Borrowed Skin

The first time I got inside Angus, it was an accident.

We were in his truck, parked behind the Piggly Wiggly on Highway 9, and he was crying about his girlfriend, Kelsey, who had locked him out of their apartment for the third time that month. I was sitting in the passenger seat with my hand on his shoulder, the way you do when your friend is falling apart and you don't have the words. I didn't have the words. What I had was a strange, hollow ache in my chest that had been growing for weeks, a kind of hunger I couldn't name. I was tired of my own body. Tired of my narrow bed in my mother's house, tired of the way my back ached from the warehouse job, tired of being Daniel, who was always the one who listened, who never got to be the one who was held.

Angus had his forehead pressed to the steering wheel. His shoulders shook. I felt the heat of his skin through his shirt, and something in me leaned toward him, not sexually, not exactly. It was more like leaning into a doorway. I closed my eyes. I thought, *I just want to be somewhere else.* And then I was.

The steering wheel was against my forehead. The vinyl was warm and smelled like his sweat. I opened my eyes and saw my own hands, dark brown, resting on my knees. No. Not my hands. My hands were still on his shoulder. But I was looking down at them from above, from inside Angus's skull, and the world had gone soft and bright, like a photograph overexposed.

I pulled back. The sensation was like stepping out of a hot bath. I was in my own body again, gasping. Angus hadn't noticed. He was still crying, still talking about Kelsey, how she'd thrown his clothes onto the lawn, how she'd called him pathetic in front of the neighbors.

"Daniel," he said. "You even listening?"

"Yeah," I said. My voice came out wrong. Too high. I cleared my throat. "Yeah, man. I'm listening."

He lifted his head and looked at me. His eyes were red, his nose running. He was a big guy, Angus, with a soft jaw and pale eyelashes that made him look younger than twenty-four. He'd been my best friend since third grade, when he'd punched a kid for calling me a porch monkey and then cried harder than I did when the principal gave him detention. I loved him in the way you love a brother you didn't choose but wouldn't trade. I would never hurt him.

That's what I told myself.

---

The second time was on purpose.

It was a Thursday. I'd been fired from the warehouse for showing up late three times in two weeks. I hadn't told my mother yet. I sat in my car outside Angus's apartment, watching the light in his window, and I felt that hollow ache again, sharper now, almost like a physical pain. I wanted to know what it felt like to be him. To have a father who sent checks. To have a mother who called just to say she was proud. To have a body that nobody crossed the street to avoid.

I let myself in through the unlocked door. He was asleep on the couch, mouth open, one arm hanging off the edge. The TV was on, some cooking show, the volume low. I stood over him for a long time. Then I closed my eyes and leaned.

It was easier the second time. Like slipping into a coat that had been tailored for someone else but somehow fit. I felt his breath in my lungs. I felt the weight of his bones, heavier than mine, denser. I raised his hand and looked at it. The knuckles were pink. The fingernails were clean. I touched his face. The stubble was soft, not wiry like mine. I ran his tongue over his teeth. They were straight. His parents had paid for braces.

I walked him to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Angus stared back at me. Blue eyes. Blond hair sticking up on one side. A little patch of drool dried at the corner of his mouth. I smiled, and his face smiled, and it was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. I looked happy. I looked like a man who had never been told to watch his tone. I looked like a man who could walk into any room and be welcomed.

I stayed for an hour. I made his body a sandwich. I sat on his couch and watched the cooking show. I flipped through his phone. Kelsey had texted him six times. *I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Come back.* I deleted them. I don't know why. It felt like something a person with power would do.

When I left, I felt lighter. I drove home with the windows down, and the night air smelled like cut grass and gasoline, and I thought, *That's what it's like.* That's what it's like to be free.

---

The third time, I didn't wait for him to be asleep.

He was in the kitchen, making coffee. I knocked on the door, and he let me in, and we sat at his table like we always did. He asked about the job. I lied and said it was fine. He asked about my mother. I lied and said she was fine. Then I said, "Angus, can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"Do you ever feel like your body isn't yours?"

He laughed. "What, like, philosophically?"

"Like, physically. Like you're wearing someone else's skin."

He stirred his coffee. "Nah, man. I don't think about it. It's just my body. It does what I tell it."

I nodded. I looked at his hands around the mug. Big hands. Hands that had never been handcuffed. Hands that had never been patted down by a cop for no reason. Hands that had never had to be careful.

"Can I try something?" I said.

"Try what?"

I didn't answer. I just leaned. And this time, I didn't leave.

He was still there, somewhere. I could feel him at the edges of my mind, like a man standing outside a window in the rain. He was confused. He was scared. He was saying my name. *Daniel. Daniel, what are you doing.* But his voice was small and far away, and I had his mouth, and his mouth was mine.

I stood up. I stretched his arms over his head. I cracked his neck. It felt good. It felt like a door opening.

"Angus," I said, testing the sound. His voice was deeper than mine, with a little rasp at the end. I liked it. I liked the way it filled the room.

I walked to the mirror in the hallway and looked at us. Two of us in one body. I touched his chest. I touched his stomach. I slid his hand under his shirt and felt the warmth of his skin, the flat of his belly, the soft hair. It was like touching someone else and being touched at the same time. I understood, then, why people did terrible things. Not for money. Not for love. For this. For the feeling of being inside a life that wasn't yours, a life that had been given to you by accident of birth, a life that had never known the weight of a white man's stare.

I went back to the kitchen and poured his coffee down the sink. Then I washed the mug. Then I dried it. Then I put it back in the cabinet, exactly where it belonged.

*Daniel,* Angus said. *Please.*

I ignored him. I had things to do.