Chapter 16
P anting, Emily barged into the room, disrupting Lisa and Stephanie’s quiet moment. “You’re here? And you’re friends again!” Lisa released Stephanie’s hands and walked towards the window. She stared out at the street while Emily rummaged through the contents of the messy desk. She pulled a bunch of papers from the top of the typewriter, scrambling to find something. “One of these days I’m going to get organized. I have a poli-sci class in fifteen minutes, and I need my notes! Lisa, have you seen them?”
With her mouth agape, Lisa turned towards Emily. “Why are you looking through my things? That’s not your desk.”
Emily laughed, “Yeah, I wish, but you’re the neat freak, remember?” She scrambled through more notebooks and loose-leaf papers before exclaiming “Aha! Here they are.”
“Wait, Em. That’s not your stuff.” Lisa wasn’t sure if Emily was serious or just trying to be funny. In college Emily had nicknamed her “the Tornado” because their room was a chaotic whirlwind of papers and clothes haphazardly covering the floor. Lisa was careless, but Emily was meticulous, a quality Lisa secretly envied. She covered up her guilt at not doing her fair share of cleaning by pretending it was a quirk that Emily should get used to if she really loved her. Friends put up with one another was Lisa’s ever-present response.
When Lisa brought Stephanie into the suite, she assumed nothing from the past had changed. She and Emily were still roommates and best friends. Their suite was the same. On the surface, everything looked as she remembered it, as if the past were fixed with no alterations possible. But now? Lisa gnawed at her lower lip realizing this version of the past contained altered personalities and habits. Had this inadvertent return with Stephanie created a different past from the one she remembered? And what would happen if they returned?
Standing with her fists on her hips like a stern mother, Emily brough Lisa back to the conversation. “What’s gotten into you? There’s a reason why you call me the Tornado.” Emily walked towards Lisa, bent close to her, and scrunched her face into a scowl. “What have you two been inhaling that’s making you act so weird?”
Lisa felt goosebumps up and down her arms, shuddering. She had caused this turbulence. She had dreamed of altering history by meeting Adam before he met Stephanie, but she hadn’t planned on changing her friend.
Stephanie interrupted Lisa’s thoughts when she put her hands up and rubbed her temples. “Do you realize that neither of you makes any sense? What are we doing here anyway, Lisa? I agree with Emily. Maybe you gave me some drug, and you don’t even realize it? My head is pounding.”
“I have a headache too,” Lisa whispered. “And no, I didn’t drug you. Stop asking such a stupid question. Why would I do such a thing?”
Stephanie shrugged her shoulders.
Emily continued, seemingly unfazed by anything around her. “If you want aspirin, ask Lisa. She’s the one who knows where everything is in this place. I’ve got to get to class. Wanna hang out later? I’ll be back in an hour, maybe less depending on whether I can sneak out when the professor has his back to the class.” Emily uttered the end of her sentence as she rushed out the door.
Lisa stared at the empty space left by Emily’s departure while Stephanie kept her face down. The enormity of the realization that she no longer knew her friend or herself was a lead weight on her conscience. She inched towards the neat desk that was now hers, and there, in the top drawer, in a compact box marked First Aid, she found the bottle of aspirin. Silently, she offered it to Stephanie. “Wait here. I’ll get you water.”
Walking back from the suite’s kitchen, cup in hand, she puzzled what to do about the knot of time she had created. All these decisions made with the singular aim of getting the love of her life had twisted the people in her life into beings she didn’t recognize. They had no say in what had happened to them; they didn’t even know they were different people from who she knew them to be in the past. But she knew. She was the constant in all these rivers of time.
Lisa returned to the room and handed Stephanie a red plastic cup with water. “Here, this was the only clean thing in the kitchen. Apparently, my note to the others to clean up was ignored.”
Stephanie’s face was blank, but her eyes were defiant. With ice in her voice she said, “Thanks.” After gulping down the aspirin, her voice softened. “You look as out of sorts as I feel. What’s wrong with you?”
Thinking for a moment at the gravity of the question, Lisa whispered, “Everything.”
Stephanie scoffed. “For whatever reason and through some strange hocus-pocus, you brought me here.”
When Lisa didn’t answer, Stephanie pressed on. “Lisa, I want answers. I want to know how we got here and…”
Something in Stephanie’s litany of complaints gave Lisa a compelling desire to inspect her closet. If this past was all new, it was possible that she’d have something hidden that might explain how this had happened. Lisa opened the closet door. She could see her reflection and Stephanie’s in the full-length mirror. They looked youthful and vibrant. It was uncanny to feel the strength in her muscles and the softness in her hands. She noticed that Stephanie caught sight of herself in the mirror also.
Stephanie stopped talking and slammed the red cup on the desk. She rose from her chair in one fluid move as the water spilled onto the desk. Through the mirror Lisa watched the water fall onto the dirty area rug, creating a dark crimson circle. She was mesmerized by the drip, drip, focusing on the sound of the drops as they landed.
Stephanie’s gasp startled Lisa. She noticed Stephanie staring at herself in the mirror.
Lisa stared at her too, marveling at watching someone discover her forgotten youth. Stephanie would understand the wonder Lisa felt the first time she saw herself young again. Stephanie was beautiful in that sinewy sense that’s reserved for the barely twenty. Her body didn’t know long twelve-hour shifts on aching feet. Wind, cold, and gravity hadn’t hijacked her skin or her hips yet. Her hair was thick, luscious, and long, cascading below her shoulders with a bounce. Lisa could see the muscles in her thighs and calves that stretched long and lean below her green shorts that she probably bought at the Army-Navy surplus store a few blocks away. That was also where she likely bought the black combat boots she wore with black socks. Her breasts swelled above the V-neck of her white T-shirt.
Stephanie leaned in closer to the mirror and caressed her face whispering, “How is this possible?”
She turned around and continued. “My brain tells me this isn’t logical, but it feels real. If you’ve played a weird mind trick on me, it’s working.”
“Stephanie, believe me, this isn’t a trick. I wish I could explain it.”
“Try. A few hours ago, we were sitting in a coffee shop in our normal bodies, with our normal lives, while I confessed that I’ve been sleeping with your husband. In the whirl of a moment then, we’re still sitting in a diner, but we’re no longer the same people. Instead, we’re these younger versions of ourselves. I mean, look at us! We look like we’re what? Nineteen, twenty years old?”
Stephanie thrust her hands out to Lisa, palms down. “My arms are strong; look at these muscles. And see here? That’s where I have a scar from a crazy patient who stabbed me with scissors years ago. But the scar’s gone. And my knees. They don’t hurt at all.” Stephanie jumped up and down, laughing. “I feel like I can play basketball again, or volleyball, or…or anything. Nothing hurts!”
But as quickly as she noticed her agility, Stephanie stopped and stared at herself in the mirror again. She slumped onto the floor, her back leaning against the closed room door. “This isn’t possible, Lisa. It’s simply not possible. Time travel, multiple memories, accidentally bringing me here. This doesn’t happen to real people. This is the Twili ght Zone !”
Lisa let Stephanie vent, not sure how to convince her. “Stephanie, I know it defies all logic, but I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know how I do it. Back in my real life, I had a car accident and hit my head. The accident left a small scar on my forehead. An ambulance took me to the hospital because I was unconscious, and after running tests, the doctor said I have an enlarged pineal gland. Maybe that’s why I’m able to time travel.”
“Why? Because of the accident?”
“No, because of the pineal gland.”
“You think that an enlarged pineal gland causes you to travel back in time and then forward again? You’re even crazier than I thought!”
Lisa bit her lip trying to explain without sounding like a lunatic. “It’s not just the pineal gland. The song has something to do with it too. I get nauseous, and I don’t know, feel like I’ve fallen through a wormhole or something when I hear the song ‘Don’t You Want Me.’”
Stephanie laughed. “‘Don’t You Want Me’?”
Lisa shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, I don’t know why that song, or how it happens. It just does. I hear the song, and my world shifts.”
Stephanie tapped her head against the door. “Ironic when I’m the one who met Adam in a cocktail bar.” Then she dug her nails into her temples. “I’m so confused and angry, and I don’t even know what to say to you, and my head just keeps pounding.”
With a mixture of guilt and sympathy, Lisa offered an explanation. “I have a headache too. In fact, I get one every time I travel back and forth. For a few minutes after arrival, my brain feels like scrambled eggs.” She paused. “Maybe you have an enlarged pineal gland also. Or maybe you came with me because we were holding hands. Remember? In the diner we were holding hands, and the song came on, and then we were here. In this time. In our past. Except that it’s not really our past. It’s a different one. That’s why I feel so confused because things are different. We never were friends in the past; we didn’t come to this room together. And Emily was different, and so was I. I think that coming back with you has somehow transformed the past.”
Stephanie set her mouth in a straight line and raised her left eyebrow. “Transformed the past? Fine then, Miss Voyager, now what? I want to go home. To my real home. You got me into this mess. Now get me out of it.”
“That’s the problem. I’m not sure how to get us back.” Lisa sighed. “I mean, I think I can transport us to the future from here. We can do like at the diner—hold hands and listen to the song.”
Stephanie jumped up from the floor and grabbed Lisa’s hand. “Here we go then. Let’s do this.”
Lisa pulled her hand back. “No, you don’t understand. It’s not just hold hands. We have to play the song, and….”
Stephanie moved towards the boom box by the window. “Do you have the song here? We can play it and hold hands, and then we’re done.” She looked at Lisa, one eyebrow lifted in a menacing arc. “Or is it that you’ve run out of whatever mushrooms you put into my drink, and now we’re somehow stuck in a hallucination.” She raised her voice again. “Don’t just stand there. Say something!”
Lisa took a deep breath. “Stephanie, please listen carefully. It’s not just the song and holding hands. The problem is that I’m afraid I don’t know to which future we’re headed.”
“Lisa, there is only one future.”
“I don’t think so. That’s the issue.”
“Oh boy, more make-believe stories.”
“No, listen. I came from two different futures. I told you before. You were married to Adam, and I was his lover. That’s the real future. That’s when I came back here the first time. And I met Adam and thought my dream had come true. But we ran into you, and you were in our lives again. He had been flirting with you, and you wanted him to be your boyfriend. I convinced you to give him up. I was rough with you. We had a terrible fight, and you gave him up. You told me you weren’t going to see him anymore. And I think that changed everything.”
“How?”
“Because when I traveled to the future again, it changed. I was his wife in that future, and you were his lover. And in that future, you met him at a bar, not in college.”
Stephanie sighed in exasperation. “That is reality, Lisa. That’s our real world. You’re married to him, you have two little girls, and I’m his mistress…was his mistress. I broke it off.” Stephanie slumped her shoulders.
A single tear fell down Lisa’s cheek as she uttered her words in acknowledgement and defeat. “This is some mess.” Stephanie hugged her, while Lisa poured out all her grief onto her rival’s shoulders.
When the sobbing stopped, Stephanie stood back. “Lisa, I believe that you believe all this. I’m not sure if I believe it all. What I do know is that we don’t belong here in 1982. We belong in our real lives. That’s where you need to take us, back to our reality. If I believe that you got us here, then I have to believe that you can get us back.”
Lisa thought hard about Stephanie’s suggestion. She paced in the small room thinking of how she could maneuver them back to the real past, the one where she had created all the problems. Stephanie stopped her while she paced. “What are you doing?”’
“I’m thinking about how to fix this.”
As she walked, she realized that going back to that life meant she’d lose everything. She stopped at the window again. She closed her eyes and heard the sound of her little girls laughing. She liked being a mother. She had only known them briefly, yet she already missed them. Returning this Stephanie to her rightful place meant giving up what she had discovered that she loved.
And that’s when it struck her. A boulder landed on her chest, pressing into it, choking off all ability to breathe. Lisa wrapped her arms around herself, looking for warmth and comfort as she realized she was about to lose everything again. If she returned to Stephanie’s real life, Lisa would lose her mother too. Her daughters may have been fictional at some level of that invented world, but her mother was very real.
Her warm, loving, kind mother. How could she bear to lose her again?