“What if you had a seizure?”
“Why would I borrow my parents’ car to have a seizure? No, there was something else in control. The reverend says I must have wrestled with the devil. Like Jacob. I must have known my body was being used for something evil, and I fought it. And then, when I won, the devil left me by the side of the road.”
He believes this. He genuinely believes this.
And I can’t tell him it’s not true. I can’t tell him what really happened. Because if I do, AJ will be in danger. I will be in danger.
“It didn’t have to be the devil,” I say.
Nathan becomes defensive. “I just know, okay? And I’m not the only one. There are lots of people out there who’ve experienced the same thing. I’ve chatted with a few of them. It’s scary how many things we have in common.”
“Are you afraid it will happen again?”
“No. I’m prepared this time. If the devil is anywhere near me, I’ll know what to do.”
I sit right there across from him and listen.
He doesn’t recognize me.
I am not the devil.
This thought is what echoes through my mind the rest of the day.
I am not the devil, but I could be.
Looking at it from afar, looking at it from a perspective like Nathan’s, I can see how scary it could be. Because what’s to stop me from doing harm? What punishment would there be if I took the pencil in my hand and gouged out the eye of the girl sitting next to me in chem class? Or worse. I could easily get away with the perfect crime. The body that committed the murder would inevitably get caught, but the murderer would go free. Why haven’t I thought of this before?
I have the potential to be the devil.
But then I think, Stop. I think, No. Because, really, does that make me any different from everyone else? Yes, I could get away with it, but certainly we all have the potential to commit the crime. We choose not to. Every single day, we choose not to. I am no different.
I am not the devil.
There is still no word from Rhiannon. Whether her silence is coming from her confusion or from a desire to be rid of me, I have no way of knowing.
I write to her and say, simply:
I have to see you again.
A
Day 6009
There’s still no word from her the next morning.
I get in the car and drive.
The car belongs to Adam Cassidy. He should be in school. But I call the office pretending to be his father and say he has a doctor’s appointment.
It may last the entire day.
It’s a two-hour drive. I know I should spend it getting to know Adam Cassidy, but he seems incidental to me right now. I used to inhabit lives like this all the time—testing the bare minimum I needed to know in order to get through the day. I got so good at it that I made it through a few days without accessing once. I’m sure these were very blank days for the bodies I was in, because they were extraordinarily blank days for me.
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.
Day 6010
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.
Day 6011
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.
Day 6012
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.
A,
I’m sorry I didn’t get to write to you yesterday. I meant to, but then all these other things happened (none of them important, just time-consuming). Even though it was hard to see you, it was good to see you. I mean it. But taking a break and thinking things out makes sense.