Flutter (24 page)

He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I can’t let you be with a monster, Emery. I can’t let you be with someone who could do this. I can’t let you be with me.”

“Ash, you are not a monster! And you must know on some level that I can’t leave you. You must know that this is something that is beyond my control.”

“Emery, don’t say that.”

“Ash, I’m so sorry you have had to carry this.”

“You have to get away from me, Emery. What if … I
mean, he was
my dad
. What if … what if
I’m
him, Emery? What if it’s in me?”

“Ash, you are not him. You never could be.”

He nodded then, ever so slightly, his head in my arms. Dala, as if on cue, knowing Ash needed her, jumped down from the mantel. She sidled up to Ash, licked his hand three times, and curled up in his lap.

“How did you get the key?” he asked quietly, petting the cat.

“In my loop.”

He considered this. “Really?” Ash sat up then, turned to me. “When I looked at it more carefully, it’s not
the
key, although it’s close.”

“What’s
the
key?” I asked, ignoring Dala’s insistent meows as she climbed into my lap, biting at the buttons of my sweater.

“After the accident, my father put the key to my mom’s totaled car on a string and gave it to me. Told me I had to wear it around my neck always. As a reminder for what I had done. What I had caused. He beat me bloody, knocked out three of my bottom teeth the first time he caught me not wearing it, knocked my mouth right into this old Victrola, one of my mom’s antiques.”

That was when I felt my body tense with no warning. I tried to push back the thrum from behind my eyes, but it was too intense. Violent. Hard. My eyelids fluttered. Then I was gone.

I feel and hear the familiar whooshing sounds in my ears, in my head, and I smell the ammonia, strong, so strong. And then I’m there, in the loop
.

I’m with my friend, my little boy, whom I haven’t seen in such a long time. Things look so bright now
.

I remember completely that I need to be back with Ash. I need to be with him, but here I am with him again, as a boy
.

This
is
him
.

I realize that’s why Ash seemed so familiar to me when I first met him. I know him from my loop. He
is
my little boy. Wow
.

Once I realize this, it all seems so simple, so obvious, nearly poetic. The line of his brow, the crooked smile
.

I feel the need to go back, want to give my new wisp of control
a try again, but I’m torn. As always, once I’m here, I can never quite feel the urgency of all the regular, worldly worries
.

And I do desperately want to spend some time with this Ash, this smaller, baby-faced Ash
.

We sit in an old schoolhouse building, a gymnasium maybe, a cafeteria. Yellowish orange light casts through the high-set windows. I can see the dust particles floating in the streams of sunshine that fall across the wooden plank floor
.

He sits cross-legged across from me. Dala sits in his lap. I’m surprised, pleased to see Dala here
. I brought her,
I think for a second, but here in the loop, it doesn’t seem like such a big deal
.

Boy Ash looks up from the cat and smiles at me. The same crooked smile that I love in the other time, my real time. I smile back
.

“Can you dance?” he says
.

“I can,” I answer enthusiastically, as if it’s a perfectly normal conversation, a perfectly normal request, and, well, for this time, for this loop, it feels like it is
.

So I stand up then and stretch. I feel good … energetic. My boy puts some music on, although I don’t see him get up. Beethoven’s Fifth plays over the loudspeakers of the gym. And I begin to dance. First, I warm up with the normal stuff—pliés, relevés, chassés—but soon I’m jumping and jetéing, and really getting into it
.

It feels great. And Ash, the boy Ash, he clasps and holds his hands under his chin, watching, grinning, occasionally clapping at a particularly skilled combination
.

I don’t usually have this much coordination here,
I remind
myself. I try to snap my fingers then, and I can’t. Things are better, but I’m still clumsy, not really myself
.

I try again to bring my thumb and middle finger together, to press them together, pushing them against each other to hear that inevitable
snap!
But I can’t do it. I can’t make my movements fine enough. My hands move like they are in mittens, like they are some kind of malformed claws
.

This is odd,
I think, and it is then that I start to see the rainbow of colors around Boy Ash’s face, not just in my peripheral vision but around him, a bit like a Catholic saint halo from the old Greek or Russian Orthodox paintings, a bit like a burst of light or a firecracker right behind his head
.

“I’m going,” I say
.

“I know,” he answers
.

“Ash,” I say
.

“Ash,” he says with a smile, as if to say “yes.”

And I’m sucked back, the whooshing sound filling my ears again, my eyes, my brain
.

I awoke slowly in Ash’s arms. I first became aware of his humming. He hummed the theme to
SpongeBob SquarePants
, and I felt it first, then heard it. And then I felt his hand on my cheek, my forehead, a finger tracing my lips.

He sat with me draped across his lap, my head cradled next to his chest. I could hear the beat of his heart, and it sounded fast. It sounded worried.

And that was when I realized that it wasn’t his. It was mine. And I needed air. I needed air. I—

And I had to take a gulp of air because coming back had been more difficult than I had expected, more difficult than usual. My eyes popped open.

“You’re okay,” he said. But he sounded alarmed. “You
weren’t breathing for a second. I was almost going to start CPR.”

We were sitting on the floor right in front of the fireplace. “I’m okay?”

“You’re okay,” he answered, but he got up and filled a glass of water and brought it back for me, and I could see his hand shaking a bit. His jaw was clenched tight. “Drink,” he ordered. “Let me take your pulse.”

I let him. “It’s getting worse. But you were there, as a boy,” I said.

He ignored me. He was rubbing his chin, thinking, counting the pulses in my wrist. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” Ash began, his voice quivering a bit. “I don’t even know what to make of this, Emery, but unless I’m losing it, unless I’m really … just …” He dropped my wrist then, obviously satisfied that I was okay for the moment.

“What?” I said, standing up, taking a few wobbly steps to the kitchen table, Ash at my elbow. “What is it?” I tried to keep my cool. “What happened?”

Ash walked to the west window, looked out at the dark night. He shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. He took a few steps back toward me. And he steadied himself with a hand on the table, rubbing his stubble with the other hand. “Emery, you left.”

“I left?”

He nodded. The color had drained from his face.

“I always leave, Ash.”

“No, Emery. You really left. I was holding you, waiting for the loop to be done. You had stopped seizing. You were still, and then you disappeared. You disappeared, for Christ’s sake!”

“What?”

“You just dissipated, like faded into static or something. I could feel you getting less and less concrete, and then you were gone. It only lasted a moment or two. But I’m not crazy, Emery. You were gone. I’m not crazy.”

“I was gone?” I couldn’t quite take this in, and that was saying something. I, who had had years of digesting time travel, could not quite digest this hiccup. This was different, unexpected—but not totally unbelievable.

“I was gone,” I repeated, and then I recalled how I had danced, really danced in the loop, how I had had control of my limbs, my entire body, my
hands
a bit even. I had really, actually, physically been there.

“The cat. Oh my God, Dala. She came with me. Where did—” I stood up on wobbly legs and clicked my tongue, but I knew.

“She left with you,” Ash said.

“She didn’t come back,” I said, plopping back down at the table. “I didn’t bring her back. Is she okay? Do you think that she’s—”

“Emery, I’m sure she’s fine.”

“But my poor little kitten. I—”

“Emery, you’ve got to focus on the bigger picture. Don’t
worry about the cat. You nearly died.” Ash’s voice broke over that last word, and it brought me back to the gravity of this situation.

“How did I come back?” I asked, hungry for this new knowledge, how this fit in with all the other pieces, what it could mean for my control, what it could mean for this feeling I had. We were getting closer. I knew it. We were getting closer to … the truth. The end?

“You came back just as you had gone. I could feel the weight of you before I could actually see you, and then you weren’t quite solid right away, and then … then you were here.” Ash flopped into a kitchen chair and put his face in his hands, shaking his head. “Of course, whether your heart stopped or not, I don’t know. But you came back and you didn’t breathe! I counted three seconds, three slow seconds, and you didn’t breathe!” He was yelling now. He was frantic.

I didn’t know what to say. The tears welled in my eyes. I didn’t want to do this to him. And Dala, poor Dala. But Boy Ash would take care of her. He would.

Ash continued. “It’s not that I didn’t believe you before, Emery. I did.”

“I know,” I said, reaching toward him, placing a hand in his hair. He looked up and grabbed my hand. He placed it onto his heart. It was racing.

“It’s just that I didn’t expect it. I didn’t expect—”

“You didn’t expect me to disappear like a ghost?” I laughed, trying to lighten the moment.

“No, that’s not it,” he said. “I didn’t expect to feel so utterly helpless, so devastated at the thought of you not coming back. I was scared, Em. I was scared that this was it for us. That you were gone.”

“I’m not gone,” I told him, and he pulled me into his lap. “I’m right here, and we will have lots of time, Ash. We are going to figure this out.”

“It wasn’t just that I thought you were gone from me; it was the thought that this was it for us, and I never took the chance to tell you what you mean to me.” He avoided my eyes then, and I saw tears forming in his as he blinked, looking down at our intertwined hands.

I placed one shaky hand on his chin and lifted his eyes up to mine.

“I’m fine,” I said. I held his beautiful hazel gaze. And, in true Ash form, he did not give in, he did not cry. He held it together for me. He placed a hand on my neck then, and he kissed me softly, tenderly on the lips. I placed my hand on his stubbly cheek and leaned my head into his chest.

“I know how you feel about me, Ash. You don’t have to tell me. You show me every day.” I took a deep breath, slowed my breathing down, tried to calm my body. “It’s the same way I feel about you.”

He seemed to consider this for a moment. “We have to leave Dala Cabin,” he said into the quiet of the room, staring into the dying embers of the fire. “We have to run.”

“I know,” I said, and sighed, thinking of my adventure on
the bus. “When you were gone, I might … maybe … have been followed while I was in Charlevoix.”

Ash’s face turned dark. “By who?”

“A man.” I watched his jaw clench. “I’m sure he was sent by Dad. But I may have just imagined the whole thing. I was upset—”

“We’ll have to leave. Tomorrow.”

I didn’t want to leave Dala Cabin. This had been our home. Our haven. But I knew it was for the best.

Through the thin shades on the east window, the sweep of the lighthouse beam shone through the window, and Ash got up from the table then, picking me up with him.

He laid me gently on the bed, and I kept my arms around his neck. I pulled him down close to me, and I kissed him.

But he stopped, taking both my hands in his. He sat down next to me on the bed. “We can wait,” he said.

I nodded and met his eyes. “Okay,” I answered, relieved. I had had enough firsts for tonight.

“It’s a minor detail. But no more pretending, no more chivalry.” He kicked off his boots then, stripped down to his long johns. I smiled at him. He climbed in next to me, and he threw the quilt over both of us.

It had been a long day, and all the pretense that had stood between us had fallen away. There was no need for it now. He pulled me close to him, wrapped me into his body, and held me there, his body warm. It felt like home.

He hummed a tune for a few seconds, the theme song to
SpongeBob
, and I chuckled.

“So I’m there, as a boy?”

“Yes,” I said.

He seemed to consider this. “I reckon that I would remember meeting you, knowing the force that was Emery Land, whether I was five or fifty,” he said. “I don’t remember it.”

“And why would you have given me the key, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” he answered. He stroked my hair, nuzzled my neck. “Tomorrow we’ll make a plan and pack.”

“Tomorrow.” I hummed a little bit more of his song, and then I listened as Ash’s breathing grew slow and deep.

The beam of the lighthouse came every few seconds, the rhythm of his breathing, the ticking of the old-fashioned windup bedside clock, and then the shining light. The presence, then quick absence, of the light played tricks on my eyes, and I could see Ash clearly in the beam in an instant, sleeping soundly, a faint smile curled onto his lips. Then, as the light disappeared, so did all visual traces of him. Only blackness was left. I knew it was just my eyes, that he was still there, but I scooted closer to him, held on more tightly. I fell into the pattern of his breathing. I buried my face in his collarbone, kissed his neck.

We were together. I felt that flutter, deep in my center, deep in my being. For a moment, only a moment, I felt that
unmistakable certainty, that unabashed optimistic sense that, yes, everything could and would turn out okay.