90s Girl

by Mia Archer

George Carlin hadn’t been in the parking lot offering me a trip in a phone booth, after all.

  “Go on,” I said, giving her a little shooing motion that I really hoped would get across how much I wanted her to leave me alone.

  “Fine,” she said, but it took Candace taking her by the hand and pulling for her to go out to have her fun with the guy and his several friends who’d skated up in the meantime.

  I sighed when they were gone and did a little twirl on my skates. A little twirl that turned out to be just a little dangerous considering I still wasn’t the greatest with these things. Sure I’d had some practice recently, but the jury was still out as to whether or not that practice was all in my head or not.

  I looked over to the arcade, and then to the abandoned dance studio on the other side of that arcade. I took a deep breath. I figured there was a good chance I was going crazy here, but at the same time this was something that I had to try, damn it.

  I skated over to the arcade and looked around. My gaze lingered on the jet fighter game and thought about what Aunt Olivia told me about what had gone on in there.

  I shivered. There were some things that people had a right not to know, but she didn’t seem to care as she’d happily told me what my mom and dad had done in there once upon a time.

  A dad who I’d never known. He’d never been a part of my life. I got the feeling that was something that made my mom a little sad, at least she’d always looked a little bummed when she talked about him, and she’d always smiled and changed the subject.

  I shivered and wondered why my mind would put someone in that dream fantasy who could’ve been my father. I wondered if it was my brain putting things together based on stuff I’d picked up over the years without realizing it, or if there was something else going on.

  Like I’d actually traveled back in time. The evidence was all there. I should believe it even if that wasn’t the kind of thing that happened, damn it!

  I sighed and rolled past the jet fighter game. I stared at the entrance to the place where the magic had happened. Well, the real magic. Assuming that magic was something that’d actually happened here last night.

  Because if I had gone back in time then magic was the only explanation I could think of to justify what’d happened.

  I sighed and rolled into the dance studio. The place was dark. I did a quick twirl around, and my hair stood on end. I could almost feel Jenny’s presence in this place. I closed my eyes as I spun around, and I was surprised that I was actually able to keep right on spinning even though I was pretty sure this was dangerous considering I wasn’t all that great on skates.

  Clapping from the entrance brought me back to reality. Funnily enough, it was opening my eyes that put me in very real danger of falling on my ass. I pitched forward, barely able to catch myself in time, and the only thing that saved me was my spinning had brought me close to a support pillar that I grabbed before I could fall and really do some damage.

  I spun around, fully expecting to see Felicity or Candace standing there. Maybe Felicity decided it was suspicious that I was going into an abandoned dark dance studio and was following me to see if I was playing kissyface with the girl from the skate rental.

  Then I blinked a couple of times. It was difficult to see in the transition between the darkness of the dance studio and the slightly brighter, but still dim, light of the arcade, but that looked an awful lot like the girl from the skate rental standing there smiling at me.

  “Hey there,” she said, that grin never leaving her face. A face that was much younger than the girl at the skate rental, for all that she bore a striking resemblance to the woman.

  “Hey yourself,” I said, not trusting myself to get anything else out.

  Oh fuck it. I threw myself across the dance studio that had, in the time it took me to spin around a couple of times and nearly lose it, lit up like there were people using it again.

  I didn’t care if there was a more than good chance that the fall I’d just taken while spinning, a fall I didn’t even realize had happened because it’d been so sudden and so hard, had resulted in me hitting my head again. If that meant I got sent back to the past where I could see Jenny all over again then I was all about taking as many head injuries as I could.

  I slammed into Jenny a little faster than I’d originally intended to, but from the way she wrapped her arms around me and started peppering my face with kisses I didn’t think she minded that I’d just slammed into her a little faster than I’d originally intended.

  Pressing against her was amazing. Having her in my arms again was pure heaven, and I didn’t want to ever let go!

  I pulled away from her and stared into her eyes. I wanted to make sure this moment was real.

  “You okay there?” Jenny asked, blushing under the scrutiny. “You’re looking at me like I’ve been gone forever or something.”

  “Or something,” I said, that goofy grin never leaving my face.

  She had no idea how good it felt to see her again. Even if there was a good chance she was a figment of my imagination brought on by a second more serious fall that was so serious I hadn’t realized it was happening until it was over and I was standing here.

  At least that’s what I told myself, even as the more rational part of my brain knew it was grasping with that little justification. That there was a good chance this was all very real, and I had managed to catch myself before I finished that fall.

  That I was in the past, as impossible as that was.

  “What would you say to going for a skate?” she asked, interrupting my thoughts about the intersection between head injuries and time travel.

  “That sounds wonderful,” I replied.

  So I took her hand and followed her out into the long lost but suddenly very present world of the early ‘90s.

  18

  Reunion

  We skated around the rink a few times and I got my skating legs back under me. It took a couple of tries, and there were a couple of times when I was worried I might take a spill, but eventually I was skating along with my hand in Jenny’s and everything was right in the world.

  I kept hitting her with glances. She had that whole retro fashion thing going for her, and she was so damn sexy. I wanted to get to know her more, if you catch my meaning. More even than I got to know her in that jet fighter arcade game

  “I didn’t see you come in tonight,” she said.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked.

  I mean that made sense. How would she see me come in? The entrance I’d made was through a door in time. Or through a fall that had me lying injured and all alone in a darkened dance studio where no one was going to find me until Felicity got weirded out by not seeing me and finally came looking.

  Not the best thing in the world, but what could you do?

  “Yeah,” she said. “It’s the weirdest thing. I kept looking at the front entrance hoping I’d see your cute butt coming through, but you never did. Then I find you in the dance studio while it’s empty. Really weird.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Totally weird, isn’t it?”

  Did she suspect what was really going on here? I mean it’s not like something weird happened and the first place someone’s mind went to was time travel, but still.

  “Y’know if you can’t afford to get in here you could’ve just asked me to comp you,” she said.

  And it hit me what was going on here. She’d found me in the dance studio twice now, and she hadn’t seen me come in the front door.

  I laughed. It was so ridiculous.

  “That’s a little silly, don’t you think?” I said. “I can assure you I paid to get in here.”

  “I wasn’t saying you didn’t,” Jenny said.

  “Think about that for a minute,” I said. “If I didn’t pay to get in here then how did I get these skates?”

  Jenny opened her mouth like she was trying to come up with a way I could’ve gotten those skates, then closed her mouth. Because I was pretty sure the only place you could
get skates here was at the skate rental, and there was no way to get skates at the skate rental if someone didn’t have a ticket.

  “Right,” she said.

  “It’s a big place,” I said. “And you’re going around in a circle with a bunch of flashing lights blinding you. You probably weren’t looking when I came in.”

  I smiled my biggest and sweetest shit-eating grin at her.

  “You’re hiding something from me,” she finally said. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to figure out your secret.”

  “Oh believe me,” I said. “I’d really love to see you figure out my secret, but don’t hold your breath.”

  She hit me with another one of those odd looks, and I decided to keep my big mouth shut. I wasn’t about to tell her the truth. That she was either a person stuck in the far past from my frame of reference, or she was a figment of my imagination.

  That wasn’t the kind of small talk that turned a first date into a second date. Though come to think of it this was really more of a second date if I counted last night as the first date, which seemed fair considering all the time we’d spent sucking face in the arcade.

  There were people who had less successful sixth dates.

  We skated around in silence for a little while after that. Well, silence and the tunes of Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer and the New Kids on the Block. Like I could seriously make a hell of a retro playlist by copying down everything they were playing here. If I could get Internet access on my phone, which I totally couldn’t since it’d be a few years before they had good signal around here, and more than a decade before high speed wireless Internet was a thing.

  Eventually some sappy music came on, and I figured that meant it was time for a good old fashioned couple’s skate. I was ready to enjoy that next go-round with Jenny, but then I saw something that had me stumbling with my next attempt to put one foot in front of the other, and I nearly spilled.

  “What’s wrong?” Jenny asked, looking around.

  She was looked where I’d been staring, and her eyes fell on what’d bothered me to the point of almost knocking me on my face.

  “You don’t have to worry about that asshole,” she said, her voice full of acid.

  “You sure about that?” I asked, looking at James leaning against the wall near the entrance.

  We skated past him and he flipped us the bird. That wasn’t the source of the stumble, though. Not really. It was weird looking at him since I was pretty sure that prick was actually my father.

  Even that knowledge wasn’t what had thrown me off, though. No, I recognized the girl standing next to him ready to head out for a couple’s skate. Amy. My mom. Looking so young and healthy.

  I stumbled again. It’d been so long, and the last time we’d talked had been when she was lying in the bed at a hospital looking skeletal and not at all like the vibrant woman I tried to remember when I thought of her.

  Pain welled up as I thought about that moment. It was something I’d thought was long in the past, but I guess I was learning just how much those painful memories were still with me for all that my mom had died while I was in middle school.

  Tears welled up. I craned my head around to try and get another look at her, and that nearly had me running into a couple in front of us.

  “Come on,” Jenny finally said, getting a good look at me and then pulling me off towards the edge.

  Maybe she could sense the delicate state I was in. Maybe she was worried that the next time I hit someone it was going to take her out as well. Whatever it was, she pulled me over to the edge, towards the arcade, and I let her pull me along.

  I guess I’d known on some level that it was possible I might see my mom if I was coming to this place. If I was really going back in time there was a good chance she’d be there. That or my mom was in whatever fantasy my brain was creating because it knew my mom had hung out here with Aunt Olivia once upon a time.

  Jenny sat me down on a bench that faced towards the skating rink. Which meant I could look out at that rink and see my mom skating hand in hand with my potential dad.

  It was weird watching them skating without a care in the world. It made me wonder what the future held for me and my friends. I imagined we looked pretty similar to dear mom and dad doing their thing out there.

  It's not the kind of thing people think about all that much. If you start to think about the crushing reality of what might happen to you then you're going to get an anxiety disorder at best, and probably a crippling case of ennui at worst.

  But watching my mom and dad, knowing what was coming, seeing two kids with the hots for each other and no idea what was coming, was crushing. I thought about the heartbreak that would happen when they eventually split up. The anger from my mom at my dad and what he pulled. She’d never been specific about what he did, but now that I'd had a chance to get to know him better I figured I had a pretty good idea it was mostly him being an ass.

  Then there was knowing everything that happened to her later. Nonspecific pain. Feeling tired all the time. Realizing it wasn’t because she was working and raising a kid. The terror of testing. The horror of a diagnosis that didn’t give her long, and there was nothing that could be done about it.

  A tear trickled down my cheek. It was almost too much for me to take, thinking about the crushing heartbreak that was waiting for her.

  "Liv?" Jenny asked, her gaze following mine out onto the skating rink. "What's going on here? You look like you’re barely holding it together.”

  "You wouldn't understand even if I explained it," I said.

  It was the overwhelming emotion of seeing my mom. Seeing her young. Healthy. Looking so much like me, though oddly she didn't look nearly as close to me as what Aunt Olivia did.

  Weird.

  "You poor thing," Jenny said. "I don't know what's going on, but I'm here for you."

  I leaned against Jenny's shoulder. I let the water works come. There was no stopping it. Not with the sheer overwhelming emotion hitting me, and so I pressed my head against her shoulder and cried. I let all the pent up anger at my mom dying so young come out in a way it hadn't since the funeral, and Jenny was there holding me the entire time.

  Oddly enough it was the first time since the funeral that I actually felt sort of okay about everything that’d happened. Sure it still sucked thinking about my mom dying young, but for some reason it was better with Jenny sitting there holding me.

  19

  Mean Girls

  I wasn't sure how long that cry lasted. Just that it was a damn good one. The kind of cry where you feel like your entire soul is pouring out through your tears.

  When I finally finished I looked up at Jenny. She smiled and brushed a strand of hair away from my face. It had been tickling me that entire time.

  It's funny the things you notice in a moment like that when you have your face pressed up against someone's chest and you’re ugly crying like there's no tomorrow.

  Oh shit. Ugly crying.

  "I probably look like shit,” I said.

  I looked around for a convenient mirror and finally saw one. The puffy and bloated mess I saw staring back at me wasn't pretty. No, not pretty at all. Not the image I wanted to project in front of the pretty girl who’d just been nice enough to let me ugly cry against her.

  "Oh shit!” I said.

  "Hey," Jenny said, putting her hand on my cheek. "You don't need to worry about that. You had some stuff you were getting out, and it's okay."

  “Is it?” I said, frantically trying to wipe the tears away and knowing it wasn’t going to do anything to take care of the puffy mess there.

  "Sure it is," she said. "I think you look beautiful."

  I looked at the girl staring back at me in that mirror, then looked to Jenny. Shook my head.

  "You're crazy."

  "Maybe I am," she said, then leaned in to kiss me. "Or maybe I'm just crazy for you."

  I leaned in and kissed her right back.

  "Cheesy lines will get you
everywhere!"

  "I'll keep that in mind," she said. "Besides. I know exactly how you feel."

  "You do?" I said, seriously doubting that.

  "Well yeah," she said. "I think everybody's had to deal with that bitch one time or another. Those two were made for each other."

  I frowned. That bitch? Those two were made for each other? Sure my dad was obviously an asshole, and we’d already established that Jenny had a bit of a contentious relationship with the dude, but…

  I wondered what the hell she could be talking about. And my heart nearly stopped as I realized my mom was skating towards us with my maybe-father in tow.

  Jenny’s frown only deepened. She let out a couple of curse words under her breath that surprised me.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  “You’re getting upset while looking at those two and you’re seriously wondering what’s wrong here?” she asked.

  “I mean that guy is a jerk, but I don’t see what the big deal is.”

  Honestly? I was a little excited. My mom was skating over to us! I could talk to her again!

  If this was a fantasy that was being made up in my head then my head injury was giving me everything I ever could’ve hoped for and then some. Like I was going to have to bang my head on the old hardwood a few more times if this was the kind of experience I could look forward to.

  Only there was that deep frown on Jenny’s face. Clearly there was something that was off about this. Something I was missing.

  “I don’t know what to make of you sometimes,” she said. “Do you have a crush on her or something? Because that’s not something you want to get involved in. Believe me, I know.”

  Now it was my turn to frown. I wondered what the hell she was on about. But before I could ask my mom was leaning against the railing with James beside her staring at the two of us like we were something he’d scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

  “What the fuck are you two doing?” she asked, looking between me and Jenny.

  I opened my mouth to say something, but there was something about the way she looked at me that stopped me. There was something in that look that said she wasn’t happy to see me or Jenny. Sure more of her ire was aimed at Jenny than at me, but still.