Once Upon Another Time

by Jettie Woodruff

  “What? What message? I don’t get it.”

  “Follow the signs. They will lead you to him.”

  “Lead me to who?”

  “Your twin flame, of course. Who else?”

  I didn’t want to be dismissed, I wanted to know more. “Does he know about this? Does he know he’s my twin flame?”

  “He is right where he is supposed to be. Follow the signs.”

  “Like, here in Atlanta? What signs? Does he live here?”

  “I’m sorry. That’s all I have. Watch for the signs, ask for guidance, open your mind to the possibilities, and pay attention to the signs.”

  “You said that twice.”

  “That’s because it’s very important. That’ll be forty dollars.”

  All my peculiar interest, the adrenaline rushing through my veins, and my pounding heart had been deflated in an instant. Scammed by a crazy lady with a whackystore. Swallowing my pride, I opened my wallet and slapped two twenties in her hand. Of all people to get wrapped up in something so ridiculous. Laughing at myself for being so gullible, I walked out the door, shaking my head in disbelief. “Now you’re going hungry, idiot.”

  “Me?”

  “Oh, no. Sorry. I’m the idiot.”

  “Get a Bluetooth. Keeps people from thinking you're crazy,” a little, old man said with a warm smile and a wink.

  “That’s not a bad idea. Thanks for the advice.”

  I never told anyone about my lunch break adventure because I didn’t want to be hassled over it. Eric would be pissed if he knew I handed over forty bucks to a physic for nothing, and nobody would believe there was any magic in that wand, not even me. Even though it played over and over in my mind, I knew there was no point in repeating it to anyone else. Once I’d gotten out of there, my rational mind put it all together. It was just a trigger, something that reminded me of another time. That’s all. Nothing whimsical about that. The lady reminded me of atime in my life when we snuck into town for the circus, the scents, and the folk-like store, in general. It all activated my memory. That’s all it was.

  Eric and I went out for pizza that night, but that’s about the extent of my excitement for the weekend. Sunday night was there before I even realized Saturday was gone, and I’d been dreading the next day all day long. I’d just unloaded the dishwasher and sat down with my tablet, hoping to find something decent to read since I didn’t have an old, hardcover book with real pages. But first, I went to check my email. I never checked my email from my tablet. Maybe it was one of those signs I was supposed to watch for, I thought, laughing at myself once again for being scammed out of forty bucks. But then something weird happened, or so it seemed weird at the moment anyway.

  My life had been weird ever since I’d walked into that store, and there were signs everywhere- or at least, I tried telling myself they were signs. Maybe I was bored.

  “Oh, my God. Come and look at this, Eric. Class of 1988,” I exclaimed with a great deal of excitement.

  My husband glanced up from his habitual recliner across the room, his eyes meeting mine for a brief second. Humming to me with a groan and a nod, he returned to his customary crossword puzzle, slightly pretending to pay attention.

  With a smile on my face, I resumed to thinking back to those days, excited about the thought of actually going this time. God, it had been so long since I’d been back there, and up until that very moment, I never wanted to. I never even thought about it. Thinking about how strange that was, wondering ‘why now,’ I had a thought, “It’s a costume party. We’re supposed to replicate our costumes. My date was Jason, and I was a beautiful witch,” I laughed, remembering it like it was yesterday. “We haven’t dressed up in years. Come on. Let’s go.”

  “Uh, let’s not. Who has a costume reunion, anyway?”

  “It was a senior prank. The theme was ice castle, but we turned it into more of a formal Halloween party. You could be my Jason, and nobody would even know it was you.”

  “They wouldn’t know me without a mask. I’m not going to a costume party, Jess.”

  “Why not? You would love my friends. Wendy is a riot, the one who got the rest of us in all the shit we got into, Jan is the pretty one, and Leigh is the funny one. That girl could make an elephant with a thorn in his foot laugh. And I’m the smart one.”

  “Was.”

  “What? What’s that supposed to mean? I’m still smart.”

  “You just said all of that like you know these people. You haven’t been around those girls since high school. You don’t know them. They’re not your friends. You grew up. What’s a ten-letter word for encrypted files stolen?”

  I stared blankly at Eric, who cared more about the stupid puzzle he had done every Sunday for the past twenty-sixyears, a ten-letter word more important than my excitement of seeing my friends. “Ransomware. Fine. I’ll go without you.”

  Eric heard one thing, ignoring my comment about going alone. “Ransomware? Is that a thing?”

  Rolling my eyes, I grumbled and stood from my own habitual chair. “I’m going to bed to read.”

  “Alright, I’ll be in as soon as the news is over.”

  Without a response, I walked to the kitchen to prepare the coffee pot for the next morning. I swore the entire weekend had gone by, and we did absolutely nothing. Except mow the yard, of course. We did that for about six hours every single Saturday, just so we could sit on the back patio admiring it, sipping a cold glass of tea, and talking about how nice it looked. At least, we could we say the bank didn’t own it anymore. That was rewarding. With a deep sigh, I told myself for the hundredth time that I wasn’t bored. It was Monday. That’s where the feeling of boredom and dread came from. Maybe that part was a little true. Maybe I was sick of going to the same office, to the same job, to do the same thing again tomorrow, and the next week, and the next week after that. Was that a sign?

  I stared out to the street light on the corner, seeing my address on a sign, but not all of it. The way the green and white sign was turned, and the way the streetlight hit it, I could only see the first four letters in Signature Street. Wondering how I could have made coffee in that exact spot for twenty-two years around this same time and never noticed the word sign glow like that, I let the pot run over. Was this a sign? I questioned again.

  And then I dropped the pot right in the sink when Eric yelled with an answer from the next room.

  “Yes!” he called like he did every Sunday night after he’d finished the crossword puzzle.

  On a normal Sunday night, I would have secretly rolled my eyes. I gave him the majority of the answers, and the only ones he got were the ones a fifth grader could get. His ego would never handle me pointing that out to him though. It was a lot less hassle to let him think he was the smart one. Still, I wondered if it were a sign. I shook my head and blinked my eyes about ten times repeatedly, trying to let all this craziness go, including the reunion I had never before wanted to attend.

  Stopping off at the den on my way to bed, I pulled my old senior yearbook from the top shelf for unknown reasons. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d opened it. Honestly, I never even thought about that time in my life. It seemed so far away now. Like another time. Thinking about the vision of Royal and me as little kids, I got ready for bed. I hadn’t thought about that boy in ages, but I still had to keep reminding myself that me touching a magic wand had absolutely nothing to do with it.

  I slid out of my pajama bottoms and onto my side of the bed with a smile. Right there on the very front page were the four of us. My high school besties. We looked like dorks, all of us wearing the same jean jackets with our collars turned up underneath, acid washed jeans covered by puffy legwarmers, and sneakers. Oh, and the big hair and jelly bracelets. That’s not what I really saw though. I saw how happy we seemed, the way we looked like we owned the world, but most of all, I saw a sadness in my eyes like I was lost, and my smile was forced.

  I wondered what happened to me. One minute I was on fire, scoring
most of the winning shots for our girls’ basketball team, and now the only shots I called were the way the swimsuits would be laid out in the catalogue accounts I held at the publishing company I’d worked for since right after college. I hadn’t even touched a basketball since I had tried to force it on my own daughter. Taylor had a heart of gold, but she got all her coordination from her dad. Which was none. But she was very smart. At least she got that from me.

  My smile deepened when I flipped to the back. The senior section. The seniors who had wished the last four years of their lives away just to wear that title. What I wouldn’t do to go back to that year. I’d do it all different, I told myself as I flipped through the pages of my high school memories. I wouldn’t be one of those people who said I wouldn’t change a thing like my grams used to say. One thing was for sure, I would savor every single moment of it. Where the hell had all that time gone? I pondered, the last thirty years passing through my mind faster than the speed of light. One minute I was tall, slender, and athletic with a bright future, and the next, I was here. Did that mean I had arrived?

  The photo of the four of us walking across the parking lot, arm in arm with our feet in perfect unison, took me back to that very day. I could remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Saturday night, Wendy had just turned eighteen, and Leigh got her a nickel bag of weed. I didn’t even smoke any, and to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life. Watching my crazy friends was enough. Next was our prom. Werewolves, zombie brides, fairy princess, witches, a couple clowns, and three Jason’s all wearing dark tuxedos. One of them my date, and the other two, somewhat of a mystery. Johnny and I stood right beside the king and queen, Wendy and David, the matching mimes in formal wear.

  Letting myself reflect on my senior prom, I briefly let a couple memories pass in and out of my mind from that night. And then, the next night after. Leigh had heisted a bottle of Crown Royal from her step dad that night. I was almost forty-seven and hadn’t touched Crown Royal since that day. It was the only night in my entire life I let alcohol get me in a situation I would regret for the rest of my life. Shaking my head, and the memory of that night away, I took a deep breath and turned that page too, still blaming the alcohol after all these years, but mostly me. I blamed myself.

  Flipping the pages, I remembered most of the kids I’d graduated with. I guess you could say I hung with the cool kids. Sure, I was smarter than all of them put together, but I didn’t do that on purpose. I was just born that way, and I liked getting good grades. It gave me leverage when I wanted to do something. The good kid card with the good grades always worked. My friends all gave me a hard time about it, but you can guess who was the first person they called when they needed to copy someone’s homework or needed help passing an algebra test. It was all in fun though. I was never offended by the brain jokes. My smile faded when I saw Royal, and my mind reflected on the way I had treated him.

  There, all alone beneath a shade tree, sat Royal, his nose in a book. Teacher’s Pet was captioned right over his name, but I didn’t really know why. We had a couple classes together, but we never talked, and to my recollection, he wasn’t a teacher’s pet. Looking at his picture, I felt sorry for him, even after all this time, and maybe a little guilty.

  I was the one who lived in the middle of nowhere. Sort of. My friends thought so anyway. It was really only four miles from town if you walked through the field, across the creek, through Mr. Whitaker’s cow pasture, and down the tracks. Royal and I had done it many times, but my friends wouldn’t dare do that. I hadn’t even walked it since the last time Royal and I had done it in third grade. Besides, there really wasn’t anything to do at my house. Leigh lived right beside the video store, and her aunt worked there. We got to see all the VHS movies before anyone else did. The four of us stayed there a lot in the winter. Wendy’s house was the one we went to in the summer. The rich friend with the pool. Jan lived right beside the old elementary school, a hangout for the kids around town, but her room was the smallest, and her little brother was a brat. We didn’t stay there often.

  My friends never came to my house because there was absolutely nothing to do there. A big farm house almost at the end of Pine Cove Holler. I mostly didn’t want them there anyway. My house wasn’t as nice as theirs and like any kid, it bothered me. Royal was the only one who had ever come over, and that was when we were little kids. He lived in the house next door, a corn field, a fence row, and an apple tree away. When you live that far away from civilization, you play with whoever is there. That happened to be Royal Pierce. He was someone I just always knew. My mom and I moved in with Grandma Grace after Papaw passed away, but I was two, so I didn’t remember anything else, and Royal had always been there. My grams sometimes kept him for his mom.

  Growing up in the holler was great when you didn’t know any different, and as little kids, we didn’t. It wasn’t until third grade that I realized Royal wasn’t like the rest of us. That’s about the time I started pulling away from him. Other than waiting at the same bus stop where I purposely kept my nose in a book to keep from talking to him, we didn’t really hang out anymore. I distanced myself from him, and by the time his parents divorced, and his mom moved him away, we hardly even talked. That was half way into the third grade.

  I never saw him again until he came back a couple weeks into our senior year of high-school to live with his dad. People said he’d gotten in trouble with the cops, and his mom sent him back, but I never asked. I looked at him like someone I used to know, ignoring him in the halls, pretending we were never acquainted.

  Even as a high school senior, Royal was still an easy target, the prey for nearly the entire Wild Cat football team. Most of the time, it was his fault though. You don’t wear sideburns and plaid in the middle of the eighties without being picked on. Or those doctor pants he wore. White cotton, like scrubs or karate pants. While the rest of us were wearing parachute pants and acid washed denim, Royal wore corduroy and tie-dye.

  Turning the page, I wondered what happened to him, hopeful he was okay, and he’d had a good life. Then I saw Johnny Dixon and me. Varsity basketball stars. King and Queen runner ups. My first true love and the second longest relationship I’d ever had. We dated our entire senior year of high school, but I’m not really sure why. I thought I was so in love with him back then, but looking at the photo of us, I realized I never really liked him that much. Everyone told me how lucky I was. Even my grams. She was hoping so much that we’d get married. He was cute for sure, but he also knew it. Johnny was one of those guys who let his popularity go to his head. That made him entitled in his eyes. Of course, we had fun. Those were the best years of my life. When the only things I had to worry about were basketball, hanging with my friends, cruising town square on Saturday nights, clothes, makeup, and having fun. That’s about it.

  I closed my yearbook when I heard Eric turning off the lights. I guess because he wouldn’t get it. He was never part of that life with me. We didn’t meet until a couple years afterward, and I knew from experience he wouldn’t be interested. Yawning, I slid beneath the covers with my hands over my head, thinking about Royal and how I ended up with Eric.

  Eric had a good head on his shoulders, my grams approved, and he knew where he was going in life. I’d say he succeeded. We both had. Our four-bedroom house had been paid off for a few years now, we had a lake view, three acres of land, a pool, a dream kitchen, and a golf course within walking distance in the event we wanted to use it. We didn’t though. Maybe that is why I felt so off. Eric and I didn’t really do anything at all. We’d go out to eat once a week, usually Friday nights after we’d both just worked fifty hours and neither of us wanted to cook. But that’s about it. It really was an empty nest since Trevor and Taylor moved out, and I wondered why we kept the place. They barely even came home anymore and hardly ever at the same time.

  Taylor lived in Pittsburgh and worked for a gaming magazine, trying to find her niche, and Trevor had just dropped the grandma bo
mb in my lap. As unreal as it seemed, my baby would have a baby in seven short months. God, that made me feel old. I didn’t feel like a grandma at all.

  Eric slid in beside me, turned the television on to that stupid Alaska show I hated, and rolled over. “Night.”

  “Night,” I quietly said, looking for a sign in that too.

  Chapter Two

  The last thing I remembered thinking about before I drifted off to sleep was the reunion, but that’s not what I dreamed about.

  It was summer, and it was like I was really there. I could see the bibbed jean shorts I wore, and I remembered that pink shirt. I also remembered Royal’s short, green shorts, and long tube socks with red stripes. We had on matching RedBallJet shoes, his red and mine blue, but we’d switched shoe laces, so they coordinated perfectly. I could see our little bodies standing right around the corner of my grandma’s porch, scrunched over while I talked my best friend into hiking across the pine forest to the county fair with me.

  “Come on, Royal. We ain’t gonna get caught.”

  “No, I’m not doing it. You’re just tryin’ to get me in trouble.”

  “I am not. We’ll just say we’re gonna go to the creek. She won’t even know it. I swear. Don’t you want to ride the Ferris wheel?”

  “My mom is gonna take me on Saturday when she doesn’t have to work. I’m not allowed to go that far.”

  I saw myself with my hands on my hips, no more than five or six-yearsold, trying like hell to talk Royal into sneaking over the mountain to the Grainsville County Fair. It had started the night before, and there was no way I would be able to wait until Saturday. That’s also when my grams said we’d go.

  “You’re just being a big baby chicken. All we have to do is walk to the railroad tracks. We didn’t get caught last time, did we?”

  “We don’t have any money.”

  “Yes, huh. My mom gave me tendollars when she came here, and I still have twodollars and two quarters and four dimes. I spent some at the Five and Dime for a toy when my grams got stamps. We can buy four tickets. That’s enough for four rides. Come on, Royal. You never want to have any fun.”