by Rysa Walker
This is the first time I’ve had two nightmares in a single night, however. The first dream woke me up around two fifteen. I was so wired after that one that I went upstairs and beat the hell out of the punching bag, until I was so exhausted that I assumed I’d get nice, peaceful dream-free sleep. But apparently I was wrong.
A gentle rain is falling outside, and I watch the drops trickle down the window as I focus on pulling in slow, steady breaths until my pulse returns to normal. I have almost half an hour before my alarm is set to go off, and I’m tempted to yank the quilt back over my head, but I know I won’t be able to fall asleep. It’s partly the dream but also because I smell bacon. And, if I’m not mistaken, blueberry pancakes.
Dad is in the kitchen when I come down. He has his earbuds in, and he doesn’t hear me at first. If we were back in our cottage at Briar Hill, he’d have been blasting his music while he cooked—I’ve been awakened many, many times by the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Sedated”—so he must be worried that his musical tastes would not appeal to Katherine and Connor. I’m not sure what they listen to, if anything. My first thought is that Katherine would be a Peter, Paul, and Mary fan or something like that, but she probably prefers music similar to whatever she listened to back in the 2300s—and I haven’t the slightest clue what that would be. Punk music from the 1980s might sound like something from the baroque era to her.
I reach around Dad to snag a strip of bacon from the plate on the back of the stove, and he swats at my hand with the spatula. “You’re getting slow, old man,” I say, shoving the bacon into my mouth. “What’s the occasion? Pancakes are usually weekend fare.”
He pulls the earbuds down around his neck. “No occasion. The blueberries were just at the tipping point, so I decided we should finish them off. And since I only have a few days left until school starts back up, at least for us poor, downtrodden teachers, I’m treating each one like vacation.”
We eat in silence for a couple of minutes, and then he says, “What were they like? I mean, I watched the video—thanks for that, by the way—but what were they like?”
It takes a few seconds for me to realize he’s talking about Evelyn and Timothy. I finish the bite in my mouth and then answer. “Your father is so much like you. He even makes the same expressions when he’s grumpy. He’s a little bit heavier than you, though.” In that regard, he reminds me a bit more of Dad from the previous timeline, who was a little thicker around the middle, too, and I push away the thought that my dad might be one of those people who tend to be chubby when they’re happy.
“Your dad likes food that’s bad for him,” I continue, “even though he said they were usually vegan. Your mom is the more no-nonsense of the two . . .”
I spend the next ten minutes or so answering his questions.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I say after I’ve exhausted all of the details that I can remember. “I should have told you all of this the other day when I got back. I know you’re curious about them.”
He smiles. “That’s okay. If you’d done that, I’d have been late picking up Sara. And this is the first time since then that it’s been just you and me. That’s the one thing I kind of miss since we moved from the cottage.”
“Me, too. But now you have this ginormous kitchen. And I don’t know about your bed, but mine is a major upgrade from the pullout sofa.” I slide the last bite of pancake around the plate to pick up the remaining syrup. It isn’t up to the task, since I usually dump way too much syrup on my pancakes, and I give in to the urge to run my finger around the plate to get the rest.
Dad looks at me for a minute, and I think he’s going to remind me that what I’m doing is kind of gross, but he just says, “Even with the bed upgrade, you don’t look like you slept very well . . .”
“I slept okay, I guess.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You were up in the middle of the night again, weren’t you? My room is right below the attic. I was going to come up and check on you, but then the thumping stopped.”
“Oh, crap. I didn’t think about that. Sorry I woke you.”
One side of the attic has been converted into a mini dojo and gym combo. Thick mats cover most of the floor space. A weight machine and rower take up a small corner, but the rest is devoted to a standing kick bag, a Muay Thai banana bag, some kettlebells, and other assorted equipment that Sensei Barbie suggested.
“You didn’t wake me for long,” he says. “Couldn’t fall asleep?”
“Couldn’t fall back asleep. Stupid dreams.”
“Are they getting worse?”
“Not really, but it’s usually not a double feature. This last one was where I’m running from Holmes. Except this time the fire shooting out of the gun turned into leaves, like the ones that I saw in Dallas the other day. It was kind of weird.”
“Hey, leaves are safer than flames, right? Maybe you’re starting to control the dream, rather than it controlling you. Have the other dreams changed too?”
“Nope. Pretty much the same.” There’s fire in those dreams, too, but instead of trying to save myself, I’m trying to save other people—sometimes people I know and love, sometimes people I’ve never seen before. In a few of the dreams, I hear someone crying and I dig through all this rubble, but just as I’m getting close, the person vanishes. In others, I’m pushing people out this big window to save them, but we’re high above the ground, so they just hit the sidewalk below, popping apart like they’re made of Lego blocks. (Apparently my dream censorship committee isn’t a fan of blood and gore, something for which I’m eternally grateful.) In the dream, I know the people will hit the ground, and I know they’ll die, but it’s like I have no choice. Out the window they go, like it or not.
“These dreams have been going on for a while now, Katie. Do you think you need to see someone? I mean, a professional?”
“And tell them what? If I told them the truth, they’d lock me up.”
“True, but maybe you could get something to help you sleep? To relax? We could say you have test anxiety or something.”
“If it gets worse, maybe.”
He looks like he’s going to say something more but then changes the subject. “You missed a fun day of Exploring Art,” he says.
“Did you go to the National Gallery again?”
“No. We visited a few of the smaller galleries over on R Street. I’d planned to stick my head in and say good night when I got back home, but you were talking to someone, so I didn’t interrupt. Was it Trey or your mom?”
“It must have been when I was leaving a message for Trey. He asked me to some get-acquainted thing at school next weekend. Are you going?”
“No. I heard about it, but it’s a private party, not an official function. It’s at the house of one of the incoming students. I think it’s just the administrators and a few of the more senior faculty at Briar Hill. Probably to help smooth over the merger. You want more coffee?”
“No, thanks. What merger?”
Dad looks surprised. “You don’t remember all of those meetings I complained about?”
I shake my head, and he gives me a puzzled look before continuing. “Carrington Day, the private school over near Silver Spring that purchased Briar Hill?”
“What? No. Although I think Trey said something about Carrington Day in his message. When were these meetings?”
“The worst of them were right after I started in January, but they dragged on for several months. It was so crazy I was about ready to quit. Briar Hill parents were raising hell about their middle school kids now having to go all the way over to Carrington.” He stops. “Oh, wait. Timeline change?”
“Must be. I don’t remember any of this.”
Every few days I stumble upon some other little change in the timeline. Sometimes it’s easy to see how it’s related to the Cyrist surge in numbers—there are dozens of towns scattered around the world that are named Cyrus City or whatever. Southern Florida is almost entirely Cyrist, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case be
fore. Other differences just seem to be odd ripple effects. Like the Iron Man series. I’d swear on my life that Gwyneth Paltrow played Pepper Potts in those movies. I’ve seen them, and I know this for an absolute fact. But I watched a trailer online the other day, and someone named Cassie Mortimer was playing Pepper. According to IMDb, she’s always played Pepper. Gwyneth is still an actress, and she’s done very well, but that particular role went to this Cassie person. And she isn’t nearly as good.
Every time I notice some new point of disconnect, I can’t help but wonder what other changes I’m going to discover, especially once school starts back up.
“Kate. Earth to Kate.”
“Oh. Sorry. I’m just beginning to worry about school. I mean, I did okay the last few weeks of school last year, but how much of the history that I remember is history? Or literature, for that matter? Did Shakespeare even write Romeo and Juliet? Did Picasso—”
“Did who write what?”
I just stare at him, and he stares back at me, all wide-eyed and innocent, but he doesn’t even last a full second before cracking a grin.
“So not funny, Dad.”
“Hey, I owed you one for the Alphonse joke.”
“Fine, but I’m being serious here.” I grab the plates and carry them to the dishwasher.
“I can see that,” he says as he clears the rest of the table. “But, Kate—it’s not like there are huge, gaping differences. You’ll be okay. You just might have to study a bit more than usual.”
I roll my eyes and jam one of the plates into the bottom rack. “Yeah. Because I have nothing else to do this year, right?”
Dad takes the last plate out of my hand and puts it into the dishwasher, then comes around to give me a long hug. I sink my head into his chest.
“Kate, I will do everything I can to help you. Both with the school stuff and anything else you need. You know that, right?”
I nod and feel myself relaxing the tiniest bit.
“But,” he adds, “I know you don’t want to hear this, and it pains me as a teacher to even suggest it—but maybe Katherine’s right? Maybe you shouldn’t be worrying about school at all right now? Or anything else. Maybe that would decrease the stress factor?”
And I tense right back up. I give him one last squeeze and pull away, pacing toward the windows. We’ve been over this before.
“Maybe,” I say, my hands clenched at my sides. “Or maybe it would just increase the stress factor. Has anyone thought about that? It’s like she expects me to be some sort of machine that just zips around and collects these damned medallions. And I know it has to be done—especially if billions of lives really are at stake here. I mean, I’m not a monster.”
Dad doesn’t say anything, just watches me pace.
“Did you know—” I pull in a long breath. “Did you know I spent a couple of hours researching Maryland’s handgun laws this week? I was going to sign up for firearms training. But you’d have to buy the gun, since I’m not eighteen yet.”
“You hate guns.”
“Yes. I do hate guns. Especially handguns. The idea of touching one completely creeps me out. But being chased by someone who had a gun when I didn’t also creeped me out.”
I wipe away a tear, but there’s another one right behind it, so I just say screw it, and let them flow. “And who knows what’s coming next, Dad? Do I go into Russia unarmed? And what if I go in with a gun and have to shoot someone, assuming I even could shoot someone, only then I get back and discover that some butterfly effect means World War Three happened in 1960 and none of you were ever born? What about all of the people who never exist because of something that’s my fault?”
I think back to the video clip Trey played the other night and hear Homer saying, “I wish, I wish I hadn’t killed that fish,” and I start laughing. But even to my own ears, the laugh sounds hysterical, and apparently Dad agrees, because he crosses over and wraps his arms around me. He walks me over to the window seat and rocks me back and forth, back and forth, while I cry and laugh at the same time.
A minute or so later, he says, “No, not now,” to someone, his voice sharp. I don’t know if it was to Katherine or Connor. Daphne was with whoever it was, and she ignores the command or maybe just realizes it couldn’t possibly have been meant for her. If someone’s crying, Daphne has to check it out. It’s probably good intuition on her part, because it’s hard to stay quite as upset when she’s nosing at your hand to see what she can do to make you feel better.
I eventually get my act together and sniff back the tears. “Sorry, Dad. I sort of fell apart there.”
“No, I’m sorry,” he says, pulling me close again. “I’m sorry I can’t fix this. No seventeen-year-old should have to deal with this kind of pressure. I’m not sure how you’ve held up as well as you have. And I’m sorry I wasn’t here the first time you were going through all of this.”
“Well, that really wasn’t your fault. You had other obligations, and, even so, you still wanted to help.” He knows the entire story of how I met his other self, happily married and teaching at a school in Delaware. I didn’t mention that he was carrying ten extra pounds or so of happily married chub, but I told him everything I remembered about the two little boys John and Robbie. I don’t know if that was doing him a favor or not, but it was one little thing I could do toward pulling them out of nonexistence.
“Do you ever think about that other life, Dad? I just wish I’d taken the time to find out her last name.”
“What? Whose name?”
“Your Emily in the other timeline. I mean, maybe she’s not married, and maybe—”
“Hey, hey—no. No, Kate. I have Sara in this timeline, and I’m perfectly happy with that.” He gives my shoulder a squeeze. “And I have you in this timeline, and I’m even more happy with that.”
We’re both silent for a minute, and then he says, “To be honest, Kate, I haven’t thought about it much. I mean, what if I told you some story about how you’d decided to stick with the piano lessons when you were nine—”
“That wouldn’t happen in any timeline, Dad.”
“—and you became this seventeen-year-old virtuoso, playing at Carnegie Hall? Would you spend time obsessing over that lost future?”
I don’t even have to think about it. “No, but I wouldn’t want that future. I hated practicing, and I hated recitals, so no. But it’s not the same thing. You seemed really happy.”
“And I’ve been really happy in this timeline, too. I’m not exactly doing the happy dance right now, because my kid is carrying the weight of the world—and I mean that very close to literally—on her shoulders, and I can’t do much to help. But I’m holding out hope that I’ll be really happy again at some point. So no, Kate. I’m not going to sleep at night thinking about that alternate future. If that’s one of the things weighing you down right now, it shouldn’t be.”
I turn around so that I can look him square in the eyes, and I’m pretty sure he’s telling me the truth. “Okay. But to get back to what started this whole meltdown, the thing that got me through the jump to 1893 was knowing that it was the only way to get my life back—or at least to get you, Mom, and Katherine back.”
There’s a pause, and then he says, a bit hesitantly, “And Trey, too?”
“Yeah.” I was thinking exactly that but opted to sidestep the whole talking-with-Dad-about-my-love-life thing. “Three out of four’s not bad. And I’m not giving up on making it four out of four.”
He pulls me forward and plants a kiss on my forehead. “Give it time, Katie.”
“That’s sort of the problem. I want to give it time. I want to spend time with him. I want to see him at school and hang out with him, because there is a connection there. I can feel it just below the surface . . .”
I sigh. It’s hard enough to wrap my head around this, let alone put it in words. “I guess . . . last time, I didn’t have a choice. I had to set the timeline straight in order to get my life back, and there was at least a small
chance of getting Trey back as well. And I had a concrete, specific task—save Katherine at the Fair. Not exactly a piece of cake, as it turned out, but at least I could . . . conceptualize it, you know?”
He nods, and I continue. “This time, however, I’m kind of okay with the timeline I see right here and now. Trey and I aren’t where we were, where I want us to be, but I think it could happen eventually. Whatever Saul and the Cyrists are planning is this big, amorphous evil that I can’t pin down. I don’t even know where these other medallions are, and even after we find them, we still have to take on Saul, Prudence, and probably Simon to get their keys. Prudence has warned me not to interfere again, and any little step I take seems like I’m poking the bear, you know? Asking for trouble. Part of me just wants to lay low for a while, live my life, and hope maybe she’ll let her guard down.”
“But . . . ?” he asks.
“The other part says I’ll never get a decent night’s sleep until every single medallion is crushed into smithereens so that no one, not even me, can tamper with whatever timeline we end up with. The only thing that both parts of me agree on is that uncertainty drives me crazy.”
“Okay, what I said earlier about talking to someone—” He holds up his hand as I start to speak. “No, wait, hear me out. You’re right—if we took you to see a professional, they’d lock you up or have you on so many antipsychotic drugs you wouldn’t be able to see the medallion, let alone use it. But. Maybe you need both parents in this? Your mom would take a little while to adj—”
“No, Dad. No. Yesterday, I might have agreed with you, but . . .” I might as well tell him. “Okay, she’s planning to call today, and I’d rather you didn’t let her know I told you first, but she’s got this really incredible work opportunity. I’ll let her give you the details, but it means a lot of travel, and she’s leaving middle of next week. I don’t think she’ll go if we tell her about this. And even though I think Katherine . . .”
I’m about to mention my suspicion that Katherine is behind Mom’s research opportunity. But I don’t have any logical reason to suspect Katherine had anything to do with it, and she didn’t look at all guilty when I mentioned it, so I don’t say anything.