If You Were Here

by Stephanie Taylor

  Heather and Roger led the way into the ballroom, and even though I knew this moment was special and that I should be taking it all in, my mind was already elsewhere, spinning in circles as I tried to imagine what I’d have to do to intercept fate and save Andy.

  “Want to get something to drink?” Roger shouted over the loud music. Everyone we knew from school was dancing around the ballroom floor like their pants were on fire. I stopped for a second and took in the spectacle of teenagers in white tuxes and puff-shouldered dresses dancing the way I’d only ever seen people do in cheesy 80s movies.

  “Daniel—yo! Drink?” Roger asked again, walking towards the table on one side of the room where the drinks were lined up. Mrs. Chavez from the school’s front office was ladling punch into glasses and handing them out. She was also probably guarding the bowl like a hawk, hoping to stop anyone from tampering with the Hi-C by adding vodka or rum.

  “Yeah, I’d drink something,” I said, looking down at Jenny. “You want punch?”

  Jenny was holding my arm tightly, her body pressed against mine like I was protecting her from a pack of rabid wolves. “Sure,” she said. Her jaw was set tightly as she watched the girls around us dancing.

  “Hey,” I said, shaking her with the arm that held hers. “What’s wrong?”

  Jenny shrugged. She looked really pretty. Her dark hair was smoothed flat and it hung just below her chin. She wore a knee-length black dress and dark red nail polish. I’d never seen her look so beautiful.

  “Let’s get a drink,” I said, trying to gauge her mood from the odd way she was glancing around. I led us both to the table and waited while Mrs. Chavez poured two glasses of punch.

  “We’re going to dance,” Roger shouted again over the music. He gave me an almost imperceptible eye roll, which told me that he wasn’t sure how he felt about being seen on the dance floor with his cousin, but as soon as he’d downed his cup of punch, he led Heather to the center of the room and started moving around like someone who’d never danced before. Heather looked horror-stricken. It was actually pretty entertaining to watch.

  “Do you want to sit?” I asked Jenny. There were a few empty chairs next to the punch table, and I pulled one out for her. She stared at it for a second, and then shook her head. I realized then that she hadn’t said more than five words to me all evening, and with a sinking feeling, I did a mental run-through of all the things I might have done wrong recently to piss her off.

  Things had been good between us since I’d confessed my big secret to her, and to be perfectly honest, her relatively easy acceptance had surprised me. I’d expected her to react more like Roger had, but then again, I had told her as we’d lain together in her bed. We had a foundation there that Roger and I would never have.

  She’d had questions, of course, but she’d never asked me to tell her about the things that would happen in the future. She hadn’t even been particularly interested in my broken iPhone when I’d showed her. I kind of attributed it to her fear of me leaving unexpectedly and journeying back into this unknown future without her.

  “I’ll be right back,” Jenny said suddenly, setting her punch down on the table. I could hear the sound of the stiff fabric under her skirt swishing around her thighs as she rushed away. I was left holding her chair in one hand and my glass of punch in the other while she exited the double doors that led out into the lobby.

  The song changed then and I searched for Roger on the dance floor. Sure enough, he was in the center of a group that was laughing and pointing while he thrusted his hips and threw his arms around. Heather had wisely moved to the side and was watching along with everyone else.

  My mind was still on Andy, but there was definitely something going on with Jenny. I wasn’t sure which of them to deal with first. I took a drink of my punch and tried not to look as awkward as I felt standing there by myself. Mrs. Chavez gave me a sympathetic smile from behind her station at the punch table and I set my drink down and walked away.

  The theme of the prom was “One Night in Paris,” and the walls were covered in French flags. There was a giant Eiffel Tower in one corner of the room that looked like someone had made it out of papier mache and glitter, and people were standing in line to pose next to it with their dates.

  The photographer knelt down, camera to his face, and held up a finger for the couple standing near the Eiffel Tower. “Here we go—on three,” he said. “One, two, three!” As he clicked the shutter, the bulb popped and the moment was captured on film forever. In two or three decades, these people would look back at their photos of prom night and wonder what the hell they’d done to their hair and why on God’s green earth their parents had let them out of the house in such hideous clothes. I walked on, pushing through the double doors with purpose.

  I found Jenny at the water fountain in the nearly empty hallway. Her back to me as she bent forward, sipping from the stream of cold liquid.

  “You know,” I said, coming up behind her and putting one hand on her lower back. “The punch I got for you probably tastes better than this.” She kept drinking and I waited for her to turn and look at me. She didn’t. “So, I can see you’re busy there, but what’s eating you tonight? You seem like you’re mad at me.”

  Jenny let go of the handle and the water shut off. She stood up straight and put the back of her hand to her lips. “I’m fine,” she said in a voice that was both unfamiliar and unconvincing. “I’m not mad. I promise.”

  I reached out and touched the strands of shiny hair that framed her face. A couple wandered down the hall and passed by us, their hands on each other’s waists, clothes disheveled and faces flushed. They’d clearly gotten lost on their way to the ballroom and decided to make the most of it.

  After they were gone, I took a step closer and rested my hands on her hips. “Okay, if you promise you’re not mad, then I believe you,” I said, looking down into her eyes. “I just want you to have a good time tonight.”

  Jenny blinked a few times and ran her hand over her stomach to smooth down her dress. “I think I ate something weird today. I don’t know.” She put her hands on my arms. “But I’m fine. Let’s go in and dance. Roger and Heather probably think we ditched them.”

  I took her hand and led her back into the ballroom. “Somebody” by Depeche Mode had started playing and I walked directly to the dance floor, putting my hands around Jenny’s waist so we could have a slow dance together at our prom. It was all I’d wanted to do all evening: just hold Jenny in my arms and enjoy the night. But somehow everything had gotten in the way of us talking and acting like we were on a real date, and now I really wanted to have a few minutes with her.

  “Hands above the waist, please,” Mrs. Henderson said, weaving through the sea of couples. She paused next to us and caught my eye. “I hope you have your essay written for Monday, Mr. Girch,” she said. She looked me and Jenny up and down. The distance between us must have pleased her, because she smiled with her mouth closed and moved on.

  “Hey,” Jenny said, once Mrs. Henderson was far enough away. “I want to tell you something.”

  But her words sounded like she was shouting them through a paper cup tied to a string—like a child’s game of Telephone—and I squinted, listening to the song as it faded into the background.

  “Daniel?” Jenny pressed her chest against mine. “I don’t know how to…”

  At this point, I couldn’t hear her at all. I didn’t have the splitting headache that I’d had at the concert, but this world and everything about it was swimming in front of me like a strip of warped film feeding through a projector. Mrs. Henderson. It was something about Mrs. Henderson that had tripped the wire in my brain. I stared at Jenny’s face and didn’t even recognize her. Who was this girl in my arms? Where was I?

  Instead of a ballroom filled with high schoolers at a prom, I saw a flash of something else: Mrs. Henderson was there, but she looked much older—the way she did in 2016. And I could see people, my classmates, crouched under tables and behi
nd chairs, but instead of jeans with zippered ankles and big, puffy hairdos, the girls were dressed like I was used to seeing them dress, their hair smoothed and the clothes familiar.

  A voice filled my head.

  “Blake,” Mrs. Henderson said loudly to someone I couldn’t see. “I’m not letting Daniel leave this room.” I looked around the ballroom to see who she might be talking to, to see if anyone around me felt as strange as I did. “No one is leaving this classroom, and no one is coming in.”

  In my blurry field of vision, Jenny had stopped dancing. She looked scared, just like she had at the Psychedelic Furs concert. “Daniel?” she mouthed. Her hands reached for me. I wanted to reach out for her, but a paralyzing fear gripped my body.

  Another voice filled the room: “Girch,” Blake Schiller said. I’d know that voice anywhere. “I’m not leaving until I see Girch.”

  “You’re going to have to leave,” Mrs. Henderson said. “Security will be coming for you soon, not to mention the police.”

  I turned around in circles on the dancefloor, looking for Blake. The confusion was overwhelming in that moment; I could see Mrs. Henderson making her way through the room, her face unconcerned as she tapped the arms of boys who’d let their hands drift too low on their dates’ waists. How could her voice be echoing through the whole room? And Blake—Blake Schiller hadn’t even been born yet…there was no way he was here, demanding to see me at Westchester High’s 1986 prom.

  The room spun and morphed around me, and classmates I knew from the future Westchester High blended with the ones I’d come to know here in 1986. Images were superimposed over the reality that was right in front of me, layering and stacking up all around the ballroom until I wasn’t sure what was real anymore.

  “Hey, Daniel—” Roger stood in front of me, his face as concerned as Jenny’s. “Dude. What’s wrong?” He took me by the shoulders and shook me hard. It didn’t stop the confusion in my mind, but for the first time, I could hear the words that someone was saying right in front of me. “Let’s get you outside. Get some air.” Roger put my arm over his shoulders and steered me to the double doors.

  Outside the night air hit me like a brick wall and all the layers of people and sound were sucked away as if I’d entered a vacuum. It was quiet, except for the rush of cars passing by on the street in front of the hotel and the far-off sounds of the music that filtered out to us from the ballroom.

  I could barely make out the chorus of “If You Were Here” by the Thompson Twins. I sat on the top step of the hotel entrance, thinking about how I’d listened to the same song the night I almost wrecked Andy’s car.

  “What’s going on?” Roger sat on the cold concrete step next to me. The girls were still inside the hotel. “You looked like shit in there, man.”

  “I don’t know. Things just got confused. I saw people who aren’t supposed to be here.”

  “Like who?”

  “Some girls I knew from 2016. And Mrs. Henderson the way I’m used to seeing her.” I paused. “And this guy named Blake.” Hearing his voice had triggered something in me, filling my chest with a sense of impending doom. It was as if I knew something big was about to happen, only I wasn’t sure what.

  Roger leaned forward and put his elbows on his knees on the step next to me. “What about this Blake guy? You two don’t get along?”

  I shrugged. “We used to. And then things happened. There was this party,” I said, remembering the scene at D’Shawn Washington’s house. “And this guy, Nick Mancini…” I trailed off. “Nevermind. It’s not important right now. But when I heard his voice it freaked me out.”

  Roger made a face like obviously. “Yeah, it would be a little weird to have some dude you know from the future show up at the prom you’re attending thirty years earlier. I can see where that might throw you.” He leaned against me and nudged my shoulder with his. “But you look better now. And the girls are in there waiting for us. Should we head back in?”

  “No,” I said forcefully. “I can’t go back in there.”

  Roger frowned. “Why not?” He reached for the lapel of his tuxedo and slid the pin out of the flower that Heather had pinned there. It matched her wrist corsage.

  “Because I think it’s all ending.” A line of cars had been set loose by a green light at the end of the street. They raced past the hotel and I stared at them for a minute.

  “What’s all ending?”

  “This.” My hand swept through the air to indicate everything. All of it: the early 80s models of cars; the music coming from inside the hotel that would never make it onto a DJ’s playlist during my time; the way the street around us was undeveloped and missing the Wendy’s, Wal-Mart, and the Starbucks I was used to seeing there. I felt like it was all ending. Like at any moment I might wake up and see a car made after 2000 speed by, rap music pounding as the driver vaped through a cracked, tinted window. All of this could disappear in an instant, and that worried me. Had I even done what I was there to do? Had I said enough and done enough to truly prepare Jenny for my leaving?

  “You mean…you think you’re going back?” Roger asked, picking up on my mood. He tucked the wilted flower into the pocket of his jacket. “Is that even possible?”

  “I have no idea. How is this even possible?”

  “Good point.” Roger’s gaze drifted out to the parking lot. A guy named Dave Arronds had his date pinned against the side of his Oldsmobile, her skirt hiked up as he pressed her against the door, kissing her hard. She definitely didn’t look like it was against her will, so we politely avoided watching them.

  “And I need to help Andy,” I said, chewing on the side of my finger. I tore at a hangnail anxiously. “I think this is the weekend when he dies.”

  Roger went still next to me. “Seriously? How?”

  “I still haven’t figured that out yet. I just think it’s going to happen. And I’m afraid I might miss it.”

  “What happens if you save him? Does he stay alive and make it to the future?”

  “This is my first time in this situation, so I’m not really sure how it works.”

  “Right, right,” Roger said, nodding as that fact sank in. “Duh.”

  “But I know I’m supposed to try to stop whatever is about to happen. It fucks up my whole family when he dies, and if I can stop it, maybe things will be different. Maybe my grandma won’t die. Maybe my mom will be happy. I don’t know, but I have to try.”

  Roger stood up. “Then let’s go. Let’s find him and stalk him all weekend. We’ll take away his car keys,” he said, already walking down the stairs. “We’ll look both ways for him before he can cross a street. I’ll even taste his food for him before he eats it.”

  I couldn’t help myself—I had to laugh. “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t get poisoned, dude.”

  “Hey,” Roger held up a hand, the other shoved into his pocket. “I’m prepared for anything.”

  Not for the first time since I’d arrived in 1986, I looked at Roger and realized what a lucky guy I—or rather, 1986 Daniel—was. He was a good best friend. Always had my back, never really questioned me when I told him I was a time-traveling eighteen-year-old from the future. What more could I have asked for?

  “You really think we should just follow him everywhere?” It did seem like the most logical way to keep him safe. And if he’d truly died the weekend after Halley’s comet, then we were only about twenty-four hours away from being in the clear.

  “I think we probably have to, unless you have more to go on.” Roger stood at the bottom of the steps looking up at me. “But hey, there is one fly in the ointment.”

  “What’s that?” I was standing up and taking off my bow tie as he talked, getting ready to unbutton the top button of my shirt and prepare to hunt my uncle down.

  Rather than saying anything, Roger lifted his chin in the direction of the doors. I turned and looked back. The girls were standing there.

  “Daniel?” Jenny was standing just outside the door. Her eyes were dark
and serious. “Are you okay?” I knew what she was thinking: that the same thing was happening now that had happened at the Psychedelic Furs concert. That maybe I was disappearing before her very eyes, turning back into the Daniel who would never understand what we’d shared.

  I looked back and forth between her and Roger. At the bottom of the stairs was my best friend, ready to jump into action and try to stop Andy from meeting an untimely demise. At the top of the stairs was the most beautiful girl I’d ever known. The kind of girl who listened to good music. The type of girl who’d skip school and take a train into New York City with me. The kind of girl who’d lead me to her bed on a rainy afternoon. I was almost torn. Almost. But I knew I was supposed to find Andy. I had to find him. It was what I needed to do. So I took the two steps up to Jenny, my dress shoes clicking against the hard stairs, and stood in front of her.

  “I have to go,” I said. I knew nothing I could say would make sense or appease her. “There’s something I’ve still got to do.”

  “Daniel.” Her voice was serious. “I have something I want to tell you, and you need to hear it.”

  “Can you tell me now?” My heart pounded in my chest. I had no idea what she wanted to say.

  “Are you guys seriously leaving?” Heather asked. She was standing behind Jenny. “You’re actually ditching us at the prom?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned around and walked back into the lobby.

  “No. This needs to be just you and me,” Jenny said flatly.

  “Daniel,” Roger said, holding up his wrist and pointing at his watch. “The time, man.”

  I looked down at him and nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” I begged Jenny. I needed her to forgive me. “I have to go. I can’t explain it all now.”

  Jenny’s eyes hardened. She clenched her jaw. “If you leave now, Daniel…”

  I could feel myself wavering, but only slightly. Andy was my mission—my job while I was here. I knew that. Jenny was something else entirely. “I have to.”