“I’m sorry, how long has it been?”
The words that leave Michael’s mouth don’t make sense. Seven months? How can that be? Did I really get lobbed into the space-time continuum and spit out that far off course?
“Give or take a few days, yeah,” he says, correcting himself as he shoves papers into his messenger bag. I catch a glimpse of them before they disappear—sheet music. “Close to seven months.”
I look around, feeling for the first time since arriving the chill in the air. This building isn’t his home. It’s like one of those loft apartments that some people lust after. But this is too cluttered to be an apartment. Too many tables, filing cabinets…
“Do you work here?”
He nods while he finishes packing. “For now, yeah. A lot has changed since you’ve been gone, Dre.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
He shrugs, and a smile takes over his lips. It’s one of those sad smiles, the ones that are heavy with emotion, an emotion that he doesn’t want to share with me yet. “Depends on how you think about it, I guess. Come on. Are you hungry? I’m guessing that jumping through time leaves you starving.”
I’m not hungry, but if eating means spending time with him…
“Yeah, I could eat.”
A grin of childlike joy spreads over his face. “Then I know the perfect place.”
I follow Michael out of the building and down two flights of stairs. I can hear muffled but loud sounds through the walls. It sounds like people yelling, but it’s too loud for that. Too many noises—explosions, yelling, arguments. It almost seems like…
“Are we above a movie theater?”
“Yep.” He pushes the door open and holds it for me. The Boston chill hits me like a close yet overly aggressive friend, but I welcome it with open arms. It’s a familiar feeling, and right now, I appreciate something familiar.
“I work for a newspaper. Well, it’s not a newspaper yet, it’s just a collection of people like me who want to have our voices heard, reporting on things that are important to people like us. It keeps me busy, which is good, since…”
“Since what?” I ask as his voice trails off.
“Never mind, let’s get going.”
It’s only been seven months, and the changes are subtle, but Michael has changed. He’s thinned out just a bit, and his bone structure is more pronounced. He’s no longer wearing jeans and a T-shirt but a khaki trench coat, a gray turtleneck, and gray pants.
He looks older, not just physically.
“What do you mean ‘people like me’?” I ask. The first place my mind goes? White people, which sends a chill down my spine. A newspaper for white people doesn’t sound like anything anyone should be part of. But also, Michael doesn’t seem like the type of person who would participate in anything like that.
But then again, a lot can change in seven months.
“Gay people,” he says without hesitation and turns the corner. “It’s a paper for gay people. Somewhere we can get our news. For us, by us.”
“FUBU,” I say, then pause. “Sorry, you don’t know what that is yet.”
Michael looks puzzled, but then he chuckles. “How long until I do?”
“What year is it? Nineteen seventy?”
He nods.
“Then, about twenty-two years.”
“I’ll make sure to remember that. Maybe I’ll look you up in ninety-two.”
“I won’t be born yet, but sure, wait about twelve years, and then you can.”
That makes me wonder, what is the age difference between Michael and me? A quick calculation answers my question for me. If Michael is nineteen now, in 1970, that means he was born in 1951. In 2021, right now, he’s seventy. Assuming that he’s still alive, he’s only fifteen years older than my father and eighteen years older than my mother.
Which means… I suddenly stop in my tracks. Michael turns to look at me, brow raised.
“My mom and dad,” I mutter, looking at him but past him. “They are both alive right now. My dad is…four years old. My mom… Wait, what month is it?”
“January,” he says. “You missed a great New Year’s Eve party.”
“Yeah, my mom just turned one.”
Michael reaches out and squeezes my shoulders, his hands warm and grounding. It’s like by rubbing them up and down, slowly, soothingly, he helps calm me.
“Do you want to go find them?” he asks, breaking the silence and pulling me out of the depths of an existential crisis that threatens to engulf me.
I snap my eyes up. “Wait, what?”
He shrugs. “I mean, do you want to?”
I open my mouth twice and close it twice. Is that even possible? Can we? Blake told me not to meet my past self, but there has to be some rule against talking to my parents before I’m even born.
“They’re children,” I argue.
Michael shrugs.
“What would I gain from it?”
Michael shrugs again.
“I don’t even know where they are!”
“Oh, come on. You don’t think it would be unreal to see them right now?” Michael suggests.
“That’s not something I want to do.” I’m pretty sure it ventures too close to violating one of those rules Blake mentioned, anyway.
Michael throws his hands up in defeat. “Fine, fine. Ignore my idea of fun. But there’s something else we can do instead.”
“I’m listening.”
There’s a glint in his eyes that could only be described as mischievous, and at this moment, I notice that his hands haven’t left my shoulders. And I don’t mind.
“Spend some time with me,” he mutters, his voice low, like saying it too loudly will shatter the moment.
I study Michael’s eyes—really study them. Boys are tricky beasts. Their words are like weasels that can wiggle their way into the smallest of cracks in another person’s armor. When I came out as gay, my mother told me to watch out for them, for the way they can wrap around you and strangle what makes you special.
But that’s not Michael. He’s biting his bottom lip. His pulse, which I can feel in his thumbs, grows faster. His neck and his sharp clavicle become more pronounced as he swallows thickly.
Since I appeared here, I’d been out of my element, out of my time. But now, I held the power in my hands.
“I mean, where else would I go? It’s not like I know anyone here. So the real question is, how are you going to make it up to me if this perfect place isn’t actually perfect?”
* * *
Michael and I get two candy bars and Cokes from the corner store. It’s not really a meal, but it’s something, and the sugar feels like a rush of power and energy.
“Sorry, it’s not much,” Michael mutters as he chews.
“It’s fine.”
“I’m…low on cash. Journalism doesn’t pay much, you know? We do it for the value of the free press, First Amendment, all that jazz.”
“It’s fine, Michael,” I say, adding a reassuring smile. “This is great. Besides, who can ignore a Snickers bar? It really is perfect.” And that’s not a lie.
I’m starting to think that maybe, just maybe, even simple meals like this can be enjoyable with someone like Michael. He gives off that calming energy that I’ve heard people have. Unlike, as Isobel says, my frantic energy.
Maybe, in some ways, we complement each other in that sense.
“Speaking of jazz, your music, are you still playing?” I ask, refocusing my attention.
He smiles—no, beams—at me with pride. “You remember.” It’s more a statement of surprise than a question.
“Of course I do.” It’s only been a few days for me, but for him, it’s been seven months. I wonder how much Michael has thought about me. Did he wonder if I was coming back? Did he start to think that I was a figment of his imagination?
“Yeah, I play a set downtown.” He points in the general direction. “Once every two weeks. You should come by sometime.”
Is that something I could do? I’ve never willingly time traveled to a specific period of time. But it should be possible. I doubt that Claire just throws herself through time and hopes for the best. I can learn how to do it.
“If you think, you know, that’s something you’d want to do?” He nervously smiles. “You know, you don’t have to, of course.”
“Two weeks from now, yeah?”
“One week from this upcoming Saturday, actually, but yeah.”
“What time?”
“Ten o’clock at the Citadel. Is that still around in your time?”
“Mm-hmm.” It’s a twenty-one-and-over club. But something tells me that getting in won’t be a problem. “I’ll be there,” I promise.
His smile shifts from nervous to warm as we head deeper into the city. The streets are familiar, but not so familiar that this feels boring. Things have changed in the fifty years between Michael’s time and mine. Side streets and one-way streets have been combined in my time and turned into two-way streets. Buildings have been demolished and ownership has changed. The city is still my city, but not completely.
And there’s some comfort in that. The city is close enough to being my city but far enough away that at this moment, at this time with Michael? It’s ours. It’s not something that can be replicated by thousands of other…
What even are we?
“It’s my turn for a question, I think,” I say, breaking the silence.
Michael glances over at me, finishing the rest of his Coke. He tosses it; the can makes a sharp sound as it hits the corner of the nearby trash can. It bounces once, twice, three times, and then lands inside it.
Michael doesn’t think that I see the way he quietly fist-pumps, but I do.
“Shoot.”
“What did you mean before when you said, ‘It keeps me busy, which is good, since…’?”
“That’s…not the question I thought you were going to ask.”
I arch my brows incredulously.
“Who am I fooling? Of course you’d ask that.”
I can tell from the stillness between us that the question is uncomfortable, prickly, even. It’s jagged and cold, but it also burns hot at the same time.
“My parents aren’t happy with me right now,” he finally says. “They kicked me out. I’m working at that newspaper for room and board.”
“They kicked you out because you’re gay? Or because you want to be a musician?”
He shrugs. That’s not an answer, but I don’t think I’m going to get anything else out of him. Not yet, anyway.
We cross the street in silence. It’s on me to say something; Michael’s done pouring his heart out. But I don’t know what to say. I’ve never dealt with something like that. When I came out, my parents were accepting. They love me for me, and my friends do too. I’m lucky—and rare. I know that. So stories about dealing with homophobia from parents? That’s foreign to me.
But I can understand standing up for what you believe in and fighting for your own future, not the idea of a future someone else has for you. While we walk in silence, I try to play out what might happen if I told my parents that I’m not sure I want to go into medicine. They wouldn’t kick me out, of course not, but they’d be disappointed. They’d question every choice I made and try to poke holes in my logic.
They’d be dismissive.
“You know you can’t choose, right?” I finally say. “Being gay. It’s not a choice.”
“Is that what you boys in the future say? Science would beg to differ.”
“Gayness being a disease isn’t a scientific law, it’s a theory,” I remind him. “And theories can be proven wrong. I promise you, it gets better.”
“Oh, I know it gets better. Just not here.” He gestures around him. “Somewhere else… Somewhere like…”
“San Francisco?”
He laughs. “You think I’d want to go there? Why? Because I’m gay?”
“Is that such a bad reason? To go someplace where you’d be accepted?”
The history of society’s treatment of gay people isn’t something obscure. It sucked—that’s how it can be summarized. My time, the twenty-first century, is the best time to be gay so far. But Michael doesn’t know that because what he’s living is all he knows.
A pang of guilt ripples through me. Is suggesting that he move breaking a rule? Am I using personal knowledge, knowledge that I’ve learned thanks to the hindsight of historians in my time period, in a way that violates one of the time travelers’ creeds?
But, on the flip side, I’m doing it to help someone. That has to factor in, right?
I hold on to that and focus back on Michael.
“Plus, California is warmer.”
“I don’t want warmer,” he objects. “I like Boston. I like that I know this city, that I know the people. The good, the bad, the ugly. It’s all part of me.”
“Well, how about New York? They say it’s like Boston, just…”
“Dirtier?” he asks. “More expensive?”
“New York is more than that, and you wouldn’t know if you didn’t try. Staying somewhere just because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do or—”
“My parents kicked me out of the house, Dre.”
Michael’s interruption cuts deep, like a heated knife passing through flesh. It’s a story as old as time, the gay kid kicked out of his house because his parents can’t handle him being who he is.
Michael isn’t ashamed; or at least, he doesn’t show it. He holds his head up high. He leads us toward the Franklin Park Zoo, which isn’t far. Signs cheerfully guide us toward our fauna adventure.
“That seems to me like even more of a reason for you to leave.”
He shakes his head. “And let them win? No. Not a chance. I’ve built a life here; I’ve found a passion here, I have a family—a found family—here. I’m not leaving. And besides…”
But he doesn’t finish, and even after I give him twenty seconds to continue, he still stays quiet.
“Besides what, Michael?”
“It’s dumb.”
“I should be the one to determine if it’s dumb or not,” I tease. “Come on, humor me. I traveled through time and space to see you.”
“I didn’t ask for that, you know.”
“Yeah, but you’d miss me if I didn’t.”
“I know, I would,” he says without hesitation. “Which is why I’m not sure I can leave. Or should leave. Because, if I do, who’s to say you’ll be able to find me again?”
The richness in Michael’s words makes my own chest feel tight. There’s no subtext, no lies, no misdirection. Just pure, simple honesty. This isn’t some AP exam or SAT practice test. He really thinks that.
“You mean it, don’t you?” I ask, though it’s more of a statement.
Michael shrugs. “I don’t want to break this connection that we have. I feel like we must have been meant to find each other. I don’t want to throw away what the universe gave us. Is that so hard to believe?”
“No, not at all. It’s just…”
Michael stops me, grabs my shoulders again, and forces me to look at him. His cheeks are rosy, and his breath is coming out in heavy white puffs. His nose is redder than the rest of his face, and his blue eyes look watery.
“Then let me be clear, Andre. I like you. I like you a lot, and I would rather stay here and spend two hours with you, wandering around a city, than a whole lifetime doing normal things that people expect of me. Normal is overrated, anyway.”
This is it, I think. This is what people talk about in movies, in TV shows, in songs and books. That pit in your stomach that feels like a never-ending drop. That weightlessness that makes you dizzy but also makes you feel complete.
Hearing Michael say those words makes me feel all of those things at once.
Hearing Michael say those words confirms for me what I’ve been feeling this whole time.
That I feel the same.
“I…”
The air leaves my lungs. The earth swirls and rushes around me. Cold becomes warm. City streets become cherry wood floors. Outside becomes inside.
I hear music. Not the symphony of the city, but an Arctic Monkeys song playing in the room.
My head spins. Did I jump back on my own, or did something pull me back?
I steady myself by grabbing the couch, and Blake barely looks up. He’s sitting on the couch, casually, both legs propped up on the table in front of him, holding a copy of Sports Illustrated—that damn smug smile on his face.
I feel a rush of emotions. Most of all, I’m upset that I left Michael at that moment, right when we were getting somewhere—although it scares me that I could have so much influence on his life.
But I also feel anger. Anger at how Blake forced me to jump. Anger because he doesn’t seem to care what he just did.
“Okay,” he says. “I can see you’re mad.”
“Oh, you picked up on that?” I growl, taking a step forward.
He stands up and takes a step back. “I should remind you, though, that I did what I did to prove a point.”
“And what point is that?”
“Where did you go?” he asks.
“Does that matter? You forced me to jump, Blake!”
“I knew where you’d end up!”
“You knew or you hoped you knew?”
He opens his mouth, but no words come out. Quickly, he shuts his lips and his angled jaw makes them form a thin line.
“I was testing the tether theory,” he argues, like that makes it better.
“What if I hadn’t ended up next to Michael? There are plenty of places I could have gone that would have been very not cool for me. The nineteenth century! The early twentieth century! ANYTIME in the past for Black people!”
“You would have found your way back.”
Anger turns white hot inside of me. I’ve never really understood what seeing red means. I’m not fully sure I do now. Because right now? I’m seeing white spots in front of my eyes.
“And what if I didn’t? You’re assuming that I would have, but it’s pretty obvious that I don’t know how to control it! I jumped because I was startled, and I jumped back because I was surprised!”
Was that even the right emotion? Doesn’t matter.
“The point is,” I continue, my voice shaking. “You…you…just assumed that you know what’s best! And you know what? Maybe I have the wrong brother teaching me!”
The words come out of my mouth like venom, and I know, once I say them, that they were the wrong words. Not only because of the way Blake’s eyes widen and then sharpen but also because of the bitterness they leave in my mouth, like I imagine cyanide would taste.
Some words are poison, and when you speak them, they might kill your target—and you along with it. Bringing up his dead brother like that, when I have his organ? That was a low blow.
“Get. Out,” he says, punctuating each word like a sentence. “I mean it. Get out.”
Part of me wants to apologize. I should apologize; that would be the right thing to do. But the stubborn part of me doesn’t want to let him off the hook that easily. He doesn’t get a pass. If he hadn’t shoved me…
“I said get the hell out!”
I don’t say anything. The rapid pulsing of my heart is enough to kick my body into high gear. I turn, walk out quickly, and slam the door behind me.