by Nat Fladager
Chase fidgeted and didn’t meet my eyes.
“Can I finish my cereal?” I asked, scraping the barrel.
He nodded and his tenseness loosened. “Yeah, of course.”
He made himself a bowl and we ate together. I surveyed his place achingly and noticed how barren it was. Just his big bed, a computer, a bottle of something on the counter gathering dust. There were no pictures hanging, no dog or cat, no home sweet home. His old bedroom was messy and cluttered with posters of bands and lovingly-used skateboards. He changed so much but, of course, it felt that way to me who was not here to see him gradually morph.
“Are you in love with someone else?” I pried while Chase washed our dishes.
He breathed in deeply and set his hands on the edge of the sink, the water running. “Why would you ask that?”
“Just tell me.” I insisted. “Please.”
Chase turned to me, drying his hands on his boxers. “No. There is no one else. Okay, Hailey, it’s time to go home now.”
I agreed and left, sad to go but happy with his answer. Even if he would never love me again, at least he wouldn't love anyone else. At least, one of us can say that.
12
I’ve seen lots of things I wish I hadn’t. My mom cry when my dad didn’t come home for dinner. My dad in a station wagon with another woman. My grandmother move into a nursing home. The willow tree at Rhino Park cut down. A naked stranger lying next to me in my dorm room bed. A second then third piercing in my left ear. A fire at the sunflower field where I used to romp around.
Maybe if I got to experience these events in the correct order they wouldn't weigh on me this much. If I didn’t have to flop between the scorched sunflower field and the golden one. But knowing things before they happen changes everything. I don’t mean to, but I have a chip on my shoulder. I hold things against people before they do the things I hold against them. Like Chase. Like dad. And myself. Still, there’s a part of me that forgives and forgets. Every time I go back and every time I go forward, I am there, even if only partially.
13
Julie drove us to the Loch Ness Monster gig up in Chico. She said she had a thing for the drummer and that’s why she borrowed her mom’s velour crop top from the nineteen seventies.
“You look cool,” I complimented her as I sat shotgun. Julie applied lipstick while she drove. “I’m sure he’ll notice you.”
I didn’t notice if the drummer noticed Julie but I did notice Chase noticing me. I was the perfect age and his feelings for me were changing. I had worn glitter eyeshadow for his sake. I could barely see the sparkle but all that mattered was if he could.
“Hey, Hailey.” He found me at the bar after their set. His hair was sweaty against his forehead. “Can I buy you a beer?”
“Yes, please.”
We cheersed and drank our lagers in silence, our body language doing all the talking.
I noticed a scrape on his arm and that it was bleeding. I pushed up his sleeve to expose it. “Ouch. That must hurt.”
“I hadn’t even noticed. Tough skin.” He grins.
I blotted the blood with a bar napkin.
“Thanks.” He gazed at me. I willed my sparkles to sparkle bright. “Hey, do you maybe wanna go outside?”
I nodded and he guided me out of the dim dive bar. We sat atop a bench under the starlight and above cigarette butts and bottle caps. He is so young here. His muscles developing. The scant pockmarks on the lower portion of his cheek. His hair sun-bleached, the color of straw or the white parts of an orange.
“Loch Ness Monster is my favorite band,” I speak up.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I’m flattered. I always thought you liked those boy bands.”
“I never liked those.”
His eyes crinkle with laughter. I push him and he boomerangs back to me.
“I have something for you.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a plastic coin-machine container. “I thought you would like it. I don’t know.”
I uncap the top and a ring tumbles out. It’s the daisy ring I’ve worn many times before...I mean after.
“Thank you.” I slip it on, realizing how much it means to me. “I do like it.”
Chase leans forward. He drums on my bare knee. I look down and he looks up.
“There you are.” Julie interrupts us. She’s crying and tugging her crop top to elongate. “He’s with someone else in there,” she vents. “I’m going to die.”
I hop off the bench and give her a hug. Chase motions that he’s heading back inside. I mouth to him that I’m sorry. He shakes his head that I shouldn't be. I lift my hand up and smile at my ring. He smiles and then mouths something to me. It looks like I love you but I know that is impossible since at this point, we aren’t even girlfriend and boyfriend.
14
I’m either here or there or in limbo. That’s how it feels when I’m at college and Chase is my ex-boyfriend and Micah is a figment of the future. I urge myself to not make any moves, but there’s a part of me that is comfortable at every age Warp drops me in.
I cry over myself and the choices I make but I can’t help making them. I am a mix of all mes, a punch bowl of maturity. I go to parties and laugh at dumb things. I kiss boys and dance to bad music. I tell my friends about Chase but act like he’s not the love of my life. I join the intramural racquetball team and study for exams. I grow up and adult. Deep down, I realize there is more to me, but the more gets buried beneath where I can’t reach it, at the times when I need it the most. Warp is changing me at a rate I can’t control and I’m afraid that eventually I will become it and no longer me.
15
I eat lunch on the steps. The wind blows through my hair and rattles my flimsy heart. I see Chase walking across campus, past the bike racks, the same breeze sweeping across me sweeping over him. In a perfect world, he would come sit next to me and share my Fruit Roll-Up, but I know the world is not perfect.
He’s avoided me since first period and even before that, I knew how today was going to go. My body told me as I crawled out of bed. My mom told me by her pile of silver dollar pancakes. Julie literally told me as we drove to school. Chase and I weren’t together and we haven’t been since this time last year.
I pull the crust off my sandwich. Chase continues his journey towards me. I yearn to run to him, to crawl my Warp-lagged body into his warm spaces. In the past, I could have. In the deeper past, he would have kept me company. Yards away, he catches my stare. He can barely look at me. I can tell how much he wishes I wasn’t in front of him.
Momentarily, he lingers before dropping his skateboard and skating off. I feel hollow, like a chocolate Easter bunny. I don’t know why he broke up with me. I’ve spent hours going over the endless possibilities, all the reasons that would make him change his mind. It could be another girl or many, or something I said or did. It could also be that it was all in my head, that I loved him much more than he loved me, or even at all.
16
“Can we go somewhere?” I ask Micah at sunrise.
“Anywhere,” he answers, wrapping himself around my finger.
We eat gas station donuts for breakfast and listen to oldies while we drive north. Micah asks me questions I can answer and it’s nice to be able to talk. I allow myself to observe him today, guilt-free. His wavy hair and long legs, his sleepy eyes and wrinkled t-shirt. He clasps my leg and I don’t mind that he does.
In the afternoon, we emerge in Whistler, Canada. Micah takes pictures of us. He takes the one I’ve seen in his living room. We get a hotel room and drink pink champagne that sounds like Rice Crispy cereal and tastes like strawberry Pop-Tarts.
“Let’s sneak into the hotel pool,” he insists after we are tipsy. “It’s after hours but who cares?”
“I didn't bring my swim suit,” I say.
“Me either,” he says.
I stand on the concrete and watch as Micah strips down to his boxer briefs then cannonballs in
to the water. “Chicken,” he taunts me, splashing water at my feet.
I walk to the edge and dip my big toe in. He swims up to me and tugs at my foot. “Come on, beautiful,” he coaxes. “Take a chance.”
I take off my clothes and dive in, meeting Micah under the water. With my skewed sensations, the pool feels waterless. We swim around the deep end, swirling in the fluorescent lights. Micah smiles and bubbles rise to the top. He swims to me and takes me to the surface.
“Hello.” He pushes the hair out of my eyes.
“Hi.” His cheeks are flushed from the Champagne we had earlier. I touch them to see if I can feel their heat.
“I feel different with you,” I confess. “Almost like it’s too good to be true.”
“But it is true. I love you. I have since the day I met you.”
How could I make such an impact on Micah? He loves me. He has since the day we met. Doesn’t he see how stupid I can be and how juvenile I act? I’ve seen women look at him. The students at the university practically drool when he walks by. Doesn’t he notice how my knees overextend and that I never do my hair? Isn’t he grossed out by the pimple on my chin and upset that I can’t cook?
Micah dries me off with a fluffy hotel towel and we walk back to our hotel room. “Are you tired?” he asks.
“Yes,” I answer. I sit on the bed and he sits next to me, our dampness colliding. “But I don’t feel like going to sleep. At least, not yet.”
17
Today is high school graduation and my gown is three inches too long. My mom has a Polaroid and my dad isn’t there. I am melancholy and too young to graduate.
Chase brushes my arm accidentally as we pass ways to our seats. I look at him, into his grayed-out blue eyes, but he doesn’t look into mine.
“Chase Morgan,” they call him to the stage. He accepts his diploma and walks on.
“Hailey Nash.” They call me. I trip over the extra fabric and toss my tassel to the left.
18
I could take advantage of time traveling. Lottery tickets and high-stakes sports bets. I could stop my dad from his affair and Julie from her countless faux pas. When I’m fed up, I juggle with this concept. But I don’t trust it or myself. I don’t know myself. I wasn’t there to grow up.
I am probably the most boring time traveler there is, if there is anyone else, but one thing I miss most about my old life is the ability to be bored. Watching TV and wasting time at Rhino Park. Spending evenings helping my mom knit a blanket for charity and playing chess with my dad before he fell asleep in the recliner. I used to sneak out and watch Chase and his friends at the skate park because they were rebels and skated after midnight. I would sit in the grass a good distance off and watch him bomb 180’s and I would imagine how our life might turn out. Kissing at the lockers. Going off to college together. Backpacking across Europe, unable to keep our paws off each other. I liked daydreaming because I knew it was only a fantasy. I had years ahead of me and time to figure it all out. I had time to think about how I wanted my life to turn out. I had time to be bored.
19
I’m freaking out but I hide it under a fake smile.
“Happy anniversary, Hailey.” Micah gives me a peony.
I accept the flower and bury my fake smile into the silky middle. I feel uneasy, not just because it’s our anniversary, but because yesterday was actually yesterday and I found out Micah and I were engaged.
“Thank you. It’s pretty.” I walk to the bathroom sink and fill up a cup with water for the flower. Today is yesterday’s tomorrow and Micah is my fiancé. All I can think about is what if Warp spit me out. Here, of all places. Here, of all times. With him, of all people.
He hugs me from behind. I look at myself in the mirror, with Micah’s head nudged into my neck. My engagement ring glistens on my left hand, while my deteriorating daisy one rests quietly on my right, used to being the only one.
Just the other day, I was glad, almost happy, to be here with Micah, the thing we have starting to grow legs and walk. I felt tired of wanting something else. But today, I’m not prepared to let it go. After however long I’ve been trapped in Warp, I am suddenly not ready to be free. I would rather stay a prisoner, if it meant never going back.
20
“Wake up Hailey. You’re having a bad dream.”
Chase appears next to me. I pick my head up from his shoulder. “Huh?”
“Don’t worry. We’re almost back.”
I didn’t dream but I did hop. And I’ve never been happier. Chase’s hair falls against my cheek. I smell his shampoo and I love him.
We are in a Volkswagen van. There is Julie, decked out in a spaghetti-strapped tank top and hoop earrings, and Chase’s bandmates. Our shoes are sandy and we are teenagers.
“How did you like the trip?” Chase yawns and stretches his arm over my shoulders. “The Boardwalk was pretty neat. And you won that cute dolphin playing balloon dart.”
I realize I am cuddling my stuffed dolphin. I pet it’s soft, blue head. I finally know it’s origin. “Yeah, it was.”
He tugs at the cuff of my sleeve. “I mostly liked hanging with you.”
His proximity draws sensations in my humdrum nerves. I can tell that he is nervous and that we are new. I follow the vein on his forearm with my eyes, up to his wrist and through the top of his hand. Chase tries not to smile but he can’t help it. The last forty-eight hours drift away and so does the gnawing bitter sweetness that my hopping days were coming to an end. “Ditto,” I reply and relax my body against his.
“Wanna come over?” Chase asks once we are dropped off in our neighborhood. He rolls back and forth on his skateboard to keep with my pace.
I take off my Keds and dump the sand out. “I’d like that.”
Chase takes my hand and we walk/skate to his place. I wonder how long ago I dared him to kiss me.
“My folks are gone,” he informs me when we arrive. He grabs a carton of Minute Maid from the fridge and pours me a pink glass.
I take a sip. “Oh?”
“They’re visiting my mom’s sister who just had a baby. They won’t be back until tomorrow.”
“Awesome.” Even my verbiage retrogrades.
We go upstairs into his bedroom. Chase gathers clothes from his bed and tosses them aside. I sit on the edge and finish my lemonade while he strums his guitar for a few minutes. I recall cords from a Loch Ness Monster song that he will eventually write. I pull my hair from its ponytail and uncross my legs.
“Hey, Hailey.” He pauses his music.
“Yes?”
“You’re really pretty.”
I melt. “So are you. I mean, not that. But you know.”
He laughs. “Yeah, I know.”
The aftertaste of cotton candy sits on my tongue and yesterday is foggy. How can I just snap into sixteen-year-old me like this? I recall my other ages but they don’t recall me.
Brashly, I stand up and go over to Chase. I put my hand on his shoulder. He stands up and presses his torso against mine. His heartbeat melds with mine, reverberating down my spine. He looks me over, examining my details. “Are you my girlfriend?” he asks.
“I am if you want me to be.”
“I want you to be.”
“Then I am.”
He kisses me and we walk backwards towards the bed until we crash upon it. I reach under Chase’s shirt and yank it off.
“Are you sure?” Chase pauses.
We haven’t done it yet. This is going to be our first time; despite the others we’ve had.
“Very,” I assure him and he smiles, relaxes and undresses me.
For a while longer, I float. We lay together laughing, deep in our own little world. And then Chase says he wishes we would never change. But I know we do. Chase isn’t the same kid as he is now and I’m not same girl. I just cheated on Micah, my fiancé, and I before that, I cheated on Chase.
“I need to go,” I say out of the blue and scramble for my clothes.
“Already?�
� Chase reacts. “Should we not have?”
I shimmy on my jeans, unable to stay put in our world. I think about all these things I could say but I can’t get them past my throat. My only excuse is Warp but I can’t use that. “No, it’s fine. I’m sorry, I just have to go.”
Chase sits up and inspects me. “Sometimes I feel like you aren’t here with me, Hailey.”
I take a breath and release it floppily as I head to the door. “Sometimes I feel like that, too.”
22
I sit in the cramped office at my work sticking stamps to the back of postcards. There is the peel of an orange in my trash can and crunched-up papers the size of my fist, like I was here yesterday and had eaten the orange and balled up the papers. But yesterday I was home and lost my virginity to Chase, something I never thought I would regret.
The middle school down the street just let out and I watch the teenagers interact in their Jansport backpacks and ponytails. They remind me of me because I was them last Wednesday. I need to make up my mind already. It’s either then or now. I can’t have my cake and eat it too, although Warp tricks me into thinking I can. The more I see of my future, the less I can hold onto my past. Chase closed the door on us. Sometimes, he opens a window but that’s not big enough for me to fit through.
A boy and girl meander after the others, holding hands under the long sleeve of the boy’s sweatshirt. I live vicariously through their shy smiles and carefree nature, their lack of experience and broken-less hearts.
If it wasn’t for Warp, I wouldn’t feel conflicted. I probably would have kept Chase. Or never thought about him after sixth grade. I remember the time my dad took me to the planetarium and we watched a show about the rabbit from Alice in Wonderland falling into a black hole. Afterwards, he bought me astronaut ice cream and glow-in-the-dark stars. I recall the texture of the Neapolitan as it melted on my tongue, the silhouette of Saturn and its rings above my bed. I had a nightmare about falling into a black hole and I told my dad that I was scared it would actually happen. He told me that was impossible and I believed him.