Patchwork

by Karsten Knight

  Footsteps approach at a run from home plate. Half the softball team peers at me with concern from over the dugout wall. Their faces are quickly obscured as two figures crouch over me, their shins and muddy cleats filling my line of vision.

  “Jesus, Lake,” Coach says. I have to roll onto my back to see her face. “Skilled infielder though you may be, I recommend you stick to catching the ball with your glove, not your belly button.”

  Now that this new reality is taking shape around us, I can feel the leather mitt on my left hand, the damp sweat-stained strap over my knuckles. When I glance down at my body, I find that my prom dress has been replaced with a tank top and dirty sweats.

  “I am so sorry, Nata,” Alexa Lambert says. As usual, the fragile sophomore looks like she’s balanced on the precipice of tears. “You told us to swing for the fences, so I—”

  “Don’t apologize for hitting her fastball,” Coach interrupts. “If Renata hadn’t taken that bullet, you probably would have had a clean single. Now take your tail out from between your legs and go get an ice pack.”

  While Alexa scampers off, Coach helps me to my feet. “What’s the damage report?”

  I lift my tank to the bottom of my sports bra. Dead center in the middle of my abs is an impressive welt, the same reddish pink as watermelon sherbet.

  “I can practically see the seams,” she says.

  “Yeah,” I manage to wheeze out. “With the heat that line drive had on it, I’m lucky I don’t have Wilson tattooed across my stomach.”

  Coach smiles. “If you’re good enough to make jokes, you’re good enough to play ball.”

  I’m disoriented as all hell to be back on earth, doing something as routine to my daily life as softball practice. I know this is the point when I’m supposed to deny the reality of everything that just happened—the prom, the explosion, the strange hodgepodge world made out of my memories. Maybe blame it on hallucination. Maybe pretend someone drugged the energy drink I chugged before morning practice to wake myself up.

  But there are other details I’m only picking up on now. Like the briny taste in my mouth and nose from nearly drowning in Boston Harbor. Like how my back is still sore from slamming up against the stony shore in that patchwork world. When I put it all together, I know in my heart that this has all been real in its own time-twisting, dimension-perverting sort of way.

  Then there’s the fact that softball season ended three weeks before the ill-fated prom. The fact that half the varsity softball squad was aboard that cruise ship with me … yet now they’re milling about the dugout, alive and in the flesh. No one is catastrophically burned from an explosion, or riddled with bullet wounds, or crying over the tragedy that just supposedly happened.

  I’ve gone back in time.

  Which raises another question: If I’ve traveled back to before the prom, then I need to figure out what day I’ve landed in. When did the Daedalus Minotaurs ever schedule a softball practice at the ass crack of dawn?

  Coach partially answers my question for me as she guides me off the field. “On second thought, you’re looking a little concussed from that fall. I think you should hit the showers.” She squeezes my shoulder. “Can’t afford to have my star pitcher injured twice before tonight’s big game.”

  My back stiffens. Big game?

  It doesn’t all come together until I fish my phone out of my duffle bag. Its digital wallpaper is a picture of Slade, Ivy, Troy, and me at Harvestfest last fall, grinning and very much alive. It’s the date on the top of the lock screen I can’t take my eyes off of.

  I’ve been sent back to April 27.

  It’s the day the Minotaurs lost the division championship.

  More importantly, it’s almost a month before the harbor cruise that ripped my life apart.

  The real question is, why today?

  After my call goes straight to Troy’s voicemail for the third time, I let my head slump against the metal locker. Beep. “Troy, it’s Renata. Call me as soon as you get this. I need to hear your voice.” The next three words slip out before I even think about it. “I love you.” I’m so anxious to know whether he’s alive that I don’t care that I broke our embargo on the L word.

  Besides, he used it first … in a future that hasn’t yet happened.

  When Troy proposed to me on that boat, I accused him of doing it out of a desperate need to cling to something familiar. Now I’m the one who eagerly yearns to know that he’s there, to feel him next to me. I don’t even care if he says “I love you” again, if only I can press my face into his neck, feel his pulse against my lips, smell that stupid department store cologne he practically bathes in.

  The warm shower dulls the edge. By the time I towel off and dress, the disorientation fades and I no longer feel like I’m having a total out-of-body experience.

  Instead déjà vu creeps up on me. I’ve stumbled back a month in time to a day I’ve already lived, but the motion of events has already changed. On the real April 27, I caught that line drive. I was never speared by the ball, or sent to the showers early.

  As I reach for the light switch on my way out of the locker room, I have an even more unnerving epiphany. If I’m somehow reliving the past, then maybe the April 27 that I remember no longer exists. Does that mean that whatever happens now becomes the real April 27? Am I in some alternate dimension, a different past, but my friends are still dead back in a separate reality? Or is there only a singular reality, and the patchwork world was like the rewind button on a time-controlling remote?

  I get nauseous just trying to entertain all the possibilities in my head.

  I wait leaning against Troy’s locker for some time before the first early birds filter into the hallway. Every slammed locker door sounds like a shotgun blast, dragging me right back to the shooting aboard the Harbor Ghost. As the academic wing grows thicker with students, I start to quake uncontrollably. I should feel safe. I’ve been given the gift of a second chance. The cruise won’t happen for another three weeks, which means I have time to stop it. Maybe that’s why I’ve been sent back—to catch whoever was behind the attack.

  What’s more, I seem to be the sole person whose memories of the prom survived the journey back in time. I search the passing faces for anyone who looks disoriented or preoccupied, especially the seniors among them who were aboard that cruise. All I see are grumpy teenagers in need of caffeine before the first bell. If they can’t remember the alternate future, then surely the killer shouldn’t either … which means it’s not like he’s about to storm the Daedalus campus today to finish what he started.

  So why am I so on edge?

  Lips press against my cheek. I shriek and collapse against the locker, which draws raised eyebrows from two passing juniors.

  But the only person I care about is the grinning sandy-haired boy who snuck up on me.

  Ordinarily I’d slug Troy for scaring the living shit out of me. I wrap my arms around him instead, squeezing him as tight as I can. I press my cheek into his stubble and whisper fiercely, “Can’t you ever get to school early, Troy Bridges?”

  “Sorry,” he whispers back. “My watch is on Pacific Time.” He doesn’t own a watch.

  Over his shoulder, I spot Ivy and Slade migrating toward homeroom. Ivy gives several suggestive hip thrusts at me. Slade jerks the strap of Ivy’s denim overalls to make her stop. Further down the hall, Wyatt retrieves the last of his books from his locker. He offers me a curt wave, the way he always does when Troy is in my vicinity.

  My four best friends. All alive again, in one place.

  I’m pretty sure that no student in the history of Daedalus Academy has felt such unadulterated joy to be at school before 8 a.m.

  With Troy still leaning against me, I can feel his cell phone vibrate in his pocket. He pulls it out. “You left me a message?” He presses Listen and lifts it toward his ear.

  I intercept the phone, stealthily swiping to delete the voicemail. “It’s nothing I can’t tell you in person,” I say. Or was it
everything I’ve never told him in person? Maybe this is my chance to fix some of the hiccups in our relationship before that awkward proposal at prom ever happens. However, I’m nervous about rocking the boat. Romantic distractions are the last thing I need when I should be keeping a vigilant eye out for a potential murderer. “Can we cut class?” I beg him. “Maybe slip out before homeroom and go see a movie? I bet we can rope Ivy and Slade into coming, too.” Out of the three of them, I only share classes with Ivy, since Slade and Troy are both seniors. The thought of enduring an entire day of school without knowing whether or not my boyfriend and friends are in danger sounds like torture.

  Troy makes a funny face and brushes my hair out of my eyes. I must look like a hot mess. “Renata, did you wake up and forget what day it is? You have a softball championship to win. If Coach finds out you went rogue, she will bench your ass for sure.”

  He of course has no idea that I’ll ultimately allow a game-losing three-run homer in the seventh inning. Worrying about tonight’s scoreboard seems trivial now.

  “Besides,” Troy lowers his voice, “we don’t want to miss the Amaranthine performance at the big game.”

  My heart sinks. I’d momentarily forgotten that, in addition to the championship, we had orchestrated an unsanctioned “halftime show.”

  One that had instigated a bleacher-clearing brawl.

  The bell rings, so Troy pecks me on the cheek and backs away toward the north wing. “See you at lunch.” He disappears in the crowd of students migrating to their homerooms.

  As the hall empties out, I slump back against my locker and contemplate whether I should even go through the motions of a regular day. Attending class, competing in tonight’s softball game … why bother at all with any of it? A murderer is on the loose. My job first and foremost is to do something about that. What that “something” should entail, I haven’t figured out yet—do some investigation, maybe drop an anonymous tip to the authorities about a terrorist plot, although trying to explain to them that I know because “I come from the future” might be a tough sell.

  The good news is that I have almost a month until those deadly events. A month to stay vigilant, a month to figure out why and more importantly prevent it from ever happening. So until I get my bearings, I need to embrace this second chance at the past as an opportunity to live better.

  Before the explosion rocked that boat, before I got sucked into that strange purgatory, I witnessed the devastating outcomes of several choices I made this year, all converging on one night. It didn’t take an assassin to hurt the people I love—I accomplished that much all by myself. If I’ve got another chance at the past, then whether I live or die, I have to right the errors I made before.

  Some of the most memorable days of our lives are the ones we could have done so much better.

  And that’s just what I intend to do.

  The origami orchid lands next to my desk. For whatever reason, Ivy refuses to do the traditional double fold or paper airplane when it comes to notes, and spends more time intricately folding them than actually writing them. Case-in-point: when I unfurl the paper blossom, the note inside simply reads, “Ready?”

  I scribble down my reply—“As I’ll ever be”—and tuck the points of the paper orchid back into the center. Before I can slide it back to Ivy’s desk, Mr. Slattery notices and interrupts his own lecture on the Palace of Versailles. “What is that?” he inquires musically. He glides between the desks, doing his slightly effeminate it’s-hard-to-look-sexy-when-you-wear-loafers walk, until he stops right in front of me. When he leans on my desk, it creaks under his weight. “A suitor of yours wanted to give you flowers, but couldn’t go to the trouble of visiting a florist? I would never be so cheap.” The class laughs.

  “Well, the next time a new suitor comes along, I’ll let you interrogate him first—to make sure his heart and his wallet are in the right place.”

  “Because wealth is something we private school teachers know so much about,” he replies. The class laughs again, and his eye twitches behind his black-rimmed glasses. I’ve always wondered whether Slattery can distinguish where the “laughing with him” ends and the “laughing at him” begins. I feel a small flare of compassion for him. I can’t tell whether it’s tinted by my gratefulness to be alive, or whether I’m somehow seeing things more objectively today, but suddenly his flirtations don’t seem as threatening as they used to.

  It makes me wonder now why we were so compelled to make him the butt of the mannequin prank, especially given that it was Ivy’s idea. Slattery must not have a thing for wiry brunettes in alternative fashion styles, because his advances never make it to the back row where she sits.

  “I think you should have it.” I hold the origami flower up for him. “As long as you promise to find a vase for it in the teachers’ lounge and water it regularly.”

  He balances the paper blossom on two fingers as he walks back toward the chalkboard. When he sits on the edge of his desk, he crosses his ankles, exposing the dark socks he’s rocking beneath his khakis, the way only a middle-aged man can do. “Unlike the romantics of our century,” he continues his lecture, dangling the paper orchid in front of his face, “Louis the XIII spared no expense when it came to designing the luxurious gardens of Versailles …”

  I smile and laugh, not because it’s all that funny, but because maybe Slattery’s good spirits are another sign that there’s time to undo the mistakes we made—I made—on that cruise ship.

  Game-day jitters are perfectly normal for me, but as I board the team bus to take the long journey up to Vermont, my stomach rolls up tighter than the end of a toothpaste tube. Knowing that I’ve already lost this division championship before is somehow making the thought of pitching today even more nerve-wracking.

  One of my teammates drops into the seat next to me, and I turn to scold her. Everyone on the team knows I always sit alone to get in the zone. But when she tilts her cap, I see a scruffy unshaven face and undeniably male features beneath the brim.

  “Troy!” I shove him hard enough that he almost falls into the aisle. My teammates in the seats around us all crack up. I completely forgot that he pulled this the last April 27, too.

  “What?” He flattens out the black women’s pants that his muscular thighs are bursting out of. “No one has to know I’m a guy if I play deep outfield. Deep, deep outfield. Maybe we can tell the umpire that I have a thyroid condition.”

  I try to shoo him out of the seat again. “It’s bad luck for you to see me before I walk out to the mound.”

  Troy laughs. “I think you’re getting softball confused with the groom seeing the bride before the wedding.”

  The word wedding brings our conversation to a halt. I have a flashback to Troy aboard the Harbor Ghost, kneeling on the sea-slick metal deck, the ring trembling in his hand. Was he planning his proposal even now, a month earlier? Or did he empty his bank account and buy the ring on a whim the day of prom? When I look into his eyes, I don’t see the wistful, vulnerable boy I left back on that boat. This is the same Troy I fell for, the Troy I haven’t seen much of lately, with his twitchy smile, willing to embarrass himself on a bus full of girls just to loosen me up before a big game.

  Coach saves me from any more reflection. “Troy Bridges!” she bellows from the front of the bus. “Unless you have recently acquired a second X chromosome, remove your person from this vehicle immediately.”

  “Gotta go,” Troy whispers. He pecks me on the cheek and then hops out the emergency exit in the back. The alarm wails briefly until he jams the door shut again. I shake my head in wonder as I watch his pale ankles disappear through the maze of cars in the parking lot.

  When I look down at the seat, I discover that Troy left me a souvenir. I burst out laughing. It’s a Polaroid picture of him making a ridiculous face over a steaming meatball sub from the Daedalus cafeteria. To anyone but me, it would seem like a weird, even slightly creepy gift to leave your girlfriend. But it’s an homage to last summer, the
summer before our first kiss.

  The attraction between us had been a slow boil throughout my sophomore year, but it could have easily fallen to the back burner when he flew off to Spain for a summer abroad program. Instead, Troy wrote to me every week—not emails, not text messages, but real letters, handwritten on college-ruled paper in his sloppy, childish penmanship. With my father only a few months gone, and my mother emotionally absent while she transformed our old house into a bed and breakfast, Troy’s letters were the one thing that kept me anchored to sanity while I wallowed alone at my family’s Nantucket summer home.

  What I loved more than anything were the Polaroids he would stuff in every envelope. While most travelers would do the touristy thing and take pictures of themselves in front of historic monuments, Troy would take pictures of himself with food. Everything from traditional Spanish dishes to occasionally nauseating “delicacies” that he’d find in markets. In every photo, he’d make a face to indicate his level of excitement, or in some cases, apprehension to eat the meal. Then, on the back of the Polaroid, he’d scribble the name of the dish along with a one-line comment on whether he thought I’d enjoy it. “You strike me as a pro-tentacle kind of girl” under the Galician octopus, or “these empanadas were flakier than Dana Holland.”

  Those photographs were one of the reasons I ended up falling for Troy, why I invited him to Nantucket for the last weekend of summer. Why I took fate into my own hands and kissed him for the first time on the beach, under the Atlantic stars.

  As the bus rumbles to life and chugs out of the campus parking lot, I touch the spot where Troy’s lips last touched my cheek. Funny how a half-second kiss can leave a shadow for hours.

  On the drive out of Reverie, we pass my house. The red sign out front that reads The Lake Inn swings on its chains as the bus breezes by. Mom carved and painted that sign herself, right after she quit her job at the candle factory and converted our home into a bed and breakfast. I pleaded with her to name the inn something else, so travelers wouldn’t show up expecting a room with a water view, only to disappointedly discover that Lake was simply our surname.