Chapter

5

I was shocked, actually shocked, like a bolt of electricity running through my body from my toes and fingers inward to my stomach and then out through my head, as I looked at Sam sitting in the front of the room, three steps down the terraced rows from where I stood. The door was in the back of the room, so all I could see were his shoulders and hair and a bit of his profile, but it was enough to knock the wind out of me.

Corrie rolled her eyes at me and tugged me toward my seat in the back. I stumbled after her, trying to keep my lungs working and my heart beating and simultaneously dreading and longing for him to turn around and look at me. This was ridiculous!

I sank into my seat, and Mr. Allan moved back to the front of the room and started diagramming intervals on the blackboard. The class of twenty-three students all began copying quietly onto their manuscript paper, and I opened my bag to dig out my supplies and follow suit. It took me twice as long as it should have to copy the intervals, partly because I was so badly out of practice and partly because I couldn’t keep my eyes from wandering to the back of Sam’s head every few seconds.

Corrie could never understand what I saw in him. He was really quite average-looking, or at least that’s what she said. To me he was the most beautiful thing I had seen, at least until I met Mitch and then each one of our children as they were born. Now as I stared at the back of his head, his broad shoulders and his arm as his hand flew swiftly and masterfully across his manuscript paper—I had to crane my neck a little to see that—all of those memories of him came spilling back. My palms were sweaty and I felt dizzy. Was I hyperventilating?

“Get a grip, Anne. He’s a kid. He’s seventeen years old, for heaven’s sake,” I whispered to myself under my breath.

“What did you say?” Corrie whispered back.

“Nothing.” I waved her away and forced myself to ignore Sam and concentrate on the work. The lesson continued, and I was encouraged at how quickly the chord progressions and transposition came back to me. It brought a sense of satisfaction that I hadn’t felt in a long time. By the end of the class time, I had actually written a short, two-stanza melody with a simple accompaniment. It was the first time in years I had created anything other than dinner or Halloween costumes for the kids, and it felt really good. It also gave me hope for my algebra test. If this came back that easily, then there was hope for me in math, I thought.

As Mr. Allan finished up his final notes, my stomach growled loudly, loud enough that the kids in front of me heard it and laughed.

“Good thing it’s almost lunchtime,” I said, trying to sound amused. It was embarrassing, though, mostly because I knew that twenty years ago I would have been embarrassed at anything that drew attention to the fact that I ate. A fat kid in high school isn’t supposed to eat in front of other people. Ever.

The bell rang, and the others gathered their belongings and shuffled to the door. Corrie gestured for me to follow her, sensing that I needed the direction today, I guessed. I tried to hurry, but I wasn’t as adept at shoving everything back into the severely overstuffed bag. Did I really have to carry everything with me at all times? I wondered.

When I straightened up, he was standing in front of me, and my heart stopped beating. I hadn’t quite remembered his eyes. They were dark brown with thick lashes and strong eyebrows. They were intense. That was the defining characteristic of Sam. He was intense, and teenager or not, I was intensely attracted to him.

“We need to talk,” he said seriously.

Shame washed over me as if I were a child caught by a parent in the act of breaking something important. Funny, though, I didn’t remember seeing him today . . . twenty years ago. Had he missed school? Had I? Ah, that was probably it. I had skipped school, something that hadn’t even occurred to me in this strange dream, despite my dad’s earlier suggestion.

He waited for my answer, and I glanced at Corrie over his shoulder. She was grinning and giving me the thumbs-up sign, obviously thinking that this was a real breakthrough for me. I almost wished I had told her about my little fiasco of the day before so that she would understand that this wasn’t going to be pretty. I looked back at him, forcing myself to focus on his face, and nodded.

He led me into Mr. Allan’s office, a place where we all frequently hung out. There were a couple of other kids in there on a couch in the corner, sophomores just digging their lunches out of their backpacks, but Sam, with the power of his senior status, just pointed to the door and they scrambled to their feet and out the door. He closed it softly behind us. I was completely intimidated.

I’m thirty-eight years old. I have three kids and a mortgage and a dead husband whom I miss more than I can possibly express. I am not intimidated by a seventeen-year-old kid I’m never going to see after I get married, I thought.

“I’m actually eighteen. Last week,” Sam said as he passed me to sit down on the couch.

My jaw dropped open. Had I actually said that out loud? Did it really matter? This was a dream. I was more sure of that fact than I had been before. This was the most dreamlike part of my day so far.

I stared at him, allowing myself to drink in the sight of his broad chest and deep brown eyes while I considered my options.

Okay, I thought, careful to keep silent this time, if this is a dream, then it must be my subconscious trying to tell me something or work through an unresolved problem. I thought about the conversation with my mother in the car. I had told her how sorry I was for hurting her, something I hadn’t done in reality, and it had felt really good. Now I was faced with another opportunity to right a wrong. This must be what my dream was for. Making the connection took a lot of weight off my mind. I knew what I had to do. I followed Sam, feeling a little more confident, and sat down on the opposite end of the couch, as far away as the cushions would permit.

“Look, Sam, I owe you an apology. We were friends . . . sort of . . . and you always knew that I had a huge crush on you, practically since I was twelve. There’s no way you couldn’t know it. I mean, could I have been more obvious?” I laughed, a short sarcastic sound, and then cleared my throat to continue.

“It was just a teenage crush, though. Still, I know that it had to be pretty disturbing to have some girl threatening to kill herself and laying the responsibility on you. That wasn’t fair, and I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess we could chalk it up to immaturity and a desperate plea for attention.”

This was horrible. Had I thought I could explain this in a way that would make sense? I soldiered on, just needing to be done with it.

“Really, though, it’s not your fault, and I was never in danger of actually committing suicide. In fact, I have lived a very happy life without you, and I wish the same for you. You are a very nice boy, and I’m sure you are going to have great success in the Air Force and meet someone great and have some kids, and that will be that. So please don’t worry about me. I’m just fine. I won’t chase after you or write you letters or drive by your house on the way home from the store or call and hang up when you answer or any of that other bizarre teenage girl behavior anymore. You have my word.”

That should do it. I had closure now, right? I was ready to wake up.

I closed my eyes and tried to picture myself waking up on The Rack in my thirty-eight-year-old body, complete with lines on my face and a few stray gray hairs that I had missed in my last hunt-and-pluck session. The room was completely quiet. I opened my eyes, and Sam was staring at me with a half grin on his face.

“Now, really, was that so bad?” he asked.

“What?” I asked.

“Just telling me how you feel? I mean, I’m not sure what all that other stuff was, but I got this much: You like me, right?” His eyes were doing that thing again, where they seemed to be trying to bore into my soul. It was that look that had kept me wrapped up in him for all those years.

“Liked. As in past tense.” That was such an understatement it was almost comical. “Actually, I spent my entire life as a teenager, right up until I met Mitch, obsessing over you. And you spent all your time dating my friends and even making out with them right in front of me, and I put up with it because I was too in love with you to do anything different.” Years’ worth of anger was starting to boil beneath the surface. I paced back and forth, too fired up to be still.

“Meanwhile, I was the one that you called when you broke up with your girlfriend or needed to talk about your jerk of a stepfather or were just plain bored, and I sucked up every ounce of attention that you saw fit to bestow on me, hoping that it really meant that you loved me back instead of just thinking I was the fat freak who had a crush on you. It’s twisted, and I’m not doing it anymore!”

I turned to storm out of the office, feeling powerful to have finally said all of that stuff to him. Now that was closure. He was right behind me, reaching out to grab my arm. The thrill that the simple touch sent through me made me mad.

“Wait. Who is Mitch?” he asked, spinning me around to face him. He was only inches away. I could smell the fabric softener in his shirt and see every individual eyelash around those amazing eyes. My bones felt like they would melt in the electric current that ran through me again, and I wondered if he felt it, too. I shoved that away, reminding myself that he was eighteen and I was thirty-eight and being attracted to someone half my age was definitely not okay. I forced myself to focus on his words instead of his hand.

“You must really have selective hearing if that is the only thing you got out of what I just said.” I debated telling him that Mitch was my dead husband but that just sounded like another attention-getting device coming from the mouth of a sixteen-year-old. “Mitch is the man I’m going to marry in four more years, and you are the guy I’m never going to see again and whom I refuse to regret. I’m sorry again for any pain I might have caused you, but I’m not playing the game anymore, so you’ll have to find someone else to be your ego booster.”

His eyebrows were raised in surprise. I stared him down until he let go of my arm, and then I turned and walked purposefully out of the band room.

I got all the way to the hall before I realized what I had just done. I had stood up for myself to Sam, told him that I wouldn’t be used to stoke the fire of his ego. The woman inside me applauded the brave move. Another part of my brain screamed at me, however, saying that what I had really done was tell him that I was in love with him and that I didn’t want anything to do with him ever again—two contradictory things that were both strictly taboo for my teenage self to even think of mentioning, let alone say out loud.

The emotions that had been so close to the surface since I entered this crazy dream threatened to overwhelm me. I had the urge to laugh and to cry and to scream all at the same time. I had forgotten how extreme everything felt as a teenager. I ran to the nearest girls’ restroom, pushing past a couple of frizzy cheerleaders and a punk wearing striped tights and green hair, and made it to the last stall before the tears came. It was like déjà vu . . . on steroids. This restroom. This stall. These tears. That guy. Wow, I had regressed twenty years. I desperately wanted to wake up. To get back to my real life, to see my children. But even as that thought came, another followed quickly behind it. Other than your children, what do you have that’s worth returning for?

I had no real friends. I’d given up all of my hobbies, hadn’t composed anything or played the piano or sung in years. My relationships with my parents and siblings, especially Hannah, were strained at best. I was a shell of a woman. What kind of mother could I be when I wasn’t even a person anymore? I cried harder as I thought of the look on Mallory’s face when she had hugged me good-bye. It was weary. It was worried. But it wasn’t surprised. I had thought I’d hidden my grief so well, buried it so deep that it couldn’t hurt them, yet she had looked as if she had been expecting this all along. Was that the way an eleven-year-old should be thinking? I was failing them. I needed Mitch in that moment so badly it seemed impossible that he could be dead. How could my need be so big without his being there to fill it, just as he had filled every other need of mine for the past thirteen years?

I wanted to wake up, but I was starting to suspect I wasn’t dreaming at all. How could everything be so real? So detailed? My normal dreams didn’t act like this. They jumped ahead in fits and starts with huge holes and odd little coincidences that didn’t make sense. If I were dreaming, I would have encountered people from other stages of my life. My siblings would have been the wrong age, or Shelley Inger would have appeared as one of my teachers. Mitch would have been here, as he was in all of my dreams.

My tears dried up suddenly, and I gasped as a new thought bloomed. I leaned against the wall of the stall, and my mouth hung open as joy burst through every fiber of my being. Even if this wasn’t real, if it was just a dream with me as a sixteen-year-old, then that meant Mitch was living on the other side of town, working and saving for college and living his life. Mitch wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. We hadn’t even met yet!