Copyright © 1999 Jeff Kirvin
This eBook is HonorWare. If you read it and enjoy it, you are obligated to pay for it (and if you don’t like it, consider this a pre-emptive money-back guarantee; I only get money if you like the book). I’ve made paying as easy as possible. All you have to do is go to click on the link below to PayPal.com and email five US dollars ($5) to jkirvin@yahoo.com. Thank you for your support.
The last day in my old life went according to form. I slumped over the grill of a fast food joint, flipping burgers. Vaporized grease clouded up my glasses. Robin Cooper, the prettiest girl in the store, walked past me. I may have said a dozen words to her the whole time we worked together, and I made a very obvious effort to ignore her. I wanted to talk to her, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. Instead, I finished my burgers, wiped my hands on my apron, and plodded into the manager’s office.
By the way, my name is (or was, anyway) Richie Preston. Damn pleased to meet ya.
The manager, Mister Stemple, was a burly man with a handlebar moustache. His chair creaked in protest as he leaned back when I walked in. “Richie. What is it now?”
I stared at my shoes as I talked. “I was wondering, Mister Stemple, about management training.”
“What about it?”
“Well, sir, uh, when will I be scheduled for it?”
Stemple screwed up his face in a confused grin. It was actually an improvement. “I really hadn’t planned on it, Richie.”
I displayed a rare case of tenacity. “It’s just that, well, several of the people I’ve trained have gone on to be assistant managers, and I’m still on the crew. I’ve been here ten years—”
Stemple cut me off. “—and I’ve valued every minute, Richie. You’re a great employee, and I don’t know how this restaurant would stay in business without you.”
I brightened a bit at this, I didn’t see what was coming. (I’m better now.)
“But I’m afraid I just don’t see management in your future. I’m sorry, Richie.”
I just stood there, unable to say a word, much less tell this guy off.
“Looks like it’s picking up out there,” Stemple went on. “You better get back to work.”
I nodded, turned and went back to my grill.
I pulled into the driveway of a suburban split-level, home sweet home. My parents’ home, anyway. I drove a beat-up black Chevette, the kind of car that’s held together by pure will and barely squeaks by annual inspections. I parked the car on the side of the driveway and went inside.
I immediately took a right into my bedroom, the only bedroom on the ground floor. I lied to myself all the time that it was my apartment. The bedroom consisted of a loft bed over a desk with a home computer, a dresser and wall to wall bookcases stocked with science fiction paperbacks. A veritable babe lair. I changed from my fast food uniform into sweats and a t-shirt, then went out into the living room.
Sitting and watching a huge 55 inch TV were my parents, David and Nadine Preston. Dad was in a recliner, Mom lounged on the couch. Neither said a word to me as I walked in. I didn’t really have anything to say to them either, so I grabbed a magazine from the end table and walked upstairs to the kitchen.
As I poured myself a glass of milk, Dad walked in. “So, how was work today?”
“Same as always.”
As I sat at the dining room table and paged through the magazine, Dad took a seat facing me. “Son, we need to talk.”
I closed the magazine. I’d been waiting for this.
“Your mom and I think it might be good for you to move out on your own.”
“You’re kicking me out?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“You said I could stay here as long as I needed to! You said—”
Dad cut me off, getting angry. This wasn’t the way he wanted it. I knew it and he knew it, but it was too late to stop now. “We thought you’d be going to college, son! We thought you’d find a real job, get an apartment—”
“Real job? I work my ass off slaving over that damn grill all day! I’d like to see you try it!” I got up and tried to storm out of the room, but Dad stood and blocked my way. He was a big guy.
“We’re just tired of supporting you while you fritter your life away!”
I stood open mouthed. “Supporting me? I pay you rent, don’t I?”
“Let’s see you find a real apartment on a hundred bucks a month.”
I pushed past my father. “Maybe I should! No matter how much it costs, at least I wouldn’t have the two of you hounding me all the time!”
I ran to my room, leaving Dad standing at the top of the stairs, defeated.
I stood with my back to the door, tears of anger welling up. They just didn’t understand. I tried to live a normal life, I really did. Things just never worked out quite the way they were supposed to. It’s not like flipping burgers was my ultimate career goal. I wanted to be a writer. I just couldn’t get anyone to read my stuff.
I climbed into bed and hugged the pillow. Depression settled in on me like a ton of bricks. I had a crap job, no social life (all my friends had long since gone to, and graduated from, college), and was looking at talking my way into having no place to live. At the ripe old age of 27, my life was ruined.
I rolled over and sobbed quietly. Someone knocked on my door, probably my mom, but I ignored it. It stopped.
Eventually, I fell asleep.
Sunlight streamed through the closed blinds. I was dressed differently, wearing athletic shorts and no shirt. The light was off.
Consciousness crept up on me slowly, stalking me. I knew I had some reason to get out of bed, I just didn’t know what...
I woke up and jumped to the floor, spun around and glanced at the clock. It read 9:08.
“Shit. I’m late.” Rubbing my eyes, I looked around the room for my fast food uniform. The room was subtly different, and the uniform was a different color.
“What the hell?” At this point I wondered if I was still asleep.
I looked around the room, more carefully this time. No item was newer than 1988 vintage. The posters, the books, even my computer were all at least ten years old.
I burst out of the room and ran to the living room. Same story. Instead of the 55 inch TV, there was an old 19 inch model. The stereo equipment matched. The recliner was a different color. I turned around and flung open the front door. The morning paper was on the porch. I picked it up and checked the date. It was an Allentown Morning Call from August 8, 1988.
Remember that old folk tale about that guy that literally slept his life away? Rip Van Winkle, I think. I was starting to wonder if I was doing that in reverse. In any case, I was thoroughly freaked at this point. You would be too.
I ran back inside and threw on some street clothes, then I ran outside. I stopped short and almost hurled when I saw my car. It was a 1976 Plymouth Fury, maroon with a white top. 318 small block V8 with more power than I knew what to do with. They used to make Furies into police cruisers, and my car let you know why. Bloody Mary, I called her. I loved that car. It was older and very different from the Chevette I drove in 1998. A lot better, too.
But here’s the thing. I totaled her in 1989.
I dug in my pocket for my keys, and was amazed when they opened and started the car. I peeled out and drove away.
Somewhere, somebody had to know what was going on.
A few comments about Nazareth, Pennsylvania. I usually fall back on an old Don Rickles joke and say that the town was so small that they had to close the zoo when the chicken died. Nazareth was barely a speck on the map, a couple thousand people. Overall, it was a suburb of Bethlehem, which together with Allentown and Easton, made up the Lehigh Valley. While I lived there the valley scored dead last in Money magazine’s Places to Live in the US. If you’ve ever heard Billy Joel’s song “Allentown”, he actually made the place seem too cheery.
Back to Nazareth. It was a small town, full of small town attitudes. Norman Rockwell nostalgia aside, small towns suck. Maybe I’m biased because I grew up in a city of four million people (Houston, Texas, thank you very much), but to me small towns are about small minds and backwoods values. The lyrics from Rush’s “Subdivisions” fit the place perfectly. “Be cool or be cast out”. Salem was a friendlier place in the late 1700s.
Regardless of the year, I was in Hell.
I pulled up and parked in front of a small store called Nazareth News. It was the only newsstand in Nazareth, as well as the only comics store. I’d hung out there a lot. I walked briskly into the store and looked at the periodicals. They were all from the week of August 8, 1988. My heart started doing gymnastics a Russian coach would have been proud of. This was too elaborate to be a prank.
As I stood gaping at the rows of ten-year-old magazines, a fortyish, balding man sidled up next to me. “Pretty cool, huh, Preston?”
I almost jumped out of my skin. “How did you know my name?”
“Just ’cause. Come on outside and I’ll explain.”
I looked at the man suspiciously. I wasn’t in the mood to trust anybody, certainly not some weirdo I’d never met. The stranger turned and walked towards the door. “Don’t say you’re not dying of curiosity.”
I glanced again at fresh newspapers displaying ten-year-old headlines, then followed the guy out the door.
“Who are you?”
The man thrust out his hand, which I eyed, then shook.
“The name’s Fate, Jack Fate. You know how people sometimes say ‘the fates are conspiring against me’? I’m one of those fates.”
I yanked my hand back.
Fate’s smile faltered. “If we’re going to work together, Richie, you’re going to have be more trusting.”
“What the heck are you talking about?”
Fate laughed, then spread his arms in an all-encompassing gesture. “This. You. You have noticed something different this morning, haven’t you?”
I stared at Fate and tried, unsuccessfully, to respond. Back then I was quite accomplished at standing silently and looking like an idiot. It’s really not that hard.
“Walk with me. Your brain works better if your feet are moving.”
The two of us began to walk down the sidewalk, towards the town square. “We’ve been watching you for quite some time, Richie. Your whole life has been one botched opportunity after another. Your last shot at success came and went last Tuesday, by your perception. It’s ten years in the future now. You blew through a yellow light on the way to work. If you had slowed and stopped at that light, you would have arrived at the next light just moments after a bad wreck and saved the life of a wealthy industrialist, and eventually married his daughter. Lovely girl. Unfortunately, you were in a hurry to flip some more burgers.”
I stared at Fate, incredulous.
“We’ve seen that happen over and over in your life. Usually someone as unlucky as you has it coming. Bad karma from a previous existence. You, on the other hand, don’t deserve your fate. You’re what we at the office call a Probability Anomaly. We just don’t know why things never go your way. You’ve never won a coin flip in your life, have you?”
I stared blankly.
“Trust me, you haven’t. We’re going to change that, you and me. Well, mostly you. I’ve done my part.”
“That’s how I got here?”
“Give the kid a cigar! That’s why it’s suddenly 1988 again. We took your consciousness back ten years so you can correct some of the blunders that made you the completely unremarkable individual you were in 1998. Your high school senior year starts in two weeks. This time you know where you went wrong the first time and you can live it just the way you’ve been dreaming about for nearly a decade. No more thinking of the perfect comeback ten minutes after an argument! Now you know at the beginning.”
As the implications of what Fate said sank in on me, a smile spread slowly across my face. One of those dark, scary smiles, like in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
Fate stopped walking just short of the town square and faced me. “Not so fast, there, sport. There’s a catch. In order to insure that you didn’t just make the exact same blunders twice in a row, we left your memory intact. This could easily be abused, so we have some ground rules.”
Fate sat on a bench, making himself comfortable. This was impressive, since he had an attitude that implied he was always comfortable. “Despite what chaos theorists will tell you about their butterfly effects, nothing you will ever do will appreciably change the flow of world history. You know, without a doubt, things that will definitely happen in the next ten years. The Cold War will end. The United States will kick the crap out of Iraq. The Chicago Bulls will win three straight NBA titles. You are not allowed to tell anyone this information, and you are not allowed to use it for personal gain. You may know that if you were to buy stock in Microsoft today it would make you rich in ten years, but you aren’t allowed to do it. We’re leaving your memory intact only so you can fix the mistakes in your own life. Any other use of the information at your disposal is grounds for us to revoke this second chance. You’ll be a burger-flipping loser in 1998 again before you know it. Are we clear on that?”
What was I going to say? Thanks but no thanks? I’d been waiting for an opportunity like this all my life.
“Yes, sir.”
I spent most of the morning wandering around town. It was a kinda scary how little had actually changed. Small towns are like that, I guess.
I went over to my friend Greg’s after lunch. Greg was a fellow writer, a kindred spirit. It took me a while to remember the way to his house.
One of Fate’s ground rules was that I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody about my situation. Now, I’ve always been terrible at keeping secrets, and this was a doozy. I had my work cut out for me.
I pulled into the driveway of Greg’s folks’ house a little after one. I won’t say Greg lived in the boonies, but I passed a herd of caribou on the way to the door.
I had to knock for a while. Greg was undoubtedly upstairs on the computer. Finally he came down and opened the door. “Preston. Come on in.”
I walked in, a goofy grin all over my face. This was going to be hard.
“What are you so happy about?”
“Oh, nothing...” Aarrgh! This was killing me! I would have made a rotten POW. I’d spill my guts as soon as the interrogator said “hi”. (And you were wondering why I’m telling you this story...)
“Okay,” Greg said. “Whatever.” Fortunately, my friends expected inexplicible behavior from me. I followed him upstairs to his room.
“Oh, by the way,” he said, “I talked to my cousin, and he said he’d DM for us next Saturday.”
My mind backpedaled furiously as I tried to remember the events he was referring to. Current stuff for him, but ten years gone from my perspective. DM, DM...
Got it! We played Dungeons & Dragons together back then (I’d since lost interest once all my friends moved away). His cousin had agreed to run a game...
“You gonna play your paladin?” he asked.
The smile came back. “I think I’m going to play a ninja. I’m feeling very sneaky.”
We walked into Greg’s room, the Lost Graveyard of Comic Books and Role-playing Game Manuals. I cleared off a spot on the corner of the bed and sat down. Greg sat by the computer.
“Richie? What’s going on? You’re acting weird, even for you.”
I couldn’t hold it in any longer. Besides, I rationalized, if Fate knew me as well as he said, then he knew I’d never be able to keep this to myself...
“Greg, you ain’t gonna believe this. I’m not who you think I am.”
“So what are you? A pod person? An android? What?”
I told him.
I told him about my future as I remembered it. I told him about waking up and losing ten years. I told him about Jack Fate, and our little deal.
Then the phone rang.
“Uh huh,” Greg said into the receiver. “Uh huh, yeah, hang on.”
He handed the phone to me. “It’s for you.”
“Hello?” I said.
“Richie, I’m kinda disappointed in you, kid,” Fate’s voice said on the other end. “I hoped you’d hold out longer.”
Panic crept over me. Had I blown it already?
“We had an office pool going about when you’d blab to someone. Do you have any idea how much money you just lost me?”
“Is it over?” I managed to ask.
“Over? Nah, we knew you’d tell someone. You’d explode otherwise. But just this one. Greg is your confidant now. You can talk to him about what you’re going through all you want, but only him. We can’t let it become public knowledge that you can get a second chance at life if you’re just pathetic enough.”
“Thank you,” I said. I’d never been so relieved.
“But Richie?”
“Yeah?”
“Remember the ground rules. No interference beyond how people interact with you. You can’t tell Greg a word about his future. Not a word. We clear on that?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. I’ll check in with you later, kid. Good luck.”
The line went dead.
I looked up at Greg. He had the strangest expression on his face. I didn’t know what Fate told him, still don’t, but he believed my story. We were in this together.
We spent the rest of the afternoon planning my strategy.
School started a couple weeks later. I’d been busy, mostly at the gym, and talking my parents into letting me get contacts. I looked a little better. The blue in my eyes was much more noticeable without glasses, and the daily workouts started trimming my stocky, almost pudgy build into something resembling muscular. I also decided to change my name. “Richie” was a little boy’s name. It was time to move on. From that point forward, I was Rick.
Nazareth Area Senior High School was your typical small town high school. Sprawling, two stories, about the only thing noteworthy at all about it was that the parking lot bordered Mario Andretti’s house. Never saw him in person, though.
Classes my senior year were nothing to get excited about. I’d switched from German to Art as an elective, but the other courses were pretty standard: English, Gym, American Government, etc. One class was kinda cool. “Doc” Holloway, my homeroom teacher and junior year chemistry teacher, selected me along with thirteen others to participate in a college level research science class. We each picked a research topic, spent the whole year doing the work, and submitted a paper as the final exam. Not only were Greg and few other friends of mine in the class, but Doc was a blast. In Chemistry the year before, he somehow always managed to cram a moose into his extra credit questions. Tall, lanky, and the kind of weathered that comes from a lifetime of cigarettes and coffee, Doc was the only teacher in the whole damn school that actually knew how to relate to kids. For the research science course, we actually took class time to watch “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” If anyone asked, Doc said he was using the scene with the witch as an example of how not to think.
As I’d been hanging around with Greg almost exclusively since my second chance began, most of my friends didn’t recognize me on the first day of school. The big unveiling of the New Rick was at lunch...
I was late getting to the lunch line that day, still wandering the halls in kind of a daze, looking at how nothing had changed (well, I know, of course it hadn’t, but I hadn’t seen it in ten years, so give me a break). I made it through the lunch line, the proud recipient of one of those weird rectangular spongy pizzas that are the hallmark of school cafeterias everywhere. Off to the side of the lunchroom, away from the crowd, were my friends.
Seated around the table, from left to right, were:
John Zimmer, aka “Ultraviolence”. As usual, John sat facing the door, just in case terrorists burst in or something. John was lovable and one of the most fiercely principled men I’ve ever known, but he was something of a paramilitary nut. He wore combat boots to school. Not the battered, half-laced punk rock combat boots, mind you. Spit-shined, spotless jump boots. Also, no matter what he wore (usually a t-shirt and khakis), he somehow made it look like a uniform. It’s a factor of his upbringing, I suppose. John’s the only guy I’ve ever known that gives a tour of his house as follows: Kitchen, Dining Room, Armory. They have one entire room of that house lined wall to wall to wall to wall with gun cases. Small wonder John turned out a tad militant. John was tall and stocky, and somehow always gave the impression of fighting fitness in spite of the beginnings of a gut.
Greg, whom you’ve met...
Martha Hill, whom I’d known since my sophomore year in band. I’d always thought she was kind of cute, but never asked her out. She had long brown hair, brown eyes and a really straight nose. Her figure was pretty nice, if a bit stocky. (That’s okay; I’m a bit stocky.)
I walked up to the table, tray in hand. Greg saw me coming, but played it cool. The seat next to Martha was open. “This seat taken?”
As one they looked up at me and did a classic double take. I wish I’d had a camcorder. John was the first to speak up.
“Preston! What the heck happened to you?”
I sat, chewed my pizza thoughtfully before answering. “Why, whatever do you mean?”
“Somebody seems to have had a good summer,” Martha chimed in.
“Gentlemen, and lady,” I added for Martha’s benefit, “there comes a time in a man’s life when he must take stock of himself, and make the changes necessary to survive. The Richie you knew is gone. Rick Preston is here to stay.”
John bounced a roll off my forehead. It’s good to have friends. Keeps you from taking yourself too seriously.
We talked and laughed the rest of the lunch hour. My friends accepted the new me without complaint or resistance. Good thing, too. I’d need the support later.
I caught up with Martha after lunch. My heart was in my throat. I don’t know why, really. I mean, she was just a girl, it’s not like she was going to pull out an AK and mow me down for what I was planning (although she could have gotten one from John, so you never really knew). I was one big bundle of nerves, and trying desperately not to look like it.
“Martha!” I called out in the hall, a little too loud. A few of my peers in the hallway turned to look at me. I swear, a few of them were actually chewing cud.
Martha turned and slowed down for me to catch up with her. “Hi, Richie— I mean, Rick.”
I smiled and gave her a gallant little bow for remembering my name change. A lot of people, particularly teachers, hadn’t caught on yet. “Hi,” I said in return. With such witty repartee, how could she possibly resist me?
“Hi,” she said. Again. This was going to be quite a conversation.
“So,” I continued, “how do you like your classes this year?” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I felt like calling Jack Fate and asking to start over, again. Small talk was something I never did master, and I was way too nervous to just ask her out immediately. So I did the only thing I could: I yammered like an idiot.
“They’re okay,” she said. Of course. She hated them, they sucked. Everyone’s classes sucked. We were still in school, mind you, and very few of us realized how truly easy that was compared to working for a living. We complained with the vigor of those who don’t realize that this is as good as it’s gonna get.
I had to get off this topic, and fast. “Mine too. Say, I was wondering—”
She stopped, mid-hallway, and turned to face me. “Yes?”
My brain short-circuited. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it. You need to keep in mind here that no female ever showed this much interest in “Richie.”
I dove in. “Well, if you aren’t busy Friday, I thought maybe we could catch a movie and maybe some Chinese food.” There. I said it. Not as confidently or emphatically as I might have liked, but you had to give me points for courage if not style.
“I’d love to.”
At that moment, the universe, as a whole, stopped. The hallway fell out of perspective like I was inside a funhouse mirror, and the crowd noise of a couple dozen teenagers between classes abruptly silenced. The only thing I could hear was the blood in my ears, and the only thing I could see was her eyes.
It was a nice moment. It passed.
“Excuse me?” My self-image being what it was, second chance or no, I needed confirmation that I wasn’t just imagining things.
“I said I’d love to,” she repeated. She was very patient with me.
A goofy grin came over me. I tried like hell to stop it, but it wouldn’t be denied. “Good,” I said. “Good, good,” I added, just in case she didn’t hear the first one. “I’ll call you to arrange things.”
“I’d like that,” she added.
“Good,” one more time, with feeling. I turned and started off.
“Rick!” she called.
I stopped and looked back at her, not knowing what to think. Did she still want to talk? Did she want me to walk her to class? Could she not bear to let me leave without a kiss? My mind was all over the map, and nowhere near that messy thing called Reality.
“Don’t you want my phone number?” she asked.
If there had been a nearby black hole handy, I would have gleefully crawled into it. As it was, I walked as nonchalantly as I could back to her and let her scrawl her number on my notebook. I thanked her, told her again that I’d call, then the bell rang.
Saved by the bell. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)
My next class, fortunately, wasn’t a class. It was study hall, but I had a pass for the Senior Center.
This was probably the only cool thing about the whole freaking school. Every morning, Mr. Frederick, head of the Math Dept. and the Senior Class Advisor, made up a limited number of passes for the Senior Center for each period. We swooped down like vultures before homeroom and nabbed a pass for each free period we had. It was first come, first served, and there were always more people wanting passes than passes, but I got there pretty early so I usually got one. Then, when that period rolled around, you had your study hall monitor sign it and off you went.
The Senior Center, in case you were wondering what all the fuss was about, was a lounge reserved only for the senior class. There were couches, recliners, a pool table, a ping pong table, a pretty powerful stereo and a fridge stocked with pretty damn good cream sodas. A wonderful oasis in a sea of dull. Those aforementioned passes were among the most valuable items in school. I actually thought about forging them once or twice, but Mr. Frederick changed the color of the paper daily, taking his cue, no doubt, from Soviet travel papers. It’s a pretty apt analogy.
Since I showed up late, my favorite chair was taken. I usually sat in one of the recliners and read, just relaxing the way you really couldn’t in the library. Today, that would not be the case.
Plan B, then. Pool. I was pretty good, not a hustler by any means, but I won more often than I lost. I grabbed a cream soda and called next game.
Only then did I notice who I’d be playing against. The two guys at the table were John Nardano and Peter Moore.
Moore was a typical Nazareth native. Son of rich lawyers, he dressed impeccably and looked down his nose at anyone not in his clique of yuppies-in-training. Tall, blond, member of the wrestling team (as were all the upper-crust cool guys).
Nardano was a different story. He was an odd mixture, halfway between the Snobs and the vo-tech Gearheads. Popular, but lacking polish. He was about my height and build, dark complexion and long black hair. It wasn’t hard to see him as part of a Mongol horde in a former life. Worse, he and I had been butting heads for the last two years.
When I first showed up at Nazareth, I was a stranger in a strange land. I had moved there from Houston in my Sophomore year, and the culture shock was so intense I never really did recover from it. For instance, in my old neighborhood (actually “da hood”; I was one of like three white kids in the whole school, a big difference from Nazareth, which had one non-white family in the whole town), the current fad was to carry a briefcase. As I parenthetically mentioned (and if you’re one of those people that skips parentheticals, boy are you going to miss a lot of this story), I lived in a poor neighborhood in Houston. Carrying a briefcase to school conveyed a certain importance and respectability. All the cool kids in my Houston high school carried them. It was kinda retro, like cigars and swing in the late 90s. In Nazareth, on the other hand, a briefcase branded me as a geek of the highest order. And one of the most vocal reminders of this was John Nardano.
I sipped my cream soda and watched their game play out. Nardano was in rare form, and sank the eight ball clean while Moore still had five balls on the table.
“Next!” he shouted, chalking his stick.
I stepped up and started racking the balls.
“Ready to lose, Richie?”
I smiled, not letting Nardano’s feeble attempt at psychological warfare faze me. “I’m ready to play, John. And the name is Rick.”
“Dick?”
What came next shouldn’t have happened; I knew better. Still, I really hated the smug bastard.
“No, Rick. With an ‘R’. Dick is your mother’s hobby.”
He was across the table in an instant, going for my throat. I discovered later that his mom had recently been caught having an affair, and that his parents were splitting up over it. At the time, I just thought he was psycho.
I sidestepped and let him crash into the fridge, a big, old steel monstrosity. The crash was face-first, and he’d have a real beaut of a shiner the next day.
I should have left it at that; I should have shut up and walked away. I didn’t.
“Gosh, John, you seem distraught. Did I cut a little too close to home?”
That’s when he swung at me.
It’s important to note at this point that while fighting, even if only to defend oneself, was a guaranteed suspension, there was no adult supervision in the Senior Center. Nardano could do whatever he wanted to me and unless someone ran and got a teacher, it’d be my word against his. I had to handle this on my own.
Nardano’s first punch was wide, uncontrolled. I had to keep it that way; he was a better fighter than I was, and I had to keep him distracted.
“Nice punch, John. Who taught you how to fight, Gandhi?”
Instead of throwing a punch, he lunged at me again, stepping right into my reach. I pegged him in the face with a clean right jab. It took some of the wind out of him, but not enough.
I was starting to get angry too. Three years of social hell began bubbling to the surface, set loose by the adrenaline rush of the fight. “Ain’t so funny now, is it, Nardano? Get used to it, you greasy son of a bitch. I ain’t your whipping boy any more.”
Nardano was incoherent by this point; he just lunged again.
Dumb move. I hit him with another right jab, and while he was fazed, a swift kick in the balls. He doubled over and I finished him off with a left uppercut that I really leaned into.
The fight was over as suddenly as it had started. Nardano was fetal on the floor and moaning, and everyone else was staring mouth agape at me, the puppy everyone felt safe to kick, a puppy that had just grown into a wolf.
I felt like saying something stupid and dramatic, something like, “Anybody else want some?” I didn’t. I walked with calm and deliberate purpose out the door. It wasn’t until I got back to study hall that I started shaking.
I kept a low profile until Friday. There was no backlash I could see from the incident with Nardano. He hadn’t reported me to Piker, the assistant principal, probably because Nardano was ashamed to admit that “Richie” Preston whipped his ass. Privately, just among us kids, he was even more quiet. It seemed he was trying to forget the whole incident ever happened.
The only noteworthy event all week was my call to Martha to arrange our date for Friday night. Ten minutes of stilted small talk to convey “I’ll pick you up Friday at seven.”
Then finally the week was over. It was here. Date Night.
I dressed in my best late-80s chic attire, stone-washed jeans, sneakers and a concert t-shirt. I’d cleaned the car out as best I could, but it still felt like a dorm room on wheels. I showed up at Martha’s promptly at two minutes to seven.
She wasn’t ready.
I’ve since learned that nearly all women do this. I’ve had girlfriends that couldn’t be on time if their lives depended on it, yet would never let me hear the end of it if I were so much as a few minutes late. At the time, I knew only that I’d been prompt, and my reward was to wait in the living room and engage in inane small talk with her dad.
Don’t get me wrong; I kinda liked her dad. He was a single parent and he wasn’t nearly as bombastic as some fathers I’ve seen. The ones that know they can play “good cop/bad cop” with the girl’s mother are much more aggravating. No, Bob Hill was okay. We just didn’t have much to talk about.
Finally, Martha came down. My heart crawled up into my windpipe and tried to suffocate me. She was wearing jeans, a polo shirt with the collar turned up and sneakers, but somehow she managed to look beautiful.
(Of course, I could be biased. This was, after all, my first date in many, MANY years...)
“Hi,” I said. I managed to avoid swallowing my tongue.
“Hi,” she answered. As she stood there, I realized I should have brought something. Flowers. A card. Anything, so long as I didn’t have to stand there like a schmuck. I covered as best I could.
“Ready?”
She nodded, and I led her out to my chariot.
Mary didn’t look like much, but Martha was suitably impressed by the car’s ability to pull her back into the seat. We didn’t talk much on the way to Lehigh Valley Mall. I was too busy driving like a maniac to impress her, and she was probably afraid for her life. We pulled into the mall parking lot between the mall and the theater and she flung open her door.
We saw the movie first. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was, only that it was an action movie. I only know that because during the opening credit sequence there was an on-screen explosion that startled Martha into jumping into my arms. She stayed there pretty much the whole movie, often resting her head on my chest. All I can remember of the experience is the warmth of her body and the smell of her hair.
After the movie we walked across the parking lot to the mall to get some food. On the way I almost took her hand in mine about a dozen times, but I never worked up the nerve to follow through.
We ate at a Chinese dive on the second floor. Small talk, mostly, first date stuff. It occurred to me that even though we’d hung out at school, Martha and I didn’t really know each other that well. We didn’t have the easy rapport I’d hoped we would, and spent most of the evening saying things like, “Oh? Me too...”
The drive home was uneventful. Both of us were tired, both from getting up early that day for school and from the effort of a first date. I walked her to her door, and that’s when it happened.
She kissed me.
We were standing in front of her door, saying goodnight. Out of nowhere she throws her arms around me and hugs me tight (she was a strong girl). Then she kissed me.
Now I’ll grant you it wasn’t a tongue kiss or anything. Just a quick peck, her (closed) lips to mine. It was only noteworthy at all because it had simply never happened to me before.
Immediately afterward she said, “Call me later” in a quiet, breathy voice and vanished inside. I was left wandering back to my car, my mind reeling on several levels.
One, later when? Later that night? Later in the week? Six weeks later? When? (Breathe, Rick, deep breaths...)
Second, and I really shouldn’t have been driving while thinking such things, was that I was reliving the kiss over and over, all 0.7 seconds of it. The soft, velvety texture of her lips, the feel of her body against mine.
As to not endanger the health of my diabetic readers, I’ll stop there, but you get the idea. I was on cloud nine the rest of the night, which was a long one, because I found myself suddenly too happy to sleep.
Needless to say, I wasn’t paying for these romantic excursions with my allowance. I had a part-time job at McDonald’s, the same one I’d slaved away at for more than ten of my years. This gave me an unfair advantage over the other seventeen year old employees, at least the ones that hadn’t been flipping burgers since they were seven. Tough. Life isn’t always fair, or I wouldn’t have needed this second chance. (And yes, I realize the irony.)
It was via McDonald’s that I met (again) Keith. Keith Swanson was one of my best friends my senior year, but the friendship ended suddenly. On our class trip Keith fell in love, lost his virginity and was cheated on within 24 hours. He didn’t take it well. We found his body hanging by his belt in his hotel room that night.
I know this sounds callous, but bear with me. I think that was why I was so alone in 1998. After graduation, everyone who knew Keith (everyone but me) scattered to the four winds. Nobody could get out of that town fast enough. I was the only one with no place to go.
Anyway, back to Keith, the pre-tragedy Keith. He was about my height and build, if a little lighter than me, with curly shoulder-length blond hair and a little peach-fuzz moustache he refused to shave. His assigned nickname (which he hated) was “Flip McSwanson,” a name that pretty much covered his fly-off-the-handle temper and excitability.
We join our hero (me, remember?) while Keith was grilling me (agh! puns!) about my date.
“So? Did you?” he asked, leering in anticipation and grinning that goofy grin of his.
“Did I what?”
“You know...”
“It went well,” I said.
“Well?”
“Good.”
“Good or great?”
“Nice.”
“Aaaaggghhh!”
It went on like that for most of my shift. I don’t know who drove who nuts more.
One interesting thing did happen that day. It’s doubly interesting, considering what happened later...
I was working dress during a rush, meaning that I put all the fixings on the buns while Keith cooked what passed for meat. I don’t know what they use now, but back then McDonald’s used giant clamshell grills to cook. Too much trouble, I suppose, to flip the patties. Either that, or too many of the teeny boppers that worked there couldn’t get the concept. Regardless, they had these huge clamshell grills with big teflon sheets protecting the big upper cooking surfaces. (You still had to squeegee off the gristle, which we called “spoo”, so the teflon was of dubious value.)
Like I said, I was dressing the buns while Keith cooked. I was on the other side of the dressing table. It was a big rush, and we were working like lightning. I pulled twelve hamburger buns out of the toaster and dressed them in about twenty seconds (with ten years of experience, I was fast). Keith scooped up six patties hot off the grill, and turned to slap them on to the buns.
I should note that the kitchen of a fast food restaurant, contrary to popular belief, isn’t the cleanest place in the world. As Keith turned, he slipped on something (grease, water, 100% (yeah, right) beef) and fell backwards.
Into the grill. The clamshell was open, so there was hot metal anywhere his upper body could have gone.
I didn’t think. I lunged forward and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, bracing myself against the dressing table. He screamed (like a girl, but it was understandable), floundered, but didn’t fall.
I saved him. I thought it would be the last time.
Things went well for the next few weeks. I didn’t have any further run-ins with Nardano, and Martha and I went out a few more times, fun, but nothing serious. Then came one of the most treacherous of high school rituals.
Homecoming.
I have to admit, I still don’t understand Homecoming. To me, it’s just another football game (don’t get me wrong, I love football, I just don’t see what makes this one so freaking special). I mean, it’s not as if high school kids need an excuse to party; they kind of do that anyway. So I really don’t understand it. Do high school kids really need a third semi-formal occasion per year (after Prom and Graduation)? I didn’t understand it the first time around, or the second, and still don’t.
Of course, just because I didn’t understand it didn’t mean I couldn’t make the most out of it just the same.
I picked Martha up around four and drove to the game. Kickoff wasn’t until five, but that gave us time to hang out and tailgate a bit. This in and of itself was more interesting than I had anticipated, because I got to talk to a lot of people that either didn’t know or didn’t care that I had existed my first time through the glorious halls of Nazareth Area Senior High.
They noticed me now. Word had spread of my little fracas with Nardano, and the reaction towards me was generally favorable. Turns out I wasn’t the only person he annoyed. Rick Preston was slowly gaining status in the high school hierarchy. (That, and most people finally called me Rick.)
I couldn’t help but notice, however, that while Martha and I were having a good time talking to other people at the game, we said very little to each other. It struck me as vaguely odd, but I was having too much fun to worry about it.
The game was okay. We won 21-17. I probably would have enjoyed it more if not for the fact that there were several guys on the team that I still really disliked, so I was kinda rooting against them. I’m not petty or anything, but I would have been okay with one of my former tormentors breaking an ankle or something.
Okay, maybe I am petty. Sue me.
After the game was the traditional Homecoming Dance. Let me say this up front. I am no Fred Astaire. Heck, I’m no MC Hammer. I’m not even Pee Wee Herman. I used to break dance when I lived in Houston (I’m from “da hood”, remember) but in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, my dancing repertoire consisted almost entirely of what Billy Crystal in “When Harry Met Sally...” referred to as “the white man’s overbite.” Dancing is not, and has never been, my “thing”. When Martha and I stepped into the school gym, my first impulse was to gravitate over to the wall and stay there.
“Rick? What’s the matter?” my lovely date asked.
I stuttered. I stammered. I said several things that may or may not have been in a known, human language.
I was petrified.
Sweet girl that she was, Martha took my hand and led me out onto the dance floor. She began to move with the music, beckoning me to do the same.
I thought, why not? I consider myself to have a pretty good sense of rhythm, I used to be a musician, after all (trombone, baritone horn, guitar and a darn mean kazoo, thank you very much). There was no reason why I couldn’t just let my body move to the music. This was few years before Madonna’s “Vogue”, but I’d already heard it and knew what the Material Girl was talking about. Just dance, dammit.
And I did.
And it was, well, very cool. I had a great time. So great, in fact, that I didn’t notice Martha checking out other guys any more than she noticed me checking out other girls. Still, as the evening wore on, it became obvious that something wasn’t right.
The dance officially ended at eleven, and we all got the school’s version of the “you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here” line known in bars around the world. Martha and I walked out to the car.
“Rick?” she said.
“Uh huh.”
“We need to talk.”
I knew this wasn’t going to be pretty. Nothing good ever follows those words. You never hear, “We need to talk. You just won a million dollars.” It just doesn’t happen. Still, I played stupid.
“About what?”
She leaned against Mary’s fender, and looked great in the moonlight. “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”
“Is one of us going to turn invisible?” I asked.
She smiled, but I could see this wasn’t easy for her, and I wasn’t making it any easier. “You know what I mean, Rick. I like you, but I don’t see this becoming a serious relationship. Something’s missing.”
I won’t lie to you. That hurt. A lot. It’s weird. I was feeling the same disconnection she was feeling, but it didn’t make getting dumped any easier.
“I see,” I said, not really seeing at all. I choked down all the snide, sarcastic comments I had about her relationship crystal ball and held out my hand.
“Friends?”
“Friends,” she said, and shook my hand. We talked as I drove her home, about the game, people at the dance, that sort of thing. It was nice, but there was a difference to it. The presumed intimacy that had been there just the day before was gone. We were just friends. Again. We shook hands again as I dropped her off, not walking her to the door this time.
I cried all the way home.
The next few weeks were somewhat uneventful. No dates, and I actually had to concentrate a little on school. It had been years since I’d used a lot of this stuff, and it did take some effort to relearn it.
The only thing of note, really, was a conversation I had with Martha, of all people. It was after school and I was walking to the parking lot.
“Rick!” I heard behind me.
I turned and saw Martha running up to me. I thought she was as lovely as ever, but no one asked my opinion.
“I was hoping I’d catch you,” she said. “I had an idea.”
What? I wondered. Getting back together? Running away to Vegas?
“I’m all ears.”
“Well,” she began, “I’m on the stage crew for the drama club. Duh, you know that. Way to go, Martha...”
What was going on? I put my hand on her shoulder, very friendly-like. “Calm down, Martha. What do you need?”
“I need you to write a play.”
I was floored. I’d let her read some of my writing while we were dating, and she’d seemed impressed, but I never expected this.
“Excuse me, what?”
“We need a play, Rick. All the stuff we have on hand is tired and old. This is our senior year, our last chance to do something great and different.”
Great and different? Was she forgetting she was in Nazareth? My confidence wasn’t up to this, especially with her.
“I don’t know, Martha—”
“You’re good, Rick. I’ve read your stuff. You can write something for us to perform that turns this school on its ear. I’ve talked it over with the rest of the drama club, and they at least want to give you a chance.”
She had a point. I am good. (And modest, too.) That old feeling was coming over me.
“And it’d be good for you, too,“ she went on. “I’ve been watching, and you don’t seem to have done anything since we broke up.”
“I’ve been busy. Midterms are coming up—”
“And you never study,” she said as she gently placed her palm on my cheek. “Don’t give me that. I know you too well.
“You need this as much as we need it, Rick. Please?”
Maybe I’m a romantic sap, but I couldn’t help but say “Yes.”
She smiled, thanked me and walked away.
That’s when it hit me.
Even though things didn’t work out with Martha, it was for the best. I know people say “it’s for the best” when they really mean “my life sucks; shoot me,” so I’ll explain.
My whole life, I never really had any success with women. This you know. But what that means is that I never understood what it was to be wanted. I’d grown up believing that I was somehow inherently undesirable, and that idea was reinforced by every rejection I got.
But everything was different now. Martha did want me. Just as much as I wanted her. There just wasn’t enough chemistry between us to build a solid relationship. Even though the relationship failed, this time it wasn’t because I was some nerdy schmuck. We were attracted to each other, but it just didn’t work out.
Do you see the importance of that distinction? She wanted me. It was possible, plausible even, for an attractive woman to be attracted to me. That revelation changed my entire attitude around women. No longer was I begging for any attention I could get. All it took was that one good experience to erase a lifetime of rejection.
So thank you, Martha. You changed my life.
It was that time of year. SATs. The test that determines your whole career potential, but hey, no pressure.
The first time I took the SATs, I got a slightly above average score. I’ve always been good at standardized tests, so I really could have got an average score without trying. Martha was right, I never study. I could get a 1200 without ever cracking a test guide. It’s not that I’m that smart, it’s just that I learned early on how to play the numbers on a multiple choice test. Out of the four answers they give you, common sense will tell you that two are just flat-out wrong. Worst case scenario you still have a coin-flip’s chance of picking the right answer out of the other two. Add that to the fact that I read considerably more than most high-schoolers, and I breezed though to something respectable.
But not perfect.
This was another opportunity for me to better my lot in life. I didn’t have the grades or SAT scores in my old life to get a scholarship and I couldn’t afford to pay tuition. I’d seen where just a high school diploma could get me, and it was time to try something else.
This didn’t go unnoticed. My parents, quite frankly, were wondering what the heck was going on.
“Who are you and what have you done with my son?”
I looked up from the test guide I had laid out on the kitchen table. “Hi, Mom.”
She put the bag of groceries down on the counter and stared at me. “I’m serious, Rick. Your dad and I have seen a real change in you the past few months. It’s like you’re a completely different person.”
I leaned back in my chair. This oughtta be good. “Better or worse?”
“Better, of course.” She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. “I’m just proud of you, that’s all. Your father and I were afraid you’d never get your act together.”
If she only knew how very close to the truth that had been. For at least the third time that day, I offered silent thanks to Jack Fate. Of course, I couldn’t tell her any of this.
“Aw, Mom...”
“Don’t ‘aw, Mom’ me. You’ve turned out to be a very responsible, diligent young man, and we’re very proud of you.”
I think I actually blushed.
Yeah, things were going great. I even started writing again. I finally came up with an idea for the play. The main character is just this guy, your typical Joe Average (I even named him that, kinda like the main character in Neal Stephenson’s excellent Snow Crash being named “Hiro Protagonist”), white collar office worker, nothing special. In the play, this guy suddenly gets everything he always wanted, and it ruins his life. I realize that doesn’t sound too cheery, but this is stage drama, I didn’t have to have the Hollywood requirement happy ending. The stage has a long and glorious tradition of tragedies.
I got the idea from one of my favorite sayings. My favorite, for reasons that should be obvious, is Satayana’s “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” My second fav, and the inspiration for the play, is an old Chinese curse: “May your every desire be immediately fulfilled.”
I think humans need strife to thrive. We’re not happy unless we’re struggling. What would happen to someone if they no longer had anything to struggle against?
I don’t know why that idea appealed to me so much, it just did. Maybe subconciously I needed a push, to shake things up a little. Maybe humans really aren’t happy unless something’s going a little wrong.
Maybe that’s why I did what I did next.
It wasn’t all wine and roses for my parents. Even though my life was finally back on track, things weren’t going as well for my sister, Heidi. And I knew they were only going to get worse.
Heidi, at the ripe old age of eleven, had already had a pretty rough life. I mentioned earlier that we were almost the only white kids in our old neighborhood in Houston. Well, she didn’t fare as well as I did. She had some abusive teachers, black women who decided to make an example of the little white girl.
My parents became aware of this abuse and yanked her out of public school and put her in a Lutheran private school. In one of life’s great tragic ironies, the teacher she had there turned out to be not only more physically abusive, but a pedophile to boot. And to make matters even worse, when Heidi first told my parents about what was happening to her, they blew it off. Maybe they were in denial that it could happen again, especially when they were paying for a private school just to prevent exactly this sort of thing. Maybe they thought she was “crying wolf” (Heidi wasn’t the most, er, truthful kid growing up). I don’t to this day really know why they didn’t believe her, but they didn’t. It wasn’t until much later (too late, as it turned out) that they woke up, and only because other kids’ parents began bringing it up. By then, Heidi’s faith in authority figures was completely gone. What her teachers had done to her was bad enough, but the idea that her parents, a kid’s ultimate protectors, believed other kids’ accounts but didn’t believe her own, it was too much to take and still have faith.
Heidi had been a JD-in-training ever since. When we first moved to Pennsylvania, she racked up nearly a thousand dollars in long distance phone bills. She hung out with the local Problem Children, and quickly became one of their leaders. And even though she was only eleven now, I knew her future as well as I knew my past. If someone or something didn’t turn her around, she’d be homeless by sixteen, pregnant by eighteen and presumed dead by twenty.
And even though I rarely said it, I loved my sister. I missed her, and I sure as hell didn’t want to lose her again.
But here’s the thing. It didn’t matter how much I loved her. Heidi and I pretty much got along, as much as siblings six years apart can. Heidi was smack dab in the middle of a crisis of faith, faith in the people that were supposed to love and protect her.
Mom and Dad.
I knew I couldn’t tell them everything I knew of the history of things to come, but, if phrased correctly, how much could a little warning hurt?
I found my Dad out in the garage, building something I couldn’t recognize on his workbench. “Hey Dad, got a minute?”
Dad put down the drill he was using and turned to me. “Sure, Rick. What’s going on?”
Now I had to be careful about this. Just enough to warn him, but not enough to give away what knew about the future. “I wanted to talk to you about Heidi.”
Dad sighed an exasperated sigh I felt sure he had patented. “What’s she done now?”
“Nothing,” I assured him, and quickly. The last thing I wanted here was for him to be on the defensive. “I’m just worried about her, that’s all.”
“Worried?” Great guy, my dad, and very booksmart, but not always the brightest bulb on the tree as far as people were concerned.
“Well, I’m probably going away to college next year, and it’s just going to be her, you and Mom. I know y’all haven’t been getting along so well, and I hoped that would improve before I left.”
“Good luck,” Dad said. “We’ve tried to talk to her, but she’s in her own little world.”
I let out a little exasperated sigh of my own. “I just have this feeling that things are going to get worse instead of better.”
“A feeling?”
“A strong feeling.”
“How strong?”
“A very strong feeling,” I said, as if to a small child. Gadzooks, parents could be such children.
“What gives you this feeling?”
“I don’t really know,” I lied. “That’s why it’s a feeling. Just the same, could you make a little more effort, just try to be there for her, okay?”
Dad looked at me for a long time without saying anything. I don’t know what he was thinking, really. I do know he was listening to his oldest kid trying to tell him how to parent. I don’t know how I would have handled the situation, but Dad did pretty well. When he finally spoke, it was only one word, but he said it with a smile that told me he really meant what he said.
“Sure.”
When I walked back in the house, the phone was ringing.
“Preston residence.”
“Rick, I’m disappointed in you,” Jack Fate said. “We need to talk. You know where.” He hung up.
My heart tried to thump its way out of my chest. I was busted for that? And so quickly? My mind raced all over the map, but somehow I managed to get in my car and drive down to Nazareth News.
Fate leaned in the doorway, reading a tabloid. “You’d be amazed how much of this is true,” he quipped as I staggered over to him. I felt like a death-row convict on that last walk, and I must’ve looked the part. Fate took one look at me and threw away the paper.
“Calm down, Preston. This is only strike two. Walk with me.”
We walked the same path we had a few months before, and Fate still had that same smug smirk.
“That was ill-advised, Preston. I warned you about interfering in the lives of others.”
“But I didn’t tell him anything! It was just a warning!”
“Sure, and if someone had warned JFK that Dallas wasn’t the best place for a convertible motorcade, you think the world would still be here today?”
The implications of what he said sank in on me and gave me a very thorough case of the willies.
“Lemme explain something to you, sport, since you don’t seem to really grok the concept. If you interfere and we revoke your chance, your interference is for nothing. The probability trail you currently inhabit ceases to exist and all of your changes are undone. We dump your conciousness back where you left it, and everything’s the same. Get it?”
“But—”
“No buts, kiddo. The spacetime continuum is not something we let you play with. Your sister’s fate, beyond how she interacts with you, is out of your control. You’re here to fix your life, no one else’s.”
Fate stopped, turned to me, and suddenly looked very, uncharacteristically, serious. “This is your last warning, Rick. One more interference and we will have no choice but to revoke this second chance. There’s only so much I can let slide. I have people to answer to. Are we clear on this?”
I nodded, defeated. “Yes, sir.”
“Any questions?”
I looked up, and he looked different, not smug, not stern. He looked like he cared. I don’t think I could have asked the question if he’d looked any other way. Maybe he knew that.
“Is there any way I can help my sister?”
“I’ve already answered that one, Rick.” He turned and walked away. “Chin up, sport,” he called over his shoulder. “Things aren’t as bad as you think. Remember this conversation.”
He turned a corner, and I ran to catch him. “Wait!” I called. “What did you mean—”
It was no use. He was gone.
I finished my play about a week later. It was the first fictional work I’d ever submitted to anybody, and I’d be lying through my freaking teeth if I said I was happy about it. I was thrilled that I had the opportunity, but I was terrified at the same time.
And this was a play. With a story or a novel, the only person you have to win over with your words is the reader, one reader at a time. Nice, intimate, no pressure. (And with a screenplay, you can be sure that at least a dozen people will rewrite you before and often during filming, so it’s not like many of your actual words end up on screen anyway.) With a stage play, you have a troop of actors memorizing what you write, stage hands building sets for the locations you specify, and most importantly an audience that you have to move, all at the same time. It’s daunting, to say the least.
I actually gave the play to Martha, who forced me to hang out while she read it. I sat and fidgeted while she read, page after page.
Then I saw it. A lone tear, streaking down her cheek.
“Rick, that was beautiful.”
I honestly didn’t know what to say. I was definitely in uncharted territory here.
“Thank you, I guess.”
She leaned over and kissed me. “We’re gonna knock ’em dead. Thank you. You won’t regret this.”
She left then, off to make copies of the play. At the time I had no idea how right she’d be.
Things settled down a little after that. The drama club put my play in production, I got 1430 on my SATs, and classes went on as normal. Not a lot to report on the school front.
At home, on the other hand...
I finally figured out what Fate was talking about regarding Heidi. I couldn’t warn my parents to look out for her, and I couldn’t warn her, but I could warn me. I was forbidden to change the lives of others beyond how they interacted with me. That didn’t mean I couldn’t take her under my wing and look after her myself.
I was pretty proud of the little bit of insight. Like most things in life, however, it was easier said than done.
“Hi, sis,” I said, leaning in her doorway.
She looked at me and turned up her stereo (which was playing Poison, the epitome of big-hair, femme-makeup glam-rock; man, the eighties were weird).
“Got a minute?” I shouted over the din.
She sighed and turned off the music. She knew damn well I wasn’t going away. It occurred to me that annoying her might not be the best way to start this off, but I didn’t have much of a choice.
“What?” My sister had the natural impatience of eleven-year-olds everywhere. Heidi was almost five feet tall, well on her way to five foot two, the tallest she’d ever get. She had shoulder length blonde hair and the standard Preston stocky build.
“I just stopped by to see how you were doing,” I said.
“Did Mom send you in here?” she asked.
“Uh, no, I came in here because I wanted to see how you were doing,” I repeated.
Heidi softened at this, but only a little. “Come on in.”
I walked into the room, shutting the door behind me. Heidi’s room was almost as much a disaster area as mine. Not much in the way of foo foo girl stuff, either. She was pretty much a tomboy, or at least she was back then. Things changed as she got older, but she was eleven when I was in my senior year, and still very much my little sister.
“So what’s up?” she asked.
I didn’t really know what to say, now that was there. I couldn’t tell her everything. How could I prevent the history of things to come without giving away how I knew it?
“I’ve noticed you haven’t been too happy lately,” I said. “I was wondering if you felt like talking about it.”
“To you?”
Man, this wasn’t going to be easy.
“Yeah, to me. Who else is in the room?”
She looked at me skeptically. I’d rarely shown this much interest in her, and this was out of character for me. We were still family, but we hadn’t been friends for a long time.
“Sit down,” she said finally.
We talked for about two hours, about school, Mom and Dad, guys she liked, tons of stuff. It was a great conversation, and I felt like I’d relocated a long lost friend. Granted, that one conversation wasn’t enough to prevent the future I remembered.
But it was a start.
We were well-past midterms by that point, into the home stretch of my senior year. I was caught up in actual school stuff, trying to get good grades this time around, to get offered the scholarships that would give me the ticket of out the Valley that I’d never had before. Yet as I studied, there was a persistent, nagging feeling that I’d forgotten something, something important. And I had.
Then, with only three months left in my glorious high school career, I met her for the second time.
Karen Ferris, the great love of my life.
I was in the lunchroom, clowning around with my buddies. She walked in, gathering information for the yearbook.
My heart stopped. I’d honestly forgotten how beautiful she was, at least to me. Karen was about five foot two, full-figured but fit with shoulder length brown hair and eyes to match. She had a down to earth, girl next door quality to her, and a smile that never failed to reduce me to jelly. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Of course, she didn’t notice me at all. In her timeline, we’d never met. I decided it was time to change that. I stood up.
“Preston?” Ultraviolence called out. “What are you doing?”
I realized I’d trailed off mid-sentence, then started wandering away from the table. Odd behavior, even from me. I also realized I didn’t have an answer to his question.
What was I doing? Karen didn’t know me, and it would sure as hell freak her out if I just walked up out of the blue and acted as if she’d been one of the most important people in my life. I had to approach this a little less directly than my usual “bull in a china shop” approach.
I had to be smooth.
Which was the one thing I was totally, completely incapable of.
I walked over to her. Calm, casual.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.”
And I was stuck. It was my first date with Martha all over again. Total brain lock when faced with a pretty girl.
“You’re on the yearbook committee, right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she answered.
Argh! This monosyllabic conversation was going nowhere, and she was starting to look over my shoulder, a sure sign that she was losing interest. I had to do something that would get her attention, something that would make me stick out.
But I couldn’t. I ended up doing the only thing I could think of.
“Rick Preston,” I said as I thrust out my hand.
She shook it. Her hand was warm and soft, just as I remembered. “Karen Ferris.”
I opened my mouth to say something else, I didn’t really know what, anything to keep the conversation going, but I didn’t get the chance. The bell rang, and she turned to leave.
“See you later,” she said as she walked away. I watched her go. I didn’t even notice Ultraviolence standing behind me until he handed me my backpack.
“Rick? You okay, man?”
I took my backpack from him, never taking my eyes off her retreating form. “Yeah, John,” I said. “I think I am.”
“The Chinese Curse on Joe Average” opened that week. There was some politically correct chest-thumping over the title, but we still opened to a packed house. I sat towards the back, you know, just in case the audience started throwing fruit or something. The lights went down, the curtain went up, and the show started.
It’s a simple story, really, and I’ve already told you the premise: a normal guy suddenly gets everything he’s always wanted, and it ruins his life. He gets the blond bombshell, only to discover not only that he can’t stand her shallow, gold-digging personality, but that she keeps him from getting the plain, warm-hearted woman he previously ignored. He gets his dream job, with a six-figure salary, only to find out he’s not willing to do the sort of cutthroat things required to earn that much dough. He gets the import sports car he always wanted, only to find himself taking the bus half the time because it’s in the shop. Things get worse and worse until the third act, when he decides to make the sacrifices necessary to get his old life back. The play is about the choices we make, and how often the things we think we want are simply what society tells us we should have, not what would actually make us happy. I’ll try to make the full text of the play available, for those of you that are interested.
There, in the school auditorium on opening night, I split my attention. I watched the play, obviously (the Drama Club did a great job with the production; exactly how I envisioned it). I also watched the audience, my peers and their parents. I watched with growing awe as something extraordinary happened.
They loved it.
Several of the girls and more than a few of the women were actually in tears at the end. The crowd rose to a standing ovation with thunderous applause. The cast came out for their curtain call, accompanied by Mr. Applegate, the director. He raised his hands to quiet the crowd.
“Most of the time, high school plays are easily produced, familiar standbys, ‘Our Town’, things like that. This play was different. Tonight was the world-premiere performance of an original work by one of our very own students. Let’s hear it for our resident playwright, Rick Preston! Come on up here, Rick!”
I stepped out into the aisle, and the audience started clapping again. They clapped as I walked to the stage, and they clapped as I took a bow with the cast. It was the greatest moment in my life.
And it was only the beginning.
The next day started well and got better: word got out about the play, and I was getting congratulations from people who hadn’t even seen it (yet). I was on top of the world.
Then Karen stopped me in the hall.
“Rick!” she called out between periods three and four. I was on the way to study hall, but you probably realize I would have stopped on the way out of a burning building to talk to her.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were a famous playwright?” she asked as she caught up to me.
I shrugged, as casually as possible. “I wasn’t famous then.”
“Very funny,” she said. “Well, I just wanted to tell you that I thought the play was wonderful. You’re a great writer.” She turned to go.
I don’t know what came over me, but I had to stop her. “Karen, wait!”
She turned and looked at me with a welcoming, expectant look in those beautiful brown eyes. As encouraging as it was, I almost faltered. This was still very unfamiliar territory.
“Would you like to go get some sodas or something after school? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the play.”
She smiled. “That sounds nice. I’ll meet you right here after school.” She turned and rushed off, trying to get to her next class before the bell.
I didn’t care about being late. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember a damn thing about the rest of that school day.
I met Karen after school as planned. We walked out to my car, the spring sun shining down and reflecting off her hair.
It all came rushing back to me, then. Spending Midsummer’s with her at a local park, our Dead Poets meetings the summer after graduation (“Dead Poets Society” was a very popular movie for artsy types like us that year), just driving around with her on a lazy summer day. Memories of the best days of my life, and memories of doing things with her that she hadn’t actually done yet. It was almost overpowering. As it was...
“Rick?”
I snapped out of it. We were standing by my car, but I hadn’t unlocked it yet.
“Are we going?” she asked.
I shook it off and unlocked the car, opening her door before walking around to my side. When I got in and fastened my seatbelt, I noticed her staring at me, a quizzical look on her face.
“What?” I asked, as casually as I could given the circumstances.
“Why were you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“You looked sad, like you’d lost something.”
I shook my head and smiled. “I almost did. Don’t worry about it. It’s just been a very long day, and I’m probably not making a lot of sense.”
She nodded and sat back, content to let the matter drop for the moment.
We drove over to the Perkins on Route 191, not far from the McDonalds where I worked. We sat and ordered sodas, and I tried think of something to say.
Fortunately, she started. “So where did you get the idea for the play?”
“There’s a guy that sends ideas through the mail,” I quipped. “Three for ten bucks.”
That didn’t go over well.
“Sorry,” I said. “Pet peeve of writers. I don’t know where it came from, really. I just started wondering one day what would happen to someone that got everything they always wanted. You know what they say, ‘be careful what you wish for, you might get it’.”
“So do you think it’s always bad to get what you want?”
I honestly didn’t know how to answer that. She was looking over her glass at me, playing with her straw. It certainly felt like she was flirting with me, but I couldn’t force my mind to believe that. Karen never saw me as more than a friend in the past as I remembered it.
“Not always, but it can be dangerous if you aren’t ready for it,” I said. “For example, suppose you won the Pulitzer your first year out of college. Not only would you not have anywhere to go from there but down, but imagine the expectations on you from then on.”
Karen didn’t answer me; she just sat and stared. I started to wonder if I had something between my teeth.
“How did you know I wanted to be a journalist?” she finally asked.
That’s when it hit me; I didn’t, at least not in this timeline. I knew all her hopes and dreams, but only through what she’d confided in me in another life. This time around I wasn’t supposed to know those things yet.
“I just assumed,” I lied. “You work on the yearbook, the school paper, it just seems like that’s the direction you’re headed.” She nodded, but gave me the same look I’d gotten in the car. I’d really have to watch my step.
“So what if you are ready?” she asked, getting the conversation back on track. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention.
“Ready?”
“Yeah. What if you get what you’ve always wanted right when you’re most able to handle it?”
I shrugged. “Then you’re better off than most people, I suppose. I never said it was universally destructive to get what you want, just that most people don’t really know what they want enough to make an informed decision.”
“So,” she said as she stood up from the booth, “if I want to get up and walk around here, sitting down next to you, do you think that’s an informed decision?”
Frankly, I can’t believe I was capable of carrying on the conversation at this point.
“That depends on what you really want.”
She looked me right in the eyes then, and I saw something there I’d never seen before: a longing, a desire. I could have died happy right then and there and never looked back, existing for all eternity in that moment.
Karen, one of the boldest women I’ve ever met, continued on. “I want to know you, Rick Preston.”
I returned her gaze and we simply sat there a moment, our eyes locked. Finally her nerve gave out and she looked away. “We ought to go,” she said. “I have homework to do.”
She stood up and I followed suit. I threw some cash on the table and headed for the door. On the way out, she took my hand in hers.
“Hey, hotshot.” The words were a challenge, probably a drunken one.
We’d just walked out into the Perkins parking lot. It was dark by then, and I didn’t notice John Nardano until we’d passed him. At first I tried to ignore him.
“You heard me, hotshot.” Nardano lurched into view, illuminated by the lights of the parking lot. There was a fire in his eyes that I hadn’t seen since the fight in the senior center, months before. The incident obviously hadn’t slipped his mind as easily as it had mine.
“You’re a pretty big man now, huh, Richie? Real important, everybody talking about how great you are.” He looked me up and down before continuing. “I don’t think you’re so goddamn special. You’re still the nerd you always were.”
It hit me then why he’d fallen out of my head so easily. Since our little skirmish, Nardano had almost fallen off the face of the Earth. No one talked about him, no one hung out with him, no one noticed him. He’d become the outcast I’d been, living in disgrace on the periphery of high school society.
Too damn bad.
“Problem, John?” I asked as sweetly as I could.
As I would have expected had I cared enough to notice, this just made him madder.
“Yeah, I got a problem,” he said as he lurched closer. “You.”
As he came closer, I tensed up. I wanted to take him on. I wanted to finish what we’d started in the Senior Center. With an intensity that still scares me to this day, I wanted to make him pay for the years of hell I’d endured. My fists clenched, my blood boiled, and I started to meet his challenge.
Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Karen. Her eyes were wide, her mouth agape. She looked at us with a mixture of fear and revulsion, and I caught myself.
See, Karen was about as big a pacifist as they come. I knew if I did this, she wouldn’t want anything to do with me.
I looked at Nardano, then down at my clenched fists. then back to Karen, and finally back to Nardano. I was better than this. Better than him. I took a deep breath and relaxed my hands.
“Go sleep it off, Nardano. I’m not looking for a fight.”
“Maybe I am!” he shouted, then he lunged at me.
He must have been drunk, because I dodged him even more easily than I had in the Senior Center. He flailed around and came back for another pass. I didn’t want to fight back, but I knew he wasn’t going to quit until he was beaten, or had taken his pound of flesh, whichever came first. I had to end the fight, and if I wanted to keep Karen, I had to do it without fighting.
“John, don’t do this,” I said. “Just go home.”
He ran at me again, and I side-stepped as expertly as a matador. He plowed into the side of a car, clanging off the metal and opening a nasty gash on his forehead.
“You smug little prick,” he muttered. “I’ll kill you.”
That was enough for me. Threatening bodily harm was legally considered assault. I turned to Karen. “Go inside and call the cops.” She turned and ran inside without a word. Thankfully, Nardano didn’t try to stop her.
“Pretty brave, Richie,” he slurred. “Send your little bitch to call the cops on me. You never did have the guts for a fair fight.” He reached into his jeans pocket, and I had a cold suspicion what he was going for.
The knife gleamed in the lights of the parking lot. I still had the edge over him in speed and dexterity, but the knife was big enough that he didn’t have to be that precise to do me some real damage. I went into a knife-fighter’s crouch and waited for him to attack.
He lurched forward, the knife slashing out recklessly. I parried the strike off to the side, then moved my other hand behind his head and threw him into the car behind me. He dropped the knife as his face bounced off the steel fender, and I kicked it across the parking lot. Karen’s good nature was infectious, and I didn’t want the police to find him with a deadly weapon.
Nardano stood back up and faced me. He was a mess. Blood ran down his cheek and his eye was swelling shut. I could hear sirens in the distance. “You miserable little bastard,” he spat. “You...”
He fell forward and landed on the pavement with a thud. I looked up as the police pulled into the parking lot, and stepped away.
“Put your hands up and back away!” shouted the first officer to get out of the car. I did as I was told.
“Wait!” I heard Karen’s voice from behind me. “That’s the wrong guy! You want the one on the ground.” She ran in front of me and pointed at Nardano.
To make a long story short, there was some confusion on the part of the cops, especially since I was untouched and Nardano had really done a number on himself. Karen eventually convinced them that Nardano was the attacker, her take on the events backed up by several Perkins employees that had watched the non-fight through the window. In the end, the cops looked at me, shrugged, and stuffed Nardano into the back of the cruiser. They didn’t see the knife, and I wasn’t compelled to point it out. A few minutes later, they were gone and Karen and I were alone again in the parking lot. I walked her over to my car.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For not making things worse,” she said. “I know you could have wiped the floor with him, but you didn’t. It took a lot of courage and maturity not to sink to his level.”
We got in the car, and I started driving her home. “Maybe I’m growing,” I said, and flashed her my winningest smile. I think she actually liked it.
The rest of the school year went by pretty fast. Karen and I kept dating, and she got accepted into Clarion University, home of Pennsylvania’s best journalism program. I breezed through finals, ending take two on my senior year with a 3.76 GPA. Graduation was right around the corner, “Batman” and “Dead Poets Society” were about to hit the theaters, everything was good.
That’s how it snuck up on me. The one event I’d dreaded all year.
The class trip.
I showed up at the school at the appointed time to get on the bus. It was a two hour drive to Pine Grove, New York, an upstate resort where we were to have three days of non-stop fun. This time around was better because I sat with Karen the whole way, talking, laughing, holding hands. All in all, the best bus ride I’d ever had.
The resort itself was the same hole I remembered. The first time around, we’d taken to calling it the “Class Trip to Hell” even before the unfortunate incident with Keith. The resort was run-down, cheap and in the middle of nowhere. We went to our rooms and put our stuff away, then we all met back in the lobby to decide what to do next.
I was rooming with Keith, which just made the whole experience harder on me. I was trying to have a good time, but every moment that I didn’t have Karen to distract me, my mind drifted back to the terrible sight of Keith swinging from the ceiling, his belt around his neck. I desperately wanted to warn him, to do something to avert the tragedy, but Fate was very specific about his warning. Not only would warning Keith (or anyone else) be my third strike and revoke my second chance, but it would be ultimately futile anyway as the timeline in which I warned Keith ceased to exist. He’d die anyway, but it would be in a space-time continuum where I was a twenty-seven year old burger-flipping loser. There was nothing I could do but wait for it to happen.
We went downstairs and met with Bert (short for Roberta) and Laura. Laura was a friend of Bert’s, and Bert was a friend of Karen’s and Greg’s next-door neighbor. Along with me, Keith, Greg, Karen, Zimmer and Roy Frey, a distant friend of mine and Greg’s, we had quite a little group going. We just had to find something to do.
That was a bigger problem than you’d think. While we’d been led to believe Pine Grove was a upscale Catskills resort, it was more like summer camp. We decided to go swimming, not because we really wanted to, but because the alternative was playing pinball in the arcade next to the gift shop.
I have to say Karen looked stunning in her swimsuit, a one-piece blue number that really showed off her figure. Unfortunately, I couldn’t give her my full attention. Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, I was too busy watching Keith and Laura.
Keith was really laying on the charm, and Laura was eating it up. She looked so into him, it wasn’t hard to believe that he’d get—
“Hello? Rick? Anybody home?”
I turned to find Karen standing in the water next to me, arms akimbo. I’d apparently trailed off from whatever I was saying to watch Keith.
“Sorry, Karen. I didn’t meant to—”
“You developing a thing for Laura?” She said it jokingly, but I could tell she didn’t really want to hear the answer if it was the wrong one.
“No, but Keith sure is. Look at him over there. Mister Smooth.”
“And this distracts you because?” she asked.
“I’m just happy to see him doing well with a woman,” I lied. “He usually doesn’t have any better luck that I do.”
Karen put her arm around me and pulled me closer. Her tight swimsuit left very little to the imagination. “Oh, I don’t know, Rick. I can see you getting very lucky real soon now...”
Keith who?
Karen and I left the pool not long after, got dressed and went for a walk. For all the badmouthing I’ve done of Pine Grove, I’ll say this: the woods around the resort were very romantic. It was a nearly full moon that night, and there was plenty of light. We walked hand in hand, just chit-chatting at first, but the farther we walked from the resort and our classmates, the more serious the conversation became.
“I’m thinking of going to Clarion next year,” I ventured.
She stopped and looked at me without saying a word. I didn’t really know how to read that, so I kept going.
“They have a really good writing program, and I’d like to get a little more seasoning before I start trying seriously to get published.”
Still nothing, but her eyes looked a little moist. Could have been a trick of the moonlight.
“Plus,” I went on, going for broke, “we can be together—”
She jumped into my arms then, and kissed me more passionately than she ever had before. I kissed her back, and the night melted away...
When we finally made it back to the resort, things had changed. Not only for us, but for everyone.
Karen and I were now definitely a couple. We’d gone from beyond dating to planning on spending at least the next couple of years together. We walked back with our arms around each other, only to find out that we weren’t the only ones with news. Greg met us in the hall as we made our way to my room.
“Looks like everyone’s getting romantic,” he said.
I gave Karen a little squeeze and asked Greg what he meant.
“Word on the street is that Keith got lucky with Laura.”
The color drained out of my face. I forgot. I forgot what was happening outside my own little world. “Where’s Roy?” I asked.
Greg looked a little confused at the question. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Thanks, man,” I said as I patted Greg on the shoulder and ran the rest of the way back to the room. Karen ran behind me.
“Rick? What’s going on?” she asked as I opened the door and found my and Keith’s room empty. I looked around quickly, and was out the door almost as she was trying to get in.
“I’ll explain later!” I said, running down the hallway. “Come on!”
We raced around the resort, but the instant I found Roy standing in the arcade, playing pinball, I knew I was too late. Laura was standing right next to him, just like she had ten years before from my perspective. “We’re too late,” I said to Karen.
“Too late for what?”
I steered Karen clear of the arcade, and walked her outside. “Your friend Laura has been very busy this evening,” I said. “First she helped Keith lose his virginity, and now she’s gone and had sex with Roy, too.”
“What? How could you know that?”
That’s when it hit me. What was I doing? I was coming dangerously close to interfering, to losing my second chance, to losing Karen. I knew that any interference would be futile, so what the hell was I doing? Was I really ready to blow everything to save a friend I couldn’t really save anyway? Knowing that I couldn’t really save him, would it be so bad to stand aside and let events run their natural course?
Knowing I’d lose everything if I tried to save him and fail anyway, could I watch a friend die?
I made my decision. “I know the same way I knew you wanted to be a journalist. Come on, we’ve got to find Keith.”
We’d no sooner turned around that we literally ran into Greg. I helped him up and started running. Greg and Karen rushed to keep up.
“What’s the hurry?” Greg called out behind me.
I talked over my shoulder as I ran. “Keith lost his virginity to Laura this evening, who turned around and slept with Roy. When Keith finds out, he’s going to try to commit suicide.”
“What?” both Greg and Karen replied.
I stopped at the pool, hoping Keith would be somewhere familiar. “You heard me,” I said. “We have to find him before it’s too late.”
“Rick,” Karen said, “I know he’s your friend, but you can’t know he’d take it that hard—”
“He knows,” Greg interrupted. “If that’s what Rick says is going to happen, then it’s going to happen.”
“Unless we stop it,” I amended.
Greg put a restraining hand on my arm and looked me right in the eye. “Are you sure you have to do this?” He realized what this was going to cost me. And I knew this was my last chance to back out.
“Yeah, I have to. Now where would he be?”
“Hey, guys, what’s going on?” We turned to see Zimmer walking towards us, looking, as ever, the epitome of combat readiness, even on vacation.
“We’re looking for Keith,” I said.
“I saw him just a little while ago. I think he was headed back to the room. He looked pretty upset.”
The room. The same room we’d found him swinging in so long ago.
Could I possibly be too late again?
We burst into the room just in time to catch Keith tying his belt to the ceiling fan.
“Don’t come any closer!” he screamed.
I screeched to a halt, John, Karen and Greg piling up behind me.
“Stay back,” Keith pleaded. “You don’t understand...”
I held my hands up and spoke in my most soothing voice. “Yes, we do. We know about Laura, and we know how you feel.”
“Bullshit!” he said. The tears were really starting to flow. “She was my... and she...”
I noticed John coordinating as he and Greg moved slowly out to the sides. Good old Ultraviolence, treating everything as a military exercise. Fortunately, Keith was too distraught to notice.
“Keith,” I said as I moved very carefully towards him, “she’s not worth it, man. Come down from there.”
“Stay back!” he screamed as he put the belt around his neck. “Don’t come any closer!”
I risked a quick glance at John, and he answered me with a nearly imperceptible nod. I looked back at Keith.
“Now!” I shouted, and we all rushed Keith at once. He tried to block Greg, who got to him first, but John and I tackled him and threw him to the bed. John had the belt off his neck before I even had a chance to look for it, and I realized he must have also ripped it off the ceiling fan. For all our ribbing of his paramilitary interests, the man was good.
Keith cried quietly as we held him down. He kept asking “how could she do this to me?”, but he didn’t fight back or try to get away. He’d have some issues with women for a while, but the worst was over; he was going to be okay.
We saved him.
We spent the rest of the night watching him, one of us sitting with him in shifts while the rest of us partied in the next room, celebrating and jumping on the beds like little kids. Karen never looked so beautiful as she did that night.
It was a good day. It was the last I’d spend in that probability line.
I woke up the next morning, not in a hotel room in upstate New York, but in my own bed, back in Nazareth. I peeked under my loft bed and saw my 1996 vintage computer, and I saw the titles of books on the bookshelf that hadn’t even been written, much less published, when I graduated high school.
I hopped out of bed and turned on my PC, checking the system date. It was the day after the last day I remembered in this timeline, the morning after I cried myself to sleep. I was right back where I started.
Sort of. Even though everything was the same, something was different. It took a few minutes to realize it was me. No matter where I looked, I didn’t see the same bleak futureless hell I remembered. I was ready to move on.
I got dressed, went out to my battered, black Chevette, and drove down to Nazareth News.
Jack Fate was standing exactly where I knew he would be, leaning against the wall outside of the store and reading a tabloid. He put down the paper as he saw me approach.
“Sorry, kid, but that was strike three. I told you before, I have people to answer to.”
I stuck out my hand, and he looked at me a little oddly before shaking it. “I wanted to say thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome, Rick. Or is it Richie?”
“It’s still Rick,” I said.
“What are you thanking me for?” he asked.
“For giving me this opportunity,” I said. “I don’t know what else to say. You’ve given me a gift I can’t ever repay you for.”
“But you lost everything. You’re right back where you started.”
“Am I?”
I think Fate started to see it, then. The change. I wasn’t the same person he first spoke to in that newsstand. “You feelin’ okay, kid?” he asked.
“Better than I have in years.”
He looked at me again with a look of utter confusion. Then, just before he turned and walked away, he smirked.
I still don’t really know what that meant, but I have a theory. I think things worked out exactly the way the fates wanted them to. I don’t think the intent was ever to let me start over, but rather to give me the life lessons I’d missed the first time around.
I’ll never know for sure. Fate walked down the sidewalk, turned a corner, and was gone. I never saw him again.
There isn’t much more to tell. I quit my job at McDonald’s that afternoon. Stemple couldn’t believe it, and I heard that he ended up leaving not long after I did amidst accusations of a sharp drop in production.
I went to a nearby Burger King, applied for and got an assistant manager position that I used to get my own place and work my way through college. I eventually got a degree in theoretical physics (no one gets a degree in writing, and besides, I have a special interest in the nature of time) and I met a girl who was mind-numbingly foolish enough to agree to spend the rest of her life with me. I think she was serious about it, because we’ve been together twenty-three years, and our son is about to graduate from high school himself. I even tracked down my sister, who now has a family of her own in California.
It’s been a great life, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Yet still, I wonder. Was this what Fate had in mind all along? Or, since I did wake up the next morning, was it all an extraordinary dream (my wife’s favorite theory)? What would have happened if I had decided not to save Keith? Did any of it really happen at all?
It’s probably for the best that I don’t know. I love my life just the way it is.
This eBook is HonorWare. If you read it and enjoy it, you are obligated to pay for it (and if you don’t like it, consider this a pre-emptive money-back guarantee; I only get money if you like the book). I’ve made paying as easy as possible. All you have to do is go to click on the link below to PayPal.com and email five US dollars ($5) to do_over_story@yahoo.com. Thank you for your support.