“I’m here!” I shout, then keep shouting it until they find me.
Chapter Thirty
I call my parents.
I tell them I’m sleeping over at Rebecca’s.
Then I sleep over at Rebecca’s.
—
The next morning, Will invites us back to his house for a picnic.
“Are you sure he’s not just inviting Preston?” I ask. It’s eleven in the morning and I’m not out of bed yet.
“Nope,” Rebecca says. She’s been up for at least an hour, I’m sure. “All of us. Me and Ben. Steve and Stephanie. Will and Preston. And…you. Do you want to ask your Mystery Man?”
“I can’t,” I say.
“Come on. Isn’t it time we met him?”
“I just can’t.”
“What? Are you ashamed of us?” She’s teasing, but I can tell there’s a worry that it’s true.
“No,” I say. Because the truth is that I’m sure A would love nothing better than a picnic with me and my friends. A would fit in perfectly. It hurts me to know this.
“Then why not?”
“Because I don’t think it’s going to work out,” I say. “With him and me. I just don’t think—”
I can’t finish the sentence, because it feels so strange to say it out loud.
Rebecca sits down on the bed next to me and gives me a hug. “Oh, Rhiannon,” she says. “It’s alright.”
I don’t know why she’s treating me this way, but I guess I’m crying or something. I want to tell her they’re tears of confusion, not sadness. Was all of this for nothing? I think of Justin last night. I think of A out there somewhere. And I think, No, this wasn’t for nothing. Even if I’m not going to be with A, I needed to stop letting Justin determine my life. I needed to find my own life. A, in a way, got me there. And it wasn’t for nothing. A and I still have something, even if it’s not the kind of something where he can come to a picnic with my friends.
I get myself together. “Sorry,” I tell Rebecca.
“No need to be sorry,” she assures me.
“I know.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Yes, I want to talk about it.
No, I cannot talk about it.
“It’s just a long-distance thing. It’s hard,” I say.
Rebecca nods, sympathetic. I know she wants to ask me more.
“Let’s get ready for the picnic,” I say.
•••
We hang out in Will’s backyard and pretend it’s Central Park. Nobody mentions Justin. Nobody mentions the Mystery Man. Except my thoughts. They mention Justin and A all the time.
I am glad Justin isn’t here. If he were here, it wouldn’t be like this. Rebecca and Ben arguing over whether it’s pretentious to pronounce croissant in a French accent when you’re speaking English. Will and Preston finding every possible opportunity to touch each other on the arm, the leg, the cheek. Steve and Stephanie chilling out—Stephanie asking Steve to peel her a grape, and Steve actually doing it, both of them laughing at how messy a process it is. If Justin were here, he’d be bored. And he’d be letting me know how bored he was. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy any of my friends, because I would be so stuck on how Justin was feeling.
But if A were here. It’s Mental-picture A at first. But then it’s any of the A’s. Because even if he was a pretty girl, or even if he was a huge guy, or even if he was poor Kelsea, back from wherever her dad sent her—there’d be a place for A. Because A would appreciate this. A would understand how much this matters, to spend a day lazing around with your friends, telling inside jokes and feeling inside of them. A has never had that. But I could give A some of mine.
I could email. I could say, Come on over. But I’m worried he won’t understand why I’m asking. He’ll think I mean we can be together. A couple.
Plus, it wouldn’t be fair to the person he’s in.
I have to remember that, too.
•••
I think about contacting him a thousand times. For the rest of the day—in the fun moments with my friends, or in the quiet moments when I’m at home. Back at school, when I see things it would be fun to tell him about, or when the minutes seem hours long and class never ends. I want to tell him about Justin, and how now when we see each other in the halls, we ignore each other, as if we’re strangers, even though the way we ignore each other isn’t like strangers at all. I want to tell A that he was right about Justin but also wrong about Justin. Yes, he wasn’t good for me. But, no, it’s not that he didn’t care. That much is obvious now.
Finally, on Monday night, I give in. Instead of telling A everything, I keep it simple, to make sure that it’s okay to keep in touch.
How are you?
R
Within an hour, I get his response.
It’s been a rough two days. Apparently, I may not be the only person out there like this. Which is hard to think about.
A
And just like that, I feel myself being drawn in again. I start to write a response—a long response—but after a few paragraphs I think, No. Stop. I thought there would be distance, but there isn’t any distance. I know that if I involve myself again right now, it will be the same as before. And it can’t be.
I hold off. I call Rebecca and talk about other things.
I need to build a life without A before I let him back in.
Chapter Thirty-One
My friends gather around me. In school. After school. On the phone at night.
Will effortlessly joins our circle. He and Preston look so happy together. And I’m happy for them. I am. But I’m also angry, because Will can join us so effortlessly, in a way A never could.
Nobody mentions my Mystery Man anymore. Rebecca must have told them not to.
Part of me still expects him to show up. Expects the universe to send him into the classroom next to mine. Or into Rebecca’s body. Or Steve’s. Just to say hello. Just to be near.
But I can’t think that way. I know I can’t.
I find myself looking into people’s eyes more than I ever did before. And I realize, that’s where we stop being a certain gender or color. Just look right into the center of the eye.
I know I haven’t answered him. It weighs on me. I know I’m not being fair. There’s no point in spending all this time thinking about A without answering. I have to be honest and clear about where it can go. That’s all. That’s it.
First thing Thursday morning, I write.
I want to see you, but I’m not sure if we should do that. I want to hear about what’s going on, but I’m afraid that will only start everything again. I love you—I do—but I am afraid of making that love too important. Because you’re always going to leave me, A. We can’t deny it. You’re always going to leave.
R
—
All through the day, there’s no response. And I think, fine, I deserve that.
But it’s still disappointing.
—
Then, Friday at lunch, a response.
I understand. Can we please meet at the bookstore this afternoon, after school?
A
To which I say:
Of course.
R
—
I’m nervous as I drive over. Everything’s changed, and nothing’s changed. This is going to be hard, but it feels so easy. Mostly, I want to see him. Talk to him. Have him be in my life.
All the other obstacles have fallen away. I am even starting to believe, deep in my heart, that if I told my friends the truth, if they met A the way I met A, on multiple days, they would believe it, too.
The only obstacle, really, is his life.
Which I know is too big an obstacle. But in the rush to see him, it doesn’t seem as big as maybe it should.
I get there first. I scan the café and know that none of these people could be him. If he were here, he’d be looking for me. He’d know when I arrived.
So I sit down. I wait. And the minute he walks throu
gh the door, I know. Like there’s a shiver of lightning between us. Today he’s this thin Asian guy wearing a blue T-shirt with Cookie Monster on it. When A sees me, his smile is wider than Cookie Monster’s.
“Hey,” he says.
And this time I say it back gladly. “Hey.”
So here we are. I’m trying to remind myself to not fall back into it, to not start thinking it’s possible. But with him right here, that’s hard.
“I have an idea,” he says.
“What?”
He smiles again. “Let’s pretend this is the first time we’ve ever met. Let’s pretend you were here to get a book, and I happened to bump into you. We struck up a conversation. I like you. You like me. Now we’re sitting down to coffee. It feels right. You don’t know that I switch bodies every day. I don’t know about your ex or anything else. We’re just two people meeting for the first time.”
The lie we want to believe. That feels dangerous.
“But why?” I ask.
“So we don’t have to talk about everything else. So we can just be with each other. Enjoy it.”
I have to tell him, “I don’t see the point—”
“No past. No future. Just present. Give it a chance.”
I want to. I know I want to. So I will. I know it’s not as easy as that, but it can at least start by being as easy as that.
“It’s very nice to meet you,” I tell him. I feel like I’m a bad actress in a bad movie.
But he likes it. “It’s very nice to meet you, as well,” he says. “Where should we go?”
“You decide,” I tell him. “What’s your favorite place?”
He thinks about it for a second. Whether he’s inside his own thoughts or this boy’s thoughts, I don’t know. His smile gets wider.
“I know just the place,” he says. “But first we’ll need groceries.”
“Well, luckily, there’s a food store down the street.”
“My, how lucky we are!”
I laugh.
“What?” he asks.
“ ‘My, how lucky we are!’ You’re such a goofball.”
“I am happy to be your ball of goof.”
“You sound like Preston.”
“Who’s Preston?”
He really doesn’t know. How could he? I’ve never told him.
So as we walk over to the grocery store, I introduce him to all of my friends. He knows Rebecca, and vaguely remembers Steve and Stephanie, but I tell him more about them, and about Preston and Ben and even Will, too. It’s weird, because I know I can’t ask him the same questions back. But he seems okay with that.
Once we get to the grocery store, A says we’re going to go down all the aisles. “You never know what you might miss,” he tells me.
“And what are we shopping for?” I ask.
“Dinner,” he says. “Definitely dinner. And as we do, keep telling me stories.”
He asks me about pets, and I tell him more about Swizzle, this evil bunny rabbit we had who would escape his cage and sleep on our faces. It was terrifying. I ask him if he had a favorite pet, and he tells me that one day he had a pet ferret that seemed to understand it had a guest in the house, so it made his life as difficult as possible—but also gave him something to do because no one else was home during the day. When we get to the produce aisle, he tells me a story about this time at camp where he got hit in the eye by a flying greased watermelon. I tell him I can’t remember being injured by any fruit, although there was a good few years when I made my mom cut up apples before I’d eat them, because someone at school had told me about psychos who put razor blades inside.
We get to the cereal aisle, which isn’t really going to help us for dinner. But A stops there anyway and asks me for my life story told in cereals.
“Okay,” I say, getting what he means. I begin by holding up a cylinder of Quaker oatmeal. “It all starts with this. My mother barely eats breakfast, but my dad always has oatmeal. So I decided I liked oatmeal, too. Especially with bananas. It wasn’t until I was seven or eight that I realized how gross it was.” I pick up a box of Frosted Flakes. “This is where the battle began. Rebecca’s mom let her have Frosted Flakes, and like everyone else, I’d seen the commercials for them a zillion times. I begged my mother to let me eat them. She said no. So I did what any law-abiding girl would do—I stole a box from Rebecca’s house and kept it in my room. The only problem was, I was afraid my mom would catch me putting the bowls in the dishwasher. So I kept them in my room. And they began to stink. She threw a holy fit, but my dad was there and he said he didn’t see the harm in Frosted Flakes if that’s what I wanted. The punch line being, of course, that once I had them, they disappointed me. They got so soggy so fast. So my mom and I reached a compromise.” I walk him over to the Frosted Cheerios. “Now, I’m not sure why Frosted Cheerios are any better than Frosted Flakes, but my mom seemed to think so. Which brings us to our grand finale.” I make a production of choosing from the ninety kinds of granola before landing on my favorite cinnamon-raisin kind. “In truth, this probably has just as much sugar in it as anything frosted, but I have at least the illusion of health. And the raisins are satisfying. And it doesn’t get soggy right away.”
“I used to love how the Frosted Flakes turned the milk blue,” A says.
“Yeah! When did that stop being cool and start being gross?”
“Probably the same time that I realized there was not, in fact, any fruit in Froot Loops.”
“Or any honey in Honeycomb.”
“Or any chocolate in Count Chocula.”
“At least the Frosted Flakes had flakes in them.”
“And frostedness.”
“Yes. And frostedness.”
Talking like this, I am forgetting that this isn’t A. I am forgetting that we’re not on a regular date.
“Moving on…,” I say, taking us to the next aisle, and the one after.
We pick up a ridiculous amount of food. As we’re nearing the checkout, I realize there’s no way I am going to be getting home when my parents are expecting me.
“I should call my mom and tell her I’m eating at Rebecca’s,” I tell A.
“Tell her you’re staying over,” he says.
My phone is in my hand, but I don’t know what to do with it. “Really?”
“Really.”
Staying over. I think about the cabin. About what happened. I mean, what didn’t happen. And how that felt.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I say.
“Trust me. I know what I’m doing.”
I want to trust him. But he also doesn’t know what it was like. And he might have the wrong idea of what a night might lead to.
“You know how I feel,” I say.
“I do. But still, I want you to trust me. I’m not going to hurt you. I will never hurt you.”
Okay. I look into his eyes and I feel like he knows. There’s a plan—there’s definitely a plan. But it’s not going to be a repeat of the cabin. He knows what he’s doing, and I do trust that.
I call my mother and tell her I’m at Rebecca’s and will be staying there. She’s annoyed, but I can deal with that.
The harder part is calling Rebecca.
“I need you to cover for me,” I say. “If my mom calls for any reason, tell her I’m over.”
“Where are you?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
“I am. I promise I’ll tell you about it later—I can’t right now. But I’m okay. I might not even be out the whole night. I just want to make sure I’m covered.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Really. It’s good.”
“Okay. But I expect a full explanation this time. Not your usual evasion.”
“I promise. I’ll tell you everything.”
She says to have a good time. I think it’s remarkable that she’s trusting me. But she is.
“You’ll tell her you met a boy,” A says once I’ve hung up.
“A boy I just met?”
&n
bsp; “Yeah. A boy you’ve just met.”
It’s strange to think of that conversation. No longer a Mystery Man. Just a boy.
If only it were that easy.
—
I follow him in my car. This is the moment I could decide not to go. All I need to do is turn the steering wheel. All I need to do is return to the highway.
But I keep going.
—
His name is Alexander Lin and his parents are away for the weekend. A tells me both things at once.
“Alexander,” I say. “That’s easy enough to remember.”
“Why?” he asks.
I thought it was obvious. “Because it begins with A.”
He laughs, surprised. I guess it wasn’t as obvious, from the inside.
—
The house is a very nice house. The kitchen is about twice the size of our kitchen, and the refrigerator, when we open it, is already pretty full. Alexander’s parents did not leave him to starve.
“Why did we bother?” I ask. I can barely find space to put away what we bought.
“Because I didn’t notice what was in here this morning. And I wanted to make sure we had exactly what we desired.”
“Do you know how to cook?”
“Not really. You?”
This is going to be interesting. “Not really.”
“I guess we’ll figure it out. But first, there’s something I want to show you.”
“Okay.”
He reaches for my hand, and I let him take it. We walk like this through the house—up the stairs, to what is clearly Alexander’s bedroom.
It’s amazing. First of all, there are sticky notes everywhere—yellow squares, pink squares, blue squares, green squares. And on each of them, there’s a quote. I don’t believe in fairy tales, but I believe in you. And Let all the dreamers wake the nation. And Love me less, but love me for a long time. I could spend hours reading his room. In a field, I am the absence of field. —Mark Strand. Most of the quotes are in one handwriting, but there’s other handwriting, too. His friends. This is something he shares with his friends.
There are pictures of these friends, too, and the way they arrange themselves looks like the way my friends would arrange themselves. Not Justin. Never Justin, who didn’t like having his picture taken. But Rebecca and Preston and the others. They would like it here. There’s a lime-green couch to hang out on, and guitars to strum, and what looks like the full collection of Calvin and Hobbes. I look at the records he has leaning against the record player. Bands I don’t know but like the sound of. God Help the Girl. We Were Promised Jetpacks. Kings of Convenience.
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