by Julie Cross
“Jackson,” Brook said, walking up behind me. “How was your date last night?”
My heart immediately sped up and I felt my eyes growing big. “Shit,” I mumbled to Adam, who looked totally confused.
Brook’s best friend from art camp or something…Alison…I met her last week and Brook begged me to ask her out because she didn’t know anyone in New York.
“Oh no,” Brook said, shaking her head. “No way, Jackson! No wonder she didn’t return my calls last night. I so hate you right now.”
I slapped my hand to my forehead. “I totally forgot…I just…got busy with…a project and—”
She held her hand up to stop me. “Save it. I should have known better.”
Adam and I stood there as she turned around and prepared to stomp off. I grabbed her hand before she got too far. “Brook…”
She shook her fingers from my grip, but I could see her trying not to smile. “Should I make up an excuse and let you reschedule or would you rather just stay an asshole and not go out with a nice, pretty girl like Alison?”
I scratched my head and caught a glimpse of Holly across the gym. “Uh…stay an asshole, I guess.”
She sighed. “At least you’re honest.”
Adam was still laughing at me about the forgotten date when we finally boarded the yellow school buses to head out to the camp grounds for the day. When I walked past Holly’s seat, I saw her scribbling furiously on a piece of paper. I paused to get a better look and read the heading on top of the page: THIS IS ME, A YEAR AGO.
“Are you still working on that stupid questionnaire?”
She jumped and then looked up at me. “Yeah…Mr. Wellborn is supposed to collect them today.”
I quickly read the top of her paper while she was busy answering my question. This was all I got to see before she slapped her hand over the page:
NAME: HOLLY MARIE FLYNN
Interview Date: June 8, 2009
High School: George Washington in Newark, NJ, class of 2009
College: Freshman at NYU, Fall of 2009
College Major: English Lit.
Birthday: September 7, 1990
Primary Language: English
Secondary Language: Very, very bad Spanish
“Good thing you’ve got your birthday written down there,” I said, unashamed at my noisiness. If she didn’t want me to see, she shouldn’t have been working on it here. “September seventh…weird…”
“What’s weird about that?” She stared at me, waiting for me to tell her we had the same birthday or something.
“Nothing…it’s just…I didn’t realize…you’re only…” I did the math quickly in my head. “Three…and a half months younger than me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Why is that weird? Because you’re so much more mature?”
I laughed. “Uh…good point.”
Adam waved me over and I slid into the spot beside him. I could still see Holly as she dove back into answering her questions. Maybe I’ll work on mine. Maybe I’ll actually turn in something this year. I removed the crumpled up paper from my backpack and dug for a pen.
“Thanks for reminding me,” Adam said. “I gotta finish that today if I want to get the free lunch Mr. Wellborn is bribing us with.”
“Free lunch? He’s taking his game to a whole new level this year.” The bus started moving and I found my pen and began writing. I didn’t really know why I even bothered to do this now…it’s not like I really cared about reading the answers in a year or that I even thought they’d be different or I’d be different. I’d still be in college…still live in the same place…still have the same volunteer job…and I’ve lived in New York city all my life, so I doubt my favorite hang outs or anything like that would change. But for some reason, I wanted Holly to think I was at least a little better than the spoiled rich kid image she already had of me. One I hadn’t made much effort to disprove, possibly because I couldn’t.
NAME: JACKSON ANDREW MEYER
Interview Date: June 8, 2009
High School: Loyola Academy in Manhattan, class of 2008
College: Sophomore at NYU, Fall of 2009
College Major: French poetry with a minor in English Lit.
Birthday: June 20, 1990
Primary Language: English
Secondary Language: French, Spanish, a little German and Italian (bathroom, pizza, etc…)
After lunch, I found Adam sitting by himself in the computer lab and talked him into walking around the camp grounds with me. I loved being there. It held all the good memories and none of the bad. And no one to remind me of any of them. I only thought about what I wanted to think about and I didn’t have to share it with anyone.
“Where’s your kids?” he asked before we headed toward the nature path in the woods.
“Swim lessons for an hour and then arts and crafts. By the time they get done, none of them are going to remember what I look like.”
“How’s Holly holding up?” he asked.
“Not sure…I haven’t seen her since morning announcements.” I stopped to tie a red string to a tree branch. Adam pointed to the string and I responded before he could ask his question. “It’s for our scavenger hunt tomorrow morning. Mr. Wellborn asked me to mark a path for the kids to follow.”
We walked in silence for a few minutes and a question only Adam could answer popped into my head, “Do you think I’m older?”
“Older than who?” He grabbed a string from the wad I had in my hand and chose a plant to tie it to.
“That’s poison ivy.” He drew his hand back quickly and I laughed. “Dude, I thought you were the smart one. Anyway, back to my question…I mean, older because of all the time jumps…like our experiment the other day in Central Park. I jumped back and I lived a few more minutes than you, right?”
“Do you feel older?”
I laughed. “What the hell kind of question is that? Yeah, I feel exactly ten days older.”
“Aren’t you turning nineteen soon?” he asked.
“Yeah, soon,” I said, but I didn’t feel like giving any more info than that. It’s not exactly easy sharing a birthday with a dead girl.
“We’ve kept track of all your minutes in the past. I can add them up and tell you what it comes out to. Can’t be more than a couple weeks.” He took his time finding a new tree branch that wasn’t poison ivy before finally tying one of the strings.
“Turn right up here,” I directed.
“You know what I think is the coolest thing about your time travel?”
“As opposed to other people’s time travel? Do you have more friends you experiment with? Maybe we should all meet and have a drink.”
“I mean because the way it works for you is a huge contrast to most theories, both fictional and scientific.”
So, even a genius like Adam was influenced by Hollywood. “Okay, tell me, what’s the coolest thing about my time travel?”
“Well…the time when you burned your arm during a jump…after you fell on the stove top…then it ended up being fine—”
“So, invincibility is the cool part?” I found the perfect tree to mark with another string and started to climb up the base to reach a higher and more visible branch.
“See, that’s the thing…you’re not really invincible. You had a scar, remember? You felt some pain.”
I glanced down at the now-fading pink streak across my forearm. “But not as much as I would if it had happened in my home base, like a normal person.” I jumped down from the tree and landed in front of Adam.
“The way that pain is lessened while in a jump is similar to the fact that time moves slower in your home base while you’re gone. Of course, physically you’re here, but you know what I mean. Gone into the past for an hour, come back and only seven seconds has passed.”
“Still, it’d be cooler to be completely invincible.”
“But it’s weird, isn’t it? You’re not invincible and you don’t come back exactly when you left. Some time passes.
But not anywhere near as much as when you’re gone.”
I finally caught up to his train of thought and looking at it from an outside perspective, it was so Adam. “They’re both symmetrical. That’s why you like it. The lessening of pain in a time jump is equal to the slowing down of time in my home base.”
“Exactly! You’re a lot smarter than you give yourself credit for,” he said. “Most people don’t latch on to my thought process. Ever.”
“I’m latching on just fine. Basically, you’re thrilled because the God of Time Travel is OCD like you and wants everything in life to be symmetrical.”
He laughed. “Well, not everything.”
When we reached the edge of the nature path, Adam and I shifted our conversation to lighter topics since kids and counselors were everywhere. After my break was over, I left him in the computer lab and headed over to the Arts and Crafts building.
My group was already lined up and waiting for me. “Did you guys have fun swimming? What project did you make?”
Little Hunter held up what looked like a blob of tissue paper and glue. “It’s a volcano.”
“You should put animal feces in it and make it rupture,” a little girl with glasses said…Annabel, I reminded myself. The weird one. There’s always a weird one. Every year.
“I don’t think—” I started say at the same time Hunter said, “What’s feces?”
Yep, pure brilliance. I patted the kid on the head. “Don’t worry. They’ll teach you that word in SAT prep class. I think it’s Latin derived.”
Hunter just stared at me and said, “Huh?”
Holly rounded the corner, wiping sweat from her forehead with the bottom of her polo shirt. “Wait! Everybody stop! I need to count heads.”
My entire group quit discussing fecal matter and watched Holly’s dozen second and third graders wandering in a jagged line that looked more like a huddle.
Mr. Wellborn flew by in the golf cart he always used to zip around the camp grounds. He spotted Holly and looked over at us twice before stopping the cart right in front of her.
“Miss Flynn…looks like you’ve got some organizational problems…remember…safety before fun…always.” Mr. Wellborn nodded toward me, and Holly glanced wearily in my direction. “Jackson, your line looks great…show Holly how you keep an accurate head count.”
I felt humiliated for her. The last thing she wanted right now was to be shown up by me. But my kids had already straightened up even more, ready to show off for our director. Mr. Wellborn had been in charge for over twenty years and had a ton of power over these kids.
“Alright, guys.” I snapped my fingers, waiting for them to shift to alphabetical order like we had learned first thing that morning. “Count off, starting with Hunter.”
“One,” Hunter called.
This continued down the line until the number twelve was called off. Mr. Wellborn nodded his approval and then gave Holly a look of warning before zooming off.
“He’s just using his tough-love techniques,” I said to Holly. “Don’t worry about it, seriously. You should have seen the lack of straight lines over by the baseball fields a few minutes ago—”
“Oh my God!” Holly said, scanning over her group. “Zoe…where’s Zoe?”
“I saw her at lunch,” one of the kids said.
Lunch ended over an hour ago. Holly was already pulling out her cell phone and looked utterly panicked.
“Hold on,” I said to her, putting my hand over her phone. “Give me five minutes, okay?”
She’d be fired for sure if she called the camp office and told them a kid was missing. “She’s really tiny…she’s got blonde hair and it’s in little pigtail braids.” Holly squeezed her eyes shut for a second. “And red…her shirt’s red and it says Coney Island on the front.”
“Where were you an hour ago?” I asked.
“Uh…by the tree house.”
I turned around and sat in the grass, pretending to study the camp schedule. But really I was getting ready to time-travel. And I’d only need a few seconds in home base. Not even long enough for Holly to say my name twice, so no need to hide first.
When I opened my eyes again, a different group of kids were off in the distance, too far away to spot me. Not that it mattered here. I took off running toward the tree house and snuck up behind Holly’s group as she attempted to gather them. The little girl with the blonde hair and pigtails and red shirt rubbed her eyes and fell behind the group. I followed them until I saw her reach the edge of the woods where a group of about five or six butterflies, in every color imaginable, fluttered toward the path into the woods.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Zoe was about to do. I waited a couple more seconds to confirm her diversion from the group and then jumped back.
I shook the familiar disoriented feeling from my head and jumped to my feet. “I think I know where she is.”
“How?” Holly said, then added, “Where?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer without giving my secret away. “Just stay here, okay? Watch my group for a minute?”
She looked completely exasperated but didn’t have any other option. I took off in a sprint across the camp grounds toward the woods. I got really far down the path and still hadn’t spotted the girl. My own heart was beginning to race and I couldn’t imagine how freaked Holly had to be getting.
Just when I was ready to give up and have her call in the search party and put the camp on lock down, which was our emergency procedure even though I doubt it had ever been used, I spotted a bright red sleeve behind a tree.
“Zoe?”
No response. I crossed the path and shoved some bushes out of my way and found the little girl leaning against the tree, sound asleep. I groaned when I saw what one of her legs and part of her right arm rested on.
“Zoe…wake up!” I shook her shoulder lightly and her eyes peeled open. “Come on…let’s get out of the woods, okay?”
She nodded and stood up, still disoriented with sleep. I gripped her hand tightly all the way back to the Arts and Crafts house. Holly was pacing back and forth, biting her fingernails.
“Oh my God! Where did you find her?!” She picked up the little girl and hugged her like she was a long lost relative. “Are you okay, Zoe?”
I was already uncomfortable with the events of the afternoon and the last thing I needed was Holly asking questions or giving apologies for normal human mistakes. I snapped my fingers, instructing my kids to line up. “Well…we’re late for our kickball game against Brook’s group. I’ll see you later.”
Holly looked like she wanted to say something, but I didn’t give her a chance.
On the way back to camp that afternoon, I was surprised when Holly slid into the seat next to me. I shrugged at Adam, who was farther down the aisle and he quickly picked a different seat, sharing with one of the older campers.
“So…” Holly said, turning to face me. “Apparently Zoe is fascinated with butterflies and chased them into the woods.”
“Really?”
“And apparently she habitually takes afternoon naps.” Holly leaned her head against the seat, letting out a huge breath. “Thank you…for helping me…for keeping me from losing my job. This is a lot different than teaching gymnastics classes. A lot more things can go wrong.”
“You’ll get better. It’s just the first day, don’t sweat it. Seriously.” I turned my head to face her and got a good look at her eyes. Something I didn’t get to see up close very often. The ice blue color swirled with the white. She looked so pretty and vulnerable, I wanted to freeze her just like this and stare at her for hours without it being weird.
“I’ve never been so tired in my life,” she said, keeping her eyes on mine. “But I think I get it…why you love this place…the job…even if you don’t really need it. There were several moments today where I stopped and thought…wow…these kids are probably going to remember this experience ten years from now. Or maybe they’ll go home and feel a little more
like a normal person.”
“That’s what it was like for me,” I said. “Camp was the kids’ world and home was a grown ups’ world. Everything at home and even school for kids like me is about acting older…proper etiquette…formal…life is so formal. And at camp you can get dirty and sweaty and win ribbons for kicking your best friend’s ass at water balloon tosses…sing stupid songs about tree frogs…what’s not to like?”
She smiled. “Were your parents pretty strict when you were a kid?”
“My dad’s not too bad…he’s a little old school about a lot of stuff, but he would never have acted like Hunter’s mom, if that’s what you mean…he wouldn’t have bragged about a nanny teaching me Hungarian or whatever.” I thought about how to explain my dad to Holly and really, to get it right, I’d have to give her the “before” and “after” details because he wasn’t the same dad as he was four years ago. “I’ve been dragged to a fair share of formal events, though. Grown up parties, lots of them, which are usually boring as hell for a kid.”
She studied my face for a few moments longer and then shifted her focus to the seat in front of us. “I certainly don’t envy your life…or theirs.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I just sat in silence, trying to untangle the meaning of this conversation…of Holly singling me out. Suddenly, I remembered something from earlier today. I groaned and hit my palm against my forehead. “I totally forgot to tell you…Zoe was asleep on top of a whole bunch of poison ivy when I found her.”
“Oh man…poor kid. And she’s already left for the day.” Holly laughed and closed her eyes. “Tomorrow…I’ll bite that bullet tomorrow.”
I patted her knee and her eyes flew open, staring at my fingers against her skin. I drew my hand back quickly. “Sorry.”
Was I sorry about touching her leg, or forgetting to tell her about the poison ivy incident? Both…I think.
The bus screeched to a stop in front of the Y and both of us scooted toward the aisle. Holly’s cheeks were slightly pink and her eyes stayed down.
This was the point where I would usually throw some cheesy line at a girl or most likely, just ask her out. I was a good enough listener, both to the spoken and unspoken words, to know she felt something too, but I didn’t have any desire to say something corny and predictable, and I didn’t really want to ask her out. I just wanted to sit beside her on that bus seat a little longer and not think about anything else.