Emma Holly (38 page)

B.G. frowned at him. "Are you going to listen?"

"I am," Eric said. "I always listen to everyone."

B.G.
leaned over his knees, mimicking Eric's pose unthinkingly. He supposed there was something to be said for a residence with a single, cohesive style, but Eric had spent precious little imagination in this room. The safe navy carpet stretched between them, perfectly matched by the safe navy coverlet on the bed. The coordinated throw pillows, nice though they were, could have been chosen by Eric's mom.

Naturally, the bedding was good quality. Plain taste or not, Eric adhered to Mrs. Berne's credo that guests deserved the best. B.G. had tested the sheets the few times he'd realized he couldn't spend one more night lying platonically at Eric's side, no matter how much he thought he ought to be easing back and leaving the field open.

Eric was part of B.G.'s life, a very good part. Letting him go wasn't easy. Now B.G. felt caught between worlds, his personal electrons unable to decide which quantum leap to make. This way lay happiness, that way misery, and between them hung all his dreams for his dearest friend.

"Speak," Eric said, a laugh in his voice, "or forever hold your peace."

B.G. almost changed his mind at Eric's choice of words.

"Go on," Eric said, seeing the doubts in his eyes.

"This is a story from before we met. I'm not certain you know what my life was like, what
I
was like back then. I'm not telling you this to elicit pity, but I didn't have a single friend my own age. Home schooling was part of the problem, although I blamed my intelligence. The other children were jealous, I reasoned, and in any case, were too stupid to interest me. I only interacted with adults, most of them professors in the college where my mother worked. I told myself these adults were my friends, but in truth I knew they were not. They were friendly, yes, and often took time to have academic conversations.

Part of me, however, couldn't help but observe that the relationships they had with their peers were different from the relationship they had with me. Even though I was smart, they thought of me as a child.

So it was that at the age of eight I was obliged to learn a lesson I resisted with all my might."

"Should I ask?" Eric said, his look so kind B.G. had to avert his gaze.

"The lesson was that I didn't have friends because of
me
. Whoever caused the first injury, myself or some neighborhood child, the situation persisted because I was angry and insecure and spent all my energy trying to prove I was superior to these small people with whom I didn't know how to communicate. It wasn't their responsibility to rise to my level. It was mine to open myself to theirs."

"I don't know, B.G. That's a pretty big lesson for an eight-year-old."

"Too big for me, I assure you. I was at the park one day with the brand-new dirt bike my mother had bought me in the hope that it would help me fit in. Because I couldn't ride, this hope was ill-founded, but you know how she is. My mother's thought processes—while well meaning—have never been overly linear. For my part, I figured I could simply wheel the bike around and make myself seem more appealing to children my age."

"And that didn't work?"

"Well, I did succeed in gathering a crowd, but the members of my chronological peer group were not as stupid as I'd assumed. One of them thought to request that I do a trick. A wheelie, as I recall. When I refused—with impressive dignity, I thought—he stole my bike and rode off. I was angry enough to fight by then, but since three of the thief's compadres remained, I got myself soundly thrashed."

Eric slid off the bed and sat on the rug, the toe of his loafer nudging B.G.'s ankle. "Bummer," he said, "as Charity would comment if she were here."

"Yes," B.G. agreed. "Getting beat up was a big bummer. Little did I realize it was also the most normal childhood interaction I'd experienced to date—not that the knowledge would have cheered me then.

Furious and nearly blind with tears, I stumped to the center of the park, where a small wooden bench sat beneath a big willow tree. There, shielded from my tormentors, I vowed I'd never speak to a child again.

I didn't need them. I didn't need anyone.

"This is when things get strange. Even though the park was normally crowded, from that point on, no one interrupted what happened, nor can I recall a single noise beyond the ones I made. No birds. No cars.

No barking dogs. It was as if I'd been enclosed in my own bubble. The very breeze ceased to blow.

"It is possible I was crying too hard to notice the woman's appearance, but suddenly one was sitting on the opposite end of the bench. My memory of her is extremely vivid. She was dressed in a clean khaki coverall, something a janitor might have worn, although she didn't look like one. She was pretty in a quiet way, with deep red hair you don't often see. As it happens, her eyes were very like Charity's—a lavender so rich they were almost violet. I remember thinking it odd that their expression could be both kind and cool.

" 'It's your doing,' she said before I could speak. 'Your conditions cannot change unless you change yourself.'

"Assuming she'd witnessed my humiliation, I responded rather rudely.

" 'Anger is pointless,' she said just as calmly as before. 'It stands in the way of what you want.'

"No doubt I should have realized something odd was happening, but my temper had shot past the breaking point. 'I don't want to be a freak!' I shouted. 'I don't want the other kids to call me names!'

"'Well, but you are a freak, Benjamin,' she said, 'and in your heart of hearts, I don't think you want to change. You enjoy being smarter. Your second concern, however, is within your power to address. If you work at liking other children, really work at it instead of always focusing that brain
of
yours on their flaws, some of them—the ones who are truly suited to be your companions—will begin liking you back.'

"It gave me a start to hear a stranger use my name, but I was something of a celebrity in our neighborhood and I concluded she knew me from that.

" 'You're talking crap,' I said with eight-year-old hubris.

" 'Suit yourself.' She shrugged with an elan I wished I could imitate. 'But a true scientist wouldn't dismiss
my
claim without a test.'

" 'It's bullshit,' I insisted. 'Touchy-feely New Age crap.'

"She smiled in a knowing way that truly pricked my rage. 'When your mother hears what has happened,'

she said, 'she's going to try to help you again, and this time her attempt will have a greater probability of success. If you make a good-faith effort to go along, what happens next will set you on the path to getting everything you want and more.'

"At this further insult to my good sense, I jumped up, fully intending to storm off. Before I got more than a step, the strangest part of the whole strange encounter occurred. The woman touched my arm. She didn't grab it or try to hold me, she simply laid her palm on my skin. Instantly, I felt as if someone were pouring a strong electrical current through my body. My hair floated straight up on my scalp, and my feet seemed to be magnetized to the grass. I couldn't have lifted them to save my life.

" 'I'm putting the proof in your pocket,' she said. 'When you look at it tomorrow, you'll know.' "

"What was the proof?" Eric asked, his voice hoarse enough that he needed to clear his throat.

In spite of himself, B.G. smiled. "Well, I didn't know yet. First I had to go home, where I deliberately refused to tell my mother about the theft of my bike. That, so I thought, would thwart my uninvited soothsayer."

"And did it?"

"Not in the least. That night at the market, three separate people told my mother what had happened, having heard the story through the neighborhood rumor mill. Because my mother was upset, on her way out she crashed her car into the bumper of the very woman she'd been considering asking for help, a woman she didn't know very well but who had a son just my age."

"Oh," Eric said with a shiver big enough to see.

"Yes, 'oh.' Normally your mother didn't shop at that market. She came that night as an expedient when her cook ran out of Tabasco in the middle of a barbecue. Fortunately for me, despite her dented car, your mother had a firm belief in instilling a sense of duty in her children and more or less ordered you to teach me to ride my bike."

"Jeez." Eric scrubbed his hand across his hair. "Mom never told me that part of the story."

"I only pieced it together later. At the time, I wasn't inclined to go along. I told my mother thanks but no thanks. Then, the next morning, I felt something crinkle in the pocket of the jeans I'd worn the day before. Pulling it out, I discovered the folded cover of a copy of
Science Weekly
magazine, the issue for the third week of November. As this was the first of April, you may imagine it caught my attention. I was aware that magazines had lead times, but surely not so far ahead. Most interesting of all, the address label was for our house.

"Still too stubborn to be convinced, I decided this was, nonetheless, enough evidence in the stranger's favor to take her advice seriously—to 'test her claim' as she put it. I agreed to my mother's request to meet with you and to try to be amenable. To my surprise, I found myself liking you very much. Even though you didn't take to me right away, you, my old friend, were the politest eight-year-old I'd ever met.

Not once did you call me a name or lose patience with my awkwardness. When you finally did warm up to me, I was so caught up in the singular pleasure of having a same-age friend that the mystery of the magazine cover went completely out of my head. I didn't think of it again until the third week of November arrived. I chanced to be the one who took in the mail and, lo and behold, our issue of
Science Weekly
had its front cover torn off. When I dug through my room and found the cover from the stranger, the pattern of the tear marks matched perfectly."

"Wow," Eric said. "That is extremely weird. Did you ever find an explanation?"

"I did not, although that doesn't prove none exists. I suppose these days some would call my stranger an angel. My personal feeling, with which you are welcome to disagree, is that she was from the future, a time traveler who, for whatever reason, wished me to choose my current path—or at least not stay on the road I was on. Who knows? I might have remained too resentful to achieve anything useful."

"A time traveler," Eric said, sounding dazed. "So you think your secret project might turn out to be something."

"Or something that leads to something. Perhaps my theories will be the foundation on which others build.

What really matters, for the moment anyway, is that believing this interpretation, as well as the other things the stranger said, inspired me to change the direction of my life. I have made friends who have been—as my stranger promised—good companions. I owe her, and you, more than I can ever repay."

"Is that what you think? That you have to give Charity up because you
owe
me?" Eric rolled forward far enough to put his hands on B.G.'s knees. "Even if you did owe me—which you don't—that's a debt I'd never, ever collect. You've given me too much. Hell, you might have saved me from doing time. If you love Charity, show her the respect of letting
her
choose."

"But she should choose you. You're the one she'll be happy with."

"Forgive me, B.G., but you're an idiot. How can you believe in time travel and that freaking mind power stuff, but not that you could make one ordinary girl happy? I mean, that's a blind spot the size of Mt.

Rainier!"

"I know myself," B.G. said, his jaw and throat feeling as if they were in a vise. Doubts about his visitor from the future he'd expected, but not a debate on this. He drew his hands into stubborn fists. "I know how I am about relationships. I guard myself. I keep myself from connecting the way you and Charity can."

"Oh, really? You keep yourself from connecting. That's why you love her. That's why, for the sake of our friendship, you're willing to sacrifice someone you really want in your life. Because you're so fucking bad at connecting."

"Look what happened with Sylvia!"

Eric actually laughed. "Sylvia chose her own path. You are not bad at connecting. You're just afraid.

And that, as your time traveling stranger would say, is pointless. It stands in the way of what you want."

"You don't understand."

"I do. I just don't 'understand' the way you want me to."

"Eric, I think you've—"

"Shush already. You've done enough thinking. I'm going to have to fix this for both of us."

"
You're
going to—"

Eric kissed whatever he'd meant to say back into B.G.'s mouth, the only sure way to silence him.

Naturally, Eric enjoyed it. He didn't think he'd ever kissed B.G. for more than seconds without getting worked up. B.G. didn't fare much better, but as soon as a longing groan rumbled from his chest, Eric pushed back.

Enough
, he thought. It was time for someone with common sense to take charge of this romantic mess.

"You're going to wait until I fix this," he said, his voice husky but firm. "You're going to lock up that little black book of yours and take a dose of your own medicine."

B.G. crossed his arms and tilted his brows.

"Forget it," Eric said flatly. "You're not snowing me with that I-know-everything pose. Just once, you're going to trust
me
to know best for
you
."

The
afternoon held a nip of winter as Charity stepped off the bus in the steep residential area near her apartment. The clouds hung low and surly, and the air—cool though it was—possessed a skin-caressing softness only an incipient drizzle could bring. It was classic Seattle weather, guaranteed to make people sigh for sunnier states.

Charity slung her heavy knapsack over her shoulder, girded her thighs to hike up the nearest hill, and let her mouth curve into a grin.

The last few months had been the best and worst of her life. She'd spent more nights crying alone into her pillow and more days feeling satisfied with herself than she would have thought possible. As of today, she'd survived her first semester at the University of Washington without being late to a single class. Best of all, thanks to the adorably nerdy labgirl B.G. loaned her as a tutor, her grades were a squeak short of As. She'd had precisely one date to interrupt her studies, and that had been an accident—a teaching assistant had invited her to what she thought was a lunch meeting to discuss a future paper. She'd put him off as politely as she could and learned a valuable lesson in the process.