Rhiannon asks, “Did you try to hold on?”
I tell her, “I’m sure I did. But I don’t remember it now. I remember crying and protesting—I told you about that. But the rest? I’m not sure. I mean, do you remember a lot about when you were five?”
She shakes her head. “Not really. I remember my mom bringing me and my sister to the shoe store to get new shoes before kindergarten started. I remember learning that a green light meant go and red meant stop. I remember coloring them in, and the teacher being a little confused about how to explain yellow. I think she told us to treat it the same as red.”
“I learned my letters quickly,” I tell her. “I remember the teachers being surprised that I knew them. I imagine they were just as surprised the next day, when I’d forgotten them.”
“A five-year-old probably wouldn’t notice taking a day off.”
“Probably. I don’t know.”
“I keep asking Justin about it, you know. The day you were him. And it’s amazing how clear his fake memories are. He doesn’t disagree when I say we went to the beach, but he doesn’t really remember it, either.”
“James, the twin, was like that, too. He didn’t notice anything wrong. But when I asked him about meeting you for coffee, he didn’t remember it at all. He remembered he was at Starbucks—his mind accounted for the time. But it wasn’t what actually happened.”
“Maybe they remember what you want them to remember.”
“I’ve thought about that. I wish I knew for sure.”
We walk farther. Circle a tree with our fingers.
“What about love?” she asks. “Have you ever been in love?”
“I don’t know that you’d call it love,” I say. “I’ve had crushes, for sure. And there have been days where I’ve really regretted leaving. There were even one or two people I tried to find, but that didn’t work out. The closest was this guy Brennan.”
“Tell me about him.”
“It was about a year ago. I was working at a movie theater, and he was in town, visiting his cousins, and when he went to get some popcorn, we flirted a little, and it just became this … spark. It was this small, one-screen movie theater, and when the movie was running, my job was pretty slow. I think he missed the second half of the movie, because he came back out and started talking to me more. I ended up having to tell him what happened, so he could pretend he’d been in there most of the time. At the end, he asked for my email, and I made up an email address.”
“Like you did for me.”
“Exactly like I did for you. And he emailed me later that night, and left the next day to go back home to Maine, and that proved to be ideal, because then the rest of our relationship could be online. I’d been wearing a name tag, so I had to give him that first name, but I made up a last name, and then I made up an online profile using some of the photos from the real guy’s profile. I think his name was Ian.”
“Oh—so you were a boy?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Does that matter?”
“No,” she tells me. “I guess not.” But I can tell it does. A little. Again, her mental picture needs adjustment.
“So we’d email almost every day. We’d even chat. And while I couldn’t tell him what was really happening—I emailed him from some very strange places—I still felt like I had something out there in the world that was consistently mine, and that was a pretty new feeling. The only problem was, he wanted more. More photos. Then he wanted to Skype. Then, after about a month of these intense conversations, he started talking about visiting again. His aunt and uncle had already invited him back, and summer was coming.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yup—uh-oh. I couldn’t figure out a way around it. And the more I tried to dodge it, the more he noticed. All of our conversations became about us. Every now and then, a tangent would get in there, but he’d always drag it back. So I had to end it. Because there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow for us.”
“Why didn’t you tell him the truth?”
“Because I didn’t think he could take it. Because I didn’t trust him enough, I guess.”
“So you called it off.”
“I told him I’d met someone else. I borrowed photos from the body I was in at the time. I changed my fake profile’s relationship status. Brennan never wanted to talk to me again.”
“Poor guy.”
“I know. After that, I promised myself I wouldn’t get into any more virtual entanglements, as easy as they might seem to be. Because what’s the point of something virtual if it doesn’t end up being real? And I could never give anyone something real. I could only give them deception.”
“Like impersonating their boyfriends,” Rhiannon says.
“Yeah. But you have to understand—you were the exception to the rule. And I didn’t want it to be based on deception. Which is why you’re the first person I’ve ever told.”
“The funny thing is, you say it like it’s so unusual that you’ve only done it once. But I bet a whole lot of people go through their lives without ever telling the truth, not really. And they wake up in the same body and the same life every single morning.”
“Why? What aren’t you telling me?”
Rhiannon looks me in the eye. “If I’m not telling you something, it’s for a reason. Just because you trust me, it doesn’t mean I have to automatically trust you. Trust doesn’t work like that.”