I want to know if I changed her. I want to know if that day changed her, if only for a day.
I want her to see me, even though I know she can’t.
He joins us at lunch.
As strange as it is to see Rhiannon again, and to have her measure so well against my memory, it is even stranger to be sitting across from the jerk whose body I inhabited just three days ago. Mirror images do no justice to this sensation. He is more attractive than I thought, but also uglier. His features are attractive, but what he does with them is not. He wears the superior scowl of someone who can barely hide his feelings of inferiority. His eyes are full of scattershot anger, his posture one of defensive bravado.
I must have rendered him unrecognizable.
Rhiannon explains to him who I am, and where I come from. He makes it clear that he couldn’t care less. He tells her he left his wallet at home, so she goes and buys him food. When she gets back to the table with it, he says thanks, and I’m almost disappointed that he does. Because I’m sure that a single thank-you will go a long way in her mind.
I want to know about three days ago, about what he remembers.
“How far is it to the ocean?” I ask Rhiannon.
“It’s so funny you should say that,” she tells me. “We were just there the other day. It took about an hour or so.”
I am looking at him, looking again for some recognition. But he just keeps eating.
“Did you have a good time?” I ask him.
She answers. “It was amazing.”
Still no response from him.
I try again. “Did you drive?”
He looks at me like I’m asking really stupid questions, which I suppose I am.
“Yes, I drove” is all he’ll give me.
“We had such a great time,” Rhiannon goes on. And it’s making her happy—the memory is making her happy. Which only makes me sadder.
I should not have come here. I should not have tried this. I should just go.
But I can’t. I am with her. I try to pretend that this is what matters.
I play along.
I don’t want to love her. I don’t want to be in love.
People take love’s continuity for granted, just as they take their body’s continuity for granted. They don’t realize that the best thing about love is its regular presence. Once you can establish that, it’s an added foundation to your life. But if you cannot have that regular presence, you only have the one foundation to support you, always.
She is sitting right next to me. I want to run my finger along her arm. I want to kiss her neck. I want to whisper the truth in her ear.
But instead I watch as she conjugates verbs. I listen as the air is filled with a foreign language, spoken in haphazard bursts. I try to sketch her in my notebook, but I am not an artist, and all that comes out are the wrong shapes, the wrong lines. I cannot hold on to anything that’s her.
The final bell rings. She asks me where I’ve parked, and I know that this is it, this is the end. She is writing her email address on a piece of paper for me. This is goodbye. For all I know, Amy Tran’s parents have called the police. For all I know, there’s a manhunt going on, an hour away. It is cruel of me, but I don’t care. I want Rhiannon to ask me to go to a movie, to invite me over to her house, to suggest we drive to the beach. But then Justin appears. Impatient. I don’t know what they are going to do, but I have a bad feeling. He wouldn’t be so insistent if sex weren’t involved.
“Walk me to my car?” I ask.
She looks at Justin for permission.
“I’ll get my car,” he says.
We have a parking lot’s length of time left with each other. I know I need something from her, but I’m not sure what.
“Tell me something nobody else knows about you,” I say.
She looks at me strangely. “What?”
“It’s something I always ask people—tell me something about you that nobody else knows. It doesn’t have to be major. Just something.”
Now that she gets it, I can tell she likes the challenge of the question, and I like her even more for liking it.
“Okay,” she says. “When I was ten, I tried to pierce my own ear with a sewing needle. I got it halfway through, and then I passed out. Nobody was home, so nobody found me. I just woke up, with this needle halfway in my ear, drops of blood all over my shirt. I pulled the needle out, cleaned up, and never tried it again. It wasn’t until I was fourteen that I went to the mall with my mom and got my ears pierced for real. She had no idea. How about you?”
There are so many lives to choose from, although I don’t remember most of them.
I also don’t remember whether Amy Tran has pierced ears or not, so it won’t be an ear-piercing memory.
“I stole Judy Blume’s Forever from my sister when I was eight,” I say. “I figured if it was by the author of Superfudge, it had to be good. Well, I soon realized why she kept it under her bed. I’m not sure I understood it all, but I thought it was unfair that the boy would name his, um, organ, and the girl wouldn’t name hers. So I decided to give mine a name.”
Rhiannon is laughing. “What was its name?”
“Helena. I introduced everyone to her at dinner that night. It went over really well.”
We’re at my car. Rhiannon doesn’t know it’s my car, but it’s the farthest car, so it’s not like we can keep walking.
“It was great to meet you,” she says. “Hopefully, I’ll see you around next year.”