Spark

by Melissa Dereberry

  Don’t ask me why, but at that moment I wished Tess would look back at me. When she doesn’t, I remind myself of everything she’s been through. She suffered a terrible injury, lost four years of her life, and is now faced with the daunting task of re-adjusting. How frustrating would it be to have to find your way through all that? I glance over at Dani, who is bouncing her legs to the music and singing out loud with unbridled enthusiasm. What a contrast to Tess’s brooding reserve, her quiet strength. It strikes me odd that the two of them are friends; they are so completely different. Then it occurs to me that for Tess, Dani represents normalcy—the one piece of the puzzle that has never been moved, the one piece that serves as a foundation for the rest. Dani is Tess’ oldest friend, the one who knew her the best before all this happened. Of course she’d gravitate to her. And besides, Dani is a good friend. But she’s not the sort of friend who helps you solve your problems; she’s the kind that helps you forget about them. No one is better at loving life than Dani.

  We arrive at the party that I had reluctantly agreed to attend. If it had been anyone but Dani asking, I wouldn’t be there. Tess looks about as excited as me. We follow Dani inside, and she disappears into the crowd in a matter of seconds so that Tess and I are left standing by the food table looking at each other. She looks nervous, so I hand her a plate. “The food looks good,” I offer.

  She smiles shyly. “Thanks.”

  “So, how are you?” I ask. “How are you feeling?” Immediately, I feel silly, thinking she probably gets asked that a thousand times a day. “I mean—you probably get tired of talking about it...” I say, apologetically.

  “Tired of talking about what?”

  “I’m sorry, never mind.”

  “Ok.” Tess shrugs and starts filling her plate.

  “I’m really sorry. I was just… you know, curious. Do you remember things—from before the accident, I mean.”

  Tess blushes. “Some of it. Like, I remember exactly how to tie my shoes,” she chuckles.

  I’m relieved that she has a sense of humor. “Do you remember sitting next to me on the bus in third grade?”

  “Oh yes… I remember beating you at cards.”

  “That’s funny,” I say. “I seem to remember beating you at cards.”

  She tells me, “Well, then I guess my memory’s not perfect, after all.” When she smiles at me, I feel a little flutter inside. I’d really, really like to play a game of cards with her right now, I thought. I’d even let her win.

  “This is going to sound crazy, but… want to see if we can find some cards?”

  Tess looks at me earnestly and nods. “Sure. Why not?”

  We find some in the game room downstairs and find a comfortable, relatively private spot. As we sit down and I start shuffling through the cards, I realize that I can’t remember just how to play anything. It’s been years since I’ve played. Tess must recognize my confusion, because she’s grabbed the deck and started dealing out the cards.

  “Spades,” she says. “My dad and I used to play all the time.”

  “Wow, I’m impressed.”

  We play a few hands, and Tess wins every one of them. After each game, she just leans back in her chair with that eager, sweet little smile of hers and I swear I could sit here all night. We decided to go check out the stars for a while, and just when I’m starting to get my mind off Dani and Mr. Macho, guess who pops up beside me and throws her arms around my neck.

  “Hey Zachy, want to take me home?” Dani wobbles on her feet a little bit.

  “Have you been drinking?” I ask.

  She shakes her head, but I know she’s lying. “Where’s Graham?”

  Anger flickers in her eyes. “What does it matter? Anyway, are you guys ready to leave?”

  I look at Tess. She shrugs and says, “Fine with me.”

  With a pang of something inexplicable—like some strange mixture of guilt and fascination, I catch a trace of Dani’s perfume as she brushes up against me. “C’mon,” she insists. I think of all the times Dani has coaxed me into doing things, charmed her way into just about anything she wanted. And it wasn’t hard for me at all to go along with her. It never has been. I look at her lips and remember so distinctly what it was like, that night in my car, the night we kissed. I’ve replayed it in my head a thousand times over, and it always comes out the same. I’m smiling, asking for more.

  “Let’s go,” I say. “I’ll take you home.”

  Tess

  I am still reeling over what just happened. After playing cards, Zach and I decided to go outside. It’s a nice night, a little chilly, but perfect since I get to spend time with Zach. We’re standing there on the back deck, leaning on the rails, not saying anything, just looking at the stars. Very quickly, a bank of clouds starts rolling in and we watch the stars disappear, one by one. Then the clouds start flickering with tiny spasms of lightning, all over. Neither of us say a word, but my hand is right next to his on the railing and we are so close—almost touching. I can feel my skin tingling. He must feel it, too, because he glances over at me twice as if he wants to say something. I am in heaven, for a brief moment, and I think maybe he is too. Even if he doesn’t know why.

  Then all of a sudden, Dani showed up and started hanging all over him. I couldn’t read their expressions, but suddenly, she whispered something in his ear and we all headed back inside. She was wobbling. I seriously think she was drunk—which both upsets and angers me on several levels. Number one, why would she do something so stupid? On the other hand, my bad for not putting two and two together and coming up with the fact that we’re at a college party celebrating a sports victory. Drinking is inevitable. Zach and I had sort of just disappeared away from the crowd, and we certainly weren't drinking, so neither of us had any idea what was going on.

  Secondly, the fact that Dani can just waltzed—scratch that… staggered—up to Zach and wrapped him around her finger really ticks me off. If you could just see the way Zach’s eyes got all soft and doughy-looking when she started talking. I hate to say this about my best friend, but does he even realize she is manipulating him? And for what? It must be the alcohol.

  Zach looked at me—slightly apologetically, mildly confused, as if to ask me if it’s ok if we leave. I felt like telling him I never wanted to come here in the first place, but I didn’t want to negate the nice time we just had, so I just nodded and got my things together.

  I was really trying not to be mad at Dani―even as she hung on him all the way to the car. I just kept telling myself that she’s still my friend and that she’s not interested in Zach. Or is she? Just as I’m thinking all this through, we got in the car and Dani was leaning closer and closer to Zach, a goofy look on her face. Once I thought I catch Zach looking at me in the rearview mirror, but I just looked away because I don’t want him to see my anger.

  On the way home, out of nowhere, Dani gave me this sly look, nudged Zach and said, “Let’s go to old Fuller Park and hang out for a while.”

  Fuller Park… in another time and place—another life, almost—was the last place I saw Dani alive. The thought of going there made me sick to my stomach. “Um—no, I don’t want to go,” I say. “Zach, can you just take me home?”

  Zach glanced at me in the mirror again. Dani gave me a pouty look. “Fine, I guess I’ll go home, too.”

  Thankfully, they dropped me off first and I jumped out, calling out “thanks” on my way out the door.

  I held my breath all the way across the yard up the stairs and into my room. My parents weren’t home at the moment—having gone out for dinner with some friends—and I am free to exhale with a loud growl that takes more physical effort than I’d planned on. I flopped down on my bed and punched my pillow. Zach, Zach, Zach. His name, over and over—a long, torturous sigh in my head. What happened to you? What happened to us? Where am I and who are we?

 
I am lost in a whirlwind of questions without answers, memories that live, for the moment, only inside my own head. Obviously Zach remembers absolutely nothing after my 13th birthday party. He remembers riding the bus, sitting next to me, playing cards, but he doesn’t remember that when I woke from a coma after four years, he was there waiting for me because he already knew me, knew that we were destined to be together. Now I wonder if any of that was ever true. Did Zach’s dad really study my brain in a coma? Did he discover time travel because of what those studies revealed? Did Zach stumble upon his dad’s research and become intrigued? And if so, why was nothing registering with him now? Why doesn’t he remember that we are meant to be together?

  This is the only thing I can hope for: That Zach knows how to time travel and he will swoop in from the future and save me—save us.

  But can I count on that? Can Tess Turner put that much faith in little more than a slight chance? I have no way of knowing if he can time travel. If he could, it makes sense that he’d have had to discover it way before we met (for the second time), because I changed everything when I chose to return to the scene of my birthday party and save Dani. In return for my best friend, I had given up Zach. How’s that for a trade-off? And to think, now she’s trying to steal him away from me. Not that I have him or anything, but still.

  On the other hand, if Zach had already implanted the chip, then he’d know about us now. Which can only mean that my only hope is that he discovers it sometime in his lifetime and returns for me—provided he believes it. Provided there’s just enough about me to intrigue him into pursuing it. He discovers all these files about me, reads them, feels inspired to time travel for the sole purpose of finding me. Throw some other variables into the equation—such as having already married, secure in his life, happy—and the chances of that happening are next to nothing.

  Suddenly it occurs to me why this all happened to begin with. Given the slim possibility of his finding out about me in the future and falling in love with the idea of me, how on earth was it possible for it to have happened at all? How did he fall in love with me at seventeen, pull me into all this chaos, and promise to love me forever? How is that possible? How did Zach fall in love with Tess Turner—who was, for all practical purposes, a fiction—from the detailed files he found in his dad’s research? Was there something more to it? How was it possible to read my story on a computer screen and be so driven to find me? To be with me? Someone he only knew as a skinny girl from the school bus.

  Confused, I jump into bed and pull my quilt over me, gazing—as I have so many times—at the pattern on it, the design that has forever eluded me. I wish I’d had the chance to ask my grandma about it. It’s fascinating, that someone can assemble a bunch of scraps and make something so beautiful out of them. There must be a memory in each piece of this fabric—some story attached to it. Every piece in its place. As I’m looking at it, my eyes follow a line of checkered cloth, noticing that it’s just a little bit off—like the stitches weren’t quite right, or the person sewing them got distracted by something. Eventually, the crooked line merged back into the whole, merged into the new normal. It wasn’t perfect, after all. Here in this lovely pattern—the beauty of the whole—there is a flaw, one thing that doesn’t fit the rest. One thing that not everyone might notice, and yet, an awkward moment that still defines who we are. That day on the swing when I turned 13—that was the moment my stitches started going awry. And when was I going to find my new normal? When I stop seeing the mistakes and instead see missed opportunities, moments when feeling awkward and misplaced simply means I’m on the way to bigger, better—and more beautiful—things.

  I think back to sitting with Zach—a.k.a., The Dork—on that school bus. Surrounded by dusty seats, a grimy floor, loud laughter and all the vague, disgusting smells of grade school children, I remember something. I remember riding along, the windows down on the bus, my hair flying all around. When we slowed, just before our stop, he told me that he liked my hair. I didn’t make much of it at the time. In all likelihood, I probably rolled my eyes at him and snickered. For one thing, nobody ever told me things like that, so I wouldn’t have believed it anyway. Second, I didn’t really like him that much. Our friendship was one of convenience, being the only two kids relatively the same age, on our street.

  And anyway—since when could someone with hair as crazy as Zach’s be trusted to give style opinions? Then I remember—we were on an open school bus, the wind tossing my hair. I must have looked less than cosmopolitan. I almost laugh out loud, the thought of the joke at my expense that I missed entirely. Then again, maybe he really had liked my hair—even funnier. I mean, Zach wasn’t exactly the cosmo kind of guy either. I can picture him liking a girl with a flaw or two. So why is he so fascinated with Dani? But I already know the answer. Dani has that effect on people. Her beauty and charm could sway just about any guy—but especially one who’s not found his true love. Yet.

  Zach

  I am simply amazed by the sudden turn of events. After dropping Tess off, Dani changes her mind and wants to go out to the tunnel, the place where I rescued her last year from Braden and his pinhead friends. I’m a little confused, but curious what she has in mind, so I take her out there. All the way, she is laughing and singing along with the stereo like she normally does. She seems to have already forgotten that Graham basically just blew her off at the party he invited her to; that she had spotted him in a dark corner kissing another girl.

  When we get to the tunnel, it has started to rain. I pull over to the side of the road and cut the lights, still feeling a little guilty about what had happened with Tess and having to leave so abruptly. She hadn’t really seemed all that upset, but I feel bad anyway. I quickly forget about it, though, because Dani is suddenly leaning over practically on top of me, kissing my neck. I’m thinking, here we go again—a little uneasy, but too excited to be completely askew about it. “Um, Dani—what are you doing?” I ask, not wanting her to stop, but seriously—what is she doing?

  “Nothing…” her lips linger on my neck, her breath a tickle.

  My heart wants to jump headlong into this, but my head tells me something different. “No seriously, what gives?” I gently push her away. “You’re in love with Graham, remember—or whoever it happens to be this month.” My irritation is seeping through and Dani recognizes it, to my surprise, and gives me that fake pout again.

  “What?” She cries, playfully, leaning even closer.

  “Nothing…” Her perfume is all up in my head now. I am losing control. I pull her in and plant one, a bit too sloppily, on her. “I just can’t believe this is happening,” I say.

  Dani leans back over into her seat and her face turns serious. “Zach, I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” How could you be sorry for this? This is great! Will someone just turn me off, please?

  “The way I treat you.”

  “You treat me fine,” I say, trying to pull her back, but knowing all the while just exactly what she means. She does treat me… she plays with my emotions, and I fall for it every time. But I keep hanging on for the small hope that one day she will realize how perfect we are for each other. Then I won’t have to entertain ridiculous fantasies like time traveling with the objective of making sure I never meet her. You know it’s bad when you’re willing to give someone up just to be free of the pain of not having them.

  “No, I don’t,” she insists. “Do you remember last time we were here? What happened after?”

  I nod. How could I forget?

  “Well, I thought a lot about that night. How sweet you were, and how gentle and—how you kissed me. But most of all, I thought about how kind you were, to go out in the middle of nowhere in the dark to get me—and then, to forgive me like you did. To just… accept me.” She pauses, looks at me with an expression I will never forget, because it’s not one you ever catch on Dani Chase’s face. It is regret. “I deci
ded right then and there that I would never deserve someone like you. You were too good for me—are too good for me.”

  Could it be true? Has Dani loved me all this time, too afraid to tell me? Afraid she wasn’t good enough for me? Could this explain all the boyfriends? Has she been simply chasing something to fill the void of loving me? Hasn’t she realized that I love her, too? Surely, she must know.

  “Dani, I have always loved you,” I say. “You have to know that.”

  By the light of the dashboard, I see tears glistening in her eyes. “I know,” she admits. “I just don’t know why.”

  There is nothing more to say. I just kiss her, firmly, with deliberation, as if it’s our first kiss. And in a way, it is.

  I keep listening in the silence that surrounds us for her to say something. Something like I love you, too, Zach. But there is nothing. Only the dribbling raindrops on the roof in between quick breaths. I catch a streak of lightning out of the corner of my eye, quick—then another one, just as quick, nearby almost touching the other one as they fade in the night—and I wonder—is this what it is to love someone? To be so full and yet missing something? The words you want to hear? The hopes you want to share? Will we be forever missing each other? Near each other but not quite in the same place.

  Tess

  I walk over to the window, pull back the curtain and peek out. The sky is all lit up with stars like a Christmas tree. There is a bank of clouds inching over the moon. I watch it for a moment, and I get sort of lost in it, like I’m in a trance. And for some reason, it reminds me of Dani, and I feel sort of sad. I have a fleeting thought that I am going to miss her and I don’t know why or where it came from. It’s like for a brief moment, I am back here that first night I came home from the hospital, trying to wrap my mind around Dani’s death. There is something hurting in my throat and I swallow hard but it won’t go away. I’m so glad Dani’s alive, that the past didn’t have to be what it was. The day that changed my life forever changed it in a way I would have never imagined. It set me on a journey that would take me through years—from a dark, lonely place—to life, to hopes so powerful that it was like I could hold them in my hands, mold them into something real. These hopes were for a best friend saved and for finding someone I knew, without a doubt, I was meant to fall in love with. I love both of them. The problem is that Zach only thinks Dani loves him. And he has no idea what he’s about to miss.