If I Could Turn Back Time (15 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Oh, my God,” I said, and held up the six-pack of Zima from the brown paper bag.

“You asked him for that?” she asked incredulously. “Way to lead him on!”

“No, he asked if I wanted ‘the usual’ and I said yes because I didn’t know what
the usual
was to him, but figured it would be something I
usually
liked, so, whatever, this is what he gave me.”

“Yuck.”

“I know, but what am I supposed to do? Can you return beer? Or whatever this is?”

“Probably not.” She shrugged. “We’ll just deal.” She turned left onto Falls Road and kept going the usual route to the lake. It didn’t really matter what we had to drink, though straight vodka might have been good, as I’d already started the day with that. But the main thing was, no matter how I choked the story out, I just wanted to talk to her about this insane thing that was happening to me.

The radio played one hit after another that would now be featured on a “classics” station, but the DJs kept announcing them as “new hits” rather than “oldies.” I sang along with every word to “Wonderwall” even though it was new and obscure, and Tanya looked at me sideways as if to ask what was wrong with me.

There was no way she’d ever really believe what was actually wrong with me.

But I was going to give it a try.

She parked on Alloway Drive in Potomac Falls, and we took the completely conspicuous brown bag of Zima along the path, past the last house on the left, over the large fallen tree I was always afraid to pass on a horse, and across the small creek that was always there, through rain or drought. Then the world opened up before us, the trees receded, and the lake spread out ahead, not as big as those up north, but still big enough to reflect the sky, clouds, and sun with some glory and solitude.

Most important was the solitude.

We stopped where we always did, on an open bank where we used to ride the horses into and out of the lake and always lost horseshoes in the thick mud. But I was grown up now, or close to it—according to the body I was in—so there were no horses, no swimming, no skating, nothing but some shitty alcoholic drinks and a quiet moment to say something thoroughly unbelievable.

We sat, the earth cool beneath us. I kicked a dead branch out of the way and dug my heels into the mushy lakeside mud, and said, “So. You want to hear something weird?”

“If it’s less weird than you’ve been all day, yes,” she said. “If you’re going to add to the ante, I don’t know.”

I had to laugh. “I’m going to add to the ante.”

“Then I don’t know. Or I hope I don’t know.” She looked me in the eye. “Did you actually do Rusty Schwedan? Because I totally knew you did.”

“No!” I objected too hard and too fast, given the lack of importance that accusation held either way. But still—I didn’t do it! Rusty was her ex-boyfriend and he’d dumped her before she got the chance to get sick of him, so she’d always felt something there was lost. “You seriously think I could have done that without you knowing?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“Well, whatever, it’s just something I heard.” She met my eyes again. “But I guess I didn’t
really
believe it. I mean, Rusty, of all people … that would have been shitty of you.”

“Tanya.” I started out just saying it in the joking manner we’d always had, but then the reality of the situation took me over and I said, “Seriously. Please.”

She looked at me, sobriety registering in her eyes. “You’re really not pregnant, right? I shouldn’t have joked about that earlier. I promise I wouldn’t tell anyone if you were or anything, but that’s not what this is about, is it?”

How clumsy. If I were pregnant, it would have been hard to admit at this point, but of course my truth was much harder than that.

“No,” I said, trying to think of some gentle way to ease into what I needed to say. After all, I was supposed to be the adult here, in some way. I shouldn’t be finding it so hard to talk to a teenager.

But I hesitated, because if she was going to be that potentially upset about a pregnancy, which I’d just shot down, how on earth would she react to my unbelievable story about being a time traveler?

“I’m not pregnant and I haven’t had sex with your ex.”

“Thank God,” she said, fanning her face with her hand, completely oblivious to what I really had to tell her. “I could not take one more fucked-up thing this year, believe me.”

That gave me pause. I hadn’t remembered senior year as being particularly traumatic. “Define
fucked-up
.”

She looked at me. “You know what fucked-up means. Pregnancies, police raids at parties, deaths, ex-boyfriends suddenly coming out as transsexual.” That was Tuck Surjan, I remembered. Tanya’s homecoming date, who had shown up with his six-foot-three frame garbed in a dress nicer than hers. He’d done it as a joke, but she had definitely not found it funny.

No woman wants her date to be prettier than she is.

“I’m not a transsexual,” I said, with the only confidence I’d had all day.

“Good.”

“But.”

“God, no. Is it worse? Not transsexual but gay? Please don’t tell me you’re in love with me.” Honestly, she actually looked serious. “Whatever you do, don’t make a pass at me.…”

It cracked me up inside. That was so Tanya. Trying to anticipate and evade any and every possible uncomfortable situation that might be heading her way. Much better, and easier, for her to say,
Don’t even try to tell me you’re in love with me
, than to say,
Don’t ever try to kiss me again, ew, I’m not into you!

“But I’m in love with you,” I said to her, my face so straight the corners of my mouth hurt.

“You are not—” She stopped and scrutinized me. “I see those dimples. You can’t lie, you suck at it, so I know you’re not in love with me. I’ll cry about it later. Meanwhile, what the fuck is the deal? Why did we have to get a six-pack of fucking Zima and come here, of all places, on the night before the last day of school? You’re freaking me out.”

This was not the Tanya of the future, I have to say. I didn’t remember that she had so much
shrillness
inside of her. In the future she was as calm and unflappable as could be, always wise, ready with good advice.

That
was the Tanya I needed to talk to.

Right now it looked like I’d have to wait twenty years for her. And if I spent the next twenty years like this I’d probably end up in the loony bin.

I thought about that for a moment. What was the worst-case scenario? Never returning to my real
now
? In some ways that would seem like a blessing—financially, certainly, with my foreknowledge of where to invest—but I was already doing extremely well. For me, waiting twenty years would be biding my time. Learning the same lessons again, reliving deaths in horrible detail. All to reach the point where I could finally become thirty-eight, so I could move forward in my life.

To me, that was a nightmare.

“Speak up,” Tanya said.

“Well,” I began, “it’s almost as unbelievable as me being in love with you.
Which I’m not
. So I need you to not totally mock me for this or dismiss it out of hand, even though it seems unbelievable.”

She was frowning. If I were to guess, I’d say she was probably close to shaking it out of me. “What are you getting at?”

“You’re my best friend,” I said, with a whole lot more history under my belt than she could ever believe. “You will be for the rest of my life, as far as I can tell.”

“Okay…?”

Wow, this was so much easier in theory than in practice. There was no way she was going to believe me about this, when she already needed convincing about minor sexual escapades that happened—or didn’t—a hundred years ago.

“Something really weird is happening to me.”

Her shoulders lowered with exasperation. “You’re killing me here. Can you just get to the point?”

“Remember when we went to that psychic in Georgetown and she seemed to know all that stuff about us? And we couldn’t explain why, but we knew it was real?”

“Vaguely.”

We
had
enjoyed a lot of beers that night at Crazy Horse. In fact, it’s possible that’s why, in memory, I thought the accuracy had been so uncanny.

“Okay, well, my point is that we both know that unexplainable phenomenon can and
does
happen. All the time.”

“I guess.”

“So what if I told you that I have been to the future? That I’m coming from the future right now?”

She screwed up her face and studied me for a very tense moment before cracking up. “Holy shit, you almost had me. I was trying to imagine telling your mom you’d popped your clutch and had to be taken to St. Elizabeth’s. I mean I was right there, mentally, really, to have you committed. Good one, Raim. So now that you’ve broken the ice, what did you
really
want to talk about?”

Not the response I’d been expecting. I hadn’t even gotten my toes wet in the truth and she’d drowned me. This was a very clear sign that I had to shut up about it. Now.

I made a show of sighing, and took a swig of Zima. This stuff was even worse than I remembered. Like flat Sprite. I hated it. “All right, I haven’t exactly
been
to the future, but I had a premonitory dream last night. And you were there.”

“Yeah? If I was there, I guess that means I wasn’t dead. So that’s a good sign right there.”

“No, Tanya. You were happy. You were married and had two kids and you were happy.”

“Really?” Her skeptical face went a little pink with pleasure. Everyone liked to believe good stuff was coming for them. “Did I marry Kenny? I did, right?”

Had I said yes, her skepticism would have dissolved. She would have jumped right on board with believing me. But of course the answer wasn’t yes and I didn’t want her to spend her life imagining she was supposed to have married some guy who never knew who she was. “No. Totally different guy. You don’t even know him yet.” It occurred to me that I could give her some valuable hope here. “So next time you’re feeling brokenhearted? Forget it. The real guy, the one you love enough to marry, is still out there waiting for you.”

Her face fell. She’d been counting on Kenny. She had a “psychic feeling” that he was
The One,
and for most of high school she’d maneuvered around the halls and keg parties, looking for the opportunity to bring her fate to fruition. I measured my next words very carefully, knowing that, even though she probably shouldn’t, she was likely to take them very seriously. “You wouldn’t trade that guy or those girls for anything in the world. You’ll be so glad you waited. Trust me.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She looked at me with a challenge in her eye. A challenge
and
a question. And I knew her well enough to know the question was stronger. “What are their names?”

“You’ll find out!”

She sighed. “You’re just messing with me.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay, then, what did I do for a living?”

I hesitated. She was a paralegal who ended up marrying her boss; her husband was a criminal attorney. But I didn’t want to tell her
any
of that because what if, for some reason, in this surreality she was on a different path? I didn’t want to influence her unduly. Set her up for a self-fulfilling prophecy that wasn’t really her own destiny.

“I don’t know
all
the details,” I ended up saying. “Come on. It would have been a pretty boring dream if we sat around talking about our jobs, wouldn’t it?”

“Not if my job was movie star.”

“If I knew for sure you were going to be a movie star, I’d be a lot nicer to you.”

“Hmm. That’s probably true.”

A few seconds passed, and she tentatively asked, “Was there anything else? In the dream, I mean. About me?”

I could have spent days telling her about her future. “Not really.” I shrugged. “We were, like, in our thirties. All I know is that you were really, really happy. The details are kind of foggy now. You know how dreams are.…”

She nodded. “But that’s good to hear, you know?”

“Oh, definitely. The future’s bright!”

Apart from some horrifying historical moments, political scandals, market catastrophes, and, for each of us, our fair share of heartache as well as happiness. But there was no need to point that out. Everyone knows life isn’t always great and fair. Sometimes it’s enough to just have faith that it’s going to get better, that the sun
will
come out again.

We clinked bottles and finished, then put the two empties back into the six-pack.

“I hate that stuff,” I said.

“Me too.”

“It smells like”—I sniffed it—“antiseptic. The hospital.” I felt a gag reflex tighten my throat.

“Huh?” She frowned and sniffed her bottle. “I think it’s like 7Up. It’s good with a Jolly Rancher in it.”

“Ugh. You really
are
eighteen, aren’t you?”

“Yeah…? So are you.”

My face went hot. “Sorry. Dream joke.”

“Ohhh.”

“And I don’t remember making out with Jer Norton.”

“I’m not surprised.” She rolled her eyes, like suddenly she was the superior one. “That night I don’t think you even remembered your own
name
.”

Usually I didn’t drink that much. I got full or dizzy before I could ever have enough to black out. But there
had
been some occasions around graduation where the partying was hard. There was no denying it. Apparently the results were as unfortunate as I might have feared.

It just made me feel funny to know I had cheated on Brendan and didn’t even remember it. Cheating was something that really bugged me. It always had. I never did it (usually) and, to my knowledge, no one ever did it to me.

In fact, that’s why I’d actually broken up with Brendan. There had been moments of jealousy, of course, but the bottom line was that I thought it was too constraining for us to go from being high school sweethearts to being married forever, but I wasn’t going to step out on him to experience other people, so there seemed like there was no choice but to end it and move on.