Let me be perfectly clear. Yes, I was scared, but that’s not why I changed the destination.
I changed it because 23 May 2016, 4.25 p.m. is a date and time that has been seared into my skull, inked into my consciousness, spring-loaded into my brain ever since it first took place.
Here is why.
Noah Brackman kissed me that day.
It was my first kiss.
And he hasn’t spoken a word to me since.
In the last two weeks, every waking and many sleeping moments have been consumed by my fierce and fiery desire to go back in time and find out what the heck I did wrong.
I could use stronger language than ‘heck’ there, but I don’t want to get disqualified.
Anyhow, here I was at home.
I walked up the stairs. From the kitchen, I could hear the sound of my parents arguing. ‘Cerulean blue!’ my mother shouted, just as I reached the top step. ‘Candy-apple red!’ my dad retaliated in a roar. (They run a graphic design business together.)
Along the corridor, I passed my sister’s room. Someone was crying in there. My sister’s voice was talking to the crying person in a quick, sensible tone. She’s always very practical about emotional anguish, my sister.
I passed my brother’s room. Music was playing. There was a crashing sound, and someone swore.
I reached my own room. I’m the youngest so I get the small one down the end.
The door was ajar. I went to push it open further — and stopped.
Someone had just laughed.
The someone was me.
I was in my room laughing.
I stood in the corridor, hyperventilating as quietly as I could, and listened to my own laughter.
And there it was.
The answer.
Right there.
I couldn’t believe I had solved the riddle so quickly. No wonder Noah hadn’t spoken to me since that day!
My laugh was ridiculous.
Hee-hee ha-ha, up high, down low, then a sort of trail of raspy ha-ha-has. I recognised it, of course, as that is exactly how I always laugh. But ordinarily, when you hear your own laugh, you’re busy finding something funny! You take no notice of the sound! Now, however, visiting from my own future and standing outside my room, I could be objective. And objectively speaking I sounded like a falling cockatoo. The cockatoo’s wings have failed it. The cockatoo is high-pitched panicking, resigned moaning, then hitting the ground with a squawky thud-thud-thud.
I couldn’t believe my parents hadn’t sent me to some kind of Laughter Rehabilitation Centre years before. I couldn’t believe my brother and sister hadn’t sat me down and said, ‘This laugh of yours? It has to stop.’
I leaned against the wall.
Noah was speaking in there. In his voice. I heard myself laugh again. Noah’s voice. My laugh. Noah’s voice. My laugh.
He was saying funny things. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were, but I remembered now: we’d been working on a chemistry assignment together, and just before he kissed me, he’d been hilarious about our chemistry teacher. Why? Why keep being funny, Noah? He must have known the direct consequence of humour would be more laughter!
Mysterious.
Although, now that I thought about it, maybe it suggested that he didn’t have a problem with my laugh?
Plus the kiss hadn’t happened yet. It was about to happen.
Logic would suggest that if you were appalled by somebody’s laugh and wanted no more to do with her, you’d say, ‘Gotta go, sorry,’ as opposed to kissing her.
The bathroom is opposite my bedroom. I crept over there, creaked open the door, unhooked the mirror from above the vanity and carried it back into the hallway.
At that moment, my brother’s door opened. Sebastian stepped out into the hallway along with a blast of music. He turned, still grinning at something in his own world, and saw me.
I was holding the bathroom mirror at a high angle, pointing it at my open door. He raised an eyebrow, interested. Then he looked at me more closely.
‘That’s my shirt,’ he said. I could only just hear him over the music from his room.
‘No, it’s not,’ I replied automatically. But it was, of course. Save it for the Subterraneans. ‘It’s okay,’ I said instead. ‘I’m not actually wearing it today. That happens in two weeks.’
He considered this, raising his other eyebrow to join the first. Then he nodded, apparently satisfied, spun around and ran down the stairs.
I played with the mirror angle.
It worked. I could see into my room.
And there we were.
Me and Noah.
We were sitting on my bed.
Me-of-the-past was facing the window, so I could only see the back of my head and a bit of my profile. My hair looked fine. In its regular ponytail and quite shiny. So it wasn’t that. He hadn’t stopped speaking to me because of a failure of hair style/quality.
Now, as I watched, Noah’s hand curled around the back of my head. He leaned towards me. Past-me took the cue. I mean, I didn’t just sit there and make it difficult for him. I didn’t rush it either. Hurtle myself forward with lively enthusiasm, and send him flying off the bed so that he crashed against my desk and got concussion. No. I leaned forward at his exact, careful speed, and then we were kissing.
I don’t know if you’ve ever watched your own first kiss taking place in real life, but I have to say it is a situation that makes you feel many complex emotions. Especially if it’s Noah Brackman doing the kissing. Noah with the eyes that disappear when he smiles. Noah with the thoughtful way of moving around life, thinking about things, and now and then commenting on those things, in his voice.
I tried to be a scientific observer.
I noted that: (1) I placed my hand on his shoulder, to give myself balance. I admired myself for this. It seemed a smooth and natural move. (2) Noah’s eyes stayed closed for the whole kiss. They didn’t fly open and widen in alarm and horror at anything I was doing. (3) When the kiss finished, we both sat back and smiled at each other. (I could tell that I was smiling from my profile.) (4) Neither of us said anything. (5) We kept smiling for ages! (Longer than the kiss, actually.) (6) Then Noah looked behind me at the clock on my bedside table and said, ‘I am unbelievably late for work.’ (He works at his dad’s plant nursery.) (7) He stood up, and (8) I also stood, ready to walk out with him.
At this point, out in the corridor, I panicked, of course — and then, there I was, back in the booth.
That’s how it happened. No rush of lights or zoom this time. Just: oh look, here’s the booth.
‘Welcome back, everyone,’ said Kara’s smooth voice over the speakers. ‘You have thirty seconds before your next journey. Please use the time to rehydrate. If you feel light-headed or dizzy, we urge you to eat the muesli bar.’
I opened the lid of the water bottle and drank.
‘Ten seconds until departure.’
I only had time to have two specific thoughts — I don’t think that I did ANYTHING wrong in that kiss! and This would not be nearly enough time to eat a muesli bar — when the booth lit up and blasted sideways again.
Once again, Babstock was surprised and pleased to see me, welcomed me politely, and lay back down.
Once again, my parents were arguing in the kitchen while I walked up the stairs. I walked a little more slowly this time so my mum shouted, ‘Cerulean blue!’ and my dad, ‘Candy-apple red!’ at the third step from the top, rather than the top.
Once again, there was crying in my sister’s room, and loud music in my brother’s. The crash! from my brother’s room, and the sound of swearing.
I stopped outside my own room and there I was laughing in there. My laugh had not improved. I went right into the bathroom and unhooked the mirror. In the hall, I looked at my brother’s closed door. Any moment it would open. Sebastian would see me with the mirror. He’d raise an eyebrow and say, ‘That’s my shirt.’
I should avoid that.
I duck
ed into the bathroom, out of sight.
Sound of door bursting open, blast of music. Footsteps along the corridor, and down the stairs.
I stepped out again.
The mirror seemed heavier than last time. I hoisted it up, and it swivelled and tilted. Now it faced across the corridor instead. Straight into my brother’s room.
Max Stephenson was in there, sitting at Sebastian’s desk. I recognised his swoopy, swirly hair. (I assume he asks his hairdresser to make his head look like cappuccino foam, please.) Max has been a casual buddy of Sebastian’s for years, but he’s really stepped things up to super-friendship this year. Dropping by almost every day and saying, ‘Dude!’ My brother seems cheerful about this development. ‘Dude!’ he says right back. The rest of our family exchange many doubtful glances.
I don’t mean to boast here, but my brother is a mild genius. He’s also super-efficient and super-conscientious, and these elements, in combination, mean he blasts into first place in every subject that he takes. He’s in Year 12 now, which means that life is suddenly looming from behind the HSC exams (he explained to us the other night).
A lot of time, when Max Stephenson comes by, the second thing he says after ‘Dude!’ is something like this: ‘Logarithms! What the f***, eh?’
To which my brother replies, surprised, ‘Really? I like them! You want me to show you?’
Followed by a free tutoring session.
This explains my family’s doubtful glances.
So I did not beam with delight to see Max Stephenson in my brother’s room. He was hunched forward, studying the computer monitor, hand on the mouse. I moved the mirror around a bit, so I could scan the bedroom. It’s always a treat to see how neat, filed and colour coordinated a life can be. The only glitch today was the smashed glass lying on the floorboards, right by Max’s sneaker. A puddle of Coke stretched from the shards towards the rug.
That explained the crash and the swearing I’d heard. Sebastian must have run downstairs to get a cloth.
I looked up at Max with disapproval. It seemed likely to me that he had knocked the glass over. Sebastian is careful with his surroundings.
A document was open on the computer screen in there. Extension English Assessment Task: In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald explores the life of the imagination, and the imagined life. Discuss.
Discuss. Those are the cheapest questions. Teachers can’t think of something to ask, so they fall back on the vague and helpless: Discuss.
My brother didn’t seem to have had an issue with it. Max was scrolling down the screen now, and one paragraph after another was appearing at high speed. Now Max reached into his pocket, with his left hand. He took out a USB — one of those novelty ones, in the shape of a little red car — and jammed it into the computer.
After that it was hard to see what happened. You will recall I was watching all of this through a heavy mirror that kept tipping and losing its focus. But I caught a flash of files flying across the screen. The ‘trash bin’ icon. And then Max was pulling out the USB again, and dropping it in his pocket; iTunes flipped onto the screen.
I didn’t think. I strode right over to my brother’s bedroom door and shouted, ‘Hey!’
I had to shout. The music was still blasting.
Max spun around in his seat. His eyes were startled. He tried to hide this startlement with a smile. ‘Hey yourself.’
‘What are you doing with that USB?’ I shouted.
Now the smile broke into pieces, like that glass.
‘Just copying some music!’ he said.
‘Music?’ I pounced, with huge amounts of wither and scorn, which, it turned out, were wasted because now I was back in the booth.
‘Welcome back,’ Kara’s voice said. ‘You have thirty seconds before your next journey.’
Once again, she instructed us to rehydrate, and suggested we eat the muesli bar if we needed it. In fact, I did feel lightheaded and dizzy now, but I was pretty sure this was fury at Max Stephenson, rather than time-travel discombobulation. I thought of the trash-can icon on the screen. He hadn’t just copied my brother’s essay, he’d also deleted it.
‘Ten seconds until departure,’ and I was in my own front hallway. I gave Babstock a fierce yet cursory hug, pelted up the steps, two at a time (‘Cerulean blue!’ ‘Candy-apple red!’), skidded along the corridor, and reached my brother’s door.
I stopped.
My hand was raised, ready to turn the handle and throw open the door.
But of course, nothing had happened yet. Max, at this point, was innocent.
Crash! from behind the door, and swearing.
I pursed my lips. If I hadn’t hesitated, I might have saved that glass.
My brother was about to fly out of the room. I sidestepped along the corridor towards the stairs.
But if I had saved the glass, I would not have saved the glass. Of course you can’t change the past, Kara had said in the briefing room, it’s already happened.
The glass broke. It was broken. In the real world of the present, it is broken.
That seemed terribly sad to me, and also quite wise.
My brother’s door flew open, and here he came with the music and the grin. ‘Hey,’ he said to me, friendly, but I wasn’t holding a bathroom mirror in the air, so he had no reason to pause, stare and notice his shirt. He carried on by, and down the stairs.
Now was my chance.
Catch Max Stephenson in the act!
But, again, I stopped. It’s already happened. Max Stephenson has already stolen my brother’s essay. It happened two weeks ago. He’d probably handed it in as his own by now. My brother would have discovered it was gone, and written another one.
The glass was already broken.
Instead of pushing open my brother’s door, I pulled it closed, dimming the music, and sat down on the floor. I needed to think through my new wisdom. So far, I wasn’t sure exactly what was wise about it.
I was sure that it was sad.
Somebody was crying somewhere, as if they agreed with me on that.
Of course, I remembered. There was somebody crying in my sister’s room. Her door was half-open and I was opposite it now, leaning against the wall, so I could hear quite clearly: the sound of a girl crying. There was some rustling and rattling going on. ‘Here,’ said my sister, Harper, in her efficient voice, ‘take this.’ I decided she was offering the person a tissue.
‘Thank you,’ mumbled the girl. I didn’t recognise the voice. The girl blew her nose. So I was right about the tissue.
‘There will be other auditions,’ Harper said. ‘And at other auditions, you will not have a twinge in your shoulder that impedes your boogaloo!’
I slapped a hand over my mouth to stop myself snorting. Boogaloo. Funny. But insensitive to laugh.
‘You think?’ murmured the girl, sniffing.
‘I don’t think, I know!’ declared my sister. ‘You rock the Humpty Hump. And as for the Kriss Kross? And the Twist-o-flex?’
Okay, it was hip-hop. I recognised those terms. Harper is the athlete in the family: she rows, does Tae Kwon Do and dances hip-hop at a professional level. This girl must be in her troupe. And she must have just messed up an audition.
I still didn’t know who she was, but I did know she wore a really powerful perfume. It was one of those high, sweet smells, like freesias and watermelon, with insect-repellent undertones, and it kept wafting out of the open door and into my face. (My sister is not a perfume sort of a person.)
‘Here,’ Harper said briskly. ‘These are the keys to my locker at the studio.’ More rustling. Jangling. ‘There’s a CD in there that Malik burned for me. The set list will —’
But I didn’t know what the set list would do, because here I was back in the booth.
‘Welcome back!’ said Kara, more upbeat this time.
Yeah, yeah, I thought. Have a drink. Eat the muesli bar. I drank, reached for the muesli bar, and flew sideways.
The front hallway again.
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I felt despondent this time. ‘Hey, Babstock,’ I said, and sat down beside him. He seemed pleased to have me.
If you couldn’t change the past, what was the point of coming here? What was the point of life?
My parents were arguing in the kitchen. I could hear them quite clearly now.
‘Seriously, that was mad,’ Mum said.
‘What are you talking about?’ Dad complained. ‘He knew it was a joke! Anyway, I can’t help it, I do it automatically.’
‘He signed off on the artwork, right? Before you went mad?’
‘As long as we change the logo to cherry pink.’
‘He’s nuts,’ Mum said.
Cherry pink, I thought. Yum. (I have lip gloss in that flavour.)
‘I know, right?’ Dad said. ‘But I agree with him that yellow is wrong for the Ely logo. Should be candy-apple red.’
‘No way. Cerulean blue.’
‘Candy-apple red,’ my father said firmly.
‘Cerulean blue!’ my mother shouted.
‘Candy-apple red!’ my dad roared in reply.
That escalated quickly, I mused to myself. But that’s always the way with my parents: flighty, tempestuous, artistic types, the pair of them.
Beside me, Babstock sighed. ‘I know, right?’ I said to him.
It seemed a good idea, sighing. I tried it, too. Sigh. It was just the thing.
Upstairs, I knew, I was laughing at Noah’s jokes and kissing him. Max Stephenson was smashing a glass and stealing my brother’s essay. A strange girl was weeping about a failed boogaloo.
And there was nothing I could do about any of it.
I played with Babstock’s ears while my parents carried on bellowing, ‘Cerulean blue!’ and ‘Candy-apple red!’ at each other.
My brother ran down the stairs.
‘Hey,’ he said, seeing me there and, ‘Yo!’ to Babstock, then, ‘Isn’t that my shirt?’ to me, but in a distracted way. He disappeared into the kitchen. There was a brief pause in the battle of colours, while Sebastian chatted and moved about in there, then he hurried by me again, a cloth in his hand, back up the stairs.
My parents picked up their profound philosophical debate immediately, ‘Cerulean blue!’ ‘Candy-apple red!’ but Mum tripped up and shrieked, ‘Cerulean-apple red!’ and they both burst into laughter —
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