Chapter 10 Adam “Starstrukk”
Adam
“Starstrukk”
Go again… Like I’m a kid down on Brighton Pier, with Dad pointing at the roller coaster.
Even after seeing Jules so upset when she first came back, of course I still want to.
Selfish, I know, but time travel kind of does that to you.
Once you realize you can break the laws of physics at will, it’s hard not to start thinking that maybe a whole bunch of other rules might not apply to you either.
That you really are the center of the universe for once.
Plus, she was smiling by the end, meaning surely the good of all this still outweighs the bad?
“So, where do you want to go?” she says.
“To see Mum and Dad.”
I’m expecting Jules to get fully on board with this right away.
She knows how much I miss them. What if seeing them again—properly, not like in ’89, when all Adam could focus on was Jules—makes me feel as happy as going back to see the kids?
What if that could be my final formative memory of them instead of the crash?
If they even have to crash…because, Christ knows, I can’t help thinking about that too. It’s been gnawing at me for days.
“But what if you’re tempted?” Jules says, as if reading my mind.
I play possum. “To do what?”
“You know what.” She gives me that look I could spot across a football stadium, the one that says, Do not fuck with me, mister. You don’t fool me one bit.
“To warn them about the accident.” She spells it out. “To try and stop them getting killed.”
I wouldn’t. But my eyes settle once more on that copy of Back to the Future over by the TV.
How many times have I played it these last few days?
Each time focusing in on the same few scenes.
Marty McFly stuffing that note into Doc Brown’s coat pocket to warn him that terrorists in the future will gun him down.
Doc then wearing a bulletproof vest to change his fate.
Marty thus saving the life of Emmett Lathrop Brown, PhD.
“What if you can’t stop yourself?” Jules says. “Even I thought about calling your dad just now, back at bath time,” she admits, looking ashen. “Knowing you can do it, Adam, knowing you can change history—or create a new history in a new universe, anyway—it makes it almost impossible to resist.”
“But you did resist,” I say.
“Yes, but they’re your parents, not mine, and as much as I loved them, for you that temptation’s going to be so much worse.”
Of course, she’s right, and this is also something I’ve been chewing over.
Putting myself in temptation’s way is risky, but not only that, it’s potentially morally reprehensible too.
Because what if I did cave? How might changing their fate and keeping them alive affect other people?
Perhaps in bad ways as well as good? Just having them survive that car crash might mean other people die in their place in that same motorway pileup.
Leaving me playing God with other people’s lives.
Something Mum would hate and I know in my heart is plain wrong.
“Something else, then?” I say. “Sometime after 2004.” We both know what I mean. After they’re dead.
“Oh, Adam. You look so sad.”
“Yeah, well, you know…I’ve just agreed to never see my parents again.”
But it’s not even just about them, is it? It’s about so many other temptations now we’ve got this power. Like Liam. His hand. If I wanted to, I could change that too. I could change anything, but mustn’t, because of what the consequences might be.
“Let’s pick something else to cheer you up, then,” Jules says. “Something fun. Like before with the picnic.”
“Sure,” I say, feeling the adrenaline kick back in right away. That same buzz I got off my first trip today. Like I’m a smoker again and all I want is another cigarette. Like I can’t help myself. Just chilling with the kids back then made me feel so alive, so integral to their lives, so complete.
“So, come on, what’s your favorite memory?” She smiles encouragingly. “Post-2004,” she reminds me. “Your happiest memory?”
Shutting my eyes, I think back through birthdays, Christmases, until out of the blue I see it—a stunning Mediterranean blue.
Even better, I know there’s a CD for it, one Jules made in 2009, when the kids were nine and six.
That same year Ngozi had booked an apartment in Mallorca but Isa had broken her leg and Geoff had been called away to work, leaving her and the twins stuck at home and giving us the apartment for a week.
The only proper family holiday we’ve ever had abroad.
“Summer Lovin’,” I tell her, finding the CD and reading out the name she scrawled across it, with a cute little stick drawing of our family holding hands beneath two cartoon palm trees.
“Do you think it will still work?” she asks, because we’ve never tried a CD.
“Only one way to find out. Oh, and I’ve already checked online. A standard CD like this is seventy-four minutes long,” I say.
“So you’ll be giving me zombie face for fourteen more minutes than the normal tapes.”
Smiling, I pull a face. “Well, lucky you.”
When I press the CD “Eject” button on the Sony, there’s an excruciating moment as all its ancient motor does is whirr.
But then the dusty panel slowly opens and we both grin.
Turning away from Jules, I adjust my Ziggy Stardust hoodie, hating the way my spare tire hangs over my belt like a roll of half-risen dough.
Giving the CD a quick polish with David Bowie’s turquoise blue jumpsuit, I slot it in.
I smile across at Jules as I quickly assume the position on the armchair, our eyes locking as the first notes of “Starstrukk” by Katy Perry start to play…before SKREEOWWWWWW…
I’m torn back down into that howling hurricane again…
***
I land—now my preferred word—for describing the feeling of arriving back inside my younger self—with a whoop, then a plummeting sensation, then an almighty splash.
Young Adam has got his arms wrapped round his knees and belly. He’s not breathing. Everything is blurry, swooshy. For a second, I freak. Where the hell have I landed this time?
Only now we’re rising, buoyed up through liquid of the deepest blue, and I realize Adam’s heart is thundering with joy, not fear. Whatever this is, he’s loving it. We break through the surface into blazing sunlight and gasp for air.
“Ten out of ten,” Nelly calls out.
“Eleven,” Liam yells.
Ears crackling, Adam grins across at them—my God, so adorable—both miming holding up scorecards like in their favorite show, Strictly Come Dancing, from where they’re sitting knobbly-kneed in their swimming costumes, looking down at him from a barnacle-encrusted wooden jetty.
I feel Adam’s joy flowing through me as Nelly tries a stand-up dive and nails it the first time. His heart soars like it might never come down.
Only then Liam’s in the water too. Without warning, jumping in.
Instantly, I feel Adam’s anxiety spike. Even though he tries to keep on smiling as both kids splash about around him, each time one of them bobs beneath the surface, his stress swells, then fades, then swells, then fades.
Like he’s got a booming tide inside him, one he simply can’t control.
I realize then that he’s gone. That happy-go-lucky twentysomething kid from the house party who wasn’t afraid of risks. Ditto, that chill guy from the picnic without a worry in the world. His mum and dad, my mum and dad, they died five years ago. Adam now knows the world bites.
“Back to the beach,” he tells them, still freaking out trying to keep track of them both.
“But Dad…”
“Just do it.” That old Nike slogan from the late eighties that he and Darius used to dare each other with.
Only from the disappointed looks on the kids’ faces, just don’t would be a better slogan for their dad.
They get back to where thirty-seven-years-young Jules is sunbathing on the beach in a polka-dot bikini. Adam’s relieved to be back safe on dry land, but even then he worries about the kids wandering off too far. His dread of losing them too eats him up.
He keeps them close, building sandcastles, so intricate and overly complex, that all three of them soon lose themselves in the task. But he’s worried about them getting sunburned too.
“Oh, shit. I forgot…” Jules says as she and the kids reluctantly start packing up, with her saying they can wear rash vests, but him countering that it’s too much of a risk. “I meant to give you this on the plane. Holiday tradition, and all that.”
She hands him an old silver Discman and a CD case. The Summer Lovin’ mix. Meaning, shit, I’m halfway through my allotted time here already and not enjoying it either, what with Adam’s anxiety seeping right through me too.
Only then a different piece of music catches his attention. Or rather, Liam’s. My little boy tugs at Adam and points across the beach toward where a man is playing an acoustic guitar. Liam’s already hooked. Adam bought him a half-size acoustic guitar for his last birthday.
By the time they reach the busker, he’s playing a simple chugging riff, one Adam watches Liam mimicking with the fingers of his left hand as he tries to work out the chords.
The guy’s voice is heavily accented, making the English words he’s singing hard to decipher, but the melody is strong and super catchy. So catchy that, next thing Adam knows, Liam is “la-ing” along in perfect harmony, like he’s known this tune all of his life.
A warm feeling ripples across Adam’s chest. Pride. Pride in his little boy.
“What is it?” he asks the busker as the song finally ends, slipping Liam a couple of euros to pop in the guy’s hat.
“ ‘Ventura Highway.’ ”
Adam nods. “Who by?”
“America.”