by Robin Palmer
The buzzing got louder.
“If there’s one thing I’m grateful to my popularity for, it’s that it gives me the opportunity to get to see past people’s outsides, if only because they’re too intimidated to keep me out,” I preached. “I’m not invisible, and because I’m not, I get to go up to people who are and let them know they’re seen.” I looked around the auditorium for Terrell from the Go Greeners. “Hey, Terrell—stand up for a second.”
“Me?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He stood up slowly and looked around, like he was afraid of what was going to happen next.
“Look at this ensemble,” I said. “Jeans with a seersucker jacket and a denim shirt with a bowtie. How amazingly cool is that? Now, I bet a lot of you guys have never noticed that Terrell has amazing fashion sense, but now that I’ve pointed it out, you won’t miss it.”
Terrell smiled, pleased with the attention, before he sat back down.
“Ashima Patel. Where are you?” I called out.
Over in the back corner, an arm slowly went up.
“Do you have your sketchbook?” In study hall the week before, I had walked by to find her sketching an amazing portrait of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
She nodded.
“Open it and show everyone one of your sketches.”
Shyly, she did, and the crowd began to murmur in amazement at her portrait of the Eiffel Tower.
“Isn’t she amazing?”
The crowd began to clap.
“Yeah. I think so, too,” I agreed. “So next time you see her, remember that even though she’s quiet, there’s a lot going on there. Here’s the thing: whether you guys believe it or not, we’re all the same. No matter where we sit in the cafeteria, or what kind of music we listen to, or how many Facebook friends we have, we all want the same thing. To be seen. And it’s my belief that by getting rid of the Ramp, we’re that much closer to that eventually happening.”
It was hard to gauge the crowd’s reaction to my speech. “I know that I probably just wasted my breath, and that none of what I said is going to change your mind about getting rid of the Ramp, but even if it doesn’t, I’m glad I said all of it. Because it’s important and it’s true. So it’s time to vote. Those in favor of the Ramp coming down, raise your hand.”
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It started slowly—a few hands here, a few there, but soon they started going up faster. And faster. Until at the end, the only holdovers were Andrea, Brad, and a few other Ramp dwellers. And then Brad’s hand went up as well.
Thank you, I mouthed.
“What’d you say?” he yelled back. “I have a hard time reading lips.”
“I said thanks.” I looked out at the crowd. “Thanks to all of you. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.”
The only thing I would have appreciated more was having someone to share this moment of victory with.
Later that afternoon, as I passed the building where the radio station was, I kept my head down. As much as I tried to get myself to stop, I couldn’t help replaying the look Jonah had given me on Saturday right before I ran out of Insomnia. I couldn’t believe I had taken the risk to tell him the truth. Of course he thought I was nuts.
And of course the door to the building had to open just as I crossed by.
“Zoe!” Jonah called after me.
I walked faster.
“Zoe!” he called again.
I began to run toward the parking lot, and could hear from his footsteps behind me that he was running after me. Huh. 2016 had given him a lot more stamina. “Zoe. Wait. Please,” I heard Jonah say.
He had to pick now to start paying attention to me? I stopped. “What?” I asked.
He caught up with me. “Okay, listen,” he said when he was by my side. “If I did happen to be the kind of person who believed in time travel—which I’m not saying I am—but if I were, then, maybe I would believe that what you told me on Saturday wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“You don’t know how much that means to me that you said that,” I said as tears began to sprout in my eyes.
“Why don’t we go somewhere so you can tell me the whole story?”
An hour later, fueled by a mochaccino and a chocolate chip cookie, I had run through the whole thing. The mouth to mouth from Brad. Waking up the next morning. Having no idea what an iPhone was, let alone Twitter. I told him about Rhiannon, and how she had said that I just needed to kiss Brad again, but that I hadn’t done that before we broke up—
“I heard you guys broke up.”
“You did?” Of course he had. The entire school had.
“Yeah. How come?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Because he wasn’t my boyfriend. I mean, he was, but he wasn’t,” I said nervously. “He wasn’t . . . my person.”
“That’s too bad,” he replied.
I searched his face for something, but nothing showed. “Yeah. I guess.” I cleared my throat. “And then Nerdy Wayne said he knew a guy who knew a guy who had some ideas, but the idea was watching that movie, and that didn’t help, so now I don’t know what to do.”
He thought about it for a second. “Well, I think I might have one, too.”
“Your family pays a guy who lives all the way in India to do everything from schedule your dentist appointments here in L.A. to make homemade baked goods for you to send as thank-you gifts?” I asked as Jonah turned on his laptop. “And his name is Hank? That’s not a very Indian name.”
“It’s actually Argjun,” Jonah replied. “Hank is his customer service call center name. He chose it because of Hank Williams. He’s a big country music fan. Right now he’s really into Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton.”
“And you know all this how?”
“We’re Facebook friends.”
“Isn’t the stuff stale when it gets here?”
“Huh?”
“The homemade baked goods.”
“Oh. No. He outsources that part. To another outsourcing company in the Valley.”
Now I was really confused. “Let me get this straight. So you hire someone in India to hire someone here to make something homemade for you.”
“I don’t. My mom does,” he said. He clicked away on the keyboard until a dialing sound was heard, like when you made a phone call. A few seconds later I saw a dark-haired guy wearing a T-shirt that said OCCUPY WALL STREET fill the screen.
“Jonah!” Long time no see,” said the guy who I was guessing was Hank. “What’s the haps?” His English was perfect, with barely any accent.
“Hey, Hank. How are you? How’s P!nk?” Jonah replied. He turned to me. “P!nk’s Hank’s girlfriend. Her real name is Ashima but P!nk is her American name.”
I couldn’t get over the fact that neither of them seemed the least bit weirded out that they were having a conversation from different continents. “Pink’s a name?” I asked, confused.
“Yeah. She’s a famous singer.”
“P!nk is wonderful, thank you for asking,” Hank replied.
Jonah pulled me closer to him so I was in line with the camera. “Hank, this is Zoe.”
“Hey, Hank.” I waved. “Nice to meet you.”
“You too, Zoe.” He looked at Jonah. “I did not see a relationship status change on your Facebook page, Jonah.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Jonah said, turning red.
“Definitely not,” I agreed. “We’re just friends. Not to mention I just broke up with someone.”
Hank nodded. “Ah. My bad. Forgive me. P!nk and I were friends for many years before we became a Facebook-official couple.”
“Okay. Moving on,” Jonah said. “So we need a little help today.”
“That is
what I am here for.”
“Now, what I’m about to explain to you might sound really weird—”
“Oh, do not worry about that,” Hank said. “I recently did some work for a major celebrity who has starred in numerous high-grossing box office action films, and while I am not at liberty to discuss what he asked me to help him with because of our strict confidentiality rules, I can assure you that it was very high on the weirdness factor.”
Was that supposed to make me feel better?
“So what we’re wondering about is time travel,” Jonah said.
“Time travel.” Hank nodded. “An oft-requested subject,” he replied, as if there was nothing weird about it whatsoever.
“It is?” I asked.
“Oh yes. I would say I get about five calls about it a month.”
Huh. Suddenly I didn’t feel so weird anymore.
“Now, are you interested in how to travel forward in time, or back?”
“Back,” I replied, still not over the fact that I was talking to a computer. Or a person in a computer. Or whatever this was. That, to me, was stranger than time travel.
“Give me one moment, please,” Hank said as he turned toward a bank of video monitors and began typing on a keyboard. We watched as the screens filled with information. After a bit, he turned back to us. “Okay. I ran various programs, with logarithms and other math-related things that are very boring to those who are not interested in math, so I will spare you the details,” he said. “But essentially the idea is this. It is to do something very similar to the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, which starred Bill Murray. Are you familiar with that movie?”
“Unfortunately I am not,” I replied.
“Oh. That’s too bad. Because it’s a very entertaining movie. If you would like, I can do a search on Dish TV to see if it will be airing anytime in the next week and I can record it for you. And if it is not, I can arrange for it to be added into Jonah’s Netflix queue. And if Netflix does not offer it for instant streaming, I can purchase it for you through iTunes. And if—”
Jonah turned to me. “It really is an awesome movie. If you have the time, you definitely should try to watch—”
“Thanks for the tip. I’ll definitely watch it at some point,” I interrupted. “Now, if you could just explain the idea.”
“Yes. Very good. Sure, I can do that,” Hank said. “So the idea is very simple. It involves the person retracing their steps of the last few days leading up to the time when he or she time traveled.”
“And then what?” Jonah asked.
“And then the person would get to the point where whatever it was that caused them to time travel could be done differently.”
We waited for him to go on, but he just continued smiling.
“So that’s it? Just go back and retrace my steps? It’s not more scientific than that?” I asked. “You know, like with worm holes or black holes or logarithms?”
Hank shook his head. “I am not a PBS special.”
I shrugged. “Okay. If you say so.”
“Was there a certain event that spurred on this time travel incident?” he asked.
Starting with the fiasco at Hot Dog on a Stick, I told him the whole story up until Brad gave me mouth to mouth and kissed me.
“Ah. So it was a kiss from your boyfriend that did this,” Hank said.
“Yes. I mean no. I mean, Brad wasn’t . . . isn’t . . . my boyfriend back in 1986,” I replied. “He was in 2016. But he’s not now. I broke up with him the other day.”
“Ah. So you think you were kissed by the wrong person?”
I nodded. “Definitely the wrong person.”
“Then it sounds like you need to be kissed by the right one!” Hank exclaimed.
Huh. Rhiannon hadn’t brought up that part. “I guess so,” I said.
“Do you know who the right person might be?” Hank asked.
I shook my head. “I have no clue.”
“Hm. Well, do you think you might be able to figure it out?”
“Probably not. I don’t really date. . . . I mean, it’s not like I’ve never been kissed before, because I have. . . . Not like a lot, but enough. . . .” I was babbling. This was getting awkward. “What if I just start retracing my steps and go from there?” I asked.
Hank nodded. “That sounds like a plan, Stan.”
It wasn’t like we had others.
“SO NONE OF THIS FEELS THE LEAST BIT familiar?” I asked Jonah as we stood in my kitchen the next afternoon. We were about to embark on Operation Groundhog Day (I did end up watching the movie the night before, and it was indeed awesome). Because he had been with me the day during the Hot Dog on a Stick Incident-with-a-capital-I (he came up with the capital I thing, and he was right—it was capital-I-worthy), I had convinced him to come with me again.
He took it in and then shook his head. “Nope. Sorry.”
“It wasn’t a fair question anyway,” I said. “My mother’s constantly remodeling.” Still, now that Jonah believed me (after regurgitating about a hundred facts to him about himself that there was no way I could know unless we were close, I had finally convinced him that I was telling the truth), I was hoping that being at my house would jog his memory even more.
“So tell me again what happened in the few days leading up to the kiss,” he said as we chowed down on gluten-free/taste-free crackers. Some things never changed—like the lack of good snacks available in my house.
I felt like I was on one of those crime shows that I had gotten addicted to in the past week. “We’ve been over this, like, ten times already,” I said.
“I know, I know. But I just want to be clear. So we don’t end up screwing it up.” He took another cracker. “I don’t want to be known as the guy who sent you back to the 1500s.”
“Fine. So after school, we went to the mall to work—” I began.
He smiled. “I can’t get over the fact that you had a job,” he said, amused.
“Oh, not just a job, but a good job.”
“What was it?”
“I’m not going to tell you,” I sniffed. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Did I have a job?”
“You did. You worked at a record store called Vinnie’s Vinyl.”
He nodded. “That makes sense. Wait—I didn’t have a Mohawk, did I?”
“No.”
“Phew.”
“But you also didn’t wear this,” I said, pulling at his fedora.
“I’ll have you know that they don’t let you into Williamsburg, Brooklyn, without one of these,” he said.
“What’s in Williamsburg?”
“It’s where I plan to live after college.”
“Is that where all those hipster people live?” I teased.
“Hipster has such a negative connotation,” he said. “I prefer . . . culture-forward.”
“But what about London?” I asked.
“Huh?”
I shook my head. “Never mind.”
“What?”
I felt my cheeks get red. “Nothing. It’s just . . . we used to talk about living in New York or London or Berlin when we grew up.”
“I could never live in Berlin. German food—”
“—gives you gas. I know,” I finished.
Now he was the one who looked embarrassed. “I guess you do know me.” He grabbed his keys. “Let’s go.”
As we turned to leave, my mother came bouncing into the kitchen and began to do some squats. “Oh. Hello,” she said when she saw Jonah.
“Mom, this is Jonah,” I said. “From school. We’re . . . lab partners in science class. Working on an experiment.”
“How nice,” she said. “Odd, but nice.” She did a few more moves that consisted of her shaking her cornrows and then stopped. “I have an idea—how about you t
wo take a break and come be part of our new video!”
I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. It was déjà vu. I turned to Jonah who looked just as spooked.
“Okay, that’s just weird,” he whispered.
She turned to Jonah. “Zoe’s father and I have a line of videos called Hip-Hop Your Way to Health. Maybe you’ve heard of them?”
“Ah, no. I don’t think I have.”
“Really? Do you follow Nas on Twitter? Because he tweeted about us just last week.”
“Nope. Sorry.”
“Oh. Well, we have a Facebook page, so you can learn more about us there,” she said. “This new video, it’s with Nicki Minaj, but we’re populating the crowd with extras who are very non-hip-hoppy, if you feel me, which is why you two would be great.”
We looked at each other. “You know, Mom, that sounds great, especially because I’m a huge Nicki fan and have been wanting to meet him—”
“Her,” Jonah said quietly.
“—her,” I said without missing a beat, “but we really need to keep working on our experiment.”
“It’s a timely one,” Jonah added.
“You can say that again,” I murmured as I grabbed Jonah’s arm and dragged him toward the front door. “So we’ll see you later!”
When we got outside, we looked at each other. “This is getting weirder by the minute,” he said.
“I know.” What if Hank was right? What if this worked? Was I ready to go back? I turned to him. “I think you should drive. You dropped me off at work the day that all this started, and I think we should stick to how it happened.”
“But my car has a tendency—”
“—to get stuck in park at red lights when going uphill, I know.”
He looked surprised. “Yeah, and sometimes—”
“—you have to put it in neutral and get out and push while I steer from the passenger side.”
He shook his head. “I’m done being freaked-out by this stuff.”
I pounded the door three times with my fist before lifting the handle up and out so that it opened. Once in, he turned to me. “So where to?”