“That’s okay. The reason you’re not seeing it is because he’s so unlike me. You’re not feeling it because I’m not like this. So in a way, it’s consistent.”
“I guess,” she says, spearing some asparagus.
She doesn’t sound convinced. And I feel I’ve already lost if we’ve gotten to the convincing stage.
It doesn’t feel like a date. It doesn’t feel like friendship. It feels like something that fell off the tightrope but hasn’t yet hit the net.
Our cars are still at the bookstore, so we head back there. Instead of cradling her roses, she dangles them at her side, as if at any moment she might need to use them as a bat.
“What’s going on?” I ask her.
“Just an off night, I guess.” She holds the roses up to her nose, smells them. “We’re allowed to have off nights, right? Especially considering …”
“Yeah. Especially considering.”
If I were in a different body, this would be the time I would lean down and kiss her. If I were in a different body, that kiss could transform the night from off to on. If I were in a different body, she would see me inside. She would see what she wanted to see.
But now it’s awkward.
She holds the roses to my nose. I breathe in the perfume.
“Thanks for the flowers,” she says.
That is our goodbye.
Day 6026
I feel guilty about how relieved I am to be a normal size the next morning. I feel guilty because I realize that while before I didn’t care what other people thought, or how other people saw me, now I am conscious of it, now I am judging alongside them, now I am seeing myself through Rhiannon’s eyes. I guess this is making me more like everyone else, but I feel something is being lost, too.
Lisa Marshall looks a lot like Rhiannon’s friend Rebecca—dark straight hair, a scattering of freckles, blue eyes. She is not someone you’d go out of your way to notice if you saw her on the street, but you’d definitely notice her if she was sitting next to you in class.
Rhiannon won’t mind me today, I think. Then I feel guilty for thinking it.
There’s an email from her waiting in my inbox. It starts like this:
I really want to see you today.
And I think, That’s good. But then it continues.
We need to talk.
And I don’t know what to think anymore
The day becomes a waiting game, a countdown, even if I’m not sure what I’m counting down toward. The clock brings me closer. My fears pound louder.
Lisa’s friends don’t get much out of her today.
Rhiannon’s told me to meet her at a park by her school. Since I’m a girl today, I’m guessing that’s safe neutral ground. No one from town is going to see the two of us and assume something R-rated. They already think male metalheads are her type.
I’m early, so I sit on a bench with Lisa’s copy of an Alice Hoffman novel, stopping every now and then to watch a jogger push by. I’m so lost in the pages that I don’t realize Rhiannon’s here until she sits down next to me.
I can’t help but smile when I see that it’s her.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she says.
Before she can tell me what she wants to tell me, I ask her about her day, ask her about school, ask her about the weather—anything to avoid the topic of her and me. But this only lasts for about ten minutes.
“A,” she says. “There are things that I need to say to you.”
I know that this sentence is rarely followed by good things. But still I hope.
Even though she’s said things, even though she’s implied there’s more than one, it all comes down to her next sentence.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
I only pause for a moment. “You don’t think you can do it, or you don’t want to do it?”
“I want to. Really, I do. But how, A? I just don’t see how it’s possible.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re a different person every day. And I just can’t love every single person you are equally. I know it’s you underneath. I know it’s just the package. But I can’t, A. I’ve tried. And I can’t. I want to—I want to be the person who can do that—but I can’t. And it’s not just that. I’ve just broken up with Justin—I need time to process that, to put that away. And there are just so many things you and I can’t do. We’ll never hang out with my friends. I can’t even talk about you to my friends, and that’s driving me crazy. You’ll never meet my parents. I will never be able to go to sleep with you at night and then wake up with you the next morning. Never. And I’ve been trying to argue myself into thinking these things don’t matter, A. Really, I have. But I’ve lost the argument. And I can’t keep having it, when I know what the real answer is.”
This is the part where I should be able to say I’ll change. This is the part where I should be able to assure her that things can be different, show her it’s possible. But the best I can do is to give her my deepest fantasy, the one I’ve been too self-conscious to share.
“It’s not impossible,” I tell her. “Do you think I haven’t been having the same arguments with myself, the same thoughts? I’ve been trying to imagine how we can have a future together. So what about this? I think one way for me to not travel so far would be if we lived in a city. I mean, there would be more bodies the right age nearby, and while I don’t know how I get passed from one body to the next, I do feel certain that the distance I travel is related to how many possibilities there are. So if we were in New York City, I’d probably never leave. There are so many people to choose from. So we could see each other all the time. Be with each other. I know it’s crazy. I know you can’t just leave home on a moment’s notice. But eventually we could do that. Eventually, that could be our life. I will never be able to wake up next to you, but I can be with you all the time. It won’t be a normal life—I know that. But it will be a life. A life together.”