Chapter 32: Back to the Past, Again!
by Dan Kirk
Nightmares did walk the earth.
“David Jones.” Mrs. Mandragorn’s shrill voice, almost as bad as her fingernails across the chalkboard, made me want to puke right then and there. I hadn’t had to deal with her once in the past two lifetimes, and waking up from my transfer back in time to find her in front of me was not pleasant, not pleasant at all. “Since you feel you already know everything there is to know about the history of our country, why don’t you explain to the class what ‘manifest destiny’ means?”
For a very long moment, I stared at her in complete surprise. This was not January 1980! In the four hours between my return to the
“Obviously, your little nap did you no good, David.” Mrs. Mandragorn said with heavy sarcasm as she stared down her nose at me. She was an older woman, well into her fifties, and was the type of elementary school teacher kids had nightmares about. I’d always disliked, no hated, her for several reasons. This type of scorn from her was the least of those reasons. How the hell had I ended up here, in the second grade, according to the date written in block letters on the left side of the chalkboard, in January of 1976 when the target date was January 5th, 1980?
“Manifest Destiny?” I asked rhetorically before she could start into a diatribe, cutting off the chortles from the other kids in the class. My big, ugly glasses I wore during this time in my life chose that moment to slip down my nose and I pushed them back up. A quick look down showed I was wearing that red t-shirt with ‘76’ across the front in a vivid blue, and brown corduroy pants while I had dirty white tennis shoes on my feet. Oh yes, I really hated this year.
“That’s right, David.” She said with even more scorn in her voice. How I hated this woman! “Do you think you might be able to give some semblance of an answer instead of wasting my time and the class’s time?”
“If you insist, Mrs. Mandragorn.” I said with a hint of the dislike I felt for her in my voice. She frowned at the tone, and all it did was inspire me to really put her in her place. “Manifest Destiny was a phrase popular with politicians and leaders of the
“Depressions during 1818 and 1839 provided an enticement for many poor Americans to head west where cheap, or free land gave them a chance to farm and provide income for their families. A population boom at the same time, as well as heavy immigration from mostly European countries, meant there was serious overcrowding in the eastern states, and plenty of hands within families to help with the farm labor. Between 1820 and 1850, nearly four million Americans moved west under the concept of it being their Manifest Destiny to populate the land.
“At the time, most of the land was sparsely populated, mostly by semi-nomadic bands of Indians who were most often rounded up and sent into government sanctioned Reservations, or simply wiped out by the mostly-white settlers. It also set up the groundwork for disputes over slavery in the new territories and helped contribute to the series of events that led to the Civil War in 1860. Is that enough, Mrs. Mandragorn, or shall I continue?”
“If… if I wanted a recitation out of your text book, I’d have had you read it aloud.” She snorted and I smiled at her with as much fake sweetness as I could muster.
“Where does it say all that in this thing?” I asked her, raising the text book as her face flushed to a deep purple I could never remember having seen before. The perfect moment was ruined, though by a deep stab of pain in my head, and I nearly missed her tirade. I only caught the last part, her ordering me to the principal’s office, and I got up to follow her instructions, still feeling very satisfied for having shoved my words in her face.
The principal wasn’t nearly as amused as I was.
It was this thick fog that had been a causal factor in Aunt Bev’s accident last year when a cement truck had not seen a stop sign and rammed her Volkswagen van, leaving her a quadriplegic for the rest of her life. Two months before that accident, my paternal grandfather, my dad’s father, had died from a brain tumor. A month ago, just a few weeks before Christmas, I had caught my father, the pastor of a
“What is it dear?” The school’s secretary asked me in a kind voice as I entered the much warmer school office. She had a pleasant smile on her face, like she really was glad to see any kid, so very much unlike the evil Mrs. Mandragorn. I even noticed a slight frown as she looked at my goose-bump riddled bare arms. Obviously, she was wondering why a kid was walking around without a jacket.
My jacket had gotten lost somewhere between
“Mrs. Mandragorn sent me to see the Principal.” I told her, wishing my voice wasn’t nearly so high-pitched, but knowing it wouldn’t change until puberty hit, in oh, seven more god damned years!
“What did you do, young man?” She asked in a voice suddenly less sweet, and more demanding. Still, it held none of the vile evilness like that damn stupid fucking teacher.
“I imagine I made her a little upset.” I said with a shrug of my shoulders and she actually laughed for a split second.
“Let’s see, you’re David Jones, right, the new boy from
“Yes, ma’am.” I answered, resisting the urge to hang my head. I wasn’t sure if it was shame, embarrassment, or what that made me want to do that, but I knew it was something typical to me at this age. For some odd reason, I realized my voice held more of the southern accent I’d once had as a child than it had for many a year. Mrs. Mandragorn had insisted, after listening to my heavy southern accent for two months that I was speech impaired, and had set in motion my being sent to speech therapy for six years just because of a damn accent.
“Well, have a seat, dear, and Principal Bernstein will see you in a moment.” She told me and I sat in one of the plastic chairs while she took my school file into the Principal’s office.
At least the wait gave me some time to think over how this monumental fuck-up happened. The fading pain in my head didn’t make thinking easier, and some of those last memories before coming back in time were still a little unclear, almost as if the fog outside had entered my brain. Some lack of clarity was to be expected with the jury-rigged equipment. Sean, Mr. Rush, and the rest of their team hadn’t really had the best of situations to rebuild the time machine after the damage it sustained in the first attack.
Those last four hours had been very busy for everyone as they rushed the final preparations. They’d expected to have another day or two, but events would not allow them that luxury. While they rushed to get things ready, I had locked myself away with my father, asking him some hard questions about our family past, and gaining some insight into how I could convince him to change his choice of careers without necessarily revealing that I was any different than the young son he’d know at that time.
It had been a very odd conversation, and filled with a lot of surprising details about how my parents had seen me as a child, and at some of the stresses in their relationship with each other and with their own parents. Fortunately for me, his answers to my questions had required him to share a lot of information of the events in our family during the last month of 1975, and the first part of 1976. These months I was now living in had nearly been the end of our family, with my mother wanting to divorce my father after I’d told her about seeing him having sex with the church secretary.
Right now, in January of 1976, my mother, with my sister and I, had moved back in with her parents in Ceres. My father had left the church in
Papa, mom’s step-father, was pushing her to divorce my father. Nanny was trying to give her room to make up her own mind, while trying to make sure my sister and I were around for her to spoil. Grandma Jones, dad’s mom, was furious with my mom for not doing what she’d done when my grandfather had cheated on her.
My mom had a temper, and could hold a grudge, but I couldn’t see her just turning into a bitter old nag unhappy with everyone but totally ignoring the cause of her unhappiness.
Everything my father had shared before coming back was still there, even if it was a little unclear. I could still see his haggard face, and could hear the tremor in his voice as he struggled against pure exhaustion to share with me everything I asked of him. He’d spent the month since mother’s death, along with my Uncle Phil, ministering to scared young soldiers, bolstering their morale, and their will to fight.
“Do it, Davey.” Dad had said after the messenger from Sean had informed me they were ready for me. “Be subtle about it, but I always did listen to you, especially when you were younger. You always had these ideas, and you didn’t stop sharing them until you got older. I know I was mad at you for a long while after we left
“I remember.” I had said softly, tears suddenly coming to my eyes at the memory. One of the few saving graces of that timeline had been the closeness with my father. I’d never really had that in any other timeline, and it was something I’d miss. Both of us had tears falling quietly down our faces as we parted from a long hug and said our final goodbyes.
“David?” The voice of the friendly secretary called me back to the here and now – I wasn’t sure if it was the present or the past. I looked up to see her smiling softly at me. “Mr. Bernstein will talk with you now.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” I said politely, noticing the thickness of my accent again. She just smiled and went back to her desk as I entered the Principal’s office. Mr. Bernstein was a smallish, rotund man with thick glasses and beady eyes. Nevertheless, he was friendly, almost jovial although he did manage to keep a stern expression as I explained why I’d been sent to his office.
“Where did you learn all that about history?” Mr. Bernstein asked me after I’d recited what I’d told Mrs. Mandragorn in answer to her question.
“A book at the library.” I answered quickly, falling back on the old stand-by I’d used a lot during previous timelines to explain understanding too much for someone my age.
“The school library?” He asked and I almost snorted in disgust. This school’s library was a joke. The whole library was slightly bigger than a supply closet.
“No, sir, the public library.” I answered him and he nodded.
“Maybe you should stick to books appropriate for your age.” He said. “It’s remarkable a young man your age would understand something like that so well. It’s obvious you’re a smart young man. Has anyone ever talked with your parents about maybe advancing you a grade?”
“No sir.” I answered quickly. “I wouldn’t want that.”
“Well, it’s something I’ll discuss with your mother when I talk to her about this little incident.” He said with a frown. “Now, why don’t you go back to class and apologize to Mrs. Mandragorn?”
“Yes sir.” I said as I got up and left the room. I’d have to do some talking later because my mom might like the idea of me advancing a grade. That wasn’t something I’d want because it would seriously mess up plans I had starting in the seventh grade.
The apology to Mrs. Mandragorn, made in front of the entire class went about as well as could be expected. I didn’t even really mind having to write, “I will not sleep in class” two hundred times on the chalkboard during recess. For lunch, even though Nanny’s house was just on the other side of the alley that ran along the far side of the school’s large yard/playground, I had a bag lunch that I located in the block of shelves near the classroom entrance. Since I was new at this school, and according to my memories, had only gone to this school for a few months, there were no friends here to talk to while I ate. After eating fairly quickly, I decided to go running around the edges of the large playground.
The rest of the afternoon passed slowly as Mrs. Mandragorn went over some very simple math problems and had us write them out on pieces of paper. Just when I thought I could stand no more of the simple second grade lessons, the last bell for the day rang and I was free of the classroom. It took only a few minutes to grab my books for the simple homework assignments she had given us, and to head home to Nanny’s. Just like I had back in the timeline I remembered, I used the alley as a shortcut home, and climbed through the garbage can recess cut-out in the fence of Nanny’s backyard.
I didn’t make it halfway across the backyard, which was filled with various kinds of fruit trees and some grape vines before Papa called out from the entrance of his garage that abutted the side of the property and ran back out into the alley. He had a frown on his taciturn face as he summoned me over to him.
“Your mom and Nanny went out.” He told me gruffly. From my adult height, he’d always seemed short, but here in this time, it felt like he towered over me. “The Principal of your school called an hour ago. Do you know what he had to tell me?”
“Yes, Papa.” I answered, trying not to gulp as my throat tightened.
“Come inside.” He told me, stepping to the side of the garage entrance and I went inside. It was a dark room, lit by a single bare bulb. There were counters running down towards the alley doors and off to the left. The counters were cluttered with various electronic equipment and tools while the rest of the garage was filled with broken televisions, half-repaired televisions and several filing cabinets. One of Papa’s hobbies was fixing television, and he’d actually managed to fix one or two during his lifetime.
“Your father should be the one doing this.” Papa said as he stepped inside the garage and shut the door. That was all I needed to hear to understand what was coming. In our family, like many others of similar faith and backgrounds, it was the father who punished the children, or in the absence of a father, the nearest male relative. “Do you understand what you did wrong?”
“Yes sir, I think so.” I said meekly, not having to fake the feeling at all. I felt like I was being slapped across the face, or dunked in cold water. In my first Do Over, realizing I was a child, under the authority of my parents had been a difficult adjustment to make, and in many ways I’d never really succeeded. Even then though, I’d been physically older than I was now and had more freedoms than a seven-year old could expect to have. For instance, the threat of being spanked wasn’t one of the things I’d had to face.
Certainly nothing like it had come up at all in the last timeline.
“I was disrespectful to my teacher.” I said after those thoughts finished running through my head, and Papa had stood there silently waiting for me to explain what I thought I’d done wrong. With that statement, he nodded as if satisfied with my answer. He’d always been a gruff man, one who didn’t say much unless it was necessary. As he nodded again, he began to remove his belt and I let out a deep breath, my eyes watching his hands move slowly. Oddly, I noticed once again the two missing fingers from his left hand. Those fingers had been lost in an accident with a saw, but he’d lived years and years without them, never letting their loss slow him down at all. “Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with a rod, he will not die.” Papa quoted Proverbs 23:13 and I managed to keep myself from responding in any way but what he expected of me, or maybe hoped. My knees were shaking slightly as every instinct in me screamed to tell him he couldn’t do this to me, that I was an adult, that I was too old… but none of that was really true in the here and now. “Turn around Davy and drop your pants.”
“Yes sir.” I said in a voice that was weak of its own accord. I turned and faced the nearby counter that had several different papers scattered around it, dropped my pants and bent over.
“This is for your own good.” Papa said sternly, but with a hint of softness as his belt lashed against my bare bottom. He counted out each stroke and I did my best to not cry out. I could feel the tears in my eyes and fought to focus on something besides the feeling of pain from my behind. At least it wasn’t as bad as the headache I’d had earlier.
Focusing on the papers on Papa’s counter helped me as he counted past five. By the time he reached ten and told me to ‘pick up your britches’; I’d learned a few things that made the pain of my spanked butt worth every stripe. Exactly how to use what I’d learned, I wasn’t sure yet, but they were things I’d never known about him before.
“Thank you, Papa.” I said softly as I finished pulling up and buttoning my pants. He seemed a little surprised that I remembered you were supposed to thank the adult who spanked you, and nodded his head sternly.
“Your birthday is next week.” He stated and I nodded. He had me wondering what he was doing when he turned and went further back into the garage, but he returned shortly holding out a light brown jacket in his hands. “Consider this an early birthday present.”
“Thank you.” I said with a lot more meaning in the words than those I’d said a few moments ago. Without hesitation I slipped into the jacket and was happy that it not only fit, but was fairly warm. Even with the afternoon more than halfway over, the sky was still covered in gray foggy clouds and the sun was no more than a distant, cool light. I tried to remember if he’d ever given me a jacket like this in my first lifetime, but a sudden stab of pain in my head hinted that it might be better not to try to think about it now. “It’s a nice jacket.”
“I found it in a thrift store.” Papa said with a shrug, dismissing it lightly, but there was a twinkle in his eye that said differently. I’d never really noticed it as a kid, only later in that first lifetime when I first entered the Navy, but Papa had cared more for me than for most of his grandkids who never spent much time with him. We’d gone fishing many times when I was growing up, and when I had joined the Navy at seventeen that first lifetime, he’d pulled me aside to whisper some good advice, and some warnings. Later, when I’d come back from the combat in
“Yes, a little.” I answered quietly.
“Get it done.” He told me. “Your mom and Nanny picked up your sister and they’re doing girl things all afternoon.”
“Yes sir.” I said quickly and left the garage, trying not to limp from the pain in my rear, and trying not to wince at the pain that was coming back in my head. I managed to remember to grab the books I’d brought home from school and dropped them on the kitchen table inside. Like any other seven year old, my stomach was growling and my first stop was the refrigerator where I made a ham sandwich and poured myself a glass of milk before sitting down to get started on my homework.
If Papa came back inside, he’d expect to see me working on the homework, especially so soon after a spanking. So, while snacking on the sandwich, I set up the homework and began to work through them easily. A vocabulary list, twenty simple arithmetic problems, and some English grammar problems were all done very quickly, and I was left with plenty of time to think about how the hell I might have ended up in God-Damn 1976.
The year of
Alexei Shevardnadze was just entering secondary schooling in the
How the hell had I ended up here in this time?
I had to fight through a haze of pain to think about those last few hours before Sean put the needle in my arm for the third time. General Powell had called down a warning that time was short. Radar had picked up a new launch off of the coast of
The somewhat familiar sensation of my mind slowing under the drug, freezing my memory cells into place for the machine to scan them and transmit them into time was washing over me when the ground had shook and the lights flickered for a moment just as the machine began to whir into action. It was the last memory I could recall, and I was fairly sure one of those nukes had gone off over
I was lucky just to have made it back at all!
There was no use crying over spilt milk, as my Nanny or my Papa might have said if I’d been able to share any of this with them. That wasn’t in my plans, though, for several reasons. First of all, my sharing of the secret of time travel had led to many of the problems I experienced in the last time. Another reason was that I had very little frame of reference for dealing with President Gerald Ford, or for Jimmy Carter who would win the White House later this year. Ford was a complete enigma for me. I’d only ever met him once, in the second timeline. Carter I’d met a couple of times, and I knew he’d never give the orders necessary to secure this timeline from the dangers posed by the communist time travelers.
The most important factor of them all, was my own desire to not get caught up in the years of government service, of the endless reports and advice about how to make the future better. None of that had ever done any good really, beyond making things more deadly, more dangerous for the country, for me, and for the world as a whole. If I could possibly arrange the elimination of the other time travelers, and the scientist who had invented the damn machine in the first place, all without revealing myself, or at the least getting myself caught up in the trappings of government, then that is what I would do in this timeline.
The good side of all this, was that I had five years until Ronald Reagan became President of the
The problem was how I was going to get there. As a kid, I couldn’t get there alone, I’d have to actually maneuver my whole family into that spot, and it was my own father who’d given me the key idea on how to do that. The only problem was that my current family situation was delicate, and anything I did to upset the balance could have just as many negative effects as positive results.
“You done with your homework?” Papa’s voice startled me out of my thoughts and I looked up at him in surprise. The man could move quietly when he wanted. His smile told me he knew he’d surprised me and was happy with that.
“Yep, I’m done.” I said with a smile of my own and he looked over my shoulder at the sheets of paper with my completed work on them.
“Looks like you got it right.” Papa said with a nod of approval. “I’ve got to run some errands.”
“May I go with you?” I asked softly, hoping he’d say yes. I noticed the folded up newspaper under his arm. It was the Sports section of the Modesto Bee, and one of the new things I’d learned about him while he was spanking me. A conversation with Jeb Bush I’d had while preparing him for his trip back through time that never happened ran through my mind and I did my best not to smile. If I was careful, I could get Papa to solve one of my problems for me. He’d always been honest and fair, if extremely stingy with his money.
“You’d just be bored.” He dismissed me with a negative wave of his hand and I let myself frown slightly.
“I’ll be good, I promise.” I told him and he let out a gust of air that was too butch to be called a sigh.
“Oh, all right, put your stuff up and get in the van.” He said at last and I hurried to obey. I was still wearing the jacket he’d given me (and I think I did remember it vaguely. I hadn’t like it the first time because it was brown and I was sick of brown clothes, but in that first life I didn’t understand the true importance of the gift. Papa was a stingy man, rarely giving anything away that cost money. His giving the coat to me was a rare thing for him to do, and something to be treasured.). Within a few seconds, I had my homework put away and was following him out of the house (which he locked all four locks on the door before turning around and shooing me into the brown van he drove).
The van was mostly silent as we pulled out and drove down
As Papa slowed down to leer at the hookers that walked the corners here, I reached over in to the middle stand between the van’s front bucket seats and picked up his newspaper. Sure enough he’d circled certain teams that were playing in the playoffs for the Super Bowl. I never knew my grandfather, the man who loved to read the bible every night, actually placed bets on sports games!
“What are you doing?” Papa asked as I made a clucking sound just as he started to pull into the parking lot of an electronics store.
“I think these are the wrong teams.” I said softly, not daring to look up and meet his eyes.
“How would you know?” He said with a bit of scorn in his voice and he snatched the paper out of my hand. I just leaned back and closed my eyes, calling up the scores I remembered reading about.
“Duke wins 88-65. The Spurs lose 92-84.” I said, purposely making my voice a little dreamy and closing my eyes. When I opened them he was staring at me like I had gone crazy. “Don’t ask me how I know, I know.”
“I’m not betting my money on some wild fancy of yours.” Papa said gruffly and opened the door on his side. I smiled, knowing I’d touched a nerve and just had to be careful about pushing the right buttons.
“You want me to mow the lawn for you this summer?” I asked him and he gave me a long look as if I really had gone crazy. “I’m big enough to do stuff like that now and we know my parents aren’t going to move far away now. Mom won’t stand for being that far away from Nanny, not after what Dad did. So I’ll be here for the summer, and I’ll mow the lawn for five bucks a week. Unless you want to place a bet, then if I lose I’ll do it for free.”
“You’ll mow my lawn all summer for free if I place the bet the way you said?” Papa said with a tone of pure disbelief in his voice. “Davey Jones, if you think I won’t hold you to it, you’re sorely mistaken.”
“It’s a deal.” I said, spitting into my palm and holding it out to him. Without any self-consciousness at all, he spat into his own palm and shook my hand.
“There’s twelve weeks in the summer.” Papa said as I got out of the van and followed him towards the entrance. “I’m not going to put a hundred twenty down on this foolish bet. I’ll put twenty down on your two bets, that’s it.”
“I’ll still mow all summer long if I’m wrong.” I said firmly. “It’s only fair since summer is still five months away.”
“You’re going to learn the dangers of gambling, son.” He said with a shake of his head as we went inside and he headed for the back counter. Behind that counter was an older man, extremely overweight and looking like he hadn’t bathed in a week. He joined Papa in laughing at my bets, but the man took Papa’s hundred bucks as he laid various bets, and then Papa took out another forty bucks and made my two bets. The man rattled off the odds on the scores and my eyes widened slightly. I had no idea so much good money could be made from making bets this way.
“You sure you can cover my winnings at those odds?” I asked the guy with some incredulity in my voice. He guffawed loudly and slapped the counter.
“Kid, if you win those bets like that I’ll kiss your damn feet before selling my store to make good on them.” He said between chortles.
“I don’t want the store, and I sure don’t want you kissing my feet.” I snorted and almost flinched when Papa stared at me hard. Had I pissed him off? He wasn’t pissed though, as a slow smile lifted the edges of his mouth. It was one of the few times he ever smiled, and it was almost… scary how it changed his face.
“I’ll take the store.” Papa said gruffly.
“If he wins.” The man grunted, suddenly not laughing as he realized Papa would hold him to that.
A twenty dollar bet at odds of four hundred and twenty-one to one yielded $8,420. The other bet was given at odds of three hundred and eight to one, which would yield another $6,160. Certainly it wasn’t a lot of money, and not worth the entire store, much less its stock, but the man would most likely not have over fourteen and half thousand dollars just lying around when we came to collect on Monday.
Nanny and Mom were home by the time we got back and I got a stern lecture from my mother about being more respectful to my teacher. Papa interceded after about twenty minutes of mom all but yelling at me to tell her he’d already disciplined me and that the matter was over with. They had picked my sister up from Kindergarten and taken her with them and I spent the rest of the day enjoying getting to know my younger sister again.
Sure, we’d done little more than play tag in the backyard until Nanny called us into a dinner of Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn, and home-made biscuits. As we all gathered in the living room after dinner, Papa lit up his pipe, something he’d quit after his heart attack next year, and I played a game of SORRY! with my mother and sister until it was bed time. All evening while he watched television, Papa kept chuckling as he looked at me over the stem of his pipe.
Saturday was interesting as Papa drug me out to the garage to listen to the college games that night. When my team won exactly as I’d said they would, he gave me a sly smile and told me to wait until tomorrow night’s game before I got to planning what I’d do with my own electronics store. Later, Aunt Fran brought her kids over for dinner and we all spent most of the night playing different games while the adults fawned over the baby Tiffany, Fran’s youngest child.
Sunday morning, I got into Nanny’s Pinto while Mom and Jenny rode with Papa to church. It was the first time I’d seen my dad in this timeline as we all gathered at the
This was going to be harder than I had imagined.
The pastor of the church was my Uncle Phil’s father (Uncle Phil was still living in
He didn’t stay for lunch.
“Davey, help me get the trash out.” Papa said later that night, after the basketball game was over. It was bedtime, and tomorrow was school, but he’d insisted that it was okay for me to stay up late. I was still getting use to my really young body, having spent a lot of the last few days tripping at odd moments, or falling asleep at odd times, or suffering through nearly-endless headaches. Adjusting to a pre-pubescent body was proving tougher than I had imagined, and I nearly dropped the bag of garbage as I helped Papa carry out two bags to the can in the backyard.
“How did you know?” Papa asked succinctly as we put the bags in the can and he put the lid back down. He was staring at me intently and waited for an answer.
“I don’t know.” I lied carefully. “Somehow I just knew what the scores were going to be.”
“I’ve never heard the like.” Papa said while shaking his head. “Old Gus isn’t going to be too happy, and the people he takes bets for are going to be even less than happy. The store was a joke, and there’s no way he’ll be holding to that and there’s no way we can force him to either. He will pay you the bet, you know, or at least pay me. If I’d thought you’d have won, I’d have never placed the bet.”
“I’m sorry.” I said glumly, wondering why I hadn’t thought of the complications before getting him to place the bet. That was also the longest speech I’d ever heard him make, except when he was saying the prayer over dinner.
“If you’re going to place a bet like that, you do it once because you’ll never get to place a bet like that again.” Papa said sternly, giving me a hard look. “Now, if you somehow got an intuition that you knew the score to something like the Super Bowl, that would be worth doing something like that, not some piss-ant basketball game.”
“
“You sure?” He asked me and I nodded again. A slow smile lit his face and he shooed me back into the house with a wave of his hand. “Go to bed, I have a phone call to make.”
That night, as I tossed and turned in the room I shared with my sister, trying to fight off the massive headache I was feeling, I realized I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next. The more I thought about that, about not really knowing what would happen tomorrow, the quicker the headache receded and I relaxed into a dreamless sleep.
