“After we picked out our clothes, they put makeup on us and everything. I thought Mom was going to flip, but she was actually enjoying it. They didn’t really do much with her—just a little more color. And that was all it took. She was pretty. I know it’s hard to believe, knowing her now. But that day, she was like a movie star. All the other moms were complimenting her. And when it was time for the actual show, we paraded out there and people applauded. Mom and I were both smiling, and it was real, you know?
“We didn’t get to keep the dresses or anything. But I remember on the ride home, Mom kept saying how great I was. When we got back to our house, Dad looked at us like we were aliens, but the cool thing is, he decided to play along. Instead of getting all weird, he kept calling us his supermodels, and asked us to do the show for him in our living room, which we did. We were laughing so much. And that was it. The day ended. I’m not sure Mom’s worn makeup since. And it’s not like I turned out to be a supermodel. But that day reminds me of this one. Because it was a break from everything, wasn’t it?”
“It sounds like it,” I tell her.
“I can’t believe I just told you that.”
“Why?”
“Because. I don’t know. It just sounds so silly.”
“No, it sounds like a good day.”
“How about you?” she asks.
“I was never in a mother-daughter fashion show,” I joke. Even though, as a matter of fact, I’ve been in a few.
She hits me lightly on the shoulder. “No. Tell me about another day like this one.”
I access Justin and find out he moved to town when he was twelve. So anything before that is fair game, because Rhiannon won’t have been there. I could try to find one of Justin’s memories to share, but I don’t want to do that. I want to give Rhiannon something of my own.
“There was this one day when I was eleven.” I try to remember the name of the boy whose body I was in, but it’s lost to me. “I was playing hide-and-seek with my friends. I mean, the brutal, tackle kind of hide-and-seek. We were in the woods, and for some reason I decided that what I had to do was climb a tree. I don’t think I’d ever climbed a tree before. But I found one with some low branches and just started moving. Up and up. It was as natural as walking. In my memory, that tree was hundreds of feet tall. Thousands. At some point, I crossed the tree line. I was still climbing, but there weren’t any other trees around. I was all by myself, clinging to the trunk of this tree, a long way from the ground.”
I can see shimmers of it now. The height. The town below me.
“It was magical,” I say. “There’s no other word to describe it. I could hear my friends yelling as they were caught, as the game played out. But I was in a completely different place. I was seeing the world from above, which is an extraordinary thing when it happens for the first time. I’d never flown in a plane. I’m not even sure I’d been in a tall building. So there I was, hovering above everything I knew. I had made it somewhere special, and I’d gotten there all on my own. Nobody had given it to me. Nobody had told me to do it. I’d climbed and climbed and climbed, and this was my reward. To watch over the world, and to be alone with myself. That, I found, was what I needed.”
Rhiannon leans into me. “That’s amazing,” she whispers.
“Yeah, it was.”
“And it was in Minnesota?”
In truth, it was in North Carolina. But I access Justin and find that, yes, for him it would’ve been Minnesota. So I nod.
“You want to know another day like this one?” Rhiannon asks, curling closer.
I adjust my arm, make us both comfortable. “Sure.”
“Our second date.”
But this is only our first, I think. Ridiculously.
“Really?” I ask.
“Remember?”
I check to see if Justin remembers their second date. He doesn’t.
“Dack’s party?” she prompts.
Still nothing.
“Yeah …,” I hedge.
“I don’t know—maybe it doesn’t count as a date. But it was the second time we hooked up. And, I don’t know, you were just so … sweet about it. Don’t get mad, alright?”
I wonder where this is going.
“I promise, nothing could make me mad right now,” I tell her. I even cross my heart to prove it.
She smiles. “Okay. Well, lately—it’s like you’re always in a rush. Like, we have sex but we’re not really … intimate. And I don’t mind. I mean, it’s fun. But every now and then, it’s good to have it be like this. And at Dack’s party—it was like this. Like you had all the time in the world, and you wanted us to have it together. I loved that. It was back when you were really looking at me. It was like—well, it was like you’d climbed up that tree and found me there at the top. And we had that together. Even though we were in someone’s backyard. At one point—do you remember?—you made me move over a little so I’d be in the moonlight. ‘It makes your skin glow,’ you said. And I felt like that. Glowing. Because you were watching me, along with the moon.”
Does she realize that right now she’s lit by the warm orange spreading from the horizon, as not-quite-day becomes not-quite-night? I lean over and become that shadow. I kiss her once, then we drift into each other, close our eyes, drift into sleep. And as we drift into sleep, I feel something I’ve never felt before. A closeness that isn’t merely physical. A connection that defies the fact that we’ve only just met. A sensation that can only come from the most euphoric of feelings: belonging.