TWELVE

1

THE TIME BETWEEN SIGNING the contract that brought “Justin Bieber” to Shady Pines and the start of the camp season was a blur. I was determined not to go anywhere near my younger version or my friends and family. I took road trips out to the countryside, slowly converting my lottery winnings to gasoline. I jogged down by the Delaware River, following its bends and curves past small main street shops and along wooded trails.

The weather was comfortably warm almost every day. My mood improved with each sunrise, and my injured hands healed to the point where nobody would be able to tell I’d been in any kind of a fight. I exercised in my hotel room, making use of bright gym clothes I’d purchased. I finally made a real shopping trip and bought a few different outfits. I was not operating under the pretense of “businessman in town for expo” this go-round. In fact, nobody on staff at the Jenkintown Hotel inquired about the purpose of my long stay. Not even my buddy Carl.

During my road trips I listened to a ton of music. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d enjoyed the FM radio in a car so much. I loved the tunes that played on regular rotation. I was constantly surprised by the songs that I had forgotten hearing earlier in my life. The music, the open roads, the warm weather and the sights, smells and sounds of a world in the earliest days of the Clinton administration placed me in an almost constant hypnotic trance. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d been so mellow.

Though I missed Helena, I accepted the possibility that time apart was good for our relationship. I thought I might be able to be a more patient husband upon my return. The fact that my relationship with her was still many years in the future seemed to lessen the pain brought about by her absence. Even knowing I was in the past for a particular and crucially important reason, the freedom of having no place to be, nobody to check in with and nothing I had to do at the moment was liberating to my burdened mind. I may have been significantly older than the Daniel Wells who belonged in 1993, but I felt younger, healthier and more alive than I had in years.

The weeks passed quickly. I showed up for the obligatory staff meetings at the camp. I didn’t have much to do. Beyond basic requirements like getting certified for CPR, the computer guy just wasn’t needed for most of the training program. I found the process of learning CPR darkly concerning, the way I seemed to find so many things in the past to be. I was being trained to save the life of a child, but what if that child had been meant to die? Fortunately I had no memory of anything horrible happening that summer at camp. I’m pretty confident that the drowning of a camper would have stuck with me.

I found the counselors fascinating. Here I saw an abundance of young men and women as well as the teenaged junior staff, all of whom viewed me as an older adult when in reality they were all born before I was. I mingled with them with an obvious curiosity, but tried to control my inquiries so as to avoid creeping them out. I found myself spending a good amount of the sessions just observing from a distance. It was an education just watching these young people interact.

2

During the second staff meeting, a young woman sat down across from me at the picnic table where I was pretending to study a packet of policies that had been distributed. Though I had never spoken to her, I recognized her in the same way I recognized everyone at the meeting. I’d spent at least one summer with all of them earlier in my life. We locked eyes for a fraction of a second and I looked away with an awkwardness I hadn’t expected because it wasn’t really part of my time traveling persona. “Hi, I’m Suzy,” she said.

I smiled politely. “I’m Justin.”

“Are you a counselor or...”

“Nah, I’m the computer ‘specialist.’”

She looked impressed. “Wow, I don’t really know too much about computers.”

“There’s really not that much to know,” I said. “The models here are pretty basic and there’s no Internet though the quality of the dialup with the kind of modems widely available would be shoddy at best and...I’m totally boring you, aren’t I?”

Suzy grinned. “Only a little bit.”

“Okay, so tell me about you. You’re a senior counselor?”

She pretended to be hurt. “You mean I don’t look fourteen? Damn.”

It was about that time that I realized she and I were flirting. The fundamental wrongness of it hung in the air, though if Suzy sensed it she gave no sign. She was both a decade younger than me and a decade older than the 1993 Danny Wells. Either way, it was uncomfortable. Not to mention I was still married in some other “when.” Yet for all my morality, sense of purpose and loyalty, I found that I craved the spark that Suzy and I seemed to have shared between us. The chemistry was strong and instantaneous.

She was also astonishingly beautiful. Her light brown hair was long and wavy in a way I associated with the ‘80s but I suppose was still in style at that point in time. She had dark brown eyes—the color of chocolate—and they sparkled in the light of the overhead fluorescents. She was tall and thin and moved in a way that said she knew she had a good body. The more we talked and the more she smiled and laughed, the more transfixed I became.

That night, lying in my bed in the Jenkintown Hotel, I thought about her. I didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing in 2013, but there was no way a girl like that hadn’t found someone and married somewhere along the way. There was a risk that any interaction beyond a friendship between us would be interference with the path she was supposed to take. Not to mention the possibility that she was supposed to have a summer fling with one of the other staff members. My involvement could change the course of multiple lives. I couldn’t believe I was even entertaining those thoughts, but there they were.

As the final week passed before the camp season began, I couldn’t stop thinking about seeing Suzy again. I knew I was becoming obsessed but it was a good obsession, if that makes any sense. It made me feel like myself...like I was getting back in touch with a part of myself that I thought had dried up and gone away forever. That chill that went through me every time I pictured Suzy’s smile, that was a good feeling that (I’m sorry to say) had long since left my relationship with Helena. It seemed that my emotions were strong enough to overrule my caution. Anger had done that, getting me into the very mess I was trying to fix. Desire and attraction threatened to do the same.

Driving to work on the first day of camp, I was determined to spend more time with Suzy—just as friends, of course—and to stay far, far away from Danny Wells. I thought that those two goals would overwhelm my focus, but by the time first period ended and I helped a group of nine year old boys finish up playing with a painting program, I realized I was actually going to enjoy my job. I loved being around computers. Even though these old models couldn’t do very much, I found they held a simplicity that I enjoyed. For all the excitement of the twenty-first century and its ever-evolving technology, a part of me had missed those simple times so damned much.

It turned out that even though I was just pretending to be a computer teacher, I really enjoyed teaching. In my capacity as instructor and resident tech guy I was able to dazzle the kids with tales of future computer marvels to come, passing it off as the knowledge of someone well-read in his industry rather than that of someone who has lived in the future. I got a kick out of watching their eyes light up as I described computers “more powerful than all the ones in this room put together” that could fit inside a pocket. The counselors would occasionally roll their eyes, but I knew some of them were intrigued by my prophecies.

Danny arrived in my little attic hangout on the third day of camp, sixth period. I avoided all eye contact with him, fearing that some unusual recognition could be sparked in his mind, but otherwise I treated him exactly like all the other kids in his bunk, all of whom I recognized immediately. I took extra time to impress that bunk with my tales from a future world, though I’m embarrassed to admit that I took even more time with Danny’s bunk’s female counterpart. I knew all those girls, and remembered how little attention they’d ever paid to me.

At first, I just wanted to show off for that group of eleven and twelve year olds. I thought I’d be satisfied with my little inside joke, knowing that they had no clue who I really was. By the end of the second week the part of my mind that was ever restless and forever trying to get me into trouble had determined that I needed to see to it that these girls were even more impressed by my younger version. That would require a level of involvement and meddling that I was sworn to avoid, but the temptation lingered and gnawed at me.

As for Suzy? She brought her bunk the second day of camp, early in the morning. Though I always had ample opportunity to pick up coffee on the way to the camp each day, I usually avoided it. The stuff never agrees with my stomach and I didn’t want to have a bathroom emergency in the middle of a class. Not that I couldn’t have ducked out leaving the junior and senior counselors in charge of their campers, but I thought it would be awkward.

Sorry, got a little off topic there. My point is, I was still in the caffeine-free daze of early morning when Suzy arrived. She was wearing a t-shirt with the camp logo, as was everyone on the staff. Tuesdays and Thursdays were “Shady Pines Pride Days,” which to me served very little purpose. All I know is that we had to wear the camp shirts on those days. That was the full extent of our exhibition of pride. I could have understood if we took trips outside of camp on those days, but we didn’t. To whom, exactly, were we advertising the camp’s logo? Anyway, there was Suzy, rocking the Shady Pines T-Shirt and cutoff jean shorts, her wavy hair pulled back in a neon pink scrunchie.

“Hi, Justin,” she said, a flirtatious lilt in her voice. “So, this is where the computer genius spends his time.”

“What computer genius?” I asked. “I’m just a guy hanging out in the attic not getting nearly enough sun.”

She laughed. “That’s true. You’re pretty pale.”

I broke away from her for a few minutes while I helped get the programs up and running on the different machines. I put the proper disks in the drives before the kids arrived but many of them didn’t know how to turn on the computers. Back then, personal computers were still sort of a new, mysterious concept and only certain families of some means had one in the house.

Once I was sure that the campers knew what they were supposed to do, I left them in their groups of three or four and leaned against the windowsill next to Suzy. Her JC, a teenaged girl named Bobbi, was busy overseeing the kids.

“So...do you live near here?” I asked. I had an insecure shakiness in my voice that hadn’t existed when Suzy and I had met a few weeks earlier. Too much time building her up in my mind and placing her on a pedestal had made me a nervous wreck. I silently screamed at myself to get it together.

“Yeah, I went to Mifflin. I just graduated at Pitt and now I’m back living with my parents.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” I said.

“Not really, my parents aren’t the most fun to be around.”

“Oh, well, yeah, I guess they’re from a little bit different era than mine.”

“I guess...” she said. “You’d think that older parents would be more strict though.”

I realized the error in what I had stupidly blurted out. Of course she’d think that my parents were older than hers.

“Yeah, I don’t know,” I said. “Parents are weird. You just gotta get yourself out of there as soon as possible. Do you have a job? Outside of summer camp, I mean, obviously.”

“Well, I’m an elementary school teacher. I start my first year in the fall.”

An elementary school teacher. Like Helena. Time travel seemed to provide parallels, or maybe just coincidences. I didn’t know which. What I did know was that Suzy having the same job as Helena gave me pause to consider that I was doing something wrong, and that somehow made Suzy even more appealing.

She and I talked through that whole period, and the rest of the day became nothing more than a countdown until the point when I could see her again. I hoped I’d run into her at the end of the day as everyone on staff walked to the parking lot. I looked around for her but couldn’t find her anywhere. I saw her junior counselor waiting to be picked up by the side of the street.

“Hey, Bobbi,” I called as I approached, “have you seen Suzy?”

She grinned. “You have a crush on her, don’t you? You think she’s totally rad.”

I could tell I was starting to blush. I felt ridiculous. “No,” I said, “we’re just friends.”

“Mm-hmm. Well, she’s not here. She had to leave before last period. Doctor’s appointment.”

Damn it! I returned to the hotel and spent that night staring at a ceiling that was becoming familiar with Suzy running around and around in my head. At that moment I had made peace with the idea that Helena—being eight years old—was not a possibility for me. Besides, I had given her everything I could the past several years, and she had made my life stressful and sometimes, though I hated to admit it, downright miserable. I deserved to have some fun. The guilt would return many times, I assure you, but that night was all about Suzy, and my frustration with the past and its lack of connective technologies. No Facebook account to “friend,” no Twitter feed to follow. Not even a cellphone to text. All I could possibly get from her was the number to her parents’ house, and I just didn’t know how comfortable they’d be with a guy in his thirties calling for their daughter, even if it was perfectly legal.

3

So that was how things started for Suzy and me. I know I mentioned earlier about my quest to get Danny Wells some girls. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. I told you how I avoided interacting with Danny at first. That was the first week. The second time he was in my computer room, I chatted with him a little, leading him with questions to which I already knew the answers. Few adults had ever taken the time to get to know me back then because I was so incredibly shy. They always ended up drawn to mentor the confident kids who behaved like jackasses.

On the other hand, Justin the computer guy knew exactly how to patiently get Danny talking. I just talked on his level, like he and I were best friends. He was quiet at first but little by little I could tell he was growing comfortable with me.

I also knew something about Danny’s time at camp. I had always had a tendency to sneak off when I didn’t care for the activity. It became more common as I got older, peaking in my CIT (Counselor in Training) summers when I didn’t do much of anything but hang out on the picnic tables in the grove in the center of camp. In the summer of 1993, I had still gone to some things with my bunkmates but more often than not I had lurked in or around my bunk or wandered the periphery of the camp.

Knowing this meant that I had a pretty good sense where I could find Danny at any given time. By the second week of camp I was spending my free periods with Suzy as well as loitering in the camp parking lot with her for an hour at the end of the day after all the buses, vans and cars had departed. I hadn’t gotten around to asking her out yet, but I felt secure enough in where things were headed that I decided to seek Danny out and set him on a similar good path.

I found him during my break period walking down by the horse stables. He was leaning on the railing studying the empty ring of dirt that campers would ride slowly around on the back of one of the three horses living on the grounds. “Danny,” I called, “what’s up man?”

He looked at me, blushed a little and gave a stiff wave. Goddamn, I was awkward back then, I thought. I drew closer. “What are you doing over here?”

“Um...nothing,” he said, “I was just gonna go meet up with my bunk. Got a little distracted.”

“Dude, it’s cool,” I said, trying my best to seem like someone a kid could relate to. “I get it. When I was your age I cut out on camp activities all the time. Your secret is safe with me.”

He looked surprised and a little impressed. “Okay.”

“So, how’s camp going?” I asked.

“It’s fine. I’m lucky that I have friends in my bunk.”

“Right. Well, that’s cool. How about the girls?”

He frowned. “What about them?”

“What do you think of them? Do you like any of them?”

His frown deepened and he turned away to stare across the horse ring. “I don’t know.”

That might have been the end of the conversation with someone else. The thing is, I knew he was full of shit. “Nobody stands out to you? What about that girl...Emily was it?”

“How did you know about her?”

“Hey, man, I pay attention. I hear things. People say she’s pretty cute. I just figured she’d be the type of girl you’d go for.”

He thought about my statement. “I guess that makes sense. Yeah... I like her.”

“So what’s the problem?” I already knew the answer to that question but wanted to keep the conversation going.

He shrugged. “She doesn’t like me. The other day a bunch of us were hanging out in the grove and she was complaining that she didn’t have a boyfriend. One of her friends goes, ‘why don’t you go out with Danny?’ and she laughed and was like, ‘um, no.’ And then somebody else was like, ‘Emily, he’s right there!’ and she apologized to me...like that would make it better, you know?”

I did. I remembered that scene vividly. It had hurt me badly and had impacted the rest of my summer, making me intentionally draw away from the girls and keep to myself as much as I could. I looked at my younger self and saw all that hurt painted fresh and raw. I wanted so much to help him. It wasn’t a plot to improve my own life in the present, though I should have been thinking about those long-term consequences. Instead I simply wanted to fix Danny’s summer as best I could, a goal that existed for the right reasons but was nonetheless foolish and short-sighted.

“Danny,” I said, “I’m going to give you advice on how to increase your chances with any girl, but I’m going to start by giving you even more important advice: don’t waste your time on Emily, or any one girl. If she’s not into you that’s fine. She’s missing out on getting to hang with a genuinely good guy. This is going to sound crazy but I’m telling you if you open your eyes and look around there are probably a ton of girls in that bunk that are even better than Emily and just waiting for someone to talk to them. Give them a chance.”

He thought it over. “So... you’re going to help me find a girlfriend?”

“Yeah, man. No guarantee but I’ll do the best I can.” I put out my hand and after a second’s hesitation he shook it. It was a weird feeling, that handshake, and it rolled out a whole new layer to the mess I was making for myself in 1993.