by IGMS
In that awful moment, I realized I had misidentified the kids at the bus stop. Randy wasn't the one turning into my father.
I pulled Tim against my chest and sank to the ground. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," I mumbled, holding him against me, both of us bawling, until the mist lifted and he faded away.
I never touched Traci again, inside the Bubble or out.
I said before you can't change people. But I know that's not true, because my brother changed me. Maybe you can change other people, just most of us suck at it. We don't know what to say or do to cause the change we want. Even with a hundred chances, we can't get it right. Tim got it right.
My mother taught me that hell is a real place, and most days I still believe that. If I don't go there, it will be thanks to Tim. And if I do, well, at least I'll have the satisfaction of knowing why.
But I sure hope I don't. I don't care to see Paw again.
That afternoon, Timmy wanted to know why I had ditched school. He only remembered walking down the hill and getting on the bus.
I don't know why I thought the Bubble's rules wouldn't apply to Tim. I was disappointed I couldn't fully share the Bubble with him, but glad he didn't remember what I had done. And it meant I could always surprise him by doing something outrageous in the Bubble. I tried to come up with ever more bizarre pranks, but the simple ones worked best.
One day, I took a coconut cream pie with me, telling Tim it was for a class party. Once in the Bubble, I intentionally slipped on a slug, and managed to heave the pie into Timmy's face as I fell. He laughed until his tears traced lines through the whipped cream.
That night, Paw got to smacking our mother around. My fault, sort of -- I had left my baseball bat lying in the family room. When Paw tripped on it, he blamed Mom for not keeping the house tidy. Usually he hit her in the bedroom with the door closed. But this time he laid into her right in front of us, his face purplish-red even though he hadn't been drinking. I just froze, not knowing what to do. But Tim stepped between them and pushed Paw away, yelling at him to stop.
Paw picked up my bat and swung for the fences.
#6: SEE OLD FRIENDS
They gave me a week off from school, as if I could recover in a week. But in hindsight, they were right. If they had waited for me to get over Timmy's death, I never would have finished junior high.
My first day back, I expected the other kids to behave awkwardly around me, but at the bus stop they all acted completely normally.
Then from behind, I heard a familiar voice sing out, "Hi-ho!" I turned and saw my little brother. He looked exactly as he had before, except for a new glow to his eyes, eyes of pearl. "Why didn't you wait for me?" he asked. My only response was to hold him tightly as I could.
Though gone to the real world, inside the Bubble Tim still waited for the bus to take him to seventh grade.
I would spend every minute of my mornings with him, ignoring everyone else (but it stung that Traci didn't seem to care I wasn't spending time with her). I carried games from home and we'd play cards, Battleship, or chess. I brought his favorite peanut butter Rice Krispie squares. I talked and laughed with him, savoring the moments.
I tried getting to the clearing early, but Tim wouldn't appear until the last ten minutes before the bus came. Often I let the bus go by, persuading Tim to ditch with me, so I could stay with him until the fog dispersed. I should have flunked out of school, but teachers cut me extra slack that year.
One time I told Tim he was dead in the real world. He said he didn't believe me, but I could see how it disturbed him, so I never told him again.
I don't mean to complain. I've had a good life. I adore my wife, my son, and my daughter (and no, I have never, ever laid a hand on them in anger). I've had plenty of great experiences and seen some amazing things. But there is no memory in life that means half so much to me as those last mornings with Tim.
You never know which will be the final foggy morning of the season. So every day in the spring, before getting on the bus, I would give Timmy a bear hug under the Big Tree and whisper in his ear, "Goodbye." And one day in April, it was.
#7: DON'T FORGET
The next year I started high school.
On Mercer Island, every kid got a car at sixteen. (I guess you did have to be rich to live there.) So it wasn't cool to ride the bus to high school. But I did. Mom and I were on a tight budget without Paw's salary, so I didn't have a car.
The Bubble was still there -- I could feel the cotton candy resistance when I touched it. But funny thing, it didn't matter if it was the Bubble or just fog, with no other people around.
Sometimes I'd let the high school bus pass and wait for the junior high bus. But somewhere in between, the Bubble would melt into ordinary fog, and Tim never appeared again.
I'll never understand how the Bubble knew which bus I was supposed to take. Hell, maybe the driver told it.
Hurry up please it's time.
Looking back, maybe I wasn't special at all. Perhaps everyone has a memory of a certain time and place that felt separate from the rest of the world, unconnected to all the crap you were going through in real life.
If you had a place like that, then do something for me: stop whatever you're doing, close your eyes, and remember it. Remember it and treasure it.
Because I think, just maybe, that was when you were in the real world.
Into the Desolation
by Catherine Wells
* * *
I know when I see her that she's headed into the Desolation. I mean, why else would a middle-aged woman carry a single, huge backpack and check into a run-down motel on the edge of the Event? Probably put all her money into a fancy dunerunner with all kinds of equipment that won't do her much good once she crosses the boundary. I glance out the front window, but I don't see any dunerunner.
Her look says I'm right, though: that unwavering, even look of someone with their mind made up. Someone whose family tried to talk her out of this. I watch her come up to the desk, make one sweep of the lobby with her eyes, then fasten them on me. "I'd like a room, please."
A low, strong voice. Polite, but not deferential. Lines around her eyes, a couple from her nose to her mouth , all soft. Mousy brown hair with strands of gray. "One night?" I ask.
"Yes."
"Fifty-three dollars, cash only."
She sheds her backpack and looks down at the index card I slide across the desk. One eyebrow goes up. "No computers?"
"Not this close to the boundary." The Desolation screws with magnetism and makes computers unreliable. At least, the kind of computer we can afford.
"Ah." She fills out the card, hands it back. Imogene Glass, someplace in Nebraska, phone number that probably doesn't work here. But my mom insists we get one. Then she fishes in her backpack for the cash.
"Second floor okay?" I ask.
"Fine." She's looking me over now, and I know what she sees: a raw kind of kid, mostly bone and gristle. Messy black hair, a couple of zits, didn't bother shaving this morning. Why should I? I'm stuck behind this stupid desk all day while Mom cleans the rooms, does the laundry. She hands over the cash. "So, when am I?" she asks.
"Plus Seven," I say. "Most of the time. We get brown-outs, but we always come back. If you stay in town, you'll go back to the world you remember." She doesn't plan to stay here, though. Why else would she come? I slide her a key -- brass, because magnetic key cards get wonky, too. "Out the door, right, first staircase. Room 214."
"Thanks." She picks up the key, hesitates. "Is there a grocery store close by?"
"Couple of miles." I look at the backpack resting against her thigh and see it's one of those internal frame packs. I wonder how far she plans to carry it. "The military surplus just down the street carries a lot of camping supplies. Dried food, MREs, if that's what you're looking for."
Her lips twitch, almost a smile. "I suppose you get a lot of folks here headed into the Time Wastes."
Now I know she's not local. No one near the
boundary calls it that. We call it the Desolation. Sure, the terrain is mostly desert and there wasn't a whole lot there before the Event, but all those jokes about the "sands of time" and people who cross into it being "Time Wasters" -- not funny, not here. Not when you've seen the people who do come back. If they come back. I kept track for a school project once: 37 percent. That's how many don't.
But I won't tell her that, because I'm sure someone else has, and it's not my problem anyway. I just tell her, "Not as many as we used to." Even the scientists don't come as much.
Her eyes are a pale blue, and they look at me as if they can see through to my brain. "You know anyone?" she asks. Wondering if it's personal for me.
I look right back. "Everybody knows someone."
She lets it go and I like her better for that. I hope she's one of the 63 percent. She hoists her pack with one hand, then hesitates. "What's your name?"
"Abel."
"How old are you, Abel?"
"Nineteen."
"So you were . . . twelve, when the Event hit?"
When time shattered like a stoneware plate hitting a tile floor. When chunks of the world lurched back ten years, or fifty, or maybe just a couple of months. When it became dangerous to cross the boundary, because out there it was still happening. Is still happening. "Yeah," I say. "I was twelve."
She's looking at me like she wants to ask a question but isn't sure she should. I keep staring back, and she takes that as permission. "Did you lose anyone?"
"Grandparents." That's partly how they figured out the boundary, by finding the places no one came out of, places you could no longer reach by telephone or satellite. Places that, if you drove to them, they were somewhen else. "They lived about twenty miles in. My dad tried to find them, but . . ." I shrug. "The whole town was gone. Who knows when it landed." What my dad found looked like something from before Columbus.
"And your dad, he . . ."
"Went over on a Thursday, came back four hours later on a Sunday." She lets out a breath, like she's relieved he made it, until I add, "That was the first time. The second time . . . we're still waiting."
And like that, the lines on her face deepen and her eyes dull, and she hasn't even crossed the boundary. But she doesn't say "I'm sorry," and I like her better for that, too. Instead she straightens up, hoists the backpack onto a chair this time and shrugs into it. "Which way is the military surplus?"
I nod to the left. "I can sell you bottled water, too, if you need more. Wholesale." Mom will laugh at that -- I'm the one always gives her a hard time for selling supplies at wholesale.
Imogene hesitates, and I can see she wants to ask me something else. I think she wants to ask if I'm interested in coming along when she crosses. But she just says, "Thanks," and goes out the door.
I sit there for a while, tapping her index card on the desk and wondering who she thinks she's going to find. If you don't count the scientists, most crossers are looking for someone, a relative or something. Sure, some just want to see what's out there, for the hell of it, because why wouldn't you want to bounce around in time if you could? Mostly young guys, mostly on foot with a buddy or two, egging each other on. Funny thing is, those guys come back more often than not. I didn't write that up for my school project, it's just something I noticed. Why you cross into the Desolation shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not you come back, so I didn't collect data on it. It was just a school project, but it had to look scientific.
But I did notice. And the ones who come back . . . Is there a scientific term for "screwed up"? Never mind, I don't need one. Everyone around here knows how people are when they come back.
There's all different ideas about what caused the Event. The scientists talk about exotic matter and quantum mechanics and string theory. One suggested our sun went supernova in the future and created a rotating black hole with ripple effects back through time. I doubt they'll ever figure it out. Around here, folks like to talk about meteorites and alien technology and a secret supercolider built under the Four Corners area. Right. Tell me why you'd try to build anything underground in that rock.
I hear my mother back in the office, on the phone, so I quickly start writing Imogene Glass in the log and make it look like I'm working. In a few minutes she comes out front. "We get a customer?" she asks, looking over my shoulder.
"Yeah," I say. "Some lady with a backpack. I put her in 214."
My mom's shoulders droop, like they always do when she hears someone else is going into the Desolation. But she never tries to talk anyone out of it. To do that, she'd have to talk about my dad, and she still can't, not without crying. It's been four years. Sometimes I'll catch her staring toward the Desolation, and when she sees me watching she just gives a little shrug and says, "Maybe tomorrow, huh?" And I say, "Yeah, maybe tomorrow." But I haven't believed that for a while.
There's a pattern, see, and I can't quite put my finger on it. It has to do with things that shouldn't matter, things like why you're going, and how big a smart-ass you are, and maybe if you know what you're doing or not. I'm not sure. Some people cross over two or three times and they still seem mostly normal. Like the scientists. And others . . . My dad was gone three days the first time -- four hours for him -- and he was never the same. His eyes kept drifting in that direction, like the magnetized needle you float in a cork in that dopey school experiment. And he kept telling us what he found, over and over again, like he was stuck in a loop. "The river had water in it," he kept saying, like that baffled him. For all his life -- for all his dad's life, I guess -- the river has been dry most of the year.
"Gus Patel called," my mom says. "He still wants to buy this place, I don't know why."
He wants to buy my mom, is what he really wants. Thinks buying this motel is the way to get her, and she'll work for him for free after that. Probably thinks I will, too. "So sell it," I say, "and move to Dallas." My sister went to Dallas as soon as she finished high school. She lives with my aunt.
Mom turns to look at me, surprised. "You want that?" she asks. "You want to go to Dallas?"
I shrug. "Not particularly." If I wanted that, I'd have gone a while ago. Enrolled in junior college. Of course, that would leave no one to help my mom run the motel. Which wouldn't matter, I guess, if she sold the place to Gus Patel. "But I would if you wanted to."
She shakes her head like I know she will. "Not yet," she says. She still believes. Then she straightens up and smiles. "Listen, I'm going to work in the office for a while, I can keep an eye on the desk if you want to go out for a bit."
She doesn't have to ask me twice. I'm out the door before she can change her mind.
I meet Imogene Glass coming down the stairs, no backpack. "Headed out?" she asks me.
"On my break," I say, like I was a paid employee entitled to a break.
She smiles. "Yeah, I had a family business. Farming. My kids used to harass me about wanting their coffee break."
"How many kids?" I ask.
Her smile dribbles away like rain down a gutter. "Three."
"They try to talk you out of this?"
"Two of them did."
I almost ask about the third but decide not to. Instead I say, "I'm going over to the surplus store to see my friend Ronnie, if you want me to show you where it is."
The smile almost comes back, not quite. "Sure."
I forget my legs are longer than hers, but she keeps up without any problem. She must be used to walking. "Where's your car?" I ask.
"Back in Nebraska. I came by bus."
The bus station is three miles from here, at least. "So you're going to walk in."
"That's the plan."
I nod, glad. "People who walk in have a better chance of walking back out."
She turns and lifts an eyebrow like I just spoke in Mandarin.
"I did a project in school," I say. "Who goes in and who comes back. When you leave out the scientists, people who walk in are more likely to come back than those who drive."
&nbs
p; "Are they." She's watching me and I pretend not to notice. I still think she wants to ask me to come along. "Maybe they run out of gas," she says. I don't mention all the extra fuel cans I've seen packed in with their gear. Then she shakes her head and grins. "Speculation. We can't exactly ask them why they didn't come back, can we?"
I laugh. I like Imogene.
"Why did you factor out the scientists?" she asks.
"They all drive, and they mostly all come back." At the beginning, lots of them went in, loaded with equipment. Measuring this and that, mapping, making notes. The first ones came back with screwy stories and screwier readings. I guess time doesn't like to be measured. They drew up a chronograph with wavy lines and arcs showing where it was 1943 and where it was 1552 and where that blended into 1911 or roughly 1200. But then others came back and said no, no, that was all wrong, it was 1873 in this spot, not 1911, or it was just after the volcanic eruption of eleven-something. And that's when they decided the area was still unstable.
Where I am, when we first got tossed around by the Event, cable went out because the satellites disappeared for a while, and then it came back, and then the stars shifted like God hit the fast-forward button, and when Mom tried to phone her sister in Dallas there were no cell towers east of El Paso. We found out later the whole world was like that, but different in different places. Maybe we were in the 1800s for a while, but Kentucky was shifted into the Bronze Age, and California had Japanese balloons from World War II show up -- it was just all mixed up, everywhere. After a couple of days, though, that passed and in most places things settled back to normal, if you don't count the World Clock reading 21:15 when the sun was at high noon over Greenwich, and some cities being a day or two off compared to others. By the end of the week, nothing was jumping around anymore.