Time After Time (23 page)

I feel something in me snap.

“What
I
want?” I yell back at her. “What do you mean what
I
want? When is this ever about what I want? I don’t have anything—not one single thing—that
I
want. Don’t you get it?” In my mind’s eye I see Anna, standing in her driveway, smiling up at this guy who isn’t me, and I feel the blood coursing hot through my veins.

“See, I get to have this tiny little taste of all these incredible things but I don’t get to
keep
any of them. I get to meet you and be part of your life, and I get to know your family and your friends, but I don’t get to hold on to any of it. I can’t stay here. This isn’t my home. And every time I have go to back, it kills me. Every. Single. Time. And it always will.”

“Bennett…” Anna steps back onto the sidewalk and pushes me away from the edge.

“No, wait. It gets even better.” I let out a sarcastic laugh and bring my hand to my chest. “I finally find something that makes me feel good about this thing I can do. I figure out how to
save
people’s lives. I get to give a few deserving people a second chance. And that feels really incredible for, like, twenty minutes…right up until the second it starts beating the shit out of me.”

I let out another laugh. “Oh wait, and here’s the best part. The more good things I do, the more I lose the one thing I promised you I wouldn’t lose—control. It’s like this infinite, totally screwed up loop,” I say, spinning my finger in the air.

Anna takes a deep breath and presses her lips tightly together. She’s crying even harder now, which should make me feel horrible but for some reason doesn’t.

“Check it out,” I say, bringing my hand to my chest. “I don’t get to have what I want. Not ever. Because the one thing I want is a normal life. I don’t want to be special and different, I just want to wake up and go to school and do homework and ride my skateboard in the park with my friends. I want my dad to be proud of me because I got an A on some stupid paper, not because I saved some kids’ lives. I want to stare out a window and think about how cool it would be to be able to travel back in time, but I don’t want to actually be able to
do
it. And I want to be in love with a girl I can see every day, not every three weeks.”

I’ve been gesturing wildly with my hands but now that I’m done ranting, I don’t know what to do with them. I run my fingers through my hair.

“I have to go. I’m sorry.” I head back toward the coffee shop, but before I can reach the door, I feel Anna’s grasp, tight on my arm.

“Bennett, I’m sorry…I didn’t mean—”

“What? Didn’t mean to talk me into all of this?” The words just slip out, even though I know they’re not true, and I turn around in time to see her face fall. That should be enough to stop me from talking, but it isn’t. “If you hadn’t made me help Emma, I never would have known what I could do. I could have spent the rest of my life going to concerts and climbing rocks in exotic locations, never caring that I was being selfish with my ability, because you know what, it’s
mine
. Not yours. Not my dad’s. Mine.” I slap my chest.

“I know that…I never meant…”

“I structured my life around a set of rules, and then I broke them for
you
. And for what? So I could be a better person?” I huff in exasperation. “How is my life better because a stranger never broke his leg and five people are alive who probably shouldn’t be?”

“What you did was
really
good. And if you were a normal person, we never would have met.”

“Yeah…well I think that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

She pulls away and looks at me. “You don’t really mean that, do you?”

As hard as it is to do, I nod.

Tears are streaming down her face and I can’t look at her. I need to get away from here.

“I need to think, Anna. You need to think.”

“I don’t need to think.”

“Well you should, because this is crazy.” I remember the words Mr. Greene said to me at the meet the other day.
This
is ridiculous. Do you really think you can keep this up?
“Come on, what were we thinking? We can’t do this forever.”

She wipes her face dry and stares at me.

“I’m going to go back to my real life for a while, okay? I’ll come back at Christmas,” I say, as if this will make it better. “Your dad’s going to be okay,” I say, as if this justifies my leaving.

She finds her voice, but it’s low and quiet and I have to strain to hear her. “Please stay.”

Before she can say another word, I take two steps back until I feel the corner of the building behind me, and without even caring who might be watching, I close my eyes and disappear.

I spent the whole drive over here psyching myself up for my performance, but once I walked through Megan’s front door it all sort of clicked on its own. It could have been the loud music or the underlying buzz of conversation that carried from one packed room to the next, but whatever it was, I was grateful. I stood in the entryway, looked around, and sucked in the intoxicating scent of holiday cheer and out-of-town parents. I reminded myself that I didn’t have to genuinely enjoy being at this party; I just had to play the part.

Now I’m all smiles and backslaps, quick one-liners and snappy comebacks, acting so out of character of late that when Sam sees me, he shoots me this
Who the hell
are
you right now
look. I may suck as a superhero, but as it turns out, I’m a fairly decent actor.

“You’re certainly chipper tonight.” Of all people, I would have expected Brooke to see through me, but she must not, because I can hear the bitterness in her voice.

“I am,” I lie. “And I’m going to stay in a good mood because it’s Christmas vacation and you’re home from school and I’m surrounded by good friends and I’m tired of feeling like shit.” I smile and take a sip of my drink. “I’m done. From here on out, I’m living in the moment.” I raise my glass in the air, toasting no one in particular.

“You were pretty upset last night.” I look around at the guys to be sure no one overheard her, but I realize it’s impossible.
I
can barely hear her over the music.

I lean in close. “Well then, last night marked the end of my wallowing.”

Brooke looks at me and slowly shakes her head. After my parents and I picked her up from the airport last night, the two of us sat in my room talking for a long time. Then I made the mistake of showing her Anna’s photo album. We got about halfway through when I had to leave the room, and while she was flipping through pages, I was in the bathroom trying not to hurl. I returned with my eyes burning and my cheeks feeling hot, took the photo book out of her grasp, and smashed it back in the drawer. She never got to see the last picture.

“No offense,” Brooke says as she taps away on her phone, “but I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this high school party. Kathryn just texted me to see if I wanted to do something, but—” She looks up at me and stops talking.

“But?”

“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “I guess I just thought you might need me around tonight, but you seem to be doing just fine, so…” She trails off, looking around the room. “I’m going to go outside and call her. See what’s up.”

Brooke walks away and I spot Sam and Lindsey hanging out by the fireplace. I’m just about to head over there when the room goes dark.

“Merry Christmas,” a voice whispers in my ear. I pull a pair of hands away from my face and turn around. Megan’s standing there wearing a red dress and a big grin. She pops one hip.

“It’s about time you made it to one of my parties.” She holds her arms out wide, palms up, and looks around the room. “See, now aren’t you sorry you didn’t get to one of these earlier?”

I smile and give her an exaggerated nod. “Truly devastated. I had no idea what I was missing.”

“Right?” She keeps coming in closer, shouting to be heard above the music. “And now your life is complete.” She rests her hand on my arm and lets it linger there a little too long. When I instinctively take a step back, she gets the hint and lets it drop.

“So, what are you doing over vacation?”

I shrug. “People keep asking me that, but I don’t think I have a very good answer.”

She tilts her head to one side. “What’s your answer?”

“Hanging out,” I say definitively, crossing my arms like I’m proud of myself for being so aimless. Megan shakes her head as if she’s actually disappointed in me and I shrug. “See what I mean? I’m not shooting very high.”

“No, not so much.”

I think about the only plan I have. The one I can’t tell her or Sam or Brooke or anyone else about. The plan I do
not
want to think about right now.

“Bennett?” Megan is using a singsong voice, waving her hand back and forth in front of my face. “You still here?” she asks.

I blink fast. “Yeah. I’m sorry. What did you say?”

“I said that I’m just hanging out too.” She looks down at the ground for a moment, and locks her eyes on mine. “I said, ‘Maybe we could hang out together?’”

I don’t say anything at first and Megan stares at me, eyebrows raised, expression hopeful, while I consider her suggestion. It’s not like I know her that much better than I did at the end of last summer, but I think back to the words I said to Sam in the park that day and feel a little bad about my response. Megan’s nice. She’s pretty. And from what I’ve learned about her over the last few months, she’s not at all vacuous. Besides, Lindsey’s incredibly cool and
she
likes her. I don’t know, maybe it’s time for me to find a “four of us” that exists in 2012 and not in 1995.

“Maybe,” I tell her.

Then we hear a crash in the distance, coming from the kitchen. “Uh-oh, that did
not
sound good. I’d better go find out what broke.” She brushes my arm again and says, “See you,” before she heads off, pushing past people, fighting her way out of the room.

As soon as she’s gone, my stomach clenches. I don’t want Megan and I don’t want another
four of us
. I want Anna. Here. Now. So I don’t have to wake up tomorrow morning with my chest hurting and my mind all fuzzy, or go to sleep tonight feeling sick because I can’t stop picturing that horrible look on her face the last time I saw her.

“Kathryn’s on her way.” I look up and see Brooke in front of me, her thumbs still tapping against the glass on her phone. “I think we’re going to—” She stops cold when she sees me, hand clenched at my forehead, my face turning redder by the second. “What happened?”

I need to get out of here. I need air.

“Do you want to go?” she asks, looking me square in the eyes, and I nod quickly.

Even though it’s winter, I still haven’t put the soft top back on the Jeep. I’ve been driving around a lot this way over the last month: top down, cold wind, tunes loud, heat cranked. I maneuver out of the parking space I found a few blocks from Megan’s house and drive away.

“Do you want to talk—” she begins and I cut her off with a curt, “No.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Brooke’s thumbs flying across the screen, and I can only assume she’s texting Kathryn with her change of plans. I wonder if she’s got a cover story or if she’s texting her the truth:
Bro’s a wreck. Need
to stay.

Her attention must move from texting to music, because as I crest over the next hill, she asks, “How about Coldplay on random shuffle?” It comes out like it’s a question, but when Brooke’s in the car, I rarely get any say in the music anyway. Not that it matters. I couldn’t care less what we listen to, as long as it keeps her from feeling like the silence is uncomfortable and it’s up to her to fill the void.

“Ooh, good song,” she says, cranking up the volume. She reclines the seat back and stares up at the sky. I don’t know what it is. I just drive, listening to the lyrics.

Can anybody fly this thing?

Before my head explodes or my head starts to ring.

I can feel Brooke turning her head to look at me every once in a while, but I ignore it, keeping my eyes fixed on the road in front of me, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. Our house is only a block away now. It’s early. I’m not at all ready to go home. And this song is right. Anna and I have been living life inside a bubble.

“Mind if I keep driving around for a bit?” I ask her.

She kicks her feet up to the dashboard and reclines back even farther. “I was hoping you would. I like this view,” she says as she stares out the open roof, into the sky. Instead of taking a left turn toward our house, I take a right toward the Great Highway.

The Ocean Beach parking lot is dark and empty, and I pull into a spot facing the Pacific. I twist the key backward in the ignition, cutting the engine without killing the music. We’re quiet for a long time.

Finally, Brooke speaks. “Why are you doing this, Bennett?”

I lean back against the headrest and let out a heavy exhale. “Please don’t… Not tonight.”

Brooke twists in her seat to face me. “On a completely different timeline that no longer exists, Anna came
looking
for you, remember? Because she felt so strongly that you were supposed to be in her life. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

I shrug. “I thought it did, but no…apparently it doesn’t.” I haven’t looked at the page in my notebook in months, but I don’t need to. I’ve read those words from her letter so many times I’ve committed them to memory.
Someday soon, we will
meet. And then you will leave for good. But I think I can fix it…
”

“You’re making this far more complicated than it is, Bennett.”

“It’s very complicated, Brooke.”

“No. You saw her with another guy and you freaked.”

“I think there’s a little more to it than that.”

Brooke stares at me.

I fix my eyes on the sky and comb my hands through my hair. “Look, I know what I saw. She’ll have a better life without me. Every time I go back there, I’m just keeping her away from the future she’s supposed to have.”

“But that’s not the future she
wants
.” Brooke tucks her hair behind her ears and leans across the console. “Besides, what’s to say she won’t do it all over again anyway? You saw her happy in two thousand five, but when she gets to two thousand eleven she could make the same decision she made last time—to go back and find you again.”

“Why, because we’re, like,
destined
to be together or something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah.”

“You’re just a romantic.”

“Maybe. But I’m also quite logical.” I let my head fall to the right and stare at her. “What you saw doesn’t matter because that future isn’t set in stone and you know it. Everything single decision you’ve made beyond that moment is changing what you saw.”

“Or, it’s changing nothing.”

“If you’re not part of her life, you’ll never know.” Brooke doesn’t take her eyes off me. “Go talk to her.”

I know she’s right. I went more than a month without speaking to Anna once before, and that was excruciating. I can’t believe I’m doing it by choice this time. I rest my elbows on the steering wheel and hold my head in my hands. “I will.”

“Hey,” she says, and I twist my neck to look at her. “Now.”

“I’m not going right now.”

She cranks up the heat and rubs her hands together in front of the vent. “I’ll be fine here. Come back in twenty minutes or so. I’ll wait.”

“I’m not going right now,” I repeat, this time slowly and with more emphasis on each word, because apparently she didn’t hear me the first time.

“Bennett…” she says, almost under her breath. “Anna’s
stuck
there waiting for you.” She gives me this sad look, like she’s upset about what happened between the two of us. But then she says, “How could—” and stops without finishing her thought. But she doesn’t have to say another word. All I have to do is look at her, and even though I’ve never seen this expression on her face before, I know exactly what she’s thinking. She’s ashamed of me. And she should be. She’s right. How could I have done that to Anna?

I need to go. Now. Besides, I’ve been missing her like crazy tonight.

Without giving myself any more time to think about it, I grab my wool coat off the backseat and pull my arms into it. Closing my eyes, I picture the one place I know I’ll find Anna completely alone.