Where I End and You Begin

by Preston Norton

  “I guess you’re family now,” said Dad, winking. “Just say the word, and we’ll bust out the bunk beds in Willow’s room.”

  “Yesssssss,” said Willow. And then, in her best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression: “Dooo eeet! Do eeet naaoooughwwww!”

  I’m not gonna lie. That felt fucking amazing.

  Wynezra just grinned, knowing full well this was the most gratifying moment of my life.

  • •

  It was surreal—being in my own house again for the first time in a month.

  It was one of those things you took for granted until it was taken from you. I found myself stalled in the entryway, just trying to breathe it all in. I lingered at the pictures on the wall: Mom, Dad, Willow, me. My small, dysfunctional, perfect family.

  I stopped in front of the living room clock like an itch. It hadn’t been adjusted in a whole month. Who knew how far off it had drifted. It was probably off by dozens of seconds. Maybe even a full minute!

  “You okay?” said Willow.

  I blinked. Remembered that I was supposed to be a stranger in this house. Smiled.

  A great big genuine smile that kind of hurt my face.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Definitely.”

  • •

  Dinner was Pizza Hut—greasy, cardiac-arrest-inducing, glorious Pizza Hut. What it lacked in the home-cooked-meal department, it more than made up for in family participation points.

  I couldn’t remember the last time my whole family sat down together for a meal. It was a rare, cosmic event—probably in the same league as the eclipse. Maybe rarer, because at least scientists could predict that shit.

  After dinner, Willow and I changed into our pj’s. But this was a mere superficiality. Neither of us planned to sleep. We were too worked up to sleep—wired, and restless, and alive.

  Willow belly-flopped on her bed—gracelessly—then rolled onto her back so that her hair cascaded over the edge in an emo waterfall. She pointed at me. “Truth or dare.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, giggling. “No way.”

  “Come on!” She slapped the empty mattress beside her. “I’ll go easy on you.”

  I sighed and sat on the bed. “Truth.”

  Willow sat upright, but she didn’t hesitate—not even for a second. “When Ziggy pulled you off Jayden, and you were screaming at him, you said, ‘She’s my sister.’ Why did you say that?”

  Well, shit.

  I set myself up for this one. I only screamed that line loud enough for anyone in a five-mile radius to hear. I should’ve seen this question coming light-years away.

  “Uh…you’re like a sister to me,” I said. “I don’t have a sister, so…Sorry if that was weird.”

  “No.” Willow shook her head hastily. “Don’t be sorry. That’s what I figured you meant. I was just flattered is all.”

  But even as she said this, she looked at me in a prying sort of way. Like she could see through my disguise.

  “Truth or dare,” I said, sort of frantically.

  “Truth.”

  “Do you hate Ezra?”

  Watch out, kids. Captain Buzzkill was in the house.

  Willow reared back slightly. “What? No. Why would you ask that?”

  “Uh.”

  “Does Ezra think that?”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. Fix this, Ezra, fix this.

  “I think…that maybe he thinks that,” I mumbled, like a total dipshit.

  “Well, I don’t,” said Willow. “I love Ezra. He’s my brother. I mean, he’s frustrating sometimes, and kind of oblivious, but he’s a boy, so I try not to hold that against him.”

  I bit my lip, and nodded, and was trying so very, very hard not to get emotional. I mostly succeeded.

  “Sorry, that was a stupid question,” I said.

  “No, it’s fine,” said Willow. “Truth or dare. Pick truth.”

  “Uh, truth?”

  She leaned toward me, fingers interlocked. “What is the nature of your and Ezra’s relationship?”

  “We’re friends.”

  “You seem like you’re more than friends.”

  “We’re just really good, really weird friends. I promise. It doesn’t make any sense, I know.”

  Willow nodded thoughtfully. She seemed awful accepting of this half-baked explanation.

  “Truth or dare,” said Willow. “Pick dare.”

  “Hey, it’s my turn!”

  “Pick dare. I dare you to pick dare.”

  “Oh my god,” I said, laughing. “Fine! Dare.”

  Willow rolled off the bed clumsily, staggered for balance, and veered to her honest-to-god hope chest. It was an ugly, beat-up heirloom that she inherited from our grandma Slevin. Willow opened it and rummaged through the contents. It appeared to be filled with an odd assortment of sentimental items—old stuffed animals, art from middle school, ancient iPods probably filled with pop music she no longer felt comfortable associating with.

  She pulled out a DVD and shoved it in my face—She’s the Man.

  “I dare you to watch the best movie in the world with me.”

  • •

  Illyria and Cornwall were at war!

  Except “Illyia” and “Cornwall” were boarding schools, and the “war,” so to speak, was a soccer game. Still, shit was lit, and it was about to get lit-er.

  AMANDA BYNES (disguised as a boy): Okay, you know what? I can’t do this anymore. Everybody, I have something to tell you. I’m not Sebastian. I’m Viola.

  CHANNING TATUM: Wait, wait. You’re not Viola.

  AMANDA BYNES: Yes…I am.

  CHANNING TATUM: No, I know Viola. I kissed Viola.

  AMANDA BYNES: You kissed me.

  CHANNING TATUM: W-w-w-w-what are you…t-talking about, I didn’t…I didn’t kiss you.

  Willow made a fake sobbing sound and pressed her hand to her chest. “Oh, my heart.”

  “Channing Tatum is so precious when he’s flustered,” I said.

  Amanda (Boy)nes proceeded to pull off her fake sideburns, all the while explaining that the girls’ team at Cornwall got cut, and the guys wouldn’t let her go out for their team; therefore, she’d been pretending to be her brother for the past two weeks while he was in London. That way, she could make Illyria’s team and beat Cornwall, because seriously, fuck Cornwall.

  Then Amanda (Boy)nes pulled off her entire wig, and yep, “he” was a she.

  Channing Tatum, however (flustered af), was in serious denial that his best bro was also the girl of his dreams. He politely informed her that just because she was wearing a wig, that d-d-d-d-didn’t prove she was a girl.

  Amanda Bynes thought that was amusing. That’s when she lifted her shirt, and let the tits do the talking.

  Cut to Viola and Sebastian’s parents—awkwardly averting their gazes in the bleachers.

  VIOLA/SEBASTIAN’S DAD: Is it just me, or does this soccer game have more nudity than most?

  Willow cracked up at this part. We both did. The laughter was terminal. We would surely die.

  “Dude,” said Willow, wiping away a legitimate tear. “Do you remember when we were watching this, and Dad was in the room on his laptop?”

  “Oh my god, yes!” I said. “All he hears is ‘nudity,’ and he’s like, ‘Whoa, what the hell?’”

  Just thinking about it made me lose my shit all over again. I laughed.

  Until I realized I was the only one laughing.

  Until I realized what I had done.

  “Truth or dare,” said Willow, suddenly very serious. “Pick truth.”

  “Uhhh…”

  “Are you Ezra?”

  I didn’t need to look in the mirror to know that I was wearing my confession on my face.

  Last second, I decided to play it stupid.

  “Ezra?” I said. “What are you talking about? How can I be Ezra?”

  I was playing it soooooo stupid.

  “Holden talked to me,” she said. “He said that you told him that you and Wynonna were swapping bodies. T
hat it’s been happening ever since the eclipse.”

  “Holden said that?” My guard had been blindsided. I dropped it shamelessly. “When?”

  “Yesterday. After you attacked Thad and Jayden. He wanted to know if I’d noticed anything…different…about you.”

  She didn’t even bother specifying who she meant by “you.” We both knew who she meant.

  Holy shit. Holy shit! Did this mean Holden believed me?

  “You’re Ezra,” she said. “Aren’t you.”

  It wasn’t a question. Not even remotely.

  So I told Willow everything.

  I tried to start at the beginning—although pinning down “the beginning” was trickier than it should have been. I settled with the most recent eclipse, and from there, worked my way forward, and backward, and upside down. I explained what Wynonna and I had pieced together from seven years ago, although so much of that was still a mystery to me.

  Willow didn’t speak a word the entire time. I spoke over the ambience of She’s the Man and finished as the credits rolled all the way to the logos at the end, and the DVD returned to its obnoxious DVD menu.

  I was kind of breathless by the end of it all.

  I looked to Willow for some sort of feedback. A sign that everything had been received and registered properly.

  “A month?” said Willow, finally. “You haven’t changed back in a whole month?”

  I bit my lip. Shook my head.

  Willow threw herself at me. Hugged me. Crushed me in her embrace.

  “I’ve missed you, Ez,” she said. Only her voice was broken. She was sobbing. “I’ve missed you so much.”

  But this wasn’t just about missing me. I could tell from the way she was suddenly trembling. Gasping for air.

  It was the nude. The blowjob video. Months of sexual harassment literally knocking on her front door. It was all crashing down on her now, and she was sobbing, and she was drowning in it, and there was nothing for her to hold on to.

  Nothing but me.

  I held her. And I cried a little bit, too.

  “I’m here,” I said. “I’ve always been here.”

  “I know,” said Willow—sniffling, smiling in spite of everything. “I know you have.”

  texted me: Hey, wanna hang? Which was great because I needed to gush about yesterday to someone, and Wynonna was already sick of me talking about it.

  “It’s great,” said Wynezra. “Really, it is. BUT CHILL YOUR LITERAL PANTIES, BRO, IT WAS JUST A SLEEPOVER.”

  “How can you say that?” I asked. “Someone believes us!”

  “Which is great. Unfortunately, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re still stuck like this.”

  Okay, so, she had a point.

  I couldn’t tell Roscoe the full story anyway, but I could tell him a version of it. That was good enough for me. Mostly, I was just excited and needed to spew words. Lots of them. And Roscoe would listen to me talk about anything, no matter how boring—algae, the keto diet, maybe even Atlas Shrugged.

  I texted yes, and called him. He picked up on the first ring.

  “Hey,” he said. He sounded flustered, which was weird since he had texted me.

  “Hey, yourself,” I said. “Sonic run?”

  “Actually, I’m feeling fancy. How about dinner at my place?”

  “Dinner?”

  “Yeah, dinner. I’m a regionally renowned chef, you know. It’s a cardinal sin I haven’t cooked dinner for you yet.”

  Again, I felt it. That creeping guilt that I was wading too far into this role. That maybe I wasn’t even doing this for Wynonna at all.

  That maybe I was doing it for me.

  Naturally, I pushed that thought away—out of sight, out of mind.

  “I like food,” I said.

  • •

  I’d been to Roscoe’s apartment once—two Saturdays ago—for breakfast. The place was nice. Simple. Clean. Which seemed suspicious for a single dude. (I had no doubt he cleaned the place like a serial killer at a crime scene before I got there.) His walls were decorated in minimalist art—lots of lines and squares, occasionally going crazy with an unruly trapezoid. He had several potted plants, including an adorable little bonsai tree on his coffee table. He even had a vinyl player with records like Damien Rice’s O and Bat for Lashes’s Two Suns. His whole thing seemed to be: hard on the outside, sweet and gooey on the inside.

  Like Gushers, basically. Roscoe was a giant Gushers fruit candy.

  It was that first day in his apartment, while perusing his vinyls, that I noticed he had Sufjan Stevens’s Illinois. I held it dearly to my chest, turned and faced him, and said, “You do realize this is the greatest album of all time, right?”

  Roscoe chuckled. “Are you just saying that because it’s called Illinois and you live in Illinois?”

  It was a fair enough question. But it was also pure coincidence. Illinois was a vision of pure genius. A transcendental work of art. It was lush and strange, jaunty and whimsical, epic and challenging. In their review for Illinois, NME magazine called Sufjan “a brainy little fucker.” He literally immersed himself in the “Prairie State.” Studied its lore like a sacred text. The entire album was teeming with bizarre facts and fascinating history. Sufjan was a genius, to be sure, and blisteringly clever, but, above all else, the album was brimming with heart.

  It was a fucking symphony—a triumph—of the human condition.

  I could have said all of this. But for the sake of not sounding like the nerd that I obviously was, I said, “Screw you. This album is the shit.”

  “Okay, okay!” said Roscoe, hands raised in playful defense. “Just trying to gauge how hipster you are.”

  “I prefer ‘cultured,’” I said, air-quoting. “Sounds less douchey.”

  Long story short, Roscoe and I were a couple of cool cats.

  But today was different.

  When Roscoe answered the door, he was wearing a maroon dress shirt, dark slacks, and a tie. Even his hair was combed—slicked back and to the side, unleashing mild anarchy at the nape of his neck.

  Not once in the history of ever had I seen Roscoe’s hair combed.

  I glanced down at myself—above-the-knee jean shorts, flip-flops, and an off-the-shoulder, oversized hot-pink sweatshirt that said RAD.

  “I feel underdressed,” I said.

  “What?” said Roscoe. “No, you’re fine! Come in.”

  He gestured me in just a little too enthusiastically. I reluctantly followed. The first thing I saw was that his normal dining table—a small disk on a single leg—had been transformed into something majestic. White tablecloth, candlelight, china, and the sort of silverware setup that involved multiple forks. A soft and swoony song with a hint of banjo was playing in the background for ambience—Sufjan, of course. “For the Widows in Paradise, for the Fatherless in Ypsilanti.”

  Something was up. So very, very up.

  Something also smelled freaking delicious. Suddenly, it was all I could think about.

  “Whoa,” I said. I sniffed the air like a bloodhound. “What is that?”

  Roscoe grinned. “That is Berner platte. Here. Sit.”

  He graciously pulled my seat out for me. I sat—suddenly entranced with the spectacle of everything. There were so many forks!

  “What do you do with three forks?” I asked.

  Roscoe chuckled. “The basic rule is you start with the outside cutlery and move inward.”

  “How many things are we eating?”

  “Oh, a few.”

  It was a surprise five-course meal. Which sounds daunting, but the courses came in small, exciting spurts. The first course, for example, was a one-bite appetizer: Swiss chard tartlets with Gruyère. Gruyère was a cheese, apparently. They were basically special mini tarts, filled with an intense riot of sweet and savory: sautéed onion and fennel, sweet dried currants, egg, crème fraîche, pine nuts, Parmesan, and—of course—Swiss chard and Gruyère.

  I only knew this because Roscoe carefully explained the
composition to me, like a science. I just sat there and nodded thoughtfully, pretending I had enough culinary chic to know what the hell he was talking about, and that I wasn’t some McDonald’s-eating American dipshit, which I was.

  Next was the soup: Bündner Gerstensuppe—a barley soup consisting of various, more traditional vegetables and Bündnerfleisch, a Swiss air-dried meat. Then a fish course, which Roscoe was quick to point out was not the main course: brook trout over a ratatouille crepe.

  Finally, the entrée: Berner platte—aka the “Bernese platter.”

  It was essentially a wide range of meats served over juniper-flavored sauerkraut, potatoes, and dried beans. The original recipe called for more exotic meats, but seeing as this was Illinois, Roscoe settled for pork chops, knockwurst sausage, and Polish kielbasa, and slow-cooked the whole thing in AmberBock beer.

  As a recovering alcoholic, Roscoe felt the need to explain to me that the alcohol cooks off. (Which I knew, obviously. I wasn’t that much of a McDonald’s-eating dipshit.) Still, I appreciated the dedication to his recovery.

  I took one bite. Chewed. Swallowed.

  “Oh…my god,” I said. I took another bite. Involuntarily made the most obnoxious dish-savoring sound imaginable: “Mmmmmnnnnggghh!”

  It was impossible not to.

  “Good?” said Roscoe.

  I conveyed the word “good” with my eyeballs, then rolled them into the back of my skull.

  “It was invented in the late seventeen hundreds,” he said, “after the Bernese defeated the French at Neuenegg. To celebrate, the people of Bern held a victory feast, everyone bringing whatever they had on hand—hence the smorgasbord of meats.”

  I swallowed. “You sure know a lot about that country.”

  “Well, Bern is just a city in Switzerland. But, yeah. I like to think of it as my other home. In fact, in a lot of ways, Switzerland is my real home. Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  Suddenly, his fingers were interlocked on the table, and he was leaning forward slightly, and his full and undivided attention skewered me—every layer of me—like a kebab.

  “How would you feel about moving to Switzerland with me?” he said.

  I slowly leaned back as I processed this invitation. Or maybe I was just tipping over. Either way, I felt light-headed.