I felt Helena’s emptiness. How deeply lonely she was. Like most memories, it was short and then it was gone. But it passed through me like an emotional wave, and the sadness lasted for most of the drive. Why was this happening? And was I the only donor experiencing these strange souvenirs of our mind-body transfers?
I’d picked Beverly Glen Park to meet Blake. When I saw him waiting for me, sitting on top of a picnic table, my heart skipped a beat.
Seeing him with the setting sun backlighting his hair, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the time we had met there before. Only then, it was really the Old Man inside Blake’s body. I’d picked this place because it was close by and there was a private guard to protect us. But maybe there was another, subconscious reason I’d picked the same park.
I continued walking, watching him all the way. He leaned his elbows on his thighs, his hands clasped, just like I remembered. But I had to remind myself this wasn’t the person I’d been with then. This was the real Blake, Senator Harrison’s grandson, who thought he had been sick, who knew nothing of the body bank, whose only clue that we once had a relationship was a photo on his phone of us together.
He held out his hand to help me onto the tabletop.
“Glad you came,” he said.
“I’m really sorry, but I don’t have long.”
“Why not?”
“I’m waiting for an important Zing.” I knew that sounded lame. “But I came because there’s something I have to tell you.”
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you. You know everything about us. I know zip.”
“That’s not important now.”
“It’s important to me.” He pulled out his phone. “So what about this picture of us?”
He showed me the happy image of the two of us, arms around each other. But it was a lie. It was really the Old Man.
It hurt to look at it.
“What were we doing?” he asked. “I mean, that day?”
“Riding horses.”
“At my grandfather’s ranch?”
“Yes.” I hated thinking back on that day. At the time, I’d thought it was one of the best days of my life.
“Looks like we had a pretty good time.”
I sighed. “We did.”
His eyes met mine. “What else did we do?”
“We went to the music center and to a drive-in restaurant. We watched the sunset.”
I didn’t fill in the details that I saw in my mind’s eye: How we’d watched the sun set over the mountains, our horses side by side, shuffling their hooves. How he’d handed me that spotted orchid, the first flower any boy had ever given me. Reliving those memories hurt. Not because they were gone, but because they never really existed. Not with him, anyway.
“No, I mean, did we do anything else?” He stretched his neck as if his collar was too tight. “Anything … more?”
“No. We just kissed.”
At the time, it wasn’t “just” a kiss to me. But he didn’t need to know that.
“I wish I could remember that,” he said.
“I wish you could too.”
He hesitated for a moment, as if he was trying to see if I meant what I’d said. Then he leaned forward, tentatively, his eyes searching for clues every step of the way.
I leaned closer until our faces were almost touching. He smelled wonderfully woodsy and grassy, same as before.
We kissed. It was … not like before.
It started out the same, the smoothness of his lips, the smell of his skin. But the spark I had once felt, that sweet electricity, was gone. It was only in my memory. I tried again. Maybe it was there, and I just wasn’t being sensitive enough. Maybe it was me. Maybe I was nervous.
Relax. Find it.
But I stopped. Pulled back.
No.
It wasn’t.
He pulled away too and looked off in the distance. We sat back, side by side, not touching each other. He ran his hand through his hair. I looked at my phone. No Zing yet.
“You seem eager to go,” he said, looking resigned.
“No, sorry, it’s really important.” I put the phone down.
“So what did you want to tell me?” he asked.
I turned to him. Finally, I could do what I came to do. “You’re in danger. We both are.”
“What?” He looked at me as if I’d said the world was flat.
I needed to start with something he already knew. “You’ve heard the news about the bombing at the mall?”
He frowned. “Bombing? They just said it was an explosion on the news. A gas leak.”
“It was a bombing. And it could have been you or me who got killed.”
He leaned away from me. It wasn’t going to be easy to convince him.