified. I was counting on his disgust, and am relieved to get it.
She’s not there when I arrive, so I get a small black coffee—pretty much the only thing I can afford—and sit and wait for her. It’s crowded, and I have to look brutish in order to keep the other chair at my table unoccupied.
Finally, about twenty minutes after five, she shows up. She scans the crowd and I wave. Even though I told her I was a football player, she’s still a little startled. She comes over anyway.
“Okay,” she says, sitting down. “Before we say another word, I want to see your phone.” I must look confused, because she adds, “I want to see every single call you’ve made in the past week, and every single call you received. If this isn’t some big joke, then you have nothing to hide.”
I hand over James’s phone, which she knows how to work better than I do.
After a few minutes of searching, she appears satisfied.
“Now, I quiz you,” she says, handing back the phone. “First, what was I wearing on the day that Justin took me to the beach?”
I try to picture it. I try to grab hold of those details. But they’ve already eluded me. I remember her, not what she was wearing.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Do you remember what Justin was wearing?”
She thinks about it for a second. “Good point. Did we make out?”
I shake my head. “We used the make-out blanket, but we didn’t make out. We kissed. And that was enough.”
“And what did I say to you before I left the car?”
“ ‘That’s the nice note.’ ”
“Correct. Quick, what’s Steve’s girlfriend’s name?”
“Stephanie.”
“And what time did the party end?”
“Eleven-fifteen.”
“And when you were in the body of that girl who I took to all of my classes, what did the note you passed me say?”
“Something like, ‘The classes here are just as boring as in the school I’m going to now.’ ”
“And what were the buttons on your backpack that day?”
“Anime kittens.”
“Well, either you’re an excellent liar, or you switch bodies every day. I have no idea which one is true.”
“It’s the second one.”
I see, over Rhiannon’s shoulder, a woman looking at us quizzically. Has she overheard what we’re saying?
“Let’s go outside,” I whisper. “I feel we may be getting an unintended audience.”
Rhiannon looks skeptical. “Maybe if you were a petite cheerleader again. But—I’m not sure if you fully realize this—you’re a big, threatening dude today. My mother’s voice is very loud and clear in my head: ‘No dark corners.’ ”
I point out the window, to a bench along the road.
“Totally public, only without people listening in.”
“Fine.”
As we head out, the woman who was eavesdropping seems disappointed. I realize how many people sitting around us have open laptops and open notebooks, and hope that none of them have been taking notes.
When we get to the bench, Rhiannon lets me sit down first, so she can determine the distance that we’ll sit apart, which is significant.
“So you say you’ve been like this since the day you were born?”
“Yes. I can’t remember it being any different.”
“So how did that work? Weren’t you confused?”
“I guess I got used to it. I’m sure that, at first, I figured it was just how everybody’s lives worked. I mean, when you’re a baby, you don’t really care much about who’s taking care of you, as long as someone’s taking care of you. And as a little kid, I thought it was some kind of a game, and my mind learned how to access—you know, look at the body’s memories—naturally. So I always knew what my name was, and where I was. It wasn’t until I was four or five that I started to realize I was different, and it wasn’t until I was nine or ten that I really wanted it to stop.”
“You did?”
“Of course. Imagine being homesick, but without having a home. That’s what it was like. I wanted friends, a mom, a dad, a dog—but I couldn’t hold on to any of them more than a single day. It was brutal. There are nights I remember screaming and crying, begging my parents not to make me go to bed. They could never figure out what I was afraid of. They thought it was a monster under the bed, or a ploy to get a few more bedtime stories. I could never really explain, not in a way that made sense to them. I’d tell them I didn’t want to say goodbye, and they’d assure me it wasn’t goodbye. It was just good night. I’d tell them it was the same thing, but they thought I was being silly.
“Eventually I came to peace with it. I had to. I realized that this was my life, and there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t fight the tide, so I decided to float along.”
“How many times have you told this story?”
“None. I swear. You’re the first.”
This should make her feel special—it’s meant to make her feel special—but instead it seems to worry her.
“You have to have parents, don’t you? I mean, we all have parents.”
I shrug. “I have no idea. I would think so. But it’s not like there’s anyone I can ask. I’ve never met anyone else like me. Not that I would necessarily know.”
It’s clear from her expression that she thinks this is a sad story I’m telling her—a very sad story. I don’t know how to convey to her that it hasn’t all been sad.
“I’ve glimpsed things,” I say. Then I stop. I don’t know what’s next.
“Go on,” she tells me.
“It’s just—I know it sounds like an awful way to live, but I’ve seen so many things. It’s so hard when you’re in one body to get a sense of what life is really like. You’re so grounded in who you are. But when who you are changes every day—you get to touch the universal more. Even the most mundane details. You see how cherries taste different to different people. Blue looks different. You see all the strange rituals boys have to show affection without admitting it. You learn that if a parent reads to you at the end of the day, it’s a good sign that it’s a good parent, because you’ve seen so many other parents who don’t make the time. You learn how much a day is truly worth, because they’re all so different. If you ask most people what the difference was between Monday and Tuesday, they might tell you what they had for dinner each night. Not me. By seeing the world from so many angles, I get more of a sense of its dimensionality.”
“But you never get to see things over time, do you?” Rhiannon asks. “I don’t mean to cancel out what you just said. I think I understand that. But you’ve never had a friend that you’ve known day in and day out for ten years. You’ve never watched a pet grow older. You’ve never seen how messed up a parent’s love can be over time. And you’ve never been in a relationship for more than a day, not to mention for more than a year.”