Every Day (19 page)

No
, I think.
Don’t feel that way
.

It was so much easier when I didn’t want anything.

Not getting what you want can make you cruel.

I check my other email and find another message from Rhiannon. She tells me vaguely about her weekend and asks me vaguely about my weekend.

I try to sleep for the rest of the day.

I wake up, and I’m not four hours away from her, or one hour, or even fifteen minutes.

No, I wake up in her house.

In her room.

In her body.

At first I think I’m still asleep, dreaming. I open my eyes, and I could be in any girl’s room—a room she’s lived in for a long time, with Madame Alexander dolls sharing space with eyeliner pencils and fashion magazines. I am sure it is only a dreamworld trick when I access my identity and find it’s Rhiannon who appears. Have I had this dream before? I don’t think so. But in a way, it makes sense. If she’s the thought, the hope, the concern underneath my every waking moment, then why wouldn’t she permeate my sleeping hours as well?

But I’m not dreaming. I am feeling the pressure of the pillow against my face. I am feeling the sheets around my legs. I am breathing. In dreams, we never bother to breathe.

I instantly feel like the world has turned to glass. Every
moment is delicate. Every movement is a risk. I know she wouldn’t want me here. I know the horror she would be feeling right now. The complete loss of control.

Everything I do could break something. Every word I say. Every move I make.

I look around some more. Some girls and boys obliterate their rooms as they grow older, thinking they have to banish all their younger incarnations in order to convincingly inhabit a new one. But Rhiannon is more secure with her past than that. I see pictures of her and her family when she is three, eight, ten, fourteen. A stuffed penguin still keeps watch over her bed. J. D. Salinger sits next to Dr. Seuss on her bookshelf.

I pick up one of the photographs. If I wanted to, I could try to access the day it was taken. It looks like she and her sister are at a county fair. Her sister is wearing some kind of prize ribbon. It would be so easy for me to find out what it is. But then it wouldn’t be Rhiannon telling me.

I want her here next to me, giving me the tour. Now I feel like I’ve broken in.

The only way to get through this is to live the day as Rhiannon would want me to. If she knows I was here—and I have a feeling she will—I want her to be certain that I didn’t take any advantage. I know instinctively that this is not the way I want to learn anything. This is not the way I want to gain anything.

Because of this, it feels like all I can do is lose.

This is how it feels to raise her arm.

This is how it feels to blink her eyes.

This is how it feels to turn her head.

This is how it feels to run her tongue over her lips, to put her feet on the floor.

This is the weight of her. This is the height of her. This is the angle from which she sees the world.

I could access every memory she has of me. I could access every memory she has of Justin. I could hear what she’s said when I haven’t been around.

“Hello.”

This is what her voice sounds like from the inside.

This is what her voice sounds like when she’s by herself.

Her mother shuffles past me in the hallway, awake but not by her own choice. It has been a long night for her, leading into a short morning. She says she’s going to try to go back to sleep, but adds that it’s not likely.

Rhiannon’s father is in the kitchen, about to leave for work. His “good morning” holds less complaint. But he’s in a rush, and I have a sense that those two words are all Rhiannon’s going to get. I get some cereal as he searches for his keys, then say a goodbye echo to his own quick goodbye.

I decide not to take a shower, or even to change out of last night’s underwear. When I go to the bathroom, I will keep my eyes closed. I feel naked enough looking in the mirror and seeing Rhiannon’s face. I can’t push it any further than that. Brushing her hair is already too intimate. Putting on makeup.
Even putting on shoes. To experience her body’s balance within the world, the sensation of her skin from the inside, touching her face and receiving the touch from both sides—it’s unavoidable and incredibly intense. I try to think only as me, but I can’t stop feeling that I’m her.

I have to access to find my keys, then find my way to school. Maybe I should stay home, but I’m not sure I could bear being alone as her for that long without any distractions. The radio station is tuned to the news, which is unexpected. Her sister’s graduation tassel hangs from the rearview mirror.

I look to the passenger seat, expecting Rhiannon to be there, looking at me, telling me where to go.

I am going to try to avoid Justin. I go early to my locker, get my books, then head directly to my first class. As friends trickle into the classroom, I make as much conversation as I can. Nobody notices any difference—not because they don’t care, but because it’s early in the morning, and nobody’s expected to be fully there. I’ve been so hung up on Justin that I haven’t realized how much Rhiannon’s friends are part of her life. I realize that until now, the most I’ve really seen her full life has been when I was Amy Tran, visiting the school for the day. Because she doesn’t spend her day alone. These friends are not what she wants to escape when she makes her escape.

“Did you get to all the bio?” her friend Rebecca asks. At first I think she’s asking to copy my homework, but then I realize she’s offering hers. Sure enough, Rhiannon has a few problems left to do. I thank Rebecca and start copying away.

When class begins and the teacher starts to lecture, all I need to do is listen and take notes.

Remember this
, I tell Rhiannon.
Remember how ordinary it is
.

I can’t help but get glimpses of things I’ve never seen before. Doodles in her notebook of trees and mountains. The light imprint her socks leave on her ankles. A small red birthmark at the base of her left thumb. These are probably things she never notices. But because I’m new to her, I see everything.

This is how it feels to hold a pencil in her hand.

This is how it feels to fill her lungs with air.

This is how it feels to press her back against the chair.

This is how it feels to touch her ear.

This is what the world sounds like to her. This is what she hears every day.

I allow myself one memory. I don’t choose it. It just rises, and I don’t cut it off.

Rebecca is sitting next to me, chewing gum. At one point in class, she’s so bored that she takes it out of her mouth and starts playing with it between her fingers. And I remember a time she did this in sixth grade. The teacher caught her, and Rebecca was so surprised at being caught that she startled, and the gum went flying from her hand and into Hannah Walker’s hair. Hannah didn’t know what had happened at first, and all the kids started laughing at her, making the teacher more furious. I was the one who leaned over and told her there was gum in her hair. I was the one who worked it out with my fingers, careful not to get it knotted farther in. I got it all out. I remember I got it all out.

I try to avoid Justin at lunch, but I fail.

I’m in a hallway nowhere near either of our lockers or the lunchroom, and he ends up being there, too. He’s not happy to see me or unhappy to see me; he regards my presence as a fact, no different than the bell between periods.

“Wanna take it outside?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say, not really knowing what I’m agreeing to.

In this case, “outside” means a pizza place two blocks from the school. We get slices and Cokes. He pays for himself, but makes no offer to pay for me. Which is fine.

He’s in a talkative mood, focusing on what I imagine is his favorite theme: the injustices perpetrated against him by everyone else, all the time. It’s a pretty wide conspiracy, involving everything from his car’s faulty ignition to his father’s nagging about college to his English teacher’s “gay way of talking.” I’m barely following his conversation, and
following
very much feels like the right word, because this conversation is designed for me to be at least five steps behind. He doesn’t want my opinion. Anytime I offer something, he just lets it sit there on the table between us, doesn’t pick it up.

As he goes on about what a bitch Stephanie is being to Steve, and keeps shoving pizza into his face, and looks at the table much more than he looks at me, I must struggle against the palpable temptation to do something drastic. Although he doesn’t realize it, the power is all mine. All it would take is a minute—less—to break up with him. All it would take are a few well-chosen words to cut the tether. He could counterattack
with tears or rage or promises, and I could withstand every single one.

It is so much what I want, but I don’t open my mouth. I don’t use this power. Because I know that this kind of ending would never lead to the beginning I want. If I end things like this, Rhiannon will never forgive me. Not only might she undo it all tomorrow, she would also define me by my betrayal for as long as I remained in her life, which wouldn’t be long.

I hope she realizes: The whole time, Justin never notices. She can see me in whatever body I’m in, but he can’t see she’s missing. He’s not looking that closely.

Then he calls her Silver. Just a simple, “Let’s go, Silver,” when we’re done. I think maybe I’ve heard him wrong. So I access, and there it is. A moment between them. They’ve been reading
The Outsiders
for English class, lying on his bed side by side with the same book open, she a little farther along. She thinks the book’s a relic from when weepy gang boys bonded over
Gone with the Wind
, but she quiets herself when she sees how much it’s affecting him. She stays there after she’s finished, starts reading the beginning again until he’s done. Then he closes the book and says, “Wow. I mean, nothing gold can stay. How true is that?” She doesn’t want to break the moment, doesn’t want to question what it means. And she’s rewarded when he smiles and says, “I guess that means we’ll have to be silver.” When she leaves that night, he calls out, “So long, Silver!” And it stays.

When we head back to school, we don’t hold hands, or even talk. When we part, he doesn’t wish me a good afternoon or thank me for the time we just had together. He doesn’t even say he’ll see me soon. He just assumes it.

I am hyperaware—as he leaves me, as I am surrounded by other people—of the perilous nature of what I am attempting, of the butterfly effect that threatens to flutter its wings with every interaction. If you think about it hard enough, if you trace potential reverberations long enough, every step can be a false step, any move can lead to an unintended consequence.

Who am I ignoring that I shouldn’t be ignoring? What am I not saying that I should be saying? What won’t I notice that she would absolutely notice? While I’m out in the public hallways, what private languages am I not hearing?

When we look at a crowd, our eyes naturally go to certain people, whether we know them or not. But my glance right now is blank. I know what I see, but not what she’d see.

The world is still glass.

This is how it feels to read words through her eyes.

This is how it feels to turn a page with her hand.

This is how it feels when her ankles cross.

This is how it feels to lower her head so her hair hides her eyes from view.

This is what her handwriting looks like. This is how it is made. This is how she signs her name.

There’s a quiz in English class. It’s
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
, which I’ve read. I think Rhiannon does okay.

I access enough to know she doesn’t have any plans after school. Justin finds her before last period and asks her if she wants to do something. It’s clear to me what this something will be, and I can’t see much benefit to it.

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

He looks at me like I’m an imbecile puppy.

“What do you think?”

“Homework?”

He snorts. “Yeah, we can call it that, if you want.”