David Levithan - Someday

Even the sad sack of skin and bones that I’m in now has more power than most. I can use that. Having money gives you an advantage, especially if you use it. And being white. And being a man.

Nobody is expecting this man to steal, because he doesn’t need to steal. So I take whatever I want.

I go to a restaurant, have an expensive dinner, then walk out before the check comes. I go to a drugstore and pocket some Advil. Then, just for fun, I find an item that will set off the alarm—an electric razor, on the pricier side for CVS—and I put it in a teenager’s backpack as he searches through deodorants. His fault for leaving his backpack around like that.

I know this is all child’s play, but isn’t child’s play how most of us fill the days? Isn’t it how our leaders have chosen to lead? I fit right in.

I am already getting tired of this body. I appreciate the lack of resistance it offers, but I miss being desirable. I had a long enough time in Poole’s body; I would like to go back to being the object of some carnal attention.

Before I leave this man’s body, I must drain his bank account. This is remarkably easy to do. All I have to do is visit his bank, speak in an even, calm manner about needing funds for a new business venture, then transfer the majority of the money to the accounts I set up for myself years ago. His children will be left with practically nothing, but if they deserved more than nothing, I imagine they would have called or written at some point. If they’re relying on getting their daddy’s money when he’s gone—well, it’s mine now.

I will have to wait a few days for the transfer to go through. It will be worth my while to do so.

In the meantime, there’s more damage to be done.

There’s always more damage to be done.

A

Day 6088

I check her Facebook all the time, waiting for something to happen. Some other message. I check every hour. Every ten minutes. Five minutes. I worry that there’s something I’m not seeing because we’re not friends.

When I wake up, I check the phone first. I see she was out with her boyfriend. I take a shower and think about her picture, about whether she looked happy or was just pretending to look happy. I feel ashamed that I want her to be pretending, then tell myself I don’t really want that. I check for another update after I get dressed, mindlessly pulling things from the drawers. Not thinking about the day at all. Just thinking about her.

Then it hits me: I have been awake for almost an hour and I haven’t even thought about who I am today, haven’t even learned this person’s name. With a few touches on the phone, I am looking at Moses Cheng’s Facebook profile. He only has forty friends. His sister tags him in family photos, but he doesn’t post anything himself. I’m not sure if this means he doesn’t have many friends or if it just means he doesn’t like Facebook. Then I search around a little in his mind and realize the answer’s both.

Moses’s sister is waiting for him in the kitchen. “Here,” she says, throwing him a granola bar. “No time to waste. We’ve got to go.”

“I need my bag,” I tell her. She groans and tells me to go get it.

I’m hoping that Moses doesn’t need anything in his backpack today that he didn’t have there yesterday. I hope he put his homework in, because I don’t have time to look for it. His sister is already calling up for him to hurry. I don’t think she’s being impatient—I think I’m late. Because I got lost thinking of Rhiannon.

In the car, Moses’s sister reminds him she can’t drive him home—she has band practice.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asks him.

I’m sure I’ll be able to find my way. I tell her I’ll be fine. And then I resist checking Rhiannon’s page on Moses’s phone, because his sister is keeping an eye out. Because of the time difference, Rhiannon’s been up for hours now. I don’t understand why she hasn’t posted anything.

I tell myself to stop.

I don’t listen to myself.

Moses is on the shorter side and the slighter side—usually this is helpful when it comes time to be invisible. But for whatever reason, people keep seeing him and shoving him. It’s like a reverse game of pinball, where the pinball stays on a straight course and it’s the bumpers that move toward him.

It’s a little better out of the hallways. But not much. In math class, the guy behind me keeps poking my back with his pencil. The first time he does it, I startle—which he thinks is hysterical. It doesn’t take me long to find that the guy’s name is Carl and this is a regular occurrence. I don’t find any memory of Moses fighting back. So I just sit there and take it. I look around for some sympathetic looks, but no one seems to care. Moses is not the only one who’s used to it.

At the end of class, the teacher asks for homework to be passed up to the front of the room, and I can’t find Moses’s in his backpack. Meanwhile, Carl is shoving his paper in my face, telling me to pass it up. I want to rip it into shreds. I want to shower the shreds over his head. And at the same time, I want to know why I’m letting him get to me. It’s like my navigation through the day has been stripped of any possibility of autopilot. I need autopilot.

The bell rings and Carl takes a bottle of Gatorade out of his bag, opens the cap, and pours the contents into my backpack. I don’t even see it happening at first, I’m so mad at myself about the homework. Then I see him dropping the empty bottle into my bag, and I remember that Moses’s phone is in there. Even though I know I should not engage, I take the bottle out of my backpack and hold it by its neck and swing it at Carl’s laughing face. It’s a plastic bottle, and the damage I do is minimal, but his surprise is immense. Now people are paying attention, and are yelling that it’s a fight. But I don’t want to fight, I just want to save the phone, so I go for my backpack, which gives Carl the opening he needs to throw me to the ground. I can feel myself being lifted, just for a second, and then I’m falling and I’m hitting and he’s yelling that he’s going to hurt me. The teacher’s coming over now, and Carl is claiming self-defense. School security comes and is only slightly less belligerent than Carl. I am marched to the vice principal’s office, and the whole time I’m trying to dry off the phone—I’m actually asking if there’s any way to get a bag of rice from the cafeteria, because I’ve heard that rice can help, but the security guard is completely ignoring anything I say. I look behind me, assuming I’ll see Carl marched in the same formation. But apparently I’m the only one being corralled. It’s the time between class periods now, so the halls are full. People look confused to see me being pulled along by security. I can see a few asking their friends who I am.

The phone won’t turn on. My backpack is leaking a trail on the linoleum floor of the hallway. The security guard is yelling at me to put the phone away, asking me what the hell I’m doing, as if having a dead phone out is an admission of guilt in all things.

I am shown into the vice principal’s office. He’s on the phone, and when he hangs up, I realize the call was about me, because straight off he says, “So . . . you hit a fellow student with a bottle.”

“It was plastic,” I tell him.

This is the wrong thing to say.

“I don’t care if it was made of feathers,” the vice principal fumes. “This school has zero tolerance for violence. Zero.”

“Please,” I say. “Let me give you some context.”

I know there’s a twisted code of honor about never tattling on another student, never speaking up against someone who’s done you wrong. I know I will only make it worse by breaking this code. But the code of honor was written by bullies for the protection of bullies, and I don’t want to follow it.