She has a poison personality, and I feel that even I am susceptible to it. Every time there’s something mean to be said, everyone looks to her for a comment. Even the teachers. And I find myself stuck in those silences, with words on the venomous tip of my tongue. I see all the girls who aren’t dressed within the guidelines, and see how easy it would be to tear them all apart.
Is that a backpack that Lauren has on? I guess she’s acting like she’s in third grade until her chest fills in. And, oh my God, why is Felicity wearing those socks? Are those kittens? I thought only convicted child molesters were allowed to wear those. And Kendall’s top? I don’t think there’s anything sadder than an unsexy girl trying to dress sexy. We should have a fund-raiser for her, it’s so sad. Like, tornado victims would look at her and say, “No, really, we don’t need the money—give it to that unfortunate girl.”
I don’t want these thoughts anywhere near my mind. The weird thing is that when I withhold them, when I don’t let Vanessa say them out loud, I don’t sense relief from any of the people around me. I sense disappointment. They’re bored. And their boredom is the thing that the meanness feeds on.
Vanessa’s boyfriend, a jock named Jeff, thinks it’s her time of the month. Her best friend and number one acolyte, Cynthia, asks her if someone died. They know something’s off, but will never guess the real reason. They certainly won’t think she’s been taken over by the devil. If anything, they’re suspicious that the devil’s taken a day off.
I know it would be foolish of me to try to change her. I could run off this afternoon and sign her up to volunteer in a soup kitchen, but I’m sure when she arrived there tomorrow, she’d only make fun of the homeless people’s clothes, and the quality of the soup. The best I could probably do would be to get Vanessa into a compromising position that someone could blackmail her about. (Did you all see the video of Vanessa Martinez walking through the hallway in her thong underwear, singing songs from Sesame Street? And then she ran into the girls’ room and flushed her own head in a toilet?) But that would be stooping to her level, and I’m sure that using her own poison against her would cause at least a little of it to fall back inside me as well.
So I don’t try to change her. I simply halt her ire for a single day.
It’s exhausting, trying to make a bad person act good. You can see why it’s so much easier for them to be bad.
I want to tell Rhiannon all about it. Because when something happens, she’s the person I want to tell. The most basic indicator of love.
I have to resort to email, and email is not enough. I am starting to get tired of relying on words. They are full of meaning, yes, but they lack sensation. Writing to her is not the same as seeing her face as she listens. Hearing back from her is not the same as hearing her voice. I have always been grateful for technology, but now it feels as if there’s a little hitch of separation woven into any digital interaction. I want to be there, and this scares me. All my usual disconnected comforts are being taken away, now that I see the greater comfort of presence.
Nathan also emails me, as I knew he would.
You can’t leave now. I have more questions.
I don’t have the heart to tell him that’s the wrong way to think about the world. There will always be more questions. Every answer leads to more questions.
The only way to survive is to let some of them go.
Day 6018
The next day I am a boy named George, and I am only forty-five minutes away from Rhiannon. She emails me and says she’ll be able to leave school at lunch.
I, however, am going to have a harder time, because today I am homeschooled.
George’s mother and father are stay-at-home parents, and George and his two brothers stay at home with them each and every day. The room that in most homes would be called the rec room is instead called “the schoolhouse” by George’s family. The parents have even set up three desks for them, which seem to have been left over from a one-room schoolhouse at the turn of the last century.
There is no sleeping late here. We’re all woken at seven, and there’s a protocol about who showers when. I manage to sneak a few minutes at the computer to read Rhiannon’s message and send her one of my own, saying we’ll have to see how the day plays out. Then, at eight, we’re promptly at our desks, and while our father works at the other end of the house, our mother teaches us.
By accessing, I learn that George has never been in a classroom besides this one, because of a fight his parents had with his older brother’s kindergarten teacher about her methods. I can’t imagine what kindergarten methods would be shocking enough to pull a whole family out of school forever, but there’s no way to access information about this event—George has no idea. He’s only dealt with the repercussions.
I have been homeschooled before, by parents who were engaged and engaging, who made sure their kids had room to explore and grow. This is not the case here. George’s mother is made of stern, unyielding material, and she also happens to be the slowest speaker I’ve ever heard.
“Boys … we’re going to talk … about … the events … leading up … to … the Civil … War.”
The brothers are all resigned to this. They stare forward at all times, a pantomime of paying perfect attention.
“The president … of the … South … was … a man … named … Jefferson … Davis.”
I refuse to be held hostage like this—not when Rhiannon will soon be waiting for me. So after an hour, I decide to take a page from Nathan’s playbook.
I start asking questions.
What was the name of Jefferson Davis’s wife?
Which states were in the Union?
How many people actually died at Gettysburg?
Did Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address all by himself?
And about three dozen more.
My brothers look at me like I’m on cocaine, and my mother gets flustered with each question, since she has to look up each answer.
“Jefferson Davis … was married … twice. His first wife … Sarah … was the daughter of … President … Zachary Taylor. But Sarah … died … of malaria … three months after … they … were … married. He remarried …”
This goes on for another hour. Then I ask her if I can go to the library, to get some books on the subject.
She tells me yes, and offers to drop me off herself.
It’s the middle of a school day, so I’m the only kid in the library. The librarian knows me, though, and knows where I’m coming from. She is nice to me but abrupt with my mother, leading me to believe that the kindergarten teacher isn’t the only person in town who my mother thinks is not doing her job right.
I find a computer and email my location to Rhiannon. Then I take a copy of Feed off the shelves and try to remember where I left off reading, a number of bodies ago. I sit at a carrel by a window and keep being drawn to the traffic, even though I know it’s still a couple of hours until Rhiannon will show up.
I shed my borrowed life for an hour and put on the borrowed life of the book I’m reading. Rhiannon finds me like that, in the selfless reading space that the mind loans out. I don’t even notice her standing there at first.
“Ahem,” she says. “I figured you were the only kid in the building, so it had to be you.”
It’s too easy—I can’t resist.
“Excuse me?” I say somewhat abruptly.
“It’s you, right?”
I make George look as confused as possible. “Do I know you?”
Now she starts to doubt herself. “Oh, I’m sorry. I just, uh, am supposed to meet somebody.”
“What does he look like?”
“I don’t, um, know. It’s, like, an online thing.”
I grunt. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“I can’t. There’s this really amazing girl I’m supposed to meet.”
She looks at me hard. “You jerk.”
“Sorry, it was just—”
“You jerky … jerk.”
She’s seriously pissed; I’ve seriously messed up.
I stand up from my carrel.
“Rhiannon, I’m sorry.”
“You can’t do that. It’s not fair.” She is actually backing away from me.
“I will never do it again. I promise.”
“I can’t believe you just did that. Look me in the eyes and say it again. That you promise.”
I look her in the eyes. “I promise.”
It’s enough, but not really. “I believe you,” she says. “But you’re still a jerk until you prove otherwise.”
We wait until the librarian is distracted, then sneak out the door. I’m worried there’s some law about reporting homeschooled kids when they go AWOL. I know George’s mother is coming back in two hours, so we don’t have much time.
We head to a Chinese restaurant in town. If they think we should be in school, they keep it to themselves. Rhiannon tells me about her uneventful morning—Steve and Stephanie got into another fight, but then made up by second period—and I tell her about being in Vanessa’s body.
“I know so many girls like that,” Rhiannon says when I’m done. “The dangerous ones are the ones who are actually good at it.”
“I suspect she’s very good at it.”
“Well, I’m glad I didn’t have to meet her.”
But you didn’t get to see me, I think. I keep it to myself.
We press our knees together under the table. My hands find hers and we hold them there. We talk as if none of this is happening, as if we can’t feel life pulse through all the spots where we’re touching.
“I’m sorry for calling you a jerk,” she says. “I just—this is hard enough as it is. And I was so sure I was right.”
“I was a jerk. I’m taking for granted how normal this all feels.”
“Justin sometimes does that. Pretends I didn’t tell him something I just told him. Or makes up this whole story, then laughs when I fall for it. I hate that.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No, it’s okay. I mean, it’s not like he was the first one. I guess there’s something about me that people love to fool. And I’d probably do it—fool people—if it ever occurred to me.”
I take all of the chopsticks out of their holder and put them on the table.
“What are you doing?” Rhiannon asks.
I use the chopsticks to outline the biggest heart possible. Then I use the Sweet’N Low packets to fill it in. I borrow some from two other tables when I run out.
When I’m done, I point to the heart on the table.
“This,” I say, “is only about one ninety-millionth of how I feel about you.”
She laughs.
“I’ll try not to take it personally,” she says.
“Take what personally?” I say. “You should take it very personally.”
“The fact that you used artificial sweetener?”
I take a Sweet’N Low packet and fling it at her.
“Not everything is a symbol!” I shout.
She picks up a chopstick and brandishes it as a sword. I pick up another chopstick in order to duel.
We are doing this when the food arrives. I’m distracted and she gets a good shot in at my chest.
“I die!” I proclaim.
“Who has the moo shu chicken?” the waiter asks.
The waiter continues to indulge us as we laugh and talk our way through lunch. He’s a real pro, the kind of waiter who refills your water glass when it’s half empty, without you noticing he’s doing it.
He delivers us our fortune cookies at the end of the meal. Rhiannon breaks hers neatly in half, checks out the slip of paper, and frowns.