“You’re involved already,” Kyle said. “I can’t tell you everything that happens in your life after I leave here today . . . But what I will tell you is this: Everyone has regrets. Some people have more than others. Whatever yours are, come March 13, 2014, if you do this for me, the slate’s clean. You will have done the one thing I ever asked of you, and all accounts are settled as far as we’re concerned.”
“You make it sound like I’m gonna have a lot to make up for,” Sillow said. “To be honest, I ain’t surprised. I didn’t know my parents, so what the fuck would I know about being one?”
“I’m here to change one thing on one day,” Kyle said. “So just, do whatever . . . Guilt free, even. Just make sure you come through on March 13, 2014.” He couldn’t believe he was actually encouraging his father to become the deadbeat he’d always been.
“Alright. Okay. So, I just gotta find a way to keep you in your house, right?” Sillow asked. “You don’t leave, you can’t cause a crash.”
Kyle hit the table with his hands. “What if school gets cancelled somehow?”
“Like, I flood the school, or call in a bomb threat or somethin’?” Sillow asked.
Kyle looked at a calendar hanging behind Sizzler’s cash register. Sillow wasn’t privy to the last eighteen years of news events like Kyle was. “Not a bomb threat,” he said, thinking about Columbine and 9/11. He certainly didn’t want to create a version of the future where his father was in jail.
“There’s another way,” Kyle said.
As he started to lay out the plan, Kyle was heartened to see his father actually listening. Sillow even wrote a few things down on a Sizzler placemat. After all, it would be almost two decades before he had to implement the plan. It wasn’t foolproof by any stretch, and dangerous too. But an okay plan was better than none. Kyle just hoped no one else would get killed in the process of carrying it out.
They finished the meal without much chitchat beyond strategizing for Sillow’s success sixteen years in the future.
A little later, as he watched his father walk away from Sizzler, back toward Crespi Memorial Hospital, Kyle felt a lump in his throat.
Kyle had accidentally wound up in the system after a horrible mistake, while Sillow, if he wasn’t living his life outside of the margins of the law, certainly seemed to enjoy being on the wrong side of good taste. Whatever Kyle’s mother saw in him at the time, Kyle wasn’t surprised that the relationship didn’t last. Watching his father go to town on that steak had been the first time they’d ever shared a meal. And, it was likely the last as well. They parted with a handshake and before he even let go, he regretted being too shy to hug his father for the first time in his life.
CHAPTER 16
February 5, 1998
* * *
Later that day
Kyle arrived back at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City just before seven o’clock. He had about fifteen minutes to get back to the construction site where they were building Stevenson Youth Correctional, and up to the unfinished third floor. Hopefully, then, the silk blot would open for him again and he could return to 2016.
The question that kept playing in Kyle’s head again and again was whether he felt he really needed to return at all . . .
He looked in the direction of the uptown A/C/E train line. He hated that he’d left Allaire crying. If he went back through the time tunnel, the chance of ever being with her again was remote. But, Kyle kept coming to what he’d seen happen to Ochoa. There was no way to guarantee he wouldn’t, at some point, come face to face with his younger self. He looked from the subway platform to the exit up to the street. Back and forth. Over and over. He reached into his pocket for the Metrocard Allaire had let him keep. For a brief moment, he decided he would go see her and miss his window to go back. But, the card wasn’t in his pocket. Gone. He remembered Myrna telling him that the timestream would want him out of 1998. Or, he could’ve just dropped it somewhere. He considered jumping the turnstile, but an announcement stopped him. He strained to hear it through the static of the old speaker.
“Uptown A, C and E trains are going out of service for track maintenance. We apologize for the delay. Please use the shuttle bus located upstairs at . . . ”
“What the hell?” Kyle heard from behind him. It was an older man complaining to the token booth clerk. “A freakin’ shuttle bus?” Kyle turned and headed for the exit up to the street.
It was drizzling when Kyle got to the construction site a couple of minutes before seven o’clock. He was cutting it close, and couldn’t afford another delay now that he’d decided on going back to 2016. It was quiet, but a few guys probably pulling overtime still occupied the future location of Stevenson Youth Correctional. He kicked the chain link fence around the site lightly until he found a spot where he might be able to lift it and push himself through. He ducked down into the weeds, nearly stepping in a pile of dog shit as he did.
He shimmied through the small opening on his stomach, until he was at the edge of the site. Most of the dozers, lifts and excavators sat empty, waiting for tomorrow. Kyle looked around to make sure no one was looking his way and then moved as quickly as he could to the corner of the unfinished building. He’d have to get up two of the tall metal ladders on the building’s skeleton to reach the third floor. He remembered from their way down that each ladder had eighteen rungs.
“Hey!” a voice called out, as Kyle started to climb. “Hey, guy. You can’t be in here . . . What . . . ? What’re you doin’?”
Kyle started climbing as fast as he could when he saw two construction workers running toward him. One of them was on his walkie-talkie, probably calling the police. There was no benefit to stopping when Kyle had only about six minutes to spare.
He started onto the second ladder. He tried to move fast, but his foot slipped on the slick metal. He hung by his arms for a second, barely escaping a fall. He looked down as the two guys underneath gained on him. They negotiated the ladder much more easily than Kyle did.
Before he could reach the third floor, Kyle looked down and saw he was only a few rungs ahead of a mountainous construction worker. Kyle tried to move quickly, but the construction worker managed to grab Kyle’s right ankle, stopping his progress completely. Kyle lifted his right knee up, trying to pull his foot away, but he had no luck pulling away from the ox who used his strong hands to keep his grip. Kyle looked down and noticed that the man’s nails had left a bloody scratch on his leg. He tried kicking at the man’s left hand clinging to the ladder, but couldn’t connect.
Kyle pulled one hand off the ladder, and grabbed the silk blot from his pocket. He wasn’t in exactly the same place that he and Ochoa had come through on their way out of the silk blot, but if he didn’t give it a shot now, he might never get the chance.
He looked down at the huge construction guy, who squinted his eyes at the strange piece of fabric in Kyle’s hand. “What the hell?” the guy asked him, loosening his grip on Kyle’s foot just a bit.
Kyle curled his left arm around the back of the ladder, basically hanging by the crease of his elbow. He looked down and tried pulling his foot away again, but no luck. He held the silk blot in both hands and pulled it over his head like a shirt. All of a sudden, his head was completely engulfed in darkness. He no longer felt the pull of the construction worker on his leg, and easily pulled the rest of his body into the silk blot. Once inside, he used the dim light emanating from the silk blot to look at the cut on his leg which was bothering him. He saw that the construction worker’s nails had made a deep gash, but Kyle could barely believe his eyes as he watched the cut heal within a few seconds. It was unlike anything he’d seen before. Like watching a time-lapse video.
Even though he’d just spent two days in the past, so much about ‘time weaving’ was still a mystery to Kyle. He wondered what it was about the tunnel that could heal a wound so quickly. And strangely, he had even discovered that one of the ‘rules’ told to him—that he’d need to exit and enter
the silk blot in the same place—didn’t seem to be exactly true.
He’d be back in 2016 in a few hours, and would find out if Sillow had come through for him. Or, if he’d failed, which would mean that Ochoa died for nothing.
And if Sillow had been successful, Kyle—not an inmate any longer—would have to explain to the prison’s guards how he managed to break into one of the cells in their prison.
CHAPTER 17
March 13, 2014
* * *
Sixteen years later (the morning of the crash)
Kyle watched from the bathroom window as his mom got back into her car and headed off. If she’d come upstairs, he and Joe would have been caught, no question. His mom probably suspected he smoked weed, but had no idea how often, and certainly not inside of her house.
Kyle sprayed enough Lysol in the small bathroom to choke a small animal, and he opened the window. He gave another look at the ridiculous wallpaper with the green elephants balancing huge serving platters, and smiled. He’d always liked the design better when he was high.
“Where’d I leave my phone?” Joe asked.
“In the basement next to mine,” Kyle said. “Yours is on the right side of the table lamp. Mine’s on the left.”
“Freak,” Joe answered. Kyle’s crazy memory still shocked the people in his life, no matter how often he put it on display.
Kyle opened the bathroom door and headed out into the hallway. He grabbed the bannister and was about to head downstairs when he heard the screen door at the back of the house squeak open, and then slam shut. He heard footsteps. “Shit,” he whispered. “She’s back.” He put a finger over his lips, signaling Joe to be quiet, and grabbed the front of Joe’s jacket pulling him back into the bathroom. Kyle closed the bathroom door quickly and quietly.
“I didn’t even hear her car, dude,” Joe said, more loudly than Kyle hoped.
Kyle tiptoed into the shower again and looked out the window. “What the fuck?” he said, his heart beating faster as adrenaline pumped through him. “Her car’s not there.”
“Who the hell is in your house then?” Joe asked.
Kyle heard footsteps coming up the stairs now. “Shit. This is not good. Shit. Shit. Shit.” Kyle knew this wasn’t just weed paranoia. Someone was in his house, and he didn’t think it was his mother.
“Maybe your mom parked in front of the house?” Joe said.
“Shhhhh!”
The footsteps continued to the top of the stairs, and stopped outside the bathroom door.
“Should we open it?” Joe whispered.
“Are you crazy?” Kyle whispered back. “No way.”
He watched the knob of the door move. He held his breath. But, the knob didn’t turn, it just shifted a little. He heard a click. Then, the footsteps headed away from the door and back downstairs.
Kyle tried the knob, but it wouldn’t turn. “Someone just locked us in,” Kyle whispered. “Whoever the hell that is just locked us in here!”
“Why the hell do you have a lock on the outside of the door?” Joe asked.
Kyle shrugged. “Old house? I don’t know.” he whispered. “Why am I even whispering?” Kyle stood with his face to the door now, and pounded on it with his fist. “Hello!!”
He put his ear to the door. Whoever it was was still in the house, walking around downstairs. “You think we’re getting robbed?” Kyle asked Joe.
“It’s gonna suck if they take our phones, dude,” Joe answered.
Sillow still felt rattled from his flight into New York the night before. He looked around his ex-wife’s living room trying to find a remote control. He was curious about whether his plane’s crash landing would be on the news. He would stay here for a couple of hours like Kyle told him to, back in 1998, making sure the boys didn’t leave that upstairs bathroom. Then, later, he’d unlock the door and try to get out without being seen. He hadn’t thought much about the house in years. He and Stella were so happy to inherit it from her father when he died. Sillow never imagined he’d be back here after he left.
The house looked almost identical to the way it did the day he bailed. He wondered if Stella still had that stupid elephant wallpaper in the upstairs bathroom. Even the ugly green couch must’ve been going on two decades now. Not that he was living like royalty either, he thought to himself. He, Raquel and the twins got by in Florida, but it was nothing fancy. And he was missing a day and a half of work to be here, which would make things tighter this month. Sillow had considered cancelling his ticket up until he passed the deadline to get a refund, but he’d promised to square the tab with his kid, and somehow this felt big enough to really make up for at least some of his mistakes.
Sillow found the remote and turned on channel 4, sitting down on the familiar green couch. Sinking into it, he understood why you wouldn’t just give it up.
As he scanned through stations, looking for coverage of his crazy landing, he heard a squeak at the back door. Suddenly the door swung open, and a woman in a black hat moved inside quickly. As she turned coming through the door, he noticed the unmistakable bulge of a gun stuck in the waist of her pants. She held a combat knife which looked like a set of brass knuckles with a curved blade attached to them. The woman moved toward Sillow, stopping a few feet away. “You have three seconds . . . Where is he?” She spoke like she was racing to get the words out of her mouth.
Sillow put his hands in front of him, trying to calm her and signal that he had no interest in a fight. “Hey lady, hold on. I don’t think you understand what’s going on here. There are, uh, lives at stake here!”
She walked forward and pushed the blade against Sillow’s throat. “Right now, the only life you should be concerned with saving is your own. Where is Kyle?”
Kyle heard the screen door downstairs screech closed again. “There’s two of them down there,” Kyle said. “I hear them talking.”
Joe looked less fazed than he probably should, given the situation. He pulled the blunt out of his coat pocket.
“Not now! What the hell are you thinking?” Kyle snapped, grabbing the blunt from Joe and putting it in his pocket. “How the hell did they know we were in here?”
Kyle felt a sense of dread and started making promises with God, even though he’d never felt sure about exactly what he believed. If we get out of this, he thought to himself, I won’t take my good grades—or my mother—for granted. I’ll stop getting high every morning. I’ll be the good kid my mom thinks I am.
“Who are you?” Sillow asked the woman.
“Is he upstairs?” she asked.
When Sillow didn’t say anything, she pressed the blade against his throat. “It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is getting Kyle on his way to school.”
“You know, don’t you?” Sillow asked. Had Kyle told her about the accident too? “You know what’s gonna go down today if he leaves this house.”
“It has to happen,” the woman answered.
Something clunked above them and they both looked toward the stairs.
The blond woman walked quickly to the stairs and started up, two at a time. Sillow hadn’t anticipated putting himself in harm’s way to help the son he had no relationship with. He was already inconveniencing himself. Sillow watched her head upstairs, the blade in her hand, and took a deep breath before getting up and following her. Sneaking up behind her, he lunged toward her left leg, and hung on it, trying to pull her to the ground.
But the blond woman grabbed the bannister for balance and raised her legs, delivering a hard drop kick to Sillow’s chest. He tumbled down the steps to the landing at the bottom. She followed him down.
“Those kids on the bus are gonna die,” Sillow said, looking up at her. “Why not at least try to stop it?”
She pulled her right leg back now, and delivered a crushing kick underneath his chin with her black Dr. Marten boot. The kick caught Sillow in the soft area between his chin and his Adam’s apple. He gagged and felt like he might throw up.
She bound
ed up the stairs toward the bathroom.
“Don’t hurt Kyle,” Sillow tried to call out as he held his throat and tried to catch his breath.
Bruno nervously fiddled with the keys to the school bus as he took the last sip of the espresso his wife Lucilla made for him. He had to leave soon to pick up the kids for morning dropoff at Clinton Middle School, but wanted to see the next story on the Today Show.
“You see this thing that happened last night?” he asked. “Plane’s gears for landing didn’t come down. They’re about to show a video on the television.”
“Were the people hurt?” Lucilla asked.
“No, thank Christ,” Bruno answered.
“You really need to get to work,” she said.
“Please!” Bruno said, a little more harshly than he preferred to be with her. “I just want to see this thing on the news. It’s five more minutes.” She’d been encouraging him to give up the bus route for years. She was right when she pointed out that the kids tried his patience, but he felt like being around them kept him young. And he liked to get out of the house for a couple of hours in the mornings and the afternoons.
The Today Show came back, leading with a video of the Western Airlines plane skidding into the runway, sparks flying, wobbling and bouncing until it came to a jarring stop. Bruno’s stomach churned thinking about their son Francesco who flew all over the place for work.
“You know how many planes land every day with no problems?” Lucilla asked. “Now, go. Those kids need to get to school, mi amore.” He looked at his watch and hurried out to the bus. He was fifteen minutes late for morning pickups.
“What the hell are they doing down there?” Kyle asked Joe. “It sounds like they’re wrestling.”
“Maybe the cops came, and they’re arresting whoever broke in,” Joe said.
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