Every Day

You have to be the devil. Only the devil would leave me like this.

2:12 a.m., WEDNESDAY

Do you have any idea what it’s like for me now?

The burden I feel is the burden of responsibility, which is a tricky one to deal with. It makes me slower, heavier. But at the same time, it prevents me from floating away into meaninglessness.

It is six in the morning; Vanessa Martinez has gotten up early. After reading Nathan’s emails, I think about what Rhiannon said, what Rhiannon feared. Nathan deserves no less of a response from me.

It will never happen again. That is an absolute. I can’t explain much more than that, but this much I know: It only happens once. Then you move on.

He writes me back two minutes later.

Who are you? How am I supposed to believe you?

I know that any response I give runs the risk of being posted on Reverend Poole’s website within seconds. I don’t want to give him my real name. But I feel if I give him a name, it will make it less likely he sees me as the devil, and more likely he will see me for what I am: just a person like him.

My name is Andrew. You need to believe me because I am the only person who truly understands what happened to you.

Not surprisingly, he replies with:

Prove it.

I tell him:

You went to a party. You didn’t drink. You chatted with a girl there. Eventually she asked you if you wanted to go dance in the basement. You did. And for about an hour, you danced. You lost track of time. You lost track of yourself. And it was one of the most fantastic moments of your life. I don’t know if you remember it, but there will probably come a time when you are dancing like that again, and it will feel familiar, you will know you’ve done it before. That will be the day you forgot. That’s how you’ll get that part of it back.

This isn’t enough.

But why was I there?

I try to keep it simple.

You were there to talk to the girl. For just that one day, you wanted to talk to that girl.

He asks:

What is her name?

I can’t get her involved. I can’t explain the whole story. So I choose to evade.

That’s not important. The important thing is that for a short time, it was worth it. You were having so much fun that you lost track of time. That’s why you were at the side of the road. You didn’t drink. You didn’t crash. You just ran out of time.

I’m sure it was scary. I’m positive it’s hard to comprehend. But it will never happen again.

Answerless questions can destroy you. Move on.

It’s the truth, but it’s not enough.

That would be easy for you, right? If I moved on.

Every chance I give him, every truth I tell him, lightens the burden of my responsibility that much more. I sympathize with his confusion, but I feel nothing toward his hostility.

Nathan, what you do or don’t do is no concern of mine. I’m just trying to help. You’re a good guy. I am not your enemy. I never have been. Our paths just happened to cross. Now they’ve diverged.

I’m going to go now.

I close the window, then open a new one to see if Rhiannon will appear in it. I realize I haven’t yet determined how far away I am from her, and am disheartened to find she’s nearly four hours away. I break the news to her in an email, and an hour later she says that it was going to be hard to meet up today, anyway. So we aim for tomorrow.

In the meantime, there’s Vanessa Martinez to contend with. She runs at least two miles every morning, and I am already late for the routine. She has to make do with a single mile, and I can almost hear her chiding me for it. At breakfast, though, nobody else says anything—Vanessa’s parents and sister seem genuinely afraid of her.

This is my first tipoff to something I will see evidenced again and again throughout the day: Vanessa Martinez is not a kind person.

It’s there when she meets up with her friends at the start of school. They, too, are afraid of her. They’re not dressed identically, but it’s clear they’ve all dressed within the same sartorial guidelines, dictated by you-know-who.

She has a poison personality, and I feel that even I am susceptible to it. Every time there’s something mean to be said, everyone looks to her for a comment. Even the teachers. And I find myself stuck in those silences, with words on the venomous tip of my tongue. I see all the girls who aren’t dressed within the guidelines, and see how easy it would be to tear them all apart.