I’ve seen many versions of Michael since jumping through time, but never a version like this.
His face is sullen, his skin a shade grayer than before. His hair is longer and unkempt. Matted. Jaggedly cut. He reminds me of pieces of a puzzle that don’t fully come together to make a complete person. Like something is missing.
The light in his eyes is gone. And I didn’t know how much I missed it, truly missed it, until now.
“So,” he says, rubbing his nose with his sleeve. “You came back, huh?”
I reach forward to grab him, but he moves back, far enough that he’s unreachable. Farther than he’s ever been before, even through time and space.
“Do you remember what happened when you last left? What you said? Do you even know what year it was then?”
“Nineteen seventy.”
“And now?”
I can’t answer that one, and he knows it. He sucks on his teeth in disgust.
“Seventy-three. It’s been three years.”
I do a quick mental check. What do I know about 1973? We don’t learn much about the seventies in school. Maybe I should have done some research before I left.
But every other time I’d always had Michael by my side. It had been us versus the world or creating our own world.
Not anymore.
“You left,” he seethes. “You left me, and you didn’t care, and you just went off to do whatever it is you went to do. I thought I’d never see you again. Every day, I woke up and felt both happy and furious that I remembered you. Remembered us. I kept waiting to forget you. I wish I could forget you.”
He turns his back to me, walking away with hurried but sporadic steps. And, like always, I follow.
“I went to fix things.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously! Michael. Michael!”
I grab his shoulder, and in that moment, that fraction of a second, that quiver of a heartbeat, I see a side of him I never thought I’d see.
“Don’t. Touch. Me,” he hisses. “Don’t you ever touch me again. Don’t you ever…”
He growls, an animalistic groan that comes from deep within his stomach. He runs his fingers through his shaggy hair.
For the first time since I met Michael, I feel something new: fear.
And I have to push through it.
“What happened to you?”
Slowly, Michael pulls himself out of his own mind and turns to me with a wild fury in his eyes. “What happened to me.” He says it like a statement. “You want to know that badly?”
Michael takes a step forward, and in response, I take a step back.
“After you left, went off to save that boy of yours, I waited to forget you. But I didn’t. And I thought maybe I had lost my mind. And you were never really real. It messed me up. I didn’t want to remember. So I had to try to forget you. And what better way to forget someone than in the bottom of a bottle?”
He doesn’t say it like he’s ashamed.
“One drink turned to two, two turned to four, and well, the past three years started to feel like a blur.”
Just by looking at him, I know he’s been self-medicating with more than alcohol. I don’t know what drugs he’s on, but he’s on something.
I swallow thickly, forcing myself to speak. “What about your family?” I ask.
“Seriously? That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”
But his posture relaxes, even if just a fraction. He takes half a step back, and I feel my breath return. I let out a breath I didn’t even know I had been holding.
“My parents don’t want anything to do with me.”
“What about your work? With the paper? Or your music? You always cared about that.”
“I sold my guitar…what? A year ago?” He shrugs. “Maybe two. You don’t have a right to judge me. No one has the fucking right.”
I feel like I’m drowning, watching every good moment we spent together disappear into an endless darkness of oblivion.
“I can fix this,” I say quietly.
“You still don’t get it. No matter what you do, you still don’t fucking get it.”
I feel a sense of weightlessness as I wait, where anything is possible, when he could say or do anything.
“Not everything is about you, Andre. My life is my own. You can’t just go back and ‘fix’ me. Who do you think you are?”
“I didn’t—” I sputter.
“No. Shut up. It’s my turn to talk. Not yours. This is my life now. This is who I am. Maybe it’s not someone you want to be with. Maybe it’s not who you thought I’d be. But you know what? Screw you. I wish I’d never met you.”
“Michael…” I want to tell him to stop. I want to tell him I’m sorry. To say so many things. To apologize, explain how wrong I was. But there’s an invisible wall between us, with a complex lock that I don’t know how to pick.
And there’s a familiar, growing pain.
I can fix this, I think. I can fix this. Screw what Claire said. This is worth fixing. I won’t be the cause of this. I won’t be the cause of hurting someone so pure, so good. This won’t be his destiny.
But before I can do anything else, a pain unlike anything I’ve felt before pierces my side.
I can’t tell up from down, left from right. Colors blur together, and every sense is going haywire. Is Michael grabbing my shoulder? I can’t tell. Is he speaking my name? Does he sound worried, or is that my imagination?
There are only three things I know for sure.
Pain.
Blackness.
And a desire to die. A desire so strong, I barely feel my body hit the floor before that darkness swallows me whole.