“Do you want something to eat?” he asks. “Or just coffee?” He points to his own cup. “I’m happy to wait here if you want to get something.”
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I had a big breakfast.”
“Well, then—shall we?”
He extends his hand to offer the chair across from him. I take off my coat and put it on the back before sitting down.
“I really appreciate you coming,” he says. “And before anything else, I want to apologize for the last time we met. I handled it badly, and I know I hardly deserve a second chance. The only way I can explain it is that I was overwhelmed when I finally found you, someone else like me. It was something I’d never attempted to do before, to talk over…what we are. And I can’t say this enough times: I completely botched it. I was so worried that you were going to leave that I of course overdid it and forced you to leave. What’s the opposite of beginner’s luck—beginner’s misfortune? Beginner’s stupidity? I’m hoping we can chalk it up to that. Although I would certainly understand if you couldn’t.”
When I imagined this conversation, it did not start like this. I am looking in his eyes, and instead of seeing something imprisoned, I am seeing a vulnerability that appears to be his own. I have spent days as boys like Wyatt before—popular, insecure, his good-heartedness sometimes roughly conveyed. I have to remind myself that I’m not really talking to him, just as the person across from me isn’t really talking to Rudy.
“Thank you for saying that,” I tell him. “You’re right—you scared the hell out of me. But I have to warn you: It wasn’t just the way you were saying it, it was what you were saying. So if you’re planning to say the same things…we’re just wasting time.”
“I’m not going to try to convince you of anything. I’m not going to try to make you do anything. I just want to talk. And I’m guessing you want to talk, too. Because I imagine this is as astonishing to you as it is to me—the possibility of talking to someone who actually knows what it’s like to be us. To be so transient, and yet so grounded in the lives of others. To have to navigate every single day as both ourselves and as someone else. Who else knows what that’s like? I have so many things to ask you. I have so many things I’ve tried to figure out on my own.”
“I think you’ve figured out more than I have.”
“Why? Because I’ve managed to stay in bodies for longer than a day? That’s true—there are a few things I’ve figured out, which I’d love to share with you. But there’s still plenty where all I have is speculation.”
“Like what?”
He smiles. “Where do I possibly begin? On the grand scale, why are we the way we are? Or on the small scale, when we hurt ourselves in someone else’s body, does the memory of the pain stay with them, or does it travel with us?”
“It doesn’t come with us. But the shame and regret at hurting someone else—that does.”
He leans back, looks at me. “That,” he says, “is a very interesting answer.”
The strangest thing about this is how unstrange it feels. I immediately know I can tell him things that I couldn’t expect Rhiannon to understand. Because even if we’re different, we’ve been through so many of the same things.
Remember, he beat Nathan up, I remind myself. But then I wonder if I pushed him to do that, by playing games with him. Not that it’s an excuse. But it could be an explanation. I think he understood even more than I did what this would feel like, to finally find someone who understands the way our lives work.
“You must have questions, too,” he says. “Don’t let me dominate the conversation—because I will, if given a chance. I’ve had all these thoughts and questions locked away and now, ta-da, here comes the key that opens the door to seeing how everything works outside of my own experience.”
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s start on a basic level. What’s your name?”
“This is Wyatt.”
“I don’t mean his name. What’s your name? I keep thinking of you as Reverend Poole. But you’re not Reverend Poole.”
“Huh. You do realize, nobody’s asked me that before?”
I smile, remembering when Rhiannon asked me the first time. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? To go your whole life without anyone asking your name.”
“You can’t laugh if I tell you.”
“My name is A. I have no grounds for laughing.”
“Because you chose it when you were young?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too. Maybe not as young as you. But still…young.”
“So what is it?”
“Xenon.”
I laugh. Not out of ridicule. Out of surprise.
“You said you wouldn’t laugh!” But he’s laughing, too.
“Sorry, sorry…”
“It’s alright.”
“Why Xenon?”
“I liked the X. Later, I found out what it means, and it fit. But even if it hadn’t fit, I would have kept it.”
“How old were you when you picked it?”
“I’m not sure—doesn’t it all blur after a while? Seven, maybe? Eight? You?”
“Probably five or six. It does blur. Years. Weeks. Days.”
“That’s one of the reasons I decided to stay longer than a day. To have more of a sense of periods of time. Other people can say, Oh, that’s when I lived in that house. Or Oh, that was when I was dating her. Or My parents were alive then. I wanted to have that. Some measure that was longer than a single day. Because a single day is too hard to hold on to.”
It’s like a punch to my brain, hearing these words come from someone who isn’t me.
I have to ask, “But don’t you feel that’s unfair to the people whose lives you’re taking? Don’t you feel you’re stealing that time from them?”
Wyatt leans in, as if this is the first time he’s saying something he doesn’t want anyone else to hear. “The thing is—if they didn’t want me to take over for them, I wouldn’t be able to do it. There’s a beautiful complicity to it. I can only take the places of the people who don’t want to be there. I know you could easily say it’s a self-serving justification—believe me, I’ve interrogated myself in depth about it over the years. But I’ve done it enough to know that nobody gives over their life force unless it’s willingly. Does that mean I’m preying on the weak? Possibly. But does it also mean I am giving the weak a break? Also possible. There’s no certainty in any of this, is there?”