The blood is coming from a cut above his eye.
“Who hit you?” I ask.
“It doesn’t matter. Just shut up and listen to me, okay?”
“I’m listening, but you’re not saying anything!”
I don’t think Leslie usually talks back to her older brother. But I don’t care. He isn’t really paying attention to me, anyway.
“They’re going to call home, okay? I need you to back me up.” He hands me his keys. “Just go home after school and see what the situation is. I’ll call you.”
Luckily, I know how to drive.
When I don’t argue, he takes it as acquiescence.
“Thanks,” he tells me.
“Are you going to the principal’s office now?” I ask him.
He leaves without an answer.
Carrie has the news by the end of the day. Whether it’s the truth doesn’t really matter. It’s the news that’s going around, and she’s eager to report it to me.
“Your brother and Josh Wolf got into a fight out by the field, during lunch. They’re saying it had to do with drugs, and that your brother is a dealer or something. I mean, I knew he was into pot and everything, but I had no idea he dealt. He and Josh were dragged down to the principal’s office, but Owen decided to run. Can you believe it? They were paging him to come back. But I don’t think he did.”
“Who’d you hear it from?” I ask. She’s giddy with excitement.
“From Corey! He wasn’t out there, but some of the guys he hangs out with saw the fight and everything.”
I see now that the fact that Corey told her is the bigger news here. She’s not so selfish that she wants me to congratulate her, not with my brother in trouble. But it’s clear what her priority is.
“I’ve got to drive home,” I say.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Carrie asks. “I don’t want you to have to walk in there alone.”
For a second, I’m tempted. But then I imagine her giving Corey the blow-by-blow account of what went down, and even if that’s not a fair assumption to make, it’s enough to make me realize I don’t want her there.
“It’s okay,” I say. “If anything, this is really going to make me look like the good daughter.”
Carrie laughs, but more out of support than humor.
“Tell Corey I say hi,” I say playfully as I close my locker.
She laughs again. This time, out of happiness.
“Where is he?”
I haven’t even stepped through the kitchen door and the interrogation begins.
Leslie’s mother, father, and grandmother are all there, and I don’t need to access her mind to know this is an unusual occurrence at three in the afternoon.
“I have no idea,” I say. I’m glad he didn’t tell me; this way, I don’t have to lie.
“What do you mean, you have no idea?” my father asks. He’s the lead inquisitor in this family.
“I mean, I have no idea. He gave me the keys to the car, but he wouldn’t tell me what was going on.”
“And you let him walk away?”
“I didn’t see any police chasing after him,” I say. Then I wonder if there are, in fact, police chasing after him.
My grandmother snorts in disgust.
“You always take his side,” my father intones. “But not this time. This time you are going to tell us everything.”
He doesn’t realize he’s just helped me. Now I know that Leslie always takes Owen’s side. So my instinct is correct.
“You probably know more than I do,” I say.
“Why would your brother and Josh Wolf have a fight?” my mother asks, genuinely bewildered. “They’re such good friends!”
My mental image of Josh Wolf is of a ten-year-old, leading me to believe that at one point, my brother probably was good friends with Josh Wolf. But not anymore.
“Sit down,” my father commands, pointing to a kitchen chair.
I sit down.
“Now … where is he?”
“I genuinely don’t know.”
“She’s telling the truth,” my mother says. “I can tell when she’s lying.”
Even though I have way too many control issues to do drugs myself, I am starting to get a sense of why Owen likes to get stoned.
“Well, let me ask this, then,” my father continues. “Is your brother a drug dealer?”
This is a very good question. My instinct is no. But a lot depends on what happened on the field with Josh Wolf.
So I don’t answer. I just stare.
“Josh Wolf says the drugs in his jacket were sold to him by your brother,” my father prods. “Are you saying they weren’t?”
“Did they find any drugs on Owen?” I ask.
“No,” my mother answers.
“And in his locker? Didn’t they search his locker?”
My mother shakes her head.
“And in his room? Did you find any in his room?”
My mother actually looks surprised.
“I know you looked in his room,” I say.
“We haven’t found anything,” my father answers. “Yet. And we also need to take a look in that car. So if you will please give me the keys …”
I am hoping that Owen was smart enough to clear out the car. Either way, it’s not up to me. I hand over the keys.
Unbelievably, they’ve searched my room, too.
“I’m sorry,” my mother says from the hallway, tears in her eyes now. “He thought your brother might have hidden the drugs in here. Without you knowing.”
“It’s fine,” I say, more to get her out of the room than anything else. “I’m just going to clean up now.”
But I’m not quick enough. My phone rings. I hold it so my mom can’t see Owen’s name on the display.
“Hi, Carrie,” I say.
Owen is at least smart enough to keep his voice down so it won’t be overheard.
“Are they mad?” he whispers.
I want to laugh. “What do you think?”
“That bad?”
“They’ve ransacked his room, but they haven’t found anything. They’re looking in his car now!”
“Don’t tell her that!” my mother says. “Get off the phone.”
“Sorry—Mom’s here, and not happy about me talking to you about this. Where are you? Are you at home? Can I call you back?”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Yeah, he really does have to come home eventually, doesn’t he?”
“Look … meet me in a half hour at the playground, okay?”
“I really have to go. But, yes, I’ll do that.”
I hang up. My mother is still looking at me.
“I’m not the one you’re mad at!” I remind her.
Poor Leslie will have to clean up the mess in her room tomorrow morning—I can’t be bothered to figure out where everything goes. That would take too much accessing, and the priority is finding out which playground Owen means. There’s one at an elementary school about four blocks from the house. I assume that’s the place.
It’s not easy to sneak out of the house. I wait until the three of them return to Owen’s room to tear it apart again, then skulk out the back door. I know this is a risky maneuver—the minute they realize I’m gone, there will be hell to pay. But if Owen comes back with me, that’ll all be forgotten.
I know I should be focusing on the matter at hand, but I can’t help but think of Rhiannon. School’s now over for her, too. Is she hanging out with Justin? If so, is he treating her well? Did anything about yesterday rub off on him?
I hope, but never expect.
Owen’s nowhere to be found, so I head to the swings and hang in the air for a while. Eventually he appears on the sidewalk and heads over to me.
“You always pick that swing,” he says, sitting down on the swing next to mine.
“I do?” I say.
“Yeah.”
I wait for him to say something else. He doesn’t.
“Owen,?
?? I finally say. “What happened?”
He shakes his head. He’s not going to tell me.
I stop swinging and plant my feet on the ground.
“This is stupid, Owen. You have five seconds to tell me what happened, or I’m going to head right back home, and you’ll be on your own for whatever happens next.”
Owen is surprised. “What do you want me to say? Josh Wolf gets me my pot. Today we got into a fight over it—he was saying I owed him, when I didn’t. He started pushing me around, so I pushed him back. And we got caught. He had the drugs, so he said I’d just dealt them to him. Real smooth. I said that was totally wrong, but he’s in all AP classes and everything, so who do you think they’re going to believe?”
He has definitely convinced himself it’s the truth. But whether it started out being the truth or not, I can’t tell.
“Well,” I say, “you have to come home. Dad’s trashed your room, but they haven’t found any drugs yet. And they didn’t find any in your locker, and I’m guessing they didn’t find any in the car, or I would’ve heard about it. So right now, it’s all okay.”
“I’m telling you, there aren’t any drugs. I used the weed up this morning. That’s why I needed more from Josh.”
“Josh, your former best friend.”
“What are you talking about? I haven’t been friends with him since we were, like, eight.”
I am sensing that this was the last time Owen had a best friend.
“Let’s go,” I tell him. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“Easy for you to say.”
I am not expecting our father to hit Owen. But as soon as he sees him in the house, he decks him.
I think I am the only one who is truly stunned.
“What have you done?” my father is yelling. “What stupid, stupid thing have you done?”
Both my mother and I move to stand between them. Grandma just watches from the sidelines, looking mildly pleased.
“I haven’t done anything!” Owen protests.
“Is that why you ran away? Is that why you are being expelled? Because you haven’t done anything?”
“They won’t expel him until they hear his side of the story,” I point out, fairly sure this is true.
“Stay out of this!” my father warns.
“Why don’t we all sit down and talk this over?” my mother suggests.
The anger rises off my father like heat. I feel myself receding in a way that I’m guessing is not unusual for Leslie when she’s with her family.
I become nostalgic for that first waking moment of the morning, back before I had any idea what ugliness the day would bring.
We sit down this time in the den. Or, rather, Owen, our mother, and I sit down—Owen and me on the couch, our mother in a nearby chair. Our father hovers over us. Our grandmother stays in the doorway, as if she’s keeping lookout.
“You are a drug dealer!” our father yells.
“I am not a drug dealer,” Owen answers. “For one, if I were a drug dealer, I’d have a lot more money. And I’d have a stash of drugs that you would’ve found by now!”
Owen, I think, needs to shut up.
“Josh Wolf was the drug dealer,” I volunteer. “Not Owen.”
“So what was your brother doing—buying from him?”
Maybe, I think, I’m the one who needs to shut up.
“Our fight had nothing to do with drugs,” Owen says. “They just found them on him afterward.”
“Then what were you and Josh fighting about?” our mother asks, as if the fact that these two boyhood chums fought is the most unbelievable thing that’s occurred.
“A girl,” Owen says. “We were fighting about a girl.”
I wonder if Owen thought this one out ahead of time, or whether it’s come to him spontaneously. Whatever the case, it’s probably the only thing he could have possibly said that would have made our parents momentarily … happy might be overstating it. But less angry. They don’t want their son to be buying or selling drugs, being bullied or bullying anyone else. But fighting over a girl? Perfectly acceptable. Especially since, I’m guessing, it’s not like Owen’s ever mentioned a girl to them before.
Owen sees he’s gained ground. He pushes further. “If she found out—oh God, she can’t find out. I know some girls like it when you fight over them, but she definitely doesn’t.”
Mom nods her approval.
“What’s her name?” Dad asks.
“Do I have to tell you?”
“Yes.”
“Natasha. Natasha Lee.”
Wow, he’s even made her Chinese. Amazing.
“Do you know this girl?” Dad asks me.
“Yes,” I say. “She’s awesome.” Then I turn to Owen and shoot him fake daggers. “But Romeo over here never told me he was into her. Although now that he says it, it’s starting to make sense. He has been acting very weird lately.”
Mom nods again. “He has.”
Eyes bloodshot, I want to say. Eating a lot of Cheetos. Staring into space. Eating more Cheetos. It must be love. What else could it possibly be?
What was threatening to be an all-out war becomes a war council, with our parents strategizing what the principal can be told, especially about the running away. I hope for Owen’s sake that Natasha Lee is, in fact, a student at the high school, whether he has a crush on her or not. I can’t access any memory of her. If the name rings a bell, the bell’s in a vacuum.
Now that our father can see a way of saving face, he’s almost amiable. Owen’s big punishment is that he has to go clean up his room before dinner.
I can’t imagine I would have gotten the same reaction if I’d beaten up another girl over a boy.
I follow Owen up to his room. When we’re safely inside, door closed, no parents around, I tell him, “That was kinda brilliant.”
He looks at me with unconcealed annoyance and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Get out of my room.”
This is why I prefer to be an only child.
I have a sense that Leslie would let it go. So I should let it go. That’s the law I’ve set down for myself—don’t disrupt the life you’re living in. Leave it as close to the same as you can.
But I’m pissed. So I diverge a little from the law. I think, perversely, that Rhiannon would want me to. Even though she has no idea who Owen and Leslie are. Or who I am.
“Look,” I say, “you lying little pothead bitch. You are going to be nice to me, okay? Not only because I am covering your butt, but because I am the one person in the world right now who is being decent to you. Is that understood?”
Shocked, and maybe a little contrite, Owen mumbles his assent.
“Good,” I say, knocking a few things off his shelves. “Now happy cleaning.”
Nobody talks at dinner.
I don’t think this is unusual.
I wait until everyone is asleep before I go on the computer. I retrieve Justin’s email and password from my own email, then log in as him.
There’s an email from Rhiannon, sent at 10:11 p.m.
J –
I just don’t understand. was it something I did? yesterday was so perfect, and today you are mad at me again. if it’s something I did, please tell me, and I’ll fix it. I want us to be together. I want all our days to end on a nice note. not like tonight.
with all my heart,
r
I reel back in my seat. I want to hit reply, I want to reassure her that it will be better—but I can’t. You’re not him anymore, I have to remind myself. You’re not there.
And then I think: What have I done?
I hear Owen moving around in his room. Hiding evidence? Or is fear keeping him awake?
I wonder if he’ll be able to pull it off tomorrow.
I want to get back to her. I want to get back to yesterday.
Day 5996
All I get is tomorrow.
As I fell asleep, I had a glint of an idea. But as I wake up, I realize the glint
has no light left in it.
Today I’m a boy. Skylar Smith. Soccer player, but not a star soccer player. Clean room, but not compulsively so. Videogame console in his room. Ready to wake up. Parents asleep.
He lives in a town that’s about a four-hour drive from where Rhiannon lives.
This is nowhere near close enough.
It’s an uneventful day, as most are. The only suspense comes from whether I can access things fast enough.
Soccer practice is the hardest part. The coach keeps calling out names, and I have to access like crazy to figure out who everyone is. It’s not Skylar’s best day at practice, but he doesn’t embarrass himself.
I know how to play most sports, but I’ve also learned my limits. I found this out the hard way when I was eleven. I woke up in the body of some kid who was in the middle of a ski trip. I thought that, hey, skiing had always looked fun. So I figured I’d try. Learn it as I went. How hard could it be?
The kid had already graduated from the bunny slopes, and I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a bunny slope. I thought skiing was like sledding—one hill fits all.
I broke the kid’s leg in three places.
The pain was pretty bad. And I honestly wondered if, when I woke up the next morning, I would still feel the pain of the broken leg, even though I was in a new body. But instead of the pain, I felt something just as bad—the fierce, living weight of terrifying guilt. Just as if I’d rammed him with a car, I was consumed by the knowledge that a stranger was lying in a hospital bed because of me.
And if he’d died … I wondered if I would have died, too. There is no way for me to know. All I know is that, in a way, it doesn’t matter. Whether I die or just wake up the next morning as if nothing happened, the fact of the death will destroy me.
So I’m careful. Soccer, baseball, field hockey, football, softball, basketball, swimming, track—all of those are fine. But I’ve also woken up in the body of an ice hockey player, a fencer, an equestrian, and once, recently, a gymnast.
I’ve sat all those out.
If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s video games. It’s a universal presence, like TV or the Internet. No matter where I am, I usually have access to these things, and video games especially help me calm my mind.