Chapter 3
“Your mother says that you were twenty minutes late getting home today.” Dad said as we sat at the dinner table, eating honey-glazed chicken with rice and steamed vegetables. My mother’s cooking was something I’d really missed without realizing it as the years had gone by in the last timeline. There were plenty of times when I’d had a bad day and come home to make something like this, something that reminded me of being a kid, protected by my parents’ love.
Davey always called it comfort food.
“Yes, I was.” I admitted cautiously, unsure of where he was going from the neutral expression on his face.
“You did well this weekend, Brian.” Dad said with a heavy sigh. “I want to hear what you thought was a good enough reason to risk ruining that progress by being late today.”
“I… it’s been an eventful day.” I answered honestly. They just frowned at me for a moment and I let out another sigh as I sat back, trying to meet both of their eyes while twiddling my fork around my plate. “Marcie and I broke up.”
“You don’t seem too heartbroken.” Dad said while both of them struggled to not smile over the news. “I thought… I thought after the reason you were grounded that you were going to go on and marry her once you’re out of high school.”
“No way in hell.” I growled, surprised at the vehemence that came with the thought.
“Watch your language, son.” Mom said, but there was no anger or sharpness in her voice, and her lips were quivering upwards.
“I can’t believe I ever dated someone like… her.” I said even more vehemently. They were both smiling openly now. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
“We tried.” Dad said with a sigh, and although his lips quirked downward for a moment he didn’t sound too angry. “Was she pushing you to sell the apartment?”
“Yes.” I admitted, shaking my head. “I’m just glad I woke up in time. That apartment… it’s all I really have left of Uncle Rich in this world, isn’t it?”
“Brian!” Mom’s voice sounded shocked, but there was a very soft smile on her face and tears in her eyes. “That’s the first time in years that you’ve mentioned him without cursing or looking like you wanted to hit something!”
“I’m sorry mom.” I said softly, apologizing for the behavior of the ‘me’ from this timeline. “I… well sorry doesn’t cut it… but I miss him too.”
“I do too, honey.” Mom said sadly. “We knew you were hurting from losing him, but every time we reached out to you, you turned us away.”
“But that’s in the past now, I think.” Dad said with a tone of approval and he looked me over. “I think you’ve done some growing, and while I don’t approve of what brought this all to a head, I do approve of the results so far. We can forgive you being late since you were dealing with breaking up from a bad relationship.”
“Actually, that was dead before lunch was over.” I said with a snort, remembering how… angry the cow had been.
“Then why were you late?” Dad asked patiently.
“I… I was talking with Brandon and Trevor about things.” I answered honestly, hoping he wouldn’t ask too many details. “I haven’t been the best son to you over the last few years, and I haven’t been the best of friends to them either.”
“Now that’s an even better reason to be twenty minutes late.” Dad said with a smile that surprised me. “So, what else is going on with you?”
“Master Chief Cole’s expecting me to join his Sea Scouts this semester.” I began and they looked confused for a moment.
“You mean Coach Cole from your football team?” Dad asked.
“Yeah.” I confirmed. “They’re having problems getting enough students, and well he asked me to join and I’m thinking about it. I’d need permission obviously, and well, it would mean coming home later a couple times a week, and probably leaving a little early as well.”
“Are you doing this to get out of being grounded?” Dad asked and I shook my head.
“Grounding won’t last little more than a week while the Sea Scouts thing goes on all semester and maybe even next year.” I answered him and he shrugged.
“Good, because if you’re going to do it, you’re doing it all semester.” Dad said while mom nodded her agreement. “Anything else?”
“Yeah.” I said as I shifted in my seat and played with the remaining food on my plate a little bit more. Suddenly I wasn’t very hungry and I was wondering if I should even discuss this with them, but they were my parents and I knew they could always help.
“What is it, Brian?” Mom asked with a slightly worried frown.
“I saw someone I haven’t seen in a while.” I answered. “He went to La Loma with Brandon, Trevor and me and he played on the freshman football team with us before his family moved to Nevada. He’s back at Downey now, and well, I don’t know how to describe it, but he looked kind of down, you know?”
“What’s his name?” Mom asked with a tilt of her blond head.
“Davey Jones.” I answered and she creased her eyebrows.
“That sounds so familiar.” Mom muttered while Dad frowned.
“Was his father a preacher?” Dad asked and I knew he recognized the name.
“Yes.” I answered and Dad sighed.
“Honey, you remember the story from last year.” Dad said to Mom. “David Jones Sr. was a local pastor who moved out to Nevada until his wife found out he was molesting their daughter. He came back to California and pled guilty to the molesting and was placed on house arrest.”
“That’s right and there was something in the paper yesterday about him being arrested for violating the terms of his parole.” Mom said as she slapped her hand on the table in triumph. “He went too close to a school or something like that. Funny, they never mentioned he had a son.”
“Yeah, well, Davey, I don’t know.” I said softly. “He’s not the same as I remembered him, like he was all hunched in on himself. Plus, he’s working at a McDonald’s near school, and missing classes because of it. Coach Cole said if he doesn’t start going to all of his classes soon they’ll kick him to alternative education.”
“What does this have to do with you?” Dad asked.
“I… I feel like I’ve spent the last few years being selfish, you know?” I answered, trying to sound as young as possible instead of older, wiser. “I saw Davey today when all the stuff with Marcie was going down and well, I began to wonder. We kind of knew each other years ago, and he’s a pretty cool guy, but since he came back he’s all withdrawn. Before… without Marcie, I might have tried to be a friend and maybe he wouldn’t look so… defeated.”
“What do you want from us?” Dad asked.
“An extra two hours after school before I have to be home?” I asked and Dad’s face started to cloud over. It was time to speak quickly. “If you’re willing to give me an extra two hours, I think it would be fair to also extend my being grounded a week.”
“Even if that means you can’t have a birthday party?” Mom asked.
“Yeah.” I agreed.
“What about the Sea Scouts thing?” Dad asked.
“The afternoon stuff counts as part of the extra two hours?” I offered. “The morning stuff counts as school time?”
“Deal.” Dad said with a nod of his head.
“Thanks for letting me bargain.” I said with a smile and he laughed.
The rest of the evening passed pretty quickly with me spending most of it on homework. Assignments from the first day weren’t too bad, but there was a lot of little things I had to review from the last semester so I would be current on what was being taught. Towards the end of the evening, I watched the Cosby Show with my parents, experiencing déjà vu from watching the old program that was now being run for the first time in this timeline.
All the while my mind was plotting out different ways to reach out to Davey in this timeline, the way he’d reached out to me. It would have been so much easier to just bump into him like we’d done on the bike path in my own timeline, but that was years ago even here. No, something else was required, and I had to remember something else Davey had said about how he’d been in this timeline.
Very, very closeted.
His sleeping with Brandon and Trevor, as well as several other guys most likely (and even one or two girls from what he’d told me one time) was all one-time affairs. Most of the people he slept with during high school he never talked to again, from what he told me. That was probably one of the reasons he wasn’t friends with Brandon or Trevor, because after having had sex with them, he actively kept them at arms-length.
He’d never exactly explained why, but I guessed it had to do with him not wanting to admit he was gay. So long as he wasn’t faced with daily reminders of his ‘weakness’ in having slept with them, he was able to pretend like it never happened until the next time. That would fit something I’d heard from many gay men who’d grown up in the eighties. It was also something I’d have to help Davey overcome eventually. No, for now I’d have to work at just being his friend and nothing more.
That night I dreamed about Davey, as might be expected. Only, the Davey I dreamed about was the man I’d grown old with. After his stroke, he’d lost control of his bodily functions and so it had been necessary to put an adult diaper on him when he came home. I think, more than anything else that had embarrassed him deeply.
I’d seen it in his eyes, and the way he tried to protest every time I carefully removed a fouled diaper, cleaned him up, and then put a new one on him. Sometimes he’d close his eyes and stretch his head back as if pretending it wasn’t happening, and other times he’d look at me with eyes that provided a glimpse into his tortured soul. I knew Davey Jones and the proud man he’d been, and I knew how much his need for help with even the most basic of needs shamed him.
That was why I would never let anyone else change him, and made sure the physical therapists got him to the point that he could sit on a toilet again. He still needed help transferring from the wheelchair to the toilet, and I still wiped his butt for him, but he no longer had to wear the diaper. Those were small victories, but each of them had helped rid his eyes of that shame, and restored to me the proud man I loved with all my heart.
In my dream, though, the look in Davey’s eyes was the same, but his body was that of the teenager I’d seen the day before. The dream was still fresh and vivid in my mind as I showered the next morning and dressed in a nice blue and white striped shirt with a pair of nice stonewashed jeans. Yes, Davey had always had a great amount of pride, and I could well imagine how much of a beating it was taking right now.
Way back in 2006 of the last timeline, a scandal had erupted just forty days before the mid-term elections. On of Davey’s Aunts, from his mother’s side, had been arrested in Las Vegas for a pyramid scheme and embezzling money from a property management company she worked for as a manager. It was only another scandal, this time on the Republican side, which had ended the relentless attacks on President Jones for the illegal acts of his sister-in-law. It was the closest to an outright scandal that they’d had to deal with, and I’d seen a look of hurt in Davey’s eyes. The night of the election, we’d both gotten drunk off our asses at our D.C. home and he’d told me how much he’d always hated that aunt. Apparently she’d caused countless problems for him in the original timeline, and was someone he actually despised. He’d also shared how awful his family had been in that timeline, which was now the timeline in which I was living.
The mirror on the back of my door helped me to make sure that I was looking good today. I couldn’t help whistling as I grabbed my car keys and left my bedroom. Mom was in the kitchen, and Dad was at the table with a cup of coffee and the newspaper. I grabbed a glass of orange juice and the cereal mom had out on the counter and sat at the table to eat.
“Good morning.” Dad said as I sat down. He put down his paper long enough to find another section and push it in my direction. “There’s something in there you might want to read.”
“Why do I have the feeling it’s not going to be good?” I asked rhetorically. It was the Metro section of the Modesto Bee, and below the fold it had a picture of David Jones, Sr. as well as a headline of “Former Pastor Released”. Davey’s father had been released from jail after it had been found that he’d not violated the terms of his parole. He was living with his mother, who lived a block from a school. The parole officer on his case had authorized him to live there, and he’d been on his way home from the neighborhood store when a police officer had arrested him.
“Ah, crap.” I murmured, feeling sorry for Davey and his family for having to constantly go through this crap. The only reason the paper paid any attention to this was because Davey’s father had been a preacher. Then again, if something like this had happened in the last timeline, there would have been an even greater furor.
“You still thinking of trying to be friends with him again?” Dad asked as I finished reading the paper and set it back down.
“Yeah.” I said with certainty that was far firmer than he had any clue of it being. “This only makes me feel worse, you know? He’s been going through all this crap and I don’t see him hanging around other people at school. It must be pretty lonely.”
“I’d imagine a lot of people wouldn’t want to be associated with someone whose father was in the papers for this kind of stuff.” Dad said and I nodded my agreement while chewing on some cereal. “I have to be off to work, but good luck.”
“Thanks, Dad.” I said with a smile.
“Honey, you know you can invite him over anytime you want, even if you are grounded.” Mom said as I finished my cereal and took it back to the sink.
“Are you sure?” I asked, surprised at how nice they were being. Then again, these were my parents, bleeding heart liberals, and I should have known better than to be surprised. It seems I’d forgotten just how caring they were.
“Definitely.” Mom said with a smile. “I feel like I’ve got my old Brian back.”
If she only knew.
“There you are!” Marcie was not the sight I wanted to see this early in the morning on the front steps of the school. She was standing there with Brandon and Trevor, as well as their girlfriends Katie and Lisa, both friends of Marcie. Today Marcie was dressed in another mini-skirt, with a tube top barely covered by a jean jacket and more of that Madonna-style lace crap. She must have wasted at least ten bucks of make-up on her face as well, and I had to squelch the desire to tell her she was looking like a cheap whore. Instead I just approached the group while keeping an eye out for Davey.
“Good morning.” I said in as neutral a tone as possible.
“I wanted to talk to you.” Marcie said. “I’ve thought it over, and I’m willing to give you another chance if you apologize to me in front of our friends. You better make it good though if you want me to forgive you and take you back.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I said as a laugh escaped my lips. She gave me a death-ray style glare while putting her hands on her hips. Oh my, she was not amused at all.
“What the hell’s gotten into you?” She nearly screeched as one of her hands ended up waggling a finger in my face. “You’re like a totally different person! Don’t you remember how important you are to me? You need to treat me better.”
“Shut up.” I growled as I slapped her waggling finger out of my eyesight. She seemed shocked enough by that, and her mouth flopped open. “You listen to me for a moment, woman. I’m not some toy you can play with when you feel like it, and I sure as hell am not about to spend the next forty years working my ass off so you can sit on a couch watching soap operas and eating bon-bons like Peggy Bundy! If you thought I was your meal ticket to an easy fucking life, you sure as hell should have treated me better than you have been. As for taking you back, you can apologize all you want but I want nothing more to do with you!”
“Fuck you!” She yelled. Her face had been getting redder and redder as I yelled, and I was relieved that was all she had to say before she stomped into the school. Katie and Lisa followed her, and I was left with my two friends, who were both staring at me like I’d gone crazy.
“What?” I snapped at them and relaxed as Trevor started to snigger.
“Dude, that picture you painted of her on the couch… that’s fucking classic!” Trevor said around his sniggers.
“Just one thing, who is Peggy Bundy?” Brandon asked as he started to chuckle.
“Oh, yeah, um just somebody I made up.” I said with a shrug. Damn that was right, Married with Children wasn’t on television yet. Oh well, it still worked to drive her off and make sure she had no illusions that it was still possible to get back with me. Several dozen people must have heard me yelling at her.
“Dude, you know she’s going to be a bitch for the next few weeks, don’t ya?” Trevor asked and I nodded.
“So will our girlfriends.” Brandon said. “We might have to join you in exploring the dark side.”
“Your choice, dude.” I replied with an easy smile. “The only thing is, I think both of you have already been there a lot more than me.”
“Let’s head inside.” Trevor said and we followed him into the school. The girls weren’t in sight and I sighed with relief as we headed to our lockers. Both of theirs were near each other while mine was in another hallway. To my surprise, Davey was there, just a few feet down from Trevor’s.
“Hey Jones.” Trevor called out.
“Hey.” Davey said cautiously, his eyes glancing to the three of us.
“Hey, I heard your dad was in the paper the other day.” Brandon said in a teasing tone and rage surged through me as I saw Davey turn white before looking away in shame. He slammed his locker shut and started to turn at the same moment I swung out with my arm and elbowed Brandon so hard he flew against the lockers with a loud clatter. As I faced Brandon and used my forearm to pin him against the lockers, I noticed Davey turning back to look at what was going on.
“Dude, that is so fucking uncool!” I nearly shouted as my face flushed with my anger. Brandon had a surprised look on his face, as did Trevor. From this position I couldn’t see Davey, but that wasn’t important.
“What?” Brandon gasped out.
“How could you be so fucking mean?” I asked, surprised at the way I was cussing. It wasn’t something I’d done much of in the last few decades.
“Mean?” Brandon gasped as I relaxed a bit and removed my arm from his throat. He straightened up a bit, grimacing as he stretched his back. “Dude, those fucking locks probably left a mark on my back! What the fuck did you do that for?”
“You fucking pissed me off.” I fumed. “How the fuck could you do that to someone?”
“Do what?” Brandon asked.
“What you said to Davey.” I reminded him and he looked at me like I was crazy.
“I just mentioned the article about his father.” Brandon stated. “What’s the big deal?”
“How the hell would you feel if your family’s business was plastered all over the paper?” I asked him and Brandon looked like he didn’t understand. Neither did Trevor for that matter.
“Dude, what the fuck’s gotten into you?” Trevor asked, moving to stand next to Brandon. I took a quick look around in time to see Davey’s back as he disappeared around a corner, while there were several other students watching us in the quickly filling corridor.
“Think about what it must be like from his perspective.” I urged my two friends in a hoarse whisper. “Imagine if it was your father in the paper like that and everyone around you knowing the shit that was going on in your family.”
“My father would never have done something like that.” Trevor snorted.
“Mine either.” Brandon said with disdain. “Besides, if he’s going to go all sensitive every time someone mentions his father he’s going to have a lot of bad times before he graduates.”
“Especially with idiots like you around.” I said furiously, ignoring the look of hurt on Brandon’s face as I spun around and stalked down the hallways towards my locker. My mind was spinning with a lot of thoughts, but most of them centered around Brandon and Trevor. They had been our best friends growing up, always there with us, always supportive and strong. How much of that had been because of Davey’s influence on us? Sean’s as well, but I had to wonder just how much of what I viewed as our moral strength during high school had been because of the influence of the two time travelers?
How much change could I make in my friends who were currently stereotypical high school jocks more interested in the next game and dipping their dick in a hole than in understanding people?
By the time history class rolled around, I hadn’t come up with any definitive answers, but I did know that I would be staying away from Trevor and Brandon for a while. They’d been giving me odd looks all morning, and from the way their girlfriends were whispering to them in the hallways between classes, I was quite convinced they were being given some ultimatums. Up until I walked into the history classroom, I was ready to mark the day off as a complete failure. A question to a girl in my last class who also had this class had confirmed that there was no set seating assignment, so when I saw Davey sitting in a desk against the wall closest to the door, I took the seat behind him and immediately turned so my back was on the wall. He sat in his desk normally, and had hunched his shoulders as soon as I sat down. The teacher was standing at the blackboard, writing something on the board while more students filed into the classroom. A thick-set geek with brown hair gave me a dirty look when he saw me sitting where I was, but didn’t say anything as he found another seat.
“You ever wonder if George Lucas sat in one of these desks?” I asked of no one in particular, although I was facing the girl who had been in my last class. Ronna, that was her name, and if I remembered correctly she was a friend of Davey’s in this timeline as well as the one I came from. She’d been there when I first met Davey, well besides that baseball game.
“Huh?” She asked.
“You know, George Lucas.” I said, grateful that someone at least had responded. Davey was still hunched forward, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him shift slightly in his seat. “The guy who made Star Wars and American Graffiti.”
“I know who he is.” Ronna said with a hint of scorn in her voice. “Why would he have sat in one of these desks and why wonder about it?”
“These desks are old enough to have been here when he was.” I said with a snort and she actually giggled. Davey’s shoulders started to move like he was on the verge of laughing. He was wearing the same jean jacket as the day before, but the jeans he was wearing today looked to be in better condition, although he still had on the half-melted tennis shoes.
“They probably were.” Ronna agreed with me. She had long, dark hair and was pretty. She was a little hefty, but not too badly overweight.
“I knew someone who went to school with him.” Davey’s voice was almost inaudible, but he turned slightly in his seat to look at Ronna and then me. His face was devoid of any expression, as if he was afraid of what would happen if he showed something. “She lived on a ranch a couple miles down from my house back in Nevada. Her husband taught me how to ride a horse. She said she thought Lucas was nothing but a weird freak in school and now she wished she’d asked him out.”
“I bet she does.” I said with a laugh and almost regretted it when he winced for a moment before a slow smile formed on his face. That was the moment the bell chose to ring and it was time for class. As the instructor turned around and I began to read the assignment on the board, I wondered just how the Brian of this timeline had ended up in a college-prep History course. Sure, some of the classes were college-prep, but not all of them were as they were when I had gone through high school. Whatever the reason, I was just glad that I was in the class with Davey as I turned to face forward in my seat.
“On the board is the outline of your semester-long project.” Mr. Wansor said in a bored tone. “Be sure to write it down accurately as it will account for half your grade this semester. You may work on this individually or in pairs, but I warn you that if you choose to work with someone there will be no changing partners or going solo unless one of you dies. You will note that there are several due dates for this assignment, the first in just three weeks when you will turn in an outline of your project. Missing a deadline reduces that portion of the grade by one step. Each deadline counts for five percent of your grade on the project with your final presentation being ten percent. Instead of a written final in this class, you will give your project presentation. Now that you’ve written the assignment down, let’s open our textbooks to page thirteen and start with a discussion on the second Constitutional Congress.”
The class was a typical one with the teacher trying to drag answers out of the students and getting monosyllabic answers instead of the erudite philosophy he probably dreamed about getting. Deep down I felt sorry for him, and halfway through class I raised my hand and gave him a five-minute answer to one of his questions. Then Ronna spoke up to argue about something I said, and to my surprise Davey responded to her statement by defending my point about the inclusion of slavery being necessary for that time and place, no matter how disgusting it was as an institution.
That got Reggie, who I remembered from the football team involved when he called Davey a ‘racist’. Before I could defend Davey on that topic, Davey snorted and shook his head before shooting Reggie a look of contempt.
“If you can’t listen to a white guy talking about the institution of slavery with honesty instead of bleating only about the horror of it, then maybe you should take a deep look at yourself.” Davey’s voice dripped with sarcasm that was so familiar I started to get hard. This was a glimpse of the Davey Jones I knew, cocksure to a fault, and full of derision for people whose viewpoints he disdained. Sure, Davey had hidden it a lot, but there had been more than a few times over the years that he’d unleashed it at people. His ambassadorial confirmation hearing had been one such event, when he verbally lashed out a freshman Republican Senator who was trying to make a name for herself. Davey had figuratively picked her up, spanked her bottom and sat her back down gently while extracting a promise from her that she’d behave like a grown up instead of a schoolyard bully trying to look good for the cameras.
“Oh yeah?” Reggie said angrily. “I ain’t the one sittin’ here defending slavery.”
“I am not defending slavery, as you would know if you bothered to really listen to what I’m saying.” Davey said. “Slavery was, and is, a horrible crime on the conscience of humanity. That doesn’t change the fact that if the founding fathers of this country had tried to get rid of it back then, there wouldn’t have been a United States today, nor a United States that would fight a bloody civil war during which the abolition of slavery would occur!”
“I think that is enough for the moment.” Mr. Wansor ended the debate in a stern voice, but there was a smile on his face. The bell rang at that moment and Reggie was one of the first ones out of the classroom, giving Davey a glare as he left. Davey let out a long breath before picking up his books. As he stood, his shoulders slumped again and the breath of life that had filled him during class seemed to drain away with his exhalation.
“Hey, Davey, wait a moment.” I called out as I picked up my own books and rushed out after him. He stopped long enough to turn around and glare at me for a moment.
“It’s David.” He said in a low voice.
“What?” I asked, confused for a moment.
“My name, it’s David, not Davey.” He explained.
“Oh, I thought…” I stammered.
“What are you trying to do?” He asked, oblivious to the stream of people filling the hallway and trying to get past us.
“Huh?” I asked although I had an idea what he was getting at with that question.
“First this morning, and then you sit next to me in class using Ronna to strike up a conversation with me.” Davey said, showing me that no matter what had happened to him in this timeline, he was still as observant as ever, and as clever in figuring out why people were doing things. That was always one of his best gifts, being able to figure out people’s motivations with just a few words and some observations. “What kind of game are you playing with me? You’ve been in classes with me since the Seventh grade and have never shown this much interest in talking to me, not even when we played football together freshman year.”
“I…” I wanted to tell him everything in that moment, but there was a little voice holding me back and it wasn’t just because we were in the middle of a crowded hallway with people all around us. “I’ve been thinking.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He asked with a very familiar edge to his tone. Davey was getting angry.
“It means I’ve kind of known you since seventh grade, except for when you were in Nevada, and I realized I really had never gotten to know you.” I started to explain in a wavering voice. His blue eyes were ice cold as he stared at me.
“Why now?” Davey asked me angrily. “If you’re going to try to tell me it had nothing to do with that article, you’re crazy. I know you and your friends. You all love teasing people because of shit like that and if you think you can trick me…”
“No!” I said vehemently, although my voice was barely more than a whisper. He must have seen how much I meant that because his head jerked back and he blinked. When he opened his eyes again, they were less angry, although he still had a wary look about him.
“Then what?” He asked and I let out a long, slow breath.
“I… when I saw that article, something inside me wondered what it would be like to be in your situation, with my family life spread out for everyone in the damn world to read.” I said quickly and as quietly as I dared to in the noise hallway. A guarded look filled his face now.
“And?” He asked in a dangerous tone.
“I kind of remembered that you were always a smart guy, and you seemed to be pretty cool when you were on the football team with us.” I said with a shrug. “You want to work together on the history project?”
“Why would I want to work with you?” He said with a hint of sneer in his voice. That hurt, but I wasn’t going to show him how much it hurt. This was awful, I was standing here talking to the man I’d just spent some sixty-odd years living with as a husband, a partner, and now we were like strangers. No, we were strangers in more ways than one.
I wanted my Davey, and it was only the look of love I’d seen in his eyes every night as I lifted him from his wheelchair and put him in our bed before crawling in and holding him tight that kept me from giving up at that moment.
“Why are you here?” I asked and his eyes narrowed suddenly.
“What do you mean?” Davey said as he switched from attack to defense.
“Why are you here at Downey High?” I asked him, having remembered something very important. It had been at his mother’s graveside, and he was crying as he buried her yet again, but unlike other times he’d buried her, he was crying tears of joy and recollecting every time that she’d done something wonderful for him in all the timelines. There had been many things, and only a few about this, the original timeline, but there had been one very big thing she’d done for him, something he’d never really thanked her for until just before she had died in this timeline.
“I…I live in the district…” He said defensively.
“You know, in the articles it talks about your mother living in Ceres.” I said calmly, noting how his eyes widened. “Your sister, shouldn’t she be a freshman? Why isn’t she going to school here?”
“That’s none of your business.” He said angrily and started to push past me, but I grabbed his arm and pulled him in close so I could whisper in his ear.
“I think you came back because your friends from before are here.” I whispered quickly before he could pull away from my grasp on his arm. “You’re here because the people you went to elementary school, junior high, and freshman year are here. I heard your voice when you spoke about Nevada. You miss it a lot. Where did you go to school last year? You moved back here in November of 1984, but you didn’t come back to Downey until this school year. I bet you went to Ceres High, which is where your sister is going now.”
“Shut up.” Davey whispered, but his tone was defeated and he didn’t bother trying to pull his arm out of my grip. His head was hanging down though, and I was willing to bet there were tears in his eyes. That made me feel bad, but it couldn’t be helped just yet. “What are you going to do?”
“Why’d you come back here, to this school, Davey?” I asked him again, still just a whisper in his ear.
“You know why.” He said and his shoulders heaved as he fought against a sob.
“Tell me, please.” I almost begged.
“I thought I had friends here.” He said bitterly. “Except for Ronna and Jeanette, though, there aren’t any here. While I played around at being somebody in Nevada, y’all moved on with your lives and I’m left in the fucking dust. There, you happy?”
“No.” I said softly as I released his arm. He turned to look at me, and there were tears in his eyes, along with an angry glare that was fueled by confusion.
“Then what?” He demanded in a low, angry voice. “You going to make me do your project for you like Ronna and Jeannette make me pay for their alcohol so they’ll hang around?”
“No, we’re going to do this project together.” I told him with as mild an expression as I could put on my face. Oh, how I wanted to take him in my arms and wipe away those tears. “Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking. Your old man dragged you out to some backwater town in Nevada where he’d be a big preacher. I remember you in freshman football. As soon as your ankle healed from that bad tackle you were going to be back on the team and you had plenty of drive to get on second string, if not first. You had some friends, some decent friends here. Then you got dragged to bumfuck Nevada and had to start over.”
“Are you a fucking mindreader?” Davey whispered with a look of shock replacing the anger on his face.
“This town you lived in, was it big?” I asked and he shook his head.
“Less than five hundred people in the entire fucking town, maybe as many people in the entire county as go to this school.” Davey answered. Yeah, that fit what I remembered of him telling me.
“So you went from being another fish in the pond to being the big fish in the little pond, right?” I asked and he nodded his head after staring at me for a long moment. “Now you’re back to being just another fish in the pond and you don’t even know all the fish anymore because they’ve changed just like you have, and to make matters worse your father’s in all the papers and not in a good way.”
“You are freaky.” He said in a whisper and I smiled.
“Yeah, but I’m thinking I’d like to get to know you.” I said with that smile still on my face and I could see something melt in him before his shoulders slumped again.
“Why?” He asked. “Sounds like you’ve figured out my pathetic life.”
“Because as I was thinking about this, I realized if I was in that situation I’d want someone to be friends with who just might understand what I was going through.” I said calmly and he gave me a guarded look. “I also realized that while I may not understand everything you’re going through, I do understand some of it and maybe I should try and make friends with you. Lord knows anyone who’s been through shit like you have has got to be someone worth knowing. I’d be wanting to slit my wrists about now.”
“Who says I haven’t?” Davey asked sarcastically and my heart nearly stopped at that thought, but then he’d lived long enough in this timeline to make it to 2004 alive.
“So, we going to work on the project together?” I asked him and he nodded after a very long moment where I held my breath.
“Good, I’ll see you in P.E., right?” I asked him.
“Yeah, but I go to work right after.” He said softly.
“Okay, see ya, Davey.” I said with a smile and walked off, not daring to look backwards. Had I said too much, or not enough? Only time would tell.
This story brought to you by a lot of hard editing from Emoe, and
beta-reading by Trebs.
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