John Adams - The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017

Wong told of a friendship he had had while in boarding school in Switzerland. This was a close friendship, childish because it was so obsessive, but adult because they seemingly saw each other clearly; they were fully mutually admiring of each other. Though Wong and the friend resembled each other physically and had similar tastes and personalities and aptitudes for school and sport, they treasured in the other the things that were different: Wong’s easy, conversational manner with teachers and fellow students alike; the friend’s single-minded ability to complete a paper or problem set from start to finish without interruption; one’s thick, fashionable glasses; the other’s adorably decorative smattering of acne. “It was very gay, as I can see you thinking, but my friend was not gay. Or perhaps a little, just for me. There was this one time in Paris—

“Anyway, I was extremely popular,” Wong said, as only Wong could say. But this friend gave Wong something no other friend could. Wong, who had been orphaned when he was a small child, knew no one else and was known by no one else to such a comforting extent. The friend knew Wong so well partially because they were so similar, which then made the differences all the more apparent, something to be mapped and delineated and treasured.

One winter break, they lied to various parties and spent break unsupervised in one of the Wong family properties in Paris. Toward the end of break the friend received news that his parents had been killed in an accident. And after the funeral, the friend would be moved to another school, closer to his relatives.

The friend did not want to go to a strange new school, to leave Wong and his other friends behind. So they came up with a plan. Wong would go to the new school in his friend’s stead, while the friend would stay at their school, where he could impersonate both Wong and himself. “When you feel bad, be me,” Wong had told him. It would help. And if the friend missed himself, felt the need for a small pocket of space-time in which to grieve, then he could always return to himself. It was only supposed to be temporary. So it was that Wong left their school in his friend’s place.

“For a whole season I pretended to be him,” said Wong. He blinked slow and smoothed his hair back. “The end,” he said.

Kim made a farting noise. “When did you guys switch back again?” he asked.

“Yeah, what happened? Did anyone ever find out?” said Huynh.

Wong said, “Time’s up. Make your guesses.”

“False,” said Lee.

“False,” said Huynh.

“True,” said the girl.

“Falsest horseshit I’ve ever heard,” said Kim.

“You’ll all have to drink,” said Wong. “All of you!” As the rest of them complained, he cackled and drained his glass.

“I’ll allow it,” said the girl. She and Wong clinked glasses.

It was Lee’s turn. The paper said SUCCESSOR. “Pass,” said Lee.

The next slip of paper said USURPER. Well, if she didn’t want SUCCESSOR, she definitely didn’t want USURPER. “Pass on this too,” said Lee.

The next slip said REPLACEMENT.

Lee yelled, “I’m not doing any of these, you assholes,” and against her will she remembered finding the pictures of her ex-husband’s old girlfriends, the new girlfriend who had usurped Lee’s position, the one who had replaced that one, and the other one, or was it two, after—it was hard to remember exactly, because the photos had been in some kind of circular book with no covers, no clear end or beginning, you could easily have flipped through all the women and gone back around to the beginning without even noticing; that was what they looked like.

Huynh was looking at her calmly. Lee remembered how perfect Huynh had been, matter-of-fact yet merciless. “Don’t dwell. Just another yellow-fever cracker-ass white guy,” Huynh had said. “Throw him back.”

Huynh pushed a square of paper toward Lee. “Here, try one more.” Her face was unreadable.

Lee unfolded the paper. Printed on it in tiny block letters was the word SHART. She hung her head, then began to shake with laughter—something about the careful, meek handwriting, more than the word itself even. “Noooooo,” she moaned. “That does it. I’m skipping my turn.” Huynh raised her glass to Lee. Wong and Kim looked relieved and drank. The girl refilled everyone’s cups. The bottle remained nearly full.

“You humans,” murmured the girl. She grinned at them, tilting her head. “I mean, us. Us humans. We’re just such a blast.”

Huynh got MATTRESS. She nodded as though she had been expecting it. Years ago, before all of them had met, Huynh had been going through a rough time. There was no money. She was living in an expensive city but was too poor and depressed to move anywhere else and could not stomach the thought of going back home—her dad was mentally ill and homeless, and her mom had left for Vietnam a while back. “I guess with all the people over the years telling her to go back to her own country, she was finally like, ‘Huh, you know what, that’s actually like not a bad idea!’” said Huynh. “You fuckers.”

Huynh had signed up with a temp agency, who immediately found her an assignment with amazingly inconvenient hours that paid terribly, but she took it, afraid that if she turned this one down she would not be placed elsewhere. During the final days before she had to move out of her current apartment, she searched through the classifieds and found exactly two apartments she could afford. One was so affordable because it was free—she would only have one roommate and would have to refrain from wearing clothing while in the apartment (“no sex no touching,” the ad had said, “i’m not some CREEP“).

Huynh took the other apartment. It was a room in a two-bedroom apartment, clean and empty except for a mattress and a suitcase. She had a roommate who she would never see. The roommate slept on the mattress from about 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Normal-people stuff. Huynh slept on the mattress during the day. At night she worked as an admin in a warehouse where they made and sent out copies of X-rays to hospitals. The schedule did not feel so good. She slept when she was supposed to, and presumably for the right number of hours, but waking up always felt cruel, as if she had just closed her eyes and hours passed in seconds, an evil trick.

Her roommate communicated with her through notes. Like: Please wash the sheets. I did it last time. We will trade off on this. I hope you understand. Best, A.M. Huynh wrote back: No problem! Thank you. Best, P.M.

This could not go on forever, but it went on for a while, until the night that Huynh, racked with a flu and three canker sores, slept through her two alarms, slept through the sinking of the sun and the rising of the sun, and sat up midday, horrified that she had stolen her roommate’s bed time. Huynh lay back down, sweaty and weak, figuring that when her roommate came back she could apologize. Maybe the roommate would take pity on her when she saw how ill she was, since she seemed very reasonable in her notes.

But the roommate never returned. No notes, no nothing. Huynh stayed in bed for three melty days, alternately dozing off and listening fearfully for the turn of the doorknob. And then: “Then I got in that accident and became the woman you see before you today,” said Huynh.

“True,” everyone said in unison. Huynh nodded again and drank once, twice, thrice, four times. She didn’t seem drunk. Lee wondered just what was in the bottle that the girl had brought.

“My turn,” said the girl. She leaned forward and plucked one of the slips of paper out of the pile. Her hair, still soaking wet, spattered the floor.

BARGAIN, it said on the paper. The girl sat up straight. She suddenly seemed very tall, and not only tall but big.