Page 21 of Exchanged

“We’re nothing alike.”

She rolls her eyes. “That’s the point. And as an outside observer during that Shadowmist game, I think the two of you have more in common than you’d care to admit.”

I open my mouth to argue, but she holds up a finger.

“Nope! That’s the parting wisdom I’m going to leave you with.” She waves her hands in front of her face and makes her voice sound like the Ghost of Christmas Past from A Christmas Carol. “Youuuu could beeeee gooood for each other!”

She stands up. I do, too. She pulls me into a hug, then pads across our backyard and into the alley. She’s walking home tonight. Her house is a few blocks away.

When I head back into the dining room, everyone else has already gone to bed. A lamp in the corner casts a dim glow over the Shadowrealm game, now packed in its box, resting innocently in the center of the table.

Shame stabs at my stomach.

When I get to the third floor, a light glows from under Garrett’s bedroom door. I pause, wondering if I should apologize. But it’s late, and he’ll be there tomorrow, so I close myself in my room and crawl into bed.

SEVEN

Garrett is gone when I get up in the morning, so I decide to work on a composition I’m writing for my wind quintet. Five of us—me, Trevor, Katrina, and our friends Ryan and Marcy from band—get together once a week to play for fun. We’ve gotten good over the past year and have even been paid to play at a few weddings. I arrange a lot of our music, and I have this stupid dream that we might perform something I composed myself one day. I’ve written a few pieces for one of my online composition classes, but most of them feel uninspired, unoriginal, and unfinished.

I was proud of the last one I wrote, proud of the instrumentation and sweeping melodies, so I brought it to rehearsal. We played it all the way through, and when we finished, Trevor and Katrina exchanged an uncomfortable look.

“Uh, Enz?” Trevor had said. “Isn’t this the love theme from Star Wars: Episode II?”

And dammit if he wasn’t right. I had spent three weeks thinking I was a creative genius when I was accidentally rewriting the soundtrack to Hayden Christensen’s shitty acting from memory. I haven’t finished a composition of my own since. Too afraid that the strains of music drifting through my mind belong to someone else, I haven’t put any of them down on paper. The only way to chase my dream of composing film scores is to actually write something, but that would mean I have to confront the mediocrity of my skill.

I plunk at my piano, trying to catch a melody just out of reach. It’s undeveloped still, more a feeling than a sound, a feeling of wanting—of something that’s missing but waiting just out of sight—a feeling like the heat that surged through my body under Garrett’s gaze last night.

But when I look up, the melody vanishes, my attention focused on something more tangible. Garrett’s door hangs open, morning sunlight streaming into the hallway from his window. Curiosity pulls me toward his room, and before I realize it, I’m standing inside.

He usually keeps the door closed, so I haven’t looked in here since he first arrived, and I marvel at how different the space is from the spartan guest room it was a week ago.

Dirty laundry lies scattered across the floor, an open duffel bag resting against the closet door. A Raiders jersey is pinned to the wall above his unmade bed. This surprises me. I thought sports fans stuck to one team. Doesn’t Garrett always wear Falcons apparel? And the room smells like guy. Musk and stale sweat and deodorant. Hovering somewhere within that, though, is the smell of Garrett, musty and wild, like the woods that cover the iron hills to the north of town in late October.

I know I shouldn’t be in here, but now that I am, I can’t seem to leave. He is a puzzle whose pieces I have been collecting, and standing in his room is like glimpsing the picture on the box, like briefly seeing a more complete picture of him. It’s a chance to put a few of the pieces together.

A camera hangs above his desk by its strap. It’s a good one, I think. In the empty space beside it, twine has been strung up, zigzagging across the wall, looped around thumbtacks. Miniature clothespins clip a dozen or so photographs to the twine, photos I assume he’s taken. I move closer to get a better look.

In one, Garrett poses with a group of friends in front of a fountain. He’s on the end, leaning in, obviously the one who set the self-timer and ran to join the group. He looks different from the person I think I know—freer, somehow, the carefully controlled way he holds himself replaced by a wide smile, his arm thrown around the girl next to him. And his friends don’t seem like the Tyler Jorgen and Evan Hegge type. The girl next to him has a sharp, bleached pixie cut and combat boots. In the middle of the group stands a round-cheeked boy, his hips popped out to the side, in a pose that screams out-and-proud. The group is eclectic, weird, cool.

Another photo catches my eye, a shot of items someone put on their lawn for garbage pickup. I can make out a massive suburban home in the background, and I wonder if this was taken in Garrett’s neighborhood. An old red tricycle serves as the focal point, rusted and missing a back wheel, propped in front of a cracked mirror. The camera position makes the tricycle reflect in the mirror from a dozen angles, disjointed abstractions of metal and crimson.

The photo is good. I don’t know much about photography, but from what I remember from freshman art, the framing is perfect, the focus great, and it makes me feel a sense of nostalgia and loss. I wonder if the music I’ll compose will ever make another person feel something the way this picture does.

Most of the photos are like this one, capturing the sorts of things or people or places that we encounter in our daily lives but don’t take the time to notice. Above all, that is what holds me in front of this makeshift gallery: the noticing. The way Garrett’s eyes saw these things differently from anyone else, how he took ordinary objects and made them art.

I step back from the photo wall and focus my attention on the mystery of the Raiders jersey. Maybe he’s only into a certain player, and not the whole team. The name NASSIB, printed above the number 94, stares down at me, taunting me with my lack of NFL knowledge. Pinned to the hidden side of the jersey, its corner just visible, is a small card.

I shouldn’t look at it.

But it seems like a gift tag or something, and my interest is piqued. I decide to take one quick glance and then leave his room alone.

I have to lean pretty far over his bed to read it, so I brace my arm against the wall to avoid touching his blankets. Groping his unmade bed would be an invasion of privacy. All of this is an invasion of privacy, but touching his bed would be too far.

I pluck the card out from behind the fabric of the jersey and read. To: Garrett, it says. From: Corey and Lisbeth. You know why.

This means nothing to me. Why did I think it would mean anything? I’ve never met those people, and the only thing I know about football is that wide receivers run fast and catch things.

“What are you doing?”