Second Self

Chapter 3

"...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment..." Plato, The Symposium

Ideas are not facts until proven, but they do give us new ways to think about things. According to one set of ideas about the universe, there are three spatial dimensions, with a fourth for time. My limited understanding of string theory told me about the possibility of at least ten dimensions—six of which are wound-up like a twisted ball of yarn.

Perception isn't universal. One person's insights won't be the same as those of another. Milly once told me that I smelled things on a molecular level. I'd assumed she was bullying me until I discovered how differently people perceived the world. Suddenly it seemed possible that another person's consciousness could occupy my body and still experience the world in a completely different way. Even breathing the same air through the same nose, there'd be no guarantee they'd detect the saccharine scent of citrus from lunch clinging to Casper's hands as we walked the trail along the top of the river valley. My senses sent signals other people didn't seem to receive. I'd stopped worrying that it meant there was something wrong with me somewhere along the way. We could never be sure of what was happening in the minds and bodies of other people.

My hand felt clammy against Thirza's warm skin. I wanted to take Casper's hand the way Thirza had taken mine, but I knew that skin was a person's largest organ. Technically, touching any part of a person's body meant you had touched all the parts of their body. I wasn't ready to touch all of Casper's parts.

Closer inspection of a large stone along the path leading up to the Friendship Center provided a welcome distraction. Both sides of the rock curved gently to points. Another stone that lay a few paces further along appeared to have the humped shoulders of a large animal. A third that was in line with the first two looked like the top portion of a bison rising from the soil. The entire animal burst from the ground near the door. Just inside the entrance of the building, a shard of sunlight bounced off one of the thirteen metallic beams that crossed each other at the peak of the tipi-shaped hall. I closed my eyes, opening them again at the sound of a woman speaking a greeting.

"Tawâw and Edlánat'e. If you're here to dance, you'll need to follow the hallway past the displays," she said.

We followed Casper, heading in the direction of the murmur of voices coming from a rectangular section of the building beyond the entrance. Wax figures of men on horseback lined one side of the hall. Wax-women were posed along the opposite wall to look like they were beading garments, examples of finished products spread out in front of them. Casper weaved his way through the crowd in the large room at the end of the hall, greeting people by grasping their arms near their elbows and shaking. Although I followed Casper's movements with my eyes, I couldn't seem to make my feet move. Before long Thirza spotted the other boy who was staying in our pod and migrated over to his group of friends, leaving me standing by myself. My rational mind told me there wasn't any reason I couldn't join Thirza and Drake, but my lizard brain wouldn't let me risk rejection.

A drumbeat began. Each thump made my core vibrate as if there was a wax string tied to a tuning fork in my gut, strung out through my navel and attached to the drums. I wiped away unexpected tears as the drums were carted away. The murmur of conversations sprang up until the whine of a fiddle cut-in. Moments later dancers moved onto the floor from various parts of the room. Casper took me by surprise by joining them. Together they stepped in the style of Irish-Step or Scottish-Highland, swinging around each other in patterns resembling square-dancing. Some of the younger dancers even threw hip-hop into their steps. All I could think to say to Casper when he returned was, "I didn't know you dance."