Once Upon a Kiss

by Robin Palmer

  When we got out of the elevator, my eyes widened. This Dell thing wasn’t a mall. It was more like a mini Disneyland complete with trolleys and a fountain that moved in time to music that just happened to have stores thrown in. As Andrea put her hand out to stop me before I got hit by a trolley, I turned to her. “What a wonderful use of our time to come here every day.”

  I was quickly learning that while “nonfat, nonwhip two Splenda mochaccino” may have been a large part of Andrea’s vocabulary, irony was not. Which meant that my comment—like a lot of things—sailed right over her head. “Well, yeah,” she agreed. “If we didn’t, how else would you have won Best Accessorizer at Castle Heights three years in a row?” As we approached a place called Anthropologie, she grabbed my arm. “Time to go to worship at the altar of fabulousness,” she announced, yanking me inside.

  Once inside, my face flushed, my heart raced, and my stomach swirled. But not in a good way, like it did when I walked into Terri’s.

  “Are you okay?” Andrea asked worriedly. “You look really red.”

  “All this pink,” I murmured. “And the floral prints. And the ruffles.” I looked at her. “It’s like . . . an overload of fabulous!”

  From the smile on her face, I could see that she hadn’t come any further along with her proficiency in irony. “Well, yeah.”

  “While you become even more fabulous, I think I’m going to sit this one out and go see if I can find a Hot Dog on a Stick.”

  “A what on a what?” she asked, confused.

  “A Hot Dog on a Stick,” I repeated. They had to have one there.

  From the look on her face, apparently they did not.

  “Or I’ll just go . . . get some . . . frozen yogurt?” I asked. That seemed like something this version of me would like.

  She smiled. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Once I got outside, I was relieved to hear Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All” blaring from the speakers as the fountain dramatically jumped in time to the lyrics. Finally. Some music from the eighties. It was good to know that you could always depend on Whitney.

  “I still can’t get over the fact that Whitney’s gone,” a middle-aged woman wearing a T-shirt that said I’M A BELIEBER said with a tsk to her friend as they passed me. “To die like that?! How awful.”

  Okay, then. You couldn’t depend on Whitney. After buying a smoothie at a place called Jamba Juice (similar to Orange Julius, but way more flavors and way more expensive) I wandered around the mall, peeking in the various windows. Where were the wide patent leather belts? And the leg warmers? And the fingerless lace gloves?

  And then I saw it.

  Which was kind of a miracle, as it was all the way in the far corner of the mall, near a generator that made a lot of noise. There was no sign, but something about it captured my eye. Maybe it was the Rubik’s cube in the window. Or the ripped sweatshirt à la Jennifer Beals in Flashdance. I almost started crying when I heard Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” as I entered. I wasn’t a huge fan—probably because MTV totally overplayed the video—but it was just such a relief to be surrounded by something familiar.

  And when I saw Terri behind the counter sorting leg warmers, I almost started to cry. “Terri! Thank God,” I cried as I ran over and hugged her.

  “Wow. Aren’t you a hugger?” she said, patting my back.

  Just hearing her voice made me hug harder.

  “Okay, I think we can stop now,” she said before she untangled herself from me.

  I looked at her. “You look so . . . normal,” I sputtered. She was Terri, and yet she wasn’t. Her hair was all the same color—brown—and she had only one earring in one ear instead of the usual five.

  “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment, but I’m gonna take it as one,” she replied. “I don’t mean to be rude or anything, ’cause God knows I need the business, but do we know each other?”

  “You don’t recognize me either?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Wait a minute—yes! I do!”

  My shoulders began to relax.

  “You’re the one who the valet guys gave the tiara to, right?”

  “Terri, it’s me . . . Zoe.”

  “Nice to meet you, Zoe.”

  “No. Zoe. As in your best customer? The girl who you said that if you had a younger sister, you would have wished it were me?”

  Instead of jogging her memory, she was starting to look a little nervous.

  I looked around the store. The clothes were the same—miniskirts; stirrup pants; poet blouses. “I was in here yesterday. Don’t you remember? You were altering a dress on me, and then Brad came in?”

  “Is Brad your boyfriend?”

  “Yes and no,” I replied. “I mean, yes, he is, at this moment, but not in real life.”

  “Ah. So what you’re saying is he’s a booty call.”

  “Ew. No!” I cried. “What I mean is . . .” How could I say He’s not my boyfriend back in 1986, which is where I live? That wasn’t going to fly. “Never mind” is what I went with instead.

  “Look, I don’t want any trouble,” Terri said. “I already get enough grief as it is being the sole vintage place in a mall in a city that worships all things shiny and new. I don’t know what kind of dare your little friends sent you on, but I’m just a single working gal trying to make a living, so while I could certainly use the business, it’s probably better if you go on back to Anthropologie or Abercrombie or wherever else it is you buy your cute little dresses—”

  I motioned to my dress. “But this isn’t my style!” I cried. I held up a poet blouse. “This is my style!” I loved poet blouses. They were so . . . puffy. Which helped to hide how close to boobless I was.

  Terri stared at me. “If you like it so much, why don’t you go try it on?” she dared me.

  “Fine. I’ll do that,” I said as I marched toward the dressing room. I plucked a pair of culottes off a rack. “I’ll even try on these.”

  When I came out, Terri smiled. “Now that is an awesome outfit,” she announced.

  “I know, right?” I said as I checked myself out in the mirror.

  “Let me get you some accessories,” she said.

  I tried to think of a way to bring up my situation without sounding completely nuts. “Hey, do you believe in past lives?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible as she rummaged through the jewelry.

  “Well, yeah, sure,” she replied. “You kind of have to if you live in L.A., right?”

  Okay, this was good. I could work with this. “So . . . if we really had past lives, then if we met people in this life that we knew from past lives, we would know stuff about them, right?”

  She shrugged as she put a triple strand of pearls around my neck. “I guess so.”

  “Soo . . . if I told you that you had a birthmark in the shape of a butterfly above your right ankle, that wouldn’t be weird then, right?”

  At that she paled. “How’d you know that?”

  Finally—we were getting somewhere! If I could convince her I knew her, then hopefully when I brought up the time-travel stuff she wouldn’t think I was too nuts. “I know that because—” Before I could continue, the door to the shop opened. “Zoe? Are you in here?” I heard Andrea call out. “One of the valet guys said they saw you come in here.”

  Unlike me, Andrea made a dainty click-clacking when she walked through the store, like a row of dominoes tap dancing. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” she said. “Why didn’t you answer my texts?” When she got a look at the poet blouse, she made the same face I gave my mother when she tried to get me to drink wheatgrass juice. “What is that?”

  “A poet blouse,” I replied happily. “Isn’t it rad?”

  I began to grab more stuff off the racks and put it on the counter near the register. Seeing that I didn’t know how to get my clo
thes from 1986 into 2016, I needed some provisions. I even got a pair of Doc Martens boots.

  “I so hope no one I know walks by,” Andrea murmured as she typed away on her phone.

  I only had ten dollars in my wallet, but I did have my Visa card, which I slapped down on the counter. Technically it was only to be used for emergencies, but as far as I was concerned, overdosing on pink could be potentially fatal.

  Andrea grabbed the credit card. “Okay, I’m sorry, but as your BFF I need to do an intervention here,” she announced. “Do you not realize what this could do to your reputation? Not to mention mine, by default? You can’t wear stuff that’s so . . . eighties!” she cried. “It’s a form of a social suicide!”

  “Two hundred five dollars and ninety-two cents,” Terri said when she was done ringing it up.

  Whoa. That inflation thing we learned about in social studies really must have been true. I turned to Andrea. “It’s okay—once my parents see the charge on their credit card, they’ll end up killing me anyway.” At least I’d be dressed well when I went.

  “If it’s okay with you, I’m going to go wait outside,” Andrea said. “You know I’m allergic to vintage.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  After she left, Terri handed me the bag. “You’re all set. I’d say it was nice talking to you, but really what it was was weird.”

  You could always count on Terri to say it like it was.

  “I know it seems that way,” I admitted. “But I swear to you—I’m not nuts.”

  “Uh-huh,” she replied in the kind of tone reserved to talking to those who were nuts.

  • • •

  My parents have always been responsible (read: cheap) with their money. Even after Discosize started doing well, and they got so busy that it became clear that they needed to hire an assistant, they would only go for someone part-time. So the whole concept of this Rain person, who—I gathered at dinner—not only worked for them full-time, but also joined us on holidays (“I’m so lucky that one of the gifts of having a dysfunctional family that I can’t stand to be within a fifty-mile radius of is that the Universe led me to all of you to adopt as my surrogate family,” she mentioned during the moment of silence she made us take before we began eating something called quinoa and tempeh), was bizarre.

  Rain was bizarre in general. I was fascinated with her dreadlocks and the earring in her nose. As it was the end of the day, the patchouli was now mixed with some funky body odor (I found out later she didn’t believe in deodorant because, according to her, it could cause Alzheimer’s), which took away my appetite a bit, but that also could have been because the entire meal had zero flavor.

  I wasn’t wild about the way that whenever anyone in the family spoke, she reached for their hand and held it while looking soulfully into their eyes (“Once you’ve learned how to be present and really listen to someone, there’s no going back,” she’d tell me later), but I had to admit it was a nice change from my parents, who never really listened to anything that I said.

  As I took a second piece of bread, my mother’s eyebrow went up.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just . . . the bread’s usually just out there for show,” she replied. “No one actually eats it.”

  I got up and went to the fridge for the butter. “Then why bother buying it and putting it out?”

  “Good question,” said my dad.

  “Maybe you’d like to work out with me to the new routine when you’re done,” my mother said hopefully. “It’s the one we’re doing with Drake next week.”

  “Who?”

  “Too bad he doesn’t have a younger brother for you to date,” I heard my father mutter.

  My mom swatted him on the bald spot on the back of his head. “Larry!”

  “What? Drake’s half-Jewish.”

  “But she already has Brad,” she hissed.

  Whatever appetite I did have left quickly vanished.

  She turned to me. “So what do you say? I could really use your input on the routine.”

  Not to mention it would burn off the carbs. It was sad to see that my mother was still obsessed with her weight. “I wish I could, but I have a ton of homework I need to do,” I said.

  “Since when do you do homework?” Ethan snorted.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I always do my homework.”

  “You mean you always use your power to force your minions to do it for you,” Ethan whispered as my parents went back and forth about the idea of doing a special Christmas edition of Hip-Hop Your Way to Health that would pair rappers with country singers who were well-known for their faith. (“Like an exercise version of that show Crossroads on CMT!” my mom said brightly.)

  I had minions? “I do not do that!” I whispered back harshly. Andrea did, I knew that, because right after she had given me grief about doing mine, she had had the nerve to ask me to do hers. For free.

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “I even got it on tape once, in case I needed to blackmail you down the line.” He shrugged. “I think it’s great. Once I’m super popular, I’m going to do the same thing.”

  As I watched Rain “eat mindfully” (read: chew every. single. bite nineteen times) I came up with an idea. “Actually, this homework I have to do tonight is really interesting,” I announced.

  No one said anything. Instead they clicked away on their iPhones underneath the table on their laps. Everyone except Rain, that was. She reached over and squeezed my hand. “I think it’s so great that you’re opening up to the family like this, Zoe,” she said. “Would you care to share with us what the homework is?”

  I pushed the food around on my plate. “It has to do with time travel.”

  At that, my dad looked up and looked over at my mother. “We’re paying thirty grand a year so she can study time travel?” he asked.

  “What class is this?” my mother asked.

  “Science.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” she said firmly. “There’s no such thing.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It kind of sounded like there might be.” I turned to Rain. “Hey Rain, what do you think? Do you believe in that kind of stuff?”

  She chewed about a dozen more times before swallowing. “Oh totally.”

  At that, my dad sighed and went back to typing.

  “Rhiannon wonders how people could not believe in alternate universes,” she went on.

  My father looked up. “Is that that psychic lady you’ve been trying to get me to go to?”

  She nodded.

  He sighed again and went back to typing some more.

  Before I could push the subject any further, my parents got sidetracked by an e-mail from someone named Jay Z’s manager, who from the way they started screaming and jumping up and down, seemed pretty important, and they got up from the table and left the room.

  After getting Ethan to help me clear the table (which, from the look I got from him, was not something I did often) I followed him up the stairs and watched as he went straight to the computer in his room. That was what I needed to do—get onto that thing so I could do some research about how to get back to 1986. From the way people talked about those things, they could teach you how to do anything.

  The problem was, just looking at all the various buttons and symbols made me start to sweat. I couldn’t do this alone. As much as it pained me, because I knew it would probably end up costing me a fortune, I was going to have to ask Ethan for some help.

  “Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” I asked at I stood at his door. “I need your help.”

  “Depends. What’s in it for me?” he asked as he typed on the computer with one hand and his iPhone with the other. My brother may have had no coordination when it came to sports (see: losing to a first-grader in T-ball. Twice. Last year) but when it came to anyth
ing electronic, like video games and computers, he would have won an Olympic gold medal.

  “The opportunity to help your older sister, whom you love so much,” I replied as I plopped down on his bed. “The same one who happens to be a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than you, and therefore could sit on you and cause a great deal of harm if she wanted to.”

  He swiveled around in his chair. “Tell me what it is first, and then I’ll tell you what it’ll cost you.”

  “Okay, but you can’t tell anyone,” I replied. “Not even Mom and Dad.”

  His eyes lit up. “So it’s illegal? That’s gonna really cost you, then.”

  “No, it’s not illegal,” I said. “It’s just . . . it’ll probably sound a bit strange when I tell you, but you have to promise to listen with an open mind.”

  “Open mind’s gonna cost you more.”

  “Ethan. Come on. I’m serious.”

  He put his hands up. “Okay, okay.” He reached under his messed-up covers to the foot of his bed and pulled out a bag of already-opened chips. So that’s what that crunching sound was when I sat down. “What is it?” he asked before he jammed his mouth full of them.

  I took a deep breath, hoping this wasn’t going to sound as crazy out loud as it did in my head. “Well . . . the thing is . . .” I reached for the bag of chips. I definitely needed reinforcements for this.

  “Can we get to it already?” Ethan asked impatiently. “There’s a webinar about self-publishing e-books that I want to see.”

  “E-what?”

  “E-books.”

  “What’s an e-book?”

  He gave one of his more annoyed sighs—the ones that he drew out super long. “I thought you had something important to tell me.”

  “I do! And that’s part of it, kind of,” I said.

  “What is?”

  “The d-book thing.”