“What did you want him for?”
“I’m just his bio partner at school. We have this project? And since he hasn’t been answering my texts, I figured I’d just drop by.”
“Well, I’ll tell him you stopped by. If, you know, he ever comes back.”
Another chance to tell him the truth. But instead I say thanks and walk back to my car.
It doesn’t feel good to be driving away.
X
I can feel Wyatt pushing against me. I can feel him wanting life.
I tamp him down. Shut him out.
This means too much to me now.
I have felt power before, but it has always been the power of one. Now I am grasping something beyond that, understanding what can happen when the power of one grows to include others like you. I know my own force. But with A, I can at least understand that force more, if not increase it.
Because, deep down, I think A wants the same thing.
It is not enough to live in isolation.
If you want true power, you must unite with your kind and undermine the rest.
A
Day 6140
I wake up in the same hotel, until I realize it’s a different hotel. I don’t remember the room enough to see the difference. But when I look into Andy’s memories to see where I am, I’m three blocks over from where I was before. I also have two roommates, Shane and Vaughn. I guess at first we’re here for the protest, but it ends up that we’re actually here for a Junior State convention, and came down a night early for the march.
I am relieved we’re not checking out at eleven.
I am up before Shane and Vaughn. There’s a third bed in the room, a foldout, but Shane and Vaughn are snuggled into one another on the bed that’s a twin to my own. That tells me just about all I need to know.
I tiptoe to the bathroom and bring Andy’s laptop with me. The first thing I see when I open it is an hour-by-hour schedule he’s made for the whole convention. Today he has debate prep with Shane and Vaughn until noon. Then there’s the opening ceremony and the first day’s worth of panels and events. Andy has marked his choices, but none of them are mandatory. Their team doesn’t compete until tomorrow.
Next I check my email and find X’s contact info. I tell him I’ll meet him at 12:30 in his lobby. We can go from there.
I also message Rhiannon and tell her I can meet her at six, and ask her to pick a place.
I hear some stirring from the bedroom and call out a loud “Good morning!” so the stirring doesn’t escalate too far. Then I close the laptop, hop in the shower, and try to get ready for the day. My mind is crowded with all the things X and I could talk about. But I have to give myself a little space to lead Andy’s life for a couple of hours before that.
You don’t have to do anything, I imagine X telling me.
When I emerge from the bathroom, Shane and Vaughn both smile sleepily at me. Vaughn pulls himself out of bed and takes the next shower. Shane continues to smile, stretching out on the bed.
“I am awash in contentment,” he says.
On the other side of his bed, three posters lean against the wall, one for each of us. I AM INTERSEX AND EQUAL. I AM ACE AND EQUAL. I AM QUEER AND EQUAL. Accessing memories of yesterday, I discover the first poster is Shane’s, the second is mine, and the third is Vaughn’s.
After Shane takes his shower, we go down for breakfast, then retreat back to our room to fine-tune our debate. The topic is that water is humanity’s most important resource, and it is the government’s duty to provide it freely to all. We are meant to argue that this is the case, and the three of us have spent months researching the history of governments and water supply. In this particular prep, I am far behind my partners—but I’m not the one who’s actually going to be debating tomorrow, so I can be a temporarily weak link.
Shane can tell I’m distracted. “Still buzzing from yesterday?” he asks me.
I tell him yes, and it’s not a lie.
When it’s time to head to the opening ceremony, I tell Shane and Vaughn that I want to skip out and explore the city some more. I ask them to cover for me, and point out that I’ll be away from the room for at least the next few hours. I tell them I’ll text updates. They call me a slacker, a rebel, an offense to all things Junior and Statesmanlike. But when I leave, they give no indication that they will vacate the room in the near future.
I am a few minutes early getting to X’s hotel, but he’s already waiting, his leg bobbing up and down with either excitement or impatience. He doesn’t know what I look like today, but when he sees me coming, he springs up and smiles.
“A, I presume?” he says when I get close.
“At your service.”
He asks me if I’m up for lunch, and I willingly follow as he takes us to a Capital Grille around the corner. Along the way, he asks me about the rest of my day yesterday, as if there aren’t so many other things to talk about. I tell him about the trouble I got into when I returned to the hotel, and how Rudy’s parents threatened to take away his trip to Disney World.
X laughs. “They have tickets to Orlando. They’ll go to Disney World. And if his punishment is that he only gets to Wizarding World, then he actually comes out ahead.”
“Have you been?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been all over?”
“More than most people, I would guess.” He looks at me and shakes his head. “You really have no idea how much freedom you have, do you?”
“I just haven’t made it far.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
“Why haven’t you gone far?”
“Well, because you can only go where the people you’re inside are going. And I get used to an area, which makes it not that easy to leave it.”
“I can understand that before you were driving age—then just about everyone is subject to a certain limitation of travel. But after? You could go anywhere.”
“Until midnight.”
“NOT until midnight. You can stay. I’ve told you that. Or, if you insist on vacating the premises at midnight, then simply take them as far as they can go.”
“And strand them? I’ve done that. It feels awful.”
“It feels awful because you’re letting it feel awful. And you probably leave behind that awful feeling in them, too. That’s not how to do it. You have to think of it as an adventure—and make them think that way, too. Yes, it’s disorienting for people who aren’t used to it to wake up in a new place, not entirely remembering how they got there. But how much better if they wake up thinking they did something wild and crazy the night before, and spontaneously pushed themselves somewhere new. You can leave that thought behind. You can make them believe that.”