Sooyoung

Day 5997

All I get is yesterday. And today.

                Yesterday I was a boy. Skylar Smith. A soccer player, but not a star soccer player. Clean room, but not compulsively so. Video game console. Ready to wake up. Parents asleep.

                He lives in a town that’s about four-hour drive from where Jessica lives.

                That was nowhere near close enough.

Today starts greatly.

                It’s almost eerie how well the next day of yesterday works out.

                I wake up early – six in the morning.

                I wake as a girl. A girl with a car. And a license.

                In a town only an hour away from Jessica.

I apologize to Summer as I drive away from her house, a half hour after waking up. What I’m doing is, no doubt, a strange form of kidnapping.

                I strongly suspect that Summer wouldn’t mind. Getting dressed this morning, the options were black, black, or…black. Not  in a goth sense – none of the black came in the form of lace gloves – but more in a rock ‘n’ roll sense. The mix in her car stereo puts Janis Joplin and Brian Eno side by side, and somehow it works.

                I can’t rely on Summer’s memory here – we’re going somewhere she’s never been. So I did some Google mapping right after my shower, typed in the address of Jessica’s school and watched it pop up in front of me. That simple. I printed it out, and cleared the history.

                I’ve become very good at clearing histories.

I know I shouldn’t be doing this. I know I’m poking a wound, not healing it. I know there’s no way to have a future with Jessica.

                All I’m doing is extending the past by a day.

Normal people don’t have to decide what’s worth remembering. You are given hierarchy, recurring characters, the help of repetition, of anticipation, the firm hold of a long history. But I have to decide the importance of each and every memory. I only remember a handful of people, and in order to do that, I have to hold tight, because the only repetition available – the only time I’m going to see them again – is if I conjure them in my mind.

                I choose what to remember, and I am choosing Jessica. Again and again, I’m choosing her, I’m conjuring her, because to let go for an instant will allow her to disappear.

                The same song that we heard in Tyler’s car comes on – And if I only could, I’d make a deal with God…

                I feel the universe is telling me something. And it doesn’t even matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that I feel it, and I believe it.

                The enormity rises within me.

                The universe nods along to the songs.

………………..

I try to hold on to as few mundane, every day memories as possible. Facts and figures, sure. Books I’ve read for info I need to know. The rules of soccer, for instance. The plot of Romeo and Juliet. The phone number to call if there’s an emergency. I remember those.

                But what about the thousands of every day memories, the thousands of every day reminders, that every person accumulates? Yeah, there are things I have no need for. And, over time, my mind has rewired itself, so all this info falls away as soon as the next morning comes.

                Which is why it’s remarkable – but not surprising – that I remember exactly where Jessica’s locker is.

I have my cover story ready: If anyone asks, I’m checking out the school because my parents might be moving to town.

                As soon as I walk in, I was just another random girl in the halls – the freshmen will think I’m a senior, and the seniors will think I’m a freshman. I have Summer’s school bag with me – black with food anime details, filled with books that won’t really apply here. I look like I have a destination.

                And I do. She’s my destination.

                And there she is, as if the universe wants this to happen.

                Sometimes memory tricks you. Sometimes beauty is best when it’s distant. But even from here, thirty feet away, I know that the reality of her is going to match my memory.

                Twenty feet away.

                Even in the crowded hallway, there is something about her that radiates out to me.

                Ten.

                She’s carrying herself through the day, and it’s not an easy task.

                Five.

                I can stand right here and she has no idea who I am. I can stand right here and watch her. I can see that the sadness has returned. And it’s not a beautiful sadness – beautiful sadness is a myth. Sadness turns our features to clay, not porcelain. She is dragging.

                “Hey,” I say, my voice thin, a stranger here.

                At first she doesn’t understand that I’m talking to her. And then it registers.

                “Hey,” she says back.

                Most people, I’ve noticed, are instinctively harsh to strangers. They expect every approach to be an attack, every question to be an interruption. But not her. She has no idea who I am, and she’s not going to assume the worst.

                “Don’t worry – you don’t know me,” I quickly say. “It’s just – it’s my first day here. I’m checking the school out and I really like your skirt and your bag. So I thought, you know, I’d say hello. Because, to be honest, I am completely al