Tempus

by Tyra Lynn

  “I wouldn’t do that. I would never do that. I was just running late.” I pulled one hand loose and put it on his cheek. “I couldn’t hurt you.”

  He smiled, and then suddenly rose to his feet. “I have to show you something!” He reached down, took my hand, and pulled me up, guiding me to one of the trees. “Close your eyes.”

  I closed my eyes and he took me a few more steps. He placed my hand on the bark of the tree, and moved it over the surface. I could feel something irregular, out of place. I tried to trace it with a finger to figure out what it was.

  In my ear, his soft voice whispered, “Open your eyes.”

  I opened my eyes. There was a carving in the bark. A heart, and inside it, J + G. It looked like it had been there for ages. I turned and smiled at him, then turned back. “I don’t remember this. I’ve never seen this, but it isn’t fresh.”

  “I know. I carved it for you yesterday. It’s a hundred years old, you know.” That had seemed perfectly normal in my strange dream; it hadn’t bothered me at all. I hadn’t questioned it.

  “I love it. Thank you.”

  I turned my back to the tree and he stepped closer, until his arms slid around me and he pressed his body to mine. “You’re welcome,” he whispered, just before our lips met. It felt as if we were breathing each other.

  That’s when I woke up. Even now, I still felt breathless. He had been my air, and now he was gone. I could still feel the warmth where his lips had been. I felt the remnants of the pressure of his body against mine as it slowly faded away. I felt alone.

  The dream continued to dissipate, like fog as the sun begins to rise and warm. I rolled over and noticed a light blinking on my phone. I picked it up to see what it was. A text message. My first text message! It was from Steve, at two a.m.

  ‘Woke up and thought of you. Call me?’

  I stretched and yawned, my usual noisy way of waking up. The clock said it was five-thirty. I didn’t want to be up this early, but oh well. I padded to the bathroom and started water in the tub. I looked at my sleepy face in the mirror over the sink. Yuck.

  After I finished my bath, I dried my hair. I was happy with it. It was easy to style using nothing but a brush and blow dryer. Next, I pulled out my new makeup bag and worked on my face. I decided not to do too much this morning, in case I saw Dad before he left for work.

  I put away my bag and started out the door, then changed my mind. Dad wouldn’t see me before work. Steve was going to ask him if he could take me out. He would be suspicious if he saw me this morning and I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to be the first one to say something. Who knows how Dad was going to react, and if he reacted badly, let Steve deal with it. He’d be better at it than I would anyway. As far as Dad was concerned, I was still sleeping—unless he’d heard my bath.

  I pulled the bag out again, emptied the contents, and looked at them all. I was trying to remember what the woman told me she used where. When I thought I figured it out, I put myself to work.

  It took me longer than it had taken her, but the results were nearly the same. Better. I knew my own face, where the flaws were, what I wanted to disguise, and what I wanted to emphasize. I made vogue ‘cover faces’ at myself in the mirror. I was hot. That thought made me giggle.

  I quietly went back to my room, just in case Dad was up now. I knew which creaky boards to avoid as I moved stealthily to my chiffarobe. I surveyed my new wardrobe, looking for something cute, comfortable, and not too dressy. I pulled out my chosen ensemble and laid the pieces across the end of my bed. It was now six-fifteen.

  I picked up my phone and dialed Steve’s number. He answered on half a ring. “Jessie!”

  “Hi, Steve. Wow. How did you answer so fast?”

  “If I tell you, will you promise not to laugh?”

  I pondered for a moment, “I can’t make any promises, but I will try not to.”

  “Figures. First, did you get my message?” He asked.

  “Yes I did. Why were you up at two?”

  “I just woke up. I went back to sleep for about three hours, but I woke back up at five and couldn’t go back to sleep. I’ve just been sitting on my sofa watching the news and holding my phone, waiting for you to wake up and call. I’m glad you called.”

  “Yeah, I am too. I would have called you earlier, but I was afraid I’d wake you up. You told me once that you sleep until it’s time to drive. I guess you didn’t mean that literally.” I giggled a little.

  “Oh, I’m not usually up this early. I had a lot of things on my mind. I’m kind of nervous about talking to your dad.” He paused. “Jessie?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know this has to seem kind of weird and out of the blue to you. I tried to explain yesterday. I just… I’m… I…” He stopped and took an audible breath. “I’m sorry, I usually don’t stutter this much. You know that, I think.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh a little. Steve, stuttering over me? That was certainly a new one. I had never seen anything fluster Steve. “It’s okay. Just say whatever you have to say. I’m pretty easy to get along with, you’ll see.” I laughed again. It felt comfortable.

  “You know, for the last year now I have really noticed you. You didn’t know it because you basically ignored me. I’d come to the back and you’d be working on something. Sometimes you’d just stop, and your eyes would get distant, and you would smile. It was captivating.” I knew it had to be glimpses. I didn’t know he’d ever seen me have one. Had other people seen it?

  “Anyway, I just kept noticing more and more. Noticing how you would move, how you would toss you ponytail over your shoulder when it fell in your face. You touch your face a lot when you work, did you know that?”

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “You said I treated you like a kid. I guess I did. I was confused, I think, by my feelings. I had… I…” Another audible breath. “It’s just I knew you for so long. I knew you when you were a kid. And I kind of wasn’t. Back then. You know?”

  “I know. It’s okay, Steve. I do understand. You want to know something I realized yesterday?” Might as well tell him the truth. “You are the only guy that’s ever broken my heart.”

  “Don’t say that!’

  I laughed. “But it’s true. Don’t worry, it was a kids' heart. Kids get their hearts broken over not getting something they want for Christmas. They survive. I survived.”

  “I’m sorry, Jessie. You know what?”

  “What?”

  “Even then, I felt bad. You were so cute, with your big brown eyes. You followed me around like my own little pet. I adored you. I guess I was a little selfish, too. I liked having you around, you made me feel good about myself. You adored me. Selfish, huh?”

  “Yeah, kind of.”

  “When you... On the swing… I realized it was my fault. You were just this sweet kid. This adorable, sweet kid. I loved you, you know. Not like a girlfriend, of course, but not like a sister either. Like you were mine, though, somehow. That’s why I did it. That’s why I hurt your feelings, and why I kept hurting your feelings. It made sense to me at the time—cruel to be kind. That’s how a teenage boys mind works, just so you know.”

  He’d loved me?

  “I just wanted to let you know. I hated you hating me, and I knew you did. Hate me. I couldn’t make myself stop.” He suddenly changed subjects. “What was that boyfriend with the guitar, the one you went out with last year?”

  “Who, Devon?” That had to be who he meant.

  “Yeah. That’s the one. You know, he was the only one that ever made me nervous.” He laughed.

  “Nervous? What does that mean?” I asked, skeptical.

  “Oh, that day he came up to the shop with his guitar and serenaded you right in front. I wanted to throw something at him through the window.”

  It was my turn to laugh, now. “Why on earth would you have wanted to do that?”

  “He was just too pretty. He was a pretty boy, and I didn’t like that you liked him. Yo
u remember what a hard time I gave you about him, until you broke up?”

  “Not really.” I did remember, though. I wanted to smash his face in every time he asked me something like where are you and your girlfriend going tomorrow, and similar questions. Devon was pretty, but not like a girl.

  “I couldn’t stand him. I told your dad I didn’t trust him. He told me I was being over protective. I didn’t like that he liked the same things as you, I didn’t like that you talked to him all the time. He seemed perfect for you, and I hated it.”

  “I never knew that.” I guess it made some of the things Steve had said and done back then make more sense.

  “Hey, I better get to work. You think you might stop by later?” He sounded hopeful.

  “I could probably do that. Julie comes home today and we’re going to spend the day doing girl things. We can probably walk up there later, or drive.”

  “I’ll expect to see you, then.”

  “Hey wait,” I stopped him from hanging up. “Can you send me a message later and let me know what Dad’s reaction was? Please?”

  “Don’t worry, I can do this. It’ll be fine, but I’ll let you know. See you later, Jessie.”

  “See you later.”

  I put down the phone. My emotions were so mixed up. I did like Steve, but I had spent so much time trying to hate him that it just felt weird not trying to hate him. I pulled my notebook out from under my pillow without looking at it, flipping to a blank page, and decided to write. It was a peculiar thing I did sometimes, but it was occasionally helpful, making a list of pro’s and con’s.

  I got a pen from the nightstand drawer and wrote down all the things from yesterday, listing the ‘points’ he had earned in the ‘Pro’s’ column. There were some good ones. Of course, I listed his looks there, as well. The call last night, the message this morning, and the recent conversation I listed as thoughtful, and caring. Good kisser. Strong. Romantic was a huge plus. I continued to write.

  The pro’s column was pretty long, so I moved over to con’s. Those were obvious, starting with four years of torture. I wrote a few things, but the con’s list wasn’t as long as it should be, in my opinion. The last thing I wrote there was ‘No fireworks.’ I felt guilty writing that down. There were almost fireworks. I scribbled out the last line, and moved back to the pro’s column. ‘Potential for fireworks,’ I wrote. I wondered if that was cheating.

  I couldn’t get my brain to function right. It jumped from thought to thought without my permission. Suddenly I remembered my dream of the blue-eyed boy. The tree. The letters carved there inside the heart. What were they?

  I closed my eyes. I could almost see it, almost read it. J + what? An O? Maybe. I went through the Alphabet, letter by letter, trying to make one fit in the space I remembered, fit the shape of it.

  I turned to another blank page. I wrote C, D, G, O, and Q. Below that, I wrote B, P, R, and U. The letter I remembered was rounded. More likely from the first line than the last, but I couldn’t remember, not with any certainty. What had he said?

  A few lines down I wrote, “I did it yesterday. It’s a hundred years old.”

  How could something be a hundred years old in a day? Dreams were funny things. I always believed there was some kind of meaning to a dream, and it wasn’t always obvious. You also dream about things in your life, only different than they are in reality. Maybe that line had to do with glimpses, that would make sense, I guess.

  I tried to recall more of the dream, but all of it was fuzzy. I remembered the kiss. I felt tingly thinking about it. I closed my eyes and could feel it, as if it had been real. My crazy brain. Maybe that’s how brains worked, but my conscience knew better. With my eyes closed, though, I could blur the line between reality and my dream just enough, enough to want to keep my eyes closed a little while longer. I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to recall other details. The kiss, it was always the kiss my mind returned to.

  I opened my eyes, feeling that same breathless feeling. If that were only from my imagination, and unfortunately, it was, then my imagination was good. It was probably foolish, wasting time on impossibilities. No, it definitely was foolish. I got up and walked over to the mirror. “I wish you were in there.”

  I put my hands on it; saw the room I remembered last. I could see it clearly, almost like looking in a window. My eyes searched the room, once again looking for a clue, something concrete to give me a time period. I could see the books on the bookshelves more clearly this time. They were too far away for me to read the binding. Some of them looked extremely old. Others looked old, but not worn.

  The books that had been on the desk were no longer there. The room was different, as if time had passed since I last saw it. I strained to recall what it had looked like before, to recognize objects I had seen in the dark. I could tell there were more things that were different, I just didn’t know what. I wanted to grab my notebook, to compare the drawing I had made of the room to what I was seeing, but if I let go…

  I tried to take a mental picture of the room. I concentrated very hard, especially on things that might be moved, smaller things. When I thought I had enough, I let go and raced to the notebook, flipping back a few pages to the sketch of the room. I knew it!

  The globe was missing from the desk, the book or journal or whatever it was that had been open on the desk was closed now. The books on the corner were gone. There were more holes in the bookshelf, from missing books. There was a coat or something now on the back of the chair in the right corner. There were several things definitely different. I made notes below the sketch and put the date.

  I was going to check the mirror every day. I was going to see something, eventually, I was certain. Though it wasn’t always true, there were usually people, or a person, in my glimpses. There were always people when it was an object that gave me more than one glimpse, like with Mary. Mary was always with the hansom cab. I didn’t always get glimpses from it, and they changed sometimes when I did, but Mary was there, every time.

  My phone vibrated on the nightstand. It was blinking, so I hurried to check my message. It was from Steve. “We’re all set. Call me on this number later.”

  Steve! Julie! What time was it? I was supposed to call Julies Aunt, she was going to come by and pick me up so we could go meet Julie at the airport! My fingers flew dialing the number. I had to set up speed dial later.

  The phone rang a couple of times before she answered. The second I heard her voice I said, “Auntie! I was supposed to call you and tell you Julies' flight was going to be earlier than we thought! You’ve got to come get me now, or go straight to the airport from your house if it’s going to take a little while!”

  “I can’t leave right now; I have something in the oven. It’ll be out in twenty minutes and I can come get you.”

  “No, you won’t have time. You’ll have time to go straight to the airport, though.” This sucked. I wasn’t going to be at the airport when Julie landed. I promised her I would be there.

  “Okay, sweetie, we’ll just have to swing by and pick you up afterwards. See you then.” She hung up.

  Julies Auntie wasn’t much for talking on the phone. She was a firm believer in saying what had to be said, then getting off as fast as possible. She rarely even said goodbye, she just said what she had to say and was gone. It took getting used to.

  Well, now I had at least forty-five minutes or more to kill before they got here. What was I doing before? The mirror. I looked around, spotted my notebook, and picked it back up. I made a sound of annoyance. I wanted to sketch the blue-eyed boy. Was that a bad thing?

  I flipped the book open and found him in the pages. I sighed, a deep, deep breath. There was something about his face, something about those eyes—even on lifeless paper, they made me tingle. I decided to work on the portrait I had promised myself to draw. I closed the notebook and left it on my bed—I could work from memory.

  I gathered my supplies and went to the desk in my library. It didn’t ta
ke long to be engrossed in my work. I wasn’t sure how long I had been at it, but the portrait was coming along nicely. I was working faster than I would have liked, but I wanted it finished before Julie and Auntie got here. I was working on the hair when I thought I heard a noise. It sounded like someone was in my room.

  I sat very still and listened. I didn’t hear another sound after a while, so I must have imagined it. I finished the hair, and called it done, for now. This one was much better, his face almost life sized on the paper, and I could imagine I was looking directly into those deep blue eyes. I had drawn him as I remembered, a lock of black hair falling over one eye. The more I looked, the more I wanted to sweep it away from his eye, mainly so I could just touch him. I was officially crazy.

  I grabbed the portrait off the desk and went back to my room. I intended to place it in the notebook on my bed. When I walked through the door my eyes saw it instantly—the notebook, open. I glanced around hurriedly, but nothing else was out of place. I slowly approached my bed, I was certain I had closed it. I remembered closing it.

  I could see the page that it was open to, even from this distance. There were two columns, one much longer than the other. Something looked wrong. I approached slowly, staring at the bottom of the shortest column. I had written there, and then scribbled it out. There was something below that.

  Someone had written there, with my pencil, and erased it. They had pressed down hard enough that the words were still visible, indented in the paper. I sat on my bed and picked up the notebook, looking closely at the erased line. It was not my handwriting. It was a fine script, two simple words.

  Too Old

  CHAPTER VII

  Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.

  —Mason Cooley

  Simultaneously, somebody knocked on the door downstairs, my phone rang, and someone yelled my name. Julie! I shoved the portrait in the notebook, shoved the notebook under my pillow, and answered my phone.