Where I End and You Begin

by Preston Norton

  Wynezra narrowed her eyes at me.

  “Okay, deal,” I said.

  “Great,” she said. “Because Holden started texting me last night.”

  My eyes inflated inside their sockets. “Seriously?”

  Wynezra smiled in such a way that exposed all of her—my—teeth. In retrospect, it was less a smile, and more a facial spasm. It teetered between ecstatic and terrified, but was mostly on the verge of another nervous breakdown.

  “Holy shit,” I said. “How’d it go?”

  “Awful. I have the flirting skills of a lonely crazy person stranded on a desert island. I went back over everything I texted him and immediately wanted to cheese-grate my brain.”

  “Oh.”

  “But he likes me!” she exclaimed. “I’m almost positive he likes me. And I think that has everything to do with you. Like, slapping his ass? Oh my god, what were you thinking?”

  I definitely wasn’t “thinking” during that part. And I almost admitted this; however, I quickly became distracted by an erroneous detail.

  “Wait,” I said. “You texted him?”

  The implication was simple: She was dyslexic. How was she able to text him, let alone read his texts?

  Wynezra met my confusion with judge-y eyes. With one hand on the steering wheel, she reached into my purse. (Yes, I was using Wynonna’s one and only purse—a turquoise, acid-washed punk bag with metal studs—because the pockets of girl pants were basically impossible to use unless you were looking to store a very large coin, like a doubloon.) She pulled out her phone, unlocked it, and raised it to her mouth.

  “Okay, Siri,” she said. There was a soft chime. “Show me my messages.”

  “You’ve got several text messages,” said the female robot living inside Wynonna’s phone. “Here are the five most recent. The first one is from Holden ‘Hottie Bugatti’ Durden. Do you want to hear it or skip it?”

  “Hear it,” said Wynezra.

  “It says, ‘Hahahahahahahahahahaha.’” The robot inside Wynonna’s phone made sure to enunciate every “ha” like the rivets in a rumble strip on the side of the interstate. “‘Ur funny wynonna.’ Do you want to reply, repeat it, or go on to the next one?”

  “Reply,” said Wynezra.

  “What’s the message?”

  “I want to bone you with Ezra’s dick.”

  My jaw dropped as the words scrolled across Wynonna’s phone.

  “Got it,” said the robot inside Wynonna’s phone. “Do you want to send this?”

  “FUCK NO,” said Wynezra. “Jesus, Siri. Delete that shit.”

  Wynezra closed the screen on the phone, raised it high over the purse in my lap, and mic-dropped it like a rock star.

  • •

  When Wynonna actually tried, the results were shocking. She pulled out all the stops at lunch.

  “Hey, Imogen, I like your sweater,” said Wynezra. “Did you get that at Marshalls?”

  “Uh, T.J.Maxx, actually,” said Imogen. Still, she seemed impressed. “Good guess, though.”

  “T.J.Maxx! Dammit, I knew it. T.J.Maxx was my next guess. Anyway, the sweater looks great. It really makes your eyes pop.”

  The sweater was solid cerulean blue on top and solid beige on the bottom, including the bottom halves of the sleeves. If her arms hung straight down, it was like someone drew a straight line across her arms and torso, separating the colors.

  And yes, it made her eyes pop. Made them blossom, even.

  “Thanks,” said Imogen. Her smile showed she was clearly flattered—if unsure how to process the compliment.

  Holden glanced covertly at me, not about to be outdone in the compliment game by his formerly socially inept best friend. I was wearing an army-green parka over a black top that ended just below my belly button—featuring the face of this three-eyed sphynx cat thingy—a pair of cutoff shorts, and burgundy-red combat boots.

  “I like your…” he started to say. Then he did a double take at my shirt. “Is that a cat?”

  I glanced down at my shirt and shrugged. “I have no idea what it is. But it’s badass, right?”

  “Very badass,” said Wynezra, before Holden could formulate a response.

  Holden just nodded stupidly.

  • •

  Imogen ambushed me the moment I stepped outside of class. Almost predatorily. God, how did she do it? Did all of her classes end two minutes early?

  “What do you think of Ezra?” said Imogen. “I want your honest, extremely biased opinion.”

  My mouth temporarily lost motor function.

  “You had sex, obviously,” she said, filling in the silence. “And that seems to have popped his social cherry—or opened the floodgates, sheesh! And I know you joked about me going to prom with him. But what do you really think?”

  Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit floating in holy water in the holy porcelain throne of God.

  “What do you think?” I said, for lack of brain capacitating.

  “I think I need to move on,” said Imogen. “And I don’t know how that’s going to happen if I don’t do something. And maybe I just need a friend, and Ezra…I mean, if he’s anything, he’s friendly. And most importantly, I want to go to prom with you without being a third wheel. Because from the looks of it, you and Holden are…well, you know. Things are looking good.”

  For whatever reason, she didn’t sound like things were “looking good.” She sounded sad. Dejected, even. However, I was a tad preoccupied with the fact that she was talking about GOING TO PROM WITH ME.

  Okay, so the “friend” part was less than stellar. But this was huge progress. It was almost too much progress. The sheer scale of the progress was so tremendous, it didn’t make any sense. I dropped a hint, and Wynonna complimented her sweater, and suddenly she was talking about prom?

  But I already knew why. She needed to “move on.”

  She needed to get over Mystery Guy X.

  How long could she talk in riddles about being “trapped in a role” and needing to “move on” without saying this guy’s name?

  As much as I was dying to know his identity, however, part of me knew that the knowledge could be crippling. The last thing I needed was to discover that this guy she liked was absolutely nothing like me. What I needed was to prove myself. And, according to the history of my and Wynonna’s predicament, I was usually myself by evening.

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday,” I said. “Let’s do something.”

  “Do something?” said Imogen.

  “A date. A double date. We can eat at Fat Patties and go see a movie after. Don’t ask me about Ezra. Get to know him yourself!”

  “Oh, I dunno,” she said. “I don’t really see the point.”

  “The point?” I said. I couldn’t help but sound a little offended. “The point is having fun! Don’t you believe in fun?”

  “Fun, for me, is reading a book, or having a girls’ night with you, or bingeing Downton Abbey.”

  “Think of it as a girls’ night with me!” I said. “Only there’s two boys invited. And I have dibs on Holden.”

  Mentioning Holden did the trick. “Holden” was the code word that activated Imogen’s preprogrammed BFF directive, and all the selflessness and sacrifice that entailed.

  “You’re right,” she said, nodding. She almost sounded sure of herself, too. “It will be fun. Let’s do it. What movies are best for dates? Romantic comedies?”

  A sinister smile slithered across my face. “Horror movies.”

  • •

  And that was how we ended up buying four tickets to Splatter IV: The Reckoning.

  Imogen actually insisted that I let her set everything up. I think she felt bad about being resistant to the double date idea. She called Wynezra directly, asked “him” on the date, and then told “him” to pass the word on to Holden. She informed them that we would be picking them up at seven p.m. sharp.

  Dress was semiformal.

  You see, Imogen only agreed to all this under one stipulation: that we d
o makeovers and she dress me up like a Barbie doll.

  Imogen didn’t strike me as the makeover type. How bad could it be? If she wore makeup, it was so low-key that you didn’t know she was wearing makeup. And her wardrobe was very un-Vogue, to say the least.

  When I first mentioned the stipulation to Wynezra—between sixth and seventh period—she laughed.

  “She’s only the makeover type for special occasions,” said Wynezra. “And when a special occasion does arise, it’s like all that pent-up feminine instinct explodes out over her. You’re gonna look like a Disney princess.”

  • •

  Everything was perfect. We had a double date. Holden and Imogen were excited about said date. Imogen was even talking about prom! All of this was, like, pinnacle-of-my-life great. Things had never been better.

  So why couldn’t I stop thinking about Wynonna?

  She was obviously damaged. And I didn’t mean that as an insult. I meant it in a way that I could totally relate to. The longer I was in her body, the more I felt like there was a blur between Who She Is and Who I Am, and her sadness felt like my sadness, and I just…I wanted to help her. I barely even knew her—and half the time, I couldn’t even stand her—but I wanted to help her. Whatever that meant.

  Maybe that’s why I felt emboldened. Maybe it was because my last attempt at “meddling with Wynonna’s life” had been met with reward.

  I stayed up until 3:14 a.m. googling “Roscoe Jones.”

  This wasn’t about curiosity. It was about gathering intel. It was about taking action.

  It was about making right an irrevocable wrong.

  Of course, I stopped a few minutes before 3:14 a.m. Closed my browser windows. Deleted my search history. Stripped down to my boxers, climbed into bed, and pulled the covers up to my chin to maintain some semblance of “trying to sleep.”

  I swear to god, I just wanted to help.

  morning—stranded in Wynonna’s house, in Wynonna’s bedroom, in Wynonna’s body, with nowhere to go—I might have had no idea what to do with myself. I wasn’t scheduled to play Barbie with Imogen until one thirty. Meanwhile, at Slevin Manor, Wynezra was going to attempt the impossible and “sleep in.”

  (Good luck with that.)

  But actually, this was great. You see, I did, in fact, have somewhere to go. And most importantly, I needed Wynezra distracted if I was going to pull off the nefarious shit I had planned.

  At eleven o’clock sharp, I arrived at Newell House. (I only stalled once.)

  Newell House was a restaurant. Arguably the restaurant—by Carbondale standards anyway. A three-story cube of a building with sandy stucco walls, narrow arched windows, and black-and-white-striped awnings. It was classy in the quaint, rural sort of way you might expect from a town whose only tourist attraction came from outer space. It used to be a hotel, but the hotel burned down in the early 1860s. It was rebuilt but burned down again in 1901. (The place was definitely haunted as fuck.) It was rebuilt again, underwent several aesthetic changes, and in 2003 became a restaurant.

  Two years ago, they hired award-winning chef Roscoe Jones—recipient of the Jean Blanchet Chef of the Year, and the James Beard Regional Chef Award (Great Lakes). In other words, he was kind of a big deal. However, his hiring was very hush-hush because he was also an ex-convict.

  I nervously adjusted my outfit. I was wearing a long black-and-white-striped punk sweater over leggings and laceless oxfords. I definitely wasn’t trying to match the restaurant, but here we were. I sighed despairingly.

  Took a deep breath.

  Walked inside.

  The walls were lime green—except in random redbrick patches—decorated in 1920s French poster art. The tile floor was speckled and patterned in whites and browns and salmon pinks. Caged chandelier lights hung low over each booth.

  This was it. This was as fancy as Carbondale got. Like Kate Middleton dodging paparazzi, incognito.

  The place was empty. But only because they opened at eleven. The guy who unlocked the door—a manager-looking sort with a mustache and an overall midlife crisis vibe going on—opened it and held it for me.

  “Good morning, miss,” he said, smiling against the weight of his own existence. “Will anyone be joining you?”

  “Nope, just me.”

  “Nothing wrong with that. Right this way.”

  I followed Midlife Crisis to a nearby booth. He handed me a menu and asked me what I’d like to drink. I said coffee. Not that I needed coffee. I was so awake, I was practically enlightened.

  Midlife Crisis left. Returned quickly with my coffee. Still smiling. “Here you go, miss. Do you need more time with your menu?”

  I looked him up and down. He was wearing a purple crosshatch-patterned dress shirt and a plain yellow tie. The hair on his head was thinning like the Indo-Burma forest. Total manager material.

  “Are you the manager?” I asked.

  Midlife Crisis chuckled in an unfortunate sort of way. “Yeah. We’re running a tad scarce on servers today. Everyone likes to get sick on the weekend. So, if you’re looking for a job…”

  He kept laughing in a way that sounded like he was crying inside.

  I looked at the menu. Back at Midlife Crisis. “Can you ask the chef what he recommends? Is that weird?”

  “No…of course not…” said Midlife Crisis, shaking his head politely, although this was clearly the weirdest thing he’d been asked all week. “Lemme go ask.”

  “Thanks. I’m his daughter.”

  Midlife Crisis had already begun to walk away, but my departing comment stopped him in his polished loafers. He turned around.

  “Luis’s daughter?” he asked, like he already knew that was impossible.

  “Roscoe’s daughter,” I said. “I’m Wynonna.”

  Every ounce of existential dread vanished from Midlife Crisis’s countenance. His eyes were pure “holy shit.” Apparently, Wynonna was a hot topic of conversation at Newell House.

  He nodded stupidly and wandered off. I watched him, following his path across the restaurant, through a pair of silver doors leading into a well-lit kitchen.

  Seconds later, the silver doors cracked open again, and a full-grown man peeked through them, hunched over like a little kid. Though only a sliver of him was visible, it was a giant, unmistakable sliver.

  It was Roscoe.

  I smiled and waved.

  His eyes went wide, and he disappeared into the kitchen.

  It was at least a solid minute later before he finally reappeared.

  He was wearing a black double-breasted chef jacket with matching slacks. He filled them like a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. The guy was ginormous—at least six feet tall and built like the body double for Jason Momoa.

  Every muscle was stiff. His face was an effigy. The guy was petrified.

  When he finally reached my table, I thought he might vomit.

  He opened his mouth.

  I was sure he was going to vomit.

  Words spilled out. They spewed everywhere—violent, chunky, relentless.

  “I can explain,” he said. “I was only following you because I recognized your car one day, and I noticed you were having trouble with your manual transmission, so I just wanted to make sure everything was okay. Plus, the crime rate’s not great around here. Like, there’s this serial groper who keeps making the rounds on the local news—total psycho creep—and he seems to be targeting college girls around campus, which is right by where you and Carol live, and anyway, I promise I wasn’t following you. I mean, I obviously was, but not in a weird way. Um. How’s Carol?”

  Wow. I felt so bad for this guy. My heart was breaking just listening to him try to talk.

  “Would you like to sit?” I said. I gestured to the seat across from me—in case he tried to sit on the floor. He seemed to be in that sort of mental state.

  He fumbled with the chair but managed to insert himself into it.

  Now that he didn’t have a ball cap to hide anything, his hair was unfurled—
longish, dark, silvery around the ears, although it fell awkwardly. Constrained. Like it had been in a man-bun only moments ago. (I was sure there were health code rules about that.) His chin, meanwhile, was a mystery beneath his beard.

  He had Wynonna’s cheekbones. Or, I guess, it was the other way around.

  “Is this okay?” I said. “I’m not going to get you fired, am I?”

  “Huh? Oh, no. Theo’s filling in for me while we talk. He said to take as much time as I need.”

  “The manager?”

  “Uh. Yeah? He’s actually a really good chef. He worked in the kitchen before he became manager.”

  “He seems like he’s having a bad day.”

  Roscoe chuckled sadly. “His husband left him.”

  “Oh damn,” I said.

  “They have two kids. A boy and girl. Four and six years old. He left all of them.”

  “Oh shit,” I said. “That’s awful.”

  Roscoe nodded in a light-headed sort of way. “Yeah. It is. Plus, the servers here are a bunch of unprofessional shits. Theo gives them a little slack, and they walk all over him.”

  We were quiet for a moment. Roscoe looked like he was either waiting for permission to talk, or he was wondering if this was all just a lucid dream he might be waking up from soon.

  “Can we talk about the accident?” I said.

  Roscoe’s breath stopped short. He ran out of breath like a vehicle running out of road at a dead end.

  Still, he managed a stiff nod.

  “Okay,” I said. “You start.”

  I was determined to make Roscoe put forth all the effort here. First, I needed to know for sure this guy wasn’t a total piece of shit.

  Already, Roscoe looked like he was about to cry. His eyes were glossy, and red, and weary from existence. But every ounce of testosterone in his Spartanic vessel forbid him from shedding tears. So he blinked, and kept blinking, until his tear ducts slurped the moisture back in and redistributed it to manlier locations, like his pits.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding. “Yeah. Well, it happened. And it was bad. Every bit as bad as it sounds. And there’s nothing I can do to take back what I’ve done. My time in prison doesn’t even begin to make up the difference. Your mother was irreplaceable, and I’m a pathetic substitute for the parent you should have had. And I’m sorry. Even though I know sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it. Also, um, I know it doesn’t change anything, but I’ve been sober for seven years now.”