Time After Time

by Tamara Ireland Stone

  The guy is nowhere to be seen, but I have a perfect view of Anna as she stands in the center of the kitchen, her parents buzzing happily around her. God, she looks incredible. Her hair is long again, and tonight it’s pulled back in a clip at the nape of her neck. I can’t stop staring.

  She’s fluttering around the kitchen like she used to, breaking off pieces of bread and dipping her finger into sauces and closing her eyes as the tastes fill her mouth. She turns and says something to her dad, and he starts cracking up.

  Suddenly, Anna pivots toward the window and looks right at me. I duck down quickly, out of sight, and everything’s quiet for a moment except the sound of my heartbeat, which I’m pretty sure they can hear from inside. I wait for a full minute to pass before I look through the corner of the window again.

  Anna’s now sitting on the bar stool with her back to me. Mrs. Greene sets a drink on the counter in front of her and I watch Anna bring the glass to her lips.

  He’s back. The guy she brought home with her returns to the kitchen and walks straight to the refrigerator. Anna’s blocking my view of him and I adjust my position, trying to get a better look, but I accidentally tap the windowpane. Anna spins in her seat and I flatten my back against the side of the house.

  “I saw it again, Dad.” She’s far away and muffled, but I can make out her words, and her voice grows louder, clearer, as she cups her hand to the window and speaks. “There’s something out there, I swear.”

  My heart is pounding hard against my rib cage and it takes every ounce of control to remain silent and motionless. She’s right there. I want to say something. I want to stand up and look at her face and see how she reacts. There must be something I can say that will make her come outside, put her hands in mine, and let me take her away to a warmer place so we can sit in sand and talk. I need to know who this guy is and what he’s doing in her house and why she’s looking at him like that. I need to know what happened to us and how we stop it.

  I hear her dad’s voice, low and clear. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but I swear, I keep seeing something move out there.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” he says. “Stay here. I’ll go outside and check it out.”

  I spin in place looking for somewhere to hide, but there’s nowhere to go. I hear the front door open and slam closed, followed by soft footsteps on the wooden porch.

  I panic and close my eyes.

  When I open them, I’m back in my room at Maggie’s. I’m sitting on my bed with my head pounding and my stomach sinking, knowing that Mr. Greene found all my footprints, and wondering what happened when he did.

  The hospital is busier today. I step out of the elevator and into the waiting room, and it takes a full minute for me to spot Anna. I finally see her, sitting in a chair against the far wall, her mom on one side and Justin on the other, holding her hand. Emma is sitting next to him, arms folded across her chest and staring up at the ceiling.

  There isn’t anywhere for me to sit, but I walk over to them anyway. As soon as I arrive, Justin stands up. “Hey.” He gestures toward the seat. “Take mine. I was just leaving anyway.” Anna stands up next to him and wraps her arms around his shoulders, and Justin hugs her tightly, eyes closed as he rubs her back. “Call me later, okay? Or even better, come by the store. I’ll be there late.”

  Anna kisses him on the cheek.

  “Mrs. Greene?” I hear the voice behind me, and when I turn around I find the doctor from yesterday standing there. “You and your daughter can see him, but let’s keep this visit short.”

  Anna grabs my hand as she walks past and gives it a squeeze. She and her mom follow the doctor out of the room and I flop down next to Emma. I let my head fall back against the wall. “How’s he doing today?”

  “Better, it seems. He regained consciousness in the middle of the night. The test results are promising, but he doesn’t have any function on his right side.” I picture Mr. Greene using his teeth to open a bag of coffee beans. Emma rubs her forehead with her fingertips. “But they think he’ll make a full recovery, eventually.”

  This is good news, but Emma’s lower lips quivers and I can tell she’s fighting back tears. “Are you okay?” I ask her.

  “Me?” She takes a deep breath and brushes her fingers across her cheeks. “I should be asking you that question, Shaggy. You look like hell.”

  I thought I looked pretty good considering everything I’ve been through in the last fifteen hours, but then I bring my hands to my face and feel the thick stubble and realize I’m still wearing the same clothes I was wearing yesterday. “I’m okay,” I lie.

  She takes a deep breath and sits up straight in her chair, looking around the crowded waiting room like she’s taking in the ugly furniture and the stacks of magazines piled up on the end tables for the first time. “This is so weird. I’ve never been in a hospital before. Have you?”

  I picture Anna and me sitting in a different waiting room in a different hospital—one closer to Chicago and the scene of Emma and Justin’s car accident—but similarly ugly and equally devoid of anything even remotely cheerful. “Yeah, I’ve been in a few.”

  “It’s so strange… I have this feeling, you know, like I must have been inside a hospital at least once, aside from being born in one, but I don’t think I ever have. No one in my family has ever been sick and I’ve never broken a bone or anything… Knock wood,” she says, bringing her knuckles to the chair’s wooden arm. Then she shudders. “This place gives me the creeps.”

  I never saw Emma after the accident, but Anna told me everything. It’s impossible to look at her right now without picturing her in that sterile hospital room, scratched up and stitched together on the outside, broken and still bleeding out on the inside. Emma will never know what I did for her and I’ll never want her to.

  Emma’s eyes dart around the room again and she leans in close. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  She comes in even closer, resting her forearms on my chair. “Do you think Justin has a thing for Anna?”

  “Anna?” I don’t mean it to come out in such a “my Anna” tone of voice, but I think it does. “No. I mean, they’re friends. They’ve known each other all their lives. Anna thinks of him like a brother.”

  “Oh, yeah…of course. I’m not talking about Anna’s feelings for him—it’s all you in that department—I’m just referring to his feelings for her.” She looks around the waiting room. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have even mentioned anything. I’ve just been curious about your opinion and we’re here, just the two of us, stuck in this crappy hospital.” She taps her bright pink painted fingernails on her jeans. “It was just the way he hugged her a few minutes ago looked a little bit ‘more than friends.’” She says the last part with air quotes. “That, you know, combined with the whole near-kiss thing…”

  My head falls to the side and I look at her. “What ‘near-kiss thing’?”

  Her eyebrows furrow as she chooses her words more carefully now. “You know. After you left town last spring.” She must be able to tell from the look on my face that I’m hearing this for the first time, because she covers her mouth with her hand and pulls away from me fast. “Anna told me you knew. She made it seem like it was no big deal.”

  She never told me. And it might not have been a big deal. If this conversation were happening yesterday, I might have just laughed it off, but coming in on the heels of what I saw last night, I might be feeling a little too raw for this.

  “Justin got a little bit drunk at my birthday party, and I might have been taking advantage of the situation, because I finally decided to come right out and ask him how he felt about her, you know? Just to see what he’d say.” I’m not sure I want to hear this, but she keeps talking and I don’t stop her. “At first he swore they were just friends, but then he told me that after you left last spring, they were hanging out at the record store together one day and they almost kissed.” She shrugs, as if that will make
it seem like she isn’t bothered by the whole incident, but I can tell by the look on her face that she is.

  “But don’t get mad. It wasn’t Anna at all. Justin tried to kiss her—he made that part crystal clear. I mean, if you weren’t in the picture, who knows, but…”

  I flash back on what I saw last night when I went to 1997. How Justin met Anna at her house, and the two of them walked to school together. And then I think about the guy I saw her with eight years later. The guy she kissed in her driveway. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that it could have been Justin, but now I can’t get the idea out of my mind. I don’t think the guy had red hair, but I never got a very good look either. I remember how Mr. Greene wrapped him up in a fatherly hug and led him into the house.

  “The whole thing is totally one-sided…” She stops and lets out a cynical laugh. “Which should have been my first clue, right?” She matches my posture, her head against the wall, her legs kicked out in front of her. “I’m not quite sure why I’m waiting around as if I’m perfectly content with being his consolation prize.”

  She starts to say more. I wish she wouldn’t. I don’t have the energy to think about any of this right now and I have much bigger things on my mind. Before Emma can speak again, Anna and her mom return to the waiting room and sit down in the chairs across from us.

  “Nothing new, I’m afraid,” Anna’s mom says as she twists her hair around her finger and lets out a heavy breath. Then, without prompting, she launches into a story about a stroke patient she worked with a few years ago. I pretend to listen before I shoot Anna a look and thankfully, she understands.

  “We’ll be right back, Mom,” she says, and she grabs my hand and leads me down the hall toward the vending machines. She digs around in her jeans pocket for change. “Want to split a bag of Doritos?”

  She’s about to slip a quarter into the slot but I stop her. “Wait. There’s a coffee shop across the street.”

  “Yeah?” She covers her mouth as she yawns. “Actually, that sounds good.” She tells me to wait by the elevator while she tells her mom where she’s going, and she comes back holding her coat. I help her into it.

  The coffeehouse is nothing like the one we’re used to, far more institutional than cozy, with metal tables and matching chairs. Anna finds a spot in the corner window while I go to the counter to order. A few minutes later, I return with a bowl of soup, a chunk of bread, and a latte.

  Anna picks up the bread and turns it over in her hands. “This reminds me of Paris,” she says. She gives me a tired smile before she takes a bite. “Sadly, this tastes nothing like that baguette.” She stares down at the bread, looking disappointed. “I’m convinced I’ll never taste anything that delicious again.”

  I don’t respond. In fact, I hardly say a word as she finishes off her soup. But as she’s balling her napkin up and stuffing it into the empty soup container, I can’t hold it in any longer.

  “I have to tell you something,” I practically blurt out, and she looks up at me. I probably should have planned out what I was going to say, but I didn’t. Now I’m just making it up as I go along and hoping it will make sense. “Remember last night, when we were sitting outside and you told me I couldn’t fix this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, I thought of something else I could do.”

  She takes a sip of her coffee and waits for me.

  “I went forward.”

  She yawns again. Then she says, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I went forward…into your future. To see what happens to him.”

  Her head springs up and she goes to set her coffee cup on the table but she loses her grip and it crashes to the table. Some of the coffee splashes over the side, and Anna reaches for her napkin to wipe up the mess. She suddenly stops and stares at me.

  “I don’t want to know, do I?”

  I nod my head. “You do. It’s good news. He’s going to be okay.”

  She lets the napkin drop as she puts her elbows on the table and buries her face in her hands. I can’t tell if she’s crying or laughing or so overwhelmed, she’s doing a combination of the two.

  “It will take a while. In a couple of years, he’ll still walk with a limp and he won’t have full use of his right hand, but eventually, he’ll be fine.”

  “Eventually when?”

  I look at her. “I’m sorry, Anna. I wish I could tell you that, but I can’t.”

  “No, of course you can’t. Okay.” She shakes her head hard, like she’s scolding herself for asking in the first place. She comes in even closer. “I still can’t believe you did this,” she says excitedly. “What else will you tell me?”

  She takes a big sip of coffee and licks the froth from her lips and I take a deep breath. “I saw enough to know that my coming here is a mistake.” There. I’ve said it. “I’m not supposed to be here, Anna. It’s changing your whole life.”

  She presses her palms into the table to steady herself. “For the better.”

  “I’m not so sure anymore.”

  She looks out the window and doesn’t say anything. “What aren’t you telling me, Bennett? What did you see?” She gives me a hard look.

  “I saw you and your family with a happy future. And if I tell you any more about it, it might not happen that way.” That’s enough. That’s all she gets to know. Anything else and I might change what I saw, and I can’t do that.

  “Well, it’s my future. I want you in it.” Her eyebrows pinch together. “Don’t you want to be in it?”

  I nod. “But think about it,” I say, shaking my head. “If you’d been in the car with your dad yesterday you would have known something was wrong. You would have seen the signs and gotten him to a hospital faster. He might not even be here right now.”

  “Oh, come on…he had a stroke. That would have happened no matter what. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I was here, Anna. With you. And I shouldn’t have been. If I hadn’t been here you would have been with your dad.”

  I didn’t expect to feel this way, but the more I talk to her, the more anger I feel building up inside me. I seem to be livid with everyone right now. With Emma, for telling me about Justin and Anna’s near-kiss, because I didn’t want to know that, especially today. With Anna, for making me think that do-overs were okay, simply because her best friend’s life was at stake. With my dad, for letting me believe I was more powerful than I really am. And with myself, for going forward and opening up a view into a future I never should have seen and certainly don’t want to exist.

  And it’s selfish, but I’m angry because it’s starting to seem like every time I do something good for someone else, I’m the one who pays the price.

  I take a deep breath and steady myself for my next words, the ones that have been rattling around in my head ever since I returned from her house on Christmas Eve 2005. This is it. If I’m going to guarantee the life I saw for Anna, where she’s happy without me, I have say it.

  “I’m not coming back anymore.”

  “What?”

  I start to reach for her hands but before I can, she pulls them away and stands up. The metal chair tips over behind her and crashes to the floor, and she looks over her shoulder like she’s considering righting it, but she doesn’t. She turns on her heel and heads for the door, out into the cold.

  By the time I catch up to her she’s standing at the edge of the curb, waiting for a break in the traffic. “Anna. Please.”

  She stops and turns around, arms crossed, tears sliding down her cheeks. “You cannot do this!” she yells as the cars speed past us. “You cannot do this to me. You promised you wouldn’t leave…” Her whole face is bright red and the tears are coming fast now. She tries to wipe her face dry but she can’t keep up.

  I grab her by the arm, but she pulls it away. “Go!” she yells. “If that’s what you want, just go!”

  I feel something in me snap.

  “What I want?” I yell back at her. “What do you
mean what I want? When is this ever about what I want? I don’t have anything—not one single thing—that I want. Don’t you get it?” In my mind’s eye I see Anna, standing in her driveway, smiling up at this guy who isn’t me, and I feel the blood coursing hot through my veins.

  “See, I get to have this tiny little taste of all these incredible things but I don’t get to keep any of them. I get to meet you and be part of your life, and I get to know your family and your friends, but I don’t get to hold on to any of it. I can’t stay here. This isn’t my home. And every time I have go to back, it kills me. Every. Single. Time. And it always will.”

  “Bennett…” Anna steps back onto the sidewalk and pushes me away from the edge.

  “No, wait. It gets even better.” I let out a sarcastic laugh and bring my hand to my chest. “I finally find something that makes me feel good about this thing I can do. I figure out how to save people’s lives. I get to give a few deserving people a second chance. And that feels really incredible for, like, twenty minutes…right up until the second it starts beating the shit out of me.”

  I let out another laugh. “Oh wait, and here’s the best part. The more good things I do, the more I lose the one thing I promised you I wouldn’t lose—control. It’s like this infinite, totally screwed up loop,” I say, spinning my finger in the air.

  Anna takes a deep breath and presses her lips tightly together. She’s crying even harder now, which should make me feel horrible but for some reason doesn’t.

  “Check it out,” I say, bringing my hand to my chest. “I don’t get to have what I want. Not ever. Because the one thing I want is a normal life. I don’t want to be special and different, I just want to wake up and go to school and do homework and ride my skateboard in the park with my friends. I want my dad to be proud of me because I got an A on some stupid paper, not because I saved some kids’ lives. I want to stare out a window and think about how cool it would be to be able to travel back in time, but I don’t want to actually be able to do it. And I want to be in love with a girl I can see every day, not every three weeks.”