Another Day

But I can’t. I just can’t.

The next day, A is only forty-five minutes away from me. In the body of a boy.

I have a math quiz in the morning, so I can’t cut out until lunch. It’s not even that I care so much about math. But I realize this could be what my life is becoming, trying to go to as little school as possible to get to wherever A is. And if this is going to be my life, I am going to have to be careful about it. I am not about to flunk out because of a crush, or whatever it is. But I’m also not going to stay away any longer than I have to.

Since A is being homeschooled today, he has to come up with a plan to escape. I wait for his message, and then get it around noon—he’s made a dash for the public library, and I should get there as soon as I can.

I don’t waste any time. As I drive over, I picture him there—which is strange, because I don’t know what he looks like today. Mostly, I’m imagining Nathan from the party. I don’t even know why.

The library is very, very quiet when I arrive. The librarian asks, “Can I help you?” when I come in, and I tell her that I’m looking for someone. Before she can ask me why I’m not in school, I walk swiftly away from the desk and start to scan the aisles for A. There’s a ninety-year-old man checking out the psychology section, and a woman who very well might be his wife taking a nap in a comfy chair by an old card catalog. In the kids’ section, there’s a mother nursing.

I’m about to give up when I see a row of desks by the window. There’s a redheaded boy sitting at one of them, reading a book. He’s completely lost in it, not noticing me until I’m right next to him. I notice that he’s cute in an adorable way, and at the same time I get angry at myself for noticing this. It shouldn’t matter. I need to think about A and not care about the body he’s in.

“Ahem,” I say, to lead him back from the world of the book he’s reading. “I figured you were the only kid in the building, so it had to be you.”

I’m expecting a smile. A glint. A relief that I’m finally here.

But instead the boy says, “Excuse me?” He seems supremely annoyed that I’ve interrupted his reading.

It has to be him. I’ve looked everywhere else.

“It’s you, right?” I ask.

I am not ringing any bells in this boy. “Do I know you?” he asks back.

Okay. Maybe not. Maybe A’s in the men’s room. Maybe I’m at the wrong library. Maybe I need to stop walking up to strangers and assuming they’re not strangers.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I apologize. “I just, uh, am supposed to meet somebody.”

“What does he look like?”

Now I’m going to seem like an idiot. Because I should know the answer to that question, but I don’t.

“I don’t, um, know,” I tell the boy. “It’s, like, an online thing.”

“Shouldn’t you be in school?”

There’s no way this boy is over eighteen, so I shoot back, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

“I can’t,” he says. “There’s this really amazing girl I’m supposed to meet.”

I’ve already told myself to start walking away, so it takes a second for me to get what he means.

I’ve been played. By the one person I didn’t think would play me.

“You jerk,” I say.

“Sorry, it was just—”

No. I will not let him apologize. “You jerky…jerk.”

I’m going to start walking away. I’m going to go. We’ve never had rules, but he’s broken one anyway.

A’s standing up now. “Rhiannon, I’m sorry.”

He’s reaching out, but I don’t want it.

“You can’t do that,” I tell him. “It’s not fair.”

He will always know what I look like. I will never know what he looks like.

“I will never do it again. I promise.”

It’s not enough. “I can’t believe you just did that,” I say. “Look me in the eyes and say it again. That you promise.”

He looks me in the eyes. We hold there for a second.

Now I can see him. Not literally. It’s not like there’s a little person waving inside his eyes. I just know he’s there.

“I promise,” he says.

He means it. I know he means it. He is in the clear—but I’m not about to let him feel like he’s there yet.

“I believe you,” I tell him. “But you’re still a jerk until you prove otherwise.”

•••

Neither of us has had lunch yet, so we decide to go eat. A tells me the boy’s mother is coming back in two hours to pick him up. We don’t have much time.

We go to the first restaurant we find, a Chinese restaurant that smells like it’s just been mopped.

“So, how was your morning?” A asks.

“It was a morning,” I tell him. “I had a math test. That can’t possibly be worth talking about. Steve and Stephanie got into another fight on their way to school—apparently, Stephanie wanted to stop at Starbucks and Steve didn’t, and because of that she called him completely self-centered and he called her a caffeine-addicted bitch. So, yeah. And, of course, Steve then skipped out of first period to get her a venti hazelnut macchiato. It was sweet of him to get her coffee, but passive-aggressive because she really likes caramel macchiatos much more than hazelnut ones. At least she didn’t point this out when she thanked him, so everything was back to its shaky normal by the time second period started. That’s the big news.”

I don’t tell him that when I saw Justin, he gave me shit for ditching him yesterday (even though it’s not like we had plans). He kept telling me he hoped I’d had an amazing night. I told him I had a really amazing time studying math. He acted like he didn’t believe me, like I ran off to some party without him.

Instead of talking about Justin, I ask A more about the girl he was yesterday. I feel I deserve credit because I ask this as if it’s the most natural question in the world. What else did you do when you were a girl yesterday?

“It was like being a grenade,” A says. “Everyone was just waiting for her to go off and do some serious damage. She had power, but it was all cultivated from fear.”

I think of Lindsay Craig and her minions. “I know so many girls like that. The dangerous ones are the ones who are actually good at it.”