Where I End and You Begin

by Preston Norton

  “It’s me, Imogen.”

  Oh god. Oh Christ. Oh literal Jesus of Nazareth.

  I wiped away at my face, sniffed back the sadness, and took several strangled breaths.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “Can I come in?” said Imogen.

  “I’m fine, really.”

  “Oh, I know. I just need to use the bathroom.”

  It was the most perfect, ill-timed joke. I burst out laughing, and then my laughter turned into sobbing all over again.

  “I want to talk to the real Wynonna,” said Imogen. “Not the fake Cesario version.”

  “I’m not the real Wynonna,” I said. “I’ve been lying to you this whole time.”

  “Okay. Well, can I talk to whoever is in this stall?”

  Who was I to object to that? I leaned forward and unlocked the stall. Imogen entered, then locked the stall behind her.

  “I’d offer you a seat, but…” I gestured elaborately at the lack of additional toilet seats in the stall.

  “Is this seat taken?” She pointed at my lap.

  I cracked a smile that indicated it was not.

  Imogen sat in my lap. For someone as skinny as she was, she was surprisingly heavy. I guess all that extra length and height had to go somewhere.

  “I saw you kissing Holden,” she said.

  Of course she did. She and Wynezra were sitting in the very back—very top—of the theater. I was sure they saw everything.

  “Was it not what you were expecting?” said Imogen.

  “It’s not that,” I said. And then I thought of Holden reaching up my leg, and I felt sick. “Not just that. It’s…”

  God, how to word this?

  “I don’t feel like myself is all,” I said.

  “Oh, right,” said Imogen. “Because you’re not the real Wynonna.”

  I chuckled. “Exactly.”

  “So, who are you?”

  “I guess I’m the fake Cesario version.”

  “Hmm. That sounds like a pickle.”

  “Yes! It’s a fucking pickle is what it is. Thank you!”

  “You know,” said Imogen, “Olivia isn’t in love with Viola.”

  Wait, what?

  “She’s in love with Cesario,” said Imogen. “That love was never fake to her.”

  I looked at Imogen. Only now, Imogen’s face was close—dangerously close—and her breath was shallow, and her eyes were large and intense and filled with so much compassion that I didn’t deserve.

  It was like someone lit a fuse, except that fuse separated in two, and reached both Imogen and me at the same time, igniting us like carefully timed fireworks.

  We kissed.

  Our lips met like waves crashing on a rocky shore—jagged, and rough, and alive. My hands were in her hair, ruining the freshly straightened curtains, and hers were on my face, cradling it like something precious. Imogen raised a leg, tucked it in, and slid it past me with impossible, balletic grace, until she was straddling me. She bit my lip. My frustratingly long fingernails scraped down the length of her back. Her hands ran down my neck, my bare shoulders, sliding down the curves of my chest. And then she grabbed my breasts, firmly, and squeezed them like she meant it.

  Oh. My. God.

  Something surged inside of me—an ecstasy I had never known. I lost all scope of the situation—who I was and what I was doing. My eyes became level with the rapidly forming hickey that Wynezra had left on Imogen’s neck. My mouth latched onto it like a bull’s-eye.

  “Ohhhhhhhhh,” said Imogen, and her eyes rolled into the back of her skull. And then she laughed. “Oh my god. Did you tell Ezra that was my spot?”

  Huh?

  “What am I saying?” said Imogen. “Of course you did. You’re the only person who knows my body like that. Thanks a lot, traitor.”

  My mouth let go—growing slack with realization.

  Imogen wrapped her arms around me, squeezing me like she never intended to let me go. The sexual intensity defused, and there was nothing left but the deepest, purest, most heartbreaking affection.

  “I feel like I’ve been holding my breath,” said Imogen. Her voice was like an open wound. “Ever since last summer. And now…now I can finally breathe.”

  I felt the truth slip around my neck like a noose, pulling tighter with each passing second. Wynonna lied to me. Or, at least, she smudged the truth significantly.

  Imogen was in love with someone, but it wasn’t a boy.

  Imogen was in love with Wynonna.

  and all sound had been absorbed in the blast. The only thing left was this ringing sensation that was everywhere and nowhere all at once. Imogen’s mouth was moving, but there were no words.

  “What’s wrong?” said Imogen. Her voice punctured a hole in the silence—muffled, but coming rapidly into focus. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “I’ve made a terrible mistake,” I said.

  Imogen took this like a slap to the face. She stood up from my lap. Backed against the wall of the bathroom stall. Shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “Don’t do this to me again.”

  “It’s not what you think,” I said.

  “Well, what is it?”

  Her lip was quivering. I wanted to tell her that this was as hard for me as it was for her, but I wasn’t even sure that was true. It was heartbreaking to me. The chances of my one and only crush over the past seven years ever liking me—me, Ezra Slevin—had just dropped astronomically. But Imogen—who’d apparently already received this rejection once before—looked like I had removed her heart Temple of Doom–style and was lowering her slowly into a ceremonial fire pit, sacrificing her to a twisted Spielbergian interpretation of the goddess Kali.

  “I’m not who you think I am,” I said.

  “Stop saying that!” said Imogen. “Cut the metaphorical bullcrap. You’re not Viola or Cesario, okay? You’re Wynonna freaking Jones! And I know I’m not insane when I say that I know you have feelings for me. I can feel it. I’ve been feeling it all week! I thought I was crazy—that I was just seeing what I wanted to see—but this is real. Look me in the eyes and tell me this isn’t real. Tell me you don’t have those sorts of feelings for me.”

  “That’s not the problem.”

  “No, the problem is you refuse to accept that you have feelings for me.”

  “That’s not the problem either.”

  I was crying now. God, why could I not stop crying? I had this aching, strangled feeling, like my body had been filled with cement, and it had all settled and hardened in my lower abdomen, putting pressure on everything, and this was all too difficult, too much, and for the life of me, I could NOT. STOP. CRYING.

  “Then what’s the problem?” Imogen demanded.

  I couldn’t do this. I jumped off the toilet, fumbled with the lock, and rushed out of the bathroom.

  Wynezra and Holden were standing just outside. They appeared to be having a heated discussion of their own.

  “No, your advice was bullshit,” said Holden. “I did exactly what you said, and she freaked—”

  “You did not do what I said, I was watching,” said Wynezra. “She was not into—”

  “She said it was great! She said thank you!”

  “Who the fuck says ‘thank you’ after you kiss them? She was being polite, and that was exactly what I told you to look out for—”

  “Wynonna, wait!” said Imogen.

  Wynezra and Holden had been completely oblivious to my presence until Imogen barged through the bathroom door. I turned around, ready for a continuation of the fight I had not signed up for, when she grabbed my face and kissed me.

  It was so hard for me to not kiss her back. Everything about it felt so right. The only thing wrong was that it wasn’t meant for me—a detail so pervasive, it tainted the whole thing.

  When she pulled her lips away, she was crying, too.

  Holden’s jaw dropped.

  Wynezra lost the color in her—my—face.

  “I
’m done hiding,” she said. “I’m done pretending I’m not who I am. I love you, Wynonna. And if you can’t accept that—”

  “I’m not Wynonna,” I said.

  “Stop saying—”

  “I’m Ezra!”

  That halted the conversation like an emergency brake. There was only the sound of my heart pumping blood into my head, thrumming in my ears.

  “What?” said Imogen. She shot a ridiculing glance at Wynezra. “Then who’s—”

  “That’s Wynonna,” I said. “We’ve been body-swapping ever since the eclipse. That’s why we’ve been acting weird. We didn’t have sex. That was a lie.”

  Imogen shook her head. “If you think this is funny—”

  “It’s true,” said Wynezra.

  Imogen stared at Wynezra, then glanced incredulously between the two of us. Fury was wafting over her like steam. “You two have sex one time, and suddenly you’re a couple of coconspirators? You’ve got each other’s back over a joke this…this…stupid?”

  “If you’re Ezra,” said Holden, looking directly—scathingly—at me, “then why did you go on a date with me?”

  “Because Wynonna likes you,” I said. “And I like Imogen. And we decided to help each other get dates with the two of you to prom.”

  I turned to Wynezra, who shrank under my glare.

  “Now I realize we were only helping ourselves,” I said.

  “This is stupid,” said Imogen. “This is so dumb. If you expect me to believe this Freaky Friday bull—”

  “How do you think I knew how to kiss you?” said Wynezra. “No one could have told me how to do that.”

  Imogen bit her lip.

  “There’s only one way you two are going to know who we are,” I said. I marched over to Holden. “Ask me anything. Something only I would know.”

  “Yeah!” Wynezra’s eyes ignited with excitement. She turned to Imogen. “There’s a shit-ton of stuff that only I would know. C’mon, hit me with anything. Something that I would never tell Ezra.”

  Imogen’s face was turning red. Her face slowly crumpled—a synthesis of emotions, all of them bad.

  “That’s the thing,” said Imogen. “I don’t think there’s anything you two wouldn’t tell each other.”

  She looked at Holden. “Are you ready to go, Holden? I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  Holden nodded silently. His gaze was lodged firmly in the fabric of space, refusing to make eye contact with either of us.

  “Wait, what about us?” said Wynezra.

  “Call your parents,” said Imogen. “Get an Uber. I really don’t care what you two do. As long as it doesn’t involve me.”

  With that, Imogen and Holden left us at the AMC 8. They abandoned us with purpose. I had never seen a pair of people want to get away from another pair of people so fast.

  There was no way this could possibly get worse. My best friend hated me, the girl I was in love with hated me, and I felt sick, and bloated, and the pressure in my lower abdomen was becoming unbearable, and my vagina felt itchy and sticky and—

  “Oh my god,” said Wynezra.

  I looked at Wynezra, then realized that she was staring at my crotch. I glanced down.

  A trickle of blood was seeping out of the bottom of my dress, all the way down my leg.

  I couldn’t help it. I started crying again.

  • •

  While I was an inconsolable mess, Wynezra told me to go to the women’s bathroom and lock myself in a stall until otherwise instructed. I did as I was told. Now that I knew I was having a period, the contents of my lower abdomen felt like they had been liquefied with an electric mixer. I pulled my underwear down, sat on the toilet, and felt my insides spill outside. I glanced down with a sort of terror usually reserved for the scared little kid who watches a horror film through their fingers.

  Blood.

  Ribbons of blood unspooled in the water into thick, soupy clouds, like something out of Jaws.

  Was this really what a period was supposed to feel like? Because this seemed worse. This seemed apocalyptic in nature. A biblical End of Times situation, like the Book of Revelation was fulfilling prophecy, except inside my vagina. And that was to say nothing of the nausea, or the crushing headache, or my boobs hurting, or the feeling that someone was stabbing me in the stomach with a fork and twisting up my insides like a spool of spaghetti. This period was special. This period must have known I was a guy, and I was intruding on the Sacred Rite of Menstruation, and it had resolved to kill me with its own secret ways.

  I heard the bathroom door open, and then Wynezra’s voice. “Ezra?”

  I sobbed in response.

  Wynezra knocked on the stall door, and I unlocked it. She entered holding this orange-wrapped thing that looked like candy at first, but then I remembered the context of the situation, and I immediately wanted to die.

  “It’s a tampon,” said Wynezra.

  “Where the hell did you find a tampon?” I said. “Concessions?”

  “The girl at concessions. I told her we had an unprecedented emergency, and she has to clean up the bathroom, so…” Wynezra shook the tampon like a maraca. “One of us needs to stick this puppy in the doghouse. Since you’re the one bleeding, I’ll let you make that decision.”

  I evaluated my hands and the added length of my French-manicured fingernails. I would have started crying again, but my tear ducts had been milked dry, so mostly, I just made the ugliest face imaginable.

  “Right,” said Wynezra. “I’ll do it.”

  It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I was expecting pain, and horrible invasiveness, and maybe something vaguely pagan and ritualistic. But I hardly felt a thing. When Wynezra told me it was over and to pull my panties up, I glanced down and there was nothing but a string dangling down there. I was basically a human party popper, but that was the weirdest part of it, and it was purely aesthetic.

  “I was expecting to feel more,” I admitted.

  “It might be your first rodeo,” said Wynezra, “but it’s not this vagina’s.”

  After that ordeal, we argued over which of our parents/guardians was the worst option to call for a ride.

  “You can call Carol if you want,” said Wynezra. “I’m just saying, she’ll make our lives a living hell every second of the drive.”

  “But she’ll pick up?” I said.

  “Reluctantly.”

  “Okay. Well. I don’t think my parents will pick up.”

  So, we created an order to our call list that ranked the pleasantness of the pickup over the likelihood that they would actually pick up the phone. I had Wynezra call Dad. No answer. I had her call Mom. Again, no answer.

  “Are they really that busy?” said Wynezra. “I mean, the hospital knows they have kids, right?”

  “They might not be—strictly speaking—busy with work,” I said.

  “Oh?” she said. And then her eyes widened. “Oh! You think they’re doing it with other people?”

  “I know they’re doing it with other people.”

  I went on to explain—in NC-17–rated detail—how I knew that.

  “Damn,” said Wynezra. “Derek’s dick sounds like a national treasure.”

  “Can we please not talk about Derek’s dick?”

  “Hey, you were the one going into graphic detail. I’m just expressing my admiration. But, um, that sucks about your parents. Do you think they know about…you know…each other?”

  “I don’t know how they couldn’t know. They work at the same hospital.”

  “Damn,” Wynezra said again. “Your parents need to sell the TV rights of their lives. This would make for a highly watchable hospital drama. And hey, you and Willow could be the side story that rakes in the younger audience demographic!”

  “I’m going to call Carol now,” I said.

  I called Carol.

  “Let me guess” was the first thing Carol said when she picked up. “You got arrested for a DUI, and I’m your phone call.”
r />   “What? No! I’m at a movie.”

  “Fascinating. Is it starring Dame Judi Dench?”

  “Uh, no?”

  “Then you felt so terribly impressed to call me because…”

  “I was on a double date, and our ride left without us.”

  “Us? Who’s us? Is us a boy?”

  “Us is a boy, yes.”

  “And I suppose this boy needs a ride home?”

  “Yes, Carol,” said Wynezra, who was standing close enough to overhear the conversation. “In an ideal world, that would be how this plays out.”

  “If that’s not too much trouble,” I said.

  “You tell me if it’ll be trouble. Are you two going to be all over each other in the back seat? Will I have to pry your young, sexually charged bodies apart with a crowbar?”

  “Christ, no,” I said. “He’s not even my date.”

  “What?”

  I sighed. “Our dates left together.”

  “Your date left with another girl? Or boy? Sorry, I guess I don’t know what the dynamic is here. Probably not important.”

  It was more important than she knew, but definitely not in the way she was thinking.

  “It’s not what it sounds like,” I said. “It’s…complicated.”

  “I’ll say,” said Carol. “Text me the address. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you, Carol,” I said.

  There was a long pause on the other end. Finally, “You’re welcome, Wynonna.”

  I was about to hang up, but Carol’s voice chimed back in, slightly louder—in a naked, vulnerable sort of way.

  “Wynonna?”

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “You can call me Grandma,” she said. Then, rather hastily, “If you want, that is. What I’m saying is, I’m not opposed to the title.”

  Wynezra overheard that, too. Her eyes were bugging out of her skull.

  I nodded reflexively. “Okay. Yeah. Thanks…Grandma.”

  There was another prolonged pause. Finally, she hung up.

  “Dude,” said Wynezra. “Did you just call Carol Grandma?”

  “She is your grandma,” I said. “Isn’t she?”

  “Biologically speaking. But she’s also a bitch. And I like to think that the latter title is the one that resonates loudest with her whole thing.”