Time After Time

by Tamara Ireland Stone

  I’ve been gesturing wildly with my hands but now that I’m done ranting, I don’t know what to do with them. I run my fingers through my hair.

  “I have to go. I’m sorry.” I head back toward the coffee shop, but before I can reach the door, I feel Anna’s grasp, tight on my arm.

  “Bennett, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean—”

  “What? Didn’t mean to talk me into all of this?” The words just slip out, even though I know they’re not true, and I turn around in time to see her face fall. That should be enough to stop me from talking, but it isn’t. “If you hadn’t made me help Emma, I never would have known what I could do. I could have spent the rest of my life going to concerts and climbing rocks in exotic locations, never caring that I was being selfish with my ability, because you know what, it’s mine. Not yours. Not my dad’s. Mine.” I slap my chest.

  “I know that…I never meant…”

  “I structured my life around a set of rules, and then I broke them for you. And for what? So I could be a better person?” I huff in exasperation. “How is my life better because a stranger never broke his leg and five people are alive who probably shouldn’t be?”

  “What you did was really good. And if you were a normal person, we never would have met.”

  “Yeah…well I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

  She pulls away and looks at me. “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

  As hard as it is to do, I nod.

  Tears are streaming down her face and I can’t look at her. I need to get away from here.

  “I need to think, Anna. You need to think.”

  “I don’t need to think.”

  “Well you should, because this is crazy.” I remember the words Mr. Greene said to me at the meet the other day. This is ridiculous. Do you really think you can keep this up? “Come on, what were we thinking? We can’t do this forever.”

  She wipes her face dry and stares at me.

  “I’m going to go back to my real life for a while, okay? I’ll come back at Christmas,” I say, as if this will make it better. “Your dad’s going to be okay,” I say, as if this justifies my leaving.

  She finds her voice, but it’s low and quiet and I have to strain to hear her. “Please stay.”

  Before she can say another word, I take two steps back until I feel the corner of the building behind me, and without even caring who might be watching, I close my eyes and disappear.

  I spent the whole drive over here psyching myself up for my performance, but once I walked through Megan’s front door it all sort of clicked on its own. It could have been the loud music or the underlying buzz of conversation that carried from one packed room to the next, but whatever it was, I was grateful. I stood in the entryway, looked around, and sucked in the intoxicating scent of holiday cheer and out-of-town parents. I reminded myself that I didn’t have to genuinely enjoy being at this party; I just had to play the part.

  Now I’m all smiles and backslaps, quick one-liners and snappy comebacks, acting so out of character of late that when Sam sees me, he shoots me this Who the hell are you right now look. I may suck as a superhero, but as it turns out, I’m a fairly decent actor.

  “You’re certainly chipper tonight.” Of all people, I would have expected Brooke to see through me, but she must not, because I can hear the bitterness in her voice.

  “I am,” I lie. “And I’m going to stay in a good mood because it’s Christmas vacation and you’re home from school and I’m surrounded by good friends and I’m tired of feeling like shit.” I smile and take a sip of my drink. “I’m done. From here on out, I’m living in the moment.” I raise my glass in the air, toasting no one in particular.

  “You were pretty upset last night.” I look around at the guys to be sure no one overheard her, but I realize it’s impossible. I can barely hear her over the music.

  I lean in close. “Well then, last night marked the end of my wallowing.”

  Brooke looks at me and slowly shakes her head. After my parents and I picked her up from the airport last night, the two of us sat in my room talking for a long time. Then I made the mistake of showing her Anna’s photo album. We got about halfway through when I had to leave the room, and while she was flipping through pages, I was in the bathroom trying not to hurl. I returned with my eyes burning and my cheeks feeling hot, took the photo book out of her grasp, and smashed it back in the drawer. She never got to see the last picture.

  “No offense,” Brooke says as she taps away on her phone, “but I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this high school party. Kathryn just texted me to see if I wanted to do something, but—” She looks up at me and stops talking.

  “But?”

  “Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “I guess I just thought you might need me around tonight, but you seem to be doing just fine, so…” She trails off, looking around the room. “I’m going to go outside and call her. See what’s up.”

  Brooke walks away and I spot Sam and Lindsey hanging out by the fireplace. I’m just about to head over there when the room goes dark.

  “Merry Christmas,” a voice whispers in my ear. I pull a pair of hands away from my face and turn around. Megan’s standing there wearing a red dress and a big grin. She pops one hip.

  “It’s about time you made it to one of my parties.” She holds her arms out wide, palms up, and looks around the room. “See, now aren’t you sorry you didn’t get to one of these earlier?”

  I smile and give her an exaggerated nod. “Truly devastated. I had no idea what I was missing.”

  “Right?” She keeps coming in closer, shouting to be heard above the music. “And now your life is complete.” She rests her hand on my arm and lets it linger there a little too long. When I instinctively take a step back, she gets the hint and lets it drop.

  “So, what are you doing over vacation?”

  I shrug. “People keep asking me that, but I don’t think I have a very good answer.”

  She tilts her head to one side. “What’s your answer?”

  “Hanging out,” I say definitively, crossing my arms like I’m proud of myself for being so aimless. Megan shakes her head as if she’s actually disappointed in me and I shrug. “See what I mean? I’m not shooting very high.”

  “No, not so much.”

  I think about the only plan I have. The one I can’t tell her or Sam or Brooke or anyone else about. The plan I do not want to think about right now.

  “Bennett?” Megan is using a singsong voice, waving her hand back and forth in front of my face. “You still here?” she asks.

  I blink fast. “Yeah. I’m sorry. What did you say?”

  “I said that I’m just hanging out too.” She looks down at the ground for a moment, and locks her eyes on mine. “I said, ‘Maybe we could hang out together?’”

  I don’t say anything at first and Megan stares at me, eyebrows raised, expression hopeful, while I consider her suggestion. It’s not like I know her that much better than I did at the end of last summer, but I think back to the words I said to Sam in the park that day and feel a little bad about my response. Megan’s nice. She’s pretty. And from what I’ve learned about her over the last few months, she’s not at all vacuous. Besides, Lindsey’s incredibly cool and she likes her. I don’t know, maybe it’s time for me to find a “four of us” that exists in 2012 and not in 1995.

  “Maybe,” I tell her.

  Then we hear a crash in the distance, coming from the kitchen. “Uh-oh, that did not sound good. I’d better go find out what broke.” She brushes my arm again and says, “See you,” before she heads off, pushing past people, fighting her way out of the room.

  As soon as she’s gone, my stomach clenches. I don’t want Megan and I don’t want another four of us. I want Anna. Here. Now. So I don’t have to wake up tomorrow morning with my chest hurting and my mind all fuzzy, or go to sleep tonight feeling sick because I can’t stop picturing that horrible look on her face the last time I saw her
.

  “Kathryn’s on her way.” I look up and see Brooke in front of me, her thumbs still tapping against the glass on her phone. “I think we’re going to—” She stops cold when she sees me, hand clenched at my forehead, my face turning redder by the second. “What happened?”

  I need to get out of here. I need air.

  “Do you want to go?” she asks, looking me square in the eyes, and I nod quickly.

  Even though it’s winter, I still haven’t put the soft top back on the Jeep. I’ve been driving around a lot this way over the last month: top down, cold wind, tunes loud, heat cranked. I maneuver out of the parking space I found a few blocks from Megan’s house and drive away.

  “Do you want to talk—” she begins and I cut her off with a curt, “No.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see Brooke’s thumbs flying across the screen, and I can only assume she’s texting Kathryn with her change of plans. I wonder if she’s got a cover story or if she’s texting her the truth: Bro’s a wreck. Need to stay.

  Her attention must move from texting to music, because as I crest over the next hill, she asks, “How about Coldplay on random shuffle?” It comes out like it’s a question, but when Brooke’s in the car, I rarely get any say in the music anyway. Not that it matters. I couldn’t care less what we listen to, as long as it keeps her from feeling like the silence is uncomfortable and it’s up to her to fill the void.

  “Ooh, good song,” she says, cranking up the volume. She reclines the seat back and stares up at the sky. I don’t know what it is. I just drive, listening to the lyrics.

  Can anybody fly this thing?

  Before my head explodes or my head starts to ring.

  I can feel Brooke turning her head to look at me every once in a while, but I ignore it, keeping my eyes fixed on the road in front of me, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. Our house is only a block away now. It’s early. I’m not at all ready to go home. And this song is right. Anna and I have been living life inside a bubble.

  “Mind if I keep driving around for a bit?” I ask her.

  She kicks her feet up to the dashboard and reclines back even farther. “I was hoping you would. I like this view,” she says as she stares out the open roof, into the sky. Instead of taking a left turn toward our house, I take a right toward the Great Highway.

  The Ocean Beach parking lot is dark and empty, and I pull into a spot facing the Pacific. I twist the key backward in the ignition, cutting the engine without killing the music. We’re quiet for a long time.

  Finally, Brooke speaks. “Why are you doing this, Bennett?”

  I lean back against the headrest and let out a heavy exhale. “Please don’t… Not tonight.”

  Brooke twists in her seat to face me. “On a completely different timeline that no longer exists, Anna came looking for you, remember? Because she felt so strongly that you were supposed to be in her life. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

  I shrug. “I thought it did, but no…apparently it doesn’t.” I haven’t looked at the page in my notebook in months, but I don’t need to. I’ve read those words from her letter so many times I’ve committed them to memory. Someday soon, we will meet. And then you will leave for good. But I think I can fix it…”

  “You’re making this far more complicated than it is, Bennett.”

  “It’s very complicated, Brooke.”

  “No. You saw her with another guy and you freaked.”

  “I think there’s a little more to it than that.”

  Brooke stares at me.

  I fix my eyes on the sky and comb my hands through my hair. “Look, I know what I saw. She’ll have a better life without me. Every time I go back there, I’m just keeping her away from the future she’s supposed to have.”

  “But that’s not the future she wants.” Brooke tucks her hair behind her ears and leans across the console. “Besides, what’s to say she won’t do it all over again anyway? You saw her happy in two thousand five, but when she gets to two thousand eleven she could make the same decision she made last time—to go back and find you again.”

  “Why, because we’re, like, destined to be together or something?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah.”

  “You’re just a romantic.”

  “Maybe. But I’m also quite logical.” I let my head fall to the right and stare at her. “What you saw doesn’t matter because that future isn’t set in stone and you know it. Everything single decision you’ve made beyond that moment is changing what you saw.”

  “Or, it’s changing nothing.”

  “If you’re not part of her life, you’ll never know.” Brooke doesn’t take her eyes off me. “Go talk to her.”

  I know she’s right. I went more than a month without speaking to Anna once before, and that was excruciating. I can’t believe I’m doing it by choice this time. I rest my elbows on the steering wheel and hold my head in my hands. “I will.”

  “Hey,” she says, and I twist my neck to look at her. “Now.”

  “I’m not going right now.”

  She cranks up the heat and rubs her hands together in front of the vent. “I’ll be fine here. Come back in twenty minutes or so. I’ll wait.”

  “I’m not going right now,” I repeat, this time slowly and with more emphasis on each word, because apparently she didn’t hear me the first time.

  “Bennett…” she says, almost under her breath. “Anna’s stuck there waiting for you.” She gives me this sad look, like she’s upset about what happened between the two of us. But then she says, “How could—” and stops without finishing her thought. But she doesn’t have to say another word. All I have to do is look at her, and even though I’ve never seen this expression on her face before, I know exactly what she’s thinking. She’s ashamed of me. And she should be. She’s right. How could I have done that to Anna?

  I need to go. Now. Besides, I’ve been missing her like crazy tonight.

  Without giving myself any more time to think about it, I grab my wool coat off the backseat and pull my arms into it. Closing my eyes, I picture the one place I know I’ll find Anna completely alone.

  The sun is barely peeking over the horizon when I arrive at the Northwestern University track. Unlike all the times I was here before, there’s just a light dusting of snow on the metal benches, and when I take my hand to brush it clean, it flutters into the wind, flying away in all directions.

  I see Anna right away. She’s down on the track, speeding around the curves, her legs reaching out in long strides, her arms pumping hard by her sides. I don’t know what she’s listening to on her Discman but I can see her lips moving and that makes me smile.

  She comes around the bend to the long edge of the track, facing me, but her eyes are fixed on the ground like she’s lost in thought. I don’t move, but something must get her attention, because just as she’s about to turn the next bend, she steals a glance into the bleachers.

  She spots me, but it takes a few seconds for it to register. She slows her pace to jog and stops at the base of the stairs, squinting up at me like it’s totally possible that her mind is playing tricks on her. I lift my hand and wave.

  Anna bolts up the stairs, taking them two at a time, but when she reaches the fourth row, she stops and doesn’t come any closer. I can tell from the look on her face I should stay where I am.

  “What are you doing here?” She takes her headphones off and wraps them around the back of her neck, never taking her eyes off me. “I thought you were coming for Christmas. That’s still four days away.” Her voice sounds wobbly and not at all like hers.

  “So did I. But…this couldn’t wait.”

  Anna looks around the track, then back at me. She presses her lips into a thin line. “What couldn’t wait?”

  “I owe you a massive apology.” I brush the snow off the bench next to me. “Do you want to sit down?”

  She walks toward me but stops short. Hugging her arms to her chest, she looks down at the icy bench an
d shakes her head no.

  “I just wanted to say how sorry I am about that day…at the hospital…I was so…I don’t know why I got so angry.”

  She sighs. “I wish you’d let me explain,” she says quietly.

  It’s clear from the determined look on her face that she has something important to tell me, so even though I don’t think she owes me an explanation at all, I sit quietly and let her speak.

  “I didn’t mean to push you so hard to do things over. I was never trying to get you to change your rules or change…anything about who you are. That’s the last thing I’d ever want.” She plays with her fingernails as she shifts her weight from one leg to the other. “I guess I’m just…fascinated. Not just by what you can do, but by…” She looks out toward the track and covers her face with her hand. “Wow. I thought I had a few more days to get this speech down. This really isn’t coming out the way I thought it would.”

  It feels strange to be this close and not touch her. I lean forward onto my thighs and smile at her. “I think it’s coming out fine.” She slides her hand down but keeps her mouth covered. Still, I can tell from her eyes that she’s smiling too.

  “Go on.… You were saying something about being fascinated.” I scoot a little closer to her, but she keeps her feet planted in the snow and starts fidgeting with her headphone wires, wrapping and unwrapping the cord around her finger.

  And suddenly, she stops moving and looks straight at me. “I’m in love with everything about you.”

  Her words make me suck in my breath, and when I look into her eyes, I see something I haven’t noticed in a while—this look of pure understanding that reminds me why I told her my secret in the first place. That sense of wonder, how she looked at me like she couldn’t know me well enough.

  I can’t take the distance any longer. I scoot over on the bench and the snow collects on my jeans. “Come here.” I pull her closer, parting my legs so she can stand in between them, and she rests her forearms on my shoulders and looks down at me.