If You Were Here

by Stephanie Taylor

  I took the shirt she was holding and held it up. “Am I ever going to live down the parachute pants?”

  “Probably not.” Jenny shrugged. “It sounded pretty spectacular.”

  I turned to the racks so she wouldn’t see how embarrassed I was. I hadn’t made that many huge mistakes since waking up in a different decade, so wearing the wrong thing on my first day here wasn’t really that big of a deal. I felt like I’d adapted pretty well to the things that felt foreign to me: no Netflix; listening to cassette tapes; not having information at the tips of my fingers. I had wondered more than once how people survived before the internet—how did you live? Like actually live—without being able to Google where the best restaurants were and what the most efficient way to kill a zombie was?

  “I’m not really finding anything,” Jenny said, standing at my side again. “Wanna go to the bookstore?”

  We headed back up to street level, merging in with the other people who were swarming the sidewalk. A fast-walking woman with a stroller pushed her way around us and I nearly stepped on her heels. An extremely tall, skinny guy with a safety pin through his cheek loped alongside Jenny, his hands shoved into the pockets of a pair of plaid pants that looked like they’d been spray-painted on. He looked down at her from the corner of his eye, assessing her slyly. My hands involuntarily clenched and I realized that I didn’t like it. I moved in closer to her in a way that felt almost territorial.

  “It’s up here.” Jenny pointed at a small storefront that was tucked away between a sandwich shop and a store that sold tshirts and NYC memorabilia. The door opened with the sound of a tinkling bell. A fat, white cat made its way lazily from the front window over to where we stood.

  “I hate cats,” I whispered to Jenny, lifting up one foot as my new feline friend tried to wind its way around my ankles.

  Jenny laughed and bent over, offering the front of her hand to the cat. “Hey, you,” she said, letting the cat sniff her hand as it looked up at her with its light green eyes. “You’re pretty.”

  “She’s a psychic cat,” said a man with a chest-length beard. He was leaning forward behind the front counter, elbows on the rough wooden slab that held an ancient cash register and several towering piles of books.

  “Psychic?” My eyebrows shot up. The only thing better than a cat was a psychic one. “Does she tell our fortunes or something?”

  The man frowned at me like I was an idiot. “No, dude. She just knows stuff. She gravitates towards people with different energies.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say about that. Jenny was still petting the cat, running her long fingers over its back. White hairs floated through the sunlight as the cat shed, arching her back and letting Jenny pet her. “Hey,” I said to the man, wanting to get away from the freaky cat. “Where would I find Carl Sagan?”

  The man stood up and put both palms on the counter. He had a long ponytail that was braided and held at the end with a yellow hair tie. “Mr. Sagan would be in the Science section, shelved under Secrets of the Universal Cosmos, Section 3, Shelf A.”

  I looked around the small bookstore; it was about the size of two of my bedrooms. It seemed impossible that there would be a section that specific in a store that was filled from floor to ceiling with dusty books and new hardcovers. I wasn’t even sure where to start looking.

  “That way,” the man said. He turned his attention to Jenny. “And what can I help you find?”

  I drifted towards the back of the store as Jenny continued petting the cat and talking to the man. She asked him what the cat’s name was, but I stopped listening to their conversation when I got to a tiny corner of the store with a hand-lettered sign on the top shelf that said “Science/Astronomy.” There, between new and used copies of a variety of books on space and the universe, was the familiar spine of Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot. I put one hand on it and slid it off the shelf.

  We’d read Sagan in my freshman Astronomy class at Westchester High, and I’d immediately been drawn to his take on space and human frailty. But I had no idea whether he’d ever explored or examined time travel, and I was dying to find out. I glanced around. There was no one else in the section, and Jenny seemed completely occupied with The Bearded Wonder and his psychic cat. I walked over to a window that ran all the way up to the ceiling and sat down with my back against it. The winter sun had warmed the glass behind me, and I leaned against it, opening the cover of Pale Blue Dot.

  “And one time, this lady came in and asked if the cat would do anything special to answer her questions about the future…” The man’s deep voice filtered through the stacks and I could hear Jenny’s interested “Mmm!” and “Oh, really?” prompts to keep him going.

  I flipped the first page and looked for the table of contents. My favorite section in the book was called “You Are Here.” I turned to it. The individual words on the page meant nothing—it was the sum total of them that fit neatly in the palm of my hand as I skimmed them. I was suddenly everywhere and nowhere at once: both in my head and sitting on the cold floor of a New York City bookstore. Both in my freshman astronomy class, hearing the words for the first time, and at a bookshop with the first girl I’d ever felt like I might really love. The world outside of me began to vanish, little by little. Time folded in on itself until I couldn’t tell if I was homesick for the moment I’d left behind, or already missing the time I was currently in but might have to leave.

  Slowly, the floor beneath me disappeared and I forgot I was even sitting on it. The sounds of Jenny and the shop owner’s conversation faded away. I could only see the book in front of me, clutched in my hands. I read the first few lines, lost in my own tiny sliver of space and time.

  The first lines were about our place in space. Our planet. Our home. The concept of home was so rooted in time for me—2016 felt like home because my mother was there, and our house was there…and because I had my iPhone and all the things that felt important to me—but was that really what “home” meant? Couldn’t it just be a place and not a time? After all, I had my mother in 1986, and I had my house, and I even had my iPhone, if I could figure out what to do with it.

  “Whatcha doing?” Jenny’s Doc Marten boots appeared in my line of vision, her toes nearly touching mine as I sat on the hard concrete floor. I looked at how close our feet were and puzzled at the way the universe had formed itself and put us together in this same place and time. I looked up at her, still lost in thought as I considered that Earth itself was more my home than any calendar year I might find myself living in.

  “Just looking at a book I haven’t seen in awhile. Ever heard of Carl Sagan?” My voice came out scratchy and I cleared my throat.

  She turned around so that she was standing next to me with her back to the window, looking down at the book in my hands. “I don’t think so.” Jenny glanced around at the overstuffed shelves that lined every wall of the shop. “But we’re in the Science section, so I’m guessing it’s—what? Astronomy?” She touched a row of books on topics like wormholes and stars, and I noticed that her dark red nail polish was chipping at the edge of her thumb.

  “Yeah. Sit,” I said, patting the floor next to me. She slid down the window and sat, crossing her legs and pulling her skirt over her thighs. Her thick green sweater covered her arms and folded her in an emerald cocoon.

  I read aloud to her. The words were about all the people you love and the ones you’ve never even known. About humanity and how all of our biggest and tiniest hopes and fears and dreams come to life here on Earth. I’d always loved the way that Carl Sagan’s words reminded me of how small we all were, how insignificant in the grand scheme of life and the universe. The reminder that every human—rich or poor, young or old, brave or fearful—had lived and died on this one tiny sphere in space had blown my young mind the first time I’d read it, and it really was no different now.

  I paused and looked at Jenny before I went on, ending with what I thought were Sagan’s most powerful words—the ones about our planet
being nothing more than a tiny speck of matter floating in a beam of light. When I was done, I sat there for a moment, letting his thoughts drift between us like bits of dust in the sunlight that fell through the window.

  The sound of the man up front walking around the store and reshelving books as he spoke quietly to the cat fell away as I lifted my eyes and looked into Jenny’s. We were the only customers in the store—not that it would have mattered anyway. The aisles could have been filled with people jostling each other for copies of the newest books, talking to one another, sipping coffee, and we wouldn’t have noticed them. The only thing on the planet right now—the only thing I cared about on this pale blue dot—was Jenny.

  “That’s weird to think about,” she said, blinking a few times and letting her eyes graze the shelves around us. “That every human who ever lived or ever will live feels the same pull of gravity. Looks at the same sun, swims in the same oceans.”

  “Right. And that this is our home—this place, not this time,” I said carefully, watching her face. “Like, if you woke up in some other year, but you were still on Earth, you’d be at home, right?”

  Jenny tipped her head from side-to-side, considering this. “Yeah, I guess so. As long as things still felt sort of familiar.”

  “What if you didn’t recognize anything except the fact that you were still on the same planet—would it be home then?”

  “I don’t know.” Jenny frowned. “I guess. In some ways. Why are you asking?”

  I stared at the book in my hands, torn between decades and places. Familiar things and the loss of them. I looked back at her. “Nevermind. It was nothing.”

  “You know what I think about sometimes?” Jenny asked, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around the striped tights that covered her legs. “You know at night, when you’re thinking about somebody? Sometimes I look out at the moon and wonder if they’re looking at it right then, too.”

  I nodded. “Could be.”

  She shook her head and I could see the thought leave her. “Anyway, yeah. I guess if we’re all here on Earth, and it’s the only place we’ll all live out our entire lives—regardless of where or when—then it’s home.”

  I let the book fall into my lap and close, my thumb holding the spot where “You Are Here” started. We were still looking at each other, and I felt like this would be the moment to lean in and kiss her. My left shoulder moved closer to hers and she didn’t look away. My lips were inches from hers when—

  The window behind us rattled with the force of something hitting it. We turned around, startled. A man on a bike was rolling away down the sidewalk, his foot still outstretched, a rude smile on his face. He’d kicked the window to be an asshole, and in doing so, he’d killed the moment. Jenny stood up.

  “It’s almost five,” she said, putting out a hand for me. “We should probably start thinking about going home.” I reached up and put my hand in hers just because she was offering it, not because I really expected her to pull me up. “I know your mom isn’t actually going to be cool with you showing up at midnight,” she said with a smirk. “Just because my dad doesn’t give a shit what I do, it doesn’t mean you don’t have a family that sits down to eat dinner at six-thirty every night.”

  I was totally prepared to show up late and take the wrath of my grandparents and the crap that Andy would give me, but she wasn’t wrong: I’d probably have some sort of consequence if I didn’t get home at a reasonable time.

  “You gonna buy that?” Jenny nodded at the book in my hands.

  I slipped my thumb out of the pages and closed it. “Yeah, I think I am,” I said. I had to now. I’d read it out loud to Jenny, and even if I couldn’t bring it back to 2016 with me, I certainly wasn’t going to leave it in the store for someone else to buy.

  We paid for it and left the store. The early winter evening was closing in around us as we rushed to catch the subway and get back to her parked car. Jenny was quiet on the train, and she rested her head against my shoulder as we raced through tunnels and sped towards our stop. It took us about fifteen minutes to get there, and as she sat next to me quietly, I opened my book again. I hadn’t even noticed it before, but there on the front page was the publication information. Author, company, location…and date. Pale Blue Dot was published by Random House, New York City. Ballantine Books. 1994.

  I looked up from the pages, thinking of the soft weight of Jenny’s head on my shoulder. I inhaled deeply, smelling the different scents of the people on the train. The metal wheels rattled against the tracks beneath us. It was real—all of it. As real as anything else I’d ever felt or experienced. And yet, the book I was holding in my hands wouldn’t even be published until 1994. Eight years in the future.

  This book didn’t even exist yet.

  18

  December 19, 2016

  Unclear (continued…)

  “Knock, knock.” A woman stood in the doorway to room 314. “Can I come in?”

  “Yes,” Jenny said, motioning for her to enter. “Come over here.”

  The woman slipped through the door and let it close behind her. She was the same height as Jenny and had shoulder-length brown hair. Her eyes were a light blue, fringed with lashes and full of curiosity.

  “This is him,” Jenny said, putting one hand on the woman’s shoulder as they looked towards the bed. “This is Daniel.”

  The woman looked at Daniel, taking in everything about him. The sharp planes of his cheekbones and the strong profile. The lashes that touched the top of his cheeks as his eyes moved beneath their lids.

  “I look like him,” the woman whispered. “It’s really strange.”

  “It is. I know,” Jenny agreed, pulling her close. “Hey, Daniel,” she said, touching his arm. “This is your daughter, Sara.”

  Sara stared down at the figure in the bed, disbelief written all over her face. “Mom,” she said, “he’s a teenager.”

  Jenny laughed softly. “He’s the same as he was the last time I saw him.”

  “Isn’t this weird for you?” Sara looked at her mother. “I mean, I know this all seems normal because it’s your life, but it has to feel kind of weird, right?”

  Jenny shrugged and looked at Daniel’s sleeping face. “No, not really. I always knew I’d see him again someday, but I had no idea it would be like this.”

  Sara’s eyes filled with tears as she watched her mother look at the boy she’d loved so many years ago. She wiped them away. “Do you think if he woke up now he’d know who you were?”

  Jenny shook her head. She was still holding onto Daniel’s arm. “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  The machines keeping Daniel alive beeped in the quiet room, filling the space between their words.

  “So if his eyes opened right now, how the hell would you explain all of this?” Sara pulled away from her mother, but the move was almost imperceptible. It had been a point of contention between them for years, this feeling that her mother had imagined the whole bizarre scenario. It wasn’t that Sara thought Jenny was lying—what good reason would she have to do that?—but it was all so fantastical, so hard to believe, that a part of Sara always wanted to step back and question the possibility that her mother had fallen in love with a boy who had traveled through time.

  “You mean how would I explain this to Daniel?” Jenny turned to Sara.

  “Yeah.” Sara’s face darkened with the shadow that always came over her when her mother talked about Daniel. “How would you tell an eighteen-year-old who’s never met you that he fathered your thirty-year-old daughter in 1986?”

  Jenny’s eyes searched the room. “I don’t think I would, honestly. It would be enough for me to know that you’d finally seen him, and that I’d gotten the chance to see him one more time.”

  Sara watched a series of emotions flicker across her mother’s still-youthful face. Watching Jenny look at Daniel was like watching her every other time she’d tried to describe him to Sara, but more surreal. Now, this fabled father she’d he
ard so much about was there, in the flesh. Only not. She could never really meet him, know him, talk to him. He would never know that she’d grown up happy and loved by the mother who saw Daniel in her daughter’s eyes. There was no way for her to reassure him that, even in his absence, she’d had a good childhood, one filled with music and family and laughter. And even if she could, it wouldn’t really matter. Because to this Daniel, she was just some thirty-year-old woman standing at his bedside. A stranger. And she would always be a stranger.

  “I’m going to wait outside, Mom,” Sara finally said, taking another step away. Jenny sat on the foot of the bed next to Daniel’s leg. She was lost in the moment, nearly oblivious to her daughter’s discomfort. “You take your time.”

  Jenny watched Daniel’s face for signs of life, half hoping he’d wake up so that she could look into his eyes, but half hoping he wouldn’t, because all he’d see was an unfamiliar middle-aged woman sitting near his feet.

  She stayed like that for several minutes, looking at him.

  “Remember that time we went to see Back to the Future?” Jenny put one hand on his shin and shook his leg gently. “And we listened to the Smiths and you kissed me in Andy’s car?” A smile played on her lips as she relived the moment. It felt like yesterday, and yet at the same time like it had happened in another lifetime. “It was different than that New Year’s Eve kiss—I should have known then that something was up. You seemed so shy when we went to the movies, and,” she laughed out loud, “you were definitely not shy on New Year’s.”

  The afternoon light fell across the white sheets that covered Daniel, a cold shadow lengthening next to Jenny’s hand. Daniel’s chest rose and fell.

  “And remember the day we skipped school and went into the city?” She shook his leg again, as if this might wake him. “And there was that bookstore with the psychic cat? That was kind of ridiculous.” She watched him. “We sat on the floor by that window and you read out loud to me from—what book was it? Carl Sagan, right?—and I felt like you wanted to tell me something. You asked me what I thought it meant to be ‘home,’ and whether I could ever feel at home in another time. I had no idea what you were talking about that day, but I’ve thought about that conversation so many times over the years, Daniel.” Jenny’s eyes were faraway.