by Jahn, Amalie
I expected to see the employee coming down the ladder, but instead of an immediate descent, I heard pounding and then a ripping sound. There were shouts from the roof followed by shouts from the ground. As I watched from my hidden vantage point, I saw Mr. Cooper ascending the ladder. More voices came from above my head. I cautiously walked over to where I believed they were standing and strained to hear what they were saying. Then it dawned on me… they had discovered the damaged shingles. If the future was any indication, I already knew the roofing was going to need to be replaced.
Employees began filing out of the store in droves, apparently unable to curtail their curiosity about what was happening on the roof. With all of the extra people milling about, I decided that the sooner I exited the attic, the better. After briefly considering taking the box of letters with me, I immediately thought better of it and instead returned the box to its hiding space behind the rafters. I carefully inched the attic door open and was bombarded with the sounds of the children playing and the adults discussing the roof. I crept silently down the fire escape, thankful for the distracting noises and breathed a sigh of relief as my feet hit the ground.
I had decided on my way down to meander over to the action to see if any resolutions had been made regarding the state of the roof. As I approached the small group of hardware store employees, I heard someone calling to one of the children from across the parking lot. Instinctively, I looked in the direction of the voice and was taken aback when I saw the boy from which it came.
It was mostly true when Branson teased that I had no interest in boys. I really did not. Or had not. Until that particular moment.
With the exception of Paul McGregor, my resident stalker, very few boys had taken any romantic interest in me over the course of my high school career. My visceral response to that had always been not to take any interest in them either. I was quite protective of my heart for some reason and had been from the time I was able to recognize that love was both given and received. It was almost as if fate knew that I was destined to have my heart broken. So although I was not unattractive and had quite a few friends who were boys, none of them had ever actually been worth risking my heart to approach romantically.
But here, across the parking lot, was someone who made my heart involuntarily skip a beat. For the first time in ages, I was not thinking about Branson. I was thinking about how in the world I was going to meet this boy, who was now strolling toward the hardware store, hands in his pockets, jeans low on his hips. I was frozen solid in my snow boots, unable to move forward. My head knew what I needed to do was walk over to the store employees to hear what they were planning for the roof. My heart, whose voice I had spent so many years ignoring, was screaming for me to walk towards the boy. Unable to move in either direction, I watched as he crossed the vacant lot to where the children had resumed their game of kickball. He called again to a girl, Melody, perhaps his sister. The little girl turned, chocolate curls brushing her shoulders, as if hearing him for the first time, and smiled an angelic smile. She immediately left the game and ran toward the boy who watched her with a mixture of love and nostalgia. He held out his hand and she took it willingly. They turned together and headed back toward his waiting car. In less than ten seconds, they were gone, headed west toward the mountain pass.
I realized, as I watched the car disappear, that I had been holding my breath. I filled my lungs desperately with air and released the tension in my shoulders. The store employees continued to discuss the roof, so I reasoned that I could spare a minute to approach the remaining children in the vacant lot. My legs found their momentum and I moved swiftly to their playing field.
“Hey guys,” I called as casually as I could, “who was the girl who just left?”
“Melody,” replied a little blond girl with both front teeth missing.
I approached her. “Was that her brother?” I ventured.
“Yeah, Charlie,” she said.
“Oh. Do you know their last name?” I pried, wondering when the girl would realize she was giving out an awful lot of information to a perfect stranger.
“Johnson,” she answered without missing a beat.
I continued my line of questioning, aware that, in addition to appearing rather strange, I was also wasting the time that I should have been spending learning about the roof.
“Do they live close by?”
“Yeah. On Sycamore. But they go to Hawk’s Ridge,” she explained, possibly anticipating where I was headed with my next question.
Hawk’s Ridge was the town’s only K-12 private school, which would explain why I had never seen him before. I thanked her for the information and ran as quickly as I could over to the other side of the lot. As I approached the employees, Mr. Cooper recognized me immediately and signaled for me to come over with a friendly wave of his hat.
“Well how are you Miss Brooke?” he asked warmly, wrapping his arm around my shoulders.
“I’m good,” I answered. “Real good. What’s going on?”
“Kids got a ball up on the roof here and when Bill went up to get it, seems we got a patch of busted up shingles on the roof gonna need replacing before the next snow comes. What a blessing those kids were out here today or else I’d have never known ‘bout that hole. Ain’t no coincidence in life ya know!”
“Yes sir,” I said.
“Branson showed up last week looking to work again this season and you know I can’t turn down a hard working boy like your brother. Could probably use you too if you had an inclination,” he said, eyes twinkling.
“Oh, no sir,” I replied, “I’ve got plenty of schoolwork keeping me busy these days. I hope you can get the roof fixed real soon.”
“Well, yeah, I’m gonna get Bill and a few others on it tomorrow. Hopefully have it torn off and redone in a day or two. I gotta run now. Tell your brother I’m gonna need him as soon as possible with this mess and tell your momma and daddy hello.”
“I will, sir,” I said.
With that, Mr. Cooper headed inside. I lingered to listen to Bill and the others deciding how to go about demolishing the broken shingles in such a way as to protect the underlayment from the elements. After a few minutes, I realized they did not have any information to share that I did not already have, so I began the walk back home. The sun was beginning to set, and with it, the warmth of its rays. I untied my jacket from around my waist, shrugged it over my shoulders, and tried not to think about Charlie Johnson as I made my way toward home.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Over the course of the next week, I repeatedly failed myself, and my whole family for that matter, on every front. While I was supposed to be contriving elaborate schemes to keep my brother from the hardware store attic, I caught myself continually thinking of Charlie Johnson and his bewitching smile. I found that I was unable to control myself. It took every fiber of my being to concentrate on the task at hand. I began hating my subconscious for its unwillingness to focus on Branson’s plight instead of Charlie.
Within several days of the ball incident, work began on the roof of the hardware store. Before they started, I made one last trip into the attic to see if there was any area I was overlooking for asbestos. So far, I had found two potential areas. I also retrieved the box of letters from its hiding spot. For some reason, I could not stand the thought of them being thrown away or destroyed.
On Friday night, Branson reported to us at dinner that as the shingles were being removed that afternoon, a hole was found in the plywood beneath that needed repair. Mr. Cooper was sending a few of the boys to clean out the attic the next morning. Branson was assigned with the task. My heart sank. I had failed. As it was before, so it would be again, if the attic was indeed the culprit. My mind raced furiously to think of something to say that would convince him to avoid the attic as the demolition was being done. But I had nothing. Not a single credible idea. My attempt at saving him from the asbestos exposure had failed.
That night in bed, I prayed for a miracle. Perh
aps Branson would develop a bout of influenza that would keep him housebound until after the roof was complete. And although I hated to wish pain upon him, I could not stop myself from considering how a broken leg would surely keep him from working for the next several weeks. In the end however, I acknowledged that God’s will be done. If my plan was not destined to work out, then so be it. At least that is what I told myself.
I rolled over for the hundredth time and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It read 2:17 A.M. Sleep was eluding me and I finally decided to stop fighting. I booted my tablet and searched the internet for instances of asbestos exposure causing pulmonary fibrosis. As I began, I hoped that I would be unable to find any accounts tying one to the other, thus effectively easing my mind. Instead, I found person after person citing one reason after another for their disease. I felt the tears coming. Sadness and despair washed over me again. My body was wracked with heaving sobs.
And then, as only the mind of a teenager would, I was struck with an image of Charlie and myself. And Branson. All together. Standing at my graduation. What a joyful thought. I picked my head up off my desk and logged into the Hawk’s Ridge Academy web site. I searched for Charlie’s face among the pages strewn with the photos of the school’s students. By the third click, he appeared. He wore his blue and tan school uniform and stood, in what I assumed was the school’s library, with the other members of the debate team. He was smiling directly at the camera and therefore it seemed as though he was looking at me. I instinctively placed my fingers on the screen to touch his face. Immediately, I acknowledged the ridiculousness of what I was doing and dropped my hands into my lap. I spent the next thirty minutes crawling the school’s website for his image. I found him several times – in the swim team photo, in a candid photo with friends eating lunch in the cafeteria, and in a photo of him at a recycling center doing volunteer work. I decided that, although I did not know Charlie Johnson, I liked him. Or rather, he seemed like a person I would like if I knew him. Finally, exhausted, I climbed back into bed and attempted to fall asleep. My last conscious thoughts were of my brother and Charlie.
In the morning, Branson was gone by the time I dragged myself out of bed. I had heard him quietly walking past my door on his way out to work before the sun rose. After my sleepless night, I had no intention of getting dressed. I dug through my closet for my red robe, the robe that I practically lived in after Branson died. It was strange to see it still in such good condition, as the robe I left in the future was missing buttons and falling apart at the seams. I held it up at arm’s length and then pressed it to my cheek. It was like an old friend with the power to comfort my aching heart. I pulled my arms through the sleeves and buttoned each of the buttons carefully. I admitted silently to myself that I was on a slippery slope, back to the days when I refused to leave the house and left the world behind, but I did not care. I knew I had failed. I knew the attic insulation was coming down and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I padded down the stairs in my bare feet. My mother and father were seated at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and watching the local news. They both acknowledged my arrival with smiles and good mornings. My mother offered to fix my breakfast, which surprisingly, I accepted. Despite my depression, I was famished. I took it as a good sign. I polished off three eggs, sunny side up, two pieces of cinnamon toast, and a large glass of orange juice. My father responded with a comment about my having a hollow leg, a comment typically reserved for Branson’s large appetite.
I had envisioned a day spent idly wallowing in my own despair, but after breakfast, as I was making my way back upstairs to my room, I was struck by a wonderful thought. The attic of the hardware store was being torn apart for one reason and one reason alone – a child kicked a ball on the roof. That was it. That seemingly inconsequential detail set off an entire chain of events in everyone’s lives involved at the store. It suddenly occurred to me that I did not have to keep Branson from helping to fix the attic. I had to keep the roof damage from being discovered. And although it was too late to change the outcome during that trip, should the need arise, it could be changed on another trip by someone else. If the cream did not cause the disease, and it was caused instead by the store attic, all was not lost! If the ball never landed on the roof, the damage would never be discovered. And I already knew the exact time to make sure the change could take place. New hope melted away the impending depression and I ran the rest of the way up the stairs, stripping off my robe so that I could get dressed and take on the day.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Each moment subsequent to my revelation, I set about enjoying the gift of togetherness that my trip afforded me. Armed with the knowledge that there was nothing more that I could do during that particular trip to save him, I spent as much time as I could enjoying Branson’s company. We spent Christmas vacation holed up in the family room in front of the fireplace eating Mom’s snickerdoodles and playing Rummy and Crazy Eights. We worked together on his science fair project that was due after the first of the year. He chose to experiment on bean plants and sound waves, just as he had the first time. We went ice skating in the park with Chad, Sarah, and Branson’s friends from work. We finished reading three of our favorite Charles Dicken’s books aloud together, again. In the middle of Great Expectations, Branson suddenly stopped and looked at me.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m glad you didn’t go all the way off the deep end,” he commented without an ounce of playfulness in his voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Before, when you were driving me crazy with all that ‘work at the mall’ business and you were crying all the time and freaking out.”
“Oh, yeah. That,” I replied.
“I’m just glad you are back to your old self, Sis.”
“Me too,” I agreed
Life continued on much the same as it had the first time for the next several weeks. The greatest difference for me was the amount of time I spent daydreaming about Charlie, which of course did not occur originally as I had been blissfully unaware of his existence. I made sure to look for him everywhere I went - at the grocery store, out to dinner, at the mall with Sarah, but I never saw him. He was like a ghost and I was beginning to think I had imagined him.
I had been back for just over four months when my anxiety returned. If the cough was coming, I knew the day would be upon us shortly. It was a Saturday afternoon and Branson and I had been bowling with Sarah and Chad. In the first timeline, I had bowled a 189, but between looking for Charlie and listening for Branson’s impending cough, I had barely broken 100 the second time around. Sarah repeatedly asked me if everything was okay, sensing my apprehension. I reassured her with my words, but I knew my actions spoke differently. When we were finished, we returned our shoes and said our goodbyes. Sarah was driving Chad home because Branson and I were meeting our parents for our weekly Saturday night dinner at Lesley’s Café. As we were getting into the car, Branson let out a quiet cough. Like the first tiny raindrops in a hurricane, it would be the beginning of the end. Again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Returning to the present was different than I had expected it would be. After Branson’s cough returned, I was with him for six weeks, four days, and nine hours until I was torn from the past and restored to the present day. Before making the trip, I chose the exact minute to leave the past so that I would not be caught by surprise when the transfer occurred. My instructions were to find an isolated spot to hide ten minutes prior to the extraction. I went to my bedroom, where I locked the door and sat quietly on my bed, holding tightly to the cowardly lion in my hand.
Only moments before, I had made a complete fool of myself, throwing my arms around Branson’s neck and telling him how much I loved him. His response was to question my sanity, as usual. I sat quietly sobbing as the transfer occurred and I instantaneously found myself back in the present day, still sitting in my bedroom on the exact day my journey had begun in the original timeline.
While I had been away, my timeline had been reset to account for the changes that were made, and I alone had memory of the original timeline, which precipitated the trip. I was grateful that I did not have to relive Branson’s death or the aftermath that ensued. However, since I had not been present for the events that took place after my extraction, I could only assume that my family’s reaction had been similar to what I had experienced in the original timeline.
After half an hour, I found the strength to rise from my bed. I made my way into the hallway, where I paused briefly, deciding whether to turn left and go down the staircase or right, toward Branson’s room. I headed down the steps, unable to face the emptiness of a room that was surely devoid of the life I had left behind only moments ago.
My parents were both at home, my mother emptying the dishwasher and my father in the garage, changing the oil in his car. After speaking with them, I discerned that they were oblivious to the changes that had been made to the original timeline, which were a result of my trip to the past. I knew I would need to make them aware of what had transpired, but for the moment, I was unable to pick the scab of my newly formed wound.
Over the course of the next several hours, what surprised me most about being back was not the initial pain that I felt having lost Branson for a second time, but the determination and power I felt with the knowledge that I knew exactly what needed to be done to keep Branson out of harm’s way.
As the dust settled from my return, I was able to fully assess my parents’ mental state, as well as determine how I had reacted to Branson's passing. It seemed that I had been less volatile in the aftermath of Branson’s death in the augmented reality, and therefore, they had been as well. I decided to approach them both one evening before I went to bed several days after my return. I stood at the foot of the staircase, observing them from a distance. They were curled up on the sofa together, as they had been every night, watching television. I felt a pang of jealousy that they had one another, because without Branson, I was alone. I thrust the emotion to the side and walked across the room to join them on the couch.