Sorry, got a little off topic there. My point is, I was still in the caffeine-free daze of early morning when Suzy arrived. She was wearing a t-shirt with the camp logo, as was everyone on the staff. Tuesdays and Thursdays were “Shady Pines Pride Days,” which to me served very little purpose. All I know is that we had to wear the camp shirts on those days. That was the full extent of our exhibition of pride. I could have understood if we took trips outside of camp on those days, but we didn’t. To whom, exactly, were we advertising the camp’s logo? Anyway, there was Suzy, rocking the Shady Pines T-Shirt and cutoff jean shorts, her wavy hair pulled back in a neon pink scrunchie.
“Hi, Justin,” she said, a flirtatious lilt in her voice. “So, this is where the computer genius spends his time.”
“What computer genius?” I asked. “I’m just a guy hanging out in the attic not getting nearly enough sun.”
She laughed. “That’s true. You’re pretty pale.”
I broke away from her for a few minutes while I helped get the programs up and running on the different machines. I put the proper disks in the drives before the kids arrived but many of them didn’t know how to turn on the computers. Back then, personal computers were still sort of a new, mysterious concept and only certain families of some means had one in the house.
Once I was sure that the campers knew what they were supposed to do, I left them in their groups of three or four and leaned against the windowsill next to Suzy. Her JC, a teenaged girl named Bobbi, was busy overseeing the kids.
“So…do you live near here?” I asked. I had an insecure shakiness in my voice that hadn’t existed when Suzy and I had met a few weeks earlier. Too much time building her up in my mind and placing her on a pedestal had made me a nervous wreck. I silently screamed at myself to get it together.
“Yeah, I went to Mifflin. I just graduated at Pitt and now I’m back living with my parents.”
“Oh, that’s cool,” I said.
“Not really, my parents aren’t the most fun to be around.”
“Oh, well, yeah, I guess they’re from a little bit different era than mine.”
“I guess…” she said. “You’d think that older parents would be more strict though.”
I realized the error in what I had stupidly blurted out. Of course she’d think that my parents were older than hers.
“Yeah, I don’t know,” I said. “Parents are weird. You just gotta get yourself out of there as soon as possible. Do you have a job? Outside of summer camp, I mean, obviously.”
“Well, I’m an elementary school teacher. I start my first year in the fall.”
An elementary school teacher. Like Helena. Time travel seemed to provide parallels, or maybe just coincidences. I didn’t know which. What I did know was that Suzy having the same job as Helena gave me pause to consider that I was doing something wrong, and that somehow made Suzy even more appealing.
She and I talked through that whole period, and the rest of the day became nothing more than a countdown until the point when I could see her again. I hoped I’d run into her at the end of the day as everyone on staff walked to the parking lot. I looked around for her but couldn’t find her anywhere. I saw her junior counselor waiting to be picked up by the side of the street.
“Hey, Bobbi,” I called as I approached, “have you seen Suzy?”
She grinned. “You have a crush on her, don’t you? You think she’s totally rad.”
I could tell I was starting to blush. I felt ridiculous. “No,” I said, “we’re just friends.”
“Mm-hmm. Well, she’s not here. She had to leave before last period. Doctor’s appointment.”
Damn it! I returned to the hotel and spent that night staring at a ceiling that was becoming familiar with Suzy running around and around in my head. At that moment I had made peace with the idea that Helena—being eight years old—was not a possibility for me. Besides, I had given her everything I could the past several years, and she had made my life stressful and sometimes, though I hated to admit it, downright miserable. I deserved to have some fun. The guilt would return many times, I assure you, but that night was all about Suzy, and my frustration with the past and its lack of connective technologies. No Facebook account to “friend,” no Twitter feed to follow. Not even a cellphone to text. All I could possibly get from her was the number to her parents’ house, and I just didn’t know how comfortable they’d be with a guy in his thirties calling for their daughter, even if it was perfectly legal.
3
So that was how things started for Suzy and me. I know I mentioned earlier about my quest to get Danny Wells some girls. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. I told you how I avoided interacting with Danny at first. That was the first week. The second time he was in my computer room, I chatted with him a little, leading him with questions to which I already knew the answers. Few adults had ever taken the time to get to know me back then because I was so incredibly shy. They always ended up drawn to mentor the confident kids who behaved like jackasses.
On the other hand, Justin the computer guy knew exactly how to patiently get Danny talking. I just talked on his level, like he and I were best friends. He was quiet at first but little by little I could tell he was growing comfortable with me.
I also knew something about Danny’s time at camp. I had always had a tendency to sneak off when I didn’t care for the activity. It became more common as I got older, peaking in my CIT (Counselor in Training) summers when I didn’t do much of anything but hang out on the picnic tables in the grove in the center of camp. In the summer of 1993, I had still gone to some things with my bunkmates but more often than not I had lurked in or around my bunk or wandered the periphery of the camp.
Knowing this meant that I had a pretty good sense where I could find Danny at any given time. By the second week of camp I was spending my free periods with Suzy as well as loitering in the camp parking lot with her for an hour at the end of the day after all the buses, vans and cars had departed. I hadn’t gotten around to asking her out yet, but I felt secure enough in where things were headed that I decided to seek Danny out and set him on a similar good path.
I found him during my break period walking down by the horse stables. He was leaning on the railing studying the empty ring of dirt that campers would ride slowly around on the back of one of the three horses living on the grounds. “Danny,” I called, “what’s up man?”
He looked at me, blushed a little and gave a stiff wave. Goddamn, I was awkward back then, I thought. I drew closer. “What are you doing over here?”
“Um…nothing,” he said, “I was just gonna go meet up with my bunk. Got a little distracted.”
“Dude, it’s cool,” I said, trying my best to seem like someone a kid could relate to. “I get it. When I was your age I cut out on camp activities all the time. Your secret is safe with me.”
He looked surprised and a little impressed. “Okay.”
“So, how’s camp going?” I asked.
“It’s fine. I’m lucky that I have friends in my bunk.”
“Right. Well, that’s cool. How about the girls?”
He frowned. “What about them?”
“What do you think of them? Do you like any of them?”
His frown deepened and he turned away to stare across the horse ring. “I don’t know.”
That might have been the end of the conversation with someone else. The thing is, I knew he was full of shit. “Nobody stands out to you? What about that girl…Emily was it?”
“How did you know about her?”
“Hey, man, I pay attention. I hear things. People say she’s pretty cute. I just figured she’d be the type of girl you’d go for.”
He thought about my statement. “I guess that makes sense. Yeah… I like her.”
“So what’s the problem?” I already knew the answer to that question but wanted to keep the conversation going.
He shrugged. “She doesn’t like me. The other day a bunch of us were hanging out in
the grove and she was complaining that she didn’t have a boyfriend. One of her friends goes, ‘why don’t you go out with Danny?’ and she laughed and was like, ‘um, no.’ And then somebody else was like, ‘Emily, he’s right there!’ and she apologized to me…like that would make it better, you know?”
I did. I remembered that scene vividly. It had hurt me badly and had impacted the rest of my summer, making me intentionally draw away from the girls and keep to myself as much as I could. I looked at my younger self and saw all that hurt painted fresh and raw. I wanted so much to help him. It wasn’t a plot to improve my own life in the present, though I should have been thinking about those long-term consequences. Instead I simply wanted to fix Danny’s summer as best I could, a goal that existed for the right reasons but was nonetheless foolish and short-sighted.
“Danny,” I said, “I’m going to give you advice on how to increase your chances with any girl, but I’m going to start by giving you even more important advice: don’t waste your time on Emily, or any one girl. If she’s not into you that’s fine. She’s missing out on getting to hang with a genuinely good guy. This is going to sound crazy but I’m telling you if you open your eyes and look around there are probably a ton of girls in that bunk that are even better than Emily and just waiting for someone to talk to them. Give them a chance.”
He thought it over. “So… you’re going to help me find a girlfriend?”
“Yeah, man. No guarantee but I’ll do the best I can.” I put out my hand and after a second’s hesitation he shook it. It was a weird feeling, that handshake, and it rolled out a whole new layer to the mess I was making for myself in 1993.
Chapter 13
1
The night after I made a pact with my younger self, I came back to the hotel and saw Carl at the desk. Though our original conversation about outer space and all that hadn’t happened yet (or might never happen, I wasn’t sure which) I had become quite chummy with the guy. The hotel didn’t have many guests and I was a regular presence.
Carl was an interesting character. He’d been married twice (“My two expensive mistakes,” he said) and still kept pictures of himself with each of his exes. When I asked him why, he coughed—Carl did a lot of coughing— and said, “Those two periods of time make up nearly a decade of my life. I’m not going to pretend that all that time didn’t happen. Anybody doesn’t like it can go screw, pardon my language, Mr. Bieber.” I had told him to call me Justin but he refused. Said it would be “disrespectful.”
He had three kids; one from the first marriage, two from the second. He didn’t get to see much of them, and I could see the hurt caused by that separation. He was a good guy, Carl, and I enjoyed our talks immensely. I tried to pry about his medical condition but he would never take the bait. I guess some people choose to pretend that bad things don’t exist. I always believed that dealing head on was the only way to solve anything. Of course I was coming to learn that the aggressive approach had its drawbacks.
That night Carl greeted me with his usual, “Good evening, Professor!” Ever since he learned about my computer specialty, he thought it was pretty damn hilarious to praise my intelligence. I wasn’t going to stop him.
“Evening, Carl,” I said.
“How’s everything?” He studied my face. “You got some stuff on your mind?”
Carl was prone to thinking I had things on my mind. Usually there wasn’t much to report. On that night I decided to vent a little. “I don’t know,” I said. “There’s this girl…”
That set Carl into one of his fits of painful-sounding laughter. “A girl! Mr. Bieber has a schoolboy crush! I love it.”
I rolled my eyes. “You know what I like about you, Carl? It’s the professionalism.”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, go on. Tell me about your lady friend.”
“She’s…she’s great. Beautiful. Fun. Sweet…smart…I could go on.”
“It sure seems like you could,” said Carl. “So what’s the problem, Professor?”
I sighed. “The problem is that she’s not my age.” I saw his eyebrow rise in intrigue. “She’s not ‘underage,’ Carl. Don’t get too excited. She’s just a lot younger than me. Recent college graduate.”
“And does she seem young?” Carl asked. “Act like a kid?”
“No. She’s mature. Focused.”
“So what’s the problem?”
I wasn’t sure how to explain the whole thing. “I just worry that I’m doing the wrong thing.”
Carl leaned on the desk. “Let me tell you something, and this comes from a guy who’s had his share of good and bad romantic experiences. Your brain is always gonna try to interfere in matters of the heart, but you should do what makes you happy. You only live once.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that saying before.”
“Well,” he said, “let me tell you another one: ‘The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.’”
“Wow,” I said, “where did you pick that one up?”
“College, my dear Professor. I didn’t learn much but that little nugget stuck with me. Can’t remember who the quote is by, though.”
“What were you in school for?” I asked.
“Business. The quote I picked up in an English Comp class I had to take for basic requirements or whatever they called it.”
“Business degree, huh? Is that what led you to this job, Carl?”
He shook his head. “Nah. What led me to this job was the heartache of divorce. I used to set up conventions for a pharmaceutical company. You know, they’d have a booth at these big shows, right? And I was in charge of making all the arrangements in advance, and then the company would fly me out to wherever the show was— Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, all the big ones, and some smaller places too, like Lincoln, Nebraska. Now I could tell you some stories about Nebraska…” He waved off that thought.
“Anyway, I’d go to these cities and run the booth. I got to meet so many people and I became a real player in the industry, you know? Well, eventually that took a toll on my marriage… this is marriage number two I’m talking about. The wife didn’t want me leaving so much and didn’t seem to understand that that was what put food on the table. She raised all kinds of hell and we had one messy divorce. Got to the point where I couldn’t think straight. I’d try to organize the booth and I’d screw up details…forget to print flyers or send the banner a week early. Eventually I got called in for a meeting with the bosses.”
“Didn’t you explain to them about your personal problems?” I asked.
“I did. They weren’t very sympathetic. And somewhere in the middle of that conversation I just started venting all the frustration I’d built up…all that anger that should have been directed at my wife just came out at these two guys. I was done after that, not just in that company but in that whole line of work. I drifted for a while after I got canned, and found myself here. I’ve been here a long time, and this hotel is good to me. I still get to meet interesting people, present company included, though not as many as a few years ago.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “I would go back and do it over if I could, Mr. Bieber, maybe find a better balance between work and family…sure as hell wouldn’t go running off at the mouth in that meeting with the head honchos. Yeah, I’d do it over if I could.”
He straightened up. “Point of this whole sob story is this: If you have a chance to be happy, grab a hold of it as hard as you can for as long as you can. Life is kinda like… one big fall off a really tall building. Eventually, you, me, and even the Pope, we’re all gonna hit the ground. Now your goal is to keep yourself floating in the air as long as possible. I don’t know, I’ve never been great at analogies. What I’m telling you is this: live your life and be happy, Mr. Bieber. That’s the truest advice an old screwup can give you.”
2
I took Carl’s words to heart and allowed myself to be open to something developing with Suzy. Things progressed a little each day. By the end of the second week of camp, she and I w
ere all but attached at the hip, but I had yet to make any attempt to see her outside of the confines of Shady Pines Day Camp. Though I now planned to have a perfect, fun summer with her while waiting for the original time traveling Daniel—let’s call him OTT Daniel—to show up and get himself into trouble, I had run into an obstacle. That obstacle was the Jenkintown Hotel, or rather the fact that I stayed at the Jenkintown Hotel and did not have a house or apartment of my own like one would expect of a thirty-something teacher from one of the local high schools.
This made me reluctant to take the relationship to a level that might be anticipated for two grownups. It wasn’t like we would be able to go to her parents’ place without an uncomfortable level of scrutiny. Suzy wasn’t stupid; far from it, actually, and before long she had picked up on my hesitation. She confronted me in the parking lot on the Friday of the second week, as I leaned against the hood of the Taurus, hands in the pockets of the board shorts I had purchased. As an aside, I had picked up a couple pairs of jean shorts as well, but I hadn’t gotten to the point where I felt comfortable wearing them even though everybody around me seemed totally fine with the style.
But anyway, there I was, chillaxing, as they say in a time way beyond 1993, and along came Suzy looking perturbed. “Hey, Suze,” I called.
“Hey yourself.” There was a chill to her voice.
“Everything okay?”
“What are you doing tonight, Justin?” she asked.
I hadn’t actually thought about it yet. I enjoyed my freedom to make plans spur of the moment and I hadn’t planned anything more than a day in advance since I’d returned to the past. “Might see a movie or something, I don’t know.”
The Traveler: A Time Travel Thriller Page 11
