by Jill Cooper
When he returns it, I know he’s bought my words. To clinch the deal, I lean forward and kiss him again, ignoring the pang of guilt in my chest. I feel as if I’m eating the last cookie in the package that someone else was saving.
I had Rick, I had Donovan, and now I have Rick again. Silly as it is, I'm sorry for the Lara that lost Donovan, almost as though she were a separate person from me. She was so distinct, but I have all her memories. She was and wasn’t me at the same time. It's hard to rationalize and make sense of any of it, so I'm simply not going to think about it anymore.
“Walk me to my locker?”
Rick nods, and when we get out of the car he slings his arm over my shoulder. It seems to belong there.
Once we’re inside, Kristine appears from nowhere grinning and bouncing on her feet. The girl never seems to change, no matter what timeline we’re in.
“Hey guys! I thought you were going to miss English again.”
“Not again.”
I head over to my locker, unsure whether I’ll remember my combination, but I spin the dial, and the numbers come to me. My books tumble out. I bend over to pick them up.
“Let me help you,” Rick says and hands me a few books. A blue piece of paper is lying on the ground. He picks it up and unfolds it.
My heart stills. I recognize the stationery.
“What’s this mean?” He hands it to me.
I recognize the handwriting. I should. It’s mine.
It’s not over.
I want it to be over. I don’t want to live this time travel hopping life anymore. If saving Mom, Dad, and Molly wasn’t enough to make me happy, what will be?
“What’s it mean?” Rick asks.
I shrug. “Who knows. Some kid probably put it in my locker.” I crumble it up and throw it back in, then slam the door shut.
****
In class everyone acts as if I should be there, but I don’t belong. I go through the motions, and take out my books, and find my pencil, but right when I think I’m settled, Donovan strolls into class.
My chest pangs. He’s cool and suave. From his dark sunglasses to his arrogant swagger, everything about him is what I used to hate, but now when I see it, I want to run to him.
He takes the seat across from me, lays out his notebook, and takes his sunglasses off. He looks at me, and his eyes bore a hole into my soul.
“Do you have a spare pen?”
“Me?” My voice chokes. “No. Sorry.”
He grunts and throws an arm over the back of his chair to wink at a girl in another row. This Donovan is a player, a playboy in the eleventh grade. I miss the serious, warm, and caring boy I knew.
“Well, thanks anyway. It’s Crane, right?”
“Lara.” I hold my hand out, feeling like a geek, but he shakes it anyway.
“Your mom’s Miranda, right? Pretty sure my mom told me we played as kids a few times, before your mom quit working.” He sucks on his lip and whistles. “Too bad.”
“Too bad my mom quit working or too bad we stopped playing together?”
He smirks so his dimples are exposed. “Maybe both.”
I laugh and shake my head. The teacher begins talking, and I turn to the front, but I barely hear him. He may as well be one of those WAH-WAH-WAH adults from Charlie Brown. My eyes focus on the wall clock. The hands are spinning backwards. At first I think it’s only the second hand, but then I realize it’s also the minute hand. Time is going backwards. I turn in my seat and look at the other students, but no one else seems to notice. I sit straight ahead and blink. It's turning clockwise again.
I’m losing my mind.
Rubbing my forehead, I wish I knew what was going on.
“Please open your books to page 245.”
Sighing, I flip my book open, but all my pages are blank, like a journal. Half the class stares at me as I slam my book shut. The teacher puts his hands on his hips, and his cheeks turn the shade of his bald, sunburned head. I slouch in my seat and open my book back up, but this time the words are filled in.
I can’t take it anymore. I’m up from my desk and running down the hall. I find the girl’s restroom and slam the door shut. I lean against it and close my eyes. Taking a deep breath, I try to calm down. I rush to the sink and splash water on my face. I don’t know what’s going on with me or who I can talk to who will make it better. Maybe no one. Maybe this is my punishment for mucking with time.
I cup my hand to collect water and drink it. Feeling better and more in control, I straighten up and glance in the mirror. Someone steps behind me.
It’s the woman with the purple hair.
Chapter Twenty-Six
She was spotted at my dad’s prison. My mother called her a ghost. I warned Mike about her.
And now she’s standing right in front of me.
I pivot on my heel to face the woman that appeared behind me. Her hair is long and the purple is in streaks. She’s wearing sunglasses, and her outfit is made completely of skintight leather. I don’t know who she is or what she wants, but her being here is bad.
Real bad.
“Come any closer,” I say, “and I’ll scream.”
She smiles, not entirely unkindly. Her gloved hands go up to her hair and pull it off. It’s a wig?
“I always wear this when I’m working. Makes me more of an enigma.” She shakes out her own hair, also long but in spiral curls. It looks exactly like my mom’s. She takes off her sunglasses, and my knees go weak. My hands brace against the basin behind me, so I don’t collapse onto the floor.
“You’re me?” I say meekly.
She catches me before I fall. “You have to hang strong, Lara. You’ve made it this far. You can get out of this.”
“Tell me what’s going on. Spill it.”
“You never made it out of the car with Donovan. They apprehended you before you could leap back in time. They want you to think you jumped.”
“I’d remember …” I whisper.
She shakes her head. “Memory swapping, remember? They took those memories out and put in the ones they want.”
“Why?”
“They want to find the location of the video, so they can destroy it, so nothing exists anymore to stop the Senator and Rex.”
I swallow hard and close my eyes. “So, my Mom, my dad … Rick …”
“None of it is real. I know it’s hard to process this, but I’m going to help you. We need to fix things.”
“So in your past, Rex …” It all clicks in my mind. “In your past, Rex was successful. You didn’t save Molly. You didn’t save Dad or Mom. The Senator has the power to make time travelers out of regular men? So, anyone in her way can be stopped thanks to time travel.
“Nothing went the way we wanted it to,” she whispers.
“You’re the one who left me the notes.” I know it’s true even before she nods. “Rex’s men at the YMCA kidnapped me. That’s why you left the notes. They brought me to the facility and did whatever they are doing to me right now.”
“I’m afraid so.”
“The news said you were at the prison when Dad was hurt. Did you try to kill him?”
“No, I was there to make sure he survived.”
I try to swallow a frog caught in my throat. “If they have me, how do I get out? Won’t I … be turned into you?”
“There’s still time for you to wake up and save Molly, everyone. But it isn’t going to be easy.”
I nod and listen.
“Chaos is going on out there while you’re in here. Rewind is being raided for illegal tests on humans. Donovan is searching for you. Our father heard word that you were kidnapped and broke out of the hospital to find you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. So much damage. So much pain. “Is there any way to go back further? To fix it?”
“This is as far back as we can go without messing it up worse. I’ve done all I can to get you here.” She makes a move backward, and fearing she’s going to disappear into the wall or something, I gra
b her arm.
“What happened to you? To us?”
Her face crumbles, but she regains composure. “Rex broke me. For me, the memories were more important than reality. I had no reality. The happy world he created was the most important thing to me, and he used them to control me, get me to do what he wanted, what they wanted.”
Deep despair covers her face. “Senators, the government, I’ve changed so much I don’t recognize the country anymore, or the world. Rex got richer, and I got … nothing.
“People work, but there is no real passion. Conviction has left the world. I didn’t do that by myself, but it started with me, with us. You have to stop it. Find a way out of here before the police unknowingly give power to the one woman who will destroy this country.”
“How do I get out?”
“I don’t know … I never found one, but I never looked. You have to do it, Lara.”
“If this is all made up, a fake memory, how did you get in? How can we be talking?”
“Because I was here once.” Her face looks terrified as she thinks of something I have no knowledge of yet. “This is a virtual reality I lived in once, which means it exists in the past, which means I can walk right into it. But we really need you to say goodbye. You need to get out of here. Soon.” With those last words spoken, right before my eyes, she disappears.
Now it’s only me, and I have nowhere to go that’s safe, that’s home. I have to find a way out of my utopian bliss, or it’s the end of me. It’s the end of everything, if I can believe she’s real.
If I can believe I haven’t lost my mind.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I go to lunch because I’m starving. I’m not sure how I can be hungry in a fictional world, but I am. I don’t have a lot of money, but I have enough to buy a sandwich and a bottle of milk.
Socializing isn’t really high on my list of things to do, so I sit alone. I unfold the wax paper my sandwich is in and it crinkles. It feels real. But I know it’s not.
Unless of course, I’m insane, and the purple lady isn’t real. But I think she is. I’ve been wrong about a lot of things, but the one thing I have never questioned is my sanity. Maybe I need to. Maybe I should be happy with what I have.
The sandwich tastes good, and the milk quenches my thirst. How can a memory hit the spot like that? The cafeteria is loud. The kids are laughing, enjoying themselves. How can that all be made up? Maybe this reality, if you can call it that, is designed to work on memories I already have. I’ve drank milk and ate tuna fish a million times. I already know how they taste; it’s not a new experience.
That’s what I need to do. I need to find a new experience and see what happens. Like the textbook in class, maybe it’ll be blank. I have to pray that’s the case because if it isn’t, I am pretty sure I can chalk up my entire existence as stark raving mad.
I get back in line to read the menu. I need to find something I’ve never eaten. The menu reads like a fast food restaurant—burgers, fries, meatball sandwiches—all of which I’ve had before. There’s oatmeal with honey, but I can’t have honey because I’m allergic. My eyes settle on the special, a veggie burger. I’m a stark supporter of eating meat and never in my darkest nightmares would I eat a burger made of beans.
That’s exactly what I need.
I rifle through my backpack and can’t find a single dime to my name. Frustrated, I give a loud sigh, and that’s when someone clears his throat behind me.
It’s Donovan. I wear shock on my face as he hands me a crumbled up five-dollar bill.
“I wouldn’t want my old playmate to go hungry.” He offers me a charming smile.
I thank him and buy the veggie burger. I take my tray back to the table, unable to shake Donovan, who’s talking the whole way and then sits across from me.
“You’ve never paid attention to me before. Why aren’t you hanging out with your clique of friends?” I take the top bun off my burger and remove the patty. I sit it on my tray and stare at it as a mortal enemy. It’s the moment of truth, but I’m not ready to bite into it yet.
He shrugs and leans on the table. “I’ve noticed you. How could I not with hair and eyes like yours?”
Even now he’s a charmer, but if I’m sane, he’s not real. He’s only smoke and mirrors. If I’m insane, well … I don’t really want to think about that.
“I’m with Rick,” I say to keep up the illusion.
He leans back, offended. “So, people tell me.”
“Oh, so you’re talking to other people about me?”
“I had to see what makes you tick. Why don’t you tell me…?” He glances down. “You on a low-carb diet or something?”
“Not exactly.”
“You have to put ketchup on it. You can’t eat it like that.”
“Sure I can.” I smirk at him and pick up the patty. He appears nervous. I close my eyes and take a bite. It’s warm and soft but tastes like nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I can’t even taste the black beans, which Dad always hid in his chili because he couldn’t stand red beans. I chew, swallow, and take a sip of my milk, completely satisfied with myself.
Donovan seems to be sitting on pins and needles. “How’d it taste?”
“Perfect.”
He appears relieved. The bell rings, and he says, “How about I walk you to your next class? Maybe after school I can take you out for a real burger?”
I put my hand on his chest to stop him from following me. “I know why you’re here. I know why they sent you.” His eyes are confused. “They thought Rick would make me happy, make me reveal where I hid the microchip, but when I didn’t, when they saw how much I longed for you, they changed their plan. But it’s not going to work, Donovan. I don’t want … this.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Are you on meds or something?” His eyes are dark and angry.
However they are controlling the images and what people say to me, somehow their real feelings are leaking in, which means maybe my feelings can leak out. If my mind believes this is real, maybe my body will too. I think of all those cheesy movies Rick’s mom forced me to watch:
A movie where a time traveler from the 1800s found a copper penny in his pocket, from the 1970s. It broke the illusion and forced him back to his time period. I also recall an old Star Trek episode where if one of them was killed in virtual reality, they actually died because they believed in the fantasy.
Thinking back, I remember how I pricked my finger, and for a brief moment, I was out of the dream. That’s what I need to do. I need to hurt myself so badly they have to take me off the machines, remove the needles, and ensure that I get medical treatment.
I leave Donovan and return to the bathroom. I check to make sure all the stalls are empty, then wedge the bathroom door shut. I take my fist and smash the mirror. It doesn’t break on the first try, so I keep going until it cracks. My knuckles hurt and are bright red, but they aren’t bleeding yet.
On the next hit, it shatters. My knuckles are gorged open, and I suck in my breath. I cradle my hand and see I have a piece of glass stuck in the open wound.
Instead of pulling the glass shard out, I wiggle it around. The pain makes me scream, which does the job.
The bathroom begins to fog up, and the next breath I take is with my real lungs.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
The real world hurts much worse than my gashed knuckle.
My back arches, and I scream, eyes searching the room. I see ceiling tiles, and then hands are on my arms, trying to still my movements. But I fight, every muscle in my arm contracting.
People all around tell me it’ll be okay, that everything will be fine, but I don’t believe them. They want to destroy me.
My arm comes free, and I scratch someone’s face. He screams and backs away. I try to sit up but can’t. I flail, but my arms are pinned down. Nothing works. There's no way out.
I hear Rex. I glance up and see his smug face, stroking back my hair.
“Dear Lara, you do know how to make things hard on yourself, don’t you?”
“You said this would be easy,” says Patricia’s familiar voice. She steps close enough for me to see her, arms crossed and face pinched in anger. “You said you could break her.”
“Nothing worth doing is easy,” Rex says and places a mask over my nose and mouth.
I take a deep breath and notice that it smells stale. I do my best to wiggle free, but I don’t know where I would go anyway. My mind blanks out again, but instead of darkness, there is nothing.
An absence of color. An absence of existing.
Just nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Can you hand me that streamer?”
Blinking, my hands come into view. One is bandaged, and the other is holding a pink streamer. I hand it to my father, who is balancing up high on a ladder. The room is decorated all in pink. There are balloons, streamers, and a banner that reads Welcome our baby girl! I don’t know what’s going on. I remember being at school, at lunch, but after that, nothing.
I should be doing something else, something important, but what?
“Guests will be arriving soon. Why don’t you go get the punch ready?” Dad says as he hurries down the ladder. He moves it aside. “Hurry, Lara.”
My head snaps, and I rush to the kitchen. I get the punch bowl out of the fridge and look for cups and a ladle. After I set up the punch bowl on the table, the doorbell rings. Guests are arriving. I welcome them and take their gifts.
Once they all arrive, we dim the lights and quietly wait for Mom to arrive. She doesn’t see us when she first comes in. I think she looks beautiful in her simple sweater with her hair freshly styled from the salon.
I turn the light on, and everyone jumps out and yells, “Surprise!” Horns toot and confetti is thrown. Mom giggles and holds a hand to her chest. “Who decided it’s a good idea to scare the pregnant woman?”
“It was my idea,” I say and beam as she pulls me tight and hugs me. It’s great to be so close to her.
