Page 82 of Another Day (Every Day 2)

He laughs. I think a laugh is like the driver honking the horn, advertising pleasure.

I think that if A were in Preston’s body, I’d kiss him hard.

I know this is a ridiculous thought. I have it anyway.

Preston, of course, has no idea what I’m thinking. He sees me, yes, but not in a way that would give away my thoughts.

The car can smile all it wants, but that doesn’t mean you can see the driver’s expression.

—

I receive emails from A.

He tells me:

The girl I am today is not nice. I can make her nice for a day, but what does that do?

He says:

I want us to be walking in the woods again.

He asks:

What are you doing?

And I don’t know what to say.

—

I don’t really talk to Justin until after school. He wants me to come over to his house and I can’t. I don’t have any excuse; I just know I can’t.

I have loved his body for so long. I have loved it with devotion, with intensity. If I close my eyes, I can see it better than I see my own, because I have studied it, traced it, detailed it with so much more attention than I have ever spent on myself. It still attracts me. I still feel attachment to it. But it’s also just a body. Only a body.

If I kiss him now, I will be thinking this. If we have sex now, I will be thinking of this.

So I can’t.

Of course he asks me why not. Of course he asks me what else I have to do.

“I just need to go home,” I say.

It’s not enough. He’s pissed. It’s one thing for me to say I’m going shopping with Preston, or have made plans with Rebecca. It might even be bearable if I said I had homework or wanted to go home and be with my mom.

But I’m telling him I’d prefer nothing, and that makes him feel like less than nothing. I understand that, and feel bad about it.

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.

---