There were no Tide sticks back then.
How did someone who was in your periphery for so long just blow away like they’d never existed? Honestly, if I’d been on Jeopardy! and the Final Jeopardy question was “Ramie Phillips’s eighth-grade lunch companions,” I would have bet all but a dollar and lost because of Vito Vecchio. Seriously, it made me long for Google more than almost anything else I’d encountered so far.
What ever happened to him?
By the time school was over, my mind was racing. There was too much to comprehend and absolutely no one who might understand. Even if I’d gone to some sort of shrink, who’d be expected to be objective and understanding, the notes he would take would say things like psychotic, delusional, and I don’t even know what else, because it would all sound, in layman’s terms, batshit-crazy.
I wandered into the front courtyard in something of a daze when the final school bell rang for the day. A lot of kids had tears in their eyes, mostly the girls, because they were feeling the lastness of it all. And they were right, that was the thing. I’d already been here and gone. Even now I was aware of being in its echo, not living it for the first (and, usually, only) time. Those days of youth, as much as we scramble to age past them and into adulthood, cast long, cold shadows into the future.
“Want to go to Bambino’s?” Tanya asked, suddenly at my elbow and smiling like the Cheshire cat.
I started.
“Whoa!” She laughed and slapped her hand down on my shoulder, startling me yet again. “I’d ask if you had too much coffee this morning if I didn’t know I’d woken your ass up and you didn’t have time to pee, much less make a coffee.”
“I’m a little jumpy,” I conceded. Understatement.
“Why?”
I hesitated. I knew it would sound crazy and I shouldn’t tell her, but I also knew I was going to. I had to try. If anyone would believe me, it would be Tanya.
Not that anyone would believe me.
“It’s complicated.…”
“I’ve known you forever. How complicated can you be? If I don’t understand, no one will.”
Yup. There it was. No one could understand this. “What do you think about getting some beer and going to the lake?” I asked suddenly. That would be the perfect place to have a quiet talk.
She eyed me suspiciously. “What on earth is going on?”
“I’ll tell you.”
“Is this bad?” she asked, stopping and taking hold of my arm. “I don’t want to sit in the car all this time wondering what’s going on, only so you can tell me you’re dying or something. If you have bad news, spit it out right now.”
“No, no, it’s nothing like that.”
She was about to say something and I interrupted, “I’m not pregnant either.”
She sighed and I watched her posture relax.
Normally I would have made a joke about her not having much faith in me, but since I was about to make her think I was clinically insane, I thought it would be best to just keep it straight for now.
We walked to her car. I opened the door and it creaked in a way that hadn’t registered with me this morning. The smell, too, was the stuff of memories: part old leather, part gasoline, and a very vague whiff of the occasional Marlboro Light 100, though she didn’t want her mom to know she ever smoked, so she tried to keep it aired out.
“Where to?” she asked.
“Bambino’s.” Bambino’s Pizza, in the local shopping center, never carded back in those days. Everyone knew that and would come from miles away. I don’t know why it wasn’t a major hangout for cops. I guess they weren’t as interested in underage drinking then as they are now.
She drove and I watched the passing scenery. It was different, kind of like I was looking at life through a Hipstamatic filter. It was odd to see the cars we’d thought of as so modern back then, all looking like relics now. Literally all of them could be registered as antiques now with the Motor Vehicle Administration. But there was Brian Hall’s dad, in his driveway, washing his Mazda like it was the DeLorean from Back to the Future or something.
Actually, back then it might almost as well have been. I did think it was pretty hot myself back in the day.
Mr. Hall, however, was not. It was suddenly obvious to me why he’d bought a little sports car. Middle-aged, with a paunch, one of the early customers of hair plugs, so it looked as if he had a black rash on his scalp. He was back on the dating scene and he’d clearly invested in this car as his ticket to ride.
I wondered if it helped.
Tanya was singing along with Bon Jovi as she swung into the shopping center parking lot. It took my breath away. I hadn’t realized how much the place had changed—how much I’d forgotten—until now, seeing it like this. There was that quirky stationery store with all the funky gift items, a record and CD shop that was about to go out of business, a Szechuan restaurant I used to love but which was going to be replaced by a burger joint in a few years, banks whose names would be swallowed up by others, a Peoples Drug store that would soon be CVS, and a grocery store that seemingly never changed.
Jeez, the parking lot needed fixing up back then; I couldn’t believe that the place had grown—added California Tortilla, one of those ubiquitous juice places, a Popeyes Chicken, and a bookstore that only lasted a couple of years before being replaced by a Baskin-Robbins/Dunkin’ Donuts—all without ever fixing or expanding the parking lot.
That didn’t seem to do the businesses any harm, though the community constantly complained about it. Given that it was the closest place to get all the essentials, it probably didn’t ultimately matter whether or not there was comfortable parking. In and out was good enough.
Tanya parked at the curb in front of Bambino’s. “You going in?”
“Sure.” I picked up my purse and got out of the car. The hot sun bouncing off the parking lot cooked the familiar smell of tar into my consciousness. They were constantly patching this lot, so tar would forever smell like summer in my hometown to me.
“Hey, Ramie,” a girl I absolutely couldn’t identify to save my life said as I walked into the carryout side of the restaurant while she was leaving. “Have a good summer!”
“Thanks! You too!” I could swear I’d never seen her before in my life. Wouldn’t I have remembered that jutting jaw?
The guy behind the counter, on the other hand, did look familiar, though I couldn’t remember his name. Jimmy? Johnny? I wasn’t sure enough to try either. He was about six-foot-two and skinny as a rock star, with piercing blue eyes and a good strong chin. His skin was marred with the red spots we all battled to some degree at that age, but I could see he was going to be a good-looking man.
“Yo!” he said in greeting, then hesitated with what seemed a slight expectation.
I was stymied. What was expected of me? How could there be someone who knew me well enough to expect a response of some sort when I couldn’t recall who he was?
When I didn’t answer right away, he added, “The usual?”
“You know it.” What was the usual? I remembered getting Budweiser, Cold Duck, Blue Nun, and whatever else my budget would allow here. I decided to take the luck of his draw.
Zima.
He cited a ridiculously low price, and I opened what turned out to be a ridiculously sparse wallet and pulled out just enough to cover it, along with a fifty-cent tip. Big spender.
He didn’t appear to notice, though, just put the Zima in a handle-free bag that I’d have to carry the same as the six-pack, and handed it over. I thanked him and went back out to the car.
“What’s that guy’s name in there?” I asked Tanya when I got in.
“What guy?”
“The guy who works there. Tall, dark hair, blue eyes. Kind of cute except for the breakouts?”
“What, Jer Norton?”
Jer. That was it. “That’s right. Man, that was going to drive me nuts.”
She was looking at me. “Are you serious?”
“What do you mean?
”
“You forgot who Jer Norton was? Or you just want me to think you have no idea what happened?”
I looked at her blankly. “I have no idea what happened. What are you talking about?”
“The party last weekend?”
Party, party, party. There had been so many graduation parties. And so much beer at those graduation parties. Was it reasonable for me to say I honestly had forgotten, even though it had apparently been less than a week ago?
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I didn’t tell Brendan. Obviously.”
“Oh. Good.”
“But I think you should.”
“I…”
“Not about Jer, necessarily, but that you need to see other people, not tie yourself down to your high school boyfriend. If it’s meant to be, you’ll get back together.”
Holy cow, I remembered this conversation. I remembered it. I remembered I was thinking the same thing. Which isn’t to say I had a clue what this Jer guy had to do with it—he obviously wasn’t the reason I broke up with Brendan—but I do remember thinking that I’d never had the kind of dates they showed in chick flicks and TV shows.
In high school, it’s not like you lead an extravagant, worldly life. You go to the local joint for pizza, you drink beer from a keg at a field party and make out in the back of the car, you go out to dinners with your parents, then you go off to separate schools and meet older people and have more grown-up dates until you dump them and get a job and, in my case, focus all your romantic energy into your career and leave the piece of yourself that blooms in relationship behind.
Not for the first time, I wondered if it had been a mistake to leave Brendan. Especially if I could stay with him, somehow knowing what I know now. Which I did … now.
“What happened with Jer?” I asked her again. Then added, “I seriously don’t remember.”
“You made out with him at Angela MacPherson’s party. In her room. I found you, lucky for you, and it didn’t go too far. All of which I already told you, but I guess you were probably still hammered when you woke up. You had a lot to drink.”
“Ugh.”
“Not just an ugh amount, almost an alcohol-poisoning amount. You really have to be careful!”
I was now, but at least that gave me a perfect excuse to ask for details. “So we didn’t do anything more than make out?”
She shook her head. “Not unless you did it with your clothes on. Or took them off and put them back on, then continued to make out. Which I guess isn’t impossible.…”
“Not my style.”
She laughed. “No, you’re right.”
We drove for a few minutes in companionable silence; then another question occurred to me. “At that party last weekend,” I asked, “what was I drinking?”
“That was the worst part of it all,” she said, then gave a huge laugh. “Zima!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Oh, my God,” I said, and held up the six-pack of Zima from the brown paper bag.
“You asked him for that?” she asked incredulously. “Way to lead him on!”
“No, he asked if I wanted ‘the usual’ and I said yes because I didn’t know what the usual was to him, but figured it would be something I usually liked, so, whatever, this is what he gave me.”
“Yuck.”
“I know, but what am I supposed to do? Can you return beer? Or whatever this is?”
“Probably not.” She shrugged. “We’ll just deal.” She turned left onto Falls Road and kept going the usual route to the lake. It didn’t really matter what we had to drink, though straight vodka might have been good, as I’d already started the day with that. But the main thing was, no matter how I choked the story out, I just wanted to talk to her about this insane thing that was happening to me.
The radio played one hit after another that would now be featured on a “classics” station, but the DJs kept announcing them as “new hits” rather than “oldies.” I sang along with every word to “Wonderwall” even though it was new and obscure, and Tanya looked at me sideways as if to ask what was wrong with me.
There was no way she’d ever really believe what was actually wrong with me.
But I was going to give it a try.
She parked on Alloway Drive in Potomac Falls, and we took the completely conspicuous brown bag of Zima along the path, past the last house on the left, over the large fallen tree I was always afraid to pass on a horse, and across the small creek that was always there, through rain or drought. Then the world opened up before us, the trees receded, and the lake spread out ahead, not as big as those up north, but still big enough to reflect the sky, clouds, and sun with some glory and solitude.
Most important was the solitude.
We stopped where we always did, on an open bank where we used to ride the horses into and out of the lake and always lost horseshoes in the thick mud. But I was grown up now, or close to it—according to the body I was in—so there were no horses, no swimming, no skating, nothing but some shitty alcoholic drinks and a quiet moment to say something thoroughly unbelievable.
We sat, the earth cool beneath us. I kicked a dead branch out of the way and dug my heels into the mushy lakeside mud, and said, “So. You want to hear something weird?”
“If it’s less weird than you’ve been all day, yes,” she said. “If you’re going to add to the ante, I don’t know.”
I had to laugh. “I’m going to add to the ante.”
“Then I don’t know. Or I hope I don’t know.” She looked me in the eye. “Did you actually do Rusty Schwedan? Because I totally knew you did.”
“No!” I objected too hard and too fast, given the lack of importance that accusation held either way. But still—I didn’t do it! Rusty was her ex-boyfriend and he’d dumped her before she got the chance to get sick of him, so she’d always felt something there was lost. “You seriously think I could have done that without you knowing?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Well, whatever, it’s just something I heard.” She met my eyes again. “But I guess I didn’t really believe it. I mean, Rusty, of all people … that would have been shitty of you.”
“Tanya.” I started out just saying it in the joking manner we’d always had, but then the reality of the situation took me over and I said, “Seriously. Please.”
She looked at me, sobriety registering in her eyes. “You’re really not pregnant, right? I shouldn’t have joked about that earlier. I promise I wouldn’t tell anyone if you were or anything, but that’s not what this is about, is it?”
How clumsy. If I were pregnant, it would have been hard to admit at this point, but of course my truth was much harder than that.
“No,” I said, trying to think of some gentle way to ease into what I needed to say. After all, I was supposed to be the adult here, in some way. I shouldn’t be finding it so hard to talk to a teenager.
But I hesitated, because if she was going to be that potentially upset about a pregnancy, which I’d just shot down, how on earth would she react to my unbelievable story about being a time traveler?
“I’m not pregnant and I haven’t had sex with your ex.”
“Thank God,” she said, fanning her face with her hand, completely oblivious to what I really had to tell her. “I could not take one more fucked-up thing this year, believe me.”
That gave me pause. I hadn’t remembered senior year as being particularly traumatic. “Define fucked-up.”
She looked at me. “You know what fucked-up means. Pregnancies, police raids at parties, deaths, ex-boyfriends suddenly coming out as transsexual.” That was Tuck Surjan, I remembered. Tanya’s homecoming date, who had shown up with his six-foot-three frame garbed in a dress nicer than hers. He’d done it as a joke, but she had definitely not found it funny.
No woman wants her date to be prettier than she is.
“I’m not a transsexual,” I said, with the only confidence I’d had all day.
>
“Good.”
“But.”
“God, no. Is it worse? Not transsexual but gay? Please don’t tell me you’re in love with me.” Honestly, she actually looked serious. “Whatever you do, don’t make a pass at me.…”
It cracked me up inside. That was so Tanya. Trying to anticipate and evade any and every possible uncomfortable situation that might be heading her way. Much better, and easier, for her to say, Don’t even try to tell me you’re in love with me, than to say, Don’t ever try to kiss me again, ew, I’m not into you!
“But I’m in love with you,” I said to her, my face so straight the corners of my mouth hurt.
“You are not—” She stopped and scrutinized me. “I see those dimples. You can’t lie, you suck at it, so I know you’re not in love with me. I’ll cry about it later. Meanwhile, what the fuck is the deal? Why did we have to get a six-pack of fucking Zima and come here, of all places, on the night before the last day of school? You’re freaking me out.”
This was not the Tanya of the future, I have to say. I didn’t remember that she had so much shrillness inside of her. In the future she was as calm and unflappable as could be, always wise, ready with good advice.
That was the Tanya I needed to talk to.
Right now it looked like I’d have to wait twenty years for her. And if I spent the next twenty years like this I’d probably end up in the loony bin.
I thought about that for a moment. What was the worst-case scenario? Never returning to my real now? In some ways that would seem like a blessing—financially, certainly, with my foreknowledge of where to invest—but I was already doing extremely well. For me, waiting twenty years would be biding my time. Learning the same lessons again, reliving deaths in horrible detail. All to reach the point where I could finally become thirty-eight, so I could move forward in my life.
To me, that was a nightmare.
“Speak up,” Tanya said.
“Well,” I began, “it’s almost as unbelievable as me being in love with you. Which I’m not. So I need you to not totally mock me for this or dismiss it out of hand, even though it seems unbelievable.”
If I Could Turn Back Time Page 11
