Every Day (6 page)

Owen sees he’s gained ground. He pushes further. “If she found out—oh God, she can’t find out. I know some girls like it when you fight over them, but she definitely doesn’t.”

Mom nods her approval.

“What’s her name?” Dad asks.

“Do I have to tell you?”

“Yes.”

“Natasha. Natasha Lee.”

Wow, he’s even made her Chinese. Amazing.

“Do you know this girl?” Dad asks me.

“Yes,” I say. “She’s awesome.” Then I turn to Owen and shoot him fake daggers. “But Romeo over here never told me he was into her. Although now that he says it, it’s starting to make sense. He has been acting very weird lately.”

Mom nods again. “He has.”

Eyes bloodshot
, I want to say.
Eating a lot of Cheetos. Staring into space. Eating more Cheetos. It must be love. What else could it possibly be?

What was threatening to be an all-out war becomes a war council, with our parents strategizing what the principal can be told, especially about the running away. I hope for Owen’s sake that Natasha Lee is, in fact, a student at the high school, whether he has a crush on her or not. I can’t access any memory of her. If the name rings a bell, the bell’s in a vacuum.

Now that our father can see a way of saving face, he’s almost amiable. Owen’s big punishment is that he has to go clean up his room before dinner.

I can’t imagine I would have gotten the same reaction if I’d beaten up another girl over a boy.

I follow Owen up to his room. When we’re safely inside, door closed, no parents around, I tell him, “That was kinda brilliant.”

He looks at me with unconcealed annoyance and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of my room.”

This 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 and 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 10:11 p.m.

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.

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 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. Videogame 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 fencer, an equestrian, and once, recently, a gymnast.

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 license.

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 have to decide what’s worth remembering. You are given a hierarchy, recurring characters, the help of repetition, of anticipation, the firm hold of a long history. But I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available—the only way I am going to see them again—is if I conjure them in my mind.

I choose what to remember, and I am choosing Rhiannon. Again and again, I am choosing her, I am conjuring her, because to let go for an instant will allow her to disappear.

The same song that we heard in Justin’s car comes on—
And if I only could, I’d make a deal with God.…

I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and believe it.

The enormity rises within me.

The universe nods along to the songs.

I try to hold on to as few mundane, everyday memories as possible. Facts and figures, sure. Books I’ve read or information I need to know. The rules of soccer, for instance. The plot of
Romeo and Juliet
. The phone number to call if there’s an emergency. I remember those.

But what about the thousands of everyday memories, the thousands of everyday reminders, that every person accumulates? The place you keep your house keys. Your mother’s birthday. The name of your first pet. The name of your current pet. Your locker combination. The location of the silverware drawer. The channel number for MTV. Your best friend’s last name.

These are the things I have no need for. And, over time, my mind has rewired itself, so all this information falls away as soon as the next morning comes.

Which is why it’s remarkable—but not surprising—that I remember exactly where Rhiannon’s locker is.

I have my cover story ready: If anyone asks, I am checking out the school because my parents might be moving to town.

I don’t remember if there are assigned parking spaces, so just in case, I park far from the school. Then I simply walk in. I am just another random girl in the halls—the freshmen will think I’m a senior, and the seniors will think I’m a freshman. I have Amy’s schoolbag with me—black with anime details, filled with books that won’t really apply here. I look like I have a destination. And I do.

If the universe wants this to happen, she will be there at her locker.

I tell myself this, and there she is. Right there in front of me.

Sometimes memory tricks you. Sometimes beauty is best when it’s distant. But even from here, thirty feet away, I know that the reality of her is going to match my memory.

Twenty feet away.

Even in the crowded hallway, there is something in her that radiates out to me.

Ten.

She is carrying herself through the day, and it’s not an easy task.

Five.

I can stand right here and she has no idea who I am. I can stand right here and watch her. I can see that the sadness has returned. And it’s not a beautiful sadness—beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain. She is dragging.

“Hey,” I say, my voice thin, a stranger here.

At first she doesn’t understand that I’m talking to her. Then it registers.

“Hey,” she says back.

Most people, I’ve noticed, are instinctively harsh to strangers. They expect every approach to be an attack, every question to be an interruption. But not Rhiannon. She doesn’t have any idea who I am, but she’s not going to hold that against me. She’s not going to assume the worst.

“Don’t worry—you don’t know me,” I quickly say. “It’s just—it’s my first day here. I’m checking the school out. And I
really like your skirt and your bag. So I thought, you know, I’d say hello. Because, to be honest, I am completely alone right now.”

Again, some people would be scared by this. But not Rhiannon. She offers her hand, introduces herself as we shake, and asks me why there isn’t someone showing me around.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“Well, why don’t I take you to the office? I’m sure they can figure something out.”

I panic. “No!” I blurt out. Then I try to cover for myself, and prolong my time with her. “It’s just … I’m not here officially. Actually, my parents don’t even know I’m doing this. They just told me we’re moving here, and I … I wanted to see it and decide whether I should be freaking out or not.”

Rhiannon nods. “That makes sense. So you’re cutting school in order to check school out?”