Every Day

“Dude,” he replies, “we were just talking about that yesterday. It was all over the news.”

“Yeah, I mean, did you hear anything more about it today?”

“What more is there to say? Kid got caught in a crazy lie, and now the religious crazies want to make him a poster child. I almost feel sorry for him.”

This, I think, is not good.

Our coach has to go to his wife’s Lamaze class, which he bitches about to us in detail, but it forces him to end practice early. I tell Tom that I’m going to make a Starbucks run, and he looks at me like I have been totally, irredeemably girlified. I was counting on his disgust, and am relieved to get it.

She’s not there when I arrive, so I get a small black coffee—pretty much the only thing I can afford—and sit and wait for her. It’s crowded, and I have to look brutish in order to keep the other chair at my table unoccupied.

Finally, about twenty minutes after five, she shows up. She scans the crowd and I wave. Even though I told her I was a football player, she’s still a little startled. She comes over anyway.

“Okay,” she says, sitting down. “Before we say another word, I want to see your phone.” I must look confused, because she adds, “I want to see every single call you’ve made in the past week, and every single call you received. If this isn’t some big joke, then you have nothing to hide.”

I hand over James’s phone, which she knows how to work better than I do.

After a few minutes of searching, she appears satisfied.

“Now, I quiz you,” she says, handing back the phone. “First, what was I wearing on the day that Justin took me to the beach?”

I try to picture it. I try to grab hold of those details. But they’ve already eluded me. I remember her, not what she was wearing.

“I don’t know,” I say. “Do you remember what Justin was wearing?”

She thinks about it for a second. “Good point. Did we make out?”

I shake my head. “We used the make-out blanket, but we didn’t make out. We kissed. And that was enough.”

“And what did I say to you before I left the car?”

“ ‘That’s the nice note.’ ”

“Correct. Quick, what’s Steve’s girlfriend’s name?”

“Stephanie.”

“And what time did the party end?”

“Eleven-fifteen.”

“And when you were in the body of that girl who I took to all of my classes, what did the note you passed me say?”

“Something like, ‘The classes here are just as boring as in the school I’m going to now.’ ”

“And what were the buttons on your backpack that day?”

“Anime kittens.”

“Well, either you’re an excellent liar, or you switch bodies every day. I have no idea which one is true.”

“It’s the second one.”

I see, over Rhiannon’s shoulder, a woman looking at us quizzically. Has she overheard what we’re saying?

“Let’s go outside,” I whisper. “I feel we may be getting an unintended audience.”

Rhiannon looks skeptical. “Maybe if you were a petite cheerleader again. But—I’m not sure if you fully realize this—you’re a big, threatening dude today. My mother’s voice is very loud and clear in my head: ‘No dark corners.’ ”

I point out the window, to a bench along the road.

“Totally public, only without people listening in.”

“Fine.”

As we head out, the woman who was eavesdropping seems disappointed. I realize how many people sitting around us have open laptops and open notebooks, and hope that none of them have been taking notes.

When we get to the bench, Rhiannon lets me sit down first, so she can determine the distance that we’ll sit apart, which is significant.

“So you say you’ve been like this since the day you were born?”

“Yes. I can’t remember it being any different.”

“So how did that work? Weren’t you confused?”

“I guess I got used to it. I’m sure that, at first, I figured it was just how everybody’s lives worked. I mean, when you’re a baby, you don’t really care much about who’s taking care of you, as long as someone’s taking care of you. And as a little kid, I thought it was some kind of a game, and my mind learned how to access—you know, look at the body’s memories—naturally. So I always knew what my name was, and where I was. It wasn’t until I was four or five that I started to realize I was different, and it wasn’t until I was nine or ten that I really wanted it to stop.”

“You did?”

“Of course. Imagine being homesick, but without having a home. That’s what it was like. I wanted friends, a mom, a dad, a dog—but I couldn’t hold on to any of them more than a single day. It was brutal. There are nights I remember screaming and crying, begging my parents not to make me go to bed. They could never figure out what I was afraid of. They thought it was a monster under the bed, or a ploy to get a few more bedtime stories. I could never really explain, not in a way that made sense to them. I’d tell them I didn’t want to say goodbye, and they’d assure me it wasn’t goodbye. It was just good night. I’d tell them it was the same thing, but they thought I was being silly.