The Untimely Deaths of Alex Wayfare

by M. G. Buehrlen

  Whether you eat meat or not.

  “You’re a vegetarian?” I ask Levi when he gently refuses Gran’s pot roast.

  “Vegan, actually.”

  I take stock of the dinner table. Mashed potatoes with milk and butter, glazed carrots bathed in even more butter, and tossed salad.

  “Eat up,” I say, nudging the salad bowl across the table toward him with a grin.

  He does. And we talk long into the evening, him, Dad, and me, about everything. School, politics, even AIDA. And Levi knows exactly what to say to impress Dad.

  And I love him for it. I really do. He’s wrapping me up in another lie, but it’s a lie that keeps my family safe, helps lessen their load, helps keep me sane. Makes Dad feel comfortable letting Levi and me chat out on the back porch, alone, hot mugs of coffee in our gloved hands, our foggy breath mingling with the steam. The sky is clear, cold, and dark blue, the stars twinkling, the moon lighting up the forest beyond our backyard like a spotlight.

  We’re quiet for a long time, sipping our coffee, until at last Levi speaks. “It’s not that I don’t believe you about Micki. It’s that I don’t want to believe it. She’s been my partner all this time. I trust her like you trust Tre. Can you understand how this might feel for me? Thinking she might be a traitor?”

  I sigh and look down at my hands. “Of course I do. I just don’t know what to do with all this anger. With all this failure. I don’t know how to aim it in the right direction, like you said I should.”

  “You haven’t failed. Not yet. You’ve still got 1978.”

  My throat feels tight. “Audrey may not make it until then. What am I supposed to do if I can’t save her? How is my family supposed to survive losing both of us?”

  Levi’s eyes are far off. He swallows. Frowns. Then tells me exactly what I need to hear, what I’ve needed to hear for years now.

  “It’s unbearable at first, losing someone you love; I won’t lie to you. You can’t function. You’re numb, but you’re angry, too. So angry at everything. At the unfairness of it all. And you let yourself go because nothing matters anymore. You wander, lost, because that’s all you can do. Forget about eating and showering. None of it matters, least of all your own well-being. Because you feel guilty taking care of yourself. You’re still alive to brush your teeth and get dressed and head out the door. They aren’t. And you can’t smile or laugh or find any enjoyment in anything because they can’t do those things. And if they can’t, then you can’t. But then…” He trails off, takes a deep breath. “It gets better. Slowly, after a handful of years go by. You start to forget. Their voice. Their smile. Their scent. It all fades, and you’re left with glimpses. Snatches of light. You’re left with all the good memories. And you eventually let yourself enjoy things again. Little things, like a walk along the shore, or the first time you smell woodsmoke in the air and you know fall is around the corner. You start to thaw, and little bits of color appear, like crocuses in the snow. And after a few more years, you’re suddenly OK. You’re better. You let yourself live again, because you died with them, you know, and you had to be reborn.” He finally looks at me, his eyes sincere. “That’s how they’ll survive, Alex. That’s how they’ll get through it. It will take time, but they will get through it.”

  This time, I do hug him. I don’t care if he’s just telling me what I want to hear, playing me, like he plays everyone. It feels real, because he should know. He watched Ivy die in his arms, and I don’t think he’s let himself smile since. I know I won’t see the crocuses in the snow, and I won’t have enough time to heal before my time comes, but knowing my family might gives me the hope I need.

  We say goodnight to Levi well past ten, after Gran and Pops and Claire have gone to bed. He leaves me with homework and says he’ll be back at the end of the week to see how I’m doing. I flop down on the couch and stare at the stack of materials he brought over: folders and folders of Xeroxed worksheets and study guides.

  And then it hits me. How I’m going to save Audrey after all.

  Trust is Risk

  The next morning, after I drop Claire off at school, I swing by the marina to talk to Porter. As I pull into a parking space, I spot Levi walking to his car.

  “You look like hell,” I say, climbing out of the Mustang.

  “Thanks.” He walks my way, and I can see bags under his eyes.

  “Did you sleep?”

  “Not a bit. We were working on a lead all night.”

  “What kind of lead?”

  “Porter thinks he knows how Gesh tracked you in China. But we need to do a test run with you to make sure.”

  “You mean a way that doesn’t involve Micki?” I frown. “So you still believe she’s on our side.”

  Levi’s frown matches mine. “We trust her, Alex. As much as we trust you. We want to prove her innocence.”

  I push my glasses up and meet his eyes. “Like I wanted to do for Blue?”

  Levi swallows, unsure of what to say. He glances at his watch. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to get to class. I’m already late. But I’ll see you tonight?”

  He jogs to his car, and I watch him go, wondering about that little thing called trust. What the hell is it, exactly? And why does it make us do such stupid things? I head to the boat, wondering what I would say or do if I was wrong about Micki. If I was wrong about everything.

  Porter must have seen me coming on the cameras, because he’s standing at the top of the ramp, holding the door in the shrink-wrapped wall open for me.

  “Good morning,” he says. “What are you doing here so early?”

  “I have a plan.”

  “And that is?”

  I follow him into the living room but I don’t sit down. I can’t. I’m too anxious. “We do the 1978 mission.”

  “Wasn’t that already the plan?” He digs around in one of the kitchen cabinets and pulls out a box of tea bags.

  “No, the plan was to wait a few weeks. Not anymore. I want to go tonight.”

  He pours steaming water from a kettle into a mug. “We’ve been over this. We have to go back the night of the fire. Stealing the files any sooner would create an impact.”

  “Only if we steal the files.”

  He stops what he’s doing, tea bag hovering over his mug. “Go on.”

  “I’m not planning on stealing them. I’m planning on making a copy.”

  He stares at me, silent, still.

  “They had copy machines back then, right?” I say. “We break in after hours, copy the data, take the copy, and leave the original. No one will ever know we were there.”

  He lets out a laugh. Drops the tea bag into the water. “You’re a genius, Alex Wayfare. Do you know that?”

  I grin. “You’re just now realizing this?”

  He laughs again. “It’s definitely worth a try.”

  “We slip in, slip out. No impact. If we mess up, we redo the mission.”

  He eyes me, brow raised. “You keep saying we.”

  “Because I think you should come with me.”

  “I’m always with you.”

  “No, I think you should descend with me. Into another body. Be my partner the way Blue used to be. I need your expert Cancer Researcher eyes to go through the files and copy exactly what Mom needs. I know it takes a while to find the right body, someone who won’t be missed for a few days, someone in the same vicinity as the mission, but if anyone can do it, you can.”

  “Alex, remember what I told you at the Ristorante?”

  I remember now. He said he has a handful of soulmarks in reserve, like a garage full of classic cars, each one stationed in different time periods. It’s how he traveled back in time before we first met and left a note at Johnson’s Auto Garage. The note that led me to him. The note that changed my life.

  “Does that mean we can go tonight?”

  I expect him to say no, that we should prepare first, but instead he says, “I won’t ask you to wait any longer. I’ll meet you in your garden. It’ll give me a cha
nce to test out my tracking theory.”

  I throw my arms around him, and he hugs me in return. He smells like black tea and cigars, and I realize I’ve missed hugging him. I haven’t let myself lately. My faith has been too unsteady. But I realize something in that moment, as I squeeze him tight.

  Trust is risk. That’s what it is. That’s what it’s all about.

  It’s never steady, not really. I used to think my trust was a guarantee, that my faith in someone meant everything would work out for the best. And if it didn’t, then I was a fool for letting myself trust. I used to think Blue was good, always good. That I could believe in him. Now I know that’s not true. He screws up, just like me. There are no guarantees. I’ve let Porter down countless times, and he still trusts me, despite it all. It’s because he chooses to trust me, to take a chance on me, take the risk. Like we’re family.

  “I’ll help you retrieve those files, Alex, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  I want to say it’s more likely the last thing I’ll do, but I just say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, a million times.

  Time for Truth

  I spend the rest of the day with Audrey. We watch To Have and Have Not with Bogie and Bacall, and the nurses bring us more lemon Jell-O than we can possibly finish, but we don’t mind taking up the challenge. When Hoagy Carmichael hits the screen, crooning and playing the piano, my heart sinks, and I long for the days when I still believed in Blue, when he was my fantasy. And maybe it’s the nostalgia, or the regret, or the shadow of death standing just outside the door, but something makes me want to be honest with Audrey.

  I don’t get up the courage until she’s half asleep, nestled beside me on her pillow. I lean down and whisper in her ear. “I’m going to tell you some truth right now. Do you want to hear it?”

  “Mmmm,” she says, eyes closed, a small smile on her face.

  Here we go.

  “I’m a time traveler. I travel to far-off lands, places, and times you can only dream of. With a snap of a finger, a gasp, a blink, I am there. I’ve skinny-dipped in the sixties, robbed a steam train in the 1800s, run from gangsters during Prohibition, climbed the mountains outside Beijing. I don’t know how many reincarnations I have left. I don’t know my first parents, my first family. All I know is that I’m an orphan of the stars, born to countless families with countless sisters and brothers and lovers and friends. Countless enemies, I suppose, as well. I’ve toured Dante’s castle in Limbo. I can speak Chinese and Danish. I’ve stolen treasures worth millions, turned them over in my hands. I’ve been shot twice. I broke a boy’s nose at school. I know kung fu. I’m dying. I don’t know how to trust. I’m angry, and I’m bitter, and you are the only bright spot in all of it.”

  I look down at her, and her eyes are still closed. “Mmmm,” she says.

  “I’m going to save you.” I wrap my arms around her. “You’ll see.”

  Go Time

  “Ready?” Porter asks, standing across from me in my garden, my 1978 soulmark dancing between us.

  I nod.

  “It’ll be a Tuesday,” he says. “It’s winter. Your father just pulled off an airline heist, one of the largest payoffs in his history as a gangster. He’s going to be on edge, suspicious of everyone and everything, afraid someone will tip off the feds. Within the next few weeks, he’ll systematically kill off all those involved in the heist to silence them, then take their portions. He’s ruthless, Alex. Cutthroat. So keep your head down. Don’t make waves. Sneak out, find a car, and meet me on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. That’s where the AIDA research lab is located. I’ll be in a body called Sam. Any questions?”

  “Won’t my gangster dad be suspicious of me disappearing for a few days?”

  “You’ve got a history of mental illness and wandering off, remember? If you have to, play that card. Play dumb. If you think it’s too hard to slip out, just ascend, and we’ll wait a few days. Try again.”

  I reach for my soulmark.

  “Good luck,” Porter says.

  The white light envelops me, and like a magnet, I’m pulled back in time, my soul settling into my past-life body for one last shot.

  I have to make it count.

  Chapter 25

  On the Road

  The blinding light faded into darkness, little by little, until all I saw were flecks of white swirling in front of me. I was hurtling through them, like I was flying through space, speeding through stardust.

  Then it all came into focus at once. I was behind the wheel of a car, driving down a deserted highway, carving my way through softly falling snow. I slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road to catch my bearings.

  I was alone. It was a little after five o’clock. And I couldn’t believe my stupid luck. I wouldn’t have to face Jimmy McKenzie or find a way to sneak out of his house. Janet had done all the legwork for me, same as Lo Jie stealing the vase. If I had left a day earlier or later, I might not have been so lucky. There were no obstacles between me and the cure. It was a clear shot, arrow straight, and I shivered inside with excitement.

  I pulled the visor down and flipped up the mirror. I wanted to meet Janet. Her face was longer, leaner, her eyes sunken and tired. She had more freckles, but her hair was the same dusky blond color, with maybe a slight reddish tint, cut into a pageboy style that made her face look even longer. She was thin, almost skeletally so, like she was sick. She was a complete one-eighty from Lo Jie. Janet’s mind was a whirl, her eyes darting, heart racing. Like a mouse on the run from a prowling cat.

  What was she running from?

  As I ran my fingertips across my face, my freckles, I noticed a shadow that snaked across my cheekbone. I turned on the dome light and looked closer. A bruise, purples mingling with greens and blues, bloomed across my left eyelid and up the side of my nose.

  She wasn’t running from something. She was running from someone.

  Maybe her own murdering father.

  The thought made me glance in the rearview mirror. I needed to get back on the road in case she was followed.

  The car was a ’74 Gran Torino. Burnt orange with chrome, black dash, black steering wheel, black bench seats. Cassette tapes were scattered on the seat next to me. There was a map on top of them, folded to display Pennsylvania.

  She’d made it all the way from New York City to Pennsylvania before I took over. I’d have to go through Ohio to reach Michigan. I wasn’t sure how long that would take, so I pulled back onto the highway and got going.

  I took note of where I landed, what mile marker, so I could return Janet’s body back to the same location at the end of the mission. I couldn’t leave her in Michigan after I hid the files. She’d have no idea how she got there, and that kind of shock could make an impact. Returning her back where she came from—even if it was a few days later—would be confusing for her, but not enough to change her original course. Porter told me it happens all the time. People claim they’ve lost hours or days of their lives and can’t recount the events. When that happens? We know a Descender was involved. It’s not enough to change the course of the future. Only big impacts can do that—destroying something, killing someone, letting someone fall in love with you. Those are the big ones, the waves that cause catastrophic ripples across time.

  Like me kissing Blue and tangling his heart with mine.

  For the next five hours, I bobbed my head to Creedence Clearwater Revival and Simon and Garfunkel and the Steve Miller Band. I sang along to the songs I knew, the ones Dad grew up with, the ones he played while we worked on the Mustang.

  I pulled over at a truck stop for dinner (potato chips in a can, red cream soda in a glass bottle, and a candy bar called Chocolite), burnt coffee, and a bathroom break. By the time I reached the Michigan state line past Toledo, I knew that car inside and out. It might’ve looked like a muscle car, but it didn’t drive like one. It was an automatic, which was a shame. It floated on the road like a boat and pulled to the left, but it got me where I nee
ded to go.

  A little after eleven o’clock, and after a few wrong turns through the university campus, I found AIDA’s research building and parked on a side street. If Micki were there with me, she could direct me where to go. Without that kind of intel, I was driving blind, but that was OK with me. I’d rather it be just me and Porter, like when we first started.

  I stepped out, dusted the snow from my bellbottom jeans, and hugged my denim coat to my chest, the shearling collar guarding against the cold. I leaned against the front fender of the car, breathing in the December air. There were simple white lights strung across the Greek architecture buildings. There were wreaths hung on street lamps with red bows. It was kind of nice reliving the Christmas spirit all over again. Back in Base Life, it was almost February.

  The campus was empty and silent, save a few cars winding their way through. While I waited for Porter to show, I ran through possible cover stories in case I had to explain myself to anyone. But the first person I met was Porter.

  “Hello, Alex.”

  I turned around, and there he was, wearing a young man’s body, maybe a few years older than myself. He was tall and broad with deep, dark skin, a flashing smile, and…wait for it…an afro. Porter in a black turtleneck and a honey-brown leather jacket. Porter in corduroy bellbottoms and glossy snakeskin boots.

  Oh, I was in heaven. Looking him up and down, I let out a whistle. “Damn.”

  “What?”

  “You’re fine, Porter, my man.”

  “I’m…fine?”

  “This body you’re in. It’s attractive. If only I knew this guy way back when, know what I’m saying?”

  “Alex,” he says in his most dignified, authoritative voice. “These bodies deserve respect. We’re borrowing them without their consent and making them do things they wouldn’t otherwise. We’ve discussed this.”

  “Are you saying you don’t want me to stare at your butt?”

  “Please do not stare at my butt.”