Chapter 1 - I Mean We all Need a Second Chance Sometimes

Falling, that’s the only thing I can describe it as. Endlessly falling as I slowly watched the events of my own life in reverse. Some of the events I recognized, most I didn’t. It was being shown to me as if someone else had been watching and from various angles. My life, the way I was ... How arrogant I had been as a teen. How many people did I alienate with an entitled attitude... ? Wow. I saw my wife and me meeting for the first time at the airport and me forcing her to hug me. It brought a tear to my eye. I saw my time at the Job Corps Center, learning networking and computer repair under the man I would always call my mentor. God rest his soul. I saw myself dropping from the coast guard due to the culture shock. I missed my chance there. I saw myself graduating from high school. I saw myself with the girl I called my girlfriend through most of high school. God I was an idiot. It was obviously lust and not love. Wish I had seen that sooner. I saw the day my mother lost custody. I should’ve done that sooner. Then I got hit by a bright light.

December 14^th 1996

I pulled myself off my bed, if you can call it a bed, as I opened my eyes. I looked out the window to my right. My bed, had been a wooden style futon, which laid in the center of my room. The snow was pretty heavy and it was still coming down. The glass was frosted as I looked around at the mess in my room. So much stuff around me that my mother would throw out as a way to get back at me when she lost custody. I then realized it. I was my younger self. I still had all of my adult memories. I looked at my hands. My finger, the left index finger, had been cut down to the bone as an adult and the way they had stitched it made it look like it had a chunk out of it. I had cut it with one of those ever sharp knives.

I could hear my sisters outside of my room arguing. I stood up on the bed which was low to the floor, and looked down at my appearance and was utterly disgusted. Sweats that were half way up my calves, and a gross t-shirt covered in whatever stains ... absolutely disgusting. And the aroma of ammonia in the room. I realized this was during the point in my own life that I had still not stopped wetting the bed. The smell was enough to make me gag. How did I go thru this every day? How did my family? How did my peers? By god, that was the first thing I was gonna change. I looked around my room and found a semblance of acceptable clothing and quickly grabbed it before making a hasty exit, breathing in sweet fresh air as I made my way from the door to the top of the stairs.

I hastened down the stairs, and snagged access to the bathroom before anyone could accost me. I swapped over the laundry that was already in the washer, which wreaked of mildew. No wonder the family could live with it, everything smelled fucking disgusting. I threw in my clothing and stripped down. I tossed my old clothing straight into the bathroom trash and turned on the shower. I then spent what felt like an hour just scrubbing myself raw. After my shower, I wrapped a towel around myself and rummaged through the cupboards until I found some white vinegar. Thank god we had some. I dumped some into the washer, set it to cold and started the load. I then walked out of the bathroom and almost ran into my slightly younger sister. Her name was Elysa. She had long blonde hair, blue eyes, pale skin, semi-fit body, and was 12 years old. She would be 13 in July.

“I’ve been trying to find you! Heidy is on the phone!” She exasperated at me.

Heidy? Now there was a piece of work. I dated her in 6th, 7th and 8th grades. Actually I shouldn’t say dated at all. I think in total we went on zero dates. We just hung out, made out a bit, and had given ourselves the titles of those who would date. I remember what her body was like at the time, yes, thin, long blonde curly hair, and green eyes. She once wore a sheer 1 piece that she didn’t realize was sheer until she had given me a show of her d-cup tits. I mean great body, clingy from what I remembered, and frankly ... not someone who was compatible to me. So this shit had to end now. I was done with the mindless dating of a teen just hoping to get a piece. I knew who I wanted to end up with, and though the idea of mindless sex would be fun, I knew who would end up putting out and who wouldn’t. There was a social stigma in my area of New York, where no one who considered themselves ‘decent’ had sex that young at that time in history. Honestly, I always felt New York had its head up its ass, as I knew that girls wanted it as much as guys, mostly thanks to Heidy’s best friend Lena, who was constantly telling me how horney she was but didn’t even wanna give me a real shot.

“And?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“She’s your girlfriend! Don’t you want to talk to her?” Elysa asked.

“Not especially.” I muttered as I walked past her and picked up the kitchen phone.

The phone was beige and was one of those units with the number pad built into the handset, and a super long cord reaching back to the base. The long cord was so that my sisters could easily move about the house. I honestly hated it. It always got tangled up.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hi, birthday boy!” Heidy said over the phone.

“New phone, who dis?” I said, repeating a meme from my original time.

“What?” She said, confused.

“Never mind.” I said rolling my eyes. “So what did you want?” I asked coldly.

“To wish my boyfriend a happy birthday? Why are you being such an ass?” She asked.

“I’m dumping you. No reason. I just no longer wish to be in a relationship with you.” I said before abruptly hanging up the phone.

You know, even though you know something isn’t going to work out, being an ass to that extreme just isn’t easy, even for me. I was breaking the poor girl’s heart now, but I knew that by the end of the spring she was gonna be ‘dating’ my friend from a previous town I had lived in. He would go on with her until she dumped him for some loser who she’d end up being knocked up by down the road. I had run into her right after graduating from high school, and had been caught up on the whole story. So, with Heidy, the girl that I didn’t like, wouldn’t get anything from and would go on to being just a baby momma of some guy, and with Lena, the tease who would go on to stay as Heidy’s best friend until long after I left their lives, I was done.

I shook my head at the thought and headed out into the living room, hearing the phone ring as I did. I heard my youngest sister, Meagan, pick it up.

“Josh! It’s for you!” She called out as I sat on the couch.

“Take a message, or don’t.” I called back to her.

I turned on the T.V. and started watching Saturday morning cartoons. It wasn’t long before Meagan came out to me to tell me what was up.

“Elysa took the phone. Apparently, it was Heidy. She was crying.” Meagan said.

“Thanks kiddo.” I said with a smile at her.

Meagan would end up growing up into a brilliant young lady who would make some wrong choices. Last I had heard of her, she had become a hooker ... okay, I didn’t hear that but discovered some pictures of her on an adult website, and honestly in them, she looked like a hooker would. It was nauseating when I found them. Meagan was only eight years old though, maybe I could talk her thru some of her bad future decisions though. I knew that in her teens she would utterly despise me for what was going to happen in just a few months. That was another thing that I would need to change as well. I needed it to happen sooner rather than later. She would never forgive me for it, and frankly, that was her choice, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t help her in some way before I vanished from her life again. I looked at her, her hair was straight and down to her shoulders. She had brown hair and hazel eyes, and cute little dimples, though she had a sad expression hiding inside her eyes that I had never noticed before, but now that I thought about it, I remembered her having it ever since her birthday a couple years prior to this, when our maternal grandmother died ... yes, our grandmother had died on her birthday. Poor kid. I think, honestly, that was the first thing that messed her up. She had been there, in the room, on her birthday, when my grandmother drew her last breath.

“Wanna watch some cartoons with me?” I asked with a smile.

“Um ... sure.” She said, with a perplexed look on her face.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“You’re ... different.” She pointed out.

Damn, I had almost forgotten that she was more attuned to things than most people were. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?