Rewind (2 page)
Authors: Peter Lerangis
Lianna looked at him. “Everything?”
No.
Not everything.
Edgar’s teasing, yes. The angle of the sun and the smell of the air. The weight of the net. The incredible frustration at Edgar.
After that, the dream always became muddy. Fragmented.
Even the fight was a blur.
The fight that had started it all.
I was a hothead. I couldn’t control myself back then.
“I can’t remember the fight,” Adam said, “or the accident.”
Lianna exhaled. “You’re lucky. I wish I could forget them.”
After the accident, Lianna had told him what happened. She’d told the TV stations and newspapers, too. Adam had saved all the articles. Over the years, he’d read them a thousand times, trying to spark a memory. Trying to free what he’d blocked.
The ice broke. Edgar fell in. The crack spread toward me. I tried to run away, but I wasn’t fast enough. Lianna reached for us both. Edgar was flailing and almost pulled her in. But I was still. Unconscious. So she pulled me out and ran to get help. The ambulance came and took Edgar and me to the hospital. By then, Edgar was already…
Lianna was looking at him with concern. “You don’t still blame yourself, do you?”
“I shouldn’t have been so mad at him,” Adam replied.
“Adam, we all get mad. That doesn’t make us murderers.”
Don’t ask her. Don’t bring it up
—
The words flew out of Adam’s mouth. “Did I hit him, Lianna? Is that where the bump on his head came from?”
Lianna’s face darkened. “That was a
rumor
, Adam. Forget it. It’s not worth your time.”
“What exactly did I do? Did I even
try
to save him—?”
“
Adam, please!
You think it’s easy for me to talk about this? Be
grateful
you don’t remember.”
She’s not saying I didn’t do it.
They were in front of Lianna’s house now. She turned sharply up her driveway.
Adam squeezed his brakes and turned. His bike slipped out from under him. He put out his leg to stop a fall.
The backpack, which he’d hooked over his laser pack, slipped off his shoulder. It fell to the street.
Thud.
The sound was sharp, metallic.
Lianna turned. “Klutz,” she said with a wry smile.
Before Adam could react, she glided over and lifted the pack off the street. Balancing it on her handlebars, she unzipped it and reached in.
She pulled out a small videocamera.
Great. It had to be something expensive.
“Don’t fool with it,” Adam said.
But Lianna was already flicking buttons. Peering through the viewfinder. The red indicator light beamed above the lens.
“No image,” Lianna said, handing the camera back. “You busted it.”
“The owner’s going to sue me.”
“He’ll be happy someone found it.” Lianna yawned. “Don’t sweat it, Adam. You worry too much.”
As she pedaled up her driveway, Adam lifted the viewfinder to his eye.
Now the camera was working. Sort of. It was glowing with a blurry image of the street.
He adjusted the focus. The image sharpened, but the street looked totally washed out. The cars, trees, houses— everything was blanketed in white, as if it had snowed.
Maybe it can be repaired.
Adam dropped the videocamera in the backpack, put both packs around his shoulders, and set off down the street.
He’d deal with it tomorrow.
Did he see?
He must have.
They why—?
“R
ISE AND SHINE!”
Dad.
Adam’s eyes blinked open.
He was awake.
The last images of his dream still clung to his consciousness.
The
dream.
It had started the same as always. The walk to the lake. The net. The start of practice.
But this time, it hadn’t gotten fuzzy. He had seen what happened to Edgar. And it wasn’t the way he’d thought it had been. It was worse. Much worse.
Hold on to it. HOLD ON…
Too late.
Adam sat up, groggy and mush-mouthed. As he yawned, his head throbbed. The smell of fried eggs wafting up from the kitchen only made him feel worse.
As his eyes adjusted to the light, the sight of the backpack startled him, black and unfamiliar on his desk. Through an open zipper, the videocamera lens glinted dully at him. Watching.
Adam staggered to the desk. He removed the camera and set it down, facing the wall.
A thick, sealed manila envelope fell out from the backpack onto his desk. Adam picked it up and turned it over.
No address.
He examined the backpack for tags. Nothing.
He tilted the videocamera, hoping to see some ID on it.
Click.
The red indicator light blinked on.
Must have jolted it.
He held the camera up and peered through the viewfinder. The dark, shadowy confines of his closet filled the frame, along with a string of tiny glowing indicators Adam noticed 7:48 A.M. and January 13. Right on the nose.
“Adam?” his dad called from downstairs. “Are you up?”
“Coming!” He swung the videocamera around, sweeping it across his room.
His eyes focused on a chest of drawers in the corner—his old one, which his mom had thrown out last year. Or so she’d claimed.
He smiled.
When did she sneak that in here?
Adam lowered the camera.
The chest was gone.
“What the—?”
Quickly he looked through the viewfinder again.
The chest was back.
He panned the camera around the room, slowly.
A paperback copy of
Mossflower
was on the bed. He hadn’t seen it in ages.
A hockey uniform lay on the floor, identical to the one he’d worn the day of the accident.
A spiral notebook was next to it— marked
ADAM SARNO,
5-208.
Grade 5. Room 208.
All my old stuff.
In my old room.
A dream. He had to be dreaming.
Adam set the camera down. He rubbed his eyes, then cast a long, level glance around the room.
Everything was normal. No dresser. No uniform.
He pinched himself. Hard enough to hurt.
Okay, you are officially awake. Do not freak. Look through the videocamera again. Everything will be normal. Then you can go eat breakfast.
He swallowed. Lifted. Looked.
“Adam, you’re going to be late for school!” his dad’s voice boomed out.
Adam opened his mouth to reply, but no sound came out.
My old pajamas…the Monopoly game, with the cover still intact…the radio I threw out last year…
WHAT IS GOING ON?
His eye shot down to the bottom of the frame. To the electronic indicators.
The correct time. The correct month and day.
But Adam stared at the last numeral. The year.
He clicked the
RESET
button. He tried to change the setting.
Nothing happened.
The
YEAR
setting was stuck.
Four years earlier.
He doesn’t have much time.
Who?
Adam.
5I thought you meant the other one.
A
DAM RAN DOWN THE
stairs two at a time. He darted past the kitchen.
Please please please let this be a figment of my imagination.
His mom and dad looked up curiously from the morning newspaper.
“Forgot to do some homework,” Adam called out.
He went into the den, pulled a blank video-cassette from a shelf, and tucked it under his shirt.
If it’s not a figment, I want proof.
He bounded back up to his room. Quickly he inserted the tape into the videocamera, pressed
RECORD,
and looked through the viewfinder.
Yes.
The old room filled the frame. The wrong year glowed on the indicator.
He would have it on tape.
Evidence.
“Homework?”
his dad’s voice thundered up from the kitchen. “Adam Sarno, I want an explanation now!”
Adam jumped.
“Coming!” He lowered the camera and set it on his desk. Then he ran for the door.
And the room blipped.
Not a flash of light, exactly. A flash of
something.
A momentary blur of colors. Along with an odd popping sound.
Adam stopped. He looked over his shoulder. The videocamera was angled slightly away from him, pointing to the center of the room. Still on.
Slowly he retraced his steps backward and sideways, closer to the camera’s line of sight.
Blip.
The old hockey uniform materialized on the floor. Under his foot.
He choked back a gasp.
Slowly he lifted his eyes upward.
The videocamera had disappeared. Only the lens remained. It floated in the air, a hovering eye.
Under it was a mess of papers.
Fifth-grade homework.
The Monopoly game,
Mossflower,
the spiral notebook. It was all exactly as he’d seen through the lens.
But he wasn’t looking through the lens anymore.
He was in front of it.
In the room.
In the past.
Trapped.
Panic raced through him. He had to get out.
The lens. Move away from it.
Adam darted to the left. Toward his door.
Blip.
The flash again. The shift in colors. The popping sound.
He was back. His room was exactly the way he’d left it. The old stuff was gone.
The videocamera was intact on his desk. Not just a floating lens.
And Adam’s mind was racing.
Can I control this?
Can I go back and forth?
Am I nuts?
Before he could answer that last question, he stepped in front of the camera again.
Blip.
The flash and the popping noise no longer scared him.
As the past reassembled itself, Adam took a long, hard look around.
He noticed what he’d been too panicked to see before.
The colors, for instance. They were muted, a little too brown. The sounds—a passing car, the hissing of the upstairs shower—were dull, softened.
The light through the window was unusually bright. He looked out.
Snow.
He thought about what he’d seen through the viewfinder last night, outside of Lianna’s house. The bleached-out street.
The camera wasn’t broken at all. I was seeing snow.
He thought back to four years ago. Had it snowed then? He couldn’t remember.
Adam walked across the room. He ran his fingers over the bedsheets. He reached behind his headboard and felt the hardened lumps of chewed bubble gum he’d always put there.
Until Mom made me clean it all off. At age ten.
He turned toward his shelves and saw a book—
Time and Again
by Jack Finney, which he hadn’t seen since he lent it to Lianna in seventh grade.
He reached for it.
His finger made contact. He could feel the texture of the binding as he pulled.
But the book barely budged.
It was as if it were made of some strange new substance—somehow solid but somehow not, a density of air.
He pulled harder. Really yanked. The book teetered toward him.
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
Adam spun around. Behind him, the book fell to the floor.
Dad was charging angrily up the stairs. Adam recognized the heavy footsteps.
But
which
Dad? Past or present?
Whatever. He was in the wrong place for either.
He leaped out of camera range.
Blip.
His room—his current, totally solid room—materialized around him.
Dad of the present charged in. His eyes shot right to the videocamera. “This is your homework?”
“Video class,” Adam blurted out. “I mean, video
project.
Communication arts class.”
“Where’d you get this?” He was heading for the camera now.
“No!” Adam rushed in front of him.
But it was too late.
Dad lifted the camera to his right eye.
And looked through.
Order a file on the father.
Not necessary.
Why?
Because only the boy can see.
“I
T’S BROKEN.”
All day long, Mr. Sarno’s words stayed with Adam.
He didn’t see it. Lianna didn’t see it.
I’m the only one.
Which meant either the camera was defective, or Adam was crazy.
The tape would tell. He was dying to see it.
He kept the videocamera with him in school. It was in the old backpack, stuffed into the bottom of
his
pack. Now, as he pedaled away from school with Lianna and Ripley, he could feel it jabbing against his back.
“I hate surprises,” Lianna remarked.
“You’ll like this one,” Adam said.
“It better be good,” Ripley grumbled. “And quick. I have hockey practice.”
They glided onto Locust Avenue and then swerved up Ripley’s driveway. “Ripley,” Adam said as he dropped his bike in the backyard, “it’ll blow you away.”
If it works.
Adam hadn’t seriously thought about the alternative. But as he climbed the stairs to Ripley’s room, he began shaking.
What if it doesn’t?
Humiliation. His friends would know he was loony.
Stop. Think positive.
If it
did
work, if he’d captured the past on tape, if the camera
was
seeing what happened four years ago…
Saturday. Three o’clock.
The accident.
He would have to go there. Take the video-camera to the lake.
And see.
No. Don’t even think about it.
It would happen again. Before his eyes. No more fragmented visions. No more blocked memories.
Cold, hard images.
He would know. For sure.
And that part scared him the most.