Where I End and You Begin

by Preston Norton

  Just kidding. But there is such a thing as tact.

  “You’re right,” I said, breathless and detached, as the gears were spinning out of control in my head. “Maybe that is why.”

  Holden groaned. “You’re not supposed to agree with me!”

  “No, no, no! This is good.”

  “It is?”

  “You just need to put on the ol’ Holden suave.”

  “Suave?” said Holden, confused. “What, like the shampoo?”

  I sighed. “Remember when you were getting ready for the double date? And you were trying so hard to impress her?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look, maybe this is a breach of confidentiality, but bro-to-bro, she was super turned on.”

  “What? Really?”

  “Remember all that stuff Ezra told you to do with Wynonna? Except it backfired because Wynonna was me?”

  Holden’s eyes expanded with realization.

  “That was Wynonna telling you to do that. Because she wanted you to do that to her.”

  Holden’s mouth opened to roughly the size of a groundhog hole. Punxsutawney Phil could have fit through that thing.

  “What should I do?” said Holden. “When should I do? I mean, you guys haven’t switched back in a month. What if you never switch back?”

  The moment he said it, he seemed to immediately regret it.

  “I mean, of course you’ll switch back eventually,” he said. “I’m just saying…”

  And then he kind of trailed off.

  “No, you’re right,” I said sullenly. Resigned to my fate. “Maybe we’ll never swap back.”

  Holden bit his lip.

  “But maybe we will,” I said. “And if you win Wynonna over while she’s a guy? I’d say you’ve won her over pretty goo—”

  Flash.

  I was behind the steering wheel of my car.

  My car—the Subaru.

  My hands were on the steering wheel.

  In the mere yoctoseconds that I was processing this startling turn of events, I noticed the bleeding neon of the elevated brake lights in front of me, coming in at literal breakneck force.

  I collided with the mountain of a vehicle in front of me, and the hood of the Subaru crumbled like paper beneath the metal beast, and my head smashed into the steering wheel, and—

  Black.

  I couldn’t even process it. One second we were driving. The next, I was hanging forward, dangling against the shoulder harness of my seat belt, probably dead. At the very least, my soul felt like it had been jarred from my body.

  “Ezra?” said Mom’s voice. She was sitting in the passenger seat, slowly waking up from her own post-impact daze, a pair of airbags slowly deflating. The panic in her tone escalated. “Ezra, honey, are you okay?”

  “Uh…” I said, dispelling the theory that I was probably dead.

  “Does anything hurt?”

  I slowly gave myself a once-over—as if seeing my individual body parts would help me decipher whether or not they were hurting. Mostly, I was shell-shocked, and discombobulated, and didn’t know what was going on.

  My forehead hurt a little bit—I was pretty sure it hit the back of Dad’s seat—but my seat belt absorbed the brunt of the impact. And anyway, I didn’t want to worry Mom. She looked worried enough.

  I shook my head.

  That was enough for her. She promptly moved down the line in priority order. Turned to Dad in the driver’s seat.

  “Mark?” she said.

  Dad seemed awake. And aware. And acutely focused on the car in front of us.

  Slowly, Mom turned her head.

  The vehicle in front of us—a small white thing—was folded around the nose of our SUV. It looked like an aluminum can that had been stepped on sideways.

  The passenger-side window was covered in blood.

  It was a shattered spiderweb of cracks, nothing visible on the inside.

  Nothing but blood. I had never seen so much blood. Not even in movies.

  Suddenly, Mom was turning back around, smiling wide and slightly manic, blocking my view. “Hey, Ezzie! I’m going to go outside and help these nice people. Your father’s going to come back there and make a phone call, okay? He’s going to call nine-one-one.”

  Dad nodded, dazed. He seemed immensely glad that someone else was taking charge here.

  “But I need you to do something for me, okay?” she said. “I need you to close your eyes. I need you to close them until I come back there and tell you that you can open them. No peeking. Can you do that for me, Ezzie? Nod your head if you can do that for me.”

  I nodded my head.

  “Okay, close your eyes now, baby.”

  I closed my eyes. Closed them until there was nothing but black.

  I heard both car doors open and close. The back door opened, I felt Dad heave himself beside me, and it closed again. I heard the faint whir of a dial tone.

  “Yeah, I’d like to report an accident,” said Dad. “We hit a car, I think they ran a stop sign. The woman in the passenger seat, I think she’s…uh…Look, my kid’s in the car with me, but it’s bad. Uh. Lynbriar. Lynbriar Lane and…um…Bellchase Drive. Yes, Carbondale. Yes. Yes. Okay. My wife’s a doctor actually, she’s already checking on them. Yeah. Well, I realize that, but this woman really looks…Okay. Okay, thank you. Okay, bye.”

  Silence. I felt Dad’s hand, ruffling my hair, pulling my head into his chest.

  “How ya hangin’ in there, bud?”

  “I’m hangin’,” I said.

  “Eyes still closed?”

  I nodded my head against his chest.

  “Good. Keep ’em closed. We’ll get you ice cream.”

  “Birthday-cake ice cream?” I asked.

  “You bet.”

  “With sour gummy worms on top?”

  Dad chuckled. “That sounds awful, but sure. Whatever you want.”

  We stayed that way for a long time. Not talking. Not really needing to. I knew something bad had happened, but beyond that, I hadn’t a clue. Dad’s presence told me that everything was going to be all right, and I guess that was all I needed to know.

  I may have fallen asleep at some point. It was hard to tell. All I knew was that the whole blurry ordeal felt like hours, but the hours seemed to melt together into something smaller, more fluid, manageable.

  Finally, the back door opened again. A new body filled the empty space beside me. Pulled me away from Dad and squeezed me. Held me desperately. I didn’t need to open my eyes to know it was Mom.

  I could feel her crying into my hair.

  “Mom?” I said, sleepily. “Are you okay?”

  Mom sniffed. “I’m okay, honey. I just love you so much. You and Willow both. You two are everything to me.”

  “Can I open my eyes now?”

  Mom seemed to hesitate. “Okay. But before you do…there’s an ambulance and some police cars here. But don’t worry. They’re all here to help, so don’t be scared, baby. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. You can open your eyes.”

  I opened them.

  She wasn’t kidding. I was immersed in a world of flashing lights, reds and blues, strobing relentlessly. I counted a total of four police cars, three tow trucks, two ambulances, and a fire truck.

  One ambulance in particular stole my attention. This was because the back door was open, facing us, and two girls I very much recognized were sitting in the back.

  The first girl was Imogen Klutz—aka the Most Beautiful Girl in the World. She was kind of the highlight: squeaky-clean, wearing crisp Hello Kitty pajamas, her hair completely wet, flattened in sheets down either side of her perfectly round head. It looked like she had jumped straight out of the shower for this.

  Imogen’s chubby arms were wrapped fiercely around the girl beside her, head resting on the girl’s shoulder.

  The second girl was Wynonna Jones—aka the Best Friend of Imogen Klutz. Her presence was kind of alarming. For starters, she appeared to be spat
tered in blood. Her brown hair was matted to her forehead, and everything else was drenched in sweat. Her clothes stuck to her like tape. Her face was empty. Numb. A sort of “dead inside” look oozed out of her. She had a red blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and have I mentioned that Imogen was holding her like she was the most important thing in the world?

  Suddenly, I had completely forgotten about the blood situation. All that I could focus on was my overwhelming jealousy of Wynonna.

  In some distant cubicle of my mind, I became aware of several things.

  I was aware of the time—3:13 a.m.

  I was aware of Imogen’s mom and dad standing off to the side, talking to a police officer. I heard the words, even though they failed to register.

  “Her grandmother is willing to assume guardianship, but she’s currently out of town. She’s trying to get here as soon as she can, but until then, well…the girl is obviously in a fragile state.”

  “It’s no problem,” said Mrs. Klutz, shaking her head. “No problem at all. Christ, I wish we could do more.”

  I was aware of Wynonna—looking directly at me.

  At first, I was startled. She was looking so intently at me, it almost seemed resentful. Maybe it was. But the more I studied her, the more I realized it was longing. Like she wished she was me.

  I failed to realize Mom was still holding me.

  I failed to realize what that meant to Wynonna.

  Tick—3:14 a.m.

  Pi.

  It was kind of a magical number for me—in the same way that 7:11 was a magical number for everyone else. “Seven-eleven, make a wish!” they would say. Well, I liked to make wishes on 3:14—although I usually made my wishes in the afternoon. Tonight was a rare occurrence. I had never stayed up late enough to make a wish at 3:14 a.m.

  I didn’t care that Wynonna was sweaty, dirty, possibly covered in blood. I didn’t care that she looked like she was having the worst day of her life. All I cared about was that—right here, right now—she was the most important thing to Imogen Klutz.

  In that moment, I wished I was Wynonna Jones.

  • •

  “You excited for the eclipse tomorrow?” said Mom, on the drive home.

  I pretended to mull the question over. Shrugged. It was easier than telling Mom I didn’t give one single crap.

  “You should be excited,” she said. “Did you know that Carbondale will experience the longest duration of totality in the entire United States?”

  I did, in fact, know this. Everyone in town talked about it like it was the Apollo 11 moon landing—which it definitely wasn’t.

  “It’s cool, I guess,” I said.

  Mom rolled her eyes.

  “How about Romeo and Juliet?” said Dad. “You got those lines memorized?”

  Now that was something I could get excited about. I gave a toothy smile. Nodded elatedly.

  • •

  I never fell asleep that night—the first blip in a pattern that would grow to haunt me.

  I couldn’t even begin to fathom the scar that accident left on my brain. The memory faded like a dream, but the scar remained. A scar filled with crumpled metal, and shattered glass, and blood. So much blood.

  The next day, Mom, Dad, Willow, and I joined fourteen thousand people who crammed into Saluki Stadium for the biggest eclipse-viewing event in town.

  At 1:20 p.m., the moon completely eclipsed the sun.

  For a split second, I became someone else. Someone who was also at Saluki Stadium, watching the exact same eclipse, accompanied by a family—just not hers.

  Someone who was doing everything she could to ignore the fact that her life had been ruined forever.

  But it was a fleeting instant. A flicker.

  The moment I sensed something was off, I looked away from the eclipse, looked around me, looked at my own hands.

  I was myself. Nothing was out of the ordinary.

  But not for long.

  Reality sucker-punched me in the face. This wasn’t a drill. It wasn’t a dream, or a memory, or some pensive in-between either. I was here, and I was now. It was a very physical sensation.

  Or maybe it was just the lingering impact of the steering wheel. My face seriously hurt.

  I glanced down at myself. I was wearing a hospital gown, and there were wires everywhere—in my nose, in my arm, spooling around me like the entrails of a gutted cassette tape.

  And I was me. I was Ezra Slevin.

  “Hello?” I said, but my voice came out as a breathless croak. I tried harder. “Helloooo? Is anyone there?”

  I was so focused on myself, I failed to notice that I wasn’t the only person in the room. Three heads snapped upright in my peripheral: Willow, and Holden, and…

  …and Wynonna.

  Of the three, Wynonna looked the shittiest. Her eyes were bloodshot and raw with devastation. Her mouth was a brittle line, ready to break.

  At least, she looked like that for a fraction of a second. The moment our gazes interlocked, her eyes swelled. She bolted out of her chair and threw herself on top of me, sobbing into my chest.

  “I thought you died!” she cried. “You’re not allowed to die on me! You can’t fucking do that!”

  “Mom!” Willow shouted. “Dad! He’s awake! Somebody, he’s awake!”

  Wynonna took a shuddering breath. “I only have so many people,” she said softly. “I can’t lose you, too.”

  • •

  The world outside my hospital room window had long faded into darkness. Willow finally went home with Dad. Mom said she’d be right behind them. She told me that if I was feeling well enough in the morning, I’d be released. Currently, there was no sign of a concussion. No broken bones. No back or leg or knee injury, as was common with these types of accidents. As far as a neck injury, I had only the mildest of whiplash. The worst part was my face. The entire area around both eyes and the bridge of my nose was bruised, like I was wearing a bandit mask. But aside from looking like the Hamburglar, I was perfectly healthy. It was just a matter of waiting out the night and making sure I didn’t spontaneously combust or anything.

  When Mom left, it was just me and Wynonna and Holden. Wynonna appeared to want to talk to me alone, but Holden just seemed eager to talk.

  “You’re you!” he exclaimed. “I mean, you’re Ezra-Ezra, right? Not Wynonna-Ezra?”

  I glanced at Wynonna.

  “Oh, I already told her and Willow that I believe you guys,” he said. “She started freaking out mid-sentence, and I just knew you guys had swapped. So, I guess that was a stupid—”

  Wynonna cleared her throat loudly. “Holden?”

  Holden snapped rigid. He may have been a chatterbox, but Wynonna possessed the power to turn his words to sludge. Not to mention, he farted in front of her AND THREW HIS FART IN HER FACE. This was not the sort of embarrassment you live down.

  “Yeah?” said Holden.

  “Can Ezra and I have a word?” she said. “Alone?”

  “Oh,” said Holden. “Okay. Should I just wait outside the door?”

  “It’s probably going to be a while,” said Wynonna. “And it’s late. You look tired. You should go home.”

  Holden looked like he didn’t know if he should be offended or grateful that she was so considerate of his REM cycle.

  Wynonna let out a quiet sigh. “And if Ezra gets out tomorrow morning, we can all sit together at lunch.”

  Holden lit up. “Oh! Okay! Yeah!” He nodded incessantly to indicate how pumped he was.

  Wynonna nodded to let him know that he could go now.

  Holden left.

  Wynonna walked slowly—inconspicuously—to the hospital room door, glanced outside to make sure that Holden was thoroughly gone, and closed the door. She flattened her back against the surface, every muscle a knot of tension.

  Looked at me.

  “I’m still mad at you,” she said. “Don’t go thinking you’re off the hook just yet.”

  I deflated in my hospital bed.


  “What were you thinking?” she said. “I mean, I know what you were thinking, unfortunately, but still, what were you THINKING? How did you expect this to work?”

  I shrugged helplessly. “I mean…he’s sorry. You have no idea how sorry he is.”

  “Not half as sorry as he should be.”

  “He hates himself for what he did.”

  “Good! He should hate himself!”

  “He’s been sober for the past seven years.”

  That one hit her a little bit. Not hard. Just enough for her to not have a comeback.

  “I know what he did was unforgivable,” I said. “But he loves you. He’d do anything for you. Aren’t those the sort of people worth fighting for? Isn’t that worth giving a chance?”

  Wynonna didn’t say anything. Her eyes were hard, and her mouth was pinched shut fiercely, but she said nothing. If anything, it meant she was listening. “I told him who I was,” I said.

  Wynonna reared back slightly. “You what?”

  “I told him we were swapping bodies. That my name was Ezra Slevin.”

  “You told him you were Ezra Slevin?” she repeated incredulously.

  It was the way she emphasized my last name that triggered it.

  Roscoe’s voice became an echo in my skull.

  That little boy. You’re pretending to be that little boy.

  Wait.

  This is cruel. I don’t think you even realize how cruel you’re being.

  Oh my god.

  Seven years ago, during that accident…Roscoe saw me. He saw a little boy sitting in the back seat of the other vehicle. And he must have known our last name. After being charged, convicted, and serving a five-year sentence for a Class 3 felony, he had to know the name of the people in the other car.

  That’s why he was so upset.

  That’s why he stormed off.

  “Ezra?” said Wynonna. She waved her hand in front of my face. “You still in there?”

  I blinked. Refocused on Wynonna.

  “The accident,” I said slowly, “the one from seven years ago…you know who was in the other car, don’t you?”

  Wynonna didn’t react. She had already gone through the entire spectrum of emotions today. There probably wasn’t much left to feel anymore.