Do you ever wish you were someone else?
I hear people say this, but I’ve never once wished I was someone else.
I just wish I were me living in someone else’s life.
Because it’s not me that I hate so much, it’s the stuff surrounding me. Like all those bags of groceries full of crap. Just so much stuff that came out of nowhere. That’s what my life is right now.
I don’t want to be Ray Spencer, the homecoming king who graduated and I’ll probably never see again. I don’t want to be him, but I sometimes wouldn’t mind his life.
Parents and friends and yes, Mother, a drama-free life.
Maybe I would have less drama if I hadn’t moved to this dramatic little town.
Ever think about that, Mom?
The overly dramatic sixteen-year-old is on his motorcycle and driving to get away.
To maybe come along a side road that takes him to another life, another place, a place called hope and happiness. To a place called home.
But I keep driving, and that road never shows up.
Mom had the right idea about going sightseeing. That’s exactly what I’m doing in Asheville now. I’m browsing in a Best Buy store when I think of something else I miss about living in Illinois.
Apple stores.
It’s not that I ever did a lot of shopping at them, but I used to go there with my father. Back in the days when he actually spent most of his time working at the law firm. Maybe he thought of it as a father-son outing, but it was really just an excuse for him to go check out the latest Apple gizmos. The store itself looked a lot like an Apple computer: white and futuristic with that logo front and center. It certainly didn’t look like any of the other stores surrounding it. But I guess that was the point.
Thinking about those half-hour trips to the Apple store makes me think of my father.
And of his apology after he found God.
I’m sorry for neglecting my duties as a father, Chris.
I was fifteen and had already spent most of my days as a son living under his roof. Even if he and Mom didn’t divorce, I’d only have a few more years to see him suddenly try to step up to the plate and assume his duties.
I didn’t say anything at the time, good or bad. I just nodded and felt a bit embarrassed for both of us. The man was on his knees as if he’d done something criminal or something. The man—this guy who’d always been so controlled and so tough and so unemotional—was on his knees, in tears, asking for my forgiveness.
Looking at the latest iPhones at the Best Buy store, I’m thinking of my father’s tear-filled apology.
I try and shake the thought as I play with the phone. I think of Lily and Harris texting each other. I think of all the other thousands of times in the past year when it would have been nice to own a cell phone.
At least it would provide a little temporary escape.
“Picking up a new phone?”
The voice chills like a screech on a chalkboard. I look up and see Jeremiah Marsh standing at the counter next to me.
For a moment I’m stuck back at the falls, facing him down in some kind of possessed rage, forgetting who I was and what I was doing as I took the knife and stabbed him.
But of course you didn’t really do that, Chris, because if you had, how could he be standing here?
“I love my iPhone, I have to tell you,” Marsh says, showing me his in a black case. “Though it is a bit addictive.”
I look around us to make sure that I’m still here in this Best Buy, surrounded by others.
I haven’t seen him since the moment I walked into graduation and saw him speaking on the platform.
A voice from the grave.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, Chris,” he says. His pearly white smile strangely seems to match his bleached-out hair.
I can’t think of anything to say. A part of me wants to bolt, but another part can’t move. And that includes my lungs and my heart.
“How’s your summer going?”
“What do you want?”
He looks perplexed, as if he just can’t quite understand my attitude at the moment.
“Well, to be perfectly honest, I came here for a CD. But that’s the thing about technology—it just keeps changing. I remember when Best Buy had thousands of CDs. But not anymore. Everything is a download these days. Everything is electronic. And it’s a bit sad, because I believe there’s a really impersonal nature about that. People don’t ever have to leave their rooms to buy or sell or communicate. So what does that ultimately mean?”
I can’t tell if there’s a point to what he’s saying or if he’s just talking to sound deep.
He glances at me with those eyes that feel about as warm as the flatline on a heartbeat monitor.
“I keep thinking we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot, Chris.”
He says this as if—as if there’s actually a chance that there could be any kind of normal relationship between us.
“I can understand your feelings,” Marsh says. “I’ve been there.”
I don’t think he understands anything about me.
“I was sixteen once. But then again, you’ve got a birthday coming up, don’t you? This summer, right?”
I nod. I can’t help it. This is surreal.
I saw you drop over the falls. I saw you fall to your death.
“What if I made a peace offering?” He points at the iPhone. “How about I give you one of these as a token of our starting over? A clean slate. Let the past stay in the past.”
An iPhone? He seriously wants to buy me an iPhone?
That wouldn’t cover one strand on Jocelyn’s head.
Perhaps he can see my reaction from the flushed feeling my face suddenly gets. He smiles, so calm, so smug, so pastorlike.
But I no longer think of him as a pastor. Not anymore.
“Chris—let me ask you something.”
“No.”
“Just wait. Please. Then I’ll let you go. You’ve been here—how long?”
“Since October.”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “Of course. Don’t you understand—I know the exact date you and your mother came to Solitary. I know pretty much everything about you, Chris.”
“Okay.”
“But you still don’t know the reasons why I know about you. Aren’t you mildly curious?”
Anger is bubbling inside of me.
I spent six months being curious until that curiosity killed the cat. Until my nine lives were shot and I was sent into sweet denial.
“You continue to fascinate me, Chris. You really do. I’ve been wrong about certain things. That’s been my fault. But I just want to say this. What if you didn’t have to just look at that phone? What if you didn’t have to wait and wonder if you could ever own something like that?”
He’s talking in his pastor voice, so soft and sweet, like some kind of poisoned candy.
“What if you could have anything—and I mean anything—your heart desires?”
The way he says anything makes a wave of bumps cover my skin.
I feel locked in this store. Locked in place. Locked in fear and frustration. I want to lash out at the man across from me, but I already tried that. And look where it got me.
I think of the “anything” he could give me. I picture Jocelyn. I picture the way she looked when I found her last New Year’s Eve all bloodied and gone.
“Clean slate,” he says again, as if reading my mind. “Chris—she was not part of the plan.”
“Who?”
“You know who. The reason you’re still so angry. The reason you still can’t let go.”
I shake my head. How can he read my mind? Is he reading my mind?
“A mistake, for sure. But I never thought—I didn’t foresee that happening. But that was yesterday, and this is today.”
He’s still talking like a man speaking in another language, making no sense whatsoever to me. Slowly he reaches out his hand and holds out his palm. As if he’s holding something in it.
“If you let it go, Chris—if you let her go—and if you just let things happen, you will see.”
“See what?” I ask.
“See what you can become. See the person you can be.”
“I don’t—I can’t—I don’t want to be you.”
He smiles and puts one hand in the other. “That’s the thing, Chris. The thing you don’t understand. I know you don’t want to be me. But I’ve always wanted to be you. To be the you you’re meant to be. And I mean it when I say that if you just … let … it … go, then the world will be yours.”
“The what?” I laugh. This is crazy. “If I do what? What do I have to do?”
“Just ask, Chris. Just ask.”