Chapter 15: Visits

Friday, August 24, 1984

Much of the day was pretty quiet. We all had things to get done, but most of them were pretty straightforward.

There were a few shopping runs, but I wasn’t invited to them. Most of them had to do with overlooked household items or a desire for some additional knickknacks and decorations. I think the girls wanted things to be a bit more polished for Michael’s visit.

During a lull in activity (that I only later realized was probably planned to give her a chance to talk to me), Mel sat down next to me on the living room couch, tucking her feet under her and turning to me.

“So,” she said. “I’m going to ask a question I don’t think you can answer.”

“Shoot,” I said.

She smiled. “Why you? And Angie, and Laura?”

“We’ve all asked ourselves that hundreds of times. There’s no answer. God, or the Gods, or the Universe, or ... whatever ... is mute. We shouldn’t be here by the laws of the universe we’re used to, but yet here we are. We all had real issues in our first life, and it’s at least plausible to argue that much of that was because we didn’t have the right versions of the other people in our lives, but that’s not an answer.”

She nodded slowly, but I could tell that wasn’t going to satisfy her.

“I’ve heard about Laura’s dying wish,” she said.

I just nodded.

She paused, then said, “It seems very ... convenient.”

“It does,” I said. “It doesn’t hold up literally...”

“I get that,” she said. “You aren’t the Steve, and Angie isn’t the Angie, that she made the wish for. Still ... it’s something.”

I shrugged a bit.

“We’ve all thought about it, of course. One theory is that everyone who needs one gets a second chance. We know there are multiple universes, after all. Why not an infinite number? Or at least more than necessary for everyone to get a chance.”

“What defines ‘need?’” she said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jas and Cammie both listening. I suspected the others were, too. I let them pretend that I hadn’t seen them.

“In my self-centered view...” I said.

She giggled a bit at that.

“ ... it’s the people whose lives were sufficiently screwed up that they would welcome a second chance even at the cost of the good things in their first life not happening. I made a conscious choice to give up things that mattered to me because they’re not compatible with making this life better. Angie has, too, and Laura definitely has. In at least some cases, I think those things have come back to me — my relationship with Dave Mayrink, who I know you don’t know, is less close but also better in this life than it was before — and in others, it won’t matter.”

“Won’t matter?”

I shrugged again.

“There’s no Dave Winton in this universe to be friends with. Darla is terrific, but she isn’t ‘girl Dave.’ She’s her own person, and just thinking of her as ‘girl Dave’ would shortchange her.”

Mel nodded, then said, “So ... someone like me?”

“Honestly, I hope you’ll never be in the position to want a second chance. It’s fraught with peril. I very much don’t want a third chance right now. If things went really, really badly in the future, perhaps I would change that, but I would have to assume it would be in yet another universe and that things that happened this time might not happen. Worse, I might ‘break’ things from my perspective. Imagine if I said or did the wrong thing and Jas hated me. Or Cammie hated me, or simply distrusted me, because of something I did. Even if I didn’t break something, though, they would be different people. Angie might not even exist, or might be a very different person.”

She nodded again, more slowly.

“Yeah,” she said, still nodding a little. “I don’t think I would want to do that. High school again? Trying to ‘meet’ Cammie the right way? Knowing what would likely happen to her? I mean, do I try to avoid the photo being taken, or let things play out? Would I be awkward? How do I handle you?”

I nodded. “So far, for Angie, me, and Laura, there’s nothing significant from our first life that we want so badly that we’d have to try to repeat things the ‘right’ way. Thus, we tentatively believe that maybe that matters. There’s a huge difference between ‘here, do things over and maybe it’ll be better’ and ‘here, do things over, but make sure to do everything right or — at least for you — it might be much worse.’”

Mel shivered.

“Yeah. I mean, it’d be cool to ‘know stuff,’ but so much could go wrong.”

“We’re all agreed that we don’t want another chance. Who knows if that matters — and ask me again if something big goes horribly wrong! — but right now? The idea of trying to navigate the last four years and not do something that makes things worse is scary — particularly if I had to do it in another universe.”

“Ugh!”

She paused, then said, “So it’s ... what? A reward for a sucky life?”

“I don’t think of it as a reward so much as a way of ... um, ‘setting things right,’ I suppose.”

“And we never hear about this because...?”

“Maybe in these universes, we’re the first. If we’re indulging the ‘infinite universes’ theory, this one could be custom-made for us.”

“Which begs the question of whether it’s still ... I dunno... ‘fair,’ I guess.”

“Absolutely! Either way, though, we’re apparently ‘chosen’ — in some sense of the word — so the question is already begged. We don’t like the idea that the universe is biased in our favor so we try not to dwell on it. It still may be biased, though.”

“Yeah,” she said, shifting a bit. “This is kinda what I was thinking. It’s good to hear it from you. I’ve been considering it. I mean, I’m good with who you are, and who Angie is and who Laura is. My parents would completely freak out if I told them one of my housemates is an ex-con...”

I chuckled at that, and she grinned back.

“ ... but that’s not the person I know, and you’re ... you. Not the other you. Whoever you were, you’re the guy I’ve known for four years. It fills in a lot of gaps, but it doesn’t make you someone else, not to me.”

I shrugged a bit, again.

“That’s something I think we all struggled with. I can only be me. If I’d started raving about having died in 2021, having been in my mid-50s, having kids and an ex-wife, my parents would’ve had me committed. If I’d proven that I was right, that might have been worse. Just being fourteen and living my life was the only option. The universe made that easy, I think, but I have no way of knowing. In any case, now I’ve been this ‘me’ for four years, and the other ‘me’ is more like a really, really good book or movie. I know he was real, but he doesn’t exist in this universe.”

“Yeah,” she said, shifting again. “It’s weird, but it’s good. I think...”

She paused, bit her lower lip, then nodded to herself before continuing.

“I know that I’m lucky I met you, or re-met you, or ... whatever. That Study Group happened. That we became such close friends. And ... I’m lucky it was you. I don’t know if the other Steve could’ve done the things that really mattered.”

I shook my head.

“Most likely he couldn’t have. He was me, and the versions of me that I know of all kinda suck in their own ways. First-life me ... well, as much as that sucked, that’s the best other version. I wouldn’t hold out a lot of hope that another me would’ve been up to the task. Of course, this universe...”

She grinned and picked it up from me, saying, “Might not have been built to have a Steve other than you.”

“Exactly,” I said, nodding.

“Or an Angie other than the one we have.”

“That’s a big one. I’d have been ‘better’ by myself. Angie made me a whole lot better, just by being her.”

That must have gotten to her, because a slightly teary Angie appeared around the corner, came over, sat in my lap, and hugged me.

“Me, too, big brother,” she said. “I’d have been better, but I don’t think I’d have really understood what ‘better’ meant without you.”

I hugged her right back.

“We make a pretty good team.”

“The best!” she said.

Mel smiled.

“Thanks, both of you,” she said. “This helps. I like that we can just talk about this stuff.”

Angie giggled, her mood lifting, and said, “You should hear some of the conversations we’ve had. English sucks at describing how you’re doing something for the first time that you’ve done a dozen times a few years from now!”

Mel almost snorted.

“I can imagine!” she said, hesitated, then said, “I guess I hadn’t thought that through. All of the movies and shows and stuff...”

“So far, they’re the same,” I said, with Angie nodding. “They’re also different. I’ve never seen any of them in the same way as I’m seeing them now. The people are different. The situations are different.”

“Still...”

I shrugged.

Angie said, “Not spilling the beans on all the things we know is hard! When Steve figured me out, it was because I got all flustered and used a phrase from that movie.”

“My recognizing it was a dead giveaway that I was in the same boat, of course,” I said.

Mel giggled.

“Okay! Well ... that’s my big question for today. I want to kinda go down the rabbit hole slowly and carefully, if that’s okay.”

“Very okay,” I said, with Angie nodding.

“We don’t want to overshare,” she said. “Like big brother said, we really are just us. We just are weird people who know a lot of things we shouldn’t. Sharing those things is sometimes good, but it takes a lot of thought.”

“Much is ‘need to know,’” I said.

Mel nodded.

“Plus, we know less than you think. It’s big stuff, mostly. Books, movies, that stuff. Politics. World events. I have no clue what you did after high school. Or Cammie, or Jas, or Paige,” Angie said.