I have grown accustomed to sensing expectation in others, or the lack of it. I read his parents easily: Justin doesn't talk to them much in the morning, so I don't have to talk to them. Sixteen years is a lot of time to practice. They have no idea that anything is different.

I take the clothes with me to the bathroom, dress after showering. I reach for a shirt and some jeans, but something lets me see that it's the same shirt he wore yesterday. We all contain mysteries, especially when seen from the inside. And while I'm glad to be thinking like myself, a hint every now and then of how the other person thinks would be helpful. It's as if that part of me replaces the same part of whatever person I'm in. Does he want to kill his parents in the next room? Or would he be lost without his mother coming in to make sure he's awake? It's impossible to tell. I know this is Justin's room, but I have no idea if he likes it or not. You can have theories, but there will never be proof. After a while, you have to be at peace with the fact that you simply are. I'm never going to figure it out, any more than a normal person will figure out his or her own existence. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago. I don't hop from being sixteen to being sixty. So I try to be careful.įrom what I can tell, every person I inhabit is the same age as me. I've harmed people's lives in the past, and I've found that every time I slip up, it haunts me. It's hard being in the body of someone you don't like, because you still have to respect it.

He hasn't gotten much sleep.Īlready I know I'm not going to like today. The voice in my head is always different. But not so addicted that he needs one as soon as he wakes up. I'm never the same person twice, but I've certainly been this type before. I look around and know that this is his room. Somehow I know this-my name is Justin-and at the same time I know that I'm not really Justin, I'm only borrowing his life for a day. The biography kicks in, a welcome gift from the not?me part of the mind.

I wake up, open my eyes, understand that it is a new morning, a new place. I am myself-I know I am myself-but I am also someone else. It's the life, the context of the body, that can be hard to grasp.Įvery day I am someone else. The body is the easiest thing to adjust to, if you're used to waking up in a new one each morning. It's not just the body-opening my eyes and discovering whether the skin on my arm is light or dark, whether my hair is long or short, whether I'm fat or thin, boy or girl, scarred or smooth. Immediately I have to figure out who I am.

Every day book david levithan