by Ellen Smith
He’d left the door to the office open. The song on the radio didn’t quite drown out the sound of the air conditioner going full-blast from the orchestra room, or the sounds of people walking down the hall outside. Will got up and scanned the orchestra room twice before shutting the office door.
It wasn’t cool that Hector had seen him jump like that, but at least it could be explained away. Too much caffeine or whatever. That was fine. What Will didn’t like was the stuff only Mara seemed to notice. The way he’d scan a restaurant or a movie theater before they went in, noticing how close they were to the exits, just in case. The dreams that still woke him up at night—each so real it took him hours to settle back to sleep. If he ever did.
Mara always wanted to comfort him when that happened. She used to offer to get him a drink or rub his back when really all he wanted was to stare at her. He wanted to admire every perfect, healthy inch of her body until he could convince his brain that this moment, right now, was real. In his dreams, he could still smell the blood soaking through her shirt and feel the weight of her when she lost consciousness.
It wasn’t just in his dreams, though. That image came to him when he was driving and saw a banged-up car on the side of the road, or when the news showed the skeleton of a burned-down house in the city. This school year, after the bomb threat, he’d seen the image whenever he looked at his students.
You never knew when something could happen. Or who you could lose.
* * * * *
Will finished submitting all of his grades just before the deadline at the end of the workday. Then he stayed an hour later, sorting sheet music for next week’s classes and scribbling notes into each square of his planner. He still had emails to answer, but finally, Will decided to pack up and go home.
It was to Mara’s credit that she didn’t say “I told you so” when he got to the apartment and immediately pulled out his laptop. She made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner and brought him one while he worked. Will rolled his head back and luxuriated in the little neck massage Mara gave him. This was definitely better than staying later and trying to do everything at school.
On the other hand, it was more distracting. Much more distracting. The soft scent of Mara’s sweet, citrusy lotion made him think of all the things he’d like to be doing instead of work.
“Can I get you something?” Mara asked.
“Stay here and keep me company?” Will gestured to the other chair at the little dining table. It was just the right size for the eat-in nook of their kitchen, framed on one side by the closet with the washer and dryer and on the other side by a large window that overlooked the parking lot. They almost never ate there, unless Mara got it into her head to make a romantic meal for Valentine’s Day or their anniversary. Instead, the table functioned as a computer desk for two. Their laptops sat side by side, with stacks and stacks of unopened mail littering the rest of the table.
Mara sat next to him and started up her laptop. “We really should do something about all this,” she said, picking up a fistful of catalogs. “Do we need anything from here? They’re having a thirty percent off sale.”
“They were having a sale,” Will said, pointing to the date. “That was for Presidents’ Day. In February.”
“Oh, good grief,” Mara said. She tossed the catalog into the recycling bin. “Same with these coupon inserts . . . and this housewares store . . .”
“Rats. I was dying to go housewares shopping.”
“I bet. What about this catalog? Need any new suits?”
“Do I ever wear my current one? Why do these companies keep sending me catalogs? Like I need to wear eighty-dollar shirts to teach kids how to play their scales.”
Thump. The last catalog briefly hit the edge of the recycling bin before falling in.
“Rim shot,” Will said.
“Still counts.”
Will turned back to his laptop. His inbox had seemed to double in size every hour. That was Cliff’s fault. Since starting up the anti-bullying program this school year, the principal had urged concerned parents and staff to “keep the lines of communication open.” Since at least a hundred students in each grade level were taking orchestra this year, Will had to keep communication open with a lot of students and parents.
Will cracked his knuckles and clicked on the first email. He’d answer at least twenty emails tonight. And he’d make it quick too. No need to spend hours on this. Will tried to answer each email in one or two lines.
Matthew does seem to have improved in his class participation and in working together with the other saxophone players. Thanks for your note. I’ll see you at the IEP meeting next week!
No, I haven’t noticed any signs, but I’ll keep an eye out. I’d like to bring the guidance counselor into this conversation—she has several good resources for parents dealing with this issue.
Yes, participation in both the fall and spring concerts is mandatory for a passing grade.
Beside him, Mara was still sorting through the mail that cluttered the table. Every so often, he heard the soft sound of more papers hitting the bin, or he smelled her shampoo when she brushed her hair out of her eyes.
“Am I distracting you?” Mara asked.
“Yes,” Will said. “You’re my favorite distraction.”
Mara smiled. “I hope you’re getting enough done, anyway. I want to go to bed before too much longer.”
That was motivation enough. Will clicked on the next email in his inbox. It was from Cliff.
RE: Continuing our conversation today—are you interested in speaking at the assembly?
Will wasn’t in the mood to discuss that again—at least, not with Cliff. He turned to Mara. “Cliff asked me something interesting this morning.”
“Interesting good or interesting bad?”
“I’m not sure,” Will said. “He wanted me to talk about the shooting at an anti-bullying assembly after the break.”
“Talk about . . . our shooting?”
Well, it was clear what Mara thought about that. “I don’t think I’m going to do it,” Will said.
“Do whatever you think is right,” Mara said, eyebrows raised. “I’m a little surprised he’d ask you.”
“I think he’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. Things are looking bad at the school and he needs to show we’re working on addressing school violence. A lot of the parents have been pretty unhappy.”
“I’d be unhappy too if my kids had to evacuate the school for a bomb threat.”
Hearing Mara say my kids like that made his head swim for a minute. Someday. When they had enough saved. And if Mara’s pain was under control—she couldn’t get pregnant with the types of painkillers she was on.
Will was realistic enough to know that someday might not come. They were only twenty-six, though. Things could change. Miracles happened all the time.
Mara slowly shook her head. “I don’t know how you stand working there. How do you do it every day?”
She meant handling the school violence—at least, Will thought she did. Maybe she was thinking about their if-when-maybe-never future children too. How hard it was to see classrooms full of kids every day and know that he and Mara might never get their turn at parenthood. Will shrugged and turned back to his laptop.
Mara dropped a kiss on his cheek before she started sorting again. Some of the tabletop was almost visible as more and more of their piled-up mail sailed into the recycling bin. Will imagined that this was what she might be like at her new job. There was something about Mara that made even efficiency look elegant.
Back in college, they used to study together—in the same room, anyway. Will spent more time studying her than his notes. No regrets. He could learn music theory anywhere, anytime. There was only one Mara.
Will skipped over Cliff’s email and answered five more messages from parents. Then ten. Then another six.
There. He’d responded to more than twenty emails, and h
e was going to call it a night. He hit the red X on his browser with an extra flourish. He turned to see if Mara had noticed—and, more importantly, if she was ready to expand on that going-to-bed idea.
Mara was still and quiet. She didn’t even look up at him. She was holding a letter, her eyes tracking each line.
“Hello?” Will asked. “Mara? Whatcha reading?” No answer. He waved his hand in front of her eyes, half-joking. “Earth to Mara. Come in, please.”
She didn’t smile. When she looked at him, it was impossible to read her expression—she seemed blank, almost, as if someone had zapped her out of her body for a moment. She put down the letter and handed him a sealed envelope.
“You got one too,” Mara said, so softly he could barely hear.
Will inwardly groaned when he saw the seal—Department of Justice. Not them again. Even after they finally got a conviction against Jason Mann, he and Mara had still been treated to countless notifications of petitions and requests for appeal. It had been almost a year since they’d gotten anything. Naively, Will had hoped that meant Jason had finally decided to stop making excuses for himself and had accepted his sentence.
Guess not.
But then, why was Mara staring at her letter like that? It wasn’t like anything ever came of Jason’s appeals. Will slit open the envelope and started to read.
Notice of Request for Timeline Rectification
March 16, 2011
Dear William B. Sterling,
This letter is to notify you that a Timeline Rectification Case has been opened regarding the incident at Adams Morgan University Student Union on October 18, 2002. The offender(s) has/have requested a timeline rectification under Code 67b.
A timeline rectification may be requested to a) lessen the impact on victim(s) of the crime and b) reduce or dismiss the sentence against the offender.
Your participation is vital to the resentencing process. Please report to an intake appointment with Nayana Patel, Corrections Specialist on
March 31, 2011, 10:30 a.m.
Suite #200
Bennington Building
940 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC, 20530
If you have any questions regarding this case, please visit the Applicants for Timeline Rectification portal on the Department of Justice website. You may use this portal even if you did not personally apply for the timeline rectification. Please have the Case Number on this letter and your Social Security number ready for login. For your convenience, you may use the portal to submit any questions or concerns electronically before the meeting.
Sincerely,
Nayana Patel
Corrections Specialist
Department of Timeline Rectification
Chapter Three
MARA
“A time wreck,” Mara said. The words tasted as bitter on her tongue as any of the painkillers she had to swallow. “They want us to be time wreckers.”
“Timeline rectifiers,” Will corrected. “Wow. Never thought that would happen.”
“It probably won’t,” Mara said. “Jason’s applied for continuances and appeals before. This guy has tried to beat the system with every trick in the book.”
“Let him!” Will said. “If he’s willing and the corrections officer or whatever says he’s clear, why not? I mean, I’m not going to stand in his way.”
“Well, I guess. If Jason’s actually ready to change.”
“That’s . . . what a time wreck is,” Will said. He frowned slightly, as if he were trying to understand her. “That’s the point. He’s rehabilitated enough to take back what he did. You know. ‘Go back in time. Undo the crime.’” He made air quotes with his fingers as he repeated the slogan.
“People started saying that at a protest rally. Against time wrecks. Remember that? I just saw a postcard about another rally yesterday. People come to DC from all over the place to protest this stuff.”
“To be fair, people come to DC to protest a lot of things.”
Will’s eyes were begging her to laugh. He wanted her to relax, to be happy, to not take everything so seriously for once.
Sorry. Seriousness is in my DNA. Mara groaned when she thought of something else. “Oh my gosh, and my parents. Your mom. What would they say if they knew we’d been offered something like this?”
“Nothing.”
“Really? Your devoutly religious mother won’t have a thing to say about us turning back time? I’m sure she’d think it’s going against God’s will or something. And Dad’s always worried about another scandal, especially since last year’s election was so close. He almost lost his seat in Congress. And my mom—I don’t even want to think about what she’d have to say.” Mara’s mother, Mrs. Augusta Gaines, was one of the top-tier attorneys in northern Virginia. Even though her office didn’t represent criminal justice cases, Mrs. Gaines had used her connections to hire—and fire—each of the lawyers who had represented Mara and Will against Jason Mann.
“My mom won’t say anything because she won’t know,” Will said. “Neither will your parents. We don’t have to tell anybody beforehand. And if the time wreck goes through and Jason fixes everything, nobody will ever know. Even we won’t know. It’ll just be like it never happened at all.”
“But think about why that is,” Mara said. “A time wreck wouldn’t just change time for us. If we go back and change this crime, it’s going to change time for the whole world too. What if we erase something important?”
“Yeah, change one flap of a butterfly’s wings and the whole world goes to hell,” Will said, sarcasm dripping off his words. “I’m sure the people who say that are exaggerating. Time wrecks have been legal for years and the apocalypse hasn’t happened yet.”
But we met because of the shooting. Mara stared at him, trying to force the words out of her mouth. If Jason hadn’t shot me . . . if you hadn’t seen it happen, if you hadn’t saved my life . . . would we have met?
Will reached out and grabbed her good hand. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Jason did wrong. Now he’s finally trying to make it right. This is a good thing.”
Could he really not realize? Finally, Mara found the words. “But we have a good thing. We have a good life. And as awful as it is, what Jason did—that’s how you and I met. If it hadn’t been for him—”
“Stop,” Will said. On the rare occasions Will was angry—like now—his pale skin turned blotchy and red. “Stop. We do not owe one damn thing to Jason Mann.”
“I’m not saying we owe him anything,” Mara said. “We don’t. I’m just saying that when we change one thing, we change all the things that happened after that too. I want to change what he did, but I don’t want to miss meeting you.”
Just as suddenly as Will had gotten angry, he calmed down again. “Of course we’ll meet each other,” he said. “We were in the same building on the same night, for God’s sake. We both went to Adams Morgan for the same four years. We were bound to bump into each other at some point.”
“But we don’t know that,” Mara said. “I don’t know every single person who went to college with us. Neither do you. We could have missed each other.”
“We won’t miss each other,” Will said. He smiled at her, as if a simple assurance could be enough.
“You don’t know that.” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “We have to be practical. We can’t just trust that everything is going to work out. What if Jason isn’t even sorry? What if he’s just saying that he’s rehabilitated, but he hasn’t done the work? We could go back in time and have him decide to shoot us all over again.”
With a sigh, Will pushed back his chair and stood up. He leaned back, stretching until even Mara could hear his spine pop in three places. “I’m going to get myself a soda,” he said. “Want anything?”
“It’s ten-thirty. We should be going to bed.”
Will grabbed a can of Mountain Dew from the refrigerator and popped it open. He took two long, thirsty s
wigs before coming back to the table.
Mara watched as he opened a new window on the browser of his laptop. Are we still arguing? Is he changing the subject? It would be just like Will to bring up some stupid video on YouTube to make her laugh right now. Anything to break the tension.
Will looked at the letter before typing a web address into the search bar. Mara realized with a sinking heart what he was looking up. There was the Department of Justice seal in the corner, and the words “Applicants for Timeline Rectification Portal” emblazoned across the top of the screen.
With a few more taps, Will had entered the case number from his letter and his Social Security number. There was a pause before a new window popped up: “Thank you for registering, William B. Sterling!”
“Here we go,” Will said. “Look. They already have a bunch of stuff uploaded. Here’s the PDF of the police report after the shooting . . . and here’s the summary of the trial . . . copies of Jason’s appeals.” He clicked each file as he spoke.
“That’s a lot of information to have on the Internet,” Mara said.
In response, Will pointed at the secured icon in the corner of the webpage. “Besides, most of this was probably online before, anyway.” That didn’t make Mara feel better. “Okay, here it is. Jason wrote a statement declaring his intent to seek a timeline rectification—”
“It just says that he believes he is capable of making a different choice now, if he were faced with the same circumstances.” Mara rolled her eyes. “Excuse me if I doubt his sincerity on that one.”
“He probably signed a form letter. I doubt they make each criminal write their own essay. And here’s one from a corrections officer who oversaw his rehabilitation.” Will squinted through his glasses at the PDF. “It looks like a questionnaire. Says he believes Jason is highly qualified for a rectification.”