She tried screaming again and a blood-curdling scream rose from her throat, loud enough to wake the dead. But it didn't. It couldn't.
Destiny.
Destiny had a course of its own and it was stronger than the will of any man, woman, or teenage girl.
Kicking and elbowing with an inhuman strength she never knew she had, she managed to break free and she ran. She ran faster than she had ever run in her life.
And she thought she saw his face in the window for just an instant. His once sexy, calm and cool face was full of fear. He mouthed words as he looked into her eyes. She didn't know what he said. What did he say? What were the words? She needed those words more than the air she was breathing. She was stopped again, the arms around her once more, stopping her. She kicked her legs into the air, struggling. And then she dropped like a brick as flames licked the window, licking his beautiful face and then he was gone.
Thirty-Two
The Book II
Jack woke up early, just as the sunlight began to stream through the gaps between the curtains and the window. Magz was slumped over her desk asleep. The small work light was still on, lighting up her chestnut hair like a halo. His face fell as he remembered the night before. Her sobs had woken him shortly after he'd passed out, and when she'd told him Sammy Ruthven was dead, he didn't know what to think. Sammy Ruthven was a character from a world that he knew nothing about. A world that Magz was convinced was real. The Twinkies had been interesting, and the thing with that Jonas guy at the bar was kind of weird, but time travel?
He pulled on his jeans and buttoned up his shirt before waking her with a gentle nudge on her shoulder.
She lifted her head and wiped some drool from the side of her mouth.
“Sorry, I didn't want to wake you, but you'll get a stiff neck sleeping like that.”
Magz nodded sleepily, her red eyes lifeless. She slunk back into the bed and under the covers.
“It's going to be OK,” he said, although he didn't really know why he said it. It was just what you said, wasn't it?
“Nothing will ever be OK again,” she replied, lowering her head slowly onto the tequila tear stained pillow.
“We can get through this.” Whatever this was. “I promise.”
She made a soft groaning noise in response.
Jack was about to turn out the light when he saw what she had been looking at. The 1983 yearbook open to a page of portraits. She had drawn a heart around Sammy Ruthven with a pink pen, she was such a dork. He didn't really want to admit it, but the guy was OK looking, Jack couldn't deny that.
He also couldn't deny the picture on the opposite page. Her name was Peggy Martin and she looked a hell of a lot like a girl Jack knew called Magz Martin. She was even wearing the triangle earrings he’d bought for her.
Jack looked over at her asleep beneath the spotty covers.
He turned off the light, took the book and went downstairs to make coffee.
Thirty-Three
Making Plans for Sammy
Peggy ran through the hallway, skidding to a stop in front of the English classroom. She peered through the glass window to see Janet, young Janet dressed in a bright yellow skirt suit writing in her scrawling handwriting on the chalk board for a class of Juniors. Peggy rolled her eyes, the one time she really needed her, Janet was teaching.
She knocked on the door and opened it slowly. All heads turning towards her she felt her face growing warm.
“Yes Peggy?” asked Janet, looking over from the board.
“I really need to speak to you.” Peggy's heart jumped into her throat at the thought of what she was going to say.
Janet put down her chalk and walked towards her. “Continue questions one to six,” she said, waving her hand at the class and following Peggy outside, closing the door behind her.
“What is it?” Janet asked, her face full of worry.
“He's dead,” Peggy said as tears slid down her cheeks. She wasn't even crying, tears were just coming on their own now.
“Who?” asked Janet, putting her hands on Peggy’s shoulders.
“Sammy.”
Janet gasped. “What happened?”
“A car accident,” Peggy said through her tears.
“When?”
“The night of the prom.”
“Prom? Prom is months away.” Janet shook her head in confusion.
“He's going to die.”
Janet took a step backwards and leant up against the door behind her. She looked both ways down the corridor and then up to the ceiling. “We can't talk about this here.”
Peggy looked at her pleadingly. She needed Janet to tell her what to do, to tell her how to fix it. To tell her everything was going to be OK. Now. Not at three-fifteen.
Janet made a waiting gesture and headed back into the classroom, leaving Peggy to stand alone, her face wet with tears, her heart breaking. Two nuns walked past without even glancing at her. Weren't nuns meant to care about other people? Wasn't it their job to come and ask you if you were OK, come and pray over you or something? But they didn't even look. She wanted to scream after them, “Sammy's going to die, don't you even care?!” but she didn't. She just stood there.
“Here,” Janet said, handing over her car keys.
Peggy looked up.
“Take the car home,” Janet said, putting her hand on Peggy's shaking shoulder. “Go take a shower, I'll get a ride and I'll try to be home early as I can.”
Peggy frowned, “Are you sure? Because I don't even have a license here.”
Janet tutted. “But you can drive, right?”
“I have a license, it's just too current.”
“It’ll be fine. Just go out the back way, past the book room so the nuns don't see you.” Janet's confidence convinced her, and before too long Peggy was hauling her duffel bag and backpack through the rear of the school grounds.
Peggy noticed cigarette smoke curling up into the clear blue sky behind one of the trees and heard giggling.
“Shhhh!” said a male voice.
“Why?” asked a familiar girl's voice. “No one ever comes out here.”
Lacey.
“What if someone did?” asked the boy. Obviously, he was crapping himself. Lacey should've been in Math and he was clearly meant to be somewhere else too.
“Lacey?” Peggy whispered, not wanting to get too close to whatever was going on behind that tree.
“Oh hell!” the boy panicked.
“Peg?” Lacey jumped up from behind the tree and beamed. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going back to Canada?”
“Yeah, well I'm back. I'm back from Canada.”
“Oh cool,” Lacey looked back at the tree. “It's OK, it's just my friend Peggy.” She rolled her eyes at the tree and a boy stepped out from behind it sheepishly.
“Hi,” said a cute, buff tanned boy.
“You can go now Bruce,” said Lacey, waving him off as if he'd just finished his shift at Super Pan.
“Can I call you?” he asked all puppy dog eyed.
“Oh my god, you're so cute!” Lacey said giggling.
He looked at Peggy who gave him a pitying look and then walked off, hands in his pocket, dragging his feet.
“So, what's going on?” Lacey asked, leaning against the tree, as if the whole thing with Bruce had never happened.
“I'm going home,” said Peggy.
“Home? It's not home time Peg.”
“I'm not feeling so good.”
Lacey looked at her suspiciously.
“I had some bad news and I really just need to be alone.”
“If you had bad news you need a friend. I'll come home with you. We can get a test on the way.” Lacey grabbed her bag from the ground.
“A test?” asked Peggy.
Lacey gave her a look.
“I'm not pregnant!” Peggy said as she began to walk towards the parking lot, Lacey trailing behind.
“Oh, what else could it be?”
“Me
and Sammy, we haven’t even...”
“Are you for real?” Lacey asked, skipping to catch up with her.
“I've had bad experiences and I'm not ready,” Peggy shrugged.
“Oh girl, we've all had bad experiences, but if you never did anything because of 'bad experiences' you might as well just stay at home the whole time.”
“I wouldn't mind that.”
“So, if you're not pregnant what is it?”
Peggy looked around the deserted school lot. “The truth is,” she said, “I’m from the future.”
Lacey looked at her blankly.
“I came here from the year 2016.”
Lacey said nothing.
“And I just found out something about Sammy’s future and it’s not good.”
“Oh,” said Lacey.
“Feel free to freak out now,” Peggy said.
“Why would I freak out?” asked Lacey.
“Because this is nuts.”
“Actually, it explains a lot,” Lacey said nodding.
“Wow, I really didn’t expect that to go so well,” said Peggy.
Lacey shrugged.
“I need your help,” Peggy said.
“Help? Help with what?” asked Lacey.
“Help with changing the future.”
* * *
“So, like, can you Google me?” Lacey asked, lying on the fluffy white rug smoking a cigarette, her head partly under the glass coffee table.
“I can, but I'm not going to, not after this.” Peggy put her mug down on top of a coaster over Lacey's face.
“Oh please. I want to know what happens to me.”
“Why?” Peggy folded her feet up under herself on the couch. “So, I can work out how to save your life too?”
“You think I'm dead?” Lacey asked, frowning and blowing smoke out from under the table.
“Can we just deal with one future death at a time?” Peggy picked the mug up again, she needed something in her hands.
“I hate to break it to you,” Lacey said as she crawled out from under the table and sat facing Peggy exhaling more smoke. “But we all have a future death to deal with.”
“That's not helping,” said Peggy.
“OK, so we need to devise a plan,” Lacey said, putting her cigarette out in the dolphin ashtray.
The front door opened, and Janet rushed in. “I got home as early as I could,” she called out.
Peggy looked at her wrist forgetting again that her watch was gone.
“Two fifteen,” said Lacey, who hadn't appeared to have looked at her watch at all.
“Oh, hi Lacey,” Janet said, kicking her shoes into the middle of the living room floor and throwing herself onto a red lounge chair.
“Hi Miss B,” said Lacey, “we were just devising a plan.”
Janet looked exhausted. “A plan huh? Lacey, shouldn’t you still be in class?”
Lacey shrugged.
“Can it even be done?” Peggy asked, taking a small sip of the cold tea in her hands.
Janet shrugged. “I never went back to the present, so I don't know.”
“Back to the present?” asked Lacey.
Janet looked at Lacey blankly and then her eyes grew wide as she realized what she'd just done.
“Your secret is safe with me Miss B,” Lacey said.
“Lacey, please don't take this the wrong way,” began Janet, “but you do have a reputation for knowing all the gossip at St C's.”
“Exactly, the gossip,” said Lacey. “Gossip is when you know who likes who, or who made out with who under the bleachers. Gossip isn't like, about who's a time traveler. Who the hell is going to believe that crap anyway? Oh, hey guys, guess what? Miss Bates is a frickin' time traveler! Do you think so? Really? That would seriously mess up my cred.”
Janet shrugged. She was too tired to worry about Lacey right now. “I don't know how much you can change or if you can even change anything,” she sighed.
“I don't believe that for a second,” said Lacey.
“You don't believe in destiny?” Peggy asked, looking up from her cup.
“No, that sounds stupid. What, I have no control over my life?” Lacey ran her fingers furiously through her hair.
“What do you think Janet?” asked Peggy. “I mean what do you really think?”
Janet shrugged. “I'd like to believe in destiny, that everything happens for a reason, but there are so many messed up things that happen to people, I just don't know if there can ever be a reason for some things.”
Lacey nodded in agreement.
“What do you think Peggy?” Janet asked, tucking her feet up onto the chair under her.
“I believe in destiny,” Peggy said. “Even though a lot of crappy things have happened to me, like being bullied and everything at school and my folks never being around. If I was having fun at school, I wouldn’t be here right now. If I wasn’t so damn sad all the time would Old Janet have given me the key?”
Young Janet looked thoughtful. “So then how do you explain this thing with Sammy? If you believe in destiny, then you have to accept it, and you certainly can't change it.”
“I do believe in destiny. But I also know I have to change it,” Peggy said, looking into her empty mug.
“That makes no sense at all Peg,” said Lacey reaching for her packet of cigarettes and offering Janet one.
“You can't have it both ways,” Janet said, taking the cigarette. “If this is his destiny you can't change it.”
“But what if…” began Peggy, putting down the mug again. “What if it's my destiny to change destiny? What if I was supposed to come here and save him?”
“Major woah,” said Lacey. “I totally just got goosepimples. That's super romantic.”
“OK,” said Janet, “if that’s what we’re doing, how are we going to do it?”
Peggy shrugged. “That's the bit I don't know about it.”
“It's easy,” said Lacey.
“Easy?” asked Peggy. “You think it's easy to go around altering people's destinies?”
“Sure,” Lacey said. “He dies in the Firebird.”
Peggy and Janet both looked at her blankly.
“Uh, hello?” Lacey said.
“What?” asked Peggy. “What's the big plan?”
“It's not like, rocket science,” Lacey looked at everyone like they were stupid.
“Just tell us the plan Lacey,” said Janet impatiently.
“To stop Sammy dying at the prom, to change his destiny, to make it so that Peggy and Sammy can live happily ever after, all we have to do…”
“Come on Lacey!” said Peggy.
“Is hire a limo.”
Thirty-Four
The Confrontation
Magz slipped out of the book room door before school. She stood in the hallway Googling Sammy to see if their decision to get a limo had changed anything. Other students milled around her, laughing and shouting, grabbing their books from lockers and rushing to their classes. She took a couple of pain-killers and washed them down with a swig of warm 1980’s 7UP and marched towards Janet’s classroom.
“Janet!” she demanded, storming into the empty classroom.
“Yes?” Old Janet replied, peering over her glasses as she sat marking papers at her desk.
Magz thrust her phone in the teacher’s face. “Don’t you think you could’ve warned me about this?” tears welled up in her eyes.
“Darn,” Old Janet said, rubbing a hand across her forehead.
“Darn? All you can say for yourself is darn?”
Janet sighed and lowered her glasses.
“You didn't think to tell me he was dead?”
“It’s not my place to tell you anything, you know that.” Old Janet calmly stood up and walked over to close the door.
“You didn't think I needed to know this?” Tears ran down her cheek and Janet took her in her arms. Magz resisted at first, she wriggled and stomped her feet. She was furious. And yet within seconds she found herself fal
ling into the hug and sobbing into the animal print silk shirt covering Old Janet's shoulder.
There was a knock at the door and the they broke apart. Magz stepped back and wiped her face, her make-up as good as ruined.
Jack's face appeared through a crack in the door.
“It's only Jack,” Magz said.
“Jack?” Old Janet asked, looking at him suspiciously.
“Hi,” he took a step into the room.
“Why are you here?” Old Janet asked him accusingly.
“Uh, I'm here because my best friend is freaking out.” He took a few more steps and rested his books on a desk in front of him.
Janet scowled at him, looked back at Magz, and back at Jack again.
“Magz told me about, you know...” he whispered, checking behind him, “everything. I didn't believe her at first, but then I saw the photos.”
“Photos?” Janet asked.
“In the yearbook,” said Jack. “Peggy Martin’s yearbook photo.”
“Oh,” said Janet.
“So?” demanded Magz, folding her arms against the eighties version of the school shirt.
“So now you know,” Janet said coolly.
“Now I know? That's it?” Magz felt the tears of frustration burning behind her eyes again.
“I did tell you not to try and find anything out. Did you Google him?” asked Janet, fiercely slapping her hands on the wooden desk.
“Yes, I Googled him,” Peggy said, wiping under her eyes with a bright pink manicured finger.
“You Googled him,” Janet admonished.
“She Googled him,” Jack chimed in.
“I knew you would.” Janet shook her head in disappointment.
“I'm sorry, I just, I wanted to know. I had to know!”
“And are you happy now that you do know?”
Magz began to cry again.
“Hey!” Jack scowled at the teacher.
“You stay out of this,” she said, pointing at him with a chunky-ringed finger.
“Don't take it out on him, it's all my fault!” Magz sobbed hysterically and Jack rushed to her, putting an arm around her.
Class of 1983: A Young Adult Time Travel Romance Page 21
