by Ellen Smith
“Uh-huh. Plus, you’re the one who looked up spoilers for the finale last season because you couldn’t wait to find out who won.”
Will pretended to be too busy eating his dripping gyro to respond.
Mara nestled back in the deep sofa cushion. On screen, the couples had been issued their first challenge. They were going to play some type of capture-the-flag game on an obstacle course complete with fences, rope courses, and rock walls.
“There’s one more twist,” the host said, pausing over each word for dramatic effect. “One partner in each couple will be blindfolded.” The couples groaned as the host passed out bandanas emblazoned with the show’s logo.
“We’re going to win this, no question,” said one man as his fiancée nodded happily beside him. “Our communication is on point. We’re just like . . . I’ll be talking and she’ll just know . . .”
“Exactly what he was going to say!” the fiancée finished sweetly.
Mara nudged Will’s leg. “Hey. How come we never finish each other’s—”
“Fries? Don’t mind if I do,” Will said, hovering a hand over her plate. Mara swatted him away, and he smirked.
The show switched to a commercial. As a businessman deplored the effects of his chronic dry eyes—just in time to discover a drug that could help—Mara took the first bite of her gyro. Good, but not nearly as good as the ones she and Will used to get from the food trucks when they were in college. Food truck gyros were the best.
The dry-eyes commercial ended and the next began. As the camera panned over a dimly lit room, Mara watched Will from the corner of her eye. The foreboding music rose to a crescendo and there it was: a sudden flash of light, a bloodcurdling scream, and a half-hidden ghostly figure. The voice-over intoned the title of the horror movie due out in theaters next month.
Will nonchalantly ate his fries. If he were triggered by anything onscreen, he didn’t show it. Hopefully that meant he really was okay. Even after eight years, it could be hard to tell with Will. He barely admitted to having post-traumatic stress disorder, never mind admitting that he needed some help.
Mara reached over and squeezed her husband’s hand. He squeezed back.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
“How much money people have to get paid to be on reality shows.”
“Probably not much,” Mara said. “Some people like the spotlight.”
“Fair enough.” Will munched on another fry. “I’d need at least a million to consider it.”
“Only a million? There’s not enough money in the world to convince me.”
For a moment, it looked like Engaged or Enraged was back on, until Mara realized it was an ad for another reality show. The image of a wide-eyed woman with puffy blonde hair filled the TV screen.
“What if you found out that your life was a lie?” the woman asked dramatically.
Mara thought her eyes were going to pop out of her skull. “Is that . . . ?”
The wide-eyed woman onscreen sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. “For years, I’ve felt as if my life was blown off course,” she said. “I was haunted by thoughts that this wasn’t who I was meant to be—that there was another life, my authentic life, just out of reach.”
The camera panned to her sitting at a kitchen table, sorting through boxes of photographs and newspaper clippings. “Even if the government can’t confirm it, I think the evidence is clear: I’ve had a timeline rectification, and my life isn’t what it seems. I’m on a mission to uncover the truth about my other life.” The woman turned and faced the camera straight on. If she were bothered by anything she’d uncovered, she certainly didn’t look it. “I’m Deirdre Collins: entrepreneur, TV show host, part-time actress, and full-time personality. Who knows what else I could have been?” She gave the camera an exaggerated wink. “Tune in next Wednesday at eight central for the season premiere of Déjà Deirdre!”
“You have to be kidding me,” Will said. “What is she famous for, anyway?”
“At this point, I think she’d just be famous for being famous,” Mara said. Why was her heart suddenly beating faster? “This is ridiculous. I thought the whole point of a timeline rectification was that people wouldn’t remember having one.”
“Plus, even if there was a way you could find out—why would you want to? If someone goes to the trouble of time wrecking, they probably want to forget,” Will said.
“Seriously.” Mara thought back to the postcard she’d found in their mailbox. Another day, another protest. Timeline rectifications had been legal for over a decade—since 1999, 2000, somewhere in there—but most people called them time wrecks. Anti-time wreck organizations like One Life, One Time were getting more popular every year. “Still—it’s kind of creepy to think about, isn’t it? That people can actually time travel.”
Will seemed unconcerned. “Meh, not really. Science was bound to get there eventually. And of course, the government had to get their hands on it.”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Mara said. “On the surface. Criminals actually going back and undoing their crimes instead of sitting in jail forever.”
“Only if they can be rehabilitated. And unfortunately, a lot of people can’t.”
And that’s why we’ll never get a time wreck. Jason Mann would have to be sorry for what he did. Jason had to be one of the most unrepentant and incompetent school shooters in history. His attempt to shoot up the Adams Morgan University Student Union—during a school break, no less, when almost no one was around—had only been witnessed by Mara and Will, and only Mara had been shot.
Granted, she wouldn’t have wanted Jason to be a more competent shooter. God, no. But it would be nice if he were at least a little sorry.
Mara leaned back into the couch cushions again. Well, whether Jason was sorry or not, he was rotting in jail now. Besides, they didn’t need a time wreck, anyway. It wasn’t like she and Will couldn’t handle the life they’d been given. They’d made it this far. Mara swallowed and tried to will her thumping heart to slow down.
Engaged or Enraged was back on. As the camera panned in on the couples lining the obstacle course, Will nudged her. “Your turn. What are you thinking about?”
Mara forced herself to make her voice light and cheerful. “That if we were on this show, you’d be wearing the blindfold,” Mara said. “I give better directions.”
“Not a chance,” Will said. “I’m not banging my head on every dang obstacle because you can’t see around me. Tallest guy plays navigator. Always.”
Mara laughed. She leaned against her husband and inhaled his clean-boy scent of soap and shaving cream. They fit together so neatly, his arm around her, her head on his chest.
All in all, it had been a good day.
Scratch that.
It was a good life.
Hey, Deirdre Collins, Your Show Is Nothing New . . . Literally
By Sarah Kapelli
Guest poster for the One Life, One Time blog
By now, I’m sure we’ve all seen the latest in the movement to normalize time wrecking: Deirdre Collins’s new show, Déjà Deirdre. The premise is simple: Deirdre Collins, in yet another attempt to stay relevant and regain her stardom, believes she has had a timeline rectification because she has many déjà vu moments. She moves to New York City (a place she claims to have never lived but for which she feels a strong affinity) and attempts to discover who she might have been in her first life map, before her supposed time wreck.
There are only two problems with this premise: 1) There is no evidence whatsoever that people with completed timeline rectifications will feel any sort of “déjà vu” when they encounter the people or places from their original life map; and 2) the show glamorizes time wrecking. It suggests that the worst possible outcome would be a wistful sort of melancholy, wherein the time wrecker occasionally wonders about who they might have been.
Let’s be clear: time wrecking affects a lot more than one person’s experience. Yes, it (suppos
edly) gives the criminal the opportunity to go back and choose not to commit his or her crime. Yes, it (again, supposedly) gives the victim or victims the opportunity to live without the effects of that crime. Both of these things are understandable or even admirable in principle.
However, changing a life map (as the Department of Timeline Rectification so eloquently puts it) doesn’t just affect the criminals and victims. The proverbial ripples from a single event have the power to touch us all. I don’t live a singular life, powered only by my own actions and limited only by my own shortcomings. Neither do you. We all touch and shape each other’s lives in thousands of different ways.
Here’s the thing, Deirdre: this isn’t all about you. If it is true that you’re a time wrecker (which we can’t prove, either way), that’s not just an entertaining little part of your human experience. That’s evidence that you are so selfish, so conceited, so absorbed in your own experience, that you chose to change time—which affects everyone—to benefit yourself.
That, sadly, is nothing new. Not just for Deirdre Collins, but for all of us. We frequently put our own selfish wants above our concern for the greater good. That’s not entertaining. That’s sad.
And we normalize this self-centered behavior in so much of our daily lives. Our culture has become obsessed with supporting everyone’s individual dreams and ambitions, catering to every little whim, assuring ourselves that we’re each special and unique. We need to bring back our concern for each other and focus on building our community.
The concept of time wrecks may be relatively new, but the sin behind it is a tale as old as time. Déjà Deirdre is nothing new . . . literally.
Chapter Two
WILL
Today was not a good day to be late. A teacher workday was a rare gift in their school calendar, and Will was determined to make the most of it. Mara always teased him about bringing work home—but truthfully, he did spend most of their evenings answering emails and lesson planning after dinner. Tonight, he wanted to come home with nothing on his mind except the weekend.
Will knew that wasn’t going to happen as soon as he saw the traffic jam on the Beltway. As soon as he could, he jumped off on an earlier exit and took a roundabout way to work. He wouldn’t be early, but at least he made it to the school on time. If he hadn’t forgotten his workbag in the trunk, he would have made it to his desk on time too. Will was already halfway to his classroom before he realized what he’d done.
By the time he’d retrieved the bag and reentered the building, huffing and puffing down the hall like he was out of shape—which, to be fair, he was—Will had already resigned himself to the fact that he’d be bringing some work home that night, exactly as Mara had predicted.
“How’s it going, Sterling?”
Will’s heart dropped when he heard the principal’s voice. Cliff was a retired army officer who’d improbably chosen public education as his second career. He’d been running the school for the past two years, after Ms. O’Reilly had retired to Florida to spend time with her grandchildren. With a short, silver buzz cut, perpetually tanned skin, and his collared shirt unbuttoned a bit too low, Cliff often appeared to have wandered off the set of a Miami Vice re-run.
“Running late this morning,” Will panted, hoping that Cliff would nod and move along. No such luck. Cliff stopped in front of him and gripped him in a knuckle-popping handshake. With his other hand, Cliff delivered three solid whacks to Will’s back.
“You ready for today? Going to bring the fire?” Cliff asked. “Bring the fire” was the staff motto Cliff had chosen for the 2010–2011 school year. It was supposed to remind the teachers to ignite their students’ passion for learning. Something like that. Since this had been a record year for everything from online bullying to an actual bomb threat, the teachers had privately started telling each other to “extinguish the fire.”
“It’s a busy day,” Will agreed. “Lots of work to do.”
“Good on you! Make it happen, captain!” Cliff boomed, finally stepping aside so that Will could pass. “But first—I’m planning an assembly for our anti-bullying program the week before spring break. I want us to finish the year strong. I was wondering if you’d be willing to speak out about your personal experience. Maybe seeing how bullying has affected someone they know—a teacher they look up to—well, maybe it would scare some of these kids straight.”
“Um.” Will wanted to say no and saw, at the same moment, that Cliff was fully expecting a yes. “I don’t really think a school shooting falls under bullying, per se.”
“Neither do bomb threats, but here we are. Gotta put a nicer label on it.” Cliff waited a beat longer before saying, “Give it some thought, okay? Make it a good day, Sterling. Bring the fire!”
Will was starting to hate that motto.
* * * * *
Will watched the first two hours of the workday tick by on the orchestra room’s clock. He was losing precious time to put the rest of his students’ quarterly grades into the online grading system. The school fairly hummed with tension. All around the school, teachers frantically typed in progress reports. Will realized he probably should be too.
But Will was not a deadline kind of guy. If anything, his late start this morning had made him move even slower when he finally got to his classroom. A more motivated person—someone like Mara—would simply sit down at the desk and push through until the job was done. She’d probably have gotten it done yesterday. There was no reason he couldn’t enter all of his grades in the system before lunch.
Instead, Will found himself using a bent paperclip to clean lint out of his computer keyboard.
The school bell rang, even though there were no students in the building today. Will looked at the time on his computer monitor and groaned. He had to find a way to focus.
Music. That was always the answer for him, wasn’t it? Will opened a new tab in his web browser and typed in a familiar website. Listening to the online stream of Then Sings My Soul—the official hometown radio station of Deer Hill, North Carolina—was an odd habit he’d developed back in his college days. It wasn’t that he had a particular hankering for gospel music and bluegrass. It was just nice to take a break from DC sometimes. Growing up in Deer Hill hadn’t been perfect. There was a reason Will had pieced together a music scholarship, a Pell Grant, and a Stafford Loan to fund his way through college at Adams Morgan University. But life back home had been simpler.
Will turned up the volume and hummed along to an arrangement of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “Down by the River.” He was lucky to have his own office. Most teachers were confined to a standard teacher desk jammed in the back corner of a classroom. He had the luxury of a five-by-ten-foot room, separated from the orchestra room by a frosted glass door. In here, he could play music as loudly as he wanted without worrying that anyone would overhear.
On the computer, Will clicked over to his inbox. Listening to the music made it easier to think about what he was supposed to be doing. That was good, because his email count had already jumped from twenty unread messages to sixty-two. Will scanned over the subject lines.
Subject: Just a quick question re: Matthew’s progress
Subject: Concerns on Janelle’s performance
Subject: Staff, a few brief reminders for our teacher workday
Subject: Do we have to practice over break?
Will tapped out a little percussion part on his desk in time to the music and sighed. He would answer ten emails and then get back to doing grades, he promised himself.
Bang.
Will jerked back from the computer so fast he hit both knees on the desk. He whirled around just in time to see the outline of someone on the other side of the frosted glass door.
“You okay there?” It was a familiar voice. Hector. Will realized he had been holding his breath and refilled his lungs in one greedy gasp. He barely heard Hector continue: “You know I like to announce myself when I come into a room. Didn’t me
an to drop the mop, but you know how it is. Slippery little sucker.”
“It’s fine. Just caught me off guard,” Will said, fully aware that his voice was far too high. He inched toward the door, rubbing first one aching knee, then the other, and twisted the knob open.
Hector gave him a strange look. “I could hear you jump from all the way out here. What are you reading on that computer? Someone email you dirty pictures or something? You know the folks down at the board can read your emails, dontcha?” Hector smirked. “I’m just messing with you. I know you and your lady. Classy girl. Don’t know what she’s doing with a guy like you.”
Will smirked back. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” His voice had returned to a normal register. Good. “What are you still doing here? You’re usually gone by now.”
“Eh, you teachers aren’t the only ones who got a workday today. Cliff wants me to go over all the floors again while the students are out of the building.” Hector warily eyed the tiered floor of the orchestra room. Stacking the chairs and mopping each level of the room was a daunting task, especially when he’d already done it once this week. Will followed his gaze and imagined how long it would take Hector to go over the already-clean floors.
Will shook his head. “If anyone asks, you were here. I saw you go over the floor with a toothbrush and a can of Pledge. I got your back.”
“Thanks, man,” Hector said, turning around and starting to wheel the mop bucket out. He held onto the mop handle with an exaggerated grip. “Sorry I scared the bejesus out of you earlier. You should lay off the caffeine.”
Just then, the radio station changed to an upbeat revival version of “My Savior’s Love.” Hector turned back and shot Will another questioning look. Will grinned and belted out a few verses, arms outstretched, eyes rolled back like he was singing in the choir of his childhood church. Hector laughed and walked out, shaking his head.
Will sat back down at the desk. Grades. He was going to sit in this chair and work until every last one was in. Starting right now. He adjusted his desk chair a little lower, clicked to the online gradebook, and cracked his knuckles.