Because You Exist (6 page)

Chapter 10

Here’s the thing about time travel—it always occurs at the most inconvenient of times. I mean it doesn’t happen while you’re having an awkward conversation with Jamie from yearbook who no doubt has made a doll from your very own hair, but you have to be nice to her because if you don’t that picture of you with the booger hanging out of your nose will somehow make it in. It doesn’t happen when your uncle makes you go to dinner with Bob Flemming, a big booster club supporter, who insists on bringing his bimbo girlfriends to dinner who treat you like a kid despite only being a few years older than you. And it doesn’t happen when your girlfriend keeps trying to take advantage of you and your equipment just won’t work. No, despite the one time it saved me from Shakespeare, who I just don’t get why people go nutso over, time travel pretty much comes when you least expect or want it.

The second time I felt the shift coming on was during football practice a few days after pretending to know anything about time travel at the Shell gas station. I almost didn’t make it to the bathroom in time before completely blacking out. I had gotten sacked in practice, and it took awhile to feel the effects of the shift work its way through the pain of getting my ass handed to me because my o-line couldn’t block worth a crap. Stumbling through a chorus of  “stop being a baby,” and “Betty White could take hits better than you,” I made it into the locker room.

When I came to, the silence let me know I was once again in a future I hoped would never come into existence. I didn’t waste time trying to convince myself it was all a dream. There was no going back to that. I scrambled to my feet and headed into the main building to look for Josephine. I checked and re-checked every girl’s bathroom, not above nor too frantic to note that the girls’ bathroom didn’t have couches and air fresheners as rumored.

When I made my way to the front of the building, I found Josephine waiting for me, and she didn’t exactly look thrilled.

“What have you been?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe searching for you.”

Josephine threw up her hands and looked around. “Isn’t this where we ran into each other the last time?”

“You said you went into a bathroom to avoid people knowing you were going all wonky. More wonky than usual that is. I looked for you there.”

“You spent the last twenty minutes perving around girls’ bathrooms?” she asked, tugging on the zipper of her hoodie, which was clearly not going up any further.

“Oh, God. I didn’t know we took the time to set a meeting place,” I said with a shake of my head.

“Well, I guess now we have.”

“Fine,” I spat.

“Fine.”

What we found outside of the school wasn’t much different than the last time we shifted. Same old pile of I Can’t Believe This Happened rubble. We didn’t find Mr. Ambiguous either. Did I want answers? Sure. But part of me needed to find my own place in this new world before I could decide who or what to trust.

Compared to our first tour of the future, our second tour was starting off as a bust. It was hot, much too hot for the fall of our other present—the present where I was getting ready for what was going to be a tough game against Kennedy High. Maybe it wasn’t fall in this present? Despite the heat, Josephine kept her hoodie zipped up.

I chuckled to myself.

“Want to share what’s so amusing? We’ve been walking around this prophetic war zone for like two hours now, and even I can’t walk around that long moping without getting a little antsy.”

Was it weird to say that if this girl would maybe shed her black clothing and let me actually see her face for more than five minutes at a time, I might actually think she was pretty funny?  I might actually like her.

“You do realize if you took the hoodie off you might not sweat to death,” I said, looking at her over my shoulder. We had been walking around in circles for two hours, searching for some clue as to what happened to our city, and what we were supposed to do about it. So far, all we had seen was a bunch of burned cars, busted windows, and dead people. Lots of dead people. Rotting bodies sitting in cars. Rotting bodies curled up in alleyways. Rotting bodies decaying casually in the patio chairs of the Starbucks.

No more Starbucks Mondays for me.

“I’m not hot,” Josephine replied, tugging self-consciously on the hem of her hoodie.

“Your red cheeks and sweat mustache would say otherwise,” I said, stopping my Farewell Citizens of Virginia Beach Tour to look at her completely. Nothing had changed in her appearance since our first encounter with the exception of her track pants. She must have been in the middle of practice too.

“Nice pants by the way. I love your school spirit,” I said with a smirk. I knew she hated that her participation in track mandated she wear Shepherd High clothing. Not exactly Ms. School Spirit, something about the purple and gold clashing with her love of black clothing.

“Wow. You really have a way with the ladies,” she said, wiping a hand against her upper lip.

“I do. I really do,” I said with a grin. I sat myself on a car whose hood was half crushed in. I didn’t stare too long at the hood before sitting down. The dent was about the size of a body. I didn’t want to know how the body got there, or how it disappeared.

“You are full of crap,” Josephine said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

“Um. Not really. I’ve had a girlfriend for like two years now. And if I wasn’t dating Jenna, I could get some cheerleader or other willing Shepherd female to take her place. Maybe it’s arrogant of me to say that, but the truth is the truth.”

“Just because you could get some mindless girl to screw you in the back of your Ford doesn’t mean you have a way with women. It just means you happen to be good-looking, and those girls have a low self-esteem,” she replied, kicking at the dirt.

I placed my feet against the bumper and leaned my arms against my knees. “Those girls love me.”

“Oh. Wow. You don’t know a thing about love. There’s a difference between blind, stupid devotion and love.”

“I love Jenna.” There was no longer any note of amusement or teasing in my voice. It was the one truth I believed in with any longevity.

“You sure about that?”

She was back to pissing me off.

“Yeah,” I gruffed, “I’m sure about that.”

“What kind of things do you two talk about?” she asked, taking a step closer to me.

“I don’t know. Stuff. But we talk all the time.”

“What’s one thing she doesn’t like about you?”

“She loves me, Josephine. We don’t spend our time together talking about what we don’t like about each other.”

“But there are things you don’t like about her right?” she continued.

“What’s your point?” Besides finding reasons to convince me time and time again why my nickname for her wasn’t entirely undeserved.

“Truly loving someone is loving all of them. This includes all the things that drive you crazy about them. Because if you sit there and think Jenna Maples is perfect you don’t know her at all. No one is perfect. You could very well love the idea of her.”

“Am I supposed to understand anything you’re talking about? Because according to you, I can only love my girlfriend if I find her as annoying as hell. If we’re going by that I must be head over heels in love with you. I’ll break up with Jenna as soon as we get back. I just have to be with you.”

Josephine rolled her eyes. “Hilarious. I’m just saying I see it happen all the time. I spend a lot of time watching people, Logan. I see people get together all the time just because they need something from the other person, not because they really want to know them.”

“Well, that’s not how it is with me and Jenna,” I said, pushing myself off the car and walking away from Josephine.

I could hear her jogging to catch up with me. For some reason, her words really got under my skin. I didn’t like how she was always was assuming she knew everything about me and my life. I was frustrated that we seemed to be getting nowhere. What was the point of this shifting? Was it a big F U from whoever was in charge of this—a sign we wouldn’t be able to change anything? Were we just going to have to wait for it all to occur, not being able to tell a single soul?

Why didn’t I tell Jenna? I wasn’t given a rule book. As far as I knew nothing would happen if I told her with the exception of her thinking I had taken one too many hits to the head during football.

“I’m sorry, Logan,” Josephine called to me.

I kept walking. I wanted to be back in my own world, the world where I could be with my girlfriend and go on ignoring the girl behind me.

“Logan. Calm on, don’t get all pissy on me.”

I turned on her. “How would you know anything about love? I don’t see the boys lining up for you.” Though they might if the rumors of her wild sexual appetite continued.

Josephine looked down at the ground for a second before looking back up at me. She tugged once again on her hoodie’s zipper. “No. I don’t have boys fighting over the chance to take me to the big game. No one at our stupid school wants to know me. They’re happy with me being Scary Carrie. It’s what they need from me. But if I ever do fall in love, I’ll want it to be with someone who doesn’t need me to be something for them. That’s all I’m saying.”

I took a deep breath. I created the Scary Carrie persona, and I wondered if I had damned Josephine as a result. “Can we just drop this? I’m sorry for snapping. It’s just a little frustrating feeling so useless out here.”

Josephine nodded. “Sure. We can drop this. Just some friendly advice though...if you want to really know your girlfriend talk about real things—menstrual cramps, bowel movements...”

I opened my mouth to go off on Josephine when she started laughing. “Not funny,” I muttered.

“Oh, come on. It is. Can you imagine yourself going to the store to buy Jenna some tampons?”

I could feel my face go red at the very thought which only made Josephine laugh harder. “Shut up,” I replied, unable to stop from laughing a little myself.

We walked on in a comfortable silence after that. I was getting sick of looking at the destruction that surrounded us. Sometime during our walk Josephine pushed up the sleeves of her hoodie. It was a start.

“Josephine?” I asked after another half hour of walking around without a purpose.

“Hmmm?”

“What the hell are we supposed to be doing here?”

Josephine spun slowly in a circle, taking in the damage. We had circled back around to Jenna’s neighborhood. I knew I wouldn’t ever go back into that house. I didn’t need to see those images ever again; those images of loss were burned into my eyes. For some reason, I still needed to be near Jenna in any way I could be. If Josephine noticed the direction I took us in she didn’t say anything.

“Not sure. I keep waiting for something to happen. Maybe we were supposed to stay with Mr. Ambiguous. Maybe he was telling us the truth about being our orientation leader.”

“He just didn’t feel right to me.”

“Me either.”

“He can’t lie,” said a voice that didn’t belong to either Josephine or me. I spun around to see where the voice had come from. It had a low, guttural sound to it that caused my stomach to drop. I heard Josephine gasp before I found the source of the voice.

Before us stood a man, or what was left of a man. He didn’t look a thing like Mr. Ambiguous. No clean cut look or perfectly tailored suit—this man looked like the hell that surrounded him. He was covered in filth and sweat. His longish hair lay matted against his neck, and you could tell it had been awhile since he saw a shower. He wore a pair of torn jeans and a ratty t-shirt. And he smelled, not like the rotting body of my dead girlfriend but almost as bad. None of this was what was most disturbing about his appearance. His arms shared the sores visible on the other victims of whatever event had nearly destroyed the world, but crusted over—his body still intent on healing itself. His face was marked by three long slashes across his left cheek. The cuts were deep, and I wondered how long it would be until they became infected. On top of his head he wore a top hat—an actual top hat like he ransacked Lincoln’s closest.

This is what it looked like to be a survivor. I reached behind me and grabbed Josephine’s hand. She didn’t protest.

The man grinned as he caught sight of Josephine. Mr. Ambiguous attempted to hold his emotions in check. The man in front of us didn’t give a damn. The way his eyes traveled across Josephine made it clear he liked what he saw. I pulled her so she was slightly behind me. It was this movement that made the man look back to me.

“One light. One dark. One light. One dark. One conductor. One along for the ride,” the man began to mumble as he walked back and forth in front of us. Every so often he would stop and stare at Josephine with a grin.

I felt her shudder. She cleared her throat. “What are you talking about?”

“Maybe we should just go,” I replied.

“We need answers, Logan.”

The man stopped pacing and took a step towards us. I clenched my fist in response. My heart was pounding so fast I thought I would pass out. “I have answers,” he whispered, his eyes lighting up with excitement.