Every Day (18 page)

Most of the drive, I think about Rhiannon. How to get her back. How to keep in her good graces. How to make this work.

It’s the last part that’s the hardest.

When I get to her school, I park where Amy Tran parked. The school day is already in full swing, so when I open the doors, I jump right into the fray. It’s between periods, and I have all of two minutes to find her.

I don’t know where she is. I don’t even know what period’s starting. I just push through the halls, looking for her. People brush by, tell me to watch where I’m going. I don’t care. There is everyone else, and there is her. I am only focused on her.

I let the universe tell me where to go. I rely purely on instinct, knowing that this kind of instinct comes from somewhere other than me, somewhere other than this body.

She is turning in to a classroom. But she stops. Looks up. Sees me.

I don’t know how to explain it. I am an island in the hall as people push around me. She is another island. I see her, and she knows exactly who I am. There is no way for her to know this. But she knows.

She walks away from the classroom, walks toward me. Another bell rings and the rest of the people drain out of the hall, leaving us alone together.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” I say.

“I thought you might come.”

“Are you mad?”

“No, I’m not mad.” She glances back at the classroom. “Although Lord knows you’re not good for my attendance record.”

“I’m not good for anybody’s attendance record.”

“What’s your name today?”

“A,” I tell her. “For you, it’s always A.”

She has a test next period that she can’t skip, so we stay on the school grounds. When we start to encounter other kids—kids without classes this period, kids also cutting—she grows a little more cautious.

“Is Justin in class?” I ask, to give her fear a name.

“Yeah. If he decided to go.”

We find an empty classroom and go inside. From all the Shakespearean paraphernalia hanging on the walls, I’m guessing we’re in an English classroom. Or drama.

We sit in the back row, out of sight of the window in the door.

“How did you know it was me?” I have to ask.

“The way you looked at me,” she says. “It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

This is what love does: It makes you want to rewrite the world. It makes you want to choose the characters, build the scenery, guide the plot. The person you love sits across from you, and you want to do everything in your power to make it possible, endlessly possible. And when it’s just the two of you, alone in a room, you can pretend that this is how it is, this is how it will be.

I take her hand and she doesn’t pull away. Is this because something between us has changed, or is it only because my body has changed? Is it easier for her to hold Adam Cassidy’s hand?

The electricity in the air is muted. This is not going to lead to anything more than an honest conversation.

“I’m sorry about the other night,” I say again.

“I deserve part of the blame. I never should have called him.”

“What did he say? Afterward?”

“He kept calling you ‘that black bitch.’ ”

“Charming.”

“I think he sensed it was a trap. I don’t know. He just knew something was off.”

“Which is probably why he passed the test.”

Rhiannon pulls away. “That’s not fair.”

“I’m sorry.”

I wonder why it is that she’s strong enough to say no to me, but not strong enough to say no to him.

“What do you want to do?” I ask her.

She matches my glance perfectly. “What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to do whatever you feel is best for you.”

“That’s the wrong answer,” she tells me.

“Why is it the wrong answer?”

“Because it’s a lie.”

You are so close
, I think.
You are so close, and I can’t reach you
.

“Let’s go back to my original question,” I say. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t want to throw everything away for something uncertain.”

“What about me is uncertain?”

She laughs. “Really? Do I have to explain it to you?”

“Besides that. You know you are the most important person I’ve ever had in my life. That’s certain.”

“In just two weeks. That’s uncertain.”

“You know more about me than anyone else does.”

“But I can’t say the same for you. Not yet.”

“You can’t deny that there’s something between us.”

“No. There is. When I saw you today—I didn’t know I’d been waiting for you until you were there. And then all of that waiting rushed through me in a second. That’s something … but I don’t know if it’s certainty.”

I know what I’m asking of you
, I want to say. But I stop myself. Because I realize that would be another lie. And she’d call me on it.

She looks at the clock. “I have to get ready for my test. And you have another life to get back to.”

I can’t help myself. I ask, “Don’t you want to see me?”

She holds there for a moment. “I do. And I don’t. You would think it would make things easier, but it actually makes them harder.”

“So I shouldn’t just show up here?”

“Let’s stick to email for now. Okay?”

And just like that, the universe goes wrong. Just like that, all the enormity seems to shrink into a ball and float away from my reach.

I feel it, and she doesn’t.

Or I feel it, and she won’t.

I am four hours away from her.

I’m a girl named Chevelle, and I can’t stand the idea of going to school today. So I feign sickness, get permission to stay home. I try to read, play video games, surf the Web, do all the things I used to do to fill the time.

None of them work. The time still feels empty.

I keep checking my email.

Nothing from her.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I am only thirty minutes away from her.

I am woken at dawn by my sister shaking me, shouting my name, Valeria.

I think I’m late for school.

But no. I’m late for work.

I am a maid. An underage, illegal maid.

Valeria doesn’t speak English, so all the thoughts I have to access are in Spanish. I barely know what’s happening. It takes me time to translate what’s going on.

There are four of us in the apartment. We put on our uniforms and a van comes to pick us up. I am the youngest, the least respected. My sister speaks to me, and I nod. I feel like my insides are twisting, and at first I think it’s just because of the shock of the situation. Then I realize they really are twisting. Cramps.

I find the words and tell my sister this. She understands, but I’m still going to have to work.

More women join us in the van. And another girl my age. Some people chat, but my sister and I don’t say a word to any of them.

The van starts dropping us off at people’s homes. Always at least two of us per house, sometimes three or four. I am paired with my sister.

I am in charge of bathrooms. I must scrub the toilets. Remove the hairs from the shower. Shine the mirrors until they gleam.

Each of us is in her own room. We do not talk. We don’t play music. We just work.

I am sweating in my uniform. The cramps will not go away. The medicine cabinets are full, but I know that I am here to clean, not to take. Nobody would miss two Midol, but it’s not worth the risk.

When I get to the master bathroom, the woman of the house is still in her bedroom, talking on the phone. She doesn’t think I can understand a word she says. What a shock it would be were Valeria to stomp right in and start talking to her about the laws of thermodynamics, or the life of Thomas Jefferson, in flawless English.

After two hours, we are done with the house. I think that will be it, but there are four more houses after that. By the end, I can barely move, and my sister, seeing this, does the bathrooms with me. We are a team, and that kinship gives the day the only memory worth keeping.

By the time we get home, I can barely speak. I force myself to have dinner, but it’s a silent meal. Then I head to bed, leaving room for my sister beside me.

Email is not an option.

I am an hour away from her.

I open Sallie Swain’s eyes and search her room for a computer. Before I’m fully awake, I am loading up my email.

Does she really want to know, or is she just being polite? I feel as if she could be talking to anybody. And while I once
thought what I wanted from her was this normal, everyday tone, now that I have it, the normalcy disappoints.

I write her back and tell her about the last two days. Then I tell her I have to go—I can’t skip school today, because Sallie Swain has a big cross-country meet, and it wouldn’t be fair for her to miss it.

I run. I am made for running. Because when you run, you could be anyone. You hone yourself into a body, nothing more or less than a body. You respond as a body, to the body. If you are racing to win, you have no thoughts but the body’s thoughts, no goals but the body’s goals. You obliterate yourself in the name of speed. You negate yourself in order to make it past the finish line.

I am an hour and a half away from her, and I am part of a happy family.

The Stevens family does not let Saturdays go to waste. No, Mrs. Stevens wakes Daniel up at nine o’clock on the dot and tells him to get ready for a drive. By the time he’s out of the shower, Mr. Stevens has loaded the car, and Daniel’s two sisters are raring to go.

First stop in Baltimore is the art museum for a Winslow Homer exhibit. Then there’s lunch at Inner Harbor, followed by a long trip to the aquarium. Then an IMAX version of a Disney movie, for the girls, and dinner at a seafood restaurant that’s so famous they don’t feel the need to put the word
famous
in their name.

There are brief moments of tension—a sister who is bored by the dolphins, a spot where Dad gets frustrated about the lack of available parking spaces. But for the most part, everyone remains happy. They are so caught up in their happiness that they don’t realize I’m not really a part of it. I am wandering along the periphery. I am like the people in the Winslow
Homer paintings, sharing the same room with them but not really there. I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that’s not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood.

It is a good day, and that certainly helps me more than a bad day. There are moments when I don’t think about her, or even think about me. There are moments I just sit in my frame, float in my tank, ride in my car and say nothing, think nothing that connects me to anything at all.

I am forty minutes away from her.

It’s Sunday, so I decide to see what Reverend Poole is up to.

Orlando, the boy whose body I’m in, rarely wakes before noon on Sunday, so if I keep my typing quiet, his parents will leave me alone.

Reverend Poole has set up a website for people to tell their stories of possession. Already there are hundreds of posts and videos.

Nathan’s post is perfunctory, as if it’s been summarized from his earlier statements. He has not made a video. I don’t learn anything new.

Other stories are more elaborate. Some are clearly the work of nutjobs—clinically paranoid people who need professional help, not arenas in which to vent their hyperbolic conspiracy theories. Other testimonials, however, are almost painfully sincere. There’s a woman who genuinely feels that Satan struck her at the checkout line in the supermarket, filling her with
the urge to steal. And there’s a man whose son killed himself, who believes that the son must have been possessed by real demons, rather than fighting the more metaphorical ones inside.

Since I only inhabit people around my age, I look for the teenagers. Poole must screen each and every thing that appears on the site, because there’s no parody, no sarcasm. So teenagers are few and far between. There is one, however, from Montana, whose story makes me shiver. He says he was possessed, but only for one day. Nothing major happened, but he knows he wasn’t in control of his body.

I have never been to Montana. I’m sure of it.

But what he’s describing is a lot like what I do.

There is a link on Poole’s site:

IF YOU BELIEVE THE DEVIL IS WITHIN YOU,
CLICK HERE
OR CALL THIS NUMBER.

But if the devil is truly within you, why would he click or call?

I go on my old email and find that Nathan’s tried to get in touch with me again.

He even attaches the link to Poole’s page. I want to write back to him and point out that he and I talked just the other day. I want him to ask his friend AJ how his Monday was. I want him to fear that I could be there at any moment, in any person.