She was frowning. If I were to guess, I’d say she was probably close to shaking it out of me. “What are you getting at?”
“You’re my best friend,” I said, with a whole lot more history under my belt than she could ever believe. “You will be for the rest of my life, as far as I can tell.”
“Okay…?”
Wow, this was so much easier in theory than in practice. There was no way she was going to believe me about this, when she already needed convincing about minor sexual escapades that happened—or didn’t—a hundred years ago.
“Something really weird is happening to me.”
Her shoulders lowered with exasperation. “You’re killing me here. Can you just get to the point?”
“Remember when we went to that psychic in Georgetown and she seemed to know all that stuff about us? And we couldn’t explain why, but we knew it was real?”
“Vaguely.”
We had enjoyed a lot of beers that night at Crazy Horse. In fact, it’s possible that’s why, in memory, I thought the accuracy had been so uncanny.
“Okay, well, my point is that we both know that unexplainable phenomenon can and does happen. All the time.”
“I guess.”
“So what if I told you that I have been to the future? That I’m coming from the future right now?”
She screwed up her face and studied me for a very tense moment before cracking up. “Holy shit, you almost had me. I was trying to imagine telling your mom you’d popped your clutch and had to be taken to St. Elizabeth’s. I mean I was right there, mentally, really, to have you committed. Good one, Raim. So now that you’ve broken the ice, what did you really want to talk about?”
Not the response I’d been expecting. I hadn’t even gotten my toes wet in the truth and she’d drowned me. This was a very clear sign that I had to shut up about it. Now.
I made a show of sighing, and took a swig of Zima. This stuff was even worse than I remembered. Like flat Sprite. I hated it. “All right, I haven’t exactly been to the future, but I had a premonitory dream last night. And you were there.”
“Yeah? If I was there, I guess that means I wasn’t dead. So that’s a good sign right there.”
“No, Tanya. You were happy. You were married and had two kids and you were happy.”
“Really?” Her skeptical face went a little pink with pleasure. Everyone liked to believe good stuff was coming for them. “Did I marry Kenny? I did, right?”
Had I said yes, her skepticism would have dissolved. She would have jumped right on board with believing me. But of course the answer wasn’t yes and I didn’t want her to spend her life imagining she was supposed to have married some guy who never knew who she was. “No. Totally different guy. You don’t even know him yet.” It occurred to me that I could give her some valuable hope here. “So next time you’re feeling brokenhearted? Forget it. The real guy, the one you love enough to marry, is still out there waiting for you.”
Her face fell. She’d been counting on Kenny. She had a “psychic feeling” that he was The One, and for most of high school she’d maneuvered around the halls and keg parties, looking for the opportunity to bring her fate to fruition. I measured my next words very carefully, knowing that, even though she probably shouldn’t, she was likely to take them very seriously. “You wouldn’t trade that guy or those girls for anything in the world. You’ll be so glad you waited. Trust me.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
She looked at me with a challenge in her eye. A challenge and a question. And I knew her well enough to know the question was stronger. “What are their names?”
“You’ll find out!”
She sighed. “You’re just messing with me.”
“I’m not.”
“Okay, then, what did I do for a living?”
I hesitated. She was a paralegal who ended up marrying her boss; her husband was a criminal attorney. But I didn’t want to tell her any of that because what if, for some reason, in this surreality she was on a different path? I didn’t want to influence her unduly. Set her up for a self-fulfilling prophecy that wasn’t really her own destiny.
“I don’t know all the details,” I ended up saying. “Come on. It would have been a pretty boring dream if we sat around talking about our jobs, wouldn’t it?”
“Not if my job was movie star.”
“If I knew for sure you were going to be a movie star, I’d be a lot nicer to you.”
“Hmm. That’s probably true.”
A few seconds passed, and she tentatively asked, “Was there anything else? In the dream, I mean. About me?”
I could have spent days telling her about her future. “Not really.” I shrugged. “We were, like, in our thirties. All I know is that you were really, really happy. The details are kind of foggy now. You know how dreams are.…”
She nodded. “But that’s good to hear, you know?”
“Oh, definitely. The future’s bright!”
Apart from some horrifying historical moments, political scandals, market catastrophes, and, for each of us, our fair share of heartache as well as happiness. But there was no need to point that out. Everyone knows life isn’t always great and fair. Sometimes it’s enough to just have faith that it’s going to get better, that the sun will come out again.
We clinked bottles and finished, then put the two empties back into the six-pack.
“I hate that stuff,” I said.
“Me too.”
“It smells like”—I sniffed it—“antiseptic. The hospital.” I felt a gag reflex tighten my throat.
“Huh?” She frowned and sniffed her bottle. “I think it’s like 7Up. It’s good with a Jolly Rancher in it.”
“Ugh. You really are eighteen, aren’t you?”
“Yeah…? So are you.”
My face went hot. “Sorry. Dream joke.”
“Ohhh.”
“And I don’t remember making out with Jer Norton.”
“I’m not surprised.” She rolled her eyes, like suddenly she was the superior one. “That night I don’t think you even remembered your own name.”
Usually I didn’t drink that much. I got full or dizzy before I could ever have enough to black out. But there had been some occasions around graduation where the partying was hard. There was no denying it. Apparently the results were as unfortunate as I might have feared.
It just made me feel funny to know I had cheated on Brendan and didn’t even remember it. Cheating was something that really bugged me. It always had. I never did it (usually) and, to my knowledge, no one ever did it to me.
In fact, that’s why I’d actually broken up with Brendan. There had been moments of jealousy, of course, but the bottom line was that I thought it was too constraining for us to go from being high school sweethearts to being married forever, but I wasn’t going to step out on him to experience other people, so there seemed like there was no choice but to end it and move on.
In retrospect, no great shakes had come along. There are a lot of clichés and adages about every relationship and event in our lives somehow enriching us and making us stronger, better, smarter, you name it. But to be perfectly honest, I’ve had a lot of experiences, and memories, in my life that I could have done very well without.
Most of them had to do with dating.
So, yeah, we’ll skip the platitudes here. What I really wanted, and had a renewed determination to do, was to figure out exactly what I needed to have a do-over here, and how it would change my life in the future. Whether it was related to Brendan, my parents, my career, or a stray cat I should have rescued, I needed to figure out what had gone so wrong in my life that evidently I had to come back and fix it.
My gut told me that it was Brendan.
But, on more than one occasion, my gut had been a big fat liar.
“Let’s go,” Tanya said. “I want to go to the mall and get something awesome to wear tomorrow night. I have got to look hot for Kenny. Tomorrow night,” she said knowingly, “is the night.
Whether you think so or not.”
I, on the other hand, knew tomorrow wasn’t the night. Because no night ever ended up being the night. Within two years she would have all but forgotten him, but there was obviously no way to convince her of that right now.
Funny how fickle fate could be for teenage girls.
Oh, well, it was always fun to have a crush, to have someone to dress up for, whom you hoped would notice and appreciate it.
It had been a long time since I’d felt that way.
Come to think of it, I was in the rare position of knowing about tomorrow night. Brendan would be picking me up and I had the chance to, for once in my high school life, wear something flattering, and do my hair and makeup in a more subtle, and attractive, way.
“You know everyone’s going to be there, right?” she questioned. “I mean, even kids from Wootton. This is going to be huge. We might both hook up with our future husbands there!”
Nope.
I was going to get mad at Brendan and eventually break up with him if I didn’t get to stay long enough to stop that.
The party was important.
The more I thought about it, the more I felt like tomorrow night would be the end of this ordeal. That I could, maybe, undo what might have been the biggest mistake of my life.
“One more thing, Tanya,” I said, measuring my words really carefully. “In that dream?” Surely this small detail wouldn’t hurt. Especially since I knew she was going to go through some struggles before she got to feel contentment.
“Uh-huh?”
“You had a very happy life. There is a lot of good stuff coming that you can’t even believe right now,” I said, hoping these words would sink in and comfort her deeply—though perhaps without a remembered source—“you had daughters in particular.” Maybe going that specific, without going further, would even knock that jerk Kenny, and the three boys she thought she was going to have with him if he ever noticed her, right on out of her head. “All you have to do to get there is follow your heart.”
* * *
THE NEXT DAY would be the last—the day we took the rest of our books back and had our teachers sign off on everything—and I was acutely aware that it would be my last chance to experience high school.
Even writing that now it sounds silly. It was well past my last chance to experience high school, but somehow I’d ended up in this place of repeats and I didn’t know how many days, hours, or minutes I was going to get to relive.
However, when I woke up the next morning in my old room, I knew the dream, or whatever, wasn’t over yet.
I decided to walk in to school. It was just a few blocks; I don’t know why we had been all about driving it anyway. But since graduating, it was a walk I’d taken many times, with my mom and her dog, and I was eager to take another look at the area as it was, rather than as it is now.
Potomac has a reputation for being very posh and wealthy. Even when I was in high school it had held that distinction, but for me it had been a very average suburban place. The set for just about any nineties family sitcom you could name.
There had always been nicer areas, of course, but it was undaunting, back then, to live near them. When I’d checked Ted Koppel in for a court at the Potomac Tennis Club, I’d thought of him as a “local anchor,” not fully taking in his national reach at the time. There were a handful of other very prominent anchors and actors there, too, though I was always more wowed that the boxer Sugar Ray Leonard lived a mile from me, than by the fact that the actress who played Wonder Woman was also a stone’s throw away.
There was even a rumor that the creator of Beverly Hills, 90210 had gone to my high school and based that show on it, and when you took “Beverly Hills” out of it, I could see how that might be true. Back then.
Now the wealth was much more evident. And, to be honest, I was a bit sad for it. Yards that I could remember playing Ghost in the Graveyard in on summer nights were now expensively manicured and cordoned off. Houses that used to welcome trick-or-treaters with hot cider and candy on brisk Halloween nights now turned off their lights and turned on their alarms.
So it was really nice to be able to walk up the old, familiar road to school one more time, and pass the houses as they once were: garage doors were open, weed whackers and rakes hung on the walls, lawn mowers rested, covered in green specks, with the scent of gasoline rising off of them and mingling with the sweet fresh grass scent, to make that perfect perfume of late spring.
The cars in the driveways were humbler too: dented Chevettes, a couple old muscle cars, and the fanciest of the lot were BMW 320i’s and the odd Mercedes here and there.
In short, this was my childhood neighborhood like I’d never see it again. It was beautiful.
The school was different then too. Very ordinary, big flat brick building. There was a marquee-style sign out front with its name and relevant dates, including, right now, LAST DAY OF SCHOOL. Later, the entire thing would be rebuilt, the name emblazoned on the brick, the building carrying off the look of a very fancy theater.
And it was, basically. What was high school, but theater, drama, role-playing?
I was doing it right now. Only I was getting ready to go in and play myself again. Someone I hadn’t been in a long, long time.
We had A days and B days back then. Yesterday had been an A day, and that had covered half my classes, though I’d seen virtually everyone there was to see and remember. Now I’d just see them again. And maybe it would be less alarming. I hoped so.
But the minute I walked onto the campus, I knew that wasn’t to be. There, right inside the front door, effectively blocking the hall from anyone who might want to slip past, was Anna Farrior and her group of bitchy, hair-sprayed, made-up (and made up pretty well, I hated to admit) friends. Perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect teeth, tiny waists, narrow shoulders—they were a breed unto themselves and I had never matched them, not even when I was nine.
For some reason, Anna had had it in for me since tenth grade.
“Oh, look, it’s Ramie,” one of her friends said as I walked through the door. I hadn’t even had the chance to notice them yet, but leave it to one of those bitches to call attention to me.
Anna looked up, the leader called to attention. She raked her gaze across me like she was looking at vomit on the ground outside Nordstrom’s automatic doors. “And she still hasn’t got that makeup thing down.” She shook her head. “What an infant.”
I remembered her saying this kind of thing to me. Making fun of me because of my makeup and because I occasionally had a breakout, which she found so repulsive that it was apparently a disservice to the entire school community that I didn’t cover it up properly.
Her razzing used to bug me a lot. It was humiliating. I could literally remember hurrying past and fighting tears when this stuff had begun.
But now, of course … now it just sounded stupid. It was stupid.
Best ignored, as any grown person would say.
Unfortunately, that was what my mother had said, and so Anna was used to counter-striking when I ignored her.
“Oh, don’t be embarrassed, Ramie,” she said, so loudly that it would have been impossible for anyone who was the object of her derision to not be embarrassed. “No one notices you anyway.”
I stopped. Normally I would have scurried along and hoped this kind of crap would be long past when I got to college, but this stopped me cold. I wondered why it never had before.
I turned and took a few steps back toward her.
Predictably, her stupid friends made a small collective oooh sound and opened ranks so she was facing me. Honestly, it was just like a movie about high school. I guess clichés really do exist for a reason.
“Looks like you did,” I commented.
Anna raised her chin. “Looks like I did what?”
“Noticed me.”
Uncertainty crossed her eyes. “Well—”
“I mean”—I gave a laugh—“you just said ‘no one notices you anyway�
� to me, proving that you did the very thing you were claiming no one does. Which begs the question, Anna, why are you so jealous of me?”
Her face flamed red. “Me? Jealous of you? Ha!” She made a point of false laughter and looked to her sycophants to back her up, which they did, albeit somewhat limply and with an overall sense of confusion.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think? I can’t walk anywhere near you without you making some comment about me. To me. Though you pretend it’s to all of them.” I swept an arm, indicating her friends. “But don’t you think they’re on to you too? I mean, no one pays so much attention to one person, right down to criticizing their makeup, unless they feel threatened. Obviously.” I caught the eye of Dawn Jacowski, who was still something of an outside member of Anna’s group and who had been in my psychology class last semester. “Right?” I said to her, urging a nod.
She gave one too. A very vague one, followed by a quick, shamed look back at Anna.
“Anyway,” I said, “I’d think you’d be delighted I never got ‘that makeup thing down,’ because that leaves the stores nice and full for you to go stock up. Which, from the looks of things, you must do pretty frequently.” I could have been meaner. Part of me longed to be meaner. But since I really didn’t understand what we had against each other, I didn’t have it in me to try and wound her. Only to try and defend the part of me that had managed to be hurt by her bullshit for two and a half years.
I turned and walked away, fully expecting some sort of retort, but, to my amazement and great relief, she said nothing.
It was funny; Anna Farrior had been a recurring and annoying thorn in my side during those years of high school. Sometimes she was a major character in my memories—to this day I mentally rolled my eyes every time Facebook suggested maybe we knew each other because we had so many common high school connections.
But, for the most part, she was not part of my day-to-day memories of life.
I think the thing that gave her any power at all was the fact that she loomed large in one very important memory: my breakup with Brendan.
If I Could Turn Back Time Page 12