There’s an email from Nathan, saying how sorry he is for what happened yesterday. He says that he’d thought Reverend Poole could help me. Now he’s not sure of anything.
I write back to tell him that it isn’t his fault, and that he has to get away from Reverend Poole and try to get back to his normal life.
I also tell him this is the last time I will ever email him. I don’t explain that it’s because I can’t trust him. I figure he’ll make that connection for himself.
When I’m done, I forward our email chain to my new email address. And then I close my account. Just like that, a few years of my life are over. The only through-line is gone. It’s silly to feel nostalgic about an email address, but I do. There aren’t many pieces to my past, so I have to mourn at least a little when one falls away.
Later that night, there’s an email from Rhiannon.
How are you?
R
That’s it.
I want to tell her everything that’s happened in the past forty-eight hours. I want to lay the past two days in front of her to see how she reacts, to see if she understands what they mean to me. I want her help. I want her advice. I want her reassurance.
But I don’t think that’s what she wants. And I don’t want to give it to her unless it’s what she wants. So I type back:
It’s been a rough two days. Apparently, I may not be the only person out there like this. Which is hard to think about.
A
There are still a few hours left in the night, but she doesn’t use any of them to get back to me.
Day 6030
I wake up only two towns away from her, in someone else’s arms.
I am careful not to wake this girl who enfolds me. Her feather-yellow hair covers her eyes. The beat of her heart presses against my back. Her name is Amelia, and last night she snuck in my window to be with me.
My name is Zara—or at least that’s the name I’ve chosen for myself. I was born Clementine, and I loved that name until I turned ten. Then I started to experiment, with Zara being the name that stuck. Z has always been my favorite letter, and twenty-six is my lucky number.
Amelia stirs under the sheets. “What time is it?” she asks groggily.
“Seven,” I tell her.
Instead of getting up, she curls into me.
“Will you be a good scout and check the whereabouts of your mom? I’d rather not leave the way I came in. My morning coordination is so much fuzzier than my nighttime coordination, and I’m always much more inspired when I’m approaching the maiden.”
“Okay,” I say, and in thanks, she kisses my bare shoulder.
The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it’s the temperature of happiness. Nothing from the previous night has dissipated. I’ve woken into the comfort they’ve created.
I tiptoe into the hallway and listen at my mother’s door. The only sound is sleep-breathing, so it appears we’re safe. When I get back to my room, Amelia is still in bed, the sheet pulled back so it’s just her, her T-shirt, and her underwear. I have a feeling that Zara would not let this moment pass without crawling in beside her, but I feel I can’t do that in her place.
“She’s asleep,” I report.
“Like, safe-to-take-a-shower asleep?”
“I think so.”
“You want first shower, second shower, or both shower?”
“You can go first.”
She gets out of bed, and stops to kiss me on the way out. Her hands move under my oversize shirt, and I don’t resist. I fall right into it, kiss her a little bit longer.
“You sure?” she asks.
“You go first,” I tell her.
And then, just like Zara would, I miss her when she’s left the room.
I want it to be Rhiannon.
She sneaks out of the house while I’m in my shower. Then, twenty minutes later, she’s back at the door, to pick me up for school. My mother is awake now and in the kitchen, and smiles when she sees Amelia heading up the path.
I wonder how much she knows.
We spend most of the day together at school, but not in a way that limits our interactions with other people. If anything, we incorporate our friends into what we have between us. We exist as individuals. We exist as a pair. We exist as parts of trios, quartets, and so on. And it all feels right.
I can’t get Rhiannon off my mind. Remembering what she said about how her friends would never know me. How no one else would ever know me. How what we have together will only be us, always.
I am starting to realize what this means, and how sad it would be.
I am already feeling some of the sadness now, and it isn’t even happening.
Seventh period, Amelia has study hall in the library while I have gym. When we meet up after, she shows me the books she’s taken out for me, because they look like ones I’d like.
Will I ever know Rhiannon this well?
Amelia has basketball practice after school. I usually wait around for her, doing my homework. But she is making me miss Rhiannon too much; I have to do something about it. I ask her if I can borrow her car and run some errands.
She hands over the keys, no questions asked.
It takes me twenty minutes to get over to Rhiannon’s school. I park in my usual space as most of the cars head in the other direction. Then I find a place to sit and watch the door, hoping she hasn’t already left.
I am not going to talk to her. I am not going to start everything again. I just want to see her.
Five minutes after I’ve arrived, she appears. She is talking to Rebecca and a couple of her other friends. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but they’re all involved in the conversation.
From here, she doesn’t look like someone who’s recently lost something. Her life seems to be playing on all chords. There’s one moment—one small moment—when she looks up and glances around. For that moment, I can believe she’s looking for me. But I can’t tell you what happens in the moment after, because I quickly turn away, stare at something else. I don’t want her to see my eyes.
This is the after for her, and if she’s in the after, then I have to be in the after, too.
I stop off at a Target on the way back to Amelia. Zara knows all her favorite foods, and most of them are of the snack variety.
I stock up, and before I go back into the school to find her, I arrange them on the dashboard, spelling her name. It is, I believe, what Zara would want me to do.
I am not fair. I wanted Rhiannon to see me there. Even as I looked away, I wanted her to come right over and treat me just like Amelia would treat Zara after spending three days apart.
I know it’s never going to happen. And that knowledge is a flash of light I can’t quite see through.
Amelia is delighted by the dashboard display, and insists on taking me to dinner. I call home and tell my mother, who doesn’t seem to mind.
I can sense that Amelia realizes I’m only half here, but she’s going to let me be half elsewhere, because that’s where I need to be. Over dinner, she fills the silence with tales from her day, some real and some completely imaginary. She makes me guess which is which.
We’ve only been together for seven months. Still, considering the number of memories Zara’s collected, it feels like a long time.
This is what I want, I think.
And then I can’t help it. I add, This is what I can’t have.
“Can I ask you something?” I say to Amelia.
“Sure. What?”
“If I woke up in a different body every day—if you never knew what I was going to look like tomorrow—would you still love me?”
She doesn’t miss a beat, or even act like the question is strange. “Even if you were green and had a beard and a male appendage between your legs. Even if your eyebrows were orange and you had a mole covering your entire cheek and a nose that poked me in the eye every time I kissed you. Even if you weighed seven hundred pounds and had hair the size of a Doberman under your arms. Even then, I would love you.”
“Likewise,” I tell her.
It’s so easy to say, because it never has to be true.
Before we say goodbye, she kisses me with everything she has. And I try to kiss her back with everything I want.
This is the nice note, I can’t help thinking.
But just like a sound, as soon as the note hits the air, it begins to fade.
When I walk inside, Zara’s mother says to her, “You know, you can invite Amelia in.”
I tell her I know. Then I rush to my room, because it’s too much. So much happiness can only make me sad. I close the door and begin to sob. Rhiannon’s right. I know it. I can never have these things.
I don’t even check my email. Either way, I don’t want to know.
Amelia calls to say good night. I have to let it go to voicemail, have to compose myself into the most like Zara I can be, before I answer.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her when I call her back. “I was talking to Mom. She says you need to come by more often.”
“Is she referring to the bedroom window or the front door?”
“The front door.”
“Well, it looks like a little bird called progress is now sitting on our shoulder.”
I yawn, then apologize for it.
“No need to say you’re sorry, sleepyhead. Dream a little dream of me, okay?”
“I will.”
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you,” I say.
And then we hang up, because nothing else needs to be said after that.
I want to give Zara her life back. Even if I feel I deserve something like this, I don’t deserve it at her expense.
She will remember all of it, I decide. Not my discontent. But the contentment that caused it.
Day 6031
I wake up feverish, sore, uncomfortable.
July’s mother comes in to check on her. Says she seemed fine last night.
Is it sickness or is it heartbreak?
I can’t tell.
The thermometer says I’m normal, but clearly I’m not.
Day 6032
An email from Rhiannon. Finally.
I want to see you, but I’m not sure if we should do that. I want to hear about what’s going on, but I’m afraid that will only start everything again. I love you—I do—but I am afraid of making that love too important. Because you’re always going to leave me, A. We can’t deny it. You’re always going to leave.
R
I don’t know how to respond to that. Instead, I try to lose myself in being Howie Middleton. His girlfriend picks a fight with him at lunchtime, over the fact that he never spends time with her anymore. Howie doesn’t have much to say about that. In fact, he stays entirely silent, which only infuriates her further.
I have to go, I think. If there are things I will never have here, there are also things I will never find here. Things I might need to find.
Day 6033
I wake up the next morning as Alexander Lin. His alarm goes off, playing a song I really like. This makes waking up much easier.
I also like his room. Plenty of books on the shelves, some of their spines worn down from rereading. There are three guitars in the corner, one electric, the amp still plugged in from the night before. In another corner, there’s a lime-green couch, and I know immediately this is a place where friends come to crash, this is their home away from home. He has Post-its all over the place with random quotes on them. On top of his computer is something from George Bernard Shaw: Dance is the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire. Some of the Post-its are in his handwriting, but others have been written by friends. I am the walrus. I’m nobody—who are you? Let all the dreamers wake the nation.
Even before I’ve gotten to know him, Alexander Lin has made me smile.
His parents are happy to see him. I have a sense that they’re always happy to see him.