Chapter Twenty-Four #3
“Oh shit,” Marcus mumbles, clearly realizing what memory we’re in.
“What?” I ask. My voice is hoarse from the argument, and I look between the Marcus beside me and the Marcus on the field. Both Past Jay and Past Marcus are in sweaty gym clothes, working out as Jay’s dad coaches them through reps of push-ups and sit-ups and running up and down the bleachers.
“Come on, Marc!” Jay’s dad yells. “You’ve got to pick up that pace. Is that the best you got? That’s it? That’s how much you want first string? Jay is blowing you out the water. Leaving you behind.”
“Jay is welcome to go,” Past Marcus grumbles under his breath.
“What’s happening here?” I ask Marcus. The air is end-of-summer crisp, and I wrap my arms around myself.
The real Marcus mumbles something indecipherable.
“I asked you something!” I say, unable to believe I was just kissing the crap out of him two memories ago.
Marcus says nothing.
“Wow, really mature,” I say, then turn back to watch the scene in front of us. They are warming up their arms, making circles in the air, when suddenly Past Marcus jumps into Past Jason’s face.
“Try saying that again,” he hisses, his teeth bared. I’ve never seen Marcus that angry or that serious.
“And what happens if I do?” Past Jason taunts his cousin, moving in on him too. Now they are in each other’s face, and neither of them is moving. And then Jason breaks it and laughs. Immediately, Marcus punches him in the jaw.
“Oh my God!” I exclaim in shock. Jason ducks, then goes for his own punch, misses, ducks another blow from Marcus, and jumps on him. And now the two of them are full-on tussling.
“What’s going on? What are you so mad about?” I ask the Marcus next to me, instinctively heading toward them before I remember that I can’t do anything to stop them. I can’t separate them or talk sense into them. “Is this where you find out me and Jason are together?”
“No, this was more recent. But I should have beat his ass then too.”
“So what is this?”
“Nothing,” he says, but his jaw is clenched and he’s watching Jason like he wants to jump him all over again.
“Ow. Back off!” Jason says as they fall to the ground. Marcus knees Jason in the stomach, and my heart beats fast in my chest as I watch the whole thing.
“Marcus, what is this? What’s going on?” I ask, then wince as Jason tugs Marcus’s head by yanking on his hair.
“What the hell is this?” Mr. R says, returning from his phone call just before they kill each other. “I leave for five seconds and you two are acting like three-year-olds.”
He pulls Marcus off Jason.
“He started it,” Jason tells his dad, and as he stands, I notice he has a busted lip. The busted lip he told me happened during a soccer game a week before the accident. Just last month. It came from Marcus.
“Is this usual?” I ask Marcus. “Is this a thing that happens with you two?”
I’m realizing more and more that there were many things Jason didn’t tell me about, things he let me believe even though they weren’t true.
“Only once,” Marcus says, barely looking at me.
I turn to Marcus, gesturing at the scene in front of us. “Hurry up and explain this to me.”
Marcus makes no move to do so.
“You’re being so ridiculous! I told you what was happening in all my memories,” I point out. “Even when it was uncomfortable.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” he says in a voice that I can only describe as dull, dead, indifferent. “I didn’t need to hear every twist and turn in you and Jason’s feelings for each other.”
I’m stunned. “Then you should have asked me to shut up! Instead of laughing along and hugging me but secretly resenting me.”
He turns to me, surprised, a look in his eyes that might be hurt. Then he laughs. “Wow. So all this time and that’s what you think I’ve been doing? That’s what you think of me?”
“You have no idea what I think of you,” I say, and he just laughs again.
“You know what? Fine,” I say. “I think you’re a fraud. I think you’re someone who has two faces, and for a while I thought your real face was the face you wore that night when we met, but now I think I was wrong.”
I look him up and down. “This,” I say, “is your real face. You don’t give a fuck. You didn’t care at all that night. You haven’t cared about me all this time.”
Marcus reaches out to touch my shoulder. “Zadie…”
But I shrug him off. “Don’t touch me. You don’t like being compared to Jason? No wonder. Because he’s so much better than you will ever be.”
I blink hard after what I’ve said. Because it surprises me too.
“I didn’t mean…” I start to rephrase, but it’s too late. Marcus has a hard look in his eyes.
“You’re right,” he says, and starts to walk away from me, hands in his pockets.
Every time he catapults back to my side, he just keeps walking again. Like he can’t stand to be next to me.
And finally, the gods put us out of our misery.
We’re sucked out of that memory, hurtling through space and time again.
The electric feeling in my brain finally stops.
I wake up in my own bed, in my own room, with even more questions now than answers, and a heart that is unexpectedly broken.