My friends gather around me. In school. After school. On the phone at night.
Will effortlessly joins our circle. He and Preston look so happy together. And I’m happy for them. I am. But I’m also angry, because Will can join us so effortlessly, in a way A never could.
Nobody mentions my Mystery Man anymore. Rebecca must have told them not to.
Part of me still expects him to show up. Expects the universe to send him into the classroom next to mine. Or into Rebecca’s body. Or Steve’s. Just to say hello. Just to be near.
But I can’t think that way. I know I can’t.
I find myself looking into people’s eyes more than I ever did before. And I realize, that’s where we stop being a certain gender or color. Just look right into the center of the eye.
I know I haven’t answered him. It weighs on me. I know I’m not being fair. There’s no point in spending all this time thinking about A without answering. I have to be honest and clear about where it can go. That’s all. That’s it.
First thing Thursday morning, I write.
I want to see you, but I’m not sure if we should do that. I want to hear about what’s going on, but I’m afraid that will only start everything again. I love you—I do—but I am afraid of making that love too important. Because you’re always going to leave me, A. We can’t deny it. You’re always going to leave.
R
All through the day, there’s no response. And I think, fine, I deserve that.
But it’s still disappointing.
Then, Friday at lunch, a response.
I understand. Can we please meet at the bookstore this afternoon, after school?
A
To which I say:
Of course.
R
I’m nervous as I drive over. Everything’s changed, and nothing’s changed. This is going to be hard, but it feels so easy. Mostly, I want to see him. Talk to him. Have him be in my life.
All the other obstacles have fallen away. I am even starting to believe, deep in my heart, that if I told my friends the truth, if they met A the way I met A, on multiple days, they would believe it, too.
The only obstacle, really, is his life.
Which I know is too big an obstacle. But in the rush to see him, it doesn’t seem as big as maybe it should.
I get there first. I scan the café and know that none of these people could be him. If he were here, he’d be looking for me. He’d know when I arrived.
So I sit down. I wait. And the minute he walks through the door, I know. Like there’s a shiver of lightning between us. Today he’s this thin Asian guy wearing a blue T-shirt with Cookie Monster on it. When A sees me, his smile is wider than Cookie Monster’s.
“Hey,” he says.
And this time I say it back gladly. “Hey.”
So here we are. I’m trying to remind myself to not fall back into it, to not start thinking it’s possible. But with him right here, that’s hard.
“I have an idea,” he says.
“What?”
He smiles again. “Let’s pretend this is the first time we’ve ever met. Let’s pretend you were here to get a book, and I happened to bump into you. We struck up a conversation. I like you. You like me. Now we’re sitting down to coffee. It feels right. You don’t know that I switch bodies every day. I don’t know about your ex or anything else. We’re just two people meeting for the first time.”
The lie we want to believe. That feels dangerous.
“But why?” I ask.
“So we don’t have to talk about everything else. So we can just be with each other. Enjoy it.”
I have to tell him, “I don’t see the point—”
“No past. No future. Just present. Give it a chance.”
I want to. I know I want to. So I will. I know it’s not as easy as that, but it can at least start by being as easy as that.
“It’s very nice to meet you,” I tell him. I feel like I’m a bad actress in a bad movie.
But he likes it. “It’s very nice to meet you, as well,” he says. “Where should we go?”
“You decide,” I tell him. “What’s your favorite place?”
He thinks about it for a second. Whether he’s inside his own thoughts or this boy’s thoughts, I don’t know. His smile gets wider.
“I know just the place,” he says. “But first we’ll need groceries.”
“Well, luckily, there’s a food store down the street.”
“My, how lucky we are!”
I laugh.
“What?” he asks.
“ ‘My, how lucky we are!’ You’re such a goofball.”
“I am happy to be your ball of goof.”
“You sound like Preston.”
“Who’s Preston?”
He really doesn’t know. How could he? I’ve never told him.
So as we walk over to the grocery store, I introduce him to all of my friends. He knows Rebecca, and vaguely remembers Steve and Stephanie, but I tell him more about them, and about Preston and Ben and even Will, too. It’s weird, because I know I can’t ask him the same questions back. But he seems okay with that.
Once we get to the grocery store, A says we’re going to go down all the aisles. “You never know what you might miss,” he tells me.
“And what are we shopping for?” I ask.
“Dinner,” he says. “Definitely dinner. And as we do, keep telling me stories.”
He asks me about pets, and I tell him more about Swizzle, this evil bunny rabbit we had who would escape his cage and sleep on our faces. It was terrifying. I ask him if he had a favorite pet, and he tells me that one day he had a pet ferret that seemed to understand it had a guest in the house, so it made his life as difficult as possible—but also gave him something to do because no one else was home during the day. When we get to the produce aisle, he tells me a story about this time at camp where he got hit in the eye by a flying greased watermelon. I tell him I can’t remember being injured by any fruit, although there was a good few years when I made my mom cut up apples before I’d eat them, because someone at school had told me about psychos who put razor blades inside.
We get to the cereal aisle, which isn’t really going to help us for dinner. But A stops there anyway and asks me for my life story told in cereals.
“Okay,” I say, getting what he means. I begin by holding up a cylinder of Quaker oatmeal. “It all starts with this. My mother barely eats breakfast, but my dad always has oatmeal. So I decided I liked oatmeal, too. Especially with bananas. It wasn’t until I was seven or eight that I realized how gross it was.” I pick up a box of Frosted Flakes. “This is where the battle began. Rebecca’s mom let her have Frosted Flakes, and like everyone else, I’d seen the commercials for them a zillion times. I begged my mother to let me eat them. She said no. So I did what any law-abiding girl would do—I stole a box from Rebecca’s house and kept it in my room. The only problem was, I was afraid my mom would catch me putting the bowls in the dishwasher. So I kept them in my room. And they began to stink. She threw a holy fit, but my dad was there and he said he didn’t see the harm in Frosted Flakes if that’s what I wanted. The punch line being, of course, that once I had them, they disappointed me. They got so soggy so fast. So my mom and I reached a compromise.” I walk him over to the Frosted Cheerios. “Now, I’m not sure why Frosted Cheerios are any better than Frosted Flakes, but my mom seemed to think so. Which brings us to our grand finale.” I make a production of choosing from the ninety kinds of granola before landing on my favorite cinnamon-raisin kind. “In truth, this probably has just as much sugar in it as anything frosted, but I have at least the illusion of health. And the raisins are satisfying. And it doesn’t get soggy right away.”
“I used to love how the Frosted Flakes turned the milk blue,” A says.
“Yeah! When did that stop being cool and start being gross?”
“Probably the same time that I realized there was not, in fact, any fruit in Froot Loops.”
“Or any honey in Honeycomb.”
“Or any chocolate in Count Chocula.”
“At least the Frosted Flakes had flakes in them.”
“And frostedness.”
“Yes. And frostedness.”
Talking like this, I am forgetting that this isn’t A. I am forgetting that we’re not on a regular date.
“Moving on…,” I say, taking us to the next aisle, and the one after.
We pick up a ridiculous amount of food. As we’re nearing the checkout, I realize there’s no way I am going to be getting home when my parents are expecting me.
“I should call my mom and tell her I’m eating at Rebecca’s,” I tell A.
“Tell her you’re staying over,” he says.
My phone is in my hand, but I don’t know what to do with it. “Really?”
“Really.”
Staying over. I think about the cabin. About what happened. I mean, what didn’t happen. And how that felt.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I say.
“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
I want to trust him. But he also doesn’t know what it was like. And he might have the wrong idea of what a night might lead to.
“You know how I feel,” I say.
“I do. But still, I want you to trust me. I’m not going to hurt you. I will never hurt you.”
Okay. I look into his eyes and I feel like he knows. There’s a plan—there’s definitely a plan. But it’s not going to be a repeat of the cabin. He knows what he’s doing, and I do trust that.
I call my mother and tell her I’m at Rebecca’s and will be staying there. She’s annoyed, but I can deal with that.
The harder part is calling Rebecca.
“I need you to cover for me,” I say. “If my mom calls for any reason, tell her I’m over.”
“Where are you?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
“I am. I promise I’ll tell you about it later—I can’t right now. But I’m okay. I might not even be out the whole night. I just want to make sure I’m covered.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Really. It’s good.”
“Okay. But I expect a full explanation this time. Not your usual evasion.”
“I promise. I’ll tell you everything.”
She says to have a good time. I think it’s remarkable that she’s trusting me. But she is.
“You’ll tell her you met a boy,” A says once I’ve hung up.
“A boy I just met?”
“Yeah. A boy you’ve just met.”
It’s strange to think of that conversation. No longer a Mystery Man. Just a boy.
If only it were that easy.
I follow him in my car. This is the moment I could decide not to go. All I need to do is turn the steering wheel. All I need to do is return to the highway.
But I keep going.
His name is Alexander Lin and his parents are away for the weekend. A tells me both things at once.
“Alexander,” I say. “That’s easy enough to remember.”
“Why?” he asks.
I thought it was obvious. “Because it begins with A.”
He laughs, surprised. I guess it wasn’t as obvious, from the inside.
The house is a very nice house. The kitchen is about twice the size of our kitchen, and the refrigerator, when we open it, is already pretty full. Alexander’s parents did not leave him to starve.
“Why did we bother?” I ask. I can barely find space to put away what we bought.
“Because I didn’t notice what was in here this morning. And I wanted to make sure we had exactly what we desired.”
“Do you know how to cook?”
“Not really. You?”
This is going to be interesting. “Not really.”
“I guess we’ll figure it out. But first, there’s something I want to show you.”
“Okay.”
He reaches for my hand, and I let him take it. We walk like this through the house—up the stairs, to what is clearly Alexander’s bedroom.
It’s amazing. First of all, there are sticky notes everywhere—yellow squares, pink squares, blue squares, green squares. And on each of them, there’s a quote. I don’t believe in fairy tales, but I believe in you. And Let all the dreamers wake the nation. And Love me less, but love me for a long time. I could spend hours reading his room. In a field, I am the absence of field. —Mark Strand. Most of the quotes are in one handwriting, but there’s other handwriting, too. His friends. This is something he shares with his friends.
There are pictures of these friends, too, and the way they arrange themselves looks like the way my friends would arrange themselves. Not Justin. Never Justin, who didn’t like having his picture taken. But Rebecca and Preston and the others. They would like it here. There’s a lime-green couch to hang out on, and guitars to strum, and what looks like the full collection of Calvin and Hobbes. I look at the records he has leaning against the record player. Bands I don’t know but like the sound of. God Help the Girl. We Were Promised Jetpacks. Kings of Convenience.
I read more of the sticky notes. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. I check out the books on his shelves. Most of them have sticky notes sticking out—pages to be collected, words to be remembered after they’ve been forgotten.
I like it. I like it all.
I turn to A, and know he likes it, too. If he could have a room, this would be it. How cool that he’s found it. And how depressing that he’ll have to leave it in a few hours.
But I’m not going to think about that. I’m going to think about now.
I see an almost-finished pad of sticky notes on Alexander’s desk, and put it in my pocket, along with a pen.
“Time for dinner,” A says.
He takes my hand again. We head back into the world—but not too far into it, not too far away from this.
I find some cookbooks. We choose, by and large, to ignore them.
“Improvise,” A says. And I think, yes, that’s what we’re doing. Improvising. Living by instincts. It’s a big kitchen, but we make it feel like a small space. We fill it with music from Alexander’s iPod and steam from the boiling pots and smells as different as basil picked from the stem and garlic sautéed against a flame. There’s no plan here, just ingredients. I am sweating along and singing along and I am not stressed, because even if none of it ends up edible, it’s still worth it just to be putting it together. I think about my parents, and how they’ve missed this sensation of working together, or putting your hands on the back of the person as he stands at the stove, or having one person start the sauce but the other person take it over without a word. We are a team of two. And since it’s not a competition, we’ve already won.
In the end we have a kale salad, garlic bread, a huge pasta primavera, a quinoa and apricot salad, and a pan of lemon squares.
“Not bad,” A says. And what I want to tell him is that now I understand why people want to share a life with someone else. I see what all the fuss is about. It’s not about sex or being in a couple when you hang out with other couples. It’s not for ego gratification or fear of loneliness. It’s about this, whatever this is. And the only thing wrong with it right now is that I’m sharing it with someone who’s bound to leave.
I don’t say any of this. Because the last part makes all the rest of it harder to say.
“Should I set the table?” I ask instead. The Lins have a very nice dining room table, and a feast like this seems fit for a very nice dining room table.
A shakes his head. “No. I’m taking you to my favorite place, remember?”
He looks through the cupboards until he finds two trays. The food we’ve made barely manages to fit on them. Then A finds a bunch of candles and takes them along, too.
“Here,” he says, handing me one of the trays. Then he leads me out the back door.
“Where are we going?” I ask. I don’t even have my jacket. I hope we’re not going far.
“Look up,” he says.
At first, all I see is the tree. Then I look closer and see the tree house.
“Nice,” I say, finding the ladder.
“There’s a pulley system for the trays. I’ll go up and drop it down.”
These parents have thought of everything.
As I balance the trays, A heads up the ladder and sends a platform down. I’m not sure how balanced it’s going to be, but I put one of the trays on, and A manages to pull it up without anything falling off. We repeat this for the second tray, and then it’s my turn to go up the ladder.
It’s like something I’ve read about in a book. It never occurred to me that kids could actually have tree houses in their backyards.
There’s an open door at the top, and I climb right through. A has lit some of the candles, so the air flickers as I pull myself inside. I look around and see what’s basically a log cabin stuck in the air. There isn’t much furniture, but there’s a guitar and some notebooks, a small bookshelf with an old encyclopedia on it. A has put the trays in the middle of the floor, since there isn’t any table and there aren’t any chairs.
“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” A says.
“Yeah.”
“It’s all his. His parents don’t come up here.”
“I love it.”
I take the plates, napkins, and silverware from one of the trays and set the table that isn’t a table. When I’m done, A serves—some of everything for each of us. As we sit across from each other, we comment on the food—it’s all turned out better than it has any reason to be. The sauce on the pasta primavera tastes like a spice I can’t quite identify—I ask A what it is, and he doesn’t remember. He thinks I might have put it in. I don’t remember, either. It was all just part of the improvisation.
There’s a carafe of water on one of the trays, and that’s all we need. We could have wine. We could have vodka. We could have Cherry Cokes. It would all be the same. We’re drunk on candlelight, intoxicated by air. The food is our music. The walls are our warmth.
As the first candles diminish, A lights more. There isn’t brightness, but there’s a glow. I’ve just taken my first bite of a lemon square, its tartness still on my tongue. I catch A watching me and assume I have some powdered sugar on my face. I move to wipe it off. He smiles, still looking.
“What?” I ask.
He leans over and kisses me.
“That,” he says.
“Oh,” I say. “That.”
“Yes, that.”
We hang there, waiting for the kiss to leave the room, to float off into the night.
I have no idea what I want.
No. Not true. I know exactly what I want. I’m just not sure if I should want it.
“Dessert,” I say. “You need to try a lemon square.”
He smiles. It’s okay to let the kiss leave the room.
Already, I feel others knocking on the door.
I look at his lips. The powdered sugar on his lips.
I remind myself they’re not really his lips.
I’m not sure I care.
When we’re done, I gather up the dishes. I put everything on the trays, and then I push the trays aside. We’ve been sitting too far from each other. I want us so much closer.
I move right next to him. He puts his arm around me, and I take the pad of sticky notes out of my pocket, along with the pen. Without saying a word, I draw a heart on the top sticky note, then put it on Alexander’s heart.
“There,” I say to A.
He looks down at it. Then back up at me.
“I have to tell you something,” he says.
For a moment, I think this will be the I love you that’s even greater than the others. If he says it, I will respond.
But instead he says, “I have to tell you what’s been going on.”
Instead of leaning in to him, I move so I can see his eyes.
“What?” I ask. Irrationally, I wonder if he’s met someone else.
“Do you remember Nathan Daldry? The boy I was at Steve’s party?”
“Of course.”
“I left him on the side of the road that night. And when he woke up—he knew something was wrong. He suspected something wasn’t right. So he told a lot of people. And one of the people who found out—he calls himself Reverend Poole. But he’s not Reverend Poole. He’s someone in Reverend Poole’s body.”
“This is what you were talking about when you emailed and said you thought you weren’t the only one.”
A nods. “Yes. But that’s not all of it. Whoever’s inside Poole is like me, but not entirely like me. He says he can control it. He says there’s a way to stay in a person’s body.”
I try to wrap my mind around what he’s saying. “Who told you this? Did you email him? How do you know he’s real?”
“I saw him. I met him. He used Nathan to set a trap, and he almost got me. He says we’re the same, but we’re not the same. I don’t know how to explain it—I don’t think he uses the same rules as I do. I don’t think he cares about the people he inhabits. I don’t think he respects what we are.”
“But you believe him? When he says you can stay?”
“I think so. And I think there might be others, too. On the Internet—I think I’ve found others. Or at least, other people who were inhabited, like Nathan or you. You at least know what happened. And Nathan knows now. But most of them never know. And if Poole’s right, there may be others who’ve been taken over permanently. Someone like me could go into them, and then not leave.”
“So you can stay?” I ask, not believing this is what he’s telling me. Suddenly anything is possible. We’re possible. “Are you saying you can stay?”
“Yes,” he answers. “And no.”
It can’t be both. I don’t want to hear it’s both.
“Which one? What do you mean?”
“There might be a way to stay,” he tells me. “But I can’t. I’ll never be able to stay.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d be killing them, Rhiannon. When you take over someone’s life, they’re gone forever.”
No. He can’t be saying this. He can’t be saying it’s possible and impossible at the same time.
I can’t deal with it. I can’t. I have to stand up. I can’t be sitting on the floor in the middle of a tree house having this conversation with him.
Once I’m up, I start to boil over. “You can’t do this!” I’m telling him. “You can’t swoop in, bring me here, give me all this—and then say it can’t work. That’s cruel, A. Cruel.”
“I know,” he says. “That’s why this is a first date. That’s why this is the first time we’ve ever met.”
Not fair. This is not pretend. This is life.
“How can you say that?” I ask. “How can you erase everything else?”
He stands up and comes over to me. Even though I’m mad, even though I don’t understand what he’s doing, he wraps his arms around me. It’s not what I want, and I try to tell him I don’t want it. But then I feel the shelter of his closeness and I want it, and I stop trying to pull away.
“He’s a good guy,” A whispers in my ear. “He might even be a great guy. And today’s the day you first met. Today’s your first date. He’s going to remember being in the bookstore. He’s going to remember the first time he saw you, and how he was drawn to you, not just because you’re beautiful, but because he could see your strength. He could see how much you want to be a part of the world. He’ll remember talking with you, how easy it was, how engaging. He’ll remember not wanting it to end, and asking you if you wanted to do something else. He’ll remember your asking him his favorite place, and he’ll remember thinking about here, and wanting to show it to you. The grocery store, the stories in the aisles, the first time you saw his room—that will all be there, and I won’t have to change a single thing. His pulse is my heartbeat. The pulse is the same. I know he will understand you. You have the same kind of heart.”
No. This is not what I want. Can’t he see what I want?
“But what about you?” I ask, my voice stained by my sadness. I can’t keep it away from him.
“You’ll find the things in him that you find in me,” he answers. “Without the complications.”
He says it like it’s easy.
It’s not easy.
“I can’t just switch like that,” I tell him.
His arms draw me closer. “I know. He’ll have to prove it to you. Every day, he’ll have to prove he’s worthy of you. And if he doesn’t, that’s it. But I think he will.”
A’s giving up. Whether or not I want him to, he’s giving up.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“Because I have to go, Rhiannon. For real this time. I have to go far away. There are things I need to find out. And I can’t keep stepping into your life. You need something more than that.”
I know this makes sense. But I don’t want to make sense. I don’t want anything to make sense.
“So this is goodbye?” I ask him.
“It’s goodbye to some things,” he says. “And hello to others.”
This is where I turn.
This is where I stop being held and decide to hold.
This is where I loosen myself from his arms, but only to unfold my own arms and welcome him there.
I am not saying yes, but I am agreeing that there’s no point in me saying no.
I hold him with everything I have. I hold him with so much that he will have to remember it. He will have to remember me, wherever he is.
“I love you,” he says. “Like I’ve never loved anyone before.”
“You always say that. But don’t you realize it’s the same for me? I’ve never loved anyone like this, either.”
“But you will. You will again.”
This is where it stops. This is where it begins.
Every moment. Every day.
This is where it stops. This is where it begins.
I haven’t been looking at the clock, but now I look at the clock.
It’s almost midnight.
Where it stops. Where it begins.
“I want to fall asleep next to you,” he whispers to me.
This is my last wish.
I nod. I’m afraid to open my mouth. I am afraid I will not be able to say what he wants me to say.
We leave the trays in the tree house. It doesn’t matter, if this is what he’s going to remember anyway. Climbing down the ladder. Running back to the house. Heading to his room.
We will remember this together. All three of us.
I want to stop time. I know I cannot stop time.
Holding hands. Then, inside the room, stopping to take off our shoes. Nothing else, just shoes. I crawl into the bed. He turns off the lights.
Only the glow of the clock. He gets into the bed next to me, lying on his back. I curl into him. Touch his cheek. Turn his head.
Kiss him and kiss him and kiss him.
“I want you to remember that tomorrow,” I say when we come up for air.
“I’ll remember everything,” he tells me.
“So will I,” I promise.
One more kiss. One last kiss. Then I close my eyes. I steady my breathing. I wait.
If I could hold on to him, I would.
Lord, if I could hold on to him, I would.
I do not sleep. I wish I could sleep. But I cannot sleep.
Instead, I lie there, eyes closed, safe in the dark.
I feel him reach over and touch my heart.
I hear him say goodbye.
I feel him close his eyes. I feel him fall.
I open my eyes. I turn.
I look for the moment. I want to see the change.
But instead I find a beautiful someone, beautifully asleep. Left behind by another beautiful someone, now also asleep in some other house, in some other bed.
I want to wake him. I want to ask him if he’s still there.
But I don’t wake him, because I don’t want Alexander to ask me why I’m crying.
It isn’t until I’m turned back to the wall, until I’ve decided to will myself to sleep, that I feel the sticky note on my shirt.
The heart I gave him.
He’s taken it, and given it back to me.