My crying jag from the night before must have worn me out, or maybe it was the mental strain of questioning my sanity, but either way I slept until almost noon the next day. Disappointment threatened to consume me before I’d even fully awakened, as once again I suffered through the disorientation of opening my eyes to a past I wasn’t eager to repeat. I used what little fortitude I had left to hold my desperation in check. I showered, then rifled through my dresser drawers for something that didn’t make me look like an aquamarine cross between Britney Spears and Laura Ingalls Wilder before settling on sweat pants and the only hoodie I appeared to own. I fought off another wave of frustration. Who only owns one hoodie?
A knock on the door interrupted my fashion commentary. “Stevie, you’ve got company,” Mom said.
Company? Jody? My spirits rose at the prospect of seeing her again, but they plummeted when I opened my bedroom door to a teenage girl holding a backpack.
“Hey, Stevie. How you feeling?” the girl asked.
“Good. Much better,” I said, trying to act normal while I searched her hazel eyes and pale complexion for some clue as to her identity. My mom stood behind her, and I didn’t want to hint at my confusion for fear she’d whisk me back to the hospital.
“Lucky you have such a hard head.” She laughed, flipping a switch in my mind.
“Yeah, thanks for coming by, Nikki.” Nikki Belliard. Nikki, who would marry Rory’s little brother. Nikki, who’d become an elementary teacher. Nikki, who didn’t know any of that but was still nice enough to check on me.
“Do you want to come in?” I asked.
“Duh.” She handed me her backpack on her way past me.
I glanced at my mom, who nodded her approval before turning to go. “Just don’t get too wound up. You’re supposed to be resting.”
Nikki flopped onto my bed. “You’re welcome for bringing your stuff home.”
My stuff? I looked at the bag. So this was mine, not hers. Good to know. I fought the urge to dump its contents on the bed and rummage through them for clues the way an animal rifles through trash in search of food. “Yeah, thanks.”
“So, do you have amnesia or something?” Nikki asked.
“What? No. Why would you say that?”
“Chill out, I’m just teasing, ‘cause you got hit on the head, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said casually. Did everyone expect me to have forgotten something? My mom told my dad short-term memory loss was common with a concussion, and now Nikki implied the same. How much could I use that excuse without sounding too many alarms? I decided to test the waters. “I actually don’t remember the basketball game at all.”
“Really? Wow.” Nikki propped up on her elbow, and I scooted farther from the bed under the guise of searching for something in my desk. I guess in high school it was common enough to lie around with a friend, but in the intervening years I’d learned straight girls in my bed never led to anything good.
“I just, I forget things until someone reminds me. Then it all comes rushing back. The info isn’t gone. It’s just not up front where I need it.”
Nikki’s expression turned serious. “Did you tell your mom?”
“Yeah,” I lied. “She said short-term memory loss is normal, but I don’t want to worry her with the details. I’m fine really. I was just wondering if maybe you could help me with a few things for school tomorrow.”
“Sure.” She sat up all the way, eager to be of aid. Memories of her filled my mind. She was one of the good ones, a joiner of student council, sports, yearbook committee. She’d know everything. I needed to keep her close without frightening her to the point that she’d tell my mom how much help I needed.
“I know I’m taking theater and AP English with Miss Hadland.” I opened my backpack and spread the books out in front of me. The first one was a Spanish book. Right, four years of Spanish. Whole lot of good that did me. “And I’ve got Spanish with Señora Wallace.”
“Yup, I’m glad she’s back from maternity leave. The sub drove me crazy.”
“Yes!” I said, perhaps overly excited to remember another piece of minutia. “She had a little girl.”
Nikki nodded, unimpressed.
I pulled a trigonometry book from the backpack. “Then trig with Mr. Glass, who also teaches keyboarding, right?”
“Right.”
Then I was out of books. I did a quick count; something had to be missing. “What classes do we have together?”
“Spanish, trig, gym, and study hall.”
Gym and study hall, those were the last two. Whew, I had a full schedule. Now I needed to put it in order. I said a silent prayer that went something like please let me wake up before school tomorrow, please, please, please if there is a God or a doctor out there who can help me, please, please, please save me from high school. But while I’d always suspected God existed, I’d seen little evidence she worked on call, so I decided to hedge my bets by taking a little chance. “Okay, I remember all my classes and teachers, and I remember I have English first, then Spanish, and theater is last, but I forgot the rest of the order.
“After Spanish is trig, then study hall,” she said slowly, all amusement replaced by concern. “Then I think you have keyboarding, but I’m not in that class.”
“And gym comes before I go to theater,” I said, filling in the blank. “See, I told you I could remember once someone jump-starts me.”
“Will you forget again before tomorrow?”
I hope not. I should probably write the schedule down just in case. “No. Once it’s back, it’s back to stay.”
“Good.” She stood up. “‘Cause class was no fun without you on Friday, and I had to sit all by myself at our lockers in the morning.”
Our lockers? They were right next to each other. She handed me another puzzle piece to snap into place.
“See you tomorrow?”
“Probably.” I tried not to sound too terrified.
She hugged me good-bye, and I awkwardly put one arm around to pat her back. I wasn’t much on hugging practical strangers good-bye, but then again, it wasn’t often a stranger also happened to be my best friend.
*
Monday morning hadn’t yet dawned when my mom knocked on my door. I used the darkness of my room to hide my fear and disappointment at waking up in my parents’ home yet again. I hated the sickening feeling that accompanied the realization but hoped I wouldn’t be around long enough to grow used to it.
“How you feeling?” Mom asked, taking a seat on the side of my bed.
“I’m fine.” I grumbled, tired of the question and the lie I always told in response.
“Ready to go back to school?”
“Already?”
“It’s been four days, but if you’re not feeling well enough, you should tell me now.”
I traced the seams of my bedspread with my index finger while I considered my choices. I didn’t want to go to school. The thought of walking into those crowded hallways or sitting exposed to the world in a little desk while trying to remember knowledge I’d never used almost froze me in panic. However, if I wanted to stay home, I’d face more questions, ones I might not have the answers to. Would I blow my cover? Would my mom run more tests? Would she seek a psychiatric evaluation just to be cautious? I couldn’t risk it. At least at school I could fade into the crowd. At home, I’d be on my own.
I gritted my teeth and tried to compose myself the best I could, given the circumstances and ungodly hour. “I guess I should go to school.”
“All right then, but I want you to promise you’ll call me if you get overwhelmed or start to experience any concussion symptoms, okay?”
“Sure, Mom.” I hoped I wouldn’t have to, but I rated the prospect of being overwhelmed at some point in the day to be pretty high. In fact, I was quickly approaching it now.
An hour later, I stood in front of the double doors I’d entered with Jody just last week. And to think I’d found the experience surreal then.
I took a deep breath and started an internal pep talk I hoped to keep running all day. Keep your head low, get in, get through, get out. You did this once. You can do it again.
I entered the long, locker-lined hallway with my eyes on the floor a few feet in front of me, refusing to make eye contact with anyone. The corridor wasn’t too crowded since I’d gotten there a little early in the hopes of finding more clues in my locker. Now if only I could find it. I had some vague memory of it being on the first floor, so I headed there first. The thing about lockers, though, is they all look exactly alike on the outside, so unless I remembered the number, I was out of luck. I reached the end of the hallway and turned back around, still focused on my feet.
The start of my second pass through the hallway came to an abrupt halt when my shoulder collided with someone else’s, sending us both stumbling back a few feet. “Sorry,” I muttered.
“Sure you are.” Something about the voice caught my attention. Something familiar, but not because I recognized the speaker so much as I recognized the emotion behind it. The low tone held a palpable resignation, as if the person had reconciled herself to some sort of torment while simultaneously resenting the lot she’d drawn. I’d come to recognize the characteristic in New York among broken artists and stockbrokers alike. I’d even felt the stirrings of that depression in myself over the past couple days. But I’d never expected to hear such darkness in someone so young. Curiosity overcame fear. I broke my rule against making eye contact and stared into the haunting brown eyes of Kelsey Patel.
I jumped back and gasped. By now I probably should’ve been used to the shocks that accompanied losing eleven years of my life, but nothing could have prepared me to meet the very living gaze of a dead girl. Apparently, being gawked at was nothing new for Kelsey, who shook her head. “What’s your problem?”
“I, um…I just—” I see dead people? “Concussion.”
“What?”
“I have a concussion. I got hit in the head, and then when you, I mean when I bumped into you—”
“Oh,” her expression softened, and she pushed a strand of straight, dark hair out of her face. “Did it hurt?”
“No, I just…I don’t know. I got disoriented.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be here.” She didn’t have even the hint of an accent, suggesting she wasn’t a first-generation American, but her darker complexion made her stand out against the pasty white winter tones of the rest of the school.
“You have no idea how much I shouldn’t be here right now,” I said before I could check myself.
“Then go home.”
I choked up. Home. Where was that? When was that? And more importantly, would I ever get back there? “I’m fine, thanks.”
Kelsey shrugged, her defenses falling back into place. “Whatever.”
She walked on, but I stood rooted to the floor at my end of the hallway. Why had I thought I could survive this day? I’d always been able to slide by unnoticed, but I had too many variables now. Tears welled up in my eyes. I’d barely held myself together when the worst thing I had to face was trigonometry, but throwing long-dead teenagers into the mix pushed me over the edge. I’d made a valiant effort but couldn’t do it. I’d lost my motivation. My heart rate slowed, and my limbs grew unbearably lethargic. I’d given up and started shutting down. I needed to check myself back into the hospital. I was about to lie down when the office door opened and Jody stepped into the hallway.
So beautiful, so young, so vibrant, she had her fair hair pulled back in a ponytail, giving me a clear view of her intoxicating smile and the hint of a sparkle in her blue eyes. She wore a navy skirt with white piping. I’m sure she thought the ensemble made her appear older, but in reality it appeared she’d raided her mom’s closet. Someday she’d learn students respected her for what she did in the classroom and not because she wore pantyhose to cover her deliciously muscled calves. Someday she’d find her voice and her power, but in the meantime she was stunning in her search. Why hadn’t I kissed her when I’d had the chance?
She turned abruptly, as if sensing me watching her, and all the exuberance faded from her smile. Her expression remained polite but grew increasingly distant the closer she got to me.
“Walk with me?” she asked, her teacher voice clearly negating the question mark on the end of her sentence.
What could I do? Even if she wasn’t an authority figure, I would’ve readily agreed to follow her anywhere.
She headed quickly into the stairwell and then slowed. “How are you feeling?”
“Fine, physically. I guess I’m mostly back to normal.”
“What about emotionally?”
Of course she’d pick up on that. I smiled in spite of the turmoil spinning inside me. “I don’t know. A little overwrought, I suppose.”
“How can I help you, Stevie?”
“You have bigger issues to worry about right now.”
She stopped and finally met my eyes. “What issues would those be?”
Shit, why did I keep doing this? I only wanted to help, to let her off the hook. I didn’t mean to imply I had some sort of inside knowledge. “You’re a student teacher. You’ve got lesson plans to write, people to impress, and papers to research. That can’t be easy, especially under the microscopic gaze of Drew Phillips.”
“First of all, you’re very empathetic to think about my workload and academic responsibilities. Not many high-school seniors ever give a thought to what student teachers do.”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about college a lot lately.”
She nodded skeptically. “Second, Mr. Phillips is the gym teacher. I don’t know what he has to do with anything.”
I hung my head. I needed to shut up. “Right. I’m sorry. Maybe I’m not back to my old self yet.”
“Stevie, if you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you.”
Trust me. Even if I did talk, you couldn’t help me. I had to give her something else to focus on. “I do need my assignments for your classes on Friday. Maybe you could help me with those.”
She stared at me for a long, heavy minute before sighing. “Why don’t you come in during your study hall, and I’ll go over the lessons with you.”
“Sounds great.” Like a fool I smiled and nodded when I should’ve run. She was the one person at school who was really onto me. I should stay as far away from her as possible, not set up extra time in her presence, but I couldn’t stop myself.
The door to the stairs opened below us, and I glanced down to see Nikki. “Hey, I gotta go, okay?”
Jody nodded. “All right.”
I made my escape before I could do or say anything else. Nikki saw me coming and laughed. “Did you forget what floor your locker is on?”
“Something like that,” I said, giving one last look over my shoulder at Jody, who stood on the landing watching me go. My chest ached at the sight of her. She was too smart and too intuitive to be put off for long. Sooner or later we’d have to have a serious conversation about the connections we shared, and somehow that prospect wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as it should’ve been.
*
The morning went surprisingly well. I sat in the back of the class during English, and Jody, ever the professional, didn’t once hint that anything was going on between us other than a teacher/student relationship. And we were about to start reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, which was totally in my literary wheelhouse. Aside from the occasional stab of attraction toward the teacher, I felt like I had the class under control.
Spanish got off to a solid start because Nikki directed me to my assigned seat without me even having to ask. Señora Wallace told me I could take all the time I needed to catch up on my work. I wondered how long it would take to relearn Spanish. Of course in New York I’d picked up a few words, but I doubted any of the things my Puerto Rican neighbors shouted at each other would ever show up on a high-school test. Trigonometry was even less eventful, with Mr. Glass working through problems on the board. I could’ve been there or not, and he would’ve never known the difference.
By the time I got to keyboarding, I’d begun to think I could actually pull this off. Nikki wasn’t in the class with me, but thanks to my career choice, I had better than average computer and typing skills. Plus, if Mr. Glass’s class-engagement policy was anything like it had just been in trig, I didn’t have to worry about drawing attention to myself. I took a chance on not having assigned seats and chose a computer in the back of the room. I was so engrossed in trying to remember the ins and outs of Windows after being a Mac user for years, I didn’t notice Kelsey attempt to take the seat next to me until she landed on the floor.
I stared down at her sitting in a splay of legs and notebooks. She took a few deep breaths and gathered her things quietly.
“What happened?” I asked. “Did you miss the chair?”
She glared at me. “Yeah, it must have jumped right out from under me.”
I extended my hand, and she looked at it like I might hit her. When she realized I only meant to help her up, she glanced over her shoulder quickly. I followed her line of sight to three guys snickering in the opposite corner. All the pieces made sense. They’d kicked the chair out from under her just as she began to sit down, but instead of going off on them she was protecting me by not involving me in the situation.
She stood on her own and stacked her books neatly beside her without another word.
I pulled her chair closer. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” she said through clenched teeth.
She wasn’t fine, clearly. Even if I didn’t know how this part of my dream ended, I could see she’d already neared her breaking point. Why did I have so few memories of her? Had I blocked them or just been too absorbed in my own survival skills to pay attention to the trials of anyone else?
I turned back to the guys. Two of them had moved on, but the third one stared me down. His broad shoulders and muscled chest alone dwarfed Kelsey’s whole body. He had dark facial hair and the sneer that suggested he might have failed a grade somewhere along the way. Michael Redly. My memory had blocked the name until now. A football star with rugged good looks and an alpha-male mentality, he served as a living stereotype of a first-rate jock and top-notch asshole.
I turned away to hide the burn of shame under my skin. I didn’t want to shy away from a bully, but damned if I wasn’t a little afraid of him. He had the power to make anyone’s high-school existence hell, and I couldn’t handle one more complication now. Making myself a target could expose me to all sorts of problems that went well beyond my social status.
Thankfully, Mr. Glass entered the room and started class, which is to say he gave us our assignment. We had to type a 500-word piece he projected onto the whiteboard, then copy and paste it into three different documents. Why? I don’t know, but high school had never been the place to search for logic.
I opened a new document and began to type. I kept my eyes on the projection page while my fingers flew across the keyboard. The entire exercise would take ten minutes max. I wondered what we’d do after our warm-up. I snuck a peek at the clock as I neared the end of my assignment, only to notice Kelsey staring at me in wide-eyed, open-mouthed disbelief. She’d typed about three lines. The girl sitting to the side of me had finished about the same amount. I surreptitiously scanned the monitors around the room. No one else had more than a full paragraph while I moved onto my second page.
I immediately slowed down, but Kelsey had clearly seen my typing speed and the accompanying results. I took my sweet time proofreading the page but still finished before anyone else, so I clicked the keystrokes to copy and paste my work into new documents.
“How did you do that?” Kelsey whispered.
“What?”
“How did you just make the text appear without using your mouse?”
“I just hit control C to copy and control V to paste.”
She tried, but nothing happened, causing her to glare at me incredulously.
“Sorry. You have to “select all” first. Do control A.”
She repeated the process with the added step and actually smiled when it worked. “How did you learn to do that?”
“I don’t know. I just picked it up somewhere along the way. It’s no big deal. You could just use your mouse to do the same thing.”
“Not when they unplug your mouse.”
“What?”
She held up her computer mouse, and sure enough the cord dangled freely from the end that should’ve been connected to the computer tower.
“Just plug it back in.”
“I have to crawl under the desk and reach behind the towers to find the right outlet.”
I heard the unspoken fear. She’d be on the floor, out of sight of the teacher, and completely vulnerable to anyone around her. The keystrokes weren’t just a matter of convenience. They offered safety.
I pursed my lips, trying to stem the temper I’d learned to express more readily in adulthood. I couldn’t blow up in the middle of class, but I could still help her. “There’s a bunch of shortcuts. Give me a piece of paper, and I’ll write them out for you.”
She pulled a sheet out of her spiral notebook, still looking a little leery. “Can you also write down how you learned to type that fast?”
I laughed nervously. “Lots of practice.”
“In the last four days?” Kelsey asked. “‘Cause you were slower than me last week.”
“Really?” I shrugged. “Just been spacing out, I guess.”
I lowered my head and set to work without waiting for a response. I’d made it almost to lunch before doing something stupid, and hopefully I could dodge this too. It seemed rude to think, but no one paid attention to Kelsey anyway. I needed to be more careful in the future about being too proficient in my studies though. I couldn’t suddenly make a bid for valedictorian. I almost groaned when I realized I’d just considered my long-term prospects for survival. A few good hours did not contentment make. This dream had to end sometime, didn’t it? Dare I hope for sometime soon? Just because I could keep up the charade didn’t mean I wanted to.
I wandered into the hallway after the lunch bell. Thankfully we had open campus, and I could get away for a bit. I was headed for the front door when Nikki stopped me. “Where you going?”
“Um, out?”
“Did you bring your car?”
“No. Mom didn’t think I should drive yet.”
“Right, so where you going?”
“I was going to walk.”
She shook her head like I’d lost my mind, and clearly this was not an unfair assumption.
“Or I could stay in,” I offered weakly.
“Or you could go with me.” She finally laughed. “You need a Happy Meal.”
I cringed. I hadn’t eaten at a McDonalds since I’d read Fast Food Nation in college. Which of course meant not yet. Maybe I could spring for something a little nicer. I felt my back pocket, finding it empty. Where was my wallet? Or didn’t I carry one yet?
“What’s the matter?” Nikki asked.
“I don’t have my lunch money.”
She smiled sweetly and threw her arm around my shoulder. “I’ll cover you.”
I wanted to run and hide, but I couldn’t do this alone. I needed all the help I could get, and Nikki was offering me a lot, so I resigned myself to accepting her support as graciously as possible. “Thanks. I owe you one.”
*
Jody had her back to me as she bent over her desk to make a note on some papers. I rested my shoulder on the doorjamb to her classroom and let myself watch her. She hummed softly and swayed gently to the music in her head. She’d shed her suit coat, revealing a white oxford. The accompanying navy skirt hugged her hips in a way that made my breath catch painfully in my chest. She didn’t seem so young anymore, and frankly, neither did I. Maybe the uptick in my libido came with the other youthful changes in my body, but even the most hormonally charged teenager wouldn’t have been capable of imagining the scenarios that flashed through my mind. All hot-for-teacher fetishes aside, nothing good would ever come from my current line of thought.
I cleared my throat, startling Jody so badly she jumped, then landed, clutching her chest and laughing. “Stevie, I swear if you scare me one more time I’m going to give you a detention.
“I’m sorry.” I laughed for the first time in days. “You told me to come in during my study hall.”
“Right, I remember.” She perched on the edge of her desk. “I just got lost in thought.”
“Penny for them?”
“My thoughts?”
“Sure.” I took a seat at the student desk closest to her. “Lay ‘em on me.”
She arched an eyebrow. “I think that might be an inappropriate request.”
“Only if the thoughts are inappropriate.”
“Stevie, look, you’re a great kid, young woman, person.” She sighed. “But you’re a student, and you can’t talk to me like a peer.”
I wanted to scream, “I am your peer.” Instead I hung my head and said, “I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”
“It’s not that, but I’m trying to establish myself as a teacher. I’m trying to find my voice, and it’s not easy.”
“I’m sure it’s not. You’re only a few years older than I am, and you look younger than that. It’s probably hard to make people take you seriously. But I do, and I’m sorry if my comments made you feel otherwise.”
She opened her mouth like she wanted to say more but held back, so I pushed on tentatively. “You’re a good teacher. You’re going to be a great teacher someday. The students here need you, but I know that will take a toll on you personally.”
“My personal life isn’t the issue here,” she said with conviction, but I noticed the tremble in her hands.
“No, of course not. I didn’t mean to pry. I just thought if you were working on something—a lesson plan, a pedagogical statement, issues of classroom management, whatever—I could be a sounding board.” I was floundering. The more I tried to be supportive, the more it sounded like a cheap come-on. I needed to shut up, but I couldn’t. “You know, as a student. You help me see the lessons from your point of view. I help you see them from mine.
“You’re very intuitive, aren’t you?” she asked, seeming wary but not outright dismissive of my offer.
“I don’t know.”
“I pulled your file on Friday.”
The sudden change in topics threw me. “Really? Why?”
She sat down beside me and toyed with a strand of hair that had fallen from her ponytail. “You can say you don’t remember Thursday night, and maybe you don’t, but you said things to me no seventeen-year-old should know.”
“I’m eighteen.” I didn’t know why I felt the need to make that statement now. Perhaps I thought the extra year might lend me some credibility, but more likely I wanted her to know I was of legal age to make my own decisions.
“Still, your comments didn’t make sense to me, so I went through your records to try to find some answers.”
“And?” I’d kind of like some answers myself.
“You’ve got impressive transcripts. Great grades, high test scores, plenty of extracurricular activities. I’m not surprised you got into NYU.”
“Why do I feel like there’s bad news coming? Did you find I’m an elite operative for some underground literati organization?”
She shook her head, but the corner of her mouth twitched up, betraying amusement despite her serious tone. “No, there’s nothing there to indicate you’re anything other than an average high-school senior.”
I exhaled a breath heavy with relief. “Well, that’s good.”
“Is it?” Her brow furrowed. “You seem like so much more than average to me. You’re smart, and you notice things other teenagers don’t. You’re also maddeningly disarming.”
My stomach did a little flip-flop move right up into my throat. She found me disarming?
“What I can’t figure out is why no one else ever saw any of this in you.”
“Saw? Past tense?” Had the heat gone up in the whole room or just under my collar? “Does that mean you have me pegged now?”
“See what I mean?” She held out her hand in my direction as if I’d just demonstrated a valuable piece of evidence. “You catch things. You make connections to larger conclusions. Why aren’t you a student leader? Why aren’t you at the top of your class? Why don’t you even talk during class discussions?”
“I think you’re digging for something that’s not there. I don’t extrapolate any great life lessons. I don’t want to be a symbol or some voice crying out in the wilderness.” I backpedaled quickly. This isn’t where I’d wanted this conversation to go. I’m not you. I’m not Rory. “I’m solidly average.”
“You’re not. Average students don’t say ‘extrapolate’ or talk about pedagogical statements or describe themselves in terms of ancient Biblical allusions.”
I stood up, pushing away from the desk and trying not to pace. Of course I wasn’t the average teenager, but what did she want me to say? That I was some sort of child genius? A literary savant? I didn’t want to lie to her, but I couldn’t tell the truth, either. Frustration twisted the muscles in my back. Even on my best days I didn’t handle conflict well, and right now I was drowning in it. My defenses rose. “Why are you determined to label me as above average?”
She stepped closer, pushing just into my personal space and sending my blood pulsing through my ears. “Why are you so invested in believing the status quo is good enough?”
“It was good enough the first time, so forgive me if I want to stick with what worked until I figure out how to get out of here without going insane.” I covered my mouth, then flopped back into the chair and put my head down on the desk. I couldn’t pull the words back in, no matter how much I wished them away.
I sat perfectly still, part of me relieved to have it out there. Now maybe she could just call the hospital to come get me. At least then I wouldn’t have to go to gym class.
“Stevie,” she said softly, and crouched down so her face was next to mine. “Look at me.”
I lifted my head and met those compassionate blue eyes, so soothing no matter the circumstances.
“You’re not insane. And you’re going to make it just fine. You’re going to graduate in a few months. You’re headed to NYU, and you’ll thrive there. You and I both know that.”
“Yeah,” I said, my throat raw with emotion.
“I understand wanting to stick with what has worked for you in years past. Trust me, I know all about the urge to blend into the crowd. I don’t fault you for that. I probably would’ve done the same if I could have.”
I heard the pain in her voice. Even if I hadn’t known her story, I wouldn’t have doubted her sincerity.
“But unless we’re willing to take some risks, to challenge the perceptions of ourselves, we’re doomed to keep repeating our mistakes, to keep selling out and settling for good-enough when we could make a real difference.”
Why the hell did everyone want to change me these days? First Edmond, then Rory, now Jody. I liked my life just fine. Well, except for the whole coma-nightmare scenario I was currently facing. Then again, I wouldn’t be having this dream if people had left well-enough alone. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do here. I really do, but I’m not one of your charity cases. I don’t need you to unlock my hidden potential.”
Her frown and sagging shoulders caused my chest to constrict so tight it nearly broke my heart. I didn’t want to sound harsh, and I got an extra shot of guilt for using her reason for teaching against her, but the last thing I needed was extra scrutiny. Why did the one person I most wanted to be around pose the greatest risk?
“Fine,” she said, returning to her polite professional façade. “I guess I misread the situation.”
Of course she had. How could she not? Who looks at a high-school student and assumes she’s a twenty-nine-year-old fiction writer in a time-travel nightmare? I wished this conversation could end differently, but I’d yet to find a way to make sense of anything, much less change it. Perhaps the best thing I could do for both of us was stick to the roles we knew. “Do you have those assignments I missed?”
She eyed me expectantly for a few seconds more before she acquiesced and became the teacher I’d asked her to be. I watched as she detached herself emotionally and physically distanced herself by returning to the other side of the desk. She shuffled paperwork, then began to recite an abbreviated version of last Friday’s English-lit lesson plan. I missed her immediately, and I had only myself to blame, but this was just the way things had to be for us right now.
*
I arrived in gym class with the golden ticket in my pocket. My mother, the doctor, had written a note excusing me from all exercise for up to ten days and anything that might risk physical contact for the rest of the month. There’d be no locker-room changes or awkward showers with real teenagers. I also wouldn’t have to face basketball practice since they were in the last two weeks of the season. In fact, gym would’ve been a breeze if not for the prospect of facing Drew Phillips.
I could barely stomach the man for a photo op in present day with Rory by my side. I had no idea how I’d face him one-on-one when he clearly held all the power. I didn’t have to wonder long since he spotted me the moment I entered the gym. “Geller, front and center.”
What was this, the marines? He certainly had the haircut for it, but even marines didn’t wear their pants as high as he did.
“Yes, sir?”
“Glad to see you came to.”
“Thank you, sir.” I think.
“And what did we learn from this experience?”
I snorted. I couldn’t help it. “I’m sorry?”
“What did you learn from your embarrassing incident last week?”
Well, let’s see. I learned a concussion can induce time travel. I learned you, sir, will get more powerful, but you’ll never stop being a douche. I learned Jody is a better teacher in her first week than you are after a decade on the job. I’d actually learned a lot of things, but I doubted he wanted to hear any of them.
“I’ve got a concussion,” I said, falling back on the now-comforting excuse and producing the note from Doctor Mom. “I don’t remember anything from Thursday night.”
He scowled as he read the letter, but even he was too afraid of a lawsuit to go against a medical excuse. “Go ahead and sit this one out, but I want you to think about what got you in this mess in the first place, so maybe next time you’ll pay attention to the task at hand instead of daydreaming during a game.”
So that was the lesson? I hadn’t been paying enough attention to a high-school basketball game? I literally bit my tongue to keep from laughing. My daydreams would become the building block for a successful literary career, and basketball would become something I honestly forgot I even did. Quite the life lesson there, Drew.
I held my smirk in check as I headed for the bleachers, tossing a casual, “Yes, sir” over my shoulder as I went.
I watched disinterestedly as my female classmates did aerobics to a video Drew pressed “play” on, then spent the rest of his time observing the boys’ weight training. What a stupid, sexist double standard. He probably didn’t want his girls to bulk up because he was so doughy. I’d dated a couple of women who could have snapped him in half, even as stubby as he was.
Where was this venom coming from? Sure, the guy was a jerk, but what did I care? He hadn’t annoyed me nearly as much the first time around. I couldn’t get bent out of shape about every redneck in this place. Maybe I’d picked up on some of Rory’s animosity, or perhaps I resented the power he’d someday lord over Jody. Then again maybe the whole mind-numbingly boring sexism before me was just the last in a long line of injustices burning my brain at the moment. Either way, I needed to settle down. I had one more class to get through after this one, and intro to theater with Jody would test me a lot more than Drew Phillips’s stupidity.
*
“Stevie?”
“Yes?”
“Your monologue?”
“Yes?”
People giggled, and I realized I’d been caught daydreaming. Who knew high school made for such a long day? We were halfway through theater class, and I’d yet to engage the material in any way. Jody had done a lesson on monologues, which was interesting eleven years ago. But given my ensuing studies in theater and my own attempts at playwriting, I no longer found the topic so enthralling. My mind wandered from the material to the teacher. She was clearly exhausted, emotionally and probably physically too. I understood she loved the work and the students, but I also knew the doubts were eating her alive. She was in the act of choosing a lonely path, one that would give her moments of fulfillment, no doubt, but would also lead to regret and uncertainty years down the road.
“Stevie,” she said patiently, “did you choose a monologue?”
“Maybe the basketball knocked it out of her head,” Deelia Pats said, then smiled like she thought herself clever.
“There are extenuating circumstances,” Jody said.
“No, it’s fine.” I was thankful this assignment would be easy enough since I’d done plenty of monologues throughout college.
“I’ll do Zubaida Ula’s monologue from The Laramie Project.”
“The Laramie Project?” Deelia wrinkled her nose in distaste. “Isn’t that a fag movie?
“Deelia,” Jody snapped, the harshness of her tone immediately getting everyone’s attention. “I won’t allow discriminatory language in this classroom.”
“What? Fag’s not a cuss word.”
“It’s worse, a violent word, a weapon word, an attack on an entire subset of people, and if I hear it again I’ll send you to the principal.”
Deelia folded her arms across her chest and pursed her lips but didn’t push any further. She’d probably never been sent to the principal in her life. She was the class priss, always perfectly dressed and perfectly situated atop the social hierarchy.
“Kelsey, what did you choose?” Jody asked, doing a fine job of acting unperturbed, but I could see her chest rise and fall a little faster than usual. I wished I could squeeze her hand the way she had mine before the assembly.
“Hamlet’s ‘To Be or Not To Be’ soliloquy,” Kelsey answered, looking at me suspiciously.
I turned away to see Deelia staring at me with the same intensity, only less confused and more malicious. Great. Who knew fulfilling a silly assignment would get me stuck in multiple sets of crosshairs? I slouched lower in my seat and prayed for the final bell to ring soon.
I jumped out of my chair the second class ended, but before I could get to the door Kelsey stepped in front of me. “Where did you get your monologue?”
“What?”
“The Laramie Project just debuted at Sundance. I read an article about it last week. There’s no way you could’ve seen the movie yet.”
Shit, another damn timeline fail. “I saw the play first, before they made the movie.”
Kelsey wasn’t buying it. The other students filed out of the classroom, leaving only Jody at her desk. She shifted through papers but had to be listening. “When did you see the play? I’m pretty sure it didn’t come anywhere near here.”
“New York,” I answered quickly, pulling the only ace in my pocket. “I went to New York last fall to visit some schools. We saw it then.”
Except we hadn’t. We’d seen The Lion King. My parents wouldn’t have thought to see The Laramie Project then, and quite frankly neither would I since I didn’t know Moises Kaufman existed until I got to NYU. But Kelsey and Jody didn’t know that.
“Okay, but where did you get the actual script of the monologue to read for class?”
Dear Lord, take me now. When were the questions going to end? Was she actively trying to trip me up? And in front of Jody? Why the hell couldn’t any of this be easy? “I Googled it.”
Another furrowed brow from Kelsey indicated I’d once again slipped up.
“What’s Googled it?”
Holy shit, was this the dark ages? Surely Google existed. Had the term not reached Darlington? “I found it online.”
“I didn’t think of that,” Kelsey said. “I don’t have a computer at home.”
I regretted my reaction immediately. Maybe she hadn’t intentionally grilled me. Maybe she was genuinely interested. I forgot about the digital divide in high school. Personal computers might not be uncommon, but they weren’t in every home. And even fewer of my classmates had reliable Internet access. “Maybe you could use the one in the library sometime,” I offered weakly.
“Maybe,” Kelsey said, then turned to go.
I probably should’ve said more, maybe offered to let her use my computer, but we weren’t friends, and she was clearly suspicious of me already, so I kept my mouth shut and headed toward my locker.
I wanted to get out of there. My dad would be waiting, so I could make a quick getaway. But I worried about forgetting something, and given the circumstances I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d forgotten a lot of things. I stared at my locker, running through my classes and trying to remember which books I’d need for homework.
A few doors down, Michael and Deelia were making out against her locker, but he obviously wasn’t getting the participation level he wanted because he asked, “What’s the matter with you?”
“Miss Hadland chewed me out for saying ‘fag.’”
“What?”
“Stevie’s reading from a play about faggots.” They both looked at me, and I wanted to crawl into my locker. “And Miss Hadland went off about how we can’t call them that, or she’d send me to the principal.”
“What the hell else are you supposed to call them? Butt pirates? Cocksuckers?”
She laughed and I cringed.
“Hadland’s probably a dyke.” Michael almost spit the word. “If she sends you to the principal, tell him she hit on you.”
My stomach clenched, and my head throbbed again. That was enough. Homework be damned, I had to get out of there. Slamming my locker a little harder than I’d meant to, I jogged down the hallway and out the front door. I couldn’t stand one more minute in this place.
*
I managed to remain conversational with my parents, who had a multitude of questions about my first day back. But between having to wake up at the ass crack of dawn and the exhaustion-inducing events of my day, I was ready for sleep by six o’clock. I could’ve easily slept for twelve hours if not for my homework, so after helping clear the table like a good child, I headed to the basement to start my second shift.
I fired up the ancient laptop, and since I still used the same five passwords, I logged in easily. First I needed to Google The Laramie Project to see if I could actually get my monologue for theater class. Well, I didn’t need it since I had it memorized, but Kelsey’s questions had shaken me. I tried to keep my eyes open as I clicked on the Internet icon, and I almost jumped out of my seat at the sound of dial-up tones immediately followed by my dad yelling, “Stevie, I’m on the phone!”
Dial-up Internet and shared phone lines, two more items to add to the list of things I didn’t miss about my teenage years. I prayed again for this experience to be a dream. It had to be, didn’t it? I couldn’t have imagined something as wonderful as high-speed Internet and smartphones.
I opened my Spanish book and tried to make sense of our reading. It only took a few minutes to realize that wasn’t going to happen. Had I forgotten everything or never really learned it in the first place? I probably didn’t expect to ever use it. Why did I assume anyone worth knowing, anyone worth listening to would speak English? I resolved to make an effort to communicate with my neighbors when I got home.
I would get home, wouldn’t I? How long had I been gone? Almost a week? Would someone check on my apartment? I had friends. I wasn’t a total loner. Someone from my writing group or the youth theater program would miss me eventually, but they wouldn’t kick down the door right away. Would they contact Edmond? My parents? Maybe Beth had already called someone. She seemed like the type of person who thought of those things. Poor Beth…her parents had just died. She had enough to deal with. She didn’t need to take care of me right now.
No, damn it, this wasn’t right now, this was the past. Right now, Beth was great. So was Rory. So were we all.
Or at least I would be great as soon as I woke up. Wouldn’t I?
My dad called down to let me know he was off the phone, and I tried to connect again, bracing myself for the gurgle and beep of the modem. The thing sounded like it was in the throes of death cycling through the tones once, then twice without connecting. Darlington, Illinois was never at the forefront of new technologies. I might have to wait awhile. Maybe I should go shower.
No, I could work on my trig homework. I laughed aloud. I couldn’t do trigonometry without the Internet. A shower was my only option, but when I came back to find the modem still struggling, it took all my strength not to throw the ancient relic across the room.
Screw it. I’d just type out the monologue myself and lie about finding it online. Now if only I could work Microsoft Word. Why were none of the buttons where they should be? I suddenly realized I was running Windows Millennium Edition as my operating system.
“No,” I mumbled. “Geek, out.” Forget the monologue. Forget trig. Forget my whole awful day. I crawled into bed without even turning off the lights. Hopefully I’d wake up tomorrow, but even if I didn’t, no nightmare could be worse than the one I’d lived today.