Where I End and You Begin

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Where I End and You Begin Page 27

by Preston Norton


  She nodded her head. It was an empty—but definitive—nod.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I said.

  “I thought you already knew. I mean, you were there.”

  “But I didn’t know. I mean…I guess I did, sort of, but…I didn’t remember.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  I stared at Wynonna, beyond perplexed.

  Wynonna shrugged. “I thought you were lying to me. Which…look, I was fine with it. I figured you didn’t wanna talk about it, and I didn’t wanna talk about it either. It wasn’t until later that I realized you didn’t have a fucking clue.”

  She paused. Bit her lip.

  “So…you remember now?”

  “I do now. It’s like rear-ending that truck knocked it back into my head.”

  “Huh. Weird.”

  She didn’t even know the half of it.

  I told her everything—the forgotten memories I could suddenly recall in vivid detail. Making eye contact with Wynonna at the accident. Wishing I was her. And feeling somehow—inexplicably—that she was wishing for a similar thing.

  I told her I made this wish at 3:14 a.m.

  I told her about the sensation I felt at Saluki Stadium. That we might have swapped—ever so briefly—at the moment of the eclipse.

  Wynonna’s eyes grew progressively larger with every detail. I was apparently hitting some notes that resonated with her.

  By the time I finished talking, I looked at her. Fishing for some verbal confirmation that I was on the right track.

  “Yes!” said Wynonna. The word broke from her lips in a ragged breath. She was smiling and shaking simultaneously. “Fuck. Yes. I remember all of that.”

  • •

  We talked all night—about the accident, about our memories, about our feelings. We even talked about Roscoe. Mostly I talked about Roscoe, and Wynonna listened. Still, that was a special sort of progress.

  Then, at 3:14 a.m., we unceremoniously swapped.

  Things were back to normal.

  Well, a form of normal. But it was good enough for us.

  “Damn,” said Wynezra. “It feels like someone drove a spike in between my eyeballs, right into my brain.”

  I nodded empathetically.

  “It also feels like I’m swimming naked in rose petals like that girl in American Beauty,” she said. “Jesus, how much morphine do they have you on?”

  “Enough to alleviate a spike driven in between your eyeballs, right into your brain?” I suggested.

  “I’ll say. Like, I feel the spike, but I also feel like I’m made of magic. Dude. I feel like a unicorn!”

  I giggled helplessly. Wynezra on morphine was my new favorite thing.

  “I realize I’m on drugs right now,” said Wynezra, “but I’ll do it.”

  I blinked. “Do what?”

  “Talk to my dad.”

  I nearly fell over in my chair. “What? You will?”

  “I’m not agreeing to go to fucking Switzerland with him,” she said, hastily. “I’m not agreeing to anything. But I’ll talk to him.”

  “That’s great!” I said, trying—and failing—not to scream.

  “Under one condition.”

  “Condition?”

  “You have to be there with me. You started this mess, you have to see it through to the end.”

  I considered the offer. But not for too long. I was in, obviously. I was so totally in.

  I nodded my head like an idiot.

  the hospital later that morning. Mom saw to that. I waited outside while Wynezra underwent a routine checkup and some quick tests—performed by Mom herself—to make sure nothing was ruptured or hemorrhaging or concussed. Fortunately, Humpty-Dumpty appeared to be in tip-top shape.

  Just in time for school.

  Wynezra and I rode together. She drove, while I attempted to call Roscoe. After my third missed call, I left a desperate voice mail.

  “Hey, it’s me. Um, Ezra. I know you don’t believe me, and you probably don’t want to talk to me right now, but…look, Wynonna is willing to talk to you. The real Wynonna. So…yeah. Call me back. Please. Thank you. Um, bye.”

  I hung up.

  Wynezra just shook her head in the driver’s seat. “This is gonna be so much fun.”

  She was being sarcastic.

  “It’s a good thing I like you, Ez,” she added—dare I say coyly?

  I thought she was being sarcastic again. But then she smiled. It was a super-suspicious smile.

  “What?” I said.

  “What do you mean, ‘What?’”

  “What are you smiling about?”

  “I’m not smiling,” she said, which only made her smile even more.

  “Are you kidding me? You’re not even trying to lie properly!”

  Wynezra sighed. Still smiling. In fact, her smile had reached a critical breaking point. “Okay. Fine. I have a secret, too.”

  I stared at her. “Which is…?”

  “Well, I can’t tell you. Otherwise it wouldn’t be a secret.”

  “Are you kidding me? You have to tell me!”

  “Relax, Ezzie. You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? And since when do you call me Ez or Ezzie?”

  Wynonna just smiled—that knowing, tantalizing smile.

  • •

  She was right. I did find out soon enough.

  When the lunch bell rang, I barely took a step outside of class when I saw Imogen, leaning against the opposite wall, a gigantic Union Jack purse slung over her thin shoulder. Her legs were locked straight, her hands were tucked behind her back, and her lips were pursed, small and impenetrable.

  Her eyes were reddish and puffy, like she had been crying.

  I halted barely a step outside the doorway, forcing the rest of the class to squeeze around me on either side. Remarkably, no one told me to move. Wynonna had that sort of reputation.

  “Can we talk?” said Imogen.

  Recently, I had spent a great deal of time not obsessing over Imogen, on the grounds that she wanted nothing to do with me. So it came as sort of a surprise when my stomach filled with butterflies. Or maybe just one giant, kaiju-sized monster butterfly, like Mothra. The butterfly situation threatened to explode me from the inside.

  “Sure?” I said.

  “Is outside okay?”

  I gave a wobbly affirmative nod.

  We followed the human traffic to the nearest exit. All the while not speaking a word. Not even looking at each other, really. We broke away from the teenage current and exited through a pair of side doors.

  It wasn’t the most scenic side of Piles Fork High School. It was a shady alcove, and the grass was dying in the shade. Ziggy had recently replaced the grass with new sod, but even that was dying.

  But it was as good a place as any for Imogen to say what she had to say.

  “I talked to…” she said, then hesitated. “I talked to Wynonna.”

  I blinked.

  “The Wynonna who is currently Ezra,” she clarified, so that there was no room for misinterpretation. “I talked to Holden, too. And Willow. And…I believe you. I believe all of you.”

  “Oh,” I said. I wasn’t sure what else to say. My stomach felt dense, and my lungs were collapsing, and Mothra was flapping her mighty wings.

  “I think what you two did was messed up,” she continued. “But…I think what I did wasn’t right either.”

  “What you did?”

  “I knew Wynonna didn’t like me like that. We had a whole summer to hash that out, and I had a whole year to get over her. And I did get over her. But then…well, Wynonna really felt like a different person. And she was a different person. But literally. Because she was you. And…I think I kind of fell for that person. Just a little bit.”

  My jaw dropped.

  “Look,” said Imogen, “I knew better than to jump back into something with Wynonna. She’s the best friend I’ve ever had, Ezra. And for the past month, I…I haven’t been that
friend to her. But you have. And if you know Wynonna, you know that friends are all she has. Ezra, you’ve literally been all that she has. And…and…”

  Imogen’s voice broke.

  “I can never repay you for that.” She sniffed, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. “But since it’s what you and Wynonna were trying to do from the very beginning, and since I genuinely adore you as a human being, well…it’s nothing really, but I figure this is the least I can do.”

  Imogen fumbled with her Union Jack purse, dropped to her knee, and pulled out both a corsage and a boutonnière—both pearly-white roses laced in ribbon—still inside their plastic cases.

  My jaw was already extended to maximum gape. It could drop no farther.

  “Ezra,” she said, “whether you’re you or Wynonna on prom night…will you go to prom with me?”

  I just stood there.

  Gaping.

  Like an idiot.

  “I should mention that Wynonna is asking Holden to prom as we speak,” said Imogen, mostly to fill the silence. “It’s supposed to be a double-date sort of thing. Just FYI, in case you’re thinking of saying no—”

  But I was already nodding my head like a dashboard bobblehead, and I was crying, and I was smiling so hard, it was undoubtedly ugly.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, please. I’d like that very much.”

  “Awww,” said Imogen, and she stood up and hugged me. “You’re a really sensitive guy, Ezra. I like that.”

  “I’m on my period,” I said, sniffling.

  Imogen laughed and squeezed me harder. “The fact that you know how that feels makes me adore you even more.”

  • •

  Holden and I immediately texted each other, and then sprinted in each other’s general direction. When we met in the hall, our eyes swelled like balloons, and we squealed.

  “I just got asked to prom!” Holden screamed, waving his boxed boutonnière.

  “Me too!” I said, shaking both my boutonnière and my corsage at him.

  We kept screaming, hugged each other, and not five seconds later, I felt something nudge my thigh. Our scream transitioned into an “oh god, no” sort of wail, and we broke away. Holden threw his hands in the air, like he was under arrest.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m just excited, and you look like my prom date.”

  “You do realize,” I said, “that you might be going to prom with Wynonna in my body.”

  “Oh, I know. That’s actually a good thing. Otherwise, I might have a boner all night!”

  I laughed.

  “I’m serious!” he said. “And I still have to redeem myself for throwing my farts in her face. I’m pretty sure rocking a woody all night would be a step in the opposite direction.”

  I was laughing so hard, I couldn’t breathe.

  “You’re a real pal, you know that?” said Holden, unamused. “Laughing at my misfortune. My life is being ruined by boners and farts, you know. This is not a laughing matter. This is serious.”

  “Stop it!” I wheezed hysterically. “I can’t breathe! I can’t…I can’t breeeathe!”

  • •

  Rekindling our tradition of old, Wynezra, Imogen, Holden, and I carpooled to theater for our final dress rehearsal. Imogen and Holden let me ride shotgun in the Subaru while Wynezra drove.

  We arrived at the Amityvale, got in costume and makeup, and performed our parts like we were born for this purpose.

  Even Wynezra, with her three lines as Servant, delivered them with the greatest of…uh…servitude? In act 3, scene 4, she entered “Olivia’s garden” while Malvolio (Willow) was wearing cross-gartered yellow stockings—per the instructions in the prank love letter—and Olivia (Imogen) was declaring, “Why, this is very midsummer madness.”

  Enter WYNEZRA.

  “Madam, the young gentleman of the Count Orsino’s is returned: I could hardly entreat him back: he attends your ladyship’s pleasure.”

  Imogen’s lips curled with delight. “I’ll come to him.”

  The dress rehearsal was a flawless success. Even Jayden and Thad—with their tenderized slabs of meat for faces—were professional, and courteous, and performed their parts with minimum douchebaggery. Except for when the parts called for it. Sir Toby and Fabian were kind of horrible people.

  When we finished, Ziggy applauded us and commanded us to applaud ourselves—which we did because we were fucking awesome. Ziggy then broke down the details for tomorrow’s big performance. It would be held in the school gymnasium (because Amityvale was an irreparable shithole) at three p.m. sharp. The reason it was starting so early was that prom was the following day, in the exact same gymnasium.

  As Ziggy dismissed us, we dispersed in a mostly unified drove for the exit. Wynezra and Imogen were talking about prom dresses, and they dragged me into the discussion, because I might be wearing one of them. Wynezra and I resolved to split our combined tux and dress expenses. Holden must have felt a little left out of the prom-dress conversation, because he kept chipping in with his own thoughts and suggestions, so we decided, what the hell, we’d all go shopping together ASAP.

  That’s when we heard a wave of chatter from the front of the line. As we spilled outside into the late-afternoon sunlight, we witnessed our car—my car, technically—the Subaru, covered in hearts made of construction paper, and rose petals, and balloons tied to the side mirrors and door handles, and white words scrawled across the front windshield in window paint. They read:

  Patrick was standing awkwardly off to the side, receiving fist bumps and shoulder claps from the “dudes” and “bros” who composed the majority of Jayden and Thad’s posse. But his attention was trained on Willow, who was standing in front of the car, motionless. She finally turned and made eye contact with him.

  Walked right up to him.

  “I should hate you, Patrick,” she said. “But mostly, I’m just sad and disgusted. I don’t know why you would think you have the right to ask me to prom. You had my trust and respect—and you just gave it away. You’re worse than Thad and Jayden.”

  She marched directly to the car, leaving Patrick to marinate in the rejection.

  She walked with fierceness.

  She walked with pride.

  Willow Slevin had cashed in the last fuck she had to give. Thad and Jayden and Patrick could rot in hell, and she wouldn’t even blink.

  • •

  Prom had a theme—Winter Wonderland—and Wynezra and Imogen had the brilliant idea of dressing us all in accordance. Apparently, Holden and I were not so much participants in prom shopping as we were Barbie/Ken dolls they could dress up.

  “But isn’t this tacky?” said Holden.

  “You know what’s tacky?” said Imogen. “Your attitude. You look great.”

  “I feel like Colonel Sanders.”

  Yes, Holden was wearing a white suit. But it was far from Colonel Sanders. Maybe if a Hollywood biopic version of Colonel Sanders were on the cover of GQ magazine, played by Dave Franco. His suit coat had sharp black lapels and a matching black bow tie. His shoes were so shiny, they could have been sculpted out of obsidian.

  “You look great,” said Wynezra.

  Holden blushed. He opened his mouth, as if to say, “You look great, too,” but then seemed unsure whether he should say that to her in my body or to me in her body.

  “You look finger-lickin’ good,” I said.

  “Dammit!” said Holden. “I do look like Colonel Sanders, don’t I?”

  “Ezra!” Imogen growled through her teeth. She smacked me with her purse. “Stop provoking him.”

  “Do I look like Colonel Sanders?” said Wynezra, challengingly. “Because I think I look finger-lickin’ good.”

  She was wearing a slightly off-white suit coat—like vanilla ice cream—with a black bow tie identical to Holden’s and black slacks. She strutted seductively toward him, like a practiced male stripper. Holden was paralyzed in place. Even as she grabbed his hand, lifted it gracefully to her mouth, and inserted the very tipp
y-tip of his index finger between her lips, and proceeded to suck gently.

  “Ooooookay,” said Holden, but his voice cracked. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Okay. You’ve made your point. We can check you out now. I mean…we can check out now. We can check out your stuff…as well as my stuff. We can check out everyone’s…stuff.”

  I made a slicing gesture across my throat at him.

  Wynezra released Holden’s finger from her lips, winked, and smacked him on the butt. “There’s more where that came from, Colonel.”

  Holden—in a state of sexual crisis—discreetly adjusted his slacks.

  Imogen sighed dreamily. “This is so hot.”

  Holden and Imogen off, Wynezra looked at me expectantly. I looked at my phone.

  Still nothing from Roscoe.

  “I could call him again?” I offered, hopefully.

  Wynezra shook her head.

  My heart sank. That was it. Without the magic of morphine, her willingness to talk to Roscoe had passed. Like an unpleasant kidney stone.

  “Let’s just go over there,” she said.

  My heart bounced back, trampoline-propelled, practically lodging itself in my throat. I nearly choked on it.

  “Really?” I said. It came out as a sort of gasping wheeze.

  “We’ll go over there,” said Wynezra. “If he still hasn’t responded by the time we swap back, then we just knock the fuck on his door, Mormon-style.”

  Wynezra’s face hardened ever so slightly. In that moment, I began to question the “friendly nature” of this drop-in visit.

  “I want to talk to him as me.”

  • •

  Roscoe’s apartment was in a gated community. The key code I had was an individual number that dialed Roscoe, at which point he would push a number on his phone, and that would open the gate.

  But Roscoe wasn’t answering. Wynezra parked temporarily in front of the office. The moment a tenant drove through, she veered out and sped in behind them.

  We waited about five minutes in the Subaru, parked directly in front of Roscoe’s building, listening intensely and very uncoolly to the smooth jams of Alt Nation on Sirius XM when—flash—we swapped.

  Just like that, Wynonna was out the door, marching up to his building. She looked about as ready to talk as a contract killer.

 

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