“I just don’t think of A as an ex. It’s never felt over.”
She stops herself there. And I don’t let her shift away from it by saying something else.
Right there. We both know it.
We’ve gotten to the heart of all the problems.
Someone: So what do you mean, that you’re in different bodies?
M: I mean exactly that.
Someone: Tell me more.
M: You don’t want to hear this.
Someone: I do.
M: Why?
Someone: Because I know you’re telling the truth, and I also know that I’m not understanding it. I want to. Hopefully that counts for something. And remember, I’m the person who can lapse into thinking that life isn’t real. There’s not much that can surprise me at this point, in terms of the way you can perceive the world, and how individualized our perceptions can get.
M: Fine. If you really want to know…
Someone: I do.
M: You know what you were saying about it feeling like life is a video game? That you’re this avatar and someone else is at the controls? Well, for me it’s the opposite. I’m holding the controller. I’m making the moves. But my avatar keeps changing. Every single day, it changes. And it’s this avatar that everyone else reacts to. That’s the game. And even though I’m always the same person at the controller, everyone else’s responses entirely depend on the avatar that I’m playing. But—and this is where it gets tricky—the avatars are never actually mine. I am only borrowing them from other players in the game. Which means if I do something wrong, they get points taken off. And if I lose the game, they lose the game. They die. So I can’t stop playing, even though I want to stop playing.
Someone: You don’t like the game?
M: No. If I had any chance of winning, I might. But I don’t get to keep any of the rewards. I’m an empty player.
Someone: That’s how life can feel to me when I’m at my worst. Diversion can be fine for a while. Sights and sounds. Trippy. But I guess what I learned—and it wasn’t easy—is that in order to live, you have to believe that life is real.
M: My real and your real are not the same.
Someone: I think they are. Even if our perceptions skew us, we all share the same real.
M: I’m not sure I can get there.
Someone: You can.
A
Day 6102
I should be crashing. It’s been a long day in Joanie Kennedy’s body. School. An intense chemistry lab. Skateboarding with her friends after school. Dinner with Mom and Dad and Brother.
And also, in the middle, the forty-five minutes in study hall when she wrote an email she’ll never remember, never know about.
She has been checking her phone ever since. Between every period. During the chem lab, to the annoyance of her lab partner. She tried to take the phone along when she ran track during gym, but the coach spotted it from a kilometer away, and it went into the locker. But even when she took it out of the locker—nothing. At the skate park, she kept looking at her phone and looking out into the distance, mind elsewhere. Her friends noticed but didn’t say anything. (They also didn’t say anything about how bad her skating was when she did try.) Not before dinner or after dinner or when she went to the bathroom to check her phone during the middle of dinner.
Of course, Joanie wouldn’t care.
But I can’t think of anything else.
Certainty and doom are keeping close company in my mind. I am sure I said too much. I am sure I said the wrong things. I am sure I scared her away. I am sure I broke a promise. I am sure I made things worse.
But I won’t be totally sure until I hear back from her.
If I hear back from her.
After dinner, I listlessly work on Joanie’s history homework. It’s already nine o’clock in Maryland. Ten o’clock. Eleven. Rhiannon must have checked her email.
Midnight.
I am more alone than I’ve ever been. My life has always been full of small abandonments. This is my first big one.
I’m not taking it well.
12:01 her time. If I were there, I’d be asleep. If I were there, I’d be nowhere. I’d be inside someone’s sleep, unknown and unknowable until that person’s body woke up.
10:08 here. I check the phone. There’s an email from her.
A,
Now that I know how to reach you, I’m not sure what to say.
You didn’t ask any questions in your email. So I am not sure which answers you want and which you don’t.
Or maybe it’s all one big question. Is it possible that’s what we’ve always been for each other: a question? Never an answer. You have never been an answer for me. I have never been an answer for you. It felt like an answer, maybe. But when it came time to make it real, to say it out loud—we lost the ability to answer. The questions took control again.
You say you thought the best thing would be for us to be separate, to have our own lives. Maybe you found your own life. But you didn’t leave me with my own life. You left me with a boyfriend who feels like he was found for me, which is a shitty way to start a relationship. You left me with friends who will never in a million years understand what I’ve been through, or what I’m thinking or feeling. And, more than anything else, you left me with questions.
You say you want me to be happy. But you don’t ask me if I’m happy. Which makes me wonder if you really want me to be happy or if you just want to feel less guilty about leaving. If you want me to say it was all for the best…Nope. Sorry. You made it worse. This whole time, you could find me. And you knew I could never find you. Did you honestly think that would make me happy?
Sometimes you’re a memory that I’m not really sure happened. There are hours when I forget I ever knew you. But there are many more hours when I remember.
I guess what I’m trying to say is: I’ve missed you. But you coming back only makes me realize how mad I am.
R
I don’t have much time to respond. I don’t know what to say—I never thought it out this far, never planned how to answer her understandable anger. All I can do it push right into it.
Dear Rhiannon,
I am so sorry. I’m sorry I left you with so many questions. I’m sorry I don’t have any of the answers.