Six Earlier Days
Author: David Levithan
Date: 2012-11-26 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Young Adult; Fantasy; Short Stories; Fiction; Contemporary; Romance; Novella; Lgbt; Paranormal; Teen
Description: In Every Day, New York Times bestselling author David Levithan presented readers with his most ambitious novel to date: Every morning, A wakes up in a different body and leads a different life. A must never get too attached, must never be noticed, must never interfere. The novel Every Day starts on Day 5994 of A’s life. In this digital-only collection Six Earlier Days, Levithan gives readers a glimpse at a handful of the other 5993 stories yet to be told that inform how A navigates the complexities of a life lived anew each day. In Every Day, readers discover if you can truly love someone who
Rights: Copyright © 2012 by David Levithan

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2012 by David Levithan
Cover art copyright © 2012 by Adam Abernathy

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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eISBN: 978-0-449-81929-6

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v3.1

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Author’s Note

Day 3722
Day 2919
Day 5624
Day 5909
Day 5915
Day 5931

About the Author

Author’s Note

Every morning, A wakes up in a different body and a different life. The novel Every Day starts on Day 5994 of A’s life. For Six Earlier Days, I wanted to go back to some days in A’s life before Every Day. Think of this as A recounting a few passing moments from his past.

Day 3722

I wake up to the sound of footsteps and muffled giggles, and the smell of maple syrup. I wake up to a colorful room, to light, to smiling, singing faces, and the sound of “Happy Birthday to You.” I pull myself up, and a tray is lowered onto my lap. I see a stack of pancakes with a candle set in them. I wait until the end of the song and blow the candle out.

Today I am a girl named Cara, and it’s her tenth birthday. I’d wonder if it was my own tenth birthday, too, only I find that I have at least a dozen birthdays every year. Back when I had no concept of what a year was, I could believe that I was growing at exactly the same pace as whatever body I was in that day. But once I started to count, I knew the math was wrong. You cannot have more than one birthday in a year—and as a result, I had to admit that these were other people’s birthdays, not my own. I had wanted to find logic in my life, and that was a mistake.

When I was little, I could lose myself in the rapture of unwrapping, the glee of parties and cake and being treated like the center of the world. When the time came for the candles to be blown out, I would make my own wishes, because I felt that’s what was being granted. Often, I’d wish to stay in that day, to have every day be as precious as a birthday.

This morning is different, though. I do not bother to wish. If anything, I feel like I am stealing Cara’s wish away from her, because she is not here and I am.

I pretend I wish, though. Because I look at the faces of Cara’s parents, her sister, even her brother—and I know that, whatever her wish would be, they too would want it to turn true. Some families are like that.

It’s a weekday, so soon the parents will have to go to work and the children will have to go to school. I try to hold Cara in the halo of their affection for as long as I can, and I hope that when I’m gone, she will still feel the afterglow. The candle is put aside on the counter and the pancakes are eaten. As the food goes from taste to weight, the morning routine returns. The school bus will not wait for me, even though it’s my birthday.

I work hard on the ride to school to access the names and faces of Cara’s friends. Her mind creates flash cards for me, and I try to memorize them as best as I can. The practice is not in vain, because as soon as I get to the classroom, Mrs. Richardson announces my birthday and puts a construction-paper crown on the front of my desk. Even my fifth-grade enemies respect this. I am queen for the day.

I try to enjoy it. The cupcakes at lunch. The excitement about the party on Saturday. My two best friends, Jodie and Michaela, who couldn’t wait to give me their presents. Again, I find myself pretending—and since I am only ten, I don’t fully understand why the pretending also makes me sad. I should be grateful to have a day that’s covered in icing. I should be happy to have so many people happy for me, when all I had to do was get a year older.

On the bus ride home, the kids from my class ask me what I’m going to do tonight, and I tell them I don’t know. The kids who aren’t in my class are indifferent, and I almost wish I were sitting with them.

I am the first one home, letting myself in with my key. Usually, I head straight to the kitchen to get myself a snack—no matter which kitchen, no matter what snacks are available. But I have already eaten enough for one day, so I go straight to my room. Once there, I don’t know what to do. I feel like my boredom is cheating Cara out of something, that I am sabotaging her new year before it’s even begun. I have no way to articulate this to myself; it’s just a sensation.

My sister, Laura, comes home. She is three years older than me, and goes to the middle school. She calls out my name as soon as she gets in the door, and even though I don’t answer, she heads straight to my room. Hearing her approach, I try to busy myself, but since none of the toys or books call out to me, I end up making my bed.

My door isn’t closed, so it’s easy for her to peek in. She takes one look at me tucking a sheet under the mattress and says, “This isn’t acceptable.”

I access our history and get the usual muddle of love and competition that any two sisters share. An epic argument has the same weight in Cara’s memory as a single glance of back-seat understanding.

“It’s your birthday,” Laura says. “What do you want to do?”

What I want is for what I want to actually matter.

“I don’t know,” I tell her.

She gives me a look and doesn’t even have to say it again: This isn’t acceptable. Then another look, as she inventories our options. I don’t need to access to understand this look. I’ve seen it enough in other older brothers and sisters.

Finally, she says, “Okay. I’ve got it. Put on your bathing suit.”

I do as she says, and when she leaves the room, I assume she’s putting on her bathing suit as well. When she comes back, though, she’s still wearing the same sweater and jeans as before. She eyes me, standing there nearly shivering in my one-piece.

“Put something on over it!” she says, rolling her eyes.

As I do, I try to search Cara’s mind for clues about what we might be doing—it’s too cold to swim outside. But I can’t find anything that helps.

I’ll just have to trust her.

I am expecting us to walk to a community center, or a Y. But instead we head up the path to someone’s house.

“Don’t be afraid of her,” Laura says as she rings the doorbell.

An old lady with steely eyes opens the door. I access Cara for a name, and the first thing that comes up is the word witch.

“What do you want?” the woman asks. “I don’t eat cookies or candy. And all you kids ever seem to sell is cookies or candy.”

Laura smiles, like she’s just bumped into a friend at the mall.

“Hi, Mrs. Judge,” she says. “Today is Cara’s birthday. And when she made her wish, she wished she could swim today. So I was wondering … can we use your pool?”

Mrs. Judge turns to me. “How old are you?” she asks. She makes it seem like a trick question.

“Ten.”

“And you desire to swim, more than anything else?”

I almost look to Laura for confirmation. “Yes.”

“More fool you.”

She’s looking at me so intently that it’s almost like she sees the impostor stuck inside of the birthday girl. I dread the recognition, but I also secretly crave it. Even at ten. Or especially at ten.

Mrs. Judge stands there in front of us, and I can’t tell if she’s deliberating or if we’re being silently dismissed.

Laura, undeterred, says, “Please.”

It is not as simple as this word unlocking the gates. I know this. But nonetheless, Mrs. Judge relents, in her own way.

“Do you know where it is?” she asks Laura. The implication being: Have you been spying?

Laura shakes her head. Mrs. Judge must be satisfied by my completely flummoxed look, because she doesn’t wait for me to shake my head before gesturing us in, closing the door behind us, and leading us into the darkness of her house. The corridors are crowded with bookshelves and trophy cases. There are many photographs of a man in golfing clothes, triumphantly swinging a club. In framed headlines, he’s referred to as Horace Judge. Something about the way the house feels informs me that he died a long time ago.

“I assume you are wearing proper attire?” Mrs. Judge asks as we get to an imposing door.

“Under our clothes,” Laura answers.

“And have you brought towels?”

Laura shrugs her backpack on her shoulders. “Of course.”

“Do you have your swimming certification?”

Laura nods. I don’t even know what this means.

“Good. We can’t have any drowning, can we?”

“No, ma’am.”

She opens the door, and suddenly it’s daylight again, even though the temperature hasn’t changed. It is a large room, and its ceiling is entirely made of glass. Beneath it, a swimming pool waits, its water the color of melted blueberry ice.

Mrs. Judge looks at her watch and tells us we have an hour. Laura thanks her, and I thank her, too. We don’t move until she’s gone.

“Come on,” Laura says, pulling off her jeans.

In no time, we are down to our swimsuits and plunging into the warm water. Mrs. Judge’s presence hangs in the room, so we don’t splash or even giggle. Instead, Laura makes like a mermaid, diving underwater and staying under as long as she can. I do the same, eyes open. We start to do it together, circling, using our limbs to call and respond. When we surface, we look at one another briefly, then arc down again.

After about ten minutes of this, Laura lifts herself into a backstroke.

“Free swim!” she calls out.

This time when I submerge myself, I close my eyes. I let myself be weightless, anonymous. I hear the thrum of the water, feel how it lifts and twists my hair. I am drawn down to my childish, essential heartbeat. I don’t think of it as Cara’s. I think of it as my own.

I start to swim. I pull myself forward, kick myself forward. To swim is to transform yourself into an unnatural creature, to take on an element that should not be your own. To swim is to experience the world differently, or to experience a different world temporarily.

I do not know any of this. I do not think about swimming or what it means. I do not marvel at the fact of swimming, that a human body can do such a thing. Instead, I marvel at the sensations. I immerse myself in water because it makes me feel like I, too, am liquid. And then I push against it and feel solid again. I do not have thoughts; in their place, I have the thrum that the body creates in the absence of thoughts. I feel more like myself than I usually do, because as I swim, I don’t need to fully exist.

I lose track of time and time loses track of me. I don’t notice when Laura steps out of the pool and dries herself off. I don’t feel her looking at me until I open my mouth at the wrong time and take in too much water. I cough myself back to reality and find her sitting on the edge of the pool, her ankles and feet dangling through the surface.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

I nod.

“We need to go soon. It’s almost an hour. And if Mrs. Judge thinks we’re not listening to her, we’ll never be allowed in here again.”

The air is chilly after I emerge. Laura jumps up and gets me a towel. I dry myself off but can still feel the water clinging to me. It is no longer liquid. Now it is a scent, a drying memory, an echo.

“Don’t tell them,” Laura says as we head back to our house.

I don’t ask her why our parents can’t know. I only promise that they won’t.

Since my friend party isn’t until Saturday, my birthday dinner is just the five of us. My brother, older than Laura, has gotten me a Hello Kitty change purse. My parents have gotten me games and clothes. Laura’s gotten me music from a band she likes and wants me to like, too. I am amazed that no one else in our family can smell the afternoon on us, can understand what my birthday has really brought.

There is cake. There are more candles. I am to get another wish. I am serenaded with the same song that I have been serenaded with in so many bodies, over so many years. I am told to close my eyes.

Again, I do not wish. But this time I don’t leave myself a blank. Instead, I make myself a promise. I mark the date in my head, and I vow that from now on, this will be my birthday. Whether or not anybody in my life that day knows it, I will know it. I will celebrate. I will give myself that, as I swim through the years.

Day 2919

As a child, I am baffled by inconsistency. Not my own inconsistency—I am used to waking up in a different body and a different life every morning. This makes sense to me. It is everyone else’s inconsistency that throws me.

It is a Saturday morning, and I am seven years old. I know it’s a Saturday from the quiet of the morning, from the fact that it’s nine in the morning and nobody is rushing me off to school or to church. I like Saturday mornings because that is when I am allowed to watch cartoons. Even in houses that don’t have all the channels, I can still find cartoons.

I stumble from room to room, looking for the TV. At this age, I don’t bother to access any memories of the house. I am happy to discover everything by wandering through. My mother is in the kitchen, talking on the phone. My father might be outside, or still asleep. The TV is in the den, which has a shaggy rug and wood walls. I am late for my nine o’clock show, but I can watch the end and then see the whole nine-thirty show. This is what I did last week, and the week before. I was in different houses, but once the TV was on, it was almost like they were the same place. Last week I had brothers and sisters, but this week I don’t think I do.

I switch on the TV and it’s too loud. I find the volume control and turn it down. It’s a commercial. I don’t really care about commercials, because even if I get things, I don’t have them for very long.

I sit on the shaggy rug and lean against the couch. This show has talking animals, and when it comes back on, the moose is arguing with the aardvark about the price of a ferry ride. The parrot keeps repeating the things they’re saying in a really funny voice, and I laugh.

“What are you doing?”

I have only been watching for five minutes, but already I’m so absorbed in what’s happening that I don’t hear her at first. Then she grabs my arm and pulls me up, and I know right away I am in trouble, big trouble, and I don’t know what for. Was I laughing too loud? Was I not supposed to sit on the carpet?

Now that I’m up, she lets go and slaps the TV off. The room is suddenly silent, and there’s nowhere to hide in that silence.

“How many times have I told you not to touch that? Did I even say you could leave your room? You are not allowed to watch such garbage.”

I have so few words at age seven. I don’t know stern or enraged or sanctimonious. All I know is mad. My mother is mad at me. Her face is mad. Her posture is mad. The sound of her words is mad.

“Go back to your room.”

I don’t hesitate. I don’t want to be in the presence of her anger one moment longer. I go back to my room and sit on the bed, waiting for her to come by, to tell me what my punishment is. But all she does is come by and shut the door. There is enough light coming in through the window to make everything in the room seeable, but the air still seems tinged in shadow.

I sit there and sit there. Time feels horizonless.

Feeling someone else’s anger is bad; being left alone is worse.

At first I am too afraid to move. But eventually I have to. There are very few books in my room, and all of them are for little kids. So I pick up the dictionary, because it is the longest book in the room, and I know it’s going to be a long day.

I learn a few words. I would rather be outside the room, using them.

There’s no reprieve until lunchtime. When my mother opens the door, she eyes the dictionary in my lap with suspicion. I’ve had time to close it, but not the time to put it on the shelf. At the very least, I don’t look comfortable.

“Have you learned your lesson?” she asks.

I nod.

“Well,” she says, “we’ll see about that.”

I don’t know where my father is. His things are all around the house, so I know he has to be somewhere. He’s just not here right now.

I don’t feel I can ask where he is.

She gives me a chicken sandwich—leftovers from dinner last night, put between bread. I know to eat it all, and not to ask for more. Not because I access the thoughts of the life I’m in, but because my mother is so easy to read.

We don’t talk. We stare at other parts of the kitchen. I try to find things to read. Buttons on the microwave. The brand of the refrigerator.

I rarely feel like I’m a prisoner in a body, but I have felt like a prisoner in a house. I definitely feel like I’m a prisoner here. And I am a prisoner because, as my mother’s expression makes clear, she feels she is a prisoner to me, too.

I am not allowed television. I am not allowed to go outside. I am not given conversation. Eventually I am given dinner, but that is silent, too. My father never comes home.

The only thing I am allowed, the only thing I am given, is myself. It is enough, but only barely.

Some days are like this. And the only way to get through them is to remember that they are only one day, and that every day ends.

Day 5624

Some habits are so ingrained in the lives of the people I inhabit (for just one day) that they manage to hold on even when I am present.

When Holly wakes up, she doesn’t negotiate with the alarm clock or stumble straight to the shower. No, when she wakes up, she pulls over her phone. I don’t know how I know this. The information’s just there when I find out her name, find out where I am, find out that it’s a new morning.

I wake the phone with the touch of a finger. There’s a chat window waiting for me.

N: Good morning.

It’s dated a few hours ago. It doesn’t take much accessing to know that the message is from Natasha, who’s in France, and is also the girl Holly loves.

I type back.

H: Good morning.

And get an instant reply.

N: I am in the library, picking letters from the spines to spell out your name.

I imagine Holly would know the right response for this. But those aren’t the kind of instincts that are left for me when I stay in a body for a day. I must respond as her, but I only have my own words to work with, and my own way of putting them together.

H: It’s early. I don’t even know who I am at this point.

N: I know who you are.

H: I believe you.

In the shower, I trace back their story. Natasha moved to town about a year ago. There were immediate sparks between her and Holly, especially since they were both so open about who they were. Within weeks, they were inseparable. It was awesome. But then, only six months later, the thing that had brought Natasha to town in the first place—her mother’s job—took her back away again, to a suburb of Paris. Now they are struggling to find that balance—separated but still inseparable, apart but still a part.

I am not surprised to return and find another message.

N: It’s time for lunch. And it’s time for you to get to school. Text me en route.

I wait until I’m on the bus. People say hi to me, but I don’t feel the connection to them that I feel to Natasha. I look at the names scratched in the vinyl on the back of the seat in front of me.

H: I am carving your name in the seat in front of me.

N: What are you using to carve it?

H: My heart, of course.

I don’t know Natasha—or Holly—but I know I am going to spend the whole day like this. The running commentary, the loving support, the jokes and the observations and the random thoughts that are made a little less random when they’re shared. The desire to be heard is as deeply seeded as the desire to be loved. So much of the technology we spend our time on is geared toward this. For some people, it doesn’t matter who’s on the other end. For Holly, it matters. And that makes it matter, for a short time, to me.

N: Sometimes I imagine you just over the horizon, and when clouds come into view, they’re carrying messages to me.

H: I want a banana milkshake. Isn’t it strange how I can be sitting here in math class, and for some reason my mind can drift to banana milkshakes? Why is that?

N: I would kill for a bag of peanut M&M’s. Do you know how hard it is to get peanut M&M’s here?

H: A despicable omission.

N: Get me out of here.

H: I am getting in my helicopter.

N: I await your rope ladder.

It’s the secret smile you get from knowing that, somewhere, there is someone who is yours. Not in the sense that you own her, or control her. She is yours because you can say anything to her, whenever you need to. And she can do the same, whenever she needs to. Most of the time this isn’t necessary. But the secret smile comes from knowing it’s available, even when she’s half a world away.

I will not lie: There are times I’ve thought of doing this for myself—meeting someone online, taking a virtual opportunity and making it as real as it can ever be. But it wouldn’t be the same. The architecture of all of these words is based on a foundation: the promise that Holly and Natasha will someday see each other again. And that is a promise I will never be able to make someone else. Or I can only make it as a lie. And the simple lie would complicate everything else.

N: It’s time to go home now. I don’t know why I bother. Neither of them will be there.

H: No other place for you to go?

N: I’ve learned my lesson. I’m only passing through. I’m tired of the hello-goodbye.

I’m between classes now, on my way to English. There is no way Holly can understand Natasha’s words as much as I can.

H: Your life is your life. You can’t live it in compartments. Each place you’re in has a door open at either end.

N: But I’m here for such a short time.

H: If a day can be long, six months can’t be short.

I want to convince her even if I’m not entirely convinced myself.

N: Is that the truth?

H: I’m sending it to you in the clouds.

Some days I’m only passing through. Some days are all hello; some days are all goodbye. Some days I have no idea what I am supposed to be doing, and other days it’s abundantly clear, as if the person I am for a day has left me a note, left me instructions. Today I am meant to maintain the golden tether between two people. It doesn’t take much strength to hold on to my end. It’s good to hold on to something, to feel the pull of another person on the other end, to feel the attachment before I must let go and pass the golden tether back into the person who should really be here instead of me.

Day 5909

Hamilton Keyes wakes up at 4:44 in the morning. At first I don’t believe it when I see the clock—the alarm is definitely going off, which means he must have set it this way. The question I have is why.

As soon as I get a feel for the body I’m in, I have my answer.

Hamilton Keyes wakes up at 4:44 every morning in order to work out before school. This is his routine.

A strong body is unlike a regular body. Your movements become more precise, and your mind is more attuned to the body. The mind lets you know the force with which the body makes its way through the world. And the mind will also let you know when you are letting the body down.

I don’t feel I have a choice. Even though part of the body desperately wants more sleep, another part is awake, ready to go. It wants to be worked.

There’s a weight room in the basement. I quietly make my way down, accessing to discover the particulars of Hamilton’s routine. I’ve learned the hard way that just because a body is strong, it doesn’t mean that it can do anything. I warm up, stretch out, feel the muscles waken.

The worst thing for me about exercise is the boredom. I need to concentrate on what I’m doing, make sure I don’t slip up and catch the body off guard. Were Hamilton here, there would be a satisfaction alongside his exertion, a progression that he could chart and take meaning from. But for me it’s like driving a car and trying to get something other than a secondhand satisfaction from the speed.

I lift weights. I run in place. I sweat and towel myself off. Upstairs, I can hear footsteps, voices. But everyone leaves Hamilton alone here. This is his domain. These are his body’s hours.

I am tired for the rest of the day. My movements may be forceful and precise, but they’re blunted by the cloudy nature of my mind. My blood cries for caffeine, and I supply it. But this only gives me little flashes of wakefulness, short moments of being present in my life.

Were I a different person, I’d be able to fuel myself on admiration as much as caffeine. I’d like it when the girls call me Abercrombie. Or even the way the guys look at me; if this body is a car I’m driving, it’s a model that they want. Even some of the teachers give him admiration. Others write him off, or resent him. I read it all on their faces.

I am defensive on his behalf. I want to answer every teacher’s question, just to show them that they should not judge a person based on a body. But if I do that now, Hamilton will only have to uphold it in some way tomorrow. It may feel, in the moment, like I am doing him a favor, but really I’ll just be chaining him to an aberration.

So I sleepwalk through the day. To some, it must look like a sexy languor.

But really, I’m just tired.

At lunch, I try to eat reasonably, but the body wants more.

I feed it.

Gym class is a release. I make volleyball a contact sport. Not with the other players—I don’t start body-slamming my teammates. But I feel like I am in contact with my body again, with what it can do. I’m wasted in the classroom, the body seems to be telling me. I wasn’t made to be sitting down.

Then I return to the classroom—two more periods until the end of school. I fall asleep briefly, both times.

After school I commune with my like-bodied, like-minded friends. It’s off-season, so the only sport we can play is preparation. I feel more at home here than I did alone in the basement this morning. Here the routine expands. It feels like teamwork. And teamwork can’t help but engage the mind as well as the body.

I have been in the bodies of people who I suspect would give almost anything to have this body, to be this person. I’d be more hesitant, if I had a choice. Because over the years I have become wary of tinkering with nature in this way. A body like this is rarely natural. A body like this must be created and maintained. And when you give so much energy to the body, there ends up being very little energy for much else, at least when you are sixteen and just starting to form it. Perhaps if I could feel the satisfaction and admiration as my own, I would feel differently. Or if I needed this strength for anything other than its own display.

At dinner, Hamilton’s mother feeds him enough for the whole family. His father, whose body looks like Hamilton’s, only with a layer of time on top, talks nonstop about the game he was watching on TV last night. Hamilton’s little sister looks bored, and Hamilton’s little brother looks eager. When dinner is over, I understand why: He asks Hamilton if he can lift some weights tonight, too. Hamilton’s mother shakes her head, but his father says it’s no big deal.

“A five-pound weight never hurt anyone,” he says.

“Unless you smash someone in the skull with it,” Hamilton’s little sister chimes in.

“I don’t know, Charlie,” I say. “I really don’t know.”

“C’monnnnn,” he pleads. He can’t be older than ten.

I relent. We head to the basement and I give him the lightest weight to curl, telling him to be careful. He sticks his tongue out in concentration as he lifts it up and down, making his little biceps burp up rather than bulge.

“Your turn! Your turn!” he calls out after ten repetitions.

I’m sure this is part of what they do, and I respect the glee that Charlie feels being in his brother’s domain. I know I should do what Hamilton would do. But I’m just so tired.

“Not tonight,” I tell him.

“Why not?”

“Because,” I say, choosing my words carefully, “it’s okay to take a break. You can’t push yourself too hard.”

“Why?”

“Because you could push yourself to a place you can’t get back from.”

Charlie looks at me quizzically. “I don’t understand.”

I mess up his hair a little, playfully. “You don’t need to. All you need to know is there are all kinds of strong.”

I know he still doesn’t get it, but that’s okay. Maybe he’ll remember these words later on, and maybe he won’t.

I decide to speak his language a little better.

“Ice cream,” I say. “We definitely need ice cream.”

The body thinks it’s a waste to be lying on the couch, watching Nickelodeon. But the body is also a little relieved. And the mind? Well, the mind is happy with this kind of teamwork: two brothers with matching ice-cream bowls and matching ice-cream scoops, laughing at a talking sponge.

The heaviest thing I’ll lift for the rest of the evening is Charlie, when it’s time to go to bed.

But I still make sure the alarm is set for 4:44 the next morning. Because that shouldn’t really be my choice.

Day 5915

I try not to alter the lives I borrow for a day. But sometimes it can’t be helped.

Paul Deringer should not present much of a challenge. His morning doesn’t hold any surprises—his room is straightforward, his family is straightforward, and his schedule, when I access it, is straightforward. When I get to school, his friends are friendly. This in itself seems straightforward, but with some people there are subterranean currents beneath every interaction; they treat their friendships as politics and their lives as performance. Luckily Paul is not like that, and neither are his friends.

One friend is clearly his closest—checking his memories, I know that Nicole is the one he looks for first in the crowd, the one he will always sneak away at lunch to be with. They are not dating—the memories are clear in showing that. But they use the fact that neither of them is dating as a way to spend all the time together that would ordinarily be spent with a boyfriend or girlfriend. Timewise, it’s almost the same as dating. Heartwise, too. There just isn’t any kissing. Or at least none that I can find.

There’s a zero-tolerance policy about phones in this school, so the only way to communicate in class is to pass notes. Nicole and Paul always sit next to each other, to make this easier. I’ll admit: I find passing notes with Nicole to be more interesting than class. She’s clever, and I have to challenge myself to be clever, too. Or at least until we get to what Nicole calls “surrealist knock-knock jokes.” Then we’re just silly.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Lemon.

Lemon who?

Lemon walrus teacup.

Knock, knock.

Who’s there?

Ginger.

Ginger who?

Ginger ninja cereal bowler.

Is that bowler as in hat, or bowler as in one who bowls?

It’s an owler who married a b, and the b took her last name.

It doesn’t surprise me at the end of the day when Nicole tells me we have plans. Instead of heading to my bus, I’m commandeered into walking beside her, back to her house. When we get there, she aims straight for the kitchen, saying, “Help yourself to anything.” Quickly I access the geography of her house, which Paul is more than familiar with. Then I access the things he usually eats when he’s there. One has to be very careful around best friends, because a wrong move can be read as momentous. I’ve been in situations where I’ve reached for a soda and as a result have been lectured about how I will do anything to be popular, even drink what the popular kids drink.

I go for some pretzels, and Nicole’s lack of commentary means I’m safe. I figure we’ll set up in the den or the kitchen, since I’m a boy today and she’s a girl, and most parents have the mistaken notion that if a boy and a girl are alone in a room with a bed, pregnancy will ensue. But Nicole’s parents must not fear that from me, because she picks up her book bag and leads me onward. When we get to her room, she stretches out on the floor, unpacking her books and pulling out a pen. I take my space beside her, my body eventually semiicircling around my homework. From above we must look like a pair of parentheses, with open pages between us.

Human beings act very much like storms when there’s something to say. Very rarely in nature does a deluge catch you by complete surprise. There are the signs before—the sky darkening, the wind picking up, the air smelling like rain even before a drop has hit. With Nicole, the sky darkens when I look up to find her watching me do my homework. The wind picks up when she quickly looks away. The air smells like rain when she second-guesses, and looks at me again.

Paul might ask, “What is it?” Or he’d already know what it is. But for me, the storm remains nameless. I try to dodge it. I go back to my homework. I read the science textbook like my life depends on it.

This only angers her more.

She’s abandoned any pretense of studying. She is watching me, sending the first wave of rain over to me, the dare so clear. I am supposed to look up at her. I am supposed to meet her eye. Time will not let me go forward until I do.

I try to keep reading, even though the words dodge my focus. I turn the page when enough time has gone by for me to be due to turn the page.

“Paul.”

She’s moved her foot over to mine, and it stays there. Presses.

I look up. “What?”

“What?” she mimics.

I know she thinks my incomprehension is fake, but it’s real.

She sighs. Then says, “Knock, knock.”

I respond with the unavoidable, “Who’s there?”

“Water.”

“Water who?”

“Water we doing?”

I try to keep my voice light. “Homework?”

“No. I mean, what are we doing?”

The storm now shows, and it’s inside of her. It’s been inside of her all along. I don’t know if Paul would recognize it, but I do. His memories might show that they’re better off friends, that they were never meant to date—but that’s not her version.

And today, of all days, is when she’s going to call him on it.

Once the storm comes out, the landscape changes. What you had before is altered in some way. And you have a choice: build something new and better from what’s left, or abandon it.

It is lonely in the eye. As we sit there in the pause, as she stares at me, awaiting a response, as I see the things I could say and wonder which one to grasp for, I feel profoundly alone in myself. Reading people is a talent that I have developed, but in the end, that’s all it is—reading. Reading is not life. Reading is creating life in your head. And that can only help you so much in a storm.

I try not to alter the lives I borrow for a day, but sometimes I have no choice. Or, more accurately, I am given a choice, and I have to make it. One way or the other.

“What are we doing?” I say.

“Yes,” Nicole says, her foot moving lightly over my ankle. “What are we doing?”

I look away—I can’t do this while looking at her—and say, quietly, “I think we’re doing homework.”

She sits up, moves her foot away. I move my eyes back to the textbook.

I am telling myself it would be worse to say yes to her now and then have Paul take it away tomorrow. I am telling myself that if I make it casual enough, we can make it through the next hour, and that the conversation can be revisited tomorrow, or another day, when Paul is back. I am lying to myself that a storm can be put back inside a person, bottled up and preserved. I know I am lying to myself, but I also choose to believe it.

My instinct is that he doesn’t want to kiss her, that he’s never wanted to kiss her. But I wonder if that’s his detachment or mine.

We last five more minutes in that room. Then Nicole says she has to go downstairs for a second, and doesn’t come back up for a half hour. When she’s back, I want to ask her if she’s okay. But I have no idea whether that will make things better or worse. So I stay quiet, and then ten minutes later I say I have to go. She doesn’t protest.

I can’t just leave it like this. I can’t. So after my bag is packed, after she makes no move to walk me to the front door, I linger in her room for a second, then say, “I’m sorry. I just need to think. I can’t think right now. And I need to.”

It’s not enough. I can see that in her face. It’s not. The only hope I have is that over time it will grow to be enough. Or that whatever step Paul takes next will make it enough. Once I’m gone.

As I walk home, I stop accessing and try to navigate by instinct. Where do I think I should go? Which way is Paul’s home? I try to sense where the body wants me to be, which street feels more familiar, which direction feels inherently right.

I get horribly lost.

Day 5931

In all of the bodies I’ve been in, in all of the lives I’ve borrowed for a day, one thing has always been consistent:

Everyone wakes up tired.

In truth, most of us go through the day tired, as if all of the information swirling through the air, all of the thoughts battling within our mind, leave us in a state of perpetual exhaustion. I don’t know if it was always like this, but I’m pretty sure it’s more like this now.

I wake up, and I’m tired. This is not a surprise. I am also in the body and life of a sixteen-year-old boy named Mark. Yesterday I was in the body and life of a sixteen-year-old boy named Chase. For most people, this would be a surprise. But I am strangely used to it. This is just the way my life goes.

I access Mark’s mind, situate myself within his day. I’m only here until midnight. I try to get the basic facts, not the details. The details can be interesting, but they can also distract me into attachment. The worst thing in the world would be to pretend to know the people whose lives I step through. They cannot be homes to me. They must be hotel rooms.

Mark’s friend Sam is going to pick him up in a half-hour, so I have to shower and get dressed. Everything in his room is compulsively in place—I open one of his drawers and find the shirts folded with department-store precision, each corner of one shirt matching the corresponding corner of the shirt below it. I don’t really know if this is the result of military neatness or OCD—whatever part of Mark feels compelled to fold shirts this way has been banished for the day by my own personality. Because I try not to leave traces, I will have to live my life neatly today. Over the years, I have learned how to stand against the easy temptations of disorder. I’ll just have to do it more with Mark.

His toiletries are arranged in a very specific way, and I make sure to replace them in exactly the same configuration when I’m done. His pajamas get folded and put under the pillow, because I don’t know what would happen if someone came into the room during the day and saw them uncharacteristically sprawled on the floor.

I even make the bed.

One of the hardest things to know about people is how they move. I’ve grown very accustomed to taking on other bodies as my own, but I’m never sure how the real owners wear them. I can access memories, yes, but it’s not as if we have memories of the ways we walk or the ways we gesture. Our memories filter these facts out. Unless we are hurt in some way, our memories pretty much disregard our bodies. We don’t remember the way we like to sit. It is unlikely, in a lineup, that we’d be able to identify the back of our hand.

As I walk to Sam’s car—as I see Sam watching me—I try to make it feel natural, so it will seem natural. The music from the car is loud, and Sam is playing the steering wheel like it was made for percussion. The whole time, though, he’s facing me, watching me make my way to him.

This is their routine. This has to be their morning routine. I quickly access Mark’s mind to see how it goes.

“Good morning, super-friend,” Sam says when I get in the car, because this is what he always says when Mark gets in the car.

“Good morning, arch-amigo,” I say back, because this is always Mark’s response.

Sam smiles at this and pulls away from the curb.

I’m still not entirely awake. But if I’m not jumping into the day, I can at least let myself settle into it.

Speaking of rituals: All high schools are pretty much the same. The predictability makes it much easier for me.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in this school before, but it’s hard to tell. The hallways all look the same. The morning bells all sound the same. The announcements are all read in the same monotone.

Sam doesn’t leave my side, and soon enough, some of our other friends join us. We’re all on the basketball team, so we’re a tall crowd—Sam being the shortest, and Sam being the talker. Mark, I sense, is one of the quieter ones. People don’t really look to him for conversation.

The books in Mark’s locker are meticulously stacked. I am not surprised to open one of his notebooks and find tight, precise handwriting, always in the same color ink.

“Come on,” Sam says. “We don’t want to be late. Hartshorn will tear us a new one.”

I am grateful that he wants to lead. It saves me the trouble of having to figure out where I need to be. Even when we get to math class, I know exactly where to sit, because there are two empty chairs next to each other, and the way Sam heads straight for one makes me know I should head straight for the other.

I assume that Mark and Sam have been friends forever. But during class, I access some memories and find out that Sam only moved to town last year and met Mark through the team. They’ve been pretty inseparable since. I don’t know how Mark feels about this—one of the rules of inhabiting a body is that you can access the facts, but not interpretations.

Throughout math, Sam passes me notes. Most of them are cartoons—funny caricatures of Mr. Hartshorn and other people in the class. I’m probably supposed to reciprocate, pass something back. But instead I let him see me smile, let him see me laugh. This seems to be enough. I’m afraid to draw caricatures myself—it’s one thing if you know the people, but capturing them purely by sight, without any knowledge of who they are, can be dangerous. The wrong things can come out when you view a body as just a body, a face as just a face.

I study the people in the class, in a somewhat dreamy math-soundtracked daze. When my eye returns to Sam, I can see that he’s noticed, that he’s curious.

The next note he passes me asks, See anything you like?

I write back, Just lost in the clouds.

I have no idea what Mark will remember from this day. Mr. Hartshorn is talking about something I already know, but that doesn’t mean Mark will automatically learn it. So I remind myself to focus. I try to leave notes behind. Not about the fact that I’ve been here—I don’t want Mark to know that. But I don’t want the day to be missing, either. I want him to retain the knowledge he otherwise would have gained.

The classes I have with Sam are simple—I just follow him in and sit in the seats that have been left for us. For the classes when we’re apart, I have to access Mark’s mind and figure out where to go, where to sit, what the assignment is. Information-related exhaustion sets in again.

I can breathe easier at lunch, though. Sam meets me at my locker and teases me when the book I put back inside is out of order.

“That’s not like you, Mark, to be so messy.”

The book is, at most, an inch out of line.

“I guess I’m just in a rebellious mood,” I say.

“You better be careful. One minute it’s your locker, and the next thing you know, your socks won’t match.”

I feign horror. Sam puts his arm around my shoulder to comfort me.

“Sorry,” he says. “I know how upsetting that image must have been to you. Like genocide, only on your toes.”

“It’ll never happen,” I reply. “Promise me it’ll never happen.”

He squeezes my shoulder. “Not even if I have to pick out your socks myself.” With that, we head into the cafeteria and find our World of Boys. Even though I’m used to it by now, I’m still fascinated by how often guys split off into their own World of Boys at lunch, and girls head into their World of Girls. It’s such a steady pattern, they don’t even recognize it. If I could ask Mark about it, I’m sure he’d say that he was just hanging out with his team, with his friends. The fact that they’re all boys is secondary. But it defines everything.

They talk about teams I don’t know, and girls I don’t know. They talk about video games I know, and TV shows that sound familiar. I don’t say much, and I’m lucky, because Mark isn’t really expected to. Only Sam pays close attention to me, to what I’m saying and what I’m not saying. He thinks I’m oblivious, shoveling down my fries. But I’ve learned to know when someone wants me to say something, or just wants reassurance that I’m there.

I wait in fear for the comment that might rise from the scrutiny—an “are you okay?” followed up by a “you don’t seem quite yourself.” Sam, I sense, knows Mark well. But even when you know someone well—or especially when you know someone well—you are still looking for clues about who they are today.

“Alicia, really?” Sam is saying now. “What do you think, Mark? Is Alicia your type?”

I look at him. I can’t access fast enough to figure out who Alicia is.

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

“Well, what would you say your type is?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him again.

In my life, this is more often than not the most honest answer I can provide.

I am even more tired in the afternoon, but again, it seems like I’m in the same boat as everyone else. Even the teachers seem more lethargic, and the lessons billow rather than strike.

I only have one class in the afternoon with Sam, and he keeps largely to himself. I don’t know whether this is because he’s been caught passing notes in here before and knows better than to do it again. Or maybe he’s just tired, too. He seems lost in his own thoughts, emerging every few minutes to take in the teacher, or to send me a hello glance. I doodle in Mark’s notebook, then remember to tear out the page and throw it out at the end of the class.

Basketball practice is directly after school. I’m relieved that it’s not a game—that’s too much pressure. In slower sports, I can access the things I need to know—the names of teammates, the meaning of plays, the things I know about the opposing team. But basketball is too fast, too reactive. Especially at the end of a long day.

The movement wakes me, though. I release myself into the physicality of it—the push and pull on the court. Unsurprisingly, Sam and I are a team within the team—when there’s a chance to pass, his eye goes right to me, and mine goes right to him. Even though he’s short, he’s got speed, and because he’s got speed, he’s got respect. Mark, I can tell, is never going to be a star. He is a supporting player, the space between the stars that keeps them in place.

There’s a big game coming up, and the coach is relentless. We are working on shots, running the court, practicing plays, facing off against one another—like most coaches, he wants us to have the grace and efficiency of machinery, and he wants to be the machinist. A new kind of exhaustion hits me, but it’s an alive exhaustion, not an asleep exhaustion. I am keeping up my paces and hitting my marks. When one of my teammates botches a shot, the coach tells him to stop being a girl. I wish I could tell him that I was a girl two days ago, and two days before that. Nothing is different. A shot is a shot.

At the end of practice, the coach tells us to walk off the strain we’ve just put our bodies through. Sam gravitates toward me, asks me if he’s still giving me a ride home. I tell him yes. Of course. When I hit the shower, he’s nowhere to be found. I get out, towel off, get dressed. He comes racing through, running late. He says he’ll meet me by the car.

This gives me ten minutes of empty time. I never know what to do with it. There’s no one for me to text, no book for me to read ten minutes of. I could make conversation with the other guys leaving the locker room, but I don’t know who they are, and I won’t remember them tomorrow. The empty time remains empty. I try to remember the name of the girl I was two days ago, and the one I was two days before that. The name Alicia comes back to me, but that’s not right. I’ve already forgotten.

Sam doesn’t say much to me as we head to the car. Complaints about the coach, worries about the game coming up, resentment that Alex (whoever he is) is not a team player. I don’t have to do much more than faintly agree, and then faintly disagree when Sam says he’s complaining too much.

“But what about you?” he asks. “What’s on your mind?”

There have been moments in the past when I’ve been tempted to answer this last question truthfully, to let myself be part of the conversation. But the temptation fades under the cover of reality. I cannot share myself because, as far as Sam is concerned, I have no self. I don’t exist. Only Mark exists.

“I guess I’m just tired,” I say.

“Me too. I’m tired of so many things, you know?”

“So many things,” I echo.

We drive on for a few more minutes. The trip seems longer than the trip to school was.

I access to see if Sam and Mark had specific plans for tonight. I can’t find any. So I ask, “Where are we going?”

Sam smiles. “I’m kidnapping you. I was waiting for you to notice.”

“And where is the destination of this kidnapping?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

He sounds happy. Awake.

He makes me play Twenty Questions to figure out where we’re going. Not knowing what the options are, I’m not particularly good at the game. I find out that where we’re going is bigger than a trailer but shorter than the Washington Monument. It’s not in a city, but it’s not in a field. It is neither yellow nor purple. It is not a place where you’d find horses or falafel or the Amish. It is somewhere Sam’s been before, but not (to his knowledge) somewhere Mark’s been before. It doesn’t smell like sewage or Tater Tots or strawberries. It has never appeared on reality TV. There have been no songs written about it. It doesn’t require a change of clothing, or an admission fee, or a note from my doctor. It is not a church.

He makes me close my eyes as we pull up. I have seen no signs along the way, no telltale markers. All I can see is how proud he is of himself.

“All right. We’re here.”

I open my eyes and see an old, battered sign that says FUNLAND.

“I used to come here all the time as a kid, because my uncle was one of the owners. I don’t know if you remember, but I told you about it when we first became friends, and you drew a complete blank. So you could say the plan to come here was hatched out of that blank.”

The gates look locked to me.

“We’re going to break in?” I ask.

He pulls something out of his pocket and dangles it in front of me.

“No need to break in when you have a key!”

It’s a small amusement park—the kind that seems like a universe to a little kid but completely manageable to a parent. It’s closed for the season—the booths shuttered, the refreshment stands unrefreshed. But the rides can’t be hidden. They are idle versions of themselves, waiting for the summer to come.

“We’re going to have to play pretend,” Sam says.

He has no idea how good I am at playing pretend. But I guess that’s a different kind of pretend, a pretend that can’t be obvious. Here we revel in the pretend, laugh at it, become children within it. We walk rings around the carousel horses, trying to find our perfect steeds. We dangle at the bottom of the Ferris wheel and pretend that it is taking us up, up, up. I allow myself to relax. I allow myself to enjoy it. I even get lost in it.

Sam seems lost in it too. But every now and then, I catch him looking at me, like he has something to say. He doesn’t think I notice, but I notice. I just don’t let him notice that I’m noticing. I keep it to myself. I pretend.

We get to the rollercoaster and take our places in the car, its seating bar perpetually raised for us. I think Sam’s going to pull it down, strap us in for an imaginary ride. But instead he sits close to me, stares out. Even when it’s in operation, I imagine this rollercoaster is more coast than roll. The peaks and the dips are nothing that would scare a ten-year-old.

He looks at me again.

“I’m having such a good time,” he says.

“Me too,” I tell him. It’s true.

“I’m so glad I found you. I mean, when I first moved to town, I thought I was sunk. I didn’t want to start all over again. But then I met you, and our friends, and I thought that, yeah, I did want to start over again, after all.”

“That’s cool.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

He stares out again, away from me. Summoning something from inside of him. I can tell.

“I just wonder,” he says, quietly. Then he leaves it at that.

I know I shouldn’t ask, but I have to. “What?” And then, “What do you wonder?”

“I wonder if you and I should be more than friends. If you have those kind of thoughts.”

The truth is, I have no idea if Mark has those kind of thoughts. I can’t access his dreams or his fantasies or his desires. Only what’s happened so far.

“I don’t know,” I say.

“You said before that you were tired. Well, I’m tired, too. Tired of letting everything stay unsaid. We spend all our time together, and we do it because we want to, right? And I guess I think a lot about that, and about us. And about … well, more. Us having more. It’s not about lust or sex or whatever you want to call it. I mean, some of it is that. But mostly it’s about belonging. When I’m with you, I belong. It just naturally felt like that. And I think it felt like that for you. But I don’t know where that leaves us, or even what that is. I’m just tired of trying to figure it out myself. I need the other half of the equation.”

I feel sorry for him and I feel angry at him and I feel love for him, for having the courage to say these things. But none of these feelings is an answer. And that’s what he wants. An answer.

Why now? I wonder. Has he sensed me in here? Did I somehow shift Mark without knowing it? Did Sam see something in him today that made him feel he had a chance? Or was this always going to be the day, and I just happened to appear within it?

“Say something,” Sam asks. “Please.”

It is very possible that Mark might be speechless, too, were he here instead of me. Not for the same reasons, but still speechless. Or maybe he would know exactly what to say. A yes or a no. A kiss or a cold shoulder.

I simply don’t know.

“Sam,” I say, “you know you’re my best friend. That, to me, is the most important thing. Don’t you agree?”

He nods.

“As for the rest,” I continue, “I need to think about it. I mean, it’s about much more than you and me, isn’t it?”

I feel foolish even as I’m saying these words. Because I feel it’s foolish that it has to be about more than Sam and Mark. I want the World of Boys to be structured in such a way that if they chose to be more than best friends, it would be a step, not a leap. That a relationship could be a relationship without any other qualifiers attached.

I take his hand. It would be cruel to not take his hand, to withhold that.

“Look,” I say. “How about this? Let’s do this again tomorrow. Kidnap me again. Ask me again. Give me the night to really think about it, and what it means. Tomorrow I’ll know more.”

This isn’t the answer he wants, but it’s also not the answer he fears, so he’s willing to go with it. We exit the rollercoaster and walk around some more. But the magic of pretending has gone, and neither of us wants to insult the other by pretending otherwise. We walk in our own thoughts, knowing those thoughts have almost entirely to do with each other.

When he locks the gate behind us, Sam calls out, “See you tomorrow, Funland!”

I do the same, even though I won’t be seeing it tomorrow.

How can I let Mark know? What can I do that will make him realize what’s happened? Will there be some remnant of today when he wakes up tomorrow?

I can’t write him a letter, or even leave him a note. That would be weird.

Instead, I pace his orderly room. I am the only thing out of place.

Belonging. Togetherness. These words are as complicated and confusing as the word love. It’s probably all the same thing. Or it would be if we let it be. I can only guess from observation.

I don’t know what will happen with them. All I know is this:

As bedtime nears, Sam texts Mark a simple Good night. But in it I can sense the belonging, the togetherness, the love.

I text back my own Good night.

Then I leave it there, for Mark to find when he wakes up.

About the Author

DAVID LEVITHAN is the author of many acclaimed novels, some of them solo works, some of them collaborations. His solo novels include Boy Meets Boy; The Realm of Possibility; Are We There Yet?; How They Met, and Other Stories; Wide Awake; Love Is the Higher Law; and The Lover’s Dictionary. His collaborations include Will Grayson, Will Grayson (written with John Green), Marly’s Ghost (illustrated by Brian Selznick), and Every You, Every Me (with photographs by Jonathan Farmer), as well as three novels written with Rachel Cohn: Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List, and Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey, and spends his days in New York City, editing and publishing other people’s books. You can learn more about him at davidlevithan.com.

Every day a different body.

Every day a different life.

Every day in love with the same girl.

“An awe-inspiring, thought-provoking reminder that love reaches beyond physical appearances or gender.” —Kirkus Reviews, Starred

“A study in style, an exercise in imagination, and an opportunity for readers themselves to occupy another life: that of A, himself.” —Booklist, Starred

“Genius concept, brilliantly written. Every Day is David Levithan at his very best, and that is very, very good.” —Ellen Hopkins, author of Crank

“Is it too unmanly to say that this breathless book made me cry? It is? OK, well then I’ll just say this book is terrific, and if you’ll excuse me, I have something in my eye.” —Daniel Handler, author of Why We Broke Up

Don’t miss these other titles from New York Times bestselling author David Levithan:

Boy Meets Boy

The Realm of Possibility

Are We There Yet?

Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist

(written with Rachel Cohn)

Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List

(written with Rachel Cohn)

How They Met and Other Stories

The Likely Story series

(with David Ozanich and Chris Van Etten)

Wide Awake

Love Is the Higher Law

Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares

(written with Rachel Cohn)

Every You, Every Me

(with photographs by Jonathan Farmer)

Also available:

*Marly’s Ghost (illustrated by Brian Selznick)

*Will Grayson, Will Grayson (written with John Green)

*The Lover’s Dictionary