“It’s called the front,” I tell her.
She doesn’t flinch. She keeps looking me in the eye. Searching for something she’s not going to find.
“We don’t have to go out,” she presses. “I can get some groceries and we can have dinner here. I’ll make you some Grumpy Food. Remember Grumpy Food?”
I don’t go looking for the memory. Or at least I don’t mean to. But somehow it pushes its way in, and I am seeing her much younger, making him dinner because their mom is working and their dad is angry. Mac and cheese, right from the box. String cheese peeled and placed on the top.
I try to shake off the memory. I don’t care. I don’t care about her, or him, or any of this.
I need to make her understand that.
I need to cut the tie. I’ve cut all the others.
“You’re pathetic,” I say to her. “Can you hear yourself? Grumpy Food? What kind of piece-of-shit baby says something like that?” I see my words are hitting. I hit some more. “You’re the last person I want to see and the first person I want to get away from.”
She’s genuinely shocked now. “Pat, don’t—”
“Don’t what? Tell the truth about what a sad, weak woman you’ve become? It’s like the worst of each of our parents, bundled up in one homely body. If I never see you again for the rest of my life, I will consider it a triumph.” She’s crying now. Good. “You’re nothing but deadweight to me, Wil. You are complete dead—”
I don’t get to finish the sentence, because before I can finish the sentence, there’s a shooting pain across my chest, then another. It is unlike anything I’ve felt before, and is so monumental it feels like it could be unlike anything anyone’s ever felt before. I grasp at my chest, gasp.
“Pat!” she screams. I spin a little, then lower myself into the chair where she’d been sitting.
“Pat! Are you okay?”
I can’t even joke that no, I am not okay. It’s the body—the body is doing this. The body is pushing back. That has to be what this is.
I fall in and out of consciousness. She’s called an ambulance. An ambulance is here. I understand what they are saying. They tell me to hold on. I am holding on. They have no idea how I am holding on, to this body that wants to destroy me, this body that wants me gone. I don’t know for sure this is it, that if the body dies, I die—but I’m not about to risk it. I do everything they tell me to do. I let them do whatever they have to do. His sister holds his hand. We get to the hospital. He is hooked to machines. I am fighting this. The monitor traces the heartbeats, and while I know they are his heartbeats, I pretend for a moment that they are mine, that I am in total control, that I can survive this. They say he needs a bypass. They say they need to put me under. Under what? I think. I try to keep my eyes open. My eyes close. I am losing I am lost I am nowhere but I am inside, I am inside, as the body is opened and the body is closed, I am inside, and nobody knows I am here, nobody will ever know I am here, and this doesn’t make me sad—it makes me angry. I am angry at him, angry at this body, angry that it pushed back, landed me here, like this. I am flickering and I am here. I sense movement. I sense I am being moved. When I open my eyes, they tell me to sleep. So I sleep. And then I wake up the next morning somewhere else, good as new.
A
Day 6106
So what do I do?
I try to live the life in my head and the life of my body at the same time, and feel like it’s an impossible balance.
I wake up in the body of Colton Sterling. He’s fallen asleep in his clothes, and the clothes feel like they’ve been on for a few days. Or at least the jeans have. His room is a haphazard wreck. He’s fallen asleep with a game on pause. The screen is asking me if I want to resume.
I access some of Colton’s life and realize quickly that it’s a solitary one. No real friends come to mind. Just a lot of games, and a lot of people he talks to during games, using his headset. Unreal real people. Voices that manifest in pixelated bodies as imaginary worlds are explored and imaginary enemies are pulverized.
He hasn’t charged his phone overnight, so it sits as a shell version of itself on the floor. I plug it in, wait for there to be enough charge to get an email to Rhiannon. It would be so much easier to text her or call her, but that would leave a trace, and I don’t want to leave any of the lives I take for a day with mysterious numbers on their phones.
I head to the bathroom and take off his clothes. There are bruises on the outsides of Colton’s legs that I can’t explain. There are half-picked scabs on his arms. I can’t wash them off in the shower, but I try to rid myself of the musty rind that covers his skin. I wonder if it’s something he’s grown used to, doesn’t care about. I wonder if tomorrow he’ll feel vulnerable without it. Exposed.
I want Rhiannon to see me now. I want her to take a good look at me and tell me whether she really thinks she can love me no matter who I am.
Which isn’t fair to Colton. I recognize this. And in recognizing this, I get back at least a little bit of the sympathy I used to feel for each body I was in. I remember to see him through my eyes, not anyone else’s.
When I get back to the room, I have to dig a little to get to the clean clothes. There isn’t much time before school.
I send Rhiannon a quick message.
R,
Good morning. Or afternoon, if you don’t check this until lunch. I’m a boy named Colton today. I think he spends a lot of time playing games online—want to meet up in an Elf Parlor later this afternoon? I’ll be the Orc with a rose in its teeth.
(If only it were that easy to meet in real life.)
A
There’s more to say. And I imagine if I skipped school to laze around all day, Colton wouldn’t mind. But my responsibility is to do right by him, not right by me or right by what he wants. So I head to school.
Once I’m there, I use Colton’s memory to navigate. I think I may have been in this school a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve already forgotten who I might have been that day. Whoever it was, they couldn’t have been as alone as Colton—that I’d remember. I wait for someone to come over to him, or even to say hi in passing—but there’s nothing. There isn’t even a glare of disdain, or a pity look-away. He is just a part of the general population, without any specific encounters.
Is he used to this? Does he mind it? Is it enough to go home and plug in to other places? Maybe.
I go to class. I open his notebooks and find that he’s continued his gaming there, drawing screens and scenarios and avatars, starting in the margins, then making his way across the pages. Sometimes there are speech bubbles—“Duck and cover!” “But where do I find a duck?!?”—and I wonder if these are the only conversations Colton has each day.
Even at lunch, his usual spot is the cafeteria equivalent of a quiet car on a train—everyone wears their own force field as they shovel down fries and sip Cokes. Few people look up. Most look at phones. I expect them to get in trouble for that, but the lunchroom supervisor leaves us all alone. I take out my phone and find a message from Rhiannon.
A,
I think an Orc with a rose in its teeth is called a d’Orc.
Meanwhile, my friends are mad at me, and I don’t know why. Or maybe I do. Rebecca made a comment at lunch, wondering if there was such a thing as a local equivalent of a long-distance relationship. At first I thought she was talking about you, and then I realized she couldn’t be talking about you, and was probably talking about me and Alexander. I haven’t really hung out with him since this started. I know I have to. I’m just not sure how I’ll act around him. And that scares me.
Now…time for English. More later. Good luck with Colton.
R
* * *
—
By gym class, I’m going a little crazy from not talking to anyone all day. When I get paired with a guy named Roy for badminton, I start
chatting him up as if we’re old friends. He’s polite, but clearly would rather focus on the game than on getting to know me.
I wonder if that’s what’s getting to me about Colton. The fact that he’s completely unknown, and doesn’t know anyone else in return.
I don’t linger around school once the last bell rings. I bolt for home, as I imagine Colton does at the end of each of his days there. I know as soon as I get back to his room, I should sit down and respond to Rhiannon. But it feels more important to establish some connection for Colton, so I load up World of Guilds and put on my headset. Immediately there are people greeting me by my screen name (ElfGunner17). A few of the voices have European accents. All conversation is concentrated on the mission at hand. So it’s not like it’s personal. But it’s enough to have people talking to me and listening to me. I start to feel better, even as I’m slicing up attackers and plundering treasure for my guild.
Hours pass, but I don’t recognize them as hours. The room grows dark, but I can’t really tell, because my eyes are trained on the daylight of the screen. It’s only when other people start to log off for dinner that I look at the clock and see it’s almost seven.
Colton’s dad is still at work and his mom isn’t in the picture. So I’m alone in raiding the refrigerator and fashioning a dinner out of the random things that are inside. As I gnaw on a buffalo wing, I email Rhiannon back, smearing buffalo sauce on the phone screen no matter how carefully I try to avoid it.
R,
I’m sorry your friends are having issues. And that you and Alexander are having issues. That was always my worry when I thought about writing you, that I would only complicate things. I don’t feel as if there’s any way to go back now…but I’m trusting you to tell me if you need this to stop. Because I’m never going to be your life there. And you need to have your life there.
There’s nothing to report here. I’m playing games, killing things that aren’t real.
A
I’m worried that I’ve already run out of things to say—that once we get off the topic of us, there aren’t any other interesting contributions for me to make. We are too young to be having how-was-your-day-honey? conversations. But what else is there to talk about, when we’re so far apart?
I go back to Colton’s room and consider cleaning it up. I only have a few hours, but I could really do some undamage here. The only problem is Colton seeing it when he wakes up. There’s no way he’d believe that he’d done it himself. He’d probably get into a screaming fight with his father about coming in while he was asleep and messing everything up. And his dad would, of course, not just deny it, but wonder about his son’s mental health for making the accusation.
So I leave it messy.
I do, however, gather some of the clothes strewn across the floor and do a load of laundry. Then I go back to Colton’s room and throw the clothes around again. Let him think they’re dirty.
I keep checking for a new email from Rhiannon, but nothing comes. When I get to bed, I feel a childish need to hear her voice before I fall asleep. I can barely play it in my ears anymore. I know I could just call her, could try to delete the record of the call from Colton’s phone. But she’s probably asleep already. And I feel that having already interrupted her life by popping up in different bodies out of nowhere, I should probably ask her permission before taking that voice-step closer.
I email her again.
R,
If you ever want to talk—like, actually talk—let me know and I’ll figure out a way to call.
Good night,
A
Luckily, I remember to clear the sent item from Colton’s history before I fall to sleep.
RHIANNON
If I try to avoid my friends, they know something is up. And if I see them, they know something is up. So basically, I’m caught.
After giving me all the love advice he had to offer, Preston’s largely laid off. And by laid off I mean he’s gone back to talking about himself a lot. But I can feel him studying my responses, trying to figure out what’s going on with me and Alexander.
As usual, Rebecca’s more direct.
“I’m worried about you,” she’ll say. Or, “When you get lost in thought like that, where is it you’re going?”
The only person who seems oblivious is Alexander. Or maybe that’s just the way he works—taking everything in stride, not really caring too deeply about anything enough to let it drag him down.
No. Unfair. I can’t lie to Alexander and then be mad at him for not knowing I’m lying. That’s not how it should work.
The thing that completely unnerves me happens when I’m walking to my locker and I see Justin and his new girlfriend, Sonata. I know they’re going out—nobody’s shown any hesitation in telling me this—but instead of trying to throw it in my face, Justin’s been careful to make sure I haven’t gotten anywhere near it. They’re hanging out by Sonata’s locker, and as soon as I round the corner and notice them, I expect him to sense me there, to pull back from her or maybe to look at me while he’s kissing her, to try to make me jealous. But instead I’m like a ghost hovering unseen. He says something and they both laugh at the joke. They look like they’re having a good time. And I wonder if that’s what I looked like when I was with him.
I walk past. I’m still expecting him to see me, but he doesn’t.
Even when I’m safe at my own locker, away from them, I’m wondering if they’re happy, and if it’s possible that Justin knows how to make things work when I so clearly don’t.
Between art and math, Alexander texts and asks me to come over for homework later. I’ve been putting him off so often that I know I have to do it. But the fact that it feels like an obligation makes it also feel ominous.
I’m starting to think Alexander and I need to have a talk, and as soon as I start thinking it, it grows inside me, like the conversation has its own soul and it’s crowding out everything else I could possibly be thinking about. I know Alexander is a good boyfriend, in the same way that Justin was a bad boyfriend and A isn’t a boyfriend at all. But just because he’s a good boyfriend, it doesn’t mean he has to be my boyfriend. Which is pretty obvious, but the two things (good boyfriend, my boyfriend) haven’t seemed separable until now, because I was living with them both at the same time.
After using being sick as an excuse, I’m feeling sick, thinking about what’s about to happen. Even if I’m in control of it, it’s feeling inevitable. I tell myself it doesn’t even have to do with A. It would have happened anyway. A just made me see it sooner.
I’m not sure I believe any of this.
The minute I see Alexander after school, I expect him to recognize the warning signs, to sense what’s coming. But instead he looks happy to see me, and kisses me hello like there will never be a goodbye.
His parents aren’t home, unsurprisingly. With Justin, this would have meant a quick lunge into sex. But with Alexander, it means a stop in the kitchen to get a snack, and then an afternoon that can be unfolded as it happens.
“Grape?” he says, offering me a bowl.
I take a stem, give him back the bowl.
“Look,” I say. “We need to talk.”
He pops a grape in his mouth. “Cool. Let’s talk.”
It doesn’t help that he’s so agreeable.
“I mean a real talk. The kind that hurts.”
He eats more grapes, then holds out the bowl to me again.
I shake my head. I haven’t even eaten the grapes I took.
“You can tell me anything,” he says.
“No,” I say. “That’s not true. You know that’s not true.”
“Rhiannon. What do you want to tell me?”
“This isn’t working.”
“What isn’t working?”
“This.” I gesture to the two of us.
He pops more g
rapes in his mouth. His calm is infuriating.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” I ask him. “Anything at all.”
“Here,” he responds. He takes the remaining grapes out of the bowl and hands it to me. “Take a look.”
I don’t understand until I look at the bottom of the bowl. There, painted in red, it says:
Rhiannon, I like you for more reasons than there are grapes in this bowl.
“Oh,” I say.
“It was supposed to be a surprise. So…surprise.”
I hold up the bowl.
“You made this?”
“Pottery class. Sundays.”
The decisive gesture would be to smash it on the floor. Then I’d release him. Then I’d never get him back.
I put it delicately on the kitchen counter.
“I don’t deserve it,” I tell him. “That’s what I’m trying to say. I don’t think it’s working, and that’s because my head is in one place and you’re in another. I know you don’t want to hear it—nobody does. But, Alexander—I need to stop being unfair to you.”
He comes over and puts his arms around me.
“You’re not being unfair to me,” he says. “Unfair to yourself, sometimes. But not unfair to me. I never wanted us to be one of those you-are-my-everything couples. I want us to be able to pull away when we want to pull away, and come back close when we want to come back close. I promise, there are going to be times when my head is elsewhere, too. I get that.”
“It’s not just that,” I argue. But then I can’t go any further—because what can I really tell him?
“You want to define things,” Alexander says. “We all do, to some extent. We want to know where we stand, where we’re going—as if feelings can be reduced to geography. We become obsessed with one another’s coordinates. But I don’t want to be like that, Rhiannon. And I don’t think you want to be like that, either. I don’t want a relationship to be a restriction of freedom—I want a relationship to be an enhancement of freedom. Which I know is a lot to lay down right now. I understand we don’t come close to knowing each other all the way yet. I know it’s early days. And I also know I’m your first relationship after everything went down with Justin—I know I’m in the shadow of that, in some way. But I’m serious when I say there are dozens of reasons I like you. I enjoy my life more when you’re in the room—and that’s as good a reason as any to be dating. Right?”
Someday Page 15
