“What are you thinking about?”
Justin’s caught me at my locker, in a daze.
“It’s nothing,” I tell him. “Just daydreaming.”
He lets it go.
“Look,” he says. “What’re you doing now?”
It’s the end of the day. I have no idea what I’m doing. I could’ve driven back to the Starbucks and met the twin of the guy from yesterday. Although how would I have known it was really a twin? What if it was the same guy again? It’s not like I could really tell.
Suddenly I’m suspicious.
Really suspicious.
I wonder if tomorrow he’ll say he’s a triplet.
Or that he’s stayed in the same body after all.
Alarm. I’m starting to get pissed off. Irrationally pissed off. Or maybe rationally pissed off.
“Are you even listening to me?”
I am not listening to him. I need to listen to him. Because he is my boyfriend, and he has no idea what’s going on inside my head.
“No plans,” I say.
We both know what’s next. But he’s not going to say it. He wants me to say it.
So I do.
“Wanna hang out?”
“Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”
We go to his house. He wants to watch an old episode of Game of Thrones.
“Is this the one where someone dies?” I ask as it starts. I’m joking. They’re all the one where someone dies.
“Smart-ass,” he says.
I check my email. Nothing new from A.
Like my silence might push him into confessing.
“Put that away,” Justin says. “It’s distracting.”
I put it away. I sit there. Someone’s head gets smashed in.
We do not make out.
It’s only when three episodes are over and I’m getting ready to leave that he tells me something is on his mind.
“I fucking hate doctors,” he says. I’m a little confused. There hasn’t been a doctor in sight on Game of Thrones—it would have been much better if there had been.
“Is there any particular reason you hate doctors right now?” I ask.
“Yeah, because they’re going to let my grandma die. They’re going to put her through hell, and make all of us pay for it, and at the very end, she’s going to die anyway. That’s always what they do. Hospitals wouldn’t make money without sick people, right? They just love this shit.”
“Your grandmother’s sick?” I ask.
“Yeah. Grandpa called us last night. Says it’s serious cancer.”
“Are you okay?”
“What do you mean, am I okay? I’m not the one with cancer.”
I want to ask, Do you want to talk about it? But the answer is pretty obvious. He doesn’t want my sympathy. He doesn’t want to tell me he’s sad. He just wants me to be there as he vents his rage. So I do that. I let him yell about doctors, and about how his grandfather is the one who smokes, but look at which one of them ended up with cancer. I let him criticize his parents’ reaction. He’s mad at them for not dropping everything to go see her, when what he really means is that he wants to drop everything to go see her. But he won’t say that. Not to me. Not to himself.
I stay until he wears himself out. I stay until he changes the subject. I stay until he decides to watch a fourth episode.
I’ll be there when he wants to deal with it. He knows that, and right now that’s the best I can do.
When I get home, Mom is sitting in her usual spot, watching the news on her usual channel. If the story is really sad—a girl gone missing, a boy trapped in a well—she’ll talk back to the screen, little murmurs of sympathy, Oh, that’s too bad or Goodness, how awful.
I imagine the pretty newscaster looking into this room, looking at my mother sitting in that chair, and saying the same things. Because hasn’t she fallen down her own kind of well? Hasn’t she found her own way of being missing? Liza used to push her—telling her she needed to go out more, once even telling her she needed to get some friends. But now that it’s my turn, I find I’ve given up. It’s probably the only way I can make her happy, to leave her alone. That’s what my dad has done all these years, and it seems to have worked out fine for him.
I think about calling Liza, about telling her what’s going on.
You’re as crazy as she is. That’s probably what she’d say.
But Mom isn’t crazy. She just doesn’t care anymore.
She enjoys her shows, I think.
I want to see you again.
I don’t think Justin’s ever said that to me. But he hasn’t really needed to, has he? There’s never any doubt that he’ll see me again. Never any need to want it.
I start another email.
A,
I only want to see you again if this is real.
Rhiannon
But I don’t send it.
Chapter Ten
I wake up and write another email.
A,
So, who are you today?
What a strange question to ask. But I guess it makes sense. If any of this makes sense.
Yesterday was a hard day. Justin’s grandmother is sick, but instead of admitting he’s upset about it, he just lashes out at the world more. I’m trying to help him, but it’s hard.
I don’t know if you want to hear this or not. I know how you feel about Justin. If you want me to keep that part of my life hidden from you, I can. But I don’t think that’s what you want.
Tell me how your day is going.
Rhiannon
This one I do send. I try to act like it’s a normal email that I’d send to a normal friend. Then I try to have a normal day, partly to figure out what a normal day really is. At first it works. I go to school. I go to classes. I go to lunch and sit next to Justin. He won’t commit to any emotion.
When lunch is over, I check my email.
Rhiannon,
Today is a hard day for me, too. The girl whose body I’m in is in a bad place. Hates the world. Hates herself. Is up against a lot, mostly from the inside. That’s really hard.
When it comes to you and Justin, or anything, I want you to be honest with me. Even if it hurts. Although I would prefer for it not to hurt.
Love,
A
I try to return to normal. I try not to imagine where A is, what that body looks like. Justin has work, so I’m on my own after school. I check my email again and find a cry for help.