by Ryan Schow
Of course, I knew Hitler escaped because Holland told me. He said the maniacal dictator escaped, changed his body and disappeared to…wherever he disappeared to.
Except now, as Savannah Crawford-Swann, I went back in time and killed him. Has history changed? Did I change it?
Apparently.
Wiping my eyes, I turn to the man next to me and say, “Excuse me, sir.” He looks over at me, smiles that sad smile for me. “Do you know how Adolf Hitler died?”
He blanches at the question, like he didn’t see it coming at all. Then he looks down at my book and says, “It doesn’t tell you in there?”
“How do you remember it?”
He’s probably forty, maybe forty-five tops.
“First off, I wasn’t there—”
“I know that. That’s not what I’m asking.”
“He was caught in South America by a group of teens and twenty-somethings and beheaded before a film crew. Jesus, don’t you know this?”
A steep breath has me fighting to stay calm.
“What’s it say in there?” he asks.
I hand him the book, open to the page. He reads it, his eyes bouncing a few times to the message in red up top, then there’s a sharp intake of breath as he sees the picture. I turn away at this point. My eyes are locked on the blue skies.
“This girl…she looks like you.”
“I know.”
He’s trying to look at me, then he’s studying the picture, then he’s looking at me again. Finally he just shuts the book and sets it on my lap and falls into a difficult silence.
Exactly.
2
Cameron’s dead. I never liked her, but I hate that she’s dead even more. For the rest of the flight I can’t stop second-, third- and fourth-guessing the horrible things I did to her. How I brutalized her after fake-Abby unsuccessfully tried to hang herself. I was a heartless, soulless bully.
Worse, actually.
They say with great power comes great responsibility. I can’t stand hearing that statement because it’s such a cliché, but clichés become what they are because they tend to be statistical truths. How this ever became my truth disturbs me because I’m not sure how responsible I can be when faced with situations like the one’s I’m running into.
“Why does that girl look exactly like you?” the man beside me finally asks. In coach, people are always trying to talk to you. In First Class, they appreciate the art of not talking.
“When I figure that out, I’ll text you.”
He scoffs at the comment and I turn and close my eyes. Not because I’m tired. It’s because I want to find my way into Patrick O’Dell’s mind to check on him.
Cameron’s father…he’s so lost. He’s dying inside.
And the biggest parts of him, they’re weighing the notion of joining his daughter in the afterlife. Not helping things any, his soon to be ex-wife has waged war on him, holding him responsible for their daughter’s death. And the press? They’re absolutely crucifying him. Having been on the wrong side of the cockroach paparazzi, I can say with certainty, he’s tits deep in the circus.
Hours later, when I arrive at the funeral in a cab, I leave the book in the car and ask the cabbie to stay. Tell him it’ll be worth his time. He’s a patient man. Says he’s got friends and family he can text.
Joining the mourners, I see the faces I expected to see, and I see some that surprise me. Julie was a no-show for Maggie’s funeral, but she’s here now. As are Blake and Theresa. It’s when I see Brayden standing by himself with some hottie at his side (I crawl her mind, then think, holy shit, that’s Sunshine Cranston!) that I freak out inside.
Sunshine? It’s her, but it’s not her at all. “You effing hypocrite,” I mumble, not saying “effing” but using the real word instead because I’m that appalled. Some woman next to me turns and glares at me.
Sheepishly, I smile and apologize.
My mind is supercharged, I can’t help it. I drive hard into the ex-wildebeest’s mind. This girl—the worst, most judgmental of Janine’s Ugly Six—she’s all GMO hotness now. And her energy? It’s every bit as obnoxious as before. She’s not here to pay her respects. This little bag of gloom came for the joy of seeing Cameron’s corpse get lowered into the dirt.
Brayden catches my eye and I look down. I’m wearing my favorite Jackie-O sunglasses, but there’s the part of me that fears he’ll notice something more about me, something that will give me away. Like how perfect I look.
Don’t be preposterous, I tell myself.
When I look back up, he’s still looking at me. I turn away. Refuse to look at him, or even crawl his mind. I’ve been preparing myself to break from everyone but my family and Netty, so seeing him here sets me back about ten steps.
And then there’s Sunshine. The bridge troll who called the non-triplets clones with a frightening amount of animosity, and hostility. When did she get made over?
How did I miss it?
I was busy being Raven, that’s how. She was changing. She’d been changing for weeks now. As I siphon through her memories, I see this. In these next few days, before school’s out completely, her transformation will reach completion.
Popping out of her head, I steady myself.
The funeral begins, and as the eulogy goes on, I feel dividing lines forming. Of the guests there, half are in Cameron’s mother’s camp and half are in her father’s camp, and both sides are seriously hating the absolute crap out of each other. It’s a celebrity war I’m sure will play out in the entertainment news outlets in the days to come.
Needless to say, it’s a closed casket affair.
Naturally.
I pay my respects at the casket, apologizing to her body, even though no one’s home (it’s stupid, I know, but it makes me feel better), then turn and run right into Patrick O’Dell. I tell him I’m sorry. He thinks I’m apologizing for his loss, but really I’m saying sorry for what I took from him.
“Were you a friend of hers?”
In my mind I’m thinking, no, I’m not a friend. I was a victim who later became her tormentor, who later found her in a puddle of her own arterial blood.
“This wasn’t your fault,” I tell him. “She was really trying to turn a corner and part of that meant making amends for her past transgressions.”
“Such as?”
I lean in and whisper, “Those girls she bullied to death.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says, his face turning bright red. “Can we not talk about that here? Today?”
“Anyway, she couldn’t live with what she’d done, what she’d taken from those girls’ families, and so she took it out on herself. I’m the one who found her. I tried to save her.”
I really did.
I take his hand in mine, not realizing what I’d done until it was done. He appreciates the physical connection. So do I.
“Did you know her well?” he asks.
“Just from Astor.”
His eyes are swimming, his body sad, the weight of so much tragedy and shit-gone-wrong all but breaking his emotional back, making him look weary, at the end of his rope.
“You’re not going to recover from this,” I tell him.
“I know.”
I let go of his hand.
“When you do it, do it for the right reasons, not to escape the things you don’t want to handle.”
He knows what I’m talking about, but he won’t admit it to me, this teenage stranger.
“When I do what?” he asks.
“You know.”
When he kills himself.
“Are there ever any right reasons to do…whatever it is you’re saying I’m going to do?” he says, his eyes drowning. His expression, the steadfast look, it says me and him are on the same page.
“Some might argue there are justifiable reasons, but not me. I don’t find it very noble. Plus, you hurt people. You leave behind a wake of devastation. For some people, though, that’s the only way out of the pain. I know this from firsthand exper
ience.”
He really comes apart at this. I feel him feeling that connection with me, with what I’m saying, and he’s blown away by it.
He leans in and hugs me and to him alone, into his ear I say, “There’s nothing wrong with who you are, but until you fully accept that, you’ll never allow yourself to fall in love in a healthy way. Don’t let this break you.”
I don’t care if he likes men as much as women. What I could care less about are his sexual proclivities. But what I don’t say is the road from stardom into oblivion starts with a same-sex affair between a country singer and a boy.
“How are you so smart?” he’s asking through a choked sob.
“I just am.”
Inside him, I feel him thinking there may be other ways to deal with his life that don’t involve suicide. Maybe I’m saving a life, I tell myself. Or maybe I’m deluded. Either way, I’m here trying to do something constructive for what is left of this family. To perhaps make up for the pain my actions have caused and will no doubt cause in the years ahead.
He lets go of me, thanks me, then wipes his eyes and starts talking to other well-wishers on their way out. As I’m heading back to my taxi, I see Brayden and he’s fifteen feet away looking at his cell phone. Sunshine, in her beautiful, manufactured body, she’s looking at the casket, checking out the hole in the ground, smiling and thinking bad things do happen to bad people.
Two seconds later my cell phone rings.
Startled, I fish it out of my purse, then see it’s Brayden calling. I look up at him and he’s looking at me. Quickly, I disconnect the call then turn and leave. Does he know? Did I just give myself away?
OMG, I can’t think about this right now!
As I’m getting back inside the cab, my phone rings again so I shut it off completely. I look down at the history book, to make sure it’s still there, and next to it is a large velvet satchel. My heart stops beating. Just for a second. It stops completely though, I can feel it.
“What’s this?” I ask the cabbie, holding up the bag.
He looks in the rear view mirror at me and in a thick Wisconsin accent he says, “You put it there.”
“No I didn’t.”
“I saw you and you did.”
“Maybe it was someone who looked like me,” I say.
He raises his eyebrows, blows out a breath, then says, “Back to the airport?”
I nod my head, wondering what the hell’s happening here. Lifting the small satchel, it feels weighted. It’s a marble bag. Sweet Jesus above, I know what this is! I know what these are.
Time travel devices.
Black Hat
1
Whatever shitty little love story Brayden tried to weave with Julie, it was a sad, dysfunctional tale that ended up fizzling out on a catastrophic scale. He tried to talk to her at Cameron’s funeral, but she made a scene. Told him to leave her alone. And now, back at school—the way Jules was paying attention to everyone but him—it was seriously over. She wouldn’t talk to him. Wouldn’t even respond when he tried to talk to her in between classes or through texts. And Constance? She kept sexting him, which was bittersweet. Lately she couldn’t seem to do anything other than send him random pics of her tits. Not that he minded. At some point Brayden decided he’d forward them to Julie. If anything just to say “fuck you.”
You always hurt the ones you love. They say it’s inevitable, whomever they are.
All those pics of Constance’s dark Persian nipples served as constant reminders that Julie was pregnant with Emery’s baby and the three of them were secret lovers. Dysfunctional lovers.
He couldn’t help shaking his head over the whole affair.
Talk about trailer park!
The whole debacle had his noggin spinning so hard, it took repeated acts of God for him to scrape thoughts of Julie from his mind. It was an emotional battle he fought until the last days of school.
Instead of running himself into the brick wall that was his dead relationship with Julie, he called Netty a couple of times. She wasn’t answering. When she finally returned Brayden’s call, he was zipping up the last of three duffel bags in preparation for winter break.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Brayden,” she said, “it’s Netty.”
“I’m glad you called,” he said, feeling something inside himself unwinding. He was certain all the women in his life were writing him off, so when Netty called, he really was happy.
“So…what’s up?” she asked, monotone.
They have sex, he’s her first, she gets pregnant and loses the child and that’s what she has to say—what’s up? The tension he felt before she called, it was making an unwelcomed return. That tightening of his chest was coming back, that shortening of breath.
“I, uh…I was thinking of maybe coming to see you. If you wanted, I mean. We could have lunch or something, my treat.”
God, he wondered, when did I start sounding like such a beta male?
“Are you coming here anyway?” Netty asked.
“Sweetheart,” he said, trying to get back to his more alpha self, “I’d be coming to see you.”
“Where are you wintering?” she asked, switching subjects.
“Vegas.”
“San Francisco’s a little out of the way, isn’t it?”
“I’d rather see you, so it’s no biggie.”
“I’m not having sex with you if that’s what you’re thinking.” It used to be when she said this, it meant they were having sex. Now it sounded like she wanted him taking her at face value.
“I was going to tell you the same thing,” he joked. “You’re always stealing my lines.”
“So now I’m old news?”
Okay, he got put in the trick bag there. Yes, he wanted to have sex with her, but no he wasn’t planning on trying after she lost the baby.
“After everything you’ve gone through,” he said, taking a more serious tone, “don’t you think that would be a little…insensitive? If not a bit presumptive on my part?”
“You make a legitimate point,” she conceded.
“Well there you have it.”
“I don’t want to see you,” she finally admitted, totally ambivalent, like she could give a crap less about him or what they started several months ago. “Good-bye, Brayden.”
“Wait,” he quickly said, but after a second he realized he was speaking into an empty line.
He looked at his phone, then pressed the END button.
“Wow,” he replied out loud, aghast, to no one. Then again: “Wow.”
When the hell did he become so unpopular? The thing about Vegas was there were always more girls, more clubs, more parties to frequent. Out there, in the heart of Sin City, the art of not getting attached to anyone was an art best embraced. Now he understood. To the girls in his life, he’d grown somewhat attached.
His mentors—Titan and Romeo—they were right; keeping your emotional distance was critical to mastering the game. Vacillation was one of a pick-up artist’s most effective tools. Not giving a damn about any girl in particular, no matter how physically involved you got with her, that’s what kept a guy from falling into old ways.
It also made you numb.
The process of emotionally detaching from a person you let into your heart was difficult. If not impossible. These people you like, these people you love…to cut them out of your heart, you need to find things about them you hate. You have to embrace these dark emotions because they are your lifeline. They’re self-preservation.
He could learn to hate Julie, but Raven? No way. Never.
And he could never hate Netty.
Tearing him out of his reverie was a knock on his dorm room door followed by Damien just walking right in. What is it about the door not being locked that gave him the right to just stroll in?
“I’m about to take off,” he said to Brayden.
They bumped knuckles and then gave each other the customary bro hug before saying good-bye, enjoy your holidays, call me, bla
h-blah-blah. After that he gathered his bags, said good-bye to no one (Caden left earlier that day), then got in his sexy AF Mustang GT, kicked the brute of an engine on, then slapped the car in reverse and let his foot off the brake.
As he was backing out, he saw Julie and Theresa hauling their luggage to a stretch limo. Julie saw him. She shaded her eyes from the sun as she looked at him.
She didn’t wave, and he didn’t wave either.
Funny how things change…
If she could see behind the blacked-out glass, she would see a young man who felt like a twelve year old boy. The little boy who got all his toys taken away. The little boy who had no one left to play with.
He put the muscle car in drive, gave Astor’s grounds one last look, then said, “This place can suck it.”
With the open road ahead, he stomped on the accelerator and shot down the road heading for Vegas.
2
As much as he loved the emotional stability Vegas offered him, driving there was a necessary evil he could do without. His back and butt were screaming. Bakersfield, California, a.k.a. the armpit of California, a.k.a., B-town, it was hot as hell and dry, but he was dying to stretch his legs and eat, so lunch was a Taco Bell next to the freeway.
Bakersfield was his halfway point. A way to keep himself motivated for the second leg of the journey. After eating too many tacos and drinking too much Mountain Dew, he fished out his phone and dialed Titan.
They chit-chatted for a few minutes before Brayden asked where they were living. The thing about Titan and Romeo was, Brayden had no idea why they liked him the way they did. Inside, he felt like he was nothing special next to them. Just another pick-up artist (PUA) who made it into their world via Titan and Romeo’s classes on gaming for AFC’s (average frustrated chumps).
