Under the Light - By Laura Whitcomb Page 0,25

the day before. “Sorry,” he told her.

Jenny blushed again, I suppose not knowing what to say.

Which brought me to a more serious sin—I had taken Jenny’s deflowering away from her and exposed her to Billy’s body unprotected. I had no idea how foolish the boy had been in his short past, and neither had James. It was thoughtless and selfish of me to have changed Jenny’s reputation at school, linking her not only with Billy but with my beloved Mr. Brown. That false gossip about an English teacher having taken advantage of a student was buzzing about the high school, and probably the whole community, was appalling. I told Jenny’s parents that it was James—well, Billy—who was my lover and not Mr. Brown, and I think they believed me, but the harm had already been done.

“What happened here?” Billy asked when they got to the family room. The Prayer Corner had been neatened, the burn on the carpet hidden with a throw rug. But the charred ceiling looked like the mouth of hell.

“Sort of a protest thing when my father left.”

“You never said you were a pyromaniac.”

When Jenny opened the door to the master bedroom neither crossed the threshold. “My mother’s room,” she told him.

He peered in with no comment. Next the office, where several boxes of Dan’s belongings cluttered the middle of the floor, awaiting their fate.

“It’s kind of messy in here,” said Jenny.

Billy gave a little laugh. “You should see our place.” Then he caught her eye. “I guess you’ve already seen it.”

“I don’t remember that,” said Jenny.

“Believe me, you’re not missing anything.”

I didn’t expect Jenny to know what had happened while she was away from her body, yet I had secretly hoped I had left some residual haunting, some scent or hue that would give her a sense of me. But she seemed completely unaware of me or James.

Billy squeezed past her into the office and tilted his head as he read the titles of books left on the shelves. The Christian Wife, The Bible Diet, A Mother/Daughter Walk with God. “Man, your family is religious. No offense.”

“It’s okay.” She tried to sound lighthearted, but her sigh was weighty.

Finally she led him into her own bedroom and he followed without hesitation. Jenny sat on the bed and watched him study everything in sight: the girlish white dressing table, the orderly closet where the sliding mirrored doors were left half open, the view from the window into the pristine garden. He stopped at the painting of the praying hands.

“How did we get together?” He said it as if it was a rhetorical question.

Jenny didn’t answer him, but instead asked, “What’s the last thing you remember before your memory gap?”

“I was at a park near my house,” he said. “Getting high.”

“So you had a drug blackout?”

“I guess. I was just trying everything that day. Whatever I could get my hands on. Pot, pills, Super Glue.”

“That’s awful,” said Jenny.

But if he hadn’t, I thought, I never would have met James.

“Yeah. That was maybe two or three weeks ago.” Billy leaned on the wall beside her desk like a loiterer. I admired him for not sitting on the bed beside her. “So what kind of amnesia do you have?”

“Unexplained.” Then she frowned. “Do you think we could have done drugs together?”

“Jeez, I hope not.” Billy looked ill for a moment.

I wanted to tell them the story James had told me about his taking over Billy’s body, but I was left out of the conversation.

“No, that can’t be it,” said Jenny. “My missing time is months long, not weeks.”

“When did you wake up?” he asked her. “I mean, when did your blackout stop?”

“Yesterday.”

“Shit,” Billy whispered. “Day before yesterday.”

Now both of them looked unnerved. He pulled out the desk chair and sat.

“That’s really weird,” said Jenny.

“When I came out of it, I was visiting my dad in prison. Mitch was just unloading on him. Having this massive meltdown. I guess that was what woke me up.” Billy shrugged as if apologizing for knowing so little about his own life.

I ached at the core remembering the last time I saw James in Billy’s body, disappearing down the hall at the prison with Mitch. I missed James so badly that the floor creaked under me, but neither of the other two noticed.

“Turns out, right before I woke up, my mother told me my father was moving out,” said Jenny.

“That sucks,” said Billy. “Or not. If it was my dad we would’ve had a party.” He