“A-Aden. You okay, man?”
It was still hard to distinguish real from the sea of noise, but he was still getting better at it, and he knew that someone was now in the room with him. His heavy lashes parted, and through a misty haze he saw Shannon standing at the side of his bed.
“Can I g-get you anything?” Shannon reached out and felt Aden’s forehead.
The moment of contact, Aden’s entire body jolted with a surge of electricity, and he lost his hold on his own reality. His conscious mind shot from him into his friend, and he was suddenly seeing the world through Shannon’s eyes. Shocking, weird. Lying on the bed one second, standing the next. Pain still coursed through him, and he groaned.
His stomach rebelled at the new upright position, forcing him to hunch over and vomit. Again. Thankfully, someone had left a small metal trashcan here. Dan, maybe. Aden thought he remembered the guy checking on him a few times.
“Out,” he managed to croak to Caleb. He wanted out of Shannon’s body.
The only reply was another moan.
Usually the soul had control. Caleb decided who to possess and when. Sometimes even Aden had control. Caleb might not want to possess someone but if Aden focused hard enough, he could do it. This time, neither of them had control, but they’d still done it.
He tried to step from the body, as he’d done with all the others, but something kept him leashed, tethered there, unable to move. Still. Over and over he tried. Finally, weak, exhausted, hurting worse, he gave up and fell back on the bed. He couldn’t hear Shannon’s thoughts, so he probably had control of Shannon’s mind, too. Which meant his friend would not remember this.
He hoped.
God, what was he going to do?
However long he sprawled there, writhing, he didn’t know. Time was immeasurable, endless. Until the true fun began.
Aden lost his hold on Shannon’s reality, too, and when he next opened his eyes, he found himself in the body of a little boy. Shannon, he realized, as he studied the dark color of his arm. A younger version of Shannon. He hadn’t lost Shannon’s reality, after all.
Even if he hadn’t noticed the physical differences, he would have known. He sensed the truth, deep inside. He’d just time-traveled—into Shannon’s past.
That shouldn’t be possible, not without Eve and certainly not with someone else’s life. Always before Aden had traveled back into his own life. Now he was seeing and feeling what Shannon was seeing and feeling. The physical pain, at least, was gone, and the souls were quiet rather than frenzied.
He sat on a swing, rocking back and forth, tiny sandaled feet pushing at the gravel. His little hands gripped the metal links at his sides. The sun glowed brightly, his only friend.
“Hey, Sh-Sh-Shannon,” a kid taunted from a few feet away. Several other kids were clustered around him, laughing. They were outside a school, Aden instinctively knew, and at recess.
There was a slide, a merry-go-round and a jungle gym, but none of the boys seemed to care about those things. They were focused completely on Shannon.
“My mom says you’re so weird because your mom is white and your dad is black,” the tallest boy said, chucking a rock in his direction.
The stone slammed into Shannon’s stomach, stinging. He kept his gaze to the ground. Ignore them, and they’ll go away, his mom always said. But he knew they wouldn’t. They never did. Unless Ms. Snodgrass noticed and yelled, but she was busy picking the grass out of Karen Fisher’s hair, so he’d have better luck wishing on a star.
Another rock hit Shannon, in the leg this time. He felt the sting, but again, he gave no reaction.
“You have a girl’s name, Stutter, you know that?”
More laughter had him cringing inside. Not that he’d ever let them know it.
Aden wanted to jump up, to pound those kids into the dirt, even young as they were. And he could have. He was still in control of the body. But to change the past was to change the future, and not always for the better. Actually, never for the better. So he sat there, awash in Shannon’s embarrassment and abject sense of loneliness, hoping that’s what Shannon had done.
But then the scene shifted, the playground fading and red brick walls closing in around him. Graffiti covered those walls, and in the distance, he heard a police siren wailing.
Smoke wafted in his face, and he coughed. He waved a hand in front of his nose, only then noticing the cigarette resting in his other hand.
“So?” someone said. “What do you think?”
Aden focused. A boy stood just in front of him. Probably fourteen or fifteen, and he was smoking, too. Like Shannon, he was black, though his skin was darker, and his eyes were brown.
He was cute, Shannon thought, though not exactly his type; still, they’d been secretly dating for three weeks. What made Tyler so appealing was the fact that he was the first boy Shannon knew who admitted, freely, that he liked other boys.
Most people were accepting of him. Some were not, like Tyler’s dad, and he often sported bruises. But still Tyler didn’t try to hide the fact that he was gay, or that he had a feminine side, was even proud of it, from his lip-glossed mouth to his too-tight pink T-shirt to his red-painted toenails.
Shannon still hadn’t told anyone about his own preferences. His dad was clueless, thank God, but his mom…she must have suspected. Flighty as she was, she kept introducing him to girls and then questioning him mercilessly. What did he think of them? Why wouldn’t he ask them out?
“Earth to Shannon,” Tyler said with a laugh. “Are you listening to me?”
“Uh, sorry. What’d you say?”
Tyler’s amusement faded in a blink. “Lookit. Like I’ve told you a million times already, I said I’m tired of sneaking around. I’m not gonna let you pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about this time, either. So either you like me or you don’t. Okay? So which is it?”
“I—” Aden quickly shut his mouth. He didn’t know how Shannon had replied, only felt the panic surging through the body.
“Say something!”
“I—I—” And then it didn’t matter. The scene shifted again, and this time he was standing in the center of an outdoor basketball court. Sweaty boys were all around him, slapping him on the back, telling him what a good job he’d done.
On the ground in front of them was an unconscious boy. Tyler. He recognized Tyler’s face, even though it was swollen, bloody and battered. Shannon’s hands were throbbing. Aden studied them. The skin on his knuckles was ripped to shreds. By teeth. By Tyler’s teeth.
He had beaten Tyler? Why?
Guilt and shame bombarded him. Remorse. Sorrow. Self-loathing.
The scene shifted yet again, the emotions falling away like leaves on a tree. Now he was inside a home, sitting on a couch. Pictures abounded. Of him. Of an older black man and a white woman. His parents, he thought.
His cheeks itched, so he reached up with a shaky hand to wipe at them. They were warm and wet. With tears? Someone was in front of him, pacing, screaming. Because Shannon had beaten Tyler?
No, he realized, as Shannon’s thoughts and feelings sank into his awareness. Because Shannon had finally told his parents the truth. He was gay. He hated what he’d done to Tyler. He wished he could go back, stop himself from treating his boyfriend that way, as if he were trash. As if he were something shameful.
On and on his father screamed. This was wrong. This was a sin. His mother even joined him, crying hysterically about how embarrassed she was. Why couldn’t he be normal?
He and Shannon were so much more alike than Aden had ever realized. He’d been called a freak his entire life, rejected by his parents, tossed throughout the system, unwanted by anyone. Trash. Shameful.