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The couch was not a comfortable place to spend the night. At least, that was Wilfred’s opinion. They had a perfectly good bed to sleep in but, for reasons he couldn’t understand, he was in the minority when it came to their preferred places to sleep. At least the alarm had been set and it woke him up on time. He stretched, yawned and eventually got around to tapping his phone’s screen to turn off the alarm.

Don’t forget to go to the dentist at 10. No work today. No school either.

The message was scrawled on his forearm in blue ink. It looked like Sam’s handwriting.

“Not how I wanted to spend my morning,” Wilfred grunted but someone had to do it. He wasn’t actually upset, at least not more so than he thought anyone else would be at being reminded they had a dentist appointment. “Let’s see, what is today?”

He tapped his phone again and checked the calendar.

“Tuesday, the eighth,” he said with mild surprise. “It’s been a while. What’s everyone else been up to?”

He opened the voice memo app and scrolled back through a dozen or so messages before hitting play. While he listened, he got up and started getting ready for the day.

“Hey guys, it’s Matt,” the familiar, slightly accented voice sounded cheery and made Wilfred smile, “school’s been going good and work’s fine. Nothing major to report.”

That was always good to hear. The short voice memo’s were always either the best or the worst ones. No news was good news, right? It was the short ones with nothing but sobbing that Wilfred dreaded. He figured they all dreaded those.

“Hey, sorry I didn’t record yesterday. It’s Matt again. I, uh, got a girl’s number last night and was wondering if it’d be alright if I called her up? Anyone have any issues with me setting up a date either this weekend or next?”

“Dude!” a slightly different voice spoke next and Wilfred frowned slightly as he recognized Sam’s voice. “Is she hot? Got any pics? Oh, and college sucks! I remembered to turn in the homework but I got nothin’ out of any of those classes. I forgot to email the professors for their notes. Sorry.”

What had happened to bring Sam out, Wilfred wondered. Maybe he just picked up on Matt’s excitement about a potential date. Sam was the youngest of them, in both actual and perceived age, so he tended to be a bit less mature about things. As Wilfred got dressed and took note of the state of things he figured Sam had been around at least somewhat recently. He took a few minutes tidying up the room, picking up the dirty clothes and putting it into the hamper. He’d need to do laundry later today.

“So, I don’t really care if you go on any dates,” the next voice message began, “just remember to follow the rules.”

That must be Claire.

“I emailed the professors,” she went on, “since Sam forgot to, again, but it doesn’t look like we missed much. Mostly review. There’s finals next week.”

As Wilfred carried the hamper over to the washer he found a sticky note stuck to the dial.

Out of soap

Wilfred added shopping to his to-do list for the day, right after his dentist appointment, and since he was going to be going to the store he might as well check the fridge and pantry to see if there was anything else they were running low on or out of.

“Hey, it’s Matt. I’ve set up a date for next Saturday, the fifth, at six. Going to go bowling. Picking her up at her place. I wrote her address down on the whiteboard. Oh, and her name’s Jacinthia. And don’t worry, I’ll make sure I follow all the rules.”

They were out of milk, cereal, peanut butter, bread, and ice cream. There was a solitary banana on the counter that wasn’t very brown yet, but the lettuce in the fridge was basically mush. There was a pot he didn’t recognize in the fridge with the dregs of some soup in it. Not enough to make a meal out of. Wilfred updated his shopping list and got to making hash browns and eggs for breakfast. He’d figure out where the pot came from later.

The next few memos were predominantly from Matt, giving brief updates on classes, with a few comments coming in from a few of the others. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary. It wasn’t until Wilfred sat down to eat his breakfast that he found the first real sign that something big had happened. He bit into his food and realized he was missing a couple of teeth. The gums were only slightly sore, as though they’d had a couple days to heal already so he hadn’t noticed until he tried to chew the hot food.

He spat the food out and rushed to the bathroom. In the background he could hear Claire giving a recap from a few days ago and asking if she could get a pet now that the semester was over.

Looking in the mirror there was a brief moment of dissonance since the face looking back at him was not the one he generally associated with himself. Then he saw a large bruise on the right side of his face, centered around his cheek and lower jaw. Prodding it hurt a fair bit but as long as he didn’t poke at it he didn’t feel much pain. Looking inside his mouth revealed a mess on the inside of his cheek as well as the missing teeth. It looked like two teeth on the top and one on the bottom were completely gone.

“That explains the dentist appointment,” Wilfred sighed.

What had happened, though? He hurried back out of the bathroom to the dining room where he’d left his phone, still playing through the memos.

“…and only the statistics final was a bit dicey,” Matt’s voice was saying. “So I think we’ll pass all our classes, which is nice, and I’m really looking forward to that date tomorrow evening. Wish me luck.”

Wilfred waited for the next memo to begin playing until he realized that was the last one. No one had left a message since Friday explaining what had happened. That didn’t bode well and he suppressed the feelings of anxiety and frustration that were already bubbling up inside of him.

“Let’s see,” he said aloud, “Bowling date was on Saturday so maybe something happened then? Hit in the face with a bowling ball, perhaps? On accident or on purpose?”

He got a strange mix of feelings, almost like shadows of thoughts that he couldn’t quite see.

“No one?” He asked but nothing came of it.

His frustration was trying to turn into anger.

Next, he checked the phone for any text messages. That, at least, bore some fruit as he found the chat conversation between them and Jacinthia beginning when Matt had asked her out and going until yesterday evening. He ignored the oldest texts and instead focused on the ones from Saturday and later.

Saturday 6:03 PM

Matt: Here

Jacinthia: Be out in a min

Saturday 9:46pm

Jacinthia: Checking in, I feel so guilty. You okay?

Matt: Hurts but I’ll be fine. Not your fault. I was just being stupid.

Jacinthia: Let me know if you need anything

Matt: Soup?

Jacinthia: Yeah, I’ll bring some over tomorrow

Matt: I was joking. No need for soup

Jacinthia: I’d like to

Matt: I guess I won’t say no to some soup

Jacinthia: I’ll drop it off tomorrow around 4

Was it indeed Matt who went on the date? It was hard to tell just from the text messages but it didn’t feel like Matt was the one texting. It definitely wasn’t Claire. At least his suspicion of there being some sort of accident seemed to be correct. Had he walked up behind Jacinthia while she was bowling? He could see that happening, walking right into the bowling ball as it was being pulled back for a bowl. Seemed like something Sam might do, if that was what had happened.

Wilfred closed his eyes and searched around in his mind, feeling around for that space where he knew the others were at. Most were dormant, or not in a fit state to engage in, but Wilfred only wanted Sam. Some of the alters were pretty good at communicating with one another but Wilfred had never quite gotten the hang of it. He was one of the main reasons they used the voice memos. It was why Wilfred was so upset. If any of them really needed this information, it was him. Well, him and Matt but since Matt was the front so much of the time he tended not to miss as much or need to be brought back up to speed so frequently. It was much harder on Wilfred who only came to the front when things went wrong. Fixing things was his job. Handling the stuff none of the others wanted to to handle was his job. Being left in the middle of a mess to sort out with no explanation or context was not his job.

“Come on, someone’s got to explain to me what’s happened,” Wilfred said.

He was getting a headache and it wasn’t even an hour into the day yet. However, he did notice that there was a new voice memo. He hit play at once.

“Uh, Wilfred, it’s Sam, please delete this after you hear it.”

That didn’t bode well, and it was against the rules to delete any voice memos. If you wanted a private conversation you were supposed to write it down and put it in an envelope, labeled and sealed. Wilfred would decide later whether this warranted breaking the rules or not.

“I messed up man. Messed up big time. I was jealous of Matt getting a date so I sniped his date and fronted the whole time. And I was stupid and got to close to her when she was about to throw the bowling ball and got smacked in the face. She brought us over soup and, like, she must really like us and I, uh, I broke a lot of rules. With her. I’m freaking out, man, and I’ve been fronting ever since then but I hate dentists so I guess that’s why your out there now but I don’t know what I’m going to say to Matt or Claire. Jacinthia’s amazing but I don’t know what to do now, you know? So, like, just get our teeth sorted out. I almost wish you could stay the front until, like, I don’t know. Just don’t tell Matt or Claire. Okay? I messed up. I was stupid. We can get Matt another date with Jacinthia to make it up to him, yeah? You could like, text her and set that up after you get our teeth done? Any way, I’m super sorry and I’ll make it up to you, I swear. I mean, I already downloaded all those British shows you love watching. They’re on the server, ready to go. Yeah. So, that’s it.”

Wilfred sat there, forcing himself to breathe slowly and intentionally to keep himself from hitting the table or throwing the phone against the wall. That stupid little…of all the alters, Sam was the one who got on Wilfred’s nerves the most. He was, like so many teen age boys, selfish and short sighted. He never thought about the consequences until it was too late and…

“Breathe,” he reminded himself.

He unclenched his fists and relaxed his neck muscles. Next he unclenched his jaw. He was still hungry, but chewing would be a chore so he got up, slowly and deliberately, and grabbed the potato masher from the draw. He pulped up his meal and ate carefully, doing what little chewing he needed to don on the undamaged side of his jaw.

“I can’t change the past,” he said. “I can only choose my actions moving forward. I am not responsible for the actions of others. I can only choose how to respond to them.”

The mantra was one he used often when dealing with large problems like this. Usually, that meant meeting with a combative boss or a professor or going to the student resources office and explaining the sort of assistance Matt and their system needed from the university. It did not usually involve him needing to manage the interpersonal relationships within the system. That was, generally speaking, what Claire did. Unfortunately, Sam was more comfortable, it seemed, going to Wilfred that he was with going to Claire. Probably because he’d broken rules that were particularly important to her.

He wouldn’t be deleting Sam’s memo. It said everything that needed to be said and, honestly, he thought it would be the best way for Matt and Claire to learn about what had happened. It might also get Sam to take more responsibility for his own actions in the future rather than try and ignore them.

He hit record to make a memo of his own since he felt like he was switching and wanted to leave his own message.

“Wilfred here. It’s been quite the morning already. There’s a dentist appointment scheduled for us at 10 AM today, I assume to begin correcting the damage that was done to our teeth on Saturday. I’ve only just gotten up to speed on what’s happened, though I admit I still don’t have all the facts. Let’s all write down, on paper, our thoughts about this situation, like Claire’s had us do in the past. Sam, make sure you write out which rules, exactly, that you’ve broken. To both Sam and Matt, does Jacinthia know about us? Do we need to explain? I’ll leave the final decision to that for Matt to make.

“Oh, I’ve also got a shopping list put together since we’re out of a lot of things. I’m happy to do the dentist and shopping, but I feel like I’m switching out already.”

He sat there a moment, blinking and rubbing his eyes and feeling the headache that wouldn’t likely go away today. He scrolled back a few messages in the memo app and then hit play. When Wilfred’s message finished, Matt was already pale with shock. He only sat there for a moment before Wilfred was back. There were no new messages but he thought he could hear someone shouting. Maybe two people shouting.

“Looks like I am the front for today,” he said and decided he had enough time to watch at least one episode of The Great British Baking Show before going to the dentist. It wasn’t much, but it did at least make up a little bit for the rest of how this day was going.