But really, I don’t take my eyes off James. Not through the ride to school. Not at breakfast. He seems a little out of it now, but nothing that couldn’t be explained by a bad night’s sleep.
“How’re you doing?” I ask him.
He grunts. “Fine. Thanks for caring.”
I decide to play dumb. He expects me to be dumb, so it shouldn’t be much of a stretch.
“What did you do after practice yesterday?” I ask.
“I went to Starbucks.”
“Who with?”
He looks at me like I’ve just sung the question to him in falsetto.
“I just wanted coffee, okay? I wasn’t with anyone.”
I study him, to see if he’s trying to cover his conversation with Rhiannon. I don’t think, though, that such duplicity would be anything but obvious on him.
He really doesn’t remember seeing her. Talking to her. Being with her.
“Then why’d it take so long?” I ask him.
“What, were you timing it? I’m touched.”
“Well, who were you emailing at lunch?”
“I was just checking my email.”
“Your own email?”
“Who else’s email would I be checking? You’re asking seriously weird questions, dude. Isn’t he, Paul?”
Paul chews on some bacon. “I swear, whenever you two talk, I just tune it right out. I have no idea what you’re saying.”
Paradoxically, I wish I were still in James’s body, so I could see exactly what his memories of yesterday are. From where I sit, it appears that he recalls the places he was, but has somehow concocted an alternate version of events, one that fits closer to his life. Has his mind done this, some kind of a
daptation? Or did my mind, right before it left, leave behind this story line?
James does not feel like he was possessed by the devil.
He thinks yesterday was just another day.
Again, the morning becomes a search to find a few minutes’ worth of email access.
I should have given her my phone number, I think.
Then I stop myself. I stand there right in the middle of the hallway, shocked. It’s such a mundane, ordinary observation—but that’s what stops me. In the context of my life, it’s nonsensical. There was no way for me to give her a phone number. I know this. And yet, the ordinary thought crept in, made me trick myself for a moment into thinking that I, too, was ordinary.
I have no idea what this means, but I suspect it’s dangerous.
At lunch, I tell James I’m going to the library.
“Dude,” he says, “libraries are for girls.”
There aren’t any new messages from Rhiannon, so I write to her instead.
Rhiannon,