Six Earlier Days Read online

  “What are we doing?” I say.

  “Yes,” Nicole says, her foot moving lightly over my ankle. “What are we doing?”

  I look away—I can’t do this while looking at her—and say, quietly, “I think we’re doing homework.”

  She sits up, moves her foot away. I move my eyes back to the textbook.

  I am telling myself it would be worse to say yes to her now and then have Paul take it away tomorrow. I am telling myself that if I make it casual enough, we can make it through the next hour, and that the conversation can be revisited tomorrow, or another day, when Paul is back. I am lying to myself that a storm can be put back inside a person, bottled up and preserved. I know I am lying to myself, but I also choose to believe it.

  My instinct is that he doesn’t want to kiss her, that he’s never wanted to kiss her. But I wonder if that’s his detachment or mine.

  We last five more minutes in that room. Then Nicole says she has to go downstairs for a second, and doesn’t come back up for a half hour. When she’s back, I want to ask her if she’s okay. But I have no idea whether that will make things better or worse. So I stay quiet, and then ten minutes later I say I have to go. She doesn’t protest.

  I can’t just leave it like this. I can’t. So after my bag is packed, after she makes no move to walk me to the front door, I linger in her room for a second, then say, “I’m sorry. I just need to think. I can’t think right now. And I need to.”

  It’s not enough. I can see that in her face. It’s not. The only hope I have is that over time it will grow to be enough. Or that whatever step Paul takes next will make it enough. Once I’m gone.

  As I walk home, I stop accessing and try to navigate by instinct. Where do I think I should go? Which way is Paul’s home? I try to sense where the body wants me to be, which street feels more familiar, which direction feels inherently right.

  I get horribly lost.

  Day 5931

  In all of the bodies I’ve been in, in all of the lives I’ve borrowed for a day, one thing has always been consistent:

  Everyone wakes up tired.

  In truth, most of us go through the day tired, as if all of the information swirling through the air, all of the thoughts battling within our mind, leave us in a state of perpetual exhaustion. I don’t know if it was always like this, but I’m pretty sure it’s more like this now.

  I wake up, and I’m tired. This is not a surprise. I am also in the body and life of a sixteen-year-old boy named Mark. Yesterday I was in the body and life of a sixteen-year-old boy named Chase. For most people, this would be a surprise. But I am strangely used to it. This is just the way my life goes.

  I access Mark’s mind, situate myself within his day. I’m only here until midnight. I try to get the basic facts, not the details. The details can be interesting, but they can also distract me into attachment. The worst thing in the world would be to pretend to know the people whose lives I step through. They cannot be homes to me. They must be hotel rooms.

  Mark’s friend Sam is going to pick him up in a half-hour, so I have to shower and get dressed. Everything in his room is compulsively in place—I open one of his drawers and find the shirts folded with department-store precision, each corner of one shirt matching the corresponding corner of the shirt below it. I don’t really know if this is the result of military neatness or OCD—whatever part of Mark feels compelled to fold shirts this way has been banished for the day by my own personality. Because I try not to leave traces, I will have to live my life neatly today. Over the years, I have learned how to stand against the easy temptations of disorder. I’ll just have to do it more with Mark.

  His toiletries are arranged in a very specific way, and I make sure to replace them in exactly the same configuration when I’m done. His pajamas get folded and put under the pillow, because I don’t know what would happen if someone came into the room during the day and saw them uncharacteristically sprawled on the floor.

  I even make the bed.

  One of the hardest things to know about people is how they move. I’ve grown very accustomed to taking on other bodies as my own, but I’m never sure how the real owners wear them. I can access memories, yes, but it’s not as if we have memories of the ways we walk or the ways we gesture. Our memories filter these facts out. Unless we are hurt in some way, our memories pretty much disregard our bodies. We don’t remember the way we like to sit. It is unlikely, in a lineup, that we’d be able to identify the back of our hand.

  As I walk to Sam’s car—as I see Sam watching me—I try to make it feel natural, so it will seem natural. The music from the car is loud, and Sam is playing the steering wheel like it was made for percussion. The whole time, though, he’s facing me, watching me make my way to him.

  This is their routine. This has to be their morning routine. I quickly access Mark’s mind to see how it goes.

  “Good morning, super-friend,” Sam says when I get in the car, because this is what he always says when Mark gets in the car.

  “Good morning, arch-amigo,” I say back, because this is always Mark’s response.

  Sam smiles at this and pulls away from the curb.

  I’m still not entirely awake. But if I’m not jumping into the day, I can at least let myself settle into it.

  Speaking of rituals: All high schools are pretty much the same. The predictability makes it much easier for me.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been in this school before, but it’s hard to tell. The hallways all look the same. The morning bells all sound the same. The announcements are all read in the same monotone.

  Sam doesn’t leave my side, and soon enough, some of our other friends join us. We’re all on the basketball team, so we’re a tall crowd—Sam being the shortest, and Sam being the talker. Mark, I sense, is one of the quieter ones. People don’t really look to him for conversation.

  The books in Mark’s locker are meticulously stacked. I am not surprised to open one of his notebooks and find tight, precise handwriting, always in the same color ink.

  “Come on,” Sam says. “We don’t want to be late. Hartshorn will tear us a new one.”

  I am grateful that he wants to lead. It saves me the trouble of having to figure out where I need to be. Even when we get to math class, I know exactly where to sit, because there are two empty chairs next to each other, and the way Sam heads straight for one makes me know I should head straight for the other.

  I assume that Mark and Sam have been friends forever. But during class, I access some memories and find out that Sam only moved to town last year and met Mark through the team. They’ve been pretty inseparable since. I don’t know how Mark feels about this—one of the rules of inhabiting a body is that you can access the facts, but not interpretations.

  Throughout math, Sam passes me notes. Most of them are cartoons—funny caricatures of Mr. Hartshorn and other people in the class. I’m probably supposed to reciprocate, pass something back. But instead I let him see me smile, let him see me laugh. This seems to be enough. I’m afraid to draw caricatures myself—it’s one thing if you know the people, but capturing them purely by sight, without any knowledge of who they are, can be dangerous. The wrong things can come out when you view a body as just a body, a face as just a face.

  I study the people in the class, in a somewhat dreamy math-soundtracked daze. When my eye returns to Sam, I can see that he’s noticed, that he’s curious.

  The next note he passes me asks, See anything you like?

  I write back, Just lost in the clouds.

  I have no idea what Mark will remember from this day. Mr. Hartshorn is talking about something I already know, but that doesn’t mean Mark will automatically learn it. So I remind myself to focus. I try to leave notes behind. Not about the fact that I’ve been here—I don’t want Mark to know that. But I don’t want the day to be missing, either. I want him to retain the knowledge he otherwise would have gained.

  The classes I have with Sam are simple—I just follow him in a
nd sit in the seats that have been left for us. For the classes when we’re apart, I have to access Mark’s mind and figure out where to go, where to sit, what the assignment is. Information-related exhaustion sets in again.

  I can breathe easier at lunch, though. Sam meets me at my locker and teases me when the book I put back inside is out of order.

  “That’s not like you, Mark, to be so messy.”

  The book is, at most, an inch out of line.

  “I guess I’m just in a rebellious mood,” I say.

  “You better be careful. One minute it’s your locker, and the next thing you know, your socks won’t match.”

  I feign horror. Sam puts his arm around my shoulder to comfort me.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I know how upsetting that image must have been to you. Like genocide, only on your toes.”

  “It’ll never happen,” I reply. “Promise me it’ll never happen.”

  He squeezes my shoulder. “Not even if I have to pick out your socks myself.” With that, we head into the cafeteria and find our World of Boys. Even though I’m used to it by now, I’m still fascinated by how often guys split off into their own World of Boys at lunch, and girls head into their World of Girls. It’s such a steady pattern, they don’t even recognize it. If I could ask Mark about it, I’m sure he’d say that he was just hanging out with his team, with his friends. The fact that they’re all boys is secondary. But it defines everything.

  They talk about teams I don’t know, and girls I don’t know. They talk about video games I know, and TV shows that sound familiar. I don’t say much, and I’m lucky, because Mark isn’t really expected to. Only Sam pays close attention to me, to what I’m saying and what I’m not saying. He thinks I’m oblivious, shoveling down my fries. But I’ve learned to know when someone wants me to say something, or just wants reassurance that I’m there.

  I wait in fear for the comment that might rise from the scrutiny—an “are you okay?” followed up by a “you don’t seem quite yourself.” Sam, I sense, knows Mark well. But even when you know someone well—or especially when you know someone well—you are still looking for clues about who they are today.

  “Alicia, really?” Sam is saying now. “What do you think, Mark? Is Alicia your type?”

  I look at him. I can’t access fast enough to figure out who Alicia is.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him.

  “Well, what would you say your type is?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell him again.

  In my life, this is more often than not the most honest answer I can provide.

  I am even more tired in the afternoon, but again, it seems like I’m in the same boat as everyone else. Even the teachers seem more lethargic, and the lessons billow rather than strike.

  I only have one class in the afternoon with Sam, and he keeps largely to himself. I don’t know whether this is because he’s been caught passing notes in here before and knows better than to do it again. Or maybe he’s just tired, too. He seems lost in his own thoughts, emerging every few minutes to take in the teacher, or to send me a hello glance. I doodle in Mark’s notebook, then remember to tear out the page and throw it out at the end of the class.

  Basketball practice is directly after school. I’m relieved that it’s not a game—that’s too much pressure. In slower sports, I can access the things I need to know—the names of teammates, the meaning of plays, the things I know about the opposing team. But basketball is too fast, too reactive. Especially at the end of a long day.

  The movement wakes me, though. I release myself into the physicality of it—the push and pull on the court. Unsurprisingly, Sam and I are a team within the team—when there’s a chance to pass, his eye goes right to me, and mine goes right to him. Even though he’s short, he’s got speed, and because he’s got speed, he’s got respect. Mark, I can tell, is never going to be a star. He is a supporting player, the space between the stars that keeps them in place.

  There’s a big game coming up, and the coach is relentless. We are working on shots, running the court, practicing plays, facing off against one another—like most coaches, he wants us to have the grace and efficiency of machinery, and he wants to be the machinist. A new kind of exhaustion hits me, but it’s an alive exhaustion, not an asleep exhaustion. I am keeping up my paces and hitting my marks. When one of my teammates botches a shot, the coach tells him to stop being a girl. I wish I could tell him that I was a girl two days ago, and two days before that. Nothing is different. A shot is a shot.

  At the end of practice, the coach tells us to walk off the strain we’ve just put our bodies through. Sam gravitates toward me, asks me if he’s still giving me a ride home. I tell him yes. Of course. When I hit the shower, he’s nowhere to be found. I get out, towel off, get dressed. He comes racing through, running late. He says he’ll meet me by the car.

  This gives me ten minutes of empty time. I never know what to do with it. There’s no one for me to text, no book for me to read ten minutes of. I could make conversation with the other guys leaving the locker room, but I don’t know who they are, and I won’t remember them tomorrow. The empty time remains empty. I try to remember the name of the girl I was two days ago, and the one I was two days before that. The name Alicia comes back to me, but that’s not right. I’ve already forgotten.

  Sam doesn’t say much to me as we head to the car. Complaints about the coach, worries about the game coming up, resentment that Alex (whoever he is) is not a team player. I don’t have to do much more than faintly agree, and then faintly disagree when Sam says he’s complaining too much.

  “But what about you?” he asks. “What’s on your mind?”

  There have been moments in the past when I’ve been tempted to answer this last question truthfully, to let myself be part of the conversation. But the temptation fades under the cover of reality. I cannot share myself because, as far as Sam is concerned, I have no self. I don’t exist. Only Mark exists.

  “I guess I’m just tired,” I say.

  “Me too. I’m tired of so many things, you know?”

  “So many things,” I echo.

  We drive on for a few more minutes. The trip seems longer than the trip to school was.

  I access to see if Sam and Mark had specific plans for tonight. I can’t find any. So I ask, “Where are we going?”

  Sam smiles. “I’m kidnapping you. I was waiting for you to notice.”

  “And where is the destination of this kidnapping?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

  He sounds happy. Awake.

  He makes me play Twenty Questions to figure out where we’re going. Not knowing what the options are, I’m not particularly good at the game. I find out that where we’re going is bigger than a trailer but shorter than the Washington Monument. It’s not in a city, but it’s not in a field. It is neither yellow nor purple. It is not a place where you’d find horses or falafel or the Amish. It is somewhere Sam’s been before, but not (to his knowledge) somewhere Mark’s been before. It doesn’t smell like sewage or Tater Tots or strawberries. It has never appeared on reality TV. There have been no songs written about it. It doesn’t require a change of clothing, or an admission fee, or a note from my doctor. It is not a church.

  He makes me close my eyes as we pull up. I have seen no signs along the way, no telltale markers. All I can see is how proud he is of himself.

  “All right. We’re here.”

  I open my eyes and see an old, battered sign that says FUNLAND.

  “I used to come here all the time as a kid, because my uncle was one of the owners. I don’t know if you remember, but I told you about it when we first became friends, and you drew a complete blank. So you could say the plan to come here was hatched out of that blank.”

  The gates look locked to me.

  “We’re going to break in?” I ask.

  He pulls something out of his pocket and dangles it in front of me.

  “No need to break in w
hen you have a key!”

  It’s a small amusement park—the kind that seems like a universe to a little kid but completely manageable to a parent. It’s closed for the season—the booths shuttered, the refreshment stands unrefreshed. But the rides can’t be hidden. They are idle versions of themselves, waiting for the summer to come.

  “We’re going to have to play pretend,” Sam says.

  He has no idea how good I am at playing pretend. But I guess that’s a different kind of pretend, a pretend that can’t be obvious. Here we revel in the pretend, laugh at it, become children within it. We walk rings around the carousel horses, trying to find our perfect steeds. We dangle at the bottom of the Ferris wheel and pretend that it is taking us up, up, up. I allow myself to relax. I allow myself to enjoy it. I even get lost in it.

  Sam seems lost in it too. But every now and then, I catch him looking at me, like he has something to say. He doesn’t think I notice, but I notice. I just don’t let him notice that I’m noticing. I keep it to myself. I pretend.

  We get to the rollercoaster and take our places in the car, its seating bar perpetually raised for us. I think Sam’s going to pull it down, strap us in for an imaginary ride. But instead he sits close to me, stares out. Even when it’s in operation, I imagine this rollercoaster is more coast than roll. The peaks and the dips are nothing that would scare a ten-year-old.

  He looks at me again.

  “I’m having such a good time,” he says.

  “Me too,” I tell him. It’s true.

  “I’m so glad I found you. I mean, when I first moved to town, I thought I was sunk. I didn’t want to start all over again. But then I met you, and our friends, and I thought that, yeah, I did want to start over again, after all.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “It is, isn’t it?”

  He stares out again, away from me. Summoning something from inside of him. I can tell.

  “I just wonder,” he says, quietly. Then he leaves it at that.