Every Day

When we are done, we walk back down to the water to wash off our hands. I look back and see the way our footsteps intermingle to form a single path.

“What is it?” she asks, seeing me glance backward, seeing something in my expression.

How can I explain this? The only way I know is to say, “Thank you.”

She looks at me as if she’s never heard the phrase before.

“For what?” she asks.

“For this,” I say. “For all of it.”

This escape. The water. The waves. Her. It feels like we’ve stepped outside of time. Even though there is no such place.

There’s still a part of her that’s waiting for the twist, the moment when all of this pleasure will jackknife into pain.

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “It’s okay to be happy.”

The tears come to her eyes. I take her in my arms. It’s the wrong thing to do. But it’s the right thing to do. I have to listen to my own words. Happiness is so rarely a part of my vocabulary, because for me it’s so fleeting.

“I’m happy,” she says. “Really, I am.”

Justin would be laughing at her. Justin would be pushing her down into the sand, to do whatever he wanted to do. Justin would never have come here.

I am tired of not feeling. I am tired of not connecting. I want to be here with her. I want to be the one who lives up to her hopes, if only for the time I’m given.

The ocean makes its music; the wind does its dance. We hold on. At first we hold on to one another, but then it starts to feel like we are holding on to something even bigger than that. Greater.

“What’s happening?” Rhiannon asks.

“Shhh,” I say. “Don’t question it.”

She kisses me. I have not kissed anyone in years. I have not allowed myself to kiss anyone for years. Her lips are soft as flower petals, but with an intensity behind them. I take it slow, let each moment pour into the next. Feel her skin, her breath. Taste the condensation of our contact, linger in the heat of it. Her eyes are closed and mine are open. I want to remember this as more than a single sensation. I want to remember this whole.

We do nothing more than kiss. We do nothing less than kiss. At times, she moves to take it further, but I don’t need that. I trace her shoulders as she traces my back. I kiss her neck. She kisses beneath my ear. The times we stop, we smile at each other. Giddy disbelief, giddy belief. She should be in English class. I should be in bio. We weren’t supposed to come anywhere near the ocean today. We have defied the day as it was set out for us.

We walk hand-in-hand down the beach as the sun dips in the sky. I am not thinking about the past. I am not thinking about the future. I am full of such gratitude for the sun, the water, the way my feet sink into the sand, the way my hand feels holding hers.

“We should do this every Monday,” she says. “And Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. And Friday.”

“We’d only get tired of it,” I tell her. “It’s best to have it just once.”

“Never again?” She doesn’t like the sound of that.

“Well, never say never.”

“I’d never say never,” she tells me.

There are a few more people on the beach now, mostly older men and women taking an afternoon walk. They nod to us as we walk past, and sometimes they say hello. We nod back, return their hellos. Nobody questions why we’re here. Nobody questions anything. We’re just a part of the moment, like everything else.

The sun falls farther. The temperature drops alongside it. Rhiannon shivers, so I stop holding her hand and put my arm around her. She suggests we go back to the car and get the “make-out blanket” from the trunk. We find it there, buried under empty beer bottles, twisted jumper cables and other guy crap. I wonder how often Rhiannon and Justin have used the make-out blanket for that purpose, but I don’t try to access the memories. Instead I bring the blanket back out onto the beach and put it down for both of us. I lie down and face the sky, and Rhiannon lies down next to me and does the same. We stare at the clouds, breathing distance from one another, taking it all in.

“This has to be one of the best days ever,” Rhiannon says.

Without turning my head, I find her hand with my hand.

“Tell me about some of the other days like this,” I ask.

“I don’t know . . .”

“Just one. The first one that comes to mind.”

Rhiannon thinks about it for a second. Then she shakes her head. “It’s stupid.”

“Tell me.”

She turns to me and moves her hand to my chest. Makes lazy circles there. “For some reason, the first thing that comes to mind is this mother-daughter fashion show. Do you promise you won’t laugh?”

I promise.

She studies me. Makes sure I’m sincere. Continues.

“It was in fourth grade or something. Renwick’s was doing a fundraiser for hurricane victims, and they asked for volunteers from our class. I didn’t ask my mother or anything – I just signed up. And when I brought the information home – well, you know how my mom is. She was terrified. It’s enough to get her out to the supermarket. But a fashion show? In front of strangers? I might as well have asked her to pose for Playboy. God, now there’s a scary thought.”

Her hand is now resting on my chest. She’s looking off to the sky.

“But here’s the thing: She didn’t say no. I guess it’s only now that I realize what I put her through. She didn’t make me go to the teacher and take it back. No, when the day came, we drove over to Renwick’s and went where they told us to go. I had thought they would put us in matching outfits, but it wasn’t like that. Instead, they basically told us we could wear whatever we wanted from the store. So there we were, trying all these things on. I went for the gowns, of course – I was so much more of a girl then. I ended up with this light blue dress – ruffles all over the place. I thought it was so sophisticated.”

“I’m sure it was classy,” I say.

She hits me. “Shut up. Let me tell my story.”

I hold her hand on my chest. Lean over and kiss her quickly.

“Go ahead,” I say. I am loving this. I never have people tell me their stories. I usually have to figure them out myself. Because I know that if people tell me stories, they will expect them to be remembered. And I cannot guarantee that. There is no way to know if the stories stay after I’m gone. And how devastating would it be to confide in someone and have the confidence disappear? I don’t want to be responsible for that.

But with Rhiannon I can’t resist.

She continues. “So I had my wannabe prom dress. And then it was Mom’s turn. She surprised me, because she went for the dresses too. I’d never really seen her all dressed up before. And I think that was the most amazing thing to me: It wasn’t me who was Cinderella. It was her.

“After we picked out our clothes, they put on makeup 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 then it was time for the actual show, and 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.”

“It was 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, all right?”

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 back yard. 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.

What is it about the moment you fall in love? How can such a small measure of time contain such enormity? I suddenly realize why people believe in déjà vu, why people believe they’ve lived past lives, because there is no way the years I’ve spent on this earth could possibly encapsulate what I’m feeling. The moment you fall in love feels like it has centuries behind it, generations – all of them rearranging themselves so that this precise, remarkable intersection could happen. In your heart, in your bones, no matter how silly you know it is, you feel that everything has been leading to this, all the secret arrows were pointing here, the universe and time itself have crafted this long ago, and you are just now realizing it, you are just now arriving at the place you were always meant to be.

We wake an hour later to the sound of her phone.

I keep my eyes closed. Hear her groan. Hear her tell her mother she’ll be home soon.

The water has gone deep black and the sky has gone ink blue. The chill in the air presses harder against us as we pick up the blanket, provide a new set of footprints.

She navigates, I drive. She talks, I listen. We sing some more. Then she leans into my shoulder and I let her stay there and sleep for a little longer, dream for a little longer.

I am trying not to think of what will happen next.

I am trying not to think of endings.

I never get to see people while they’re asleep. Not like this. She is the opposite of when I first met her. Her vulnerability is open, but she’s safe within it. I watch the rise and fall of her, the stir and rest of her. I only wake her when I need her to tell me where to go.

The last ten minutes, she talks about what we’re going to do tomorrow. I find it hard to respond.

“Even if we can’t do this, I’ll see you at lunch?” she asks.

I nod.

“And maybe we can do something after school?”

“I think so. I mean, I’m not sure what else is going on. My mind isn’t really there right now.”

This makes sense to her. “Fair enough. Tomorrow is tomorrow. Let’s end today on a nice note.”

Once we get to town, I can access the directions to her house without having to ask her. But I want to get lost, anyway. To prolong this. To escape this.

“Here we are,” Rhiannon says as we approach her driveway.

I pull the car over. I unlock the doors.

She leans over and kisses me. My senses are alive with the taste of her, the smell of her, the feel of her, the sound of her breathing, the sight of her as she pulls her body away from mine.

“That’s the nice note,” she says. And before I can say anything else, she’s out the door and gone.

I don’t get a chance to say goodbye.

I guess, correctly, that Justin’s parents are used to him being out of touch and missing dinner. They try to yell at him, but you can tell that everyone’s going through the motions, and when Justin storms off to his room, it’s just the latest rerun of an old show.

I should be doing Justin’s homework – I’m always pretty conscientious about that kind of thing, if I’m able to do it – but my mind keeps drifting to Rhiannon. Imagining her at home. Imagining her floating from the grace of the day. Imagining her believing that things are different, that Justin has somehow changed.

I shouldn’t have done it. I know I shouldn’t have done it. Even if it felt like the universe was telling me to do it.

I agonize over it for hours. I can’t take it back. I can’t make it go away.

I fell in love once, or at least until today I thought I had. His name was Brennan, and it felt so real, even if it was mostly words. Intense, heartfelt words. I stupidly let myself think of a possible future with him. But there was no future. I tried to navigate it, but I couldn’t.

That was easy compared to this. It’s one thing to fall in love. It’s another to feel someone else falling in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.

There is no way for me to stay in this body. If I don’t go to sleep, the shift will happen anyway. I used to think that if I stayed up all night, I’d get to remain where I was. But instead I was ripped from the body I was in. And the ripping felt exactly what you would imagine being ripped from a body would feel like, with every single nerve experiencing the pain of the break, and then the pain of being fused into someone new. From then on, I went to sleep every night. There was no use fighting it.

I realize I have to call her. Her number’s right there in his phone. I can’t let her think tomorrow is going to be like today.

“Hey!” she answers.

“Hey,” I say.

“Thank you again for today.”

“Yeah.”

I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to ruin it. But I have to, don’t I?

I continue, “But about today?”

“Yeah? Are you going to tell me that we can’t cut class every day? That’s not like you.”

Not like me.

“Yeah,” I say, “but, you know, I don’t want you to think every day is going to be like today. Because they’re not going to be, all right? They can’t be.”

There’s a silence. She knows something’s wrong.

“I know that,” she says carefully. “But maybe things can still be better. I know they can be.”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “That’s all I wanted to say. I don’t know. Today was something, but it’s not, like, everything.”

“I know that.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

I sigh.

There’s always a chance that, in some way, I will have brushed off on Justin. There’s always a chance that his life will in fact change – that he will change. But I have no way of knowing. It’s rare that I get to see a body after I’ve left it. And even then, it’s usually months or years later. If I recognize it at all.

I want Justin to be better to her. But I can’t have her expecting it.

“That’s all,” I say. It feels like a Justin thing to say.

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you will.”

“Thanks again for today. No matter what trouble we get into tomorrow for it, it was worth it.”

“Yeah.”

“I love you,” she says.

And I want to say it. I want to say I love you too. Right now, right at this moment, every part of me would mean it. But that will only last for a couple more hours.

“Sleep well,” I tell her. Then I hang up.

There’s a notebook on his desk.

Remember that you love Rhiannon, I write in his handwriting.

I doubt he’ll remember writing it.

I go on to his computer. I open up my own email account, then type out her name, her phone number, her email address, as well as Justin’s email and password. I write about the day. And I send it to myself.

As soon as I’m through, I clear Justin’s history.

This is hard for me.

I have gotten so used to what I am, and how my life works.

I never want to stay. I’m always ready to leave.

But not tonight.

Tonight I’m haunted by the fact that tomorrow he’ll be here and I won’t be.

I want to stay.

I pray to stay.

I close my eyes and wish to stay.

DAY 5995

I wake up thinking of yesterday. The joy is in remembering; the pain is in knowing it was yesterday.

I am not there. I am not in Justin’s bed, not in Justin’s body.

Today I am Leslie Wong. I have slept through the alarm, and her mother is mad.

“Get up!” she yells, shaking my new body. “You have twenty minutes, and then Owen leaves!”

“Okay, Mom,” I groan.

“Mom! If your mother was here, I can’t imagine what she’d say!”

I quickly access Leslie’s mind. Grandmother, then. Mom’s already left for work.

As I stand in the shower, trying to remind myself I have to make it a quick one, I lose myself for a minute in thoughts of Rhiannon. I’m sure I dreamt of her. I wonder: If I started dreaming when I was in Justin’s body, did he continue the dream? Will he wake up thinking sweetly of her?

Or is that just another kind of dream on my part?

“Leslie! Come on!”

I get out of the shower, dry off and get dressed quickly. Leslie is not, I can tell, a particularly popular girl. The few photos of friends she has around seem half-hearted, and her clothing choices are more like a thirteen-year-old’s than a sixteen-year-old’s.

I head into the kitchen and the grandmother glares at me.

“Don’t forget your clarinet,” she warns.

“I won’t,” I mumble.

There’s a boy at the table giving me an evil look. Leslie’s brother, I assume – and then confirm it. Owen. A senior. My ride to school.

I have gotten very used to the fact that most mornings in most homes are exactly the same. Stumbling out of the bed. Stumbling into the shower. Mumbling over the breakfast table. Or, if the parents are still asleep, the tiptoe out of the house. The only way to keep it interesting is to look for the variations.

This morning’s variation comes care of Owen, who lights up a joint the minute we get into the car. I’m assuming this is part of his morning routine, so I make sure Leslie doesn’t seem as surprised as I am.

Still, Owen hazards a “Don’t say a word” about three minutes into the ride. I stare out the window. Two minutes later, he says, “Look, I don’t need your judgment, okay?” The joint is done by then; it doesn’t make him any mellower.

I prefer to be an only child. In the long term, I can see how siblings could be helpful in life – someone to share family secrets with, someone of your own generation who knows if your memories are right or not, someone who sees you at eight and eighteen and forty-eight all at once, and doesn’t mind. I understand that. But in the short term, siblings are at best a hassle and at worst a terror. Most of the abuse I have suffered in my admittedly unusual life has come from brothers and sisters, with older brothers and older sisters being, by and large, the worst offenders. At first, I was naïve, and assumed that brothers and sisters were natural allies, instant companions. And sometimes, the context would allow this to happen – if we were on a family trip, for example, or if it was a lazy Sunday where teaming up with me was my sibling’s only form of entertainment. But on ordinary days, the rule is competition, not collaboration. There are times when I wonder whether brothers and sisters are, in fact, the ones who sense that something is off with whatever person I’m inhabiting, and move to take advantage. When I was eight, an older sister told me we were going to run away together – then abandoned the “together” part when we got to the train station, leaving me to wander there for hours, too scared to ask for help – scared that she would find out and berate me for ending our game. As a boy, I’ve had brothers – both older and younger – wrestle me, hit me, kick me, bite me, shove me, and call me more names than I could ever catalog.

The best I can hope for is a quiet sibling. At first I have Owen pegged as one of those. In the car, it appears I am wrong. But then, once we get out at school, it appears I am right again. With other kids around, he retreats into invisibility, keeping his head down as he makes his way inside, leaving me completely behind. No goodbye, no have-a-nice-day. Just a quick glance to see that my door is closed before he locks the car.

“What are you looking at?” a voice asks from over my left shoulder as I watch him enter school alone.

I turn around and do some serious accessing.

Carrie. Best friend since fourth grade.

“Just my brother.”

“Why? He’s such a waste of space.”

Here’s the strange thing: I am fine thinking the same words myself, but hearing them come out of Carrie’s mouth makes me feel defensive.