Someday Page 9

  I am literally caught with my pants down. I quickly yank them up and pull open the door. There’s nobody there, so I run back into the store. The only person I find is my mother, who is asking me where the new pants are. I push past her and try to find the woman from the other day. But there’s nobody anywhere close to her description—and it wasn’t her voice.

  “Nathan, I’m talking to you!” my mother is saying. I’m still looking around the store. One woman meets my gaze for a second, then looks away. I don’t even remember what kind of shoes they were, under the door. I wasn’t paying attention. There are a few other people looking anxious, but everybody looks anxious nowadays. It’s just a part of who we are, especially in public.

  “Did they fit?” my mother asks.

  “Of course they fit!” I yell, which causes her to give me her best you-are-the-least-grateful-son-in-the-history-of-sons expression.

  “Well, where are they?” she asks.

  I go back to the changing room and someone has already removed and probably refolded the khakis. So my mother and I go through this dance one more time. This time I’m not disturbed. But in the relative quiet of the changing room, I do take out my phone and type vigilabo ego sum vobis into Google Translate.

  It’s Latin.

  I’m watching you.

  * * *

  —

  I could tell Rhiannon about this, I think. But I still feel like I’m this random boy who’s invited himself into her life because of this strange thing that happened to both of us. I don’t know if our friendship is strong enough for me to start freaking her out on a regular basis.

  So I keep my mouth shut. I go on with life. I turn on the news and try to let that be my cause of stress and outrage, instead of something more personal. Except the news feels like a personal attack against anyone with a shred of intelligence and decency, which doesn’t make me feel much better. I try to think of ways my mind could be playing with me…but that’s a stretch and a strain.

  Especially when it continues.

  This time it’s my inbox that’s stalked. The emails start and they don’t stop. Dozens of them, sent at uneven intervals from an email address I’ve never seen before.

  The subject line is always Vigilabo ego sum vobis.

  The messages are all blank.

  I send one message back:

  A?

  The only reply? More Vigilabo ego sum vobis.

  * * *

  —

  In the middle of the night, the doorbell rings. I hear my father get out of bed to answer it. I hear him come back and tell my mother nobody was there.

  “Just a prank,” he says. “Probably some kids.”

  “Probably picking on Nathan,” my mother says needlessly. “I wish they’d leave us alone.”

  It’s unclear whether I’m a part of that us.

  * * *

  —

  The next day, I am home alone after school.

  The doorbell rings.

  I don’t answer it.

  It rings again.

  And again.

  It’s not like I can call the police and report that someone’s ringing my doorbell. The police are already in the Nathan-is-a-wolf-crier camp.

  The fifteenth time, I go down to the door. “GO AWAY!” I yell. But I can’t see anyone through the peephole. I go to the front window, pull the curtain aside, and peek out.

  There’s a car across the street. Not the woman from before. Not a woman at all. A man, probably my dad’s age. He’s been waiting for me to pull back that curtain. He mimes a pistol with his hand and shoots at me. Then he mouths words that can only be vigilabo ego sum vobis. I think he’ll drive off then. But he doesn’t. I let the curtain drop and head back to my room.

  I call Rhiannon. I don’t tell her what’s happening, because I don’t know that there’s anything she can do about it. I just need to talk to someone, to have someone on the line if the guy across the street tries anything.

  I don’t even know what he’d try.

  Eventually I take another look outside, and the car is gone.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t want to be home alone anymore. I go to the public library after school. I sit at the computers, surrounded by other people at the computers, and I feel at least temporarily safe. I don’t understand why this is happening to me. I don’t know what I’ve done that makes me deserve to have these things go wrong.

  A girl from school, Alexandra Berkman, sits down next to me. We’re in some classes together, and we talk about French for a few minutes. Then she asks if I can watch her stuff while she goes to the washroom. I say sure, and when she comes back, I ask her if she’ll do the same for me.

  It’s a one-person bathroom deal, and someone must have jumped right in after Alexandra left, since the door’s locked and I have to wait a few minutes to get in. Eventually a seven-year-old boy emerges, without a parent. I am not optimistic about what the condition of the toilet seat is going to be. But I go in anyway.

  I’m just about to lock the door when it’s pushed hard from the outside. “Hey!” I cry out, figuring it’s someone trying to get in who didn’t see me go in first. But then a harder push comes and I’m knocked back. A guy comes storming in—big guy, about ten years older than me. “I’m in here!” I protest, and in response he punches me in the gut. I fall back onto the toilet seat, and he locks the door behind him and goes for my throat. I kick out and try to slide out from under him, but his grip is tightening and I can’t get enough air to scream. He knocks my head back onto the toilet tank and it hurts like hell.

  Then, with a grin, he asks, “Did you miss me, Nathan?”

  I don’t know what he means—until I look into his eyes and know exactly what he means. I just don’t know how it’s possible.

  “Not so heroic now, are you?” the guy taunts. “Not so disagreeable. We had an agreement, didn’t we, Nathan? And you broke that agreement. Well, ego vigilabo fuerit vobis. Except that there comes a time when watching isn’t enough. It’s time you played your part. And this time, you won’t mess it up.”

  I try to play dumb. “Who are you?” I gasp. “What do you mean?”

  He lifts me up by the throat. This guy is strong. Much stronger than Reverend Poole.

  I am terrified.

  “We did not come here for you to talk,” the guy who used to be Poole says way too calmly. “It’s my turn to talk—and I strongly recommend that you listen.”

  “I’m all ears,” I squeak.

  “Unless I remove one,” he says, not really joking. “You see, Nathan, I can do whatever I want to you, whenever I want. You will never see me coming, because I could be anyone. That much should be clear to you now.”

  I try to nod, but he’s still got me by the throat.

  “Got it,” I croak out.

  “Good,” he says, lowering me but not letting me go. “You must find the person you lost last time. You will not get another chance—and you do not have much time. If you don’t get her back to me in the next week, I will start to dismantle your life piece by piece, until there is nothing left.”

  “But we don’t know where she is! Honestly, we don’t.”

  “Well, then—you’d better find her.”

  It’s strange to think of A as a her. It’s also wrong that I used the word we.

  I wait too long to reply. He switches hands and pushes me by the back of my neck toward the sink. I thrust my hands down and push against the basin so he can’t slam my face into it.

  He lets go.

  “Good,” he says. “You have some fight in you. Use it. But don’t try to fight me. That would be irresponsible to your well-being. And don’t tell anyone else about this—not even A’s girlfriend.”

  “How do you know about A?” I blurt.

  But he�
��s not going to tell me.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he says.

  When he opens the door, there’s a line of people waiting outside. They seem surprised to see two of us inside the bathroom.

  “We were having sex,” Poole explains to the woman at the front of the line.

  “WHAT?” she yells. Luckily for me, she seems to be a hundred years old.

  Poole strides out of the library, leaving me to be the target of the angry, curious, and/or disgusted looks.

  It’s only when I get back to Alexandra that I realize I didn’t even use the bathroom, and I still have to go.

  “Are you okay?” she asks as I grab my bag.

  “There’s just…stuff I need to do,” I get out. She gives me a look to let me know she doesn’t particularly care to hear the details.

  Nobody will. Not really. Rhiannon, possibly. But I feel that telling her will only bring her more trouble, especially if Poole somehow knows she exists. (Who else could A’s girlfriend be?)

  I am on my own on this one. And, oh yeah, completely screwed.

  I have no idea how to escape this.

  X

  It takes a few days before I am the right type of person to do what I want to do. There’s nothing like the disappointment of waking up in an old woman’s body—good for invisibility and very little else. They can be receptacles of affection, but I have no need for affection. Fear is much more effective.

  I have tried to master the path from person to person. I have tried to force my intentionality into the equation. But the metaphysical mathematics elude me; I have learned how to stay in a body by killing the host, but I still am left to the whims of the gods when it comes to traveling to my next body. There used to be some correspondence in age, but that appears to have become untethered. I can end up as anyone from day to day.

  Naturally, I have preferences.

  Just as this body is strong, its former owner is ashamed. He has desires that are not the right desires—they are not acceptable desires in the community in which he lives. He does not want to be who he is, so I can easily come in and take his place.

  After scaring the pathetically susceptible Nathan Daldry in the bathroom of his local library, I head to the gym. Even if this man is a mess in his head, his body is a well-tuned vehicle. I spend time conditioning, then lifting. I have missed this rush, the feeling of force, the glorious pain of exertion. There is sweat and there is the acceleration of the heart and a struggle to maintain a steady supply of breath. But most of all, there is strength. I can revel in his strength. Even as I feel the weights press against me, I experience my own counterbalance, my own push against. This is the body I was meant to have. This is the only kind of body that allows me to feel my promise is manifest.

  I push myself to the body’s limit. Then comes the slowdown, the shower, and the unwind. But I’m still wound, even as I leave. I don’t want to go home. I want sex. I want to use this body that way. To take pleasure. To be desired, and then to take advantage of that desire.

  It doesn’t matter what this guy was into before. So he goes onto an app, and it takes about twenty minutes for me to find what I’m into. A “date” in name. But really a hookup. One and done.

  We meet at a bar. She gets tipsy and I get voracious. We all know where it goes from there. I even let her stay over. Not out of any generosity of spirit, but because I know his shame will only push deeper if she’s around. If he can sense at all what’s happened, he probably doesn’t want to come back.

  Which is, right now, fine by me.

  She actually looks touched when I ask her to spend the night. Grateful. It makes me want to laugh at her.

  One and done.

  Fun and stun.

  Done and run.

  I hold my tongue all night so I can get more from her. The next morning, though, when I’m still in his body and she’s still in my bed, I shake her off mercilessly. Tell her it was no good, and that I only asked her to stay out of pity. She gets angry, and I yawn. After she storms out, I take a nap. Then I head back to the gym.

  A couple of his friends text him. I don’t reply, and they don’t try again.

  I call in sick to work. Then I check his bank accounts and decide that tomorrow he’ll quit his job. He had no idea, but he’s already served his last day.

  When you’re given a Ferrari, you don’t trade it in for a Camry.

  This body is mine now.

  RHIANNON

  Alexander’s parents are out of town a lot. Something involving their jobs and needing to travel. They don’t see each other that much, and they don’t see Alexander much. At first I thought it was cool that they were never around—I could spend as many hours as I wanted at his house, doing homework on the lime-green couch in his room, curling up next to him for study breaks. He’d read me poems or tell me stories, and we’d never have to worry about a knock on the door.

  But now, even though I enjoy the freedom their absence gives us, I think it’s a little sad that they leave Alexander alone so much. His room makes much more sense—the way he creates all these intricate distractions, all these creative ways of having conversations with art and color and light when there aren’t any real conversations to be had with other people.

  I’m thinking about this after school on Monday, when I’m back on the lime-green couch, supposedly doing biology homework but really wondering about how our lives work.

  “Do you miss them?” I ask Alexander. He’s on the bed, supposedly reading Robinson Crusoe. “Your parents, I mean.”

  He doesn’t ask me why I’m asking the question at this particular moment. Instead he says, “Yeah. I do.”

  “Couldn’t they arrange it so they didn’t leave at the same time?”

  “They used to do that. When I was little. But it was always Mom who had to stay back—not because she’s a mom, but because her job was a little more flexible. Unfortunately, that didn’t last. The traveling’s a part of what they do, and if they want to keep their jobs, they go where they have to go. It sucks, but it pays the bills.” He stops for a second, then starts again. “No. That makes it sound worse than it is. The honest truth is that they like what they do, and they’re good at it, and even though it sucks that they’re gone, it would suck even more if they were miserable.”

  “That makes sense,” I say.

  The honest truth is something Alexander says a lot. It’s something he believes in. He’s always telling me that one of the best parts of our relationship is how natural it feels to be truthful with one another—the last people he dated weren’t as truthful, and the relationships skidded because of that.

  I know he’s right. And I know I am much more truthful with him than I ever could have been with Justin. I am discovering that the best possible relationship is one where you can say whatever is on your mind—no matter how random, no matter how hard, no matter how silly—and the other person will always be open to hear it. I have never had that before. With A, it felt that way, but we didn’t have the time to do it. We were always too caught up in figuring out how our relationship would work, or how it wouldn’t work. With Alexander, I can ask about his parents, or I can ask about dinner, or I can tell him about a cartoon I watched when I was six, or I can read a sentence from my biology book to him in a Kermit the Frog voice—I can say whatever I want, ask whatever I want. He is open to whatever words I send his way. I don’t have to worry anymore about saying the wrong thing. About landing on the certain words, or certain thoughts, that turn out to be emotional land mines. I know he’s not going to shout at me or tear me down for saying something stupid. It is incredible to have that pressure lifted.

  He can do the same with me, of course. He can say anything, ask anything. But that was never a problem with Justin. The problem always came when I opened my mouth.

  The problem with Alexander is different. The problem with him i
s that he gives me the honest truth, and I give him the dishonest truth in return.

  Or maybe it isn’t a problem. I don’t know. Because it is still the truth. I don’t lie to him. It’s just that the truth I give him has sentences missing.

  I told him about Justin. That was hard. Not because I thought he’d take Justin’s side or think less of me or decide that any girl who’d stay with an asshole like that wasn’t worth being with. If I hadn’t really known Alexander, I would have been afraid of all of those things. But because I knew Alexander, the thing that made it hardest to talk about was my own embarrassment. It didn’t bother me that Alexander would hear what I had to say—it was that I had to hear it. I had to sit there in his arms and listen to how I’d narrowed my vision so that all I could see was Justin, all I could care about was Justin. He didn’t treat me well, and it rarely occurred to me that I could be treated better. Neither of us really knew what we were doing, but we didn’t recognize that. We thought it was love.

  Now I know: Love isn’t so straightforward. It’s never a matter of telling yourself to do it and doing it. It’s never a matter of someone else telling you to do it and doing it. It can’t exist between two people if they can’t also feel it exist outside of them, too. It can involve hurt, but it shouldn’t make you hurt all the time. Then it’s not love. It’s a trap disguised as love.

  Alexander knows I fell into the trap. He knows I didn’t set it, but he also knows I laid my own traps, too. I told him all of this partly to be honest and partly to warn him. I knew he wouldn’t be scared away.

  He said Justin wasn’t a threat to him or to me anymore. He also said the girl I was when I was in love with Justin wasn’t a threat, either, because she was gone now. I told him I appreciated him saying that, but the old me will never be gone. She’ll always be alive in me somewhere. I just have to make sure she’s never in charge again, no matter how loud she gets, demanding to have her way.