90s Girl

by Mia Archer

  I smiled as I caught that little snippet. It was basically the straight girl version of what’d happened in my dream.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed as I scrolled down and saw something that seemed to confirm that everything that’d happened to me the night before actually had happened.

  “What’s wrong?” Felicity asked, suddenly alert. “Is there someone trying to break into your place or something?”

  I stared at my phone for a moment before it struck me that what I’d just said probably sounded so worried that she was justified in thinking someone was trying to break into my house. Though that wasn’t it.

  No, I was staring at something on my tablet that should’ve been impossible. Something that couldn’t be.

  It was a grainy black and white picture that looked like it’d been taken right around the same time that I’d supposedly been at the skating rink. A black and white picture that seemed to scream with all the bright neon early ‘90s colors for all that it it was in black and white.

  “Seriously Liv,” Felicity said. “What the hell is going on over there? Can you talk to me? Do I need to call the cops?”

  “No,” I muttered. “I just saw a ghost, is all.”

  I did see a ghost. Because sure enough, right there in front of me was Jenny. The girl I’d spent the better part of the evening sucking face with in a jet fighter simulation.

  She was smiling out of that picture the same as everyone else. I looked down at the date and saw that it was from 1991, which would make sense if Whitesnake and Vanilla Ice were still able to coexist on the playlist they used to get teenagers in the mood.

  “A ghost?” Felicity asked, clearly confused. “What are you even talking about Liv? You know ghosts aren’t real.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was thinking about something as I looked at an old picture.”

  “Oh,” Felicity said. “You shouldn’t scare me like that. It’s not like there’s anything in an old picture that’s going to hurt you.”

  I stared at the picture. Jenny stood in the middle of a group of teenagers smiling together. Like a class picture or something. I guessed it was a group of kids who hung out there on the regular, because I also saw James standing there with a serious look. The asshole couldn’t even smile in a picture.

  My mom was even in there smiling. She looked so pretty. Though my eyes narrowed as I realized who she was standing next to. None other than Jams, and he had his arm around her in a very possessive way. Like he was marking out his territory for anyone who was looking, and he’d cause trouble for anyone who decided to move in on her.

  Some of the things George and Jenny had said the night before came rushing back to me. James and Amy. James cheating on Amy. Amy was also my mom’s name. It couldn’t be, but…

  I felt lightheaded. Aunt Olivia had told me my mom met my dad at that skating rink, but it was one of those memories that’d gone straight down the memory hole never to resurface.

  Until now as I stared at him with his arm around her. That asshole? Seriously? Was there a chance he could be the one who knocked my mom up and then disappeared from her life?

  Given everything I knew about him so far that seemed like the kind of assholeish move he’d pull.

  “So anyway,” Felicity said. “What would you think about going back tonight?”

  “Hm?” I asked.

  There was something else odd about this picture. No Aunt Olivia. Supposedly she and my mom had been inseparable for most of their lives, so why the hell wasn’t she in this picture? I scrolled down a little more and found more pictures that included Jenny, George, my mom, and James.

  Finally scrolling up I saw Aunt Olivia. Like there was a line somewhere in the early ‘90s where she popped into existence. Weird. It’d be kinda cool to meet her and get to know her when she was a younger woman who knew how to have a good time, but maybe the skating rink hadn’t been her thing at first. Maybe my mom dragged her there and she decided she loved it.

  I’d have to ask her about it at some point.

  “Earth to Liv!” Felicity said.

  “What?” I muttered. “Oh, sorry. I got distracted, but yeah. I’m totally down for going again tonight.”

  “Really?” Felicity said, sounding genuinely surprised that I’d agree so easily. “That’s awesome! I’ll call Candace and make the arrangements. There’s not a chance she can say no if the two of us are in on it!”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “Just text me what time you’re going to pick me up.”

  I continued staring at those pictures, and I thought of everything that’d happened in that dance studio. I found myself wondering if maybe there was some way to get back. Some way to have another night with Jenny.

  Of course there was also a good chance that the whole thing had been in my head. That I’d seen some of these pictures hanging on the wall and made up a fantasy that featured the hot retro girl, but whatever.

  I’d go to the skating rink tonight, and I’d figure out what was going on damn it. Maybe I was going crazy, or maybe there was something more to this. Either way, I needed to do some more investigating so I could figure out whether or not I was losing it!

  16

  Back to the Rink

  “I don’t understand why you’d want to come back to this place,” Candace said as she looked at the exterior.

  “Because the place was pretty fun when we were here last night,” Felicity said, trying so hard to look like she actually meant it that it was obvious she was putting Candace on.

  I smiled. I could totally understand being so head over heels for someone that you came back to a place in the hopes of seeing them again. I was feeling head over heels for a girl who might not even exist, so who was I to judge.

  I mean sure she existed. I was pretty sure the girl I’d seen in that picture, Jenny, was none other than the same girl I’d seen working the skate rental. It’s just that I didn’t even know if her name was Jenny in the real world, or if the version I’d seen last night was anything like the real thing.

  For all I knew that could’ve been someting that my head made up when it was trying to fill in the blanks to create that weird fantasy.

  “Don’t be too hard on her,” I said. “I wanted to come back here too. Besides. I saw the guy you were hanging on during the couple’s skate. I think you’re trying to hide how excited you are to go in there.”

  “Whatever,” Candace said with a sniff. “I’m sure there’ll be hot guys in there tonight, so we can check it out.”

  We stepped into the skating rink and I found myself surrounded by the same retro goodness that’d surrounded me the last time around. I wondered what this place really looked like back in the early ‘90s. Most of the memorabilia and retro junk they had on the walls were the kinds of things that would’ve come along in the early to mid ‘90s, so it’s not like any of this stuff could’ve been around back then to be put on display.

  “Checking out the old stuff?” Candace asked. “Honestly. I wonder why they don’t sell this crap on eBay. They could probably make a killing.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said. “A lot of this stuff probably isn’t worth more than a few hundred bucks.”

  “You sure about that?” Candace asked. “Like I remember my parents talking about how much money they could’ve made if their parents hadn’t thrown out all their old Star Wars toys.”

  “Yeah, the big difference is our parents were raised by a generation that was dealing with the scars of having all their toys thrown out, so they saved a lot of that crap. A flooded market means the stuff isn’t worth nearly as much when it was mass produced and never thrown out en masse like the baby boom’s toys.”

  Candace stared at me like she was wondering if there was something seriously wrong with me. Heck, there were times when I thought the depths of my knowledge about old stuff meant there was something seriously wrong with me.

  People who went on about being born in the wrong generation always annoyed me. I didn’t feel that w
ay. I just had an appreciation of old stuff thanks to my mom raising me on it.

  So maybe I browsed eBay from time to time and thought about how awesome it’d be to have a collection like what I saw in this entryway. If I ever had the kind of money where I could buy this stuff and not feel bad about it.

  “Right,” I said. “If we’re standing out here talking about this old stuff we’re not going in there where you can meet your new boyfriends, or whatever it is you think you’re going to find in there.”

  “What about you?” Felicity asked. “You seemed awful quick to agree to come out here with us. Is there someone special in there for you too?”

  I blushed and thought about Jenny. Thought about how it would be very interesting to meet her again. Then I thought about how it was likely she’d never existed in the first place, or if she did then I’d been stuck in a weird Twilight Zone kind of situation for one night, but it was a situation that was never going to happen again so she didn’t exist.

  “Nothing like that,” I said, forcing a smile. “I just wanted to have a good time with my friends.”

  Felicity eyed me as though she suspected I was up to something, but she kept her thoughts to herself. Which was probably a good thing. If she managed to get what’d happened here last night out of me she’d think I was crazy, or that the hit to my head had done more damage than she initially thought.

  “Whatever,” she said. “Let’s get our tickets.”

  The same older woman was gathering tickets. She looked like she could’ve been working here back when it was first built in the sixties.

  “You girls have a wonderful night,” she said, winking at me.

  I cleared my throat. I felt like I should ask this lady if I knew her from somewhere, but then more people came in behind us and we moved along.

  Once more we were assaulted by loud music. I looked around and took in a deep breath.

  “Okay,” I muttered to myself. “You’ve got this Liv.”

  “You’ve got what?” Felicity asked, giving me one of those looks that said she suspected something was up. “Seriously. If something is going on can you just tell me what it is?”

  I thought fast. It was sort of a prerequisite for being in the closet for so long. Sure it’s not like I was in the closet anymore, but I still had all the skills I’d developed from my time spent in that not-so-wonderful place and I put them to good use here.

  “I’ve got the whole skating thing?” I said. “I mean I had a little bit of trouble with it the last time around, and I just figured if I could go out and kick some ass this time around and…”

  “Whatever,” Felicity said, rolling her eyes to let me know what she thought of my obvious lie. “Keep your secrets. I’ll figure it out soon enough.”

  I snorted. I doubted she was going to figure out my secret soon enough. Not unless she had an old fashioned police box she’d brought over from the U.K., or maybe a phone booth from out in front of a Circle K, or perhaps a DeLorean that’d been modded with time circuits.

  Unless she figured out a way to travel back in time, and not the boring forward in time stuff everyone did on a daily basis, there wasn’t a chance she was going to figure out my big secret.

  “Come on,” Candace said with a roll of her eyes. “You two are being weird, and I don’t like weird. Let’s get our skates so we can get out there and find some cute guys.”

  She blushed as she looked at me. It was a look I was used to. The look said she’d totally forgotten that yeah, I was actually into the ladies and wouldn’t be interested in a bunch of dudes. At least she had the good grace to look embarrassed.

  I’d had a couple of friends who’d been very unapologetic about things like that. Most of them were ex-friends since I didn’t need people who wouldn’t support me in my life, thank you very much.

  “She’s right, you know,” I said. “Might as well get this over with.”

  I really needed to stop saying things that got Felicity nice and suspicious about why I would say something like that. Because she was giving me the old side eye again. Like she thought there was something up.

  “Is this about the girl at the skate rental you ran into the last time we were here?” she hissed. “Because if you had a thing going with her you need to tell me. That’s not cool to get with a girl that much older than you.”

  I nearly stumbled, and she took that stumble for confirmation.

  “I knew it!” she said. “You disappeared for a little while and I was worried about you. I never thought you’d be doing something with an older woman though!”

  I looked made a motion that it was time for her to shut the fuck up. Not that it was doing much to get her to actually shut the fuck up. No, she was going on with her litany of reasons why it was a terrible idea for me to even think about doing something with a girl who was obviously at least a couple of decades my senior, and the more she went on about it the more annoyed I got.

  Finally I put my foot down. “Would you please shut the fuck up and listen?”

  Candace was walking on ahead of us, and that was just fine with me. I needed to have a chat with Felicity, and I needed her to shut the fuck up if we were going to have that chat.

  “You need to keep your mouth shut if you don’t know what you’re talking about,” I hissed at her.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked. “If you’re carrying on some affair with an older woman who’s preying on you then it’s my duty as your friend to do something about it!”

  “But I’m not carrying on an affair with an older woman!” I said. “I can promise you I didn’t see the woman behind the counter after I got my skates from her, and I wouldn’t want to get with her even if she had hit on me!”

  Of course I was splitting hairs here and telling a version of the truth that wasn’t the whole truth, but what she didn’t know would get her to stop bothering me.

  I had met that girl. At least I was pretty sure I’d met her. It’s just that I’d met her in the distant past, and the jury was still out as to whether or not that meeting was something that’d actually happened, or if it was an instance of my head making up a reality that was a little more pleasing than real reality.

  “You promise me you weren’t having a fling with that woman?” she asked.

  “With that girl in particular?” I asked. “No, I wasn’t having a fling with her.”

  Splitting hairs. She hit me with a look that said she could tell I was trying to pull one over on her and she knew it, but she couldn’t figure out exactly how I was twisting my words.

  “Fine,” she said. “But I’m going to be keeping a close eye on you tonight, and if I even suspect something weird is going on…”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll be the first to tell you if anything weird is going on tonight.”

  Tonight as in this night. Not as in a night that might’ve happened twenty years ago that was connected to tonight. For me, at least.

  I was hoping there’d be some more weirdness going on tonight that would help me get back Jenny. A girl could hope, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

  17

  The Time Warp, Again

  I was only a little disappointed that the girl who may or may not be Jenny in the present day wasn’t working the rental counter. Instead it was a girl who looked to be closer to our age. Maybe a little older.

  She seemed to be giving me the side-eye while we were getting our skates, but whatever. Again I had the whole conversation where they didn’t have any in-line skates despite the fact that I saw people skating around in the damned things, but this time I didn’t make as much of a big deal out of it.

  I did stare at the girl and wonder what the hell was going on here. It was almost like this girl didn’t want me to be in inline skates. Did she somehow know I was going to be going somewhere where that would look a little weird?

  It was possible if I’d really traveled to the past and there were people around here who’d been here back then, well it was entirely pos
sible there was some conspiracy going on.

  A conspiracy I wasn’t going to ask about since it’d label me as a nutjob if none of this time travel nonsense was real.

  So I put on skates that looked exactly the same as the ones I’d worn when I did my little time warp the night before.

  “What was that all about?” Felicity asked as we skated away from the skate rental. “It’s like the people at this place really don’t want you to have in-line skates or something.”

  “Or something is right,” I said, but I wasn’t about to start telling them about my suspicions. Crazy suspicions.

  “So what do we do now?” Candace asked.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” Felicity said, looking at a guy who’d just skated up to the wall and was smiling with an expectant grin that said he was happy to see someone.

  From the way Felicity was grinning and blushing like a lovesick idiot, I got the idea this was the guy she’d talked about skating with the night before.

  “Go have your fun,” I said.

  Felicity rounded on me and gave me a critical look. I’m sure she was thinking that the moment she disappeared I was going to run off and start making out with that girl who might be Jenny.

  And she might be right, from a certain point of view.

  “Come on,” I said. “You can be suspicious of me all you want, but your guy is waiting. Go have your fun.”

  Felicity hit me with a look that said she didn’t trust a word I was saying, but she also looked like she really wanted to go hang out with that guy. I guess he was kind of cute. If you were into that sort of thing. Which I totally wasn’t, thank you very much.

  No, I was a fan of the ladies, and there was only one girl I was thinking of. I desperately wanted to see her. The only problem was I was pretty sure I was going to need to take a fall from a toilet and invent the flux capacitor to be able to pull that off.