Where I End and You Begin

by Preston Norton

  Roscoe cleared his throat awkwardly, like he’d never done it before.

  “I’m sure you remember me talking about that job offer,” he continued, filling the silence. “Well, it’s a standing offer. And I want to take it. I want us to take it. I’ve already talked to Carol, and she said that she consents…as long as that’s what you want. The plan would be to leave as soon as your junior year ends. That’s about how long it’ll take to get your passport anyway. My friend Leif is already making accommodations for our arrival. Just temporary stuff until we get on our feet. But…this is it. This is my life plan. Because let’s be honest: I don’t have a future here. But there…there, I have one! But I need you there with me. I can’t do it without you. I can’t leave here without you.”

  My gaze just sort of drifted through Roscoe. I had lost the ability to focus.

  “So?” he said, nervously. “What do you think?”

  Remember what I said about wading neck-deep into Wynonna’s personal life? Well, I had suddenly—inexplicably—found myself at the bottom of the lake, and I was wearing cement shoes, and I had put those fuckers on myself. This was my fault.

  What happened next was pure, primal panic.

  “I can’t go to Switzerland with you,” I blurted out, “but not for the reason you think, just hear me out.”

  Roscoe looked like I had just punched him in the gut but then told him I had a good reason for it. He didn’t respond. He just looked hurt.

  “I’m not Wynonna,” I said.

  If that was supposed to give Roscoe something to work with, it was a breathtaking failure. He kept not responding. His silence stole the air out of the room.

  I took a deep breath. It was probably best to rip this Band-Aid off. Peeling slowly would only make it hurt more.

  “My name is Ezra,” I said. “Wynonna and I have been swapping bodies ever since the total solar eclipse last month. It’s the Freaky Friday Theory—the one I keep talking about. Only it’s happening for real. In fact, we haven’t swapped back for the past month. We’ve just been stranded in each other’s body. Every time you think you’ve been meeting with Wynonna, you’ve actually been meeting with me—Ezra.”

  “Why are you doing this?” said Roscoe. His voice was frail. Breaking. Maybe already broken.

  “Because it’s the truth,” I said. “The absolutely insane truth. Look, I know it’s weird, but I care about Wynonna. I want what’s best for her. She’s been hurting for so long, and I want to help her, and I think the only way to help her is through you. Remember when I told you about there being two people inside me? THIS IS WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT. There’s Wynonna and then there’s me! Ezra Slevin!”

  Roscoe’s hurt and confusion were morphing rapidly into resentment. Maybe even anger.

  “Remember that boy in the car with me? When you were following us, and he got out, and yelled at you? That was Wynonna. That was her inside my body. And yes, she still hates you, but you’ve got to believe me when I say this: All I ever wanted was to help. I just wanted her to have a family again, Roscoe. That’s all.”

  That was all.

  The Band-Aid was off. The wound was exposed. I had nothing left to say.

  All I could do was wait, and hope, and listen. “Slevin?” he said. “Ezra Slevin?”

  “Uh.” I was caught off guard. “Yeah?”

  His eyes became distant. A pair of orbs drifting off into outer space.

  “That little boy,” he said. “You’re pretending to be that little boy.”

  “Little boy?” I was only slightly offended. “What are you talking about? What little boy?”

  But Roscoe didn’t answer. Instead, he started shaking his head. His eyes became glassy, his face shattered.

  “This is cruel,” he said. “I don’t think you even realize how cruel you’re being.”

  “What little boy?” I repeated.

  Roscoe stood up from the table. Veered into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, rummaged through the contents.

  Closed it with a six-pack of Michelob AmberBock in hand.

  Well, five-pack technically. It was one bottle short, thanks to marinating the Berner platte. And then he just stood there—probably for the longest couple seconds of either of our lives.

  When he eventually moved, it was with finality. Straight line to the trash can, stepped on the pedal that pops the lid, and dropped the beer in.

  He veered for the front door.

  “Whoa, where are you going?” I said.

  “I’M GOING FOR A WALK,” said Roscoe loudly.

  As he stormed out the front door, I caught the faintest glint of it—just before the door slammed behind him.

  Tears.

  just digging a hole so deep, I couldn’t get out. I had dug a hole so deep, I had successfully tunneled through the center of the planet and popped out the other side—only to wind up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, crushed under roughly four hundred atmospheres of raw barometric pressure (5,878 pound-force per square inch). Metaphorically speaking.

  There was no tunneling my way out of this one.

  I needed to tell Wynonna the truth.

  I spent most of lunch prodding my food with a fork. I wasn’t even sure what it was. This was partly because I had the focus of a gnat who had discovered the human curse of self-awareness, and partly because it really was an indecipherable mass of slop. I think it was a casserole.

  “Why so glum?” said Wynezra.

  “Huh?” I said, snapping out of myself. “I’m not glum.”

  I forced a fake smile as proof. Mostly, it just looked like I was showing her all of my teeth, even the molars, which was probably frightening.

  “You are not a good liar,” said Wynezra. “Pro tip: Don’t be a lawyer when you grow up. Literally, be anything but a lawyer. Or a professional poker player.”

  Now I just felt sick to my stomach. I crumpled in on myself, just to make the pain go away.

  It wasn’t working.

  “Man, what happened?” said Wynezra. “Yesterday, you couldn’t shut up about that sleepover. Now I actually miss you talking! Have I ever missed you talking? God, I must be having a crisis.”

  “I’ve secretly been meeting with your dad, and now he wants you to move with him to Switzerland,” I sort of blurted out. And then my eyes went wide, and I slapped my hand over my mouth. Crap.

  Wynezra had casually been shoveling Mystery Casserole X into her face. She halted mid-shovel, inches from her mouth.

  Her hand—with the fork, with the casserole slop in its tines—wavered midair, like a reed in the wetlands.

  “Sorry,” I offered as an afterthought.

  Wynezra’s fork fell out of her limp fingers. Metal clanged, and slop splattered in a swift, chunky line across the table, like entrails.

  Then she shot up from her seat. Her balled-up fists slammed down hard and fast and furious.

  “What the fuck are you telling me, Ezra?” said Wynezra.

  “Sorry,” I said again. I probably couldn’t say that enough, but it couldn’t hurt to emphasize. “I was just trying to help.”

  “Help? How the fuck is this helping?”

  “I was just trying to…to fix…”

  “Fix?”

  “…fix your relationship with…”

  “My relationship?”

  “I mean, he’s your dad!” I exclaimed, sort of helplessly.

  “Who the hell do you think you are? There’s nothing to fix. There is no relationship. That’s the man who murdered my mom. He almost murdered me! And you think there’s a relationship to fix there?”

  “Oh, c’mon, he didn’t murder—”

  “RECKLESS. HOMICIDE,” Wynezra screamed. “That’s what he was charged with. According to the law, THAT IS MURDER.”

  I bit my lip. I really wasn’t in a position to defend myself.

  “How fucking dare you?” said Wynezra. She was shaking her head and pinching her mouth into something small and ugly. I mean, it was my head and my mouth
, but it was her pain, and she owned it like it was her only possession. “You don’t get to make my decisions. You don’t get to fix anything. Stay the fuck out of my life.”

  Wynezra stormed off. Thunderous. Pluming with rage.

  “Wynonna, wait—”

  I tried to grab her shoulder.

  She reacted like a spasm. Swung at my arm like a baseball batter, knocking my hand out of the park. Then both of her palms shoved me square in the chest.

  For the briefest moment, I was airborne. No part of me was touching the ground. I was a leaf in the wind.

  Then I was flat on my back. Stunned. Disoriented. Staring at the speckled ceiling like a galaxy. Leaf in the wind, my ass.

  At first, I felt nothing.

  Then I felt fire—in my chest, in my arm, in my spine, the back of my skull, everywhere.

  It took me a second to relearn how to breathe. When I did, I blinked, craning my neck in manageable directions. There were heads and eyes everywhere, and they were all looking at me.

  Well, half of them were looking at me. The other half were looking at Ezra Slevin, who, in turn, was glancing between her powerful hands and me—the girl she had knocked over like I was made of cards.

  She looked horrified.

  She looked devastated.

  She rushed off as quickly as she could—disappeared from my rather limited field of vision—while I tried to not-die.

  Honestly, not-dying was the least of my concerns.

  • •

  I looked everywhere for Wynezra.

  But she was nowhere.

  • •

  By fifth period, I hated myself.

  By sixth period, I was thinking suicidal thoughts. Nothing concrete or calculated or planned. It was chaotic. Desperate. A relentless thought spiral that went something like this:

  I hate myself, I want to die.

  I hate myself, I want to die.

  I hate myself, I want to die.

  I knew I wouldn’t actually harm myself. But if I did happen to just…cease to exist…it would have felt like a mercy.

  By seventh period, my life was a building on fire, and I needed to escape it, or I was going to die. I could barely even breathe.

  I skipped seventh period.

  I found a dark, unused classroom. I wasn’t even sure whose classroom it was, or why it was empty, or where I even was. I only knew that I needed it.

  I closed the door, immersing myself in pitch-blackness.

  With the light of my phone, I pulled out a pair of Wynonna’s headphones. They weren’t noise-canceling, but they would have to do.

  I plugged them into Wynonna’s phone, pulled up Sufjan Stevens’s “Chicago,” and pressed play.

  I lay flat on my back as bells chimed, strings swooned, and a menagerie of instruments thundered hopefully.

  I was disintegrating. Dissolving.

  Floating through the ceiling, through the roof, through the atmosphere, into outer space.

  My atoms interwove with the universe. I was the universe.

  The universe accepted me.

  I felt myself breathe. My chest moving, my lungs graciously accepting and releasing air, oxygen feeding into my bloodstream.

  I could breathe.

  • •

  By the end of seventh period, I slithered out of the dark, unused classroom. I timed it with the bell so I could exit stealthily into the stream of students flooding out into the hallway.

  It was already a bad day. It seemed like the sort of day where anything could happen. And by “anything,” I’m only referring to bad anythings—like contracting leprosy, or hitting all red lights on the drive home, or giving birth to the Antichrist. (I mean, I had the anatomy.) So, it was a bit surprising—as I collected my things from my locker, and I was on my way out the main entrance—that I was cornered by Holden.

  Given the circumstances, I sort of reacted like I was being mugged.

  “I have a birthmark,” said Holden. “Where is it?”

  “Aauhhhhhhgh!” I said.

  Holden froze. “Wait, which Wynonna is this? Wynonna-Wynonna or Ezra-Wynonna? Are you currently switched?”

  I had my hand over my heart and felt it slowly recede into a rhythm that wasn’t on the verge of acute myocardial infarction.

  “Ezra-Wynonna?” I said, like I wasn’t sure, myself. “Wait, you believe me?”

  Holden took a deep, meditative breath.

  “I don’t know what happened at lunch,” he said, “but my best friend would never have attacked Wynonna like that. Plus, everything he was yelling sounded off. Plus, you said ‘sister’ when you freaked out at theater. Plus”—Holden had to take an even deeper breath for this next part—practically cosmic in scope—like he was inhaling the energy of the universe—“Willow believes you.”

  “Willow?” I said.

  “Yeah. We got to talking late last night, and—”

  “You got to talking late last night?”

  “Yeah?”

  “And where exactly did this conversation take place?”

  “The dark web.”

  “WHAT?”

  “Oh my god, this!” said Holden, gesturing at me like a flashing billboard. “This is what I am talking about. This is so Ezra, it’s not even funny! Either this is the most elaborately staged hoax since the Voynich Manuscript, or…”

  He fizzled out with a perplexed shrug.

  “You believe me!” I kind of shrieked.

  “I have a birthmark,” Holden repeated, not entirely convinced. “Where is it?”

  “It’s on the underside of your penis, and it’s shaped like Idaho. You showed me it once when we were thirteen because you thought it might be cancerous.”

  “Who’s my celebrity crush?”

  “Amanda Bynes, duh.”

  “I’ve told one major lie in my life that haunts me to this day—”

  “You lied at the DMV when you got your driver’s license. You told them you were five feet when you’re actually four foot eleven and a half.”

  Holden’s eyes widened to the size of hard-boiled eggs. “Oh my god, it’s you.”

  “It’s me!”

  “You’re a girl!”

  “I’m a girl!”

  “I’d hug you,” said Holden, “but…” He glanced trepidatiously at my tits.

  I hugged him anyway. I squeezed him like I was stranded in the middle of the ocean, and he was the only thing for miles that floated.

  And then I felt something nudge my thigh.

  Something that was level with Holden’s pelvis.

  Holden and I yelped and broke apart simultaneously.

  “I told you!” said Holden. “I told you. I’m the same height as your tits. You can’t hug me if I’m the same height as your tits. Not to mention you’re Wynonna, and I like Wynonna, and…Oh my god.”

  “What?” I said, while simultaneously trying to incinerate the memory of Holden’s nudging penis etched in my mental archives of traumatizing experiences.

  “I didn’t start liking Wynonna until the week after the eclipse—while you were Wynonna.”

  Oh.

  “So which Wynonna do I like? Wynonna-Wynonna or You-Wynonna?”

  I sighed. “Look, it was a fucked-up thing Wynonna and I were doing. I was helping her get you to like her, and she was helping me get Imogen to like me. It was manipulative and wrong.”

  “So Wynonna likes me?”

  I thought about my conversation with Wynezra the other day. How she thought we were turning into each other. I mean, maybe she was right to a degree, but…

  But I was definitely not into Holden’s inadvertent penis nudge. Maybe Wynonna wouldn’t have been into it either. But I knew I wasn’t.

  “It’s complicated,” I said. “We’ve been stuck in each other’s body for a whole month now. No swapping. We’ve actually been stuck ever since the double date.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “And I think being in each other’s body for so long is affecting…what we l
ike.”

  Holden stared at me for a devastating moment. “What do you mean?”

  I related to Holden my entire conversation with Wynonna—the Almond Joy, the pork rinds, the uncertainty over her feelings for Holden, and her literal boner for Imogen.

  “No!” said Holden softly, in faraway, detached horror. “You like pork rinds?”

  I laughed.

  “Just kidding,” he said. “I don’t care about the pork rinds. I’m just really sad that Wynonna doesn’t like me anymore.”

  “She didn’t say she doesn’t like you. She’s just…uncertain.”

  “But all this time, I’ve been eating lunch with Wynonna?”

  I nodded solemnly.

  Holden’s eyes inflated, suddenly engorged with horror. “Oh no.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been picking my nose in front of her.”

  I felt the laughter in my gut, and it exploded out of me, releasing Wynonna’s trademark snort. I snorted.

  “Shit! And I keep forgetting to wear deodorant!”

  I rolled my eyes, finally suppressing the laughter. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a little slow on the puberty bus. I don’t think your sweat glands have evolved yet. I wouldn’t worry—”

  “Oh no,” said Holden. His pupils shrank, and something seemed to die inside of him. “I farted in front of her.”

  Okay. I could see how this had become a matter of National Holden Security.

  Holden grabbed me by the shoulders. “I didn’t just fart in front of her! I farted and then grabbed the fart and threw it in her face!”

  “Dude,” I said. “Seriously?”

  “I thought it was you! And I was still mad about the double date! I thought you deserved a good fart to the face.”

  “That is disgusting! And slightly horrifying.”

  “I know! What if Wynonna doesn’t like me anymore—not because she’s in your body—but because I was throwing farts in her face?”

  I opened my mouth. Closed it.

  He was right. What if that was all that it was? Maybe it didn’t help Holden’s chances with Wynonna, but then again, he did deserve to know who he was dealing with. You don’t make your crush fall in love with you by being yourself. You do it by pretending to be someone a hundred times cooler than yourself and hide the true you, who is a total fucking disaster, behind a curtain of enticing white lies.