Six Earlier Days

I stumble from room to room, looking for the TV. At this age, I don’t bother to access any memories of the house. I am happy to discover everything by wandering through. My mother is in the kitchen, talking on the phone. My father might be outside, or still asleep. The TV is in the den, which has a shaggy rug and wood walls. I am late for my nine o’clock show, but I can watch the end and then see the whole nine-thirty show. This is what I did last week, and the week before. I was in different houses, but once the TV was on, it was almost like they were the same place. Last week I had brothers and sisters, but this week I don’t think I do.

I switch on the TV and it’s too loud. I find the volume control and turn it down. It’s a commercial. I don’t really care about commercials, because even if I get things, I don’t have them for very long.

I sit on the shaggy rug and lean against the couch. This show has talking animals, and when it comes back on, the moose is arguing with the aardvark about the price of a ferry ride. The parrot keeps repeating the things they’re saying in a really funny voice, and I laugh.

“What are you doing?”

I have only been watching for five minutes, but already I’m so absorbed in what’s happening that I don’t hear her at first. Then she grabs my arm and pulls me up, and I know right away I am in trouble, big trouble, and I don’t know what for. Was I laughing too loud? Was I not supposed to sit on the carpet?

Now that I’m up, she lets go and slaps the TV off. The room is suddenly silent, and there’s nowhere to hide in that silence.

“How many times have I told you not to touch that? Did I even say you could leave your room? You are not allowed to watch such garbage.”

I have so few words at age seven. I don’t know stern or enraged or sanctimonious. All I know is mad. My mother is mad at me. Her face is mad. Her posture is mad. The sound of her words is mad.

“Go back to your room.”

I don’t hesitate. I don’t want to be in the presence of her anger one moment longer. I go back to my room and sit on the bed, waiting for her to come by, to tell me what my punishment is. But all she does is come by and shut the door. There is enough light coming in through the window to make everything in the room seeable, but the air still seems tinged in shadow.

I sit there and sit there. Time feels horizonless.

Feeling someone else’s anger is bad; being left alone is worse.

At first I am too afraid to move. But eventually I have to. There are very few books in my room, and all of them are for little kids. So I pick up the dictionary, because it is the longest book in the room, and I know it’s going to be a long day.

I learn a few words. I would rather be outside the room, using them.

There’s no reprieve until lunchtime. When my mother opens the door, she eyes the dictionary in my lap with suspicion. I’ve had time to close it, but not the time to put it on the shelf. At the very least, I don’t look comfortable.

“Have you learned your lesson?” she asks.

I nod.

“Well,” she says, “we’ll see about that.”

I don’t know where my father is. His things are all around the house, so I know he has to be somewhere. He’s just not here right now.

I don’t feel I can ask where he is.

She gives me a chicken sandwich—leftovers from dinner last night, put between bread. I know to eat it all, and not to ask for more. Not because I access the thoughts of the life I’m in, but because my mother is so easy to read.

We don’t talk. We stare at other parts of the kitchen. I try to find things to read. Buttons on the microwave. The brand of the refrigerator.

I rarely feel like I’m a prisoner in a body, but I have felt like a prisoner in a house. I definitely feel like I’m a prisoner here. And I am a prisoner because, as my mother’s expression makes clear, she feels she is a prisoner to me, too.

I am not allowed television. I am not allowed to go outside. I am not given conversation. Eventually I am given dinner, but that is silent, too. My father never comes home.

The only thing I am allowed, the only thing I am given, is myself. It is enough, but only barely.

Some days are like this. And the only way to get through them is to remember that they are only one day, and that every day ends.

Day 5624

Some habits are so ingrained in the lives of the people I inhabit (for just one day) that they manage to hold on even when I am present.

When Holly wakes up, she doesn’t negotiate with the alarm clock or stumble straight to the shower. No, when she wakes up, she pulls over her phone. I don’t know how I know this. The information’s just there when I find out her name, find out where I am, find out that it’s a new morning.

I wake the phone with the touch of a finger. There’s a chat window waiting for me.

N: Good morning.

It’s dated a few hours ago. It doesn’t take much accessing to know that the message is from Natasha, who’s in France, and is also the girl Holly loves.

I type back.

H: Good morning.

And get an instant reply.

N: I am in the library, picking letters from the spines to spell out your name.

I imagine Holly would know the right response for this. But those aren’t the kind of instincts that are left for me when I stay in a body for a day. I must respond as her, but I only have my own words to work with, and my own way of putting them together.

H: It’s early. I don’t even know who I am at this point.

N: I know who you are.

H: I believe you.

In the shower, I trace back their story. Natasha moved to town about a year ago. There were immediate sparks between her and Holly, especially since they were both so open about who they were. Within weeks, they were inseparable. It was awesome. But then, only six months later, the thing that had brought Natasha to town in the first place—her mother’s job—took her back away again, to a suburb of Paris. Now they are struggling to find that balance—separated but still inseparable, apart but still a part.

I am not surprised to return and find another message.

N: It’s time for lunch. And it’s time for you to get to school. Text me en route.

I wait until I’m on the bus. People say hi to me, but I don’t feel the connection to them that I feel to Natasha. I look at the names scratched in the vinyl on the back of the seat in front of me.

H: I am carving your name in the seat in front of me.

N: What are you using to carve it?

H: My heart, of course.

I don’t know Natasha—or Holly—but I know I am going to spend the whole day like this. The running commentary, the loving support, the jokes and the observations and the random thoughts that are made a little less random when they’re shared. The desire to be heard is as deeply seeded as the desire to be loved. So much of the technology we spend our time on is geared toward this. For some people, it doesn’t matter who’s on the other end. For Holly, it matters. And that makes it matter, for a short time, to me.

N: Sometimes I imagine you just over the horizon, and when clouds come into view, they’re carrying messages to me.

H: I want a banana milkshake. Isn’t it strange how I can be sitting here in math class, and for some reason my mind can drift to banana milkshakes? Why is that?

N: I would kill for a bag of peanut M&M’s. Do you know how hard it is to get peanut M&M’s here?

H: A despicable omission.

N: Get me out of here.

H: I am getting in my helicopter.

N: I await your rope ladder.

It’s the secret smile you get from knowing that, somewhere, there is someone who is yours. Not in the sense that you own her, or control her. She is yours because you can say anything to her, whenever you need to. And she can do the same, whenever she needs to. Most of the time this isn’t necessary. But the secret smile comes from knowing it’s available, even when she’s half a world away.

I will not lie: There are times I’ve thought of doing this for myself—meeting someone online, taking a virtual opportunity and making it as real as it can ever be. But it wouldn’t be the same. The architecture of all of these words is based on a foundation: the promise that Holly and Natasha will someday see each other again. And that is a promise I will never be able to make someone else. Or I can only make it as a lie. And the simple lie would complicate everything else.

N: It’s time to go home now. I don’t know why I bother. Neither of them will be there.

H: No other place for you to go?

N: I’ve learned my lesson. I’m only passing through. I’m tired of the hello-goodbye.

I’m between classes now, on my way to English. There is no way Holly can understand Natasha’s words as much as I can.

H: Your life is your life. You can’t live it in compartments. Each place you’re in has a door open at either end.

N: But I’m here for such a short time.

H: If a day can be long, six months can’t be short.

I want to convince her even if I’m not entirely convinced myself.

N: Is that the truth?

H: I’m sending it to you in the clouds.

Some days I’m only passing through. Some days are all hello; some days are all goodbye. Some days I have no idea what I am supposed to be doing, and other days it’s abundantly clear, as if the person I am for a day has left me a note, left me instructions. Today I am meant to maintain the golden tether between two people. It doesn’t take much strength to hold on to my end. It’s good to hold on to something, to feel the pull of another person on the other end, to feel the attachment before I must let go and pass the golden tether back into the person who should really be here instead of me.

Day 5909

Hamilton Keyes wakes up at 4:44 in the morning. At first I don’t believe it when I see the clock—the alarm is definitely going off, which means he must have set it this way. The question I have is why.

As soon as I get a feel for the body I’m in, I have my answer.

Hamilton Keyes wakes up at 4:44 every morning in order to work out before school. This is his routine.

A strong body is unlike a regular body. Your movements become more precise, and your mind is more attuned to the body. The mind lets you know the force with which the body makes its way through the world. And the mind will also let you know when you are letting the body down.

I don’t feel I have a choice. Even though part of the body desperately wants more sleep, another part is awake, ready to go. It wants to be worked.

There’s a weight room in the basement. I quietly make my way down, accessing to discover the particulars of Hamilton’s routine. I’ve learned the hard way that just because a body is strong, it doesn’t mean that it can do anything. I warm up, stretch out, feel the muscles waken.

The worst thing for me about exercise is the boredom. I need to concentrate on what I’m doing, make sure I don’t slip up and catch the body off guard. Were Hamilton here, there would be a satisfaction alongside his exertion, a progression that he could chart and take meaning from. But for me it’s like driving a car and trying to get something other than a secondhand satisfaction from the speed.

I lift weights. I run in place. I sweat and towel myself off. Upstairs, I can hear footsteps, voices. But everyone leaves Hamilton alone here. This is his domain. These are his body’s hours.

I am tired for the rest of the day. My movements may be forceful and precise, but they’re blunted by the cloudy nature of my mind. My blood cries for caffeine, and I supply it. But this only gives me little flashes of wakefulness, short moments of being present in my life.

Were I a different person, I’d be able to fuel myself on admiration as much as caffeine. I’d like it when the girls call me Abercrombie. Or even the way the guys look at me; if this body is a car I’m driving, it’s a model that they want. Even some of the teachers give him admiration. Others write him off, or resent him. I read it all on their faces.