is why I prefer to be an only child.
I have a sense that Leslie would let it go. So I should let it go. That’s the law I’ve set down for myself – don’t disrupt the life you’re living in. Leave it as close to the same as you can.
But I’m pissed. So I diverge a little from the law. I think, perversely, that Rhiannon would want me to. Even though she has no idea who Owen or Leslie are. Or who I am.
“Look,” I say, “you lying little pothead bitch. You are going to be nice to me, okay? Not only because I am covering your butt, but because I am the one person in the world right now who is being decent to you. Is that understood?”
Shocked, and maybe a little contrite, Owen mumbles his assent.
“Good,” I say, knocking a few things off his shelves. “Now happy cleaning.”
Nobody talks at dinner.
I don’t think this is unusual.
I wait until everyone is asleep before I go on the computer. I retrieve Justin’s email and password from my own email, then log in as him.
There’s an email from Rhiannon, sent at 10:11p.m.
J –
i just don’t understand. was it something I did? yesterday was so perfect, and today you are mad at me again. if it’s something I did, please tell me, and I’ll fix it. I want us to be together. I want all our days to end on a nice note. not like tonight.
with all my heart,
r
I reel back in my seat. I want to hit reply, I want to reassure her that it will be better – but I can’t. You’re not him anymore, I have to remind myself. You’re not there.
And then I think: What have I done?
I hear Owen moving around in his room. Hiding evidence? Or is fear keeping him awake?
I wonder if he’ll be able to pull it off tomorrow.
There’s no way for me to know.
I want to get back to her. I want to get back to yesterday.
All I get is tomorrow.
As I fell asleep, I had a glint of an idea. But I as I wake up, I realize the glint has no light left in it.
Today I’m a boy. Skylar Smith. Soccer player, but not a star soccer player. Clean room, but not compulsively so. Video-game console in his room. Ready to wake up. Parents asleep.
He lives in a town that’s about a four hour drive from where Rhiannon lives.
This is nowhere near close enough.
It’s an uneventful day, as most are. The only suspense comes from whether I can access things fast enough.
Soccer practice is the hardest part. The coach keeps calling out names, and I have to access like crazy to figure out who everyone is. It’s not Skylar’s best day at practice, but he doesn’t embarrass himself.
I know how to play most sports, but I’ve also learned my limits. I found this out the hard way when I was eleven. I woke up in the body of some kid who was in the middle of a ski trip. I thought that, hey, skiing had always looked fun. So I figured I’d try. Learn it as I went. How hard could it be?
The kid had already graduated from the bunny slopes, and I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a bunny slope. I thought skiing was like sledding – one hill fits all.
I broke the kid’s leg in three places.
The pain was pretty bad. And I honestly wondered if, when I woke up the next morning, I would still feel the pain of the broken leg, even though I was in a new body. But instead of the pain, I felt something just as bad – the fierce, living weight of terrifying guilt. Just as if I’d rammed him with a car, I was consumed by the knowledge that a stranger was lying in a hospital bed because of me.
And if he’d died . . . I wondered if I would have died too. There is no way for me to know. All I know is that, in a way, it doesn’t matter. Whether I die or just wake up the next morning as if nothing happened, the fact of the death will destroy me.
So I’m careful. Soccer, baseball, field hockey, football, softball, basketball, swimming, track – all of those are fine. But I’ve also woken up in the body of an ice hockey player, a gymnast, a horse jumper, and once, recently, a volunteer firefighter.
I’ve sat all those out.
If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s video games. It’s a universal presence, like TV or the internet. No matter where I am, I usually have access to these things, and video games especially help me calm my mind.
After soccer practice, Skylar’s friends come over to play World of Warcraft . We talk about school and talk about girls (except for his friends Chris and David, who talk about boys.) This, I’ve discovered, is the best way to waste time, because it isn’t really wasted – surrounded by friends, talking crap and sometimes talking for real, with snacks around and something on a screen.
I might even be enjoying myself, if I could only unmoor myself from the place I want to be.
It’s almost eerie how well the next day works out.
I wake up early – six in the morning.
I wake up as a girl.
A girl with a car. And a licence.
In a town only an hour away from Rhiannon’s.
I apologize to Amy Tran as I drive away from her house, a half hour after waking up. What I’m doing is, no doubt, a strange form of kidnapping.
I strongly suspect that Amy Tran wouldn’t mind. Getting dressed this morning, the options were black, black, or . . . black. Not in a Goth sense – none of the black came in the form of lace gloves – but more in a rock ’n’ roll sense. The mix in her car stereo puts Janis Joplin and Brian Eno side by side, and somehow it works.
I can’t rely on Amy’s memory here – we’re going somewhere she’s never been. So I did some Google mapping right after my shower, typed in the address of Rhiannon’s school and watched it pop up in front of me. That simple. I printed it out, then cleared the history.
I have become very good at clearing histories.
I know I shouldn’t be doing this. I know I’m poking a wound, not healing it. I know there’s no way to have a future with Rhiannon.
All I’m doing is extending the past by a day.
Normal people don’t
