Every Day (29 page)

I decide to come on tough.

“It’s Sunday,” I say. “Shouldn’t you be in church?”

He smiles. “More important things for me here.”

This must have been what it was like when Red Riding Hood first met the big bad wolf. What she felt must have been as much intrigue as terror.

“What do you want?” I ask.

He folds his leg across his knee. “Well, Nathan told me the most interesting story, and I’m wondering if it’s true.”

There’s no use denying it. “Nathan wasn’t supposed to tell anyone!” I say loudly, hoping Nathan hears me.

“While for the past month you’ve left Nathan hanging, I have been attempting to give him answers. It’s natural that he should confide in me when he is told such a thing.”

Poole has an angle. That much is clear. I just don’t know what it is yet.

“I am not the devil,” I say. “I am not a demon. I am not any
of the things you want me to be. I am just a person. A person who borrows other people’s lives for a day.”

“But can’t you see the devil at work?”

I shake my head. “No. There was no devil inside of Nathan. There is no devil inside of this girl. There is only me.”

“You see,” Poole says, “that’s where you’re wrong. Yes, you are inside of these bodies. But what’s inside of you, my friend? Why do you think you are the way you are? Don’t you feel it could be the devil’s work?”

I speak calmly. “What I do is not the devil’s work.”

At this, Poole actually laughs.

“Relax, Andrew. Relax. You and I are on the same side.”

I stand up. “Good. Then let me go.”

I make a move to leave, but as I anticipated, he blocks me. He pushes Ainsley back to the sofa.

“Not so fast,” he says. “I’m not finished.”

“On the same side, I see.”

The grin disappears. And for a moment, I see something in his eyes. I’m not sure what it is, but it paralyzes me.

“I know you so much better than you give me credit for,” Poole says. “Do you think this is an accident? Do you think I’m just some religious zealot here to exorcise your demons away? Did you ever ask yourself why I am cataloging such things, what I’m looking for? The answer is you, Andrew. And others like you.”

He’s fishing. He has to be.

“There are no others like me,” I tell him.

His eyes flash again at me. “Of course there are, Andrew. Just because you’re different, it doesn’t mean you’re
unique
.”

I don’t know what he’s saying. I don’t want to know what he’s saying.

“Look at me,” he commands.

I do. I look into those eyes, and I know. I know what he’s saying.

“The amazing thing,” he tells me, “is that you still haven’t learned how to make it last longer than a single day. You have no idea the power that you possess.”

I back away from him. “You’re not Reverend Poole,” I say, unable to keep the shaking out of Ainsley’s voice.

“I am today. I was yesterday. Tomorrow—who knows? I have to judge what best suits me. I wasn’t going to miss
this
.”

He is taking me beyond another window. But right away, I know that I don’t like what’s there.

“There are better ways to live your life,” he continues. “I can show you.”

There’s recognition in his eyes, yes. But there’s also menace. And something else—an entreaty. Almost as if Reverend Poole is still inside somewhere, trying to warn me.

“Get off of me,” I say, standing up.

He seems amused. “I’m not touching you. I am sitting here, having a conversation.”

“Get off of me!” I say louder, and start ripping at my own shirt, sending the buttons flying.

“What—”

“GET OFF OF ME!” I scream, and in that scream is a sob, and in that sob is a cry for help, and just as I’d hoped, Nathan hears it, Nathan has been listening, and the door to the living room is flung open, and there he is, just in time to see me
screaming and crying, my shirt ripped open, Poole standing now with murder in his eyes.

I am betting everything on the common decency I saw in Nathan, back when I was inside of him, and even though he is clearly terrified, the common decency does rise, because instead of running away or closing the door or listening to what Poole has to say, Nathan yells, “What are you doing?” and he holds the door open for me as I flee, and he blocks the reverend—or whoever he is inside—from catching me as I run out the front door and into my car. Nathan summons the strength to hold Poole back, buying me those crucial seconds, so by the time Poole is on the lawn, my key is already in the ignition.

“There’s no point in running away!” Poole yells. “You’re only going to want to find me later! All the others have!”

Trembling, I turn up the radio, and drown him out with the sound of the song, and the sound of me driving away.

I don’t want to believe him. I want to think he’s an actor, a charlatan, a fake.

But when I looked closely at him, I saw someone else inside. I recognized him in the same way that Rhiannon recognized me.

Only, I also saw danger there.

I saw someone who does not play by the same set of rules.

As soon as I’m gone, I wish I’d stayed a few minutes longer, let him talk a little bit more. I have more questions than I’ve ever had before, and he might have had the answers.

But if I’d stayed just a few more minutes, I don’t know if I could have left. And I would have been dooming Ainsley to the same struggle as Nathan, if not worse. I don’t know what Poole would have done with her—what
we
would have done with her, if I’d stayed.

He could be lying. I have to remind myself that he could be lying.

I am not the only one
.

I cannot wrap my thoughts around this. The fact that there could be others. They may have been in the same school as me, the same room as me, the same family as me. But because we keep our secret so hidden, there’d be no way to know.

I remember the boy in Montana whose story was so similar to mine. Was that true? Or was it just a trap Poole set?

There are others
.

It can change everything.

Or it can change nothing.

As I drive back to Ainsley’s house, I realize it’s my choice.

Darryl Drake is very distracted the next day.

I guide him through school and say the right things when I have to. But his friends keep commenting that he’s lost in space. At track practice, the coach berates him repeatedly for lack of focus.

“What’s on your mind?” Darryl’s girlfriend, Sasha, asks him when he drives her home.

“I guess I’m not really here today,” he tells her. “But I’ll be back tomorrow.”

I spend the afternoon and the evening on the computer. Darryl’s parents are both at work and his brother is in college, so I have the whole house to myself.

My story is front and center on Poole’s website—a bastardized account of what I told Nathan, with some errors that come either from Nathan hiding something or from Poole goading me on.

Going outside his own site, I find out everything I can about Reverend Poole, but it’s not much. He doesn’t seem to have
become outspoken about demonic possession until Nathan’s story hit. I look at photos from before and from after, trying to tell if there’s some difference. In photographs, he looks the same. The eyes are hidden by the flatness of the image.

I read all the stories on the site, trying to find myself within them, trying to find other people like me. Again, there are a couple from Montana. And others that could be similar, if what Poole hinted at is true: that the one-day limit is only for newcomers, and can be somehow bypassed.

It’s what I want, of course. To stay in a single body. To lead a single life.

But at the same time, it’s not what I want. Because I can’t help thinking about what would happen to the person whose body I’d stay in. Does he or she just wink out of existence? Or is the original soul then banished to bounce from body to body—basically, are the roles reversed? I can’t imagine anything sadder than having once had a single body and then suddenly not being able to stay in any for longer than a day. At least I’ve had the comfort of never knowing anything else. I would destroy myself if I’d actually had to give something up before leading this traveler’s existence.

If there were no one else involved, it would be an easy choice. But isn’t that always the case? And there’s always someone else involved.

There’s an email from Nathan, saying how sorry he is for what happened yesterday. He says that he’d thought Reverend Poole could help me. Now he’s not sure of anything.

I write back to tell him that it isn’t his fault, and that he has to get away from Reverend Poole and try to get back to his normal life.

I also tell him this is the last time I will ever email him. I don’t explain that it’s because I can’t trust him. I figure he’ll make that connection for himself.

When I’m done, I forward our email chain to my new email address. And then I close my account. Just like that, a few years of my life are over. The only through-line is gone. It’s silly to feel nostalgic about an email address, but I do. There aren’t many pieces to my past, so I have to mourn at least a little when one falls away.

Later that night, there’s an email from Rhiannon.

That’s it.

I want to tell her everything that’s happened in the past forty-eight hours. I want to lay the past two days in front of her to see how she reacts, to see if she understands what they mean to me. I want her help. I want her advice. I want her reassurance.

But I don’t think that’s what she wants. And I don’t want to give it to her unless it’s what she wants. So I type back:

There are still a few hours left in the night, but she doesn’t use any of them to get back to me.

I wake up only two towns away from her, in someone else’s arms.

I am careful not to wake this girl who enfolds me. Her feather-yellow hair covers her eyes. The beat of her heart presses against my back. Her name is Amelia, and last night she snuck in my window to be with me.

My name is Zara—or at least that’s the name I’ve chosen for myself. I was born Clementine, and I loved that name until I turned ten. Then I started to experiment, with Zara being the name that stuck. Z has always been my favorite letter, and twenty-six is my lucky number.

Amelia stirs under the sheets. “What time is it?” she asks groggily.

“Seven,” I tell her.

Instead of getting up, she curls into me.

“Will you be a good scout and check the whereabouts of your mom? I’d rather not leave the way I came in. My morning coordination is so much fuzzier than my nighttime coordination, and I’m always much more inspired when I’m approaching the maiden.”

“Okay,” I say, and in thanks, she kisses my bare shoulder.

The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it’s the temperature of happiness. Nothing from the previous night has dissipated. I’ve woken into the comfort they’ve created.

I tiptoe into the hallway and listen at my mother’s door. The only sound is sleep-breathing, so it appears we’re safe. When I get back to my room, Amelia is still in bed, the sheet pulled back so it’s just her, her T-shirt, and her underwear. I have a feeling that Zara would not let this moment pass without crawling in beside her, but I feel I can’t do that in her place.

“She’s asleep,” I report.

“Like, safe-to-take-a-shower asleep?”

“I think so.”

“You want first shower, second shower, or both shower?”

“You can go first.”

She gets out of bed, and stops to kiss me on the way out. Her hands move under my oversize shirt, and I don’t resist. I fall right into it, kiss her a little bit longer.

“You sure?” she asks.

“You go first,” I tell her.

And then, just like Zara would, I miss her when she’s left the room.

I want it to be Rhiannon.

She sneaks out of the house while I’m in my shower. Then, twenty minutes later, she’s back at the door, to pick me up for school. My mother is awake now and in the kitchen, and smiles when she sees Amelia heading up the path.

I wonder how much she knows.

We spend most of the day together at school, but not in a way that limits our interactions with other people. If anything, we incorporate our friends into what we have between us. We exist as individuals. We exist as a pair. We exist as parts of trios, quartets, and so on. And it all feels right.

I can’t get Rhiannon off my mind. Remembering what she said about how her friends would never know me. How no one else would ever know me. How what we have together will only be us, always.

I am starting to realize what this means, and how sad it would be.

I am already feeling some of the sadness now, and it isn’t even happening.

Seventh period, Amelia has study hall in the library while I have gym. When we meet up after, she shows me the books she’s taken out for me, because they look like ones I’d like.