Chapter 42: The Universe Strikes Back

Tuesday, October 19, 1982

I caught Cal between classes and pulled him aside. As usual, he looked busy, probably because he was. Not many people would dare interrupt him, I suspect.

“Hey, Steve! What’s up! It’s been too long!”

He gave me a big bear-hug, which I returned. And, yes, one could make ‘bear’ jokes about Cal, but he didn’t fit that stereotype at all.

“It has. Congrats on all the wins!”

“It’s pretty amazing. We’re getting more and more college recruiters. Both Andy and I have some great schools sniffing around, and a few of the seniors will get Division I scholarships. A bunch more will be playing Division II, it looks like.”

“Awesome. Hey, look. This is awkward, but important.”

Cal smiled. “If anyone can get away with asking something awkward, it’s you. Whatcha need?”

“Eyes.”

He looked confused at that.

“There’s a rumor that someone on the team — and I won’t name names, but it’s a starter, and a prominent one — is being a jerk to one or more girls. Not just the usual pressuring, but edging on coercion. Maybe beyond edging. If there’s locker room talk that way, and it sounds, well, real, I need to know.”

Cal frowned. “That’s not good at all. I wish you’d name names, but I can see why you wouldn’t. It’d screw up the team if we started being suspicious of one guy, especially a prominent starter. Yeah ... I can do that.”

He bit his lip. “And it’s me because...?”

“Someone knows you’re dating a very nice girl and have no interest in getting anything on the side from anyone else. Someone completely trustworthy.”

“Well, that tells me quite a bit,” he said, smiling. “If it was anyone else ... but it’s not. I trust you, and if you trust them, so do I. Besides, Cammie’s amazing, but I don’t need to tell you that.”

“Not at all. Even if we’re just partners in Debate, she’d certainly be a keeper for anyone.”

“That she would, man. That she would. I’m awfully lucky she’ll go out with a shmoe like me.”

“A shmoe who’ll be on a full-ride scholarship at a good school — and that might be an academic scholarship — and will probably have a great career, both in football and outside it.”

“Hey, I can’t help it if I’ve got it all!”

“Nope. And, if you’ve got it...”

“Flaunt it! Damn right!”

“Thanks, Cal. Just in case I haven’t said it enough, I’m really lucky that you’re a friend.”

“Hey, man. Me, too. More than you’ll ever really know.”

Another bear hug, and we were on our ways.

Wednesday, October 20, 1982

Unusually for a Wednesday — unusual for any day, really — we were all watching TV. Mom and Dad were on the couch, Ang and I on the floor, backs against the couch, legs out, holding hands.

The reason? Game 7 of the World Series. Mom was excited, and who could blame her? Milwaukee was up 4-1, bottom of the 6th. Get an out here, and in three more innings, Milwaukee would win their first Series — the first they’d even gotten to. Big for Mom, bigger for Uncle Ryan, huge for Wisconsin in general.

I watched as St. Louis got first a run, then another. Then a third. Suddenly, they were tied.

Mom grumbled, “Come on! You had them!”

Dad said, “They’ve got three more innings. They can do it!”

But ... they couldn’t. The game ended 6-4 Cardinals. Milwaukee fans would be sad for another year. Perhaps another decade, or two, or three.

Angie, of course, read my face, but Mom and Dad couldn’t see me, and Dad was busy consoling Mom. It’s not that Mom was that big a baseball fan — she definitely wasn’t — but it still meant something to her for herself, and more because it would’ve meant a lot for Uncle Ryan.

For me, it was sad because of family, but it was more than that. Much more.

11:00pm

Angie snuggled up. “I saw your face. You ... that ... that wasn’t...”

I sighed. “Well, twenty thousand poorer, and perhaps a good bit wiser.”

“You’re sure of what happened last time?”

“Uncle Ryan celebrated for days, I’m told. He had a ‘Milwaukee Brewers - World Champions’ license plate frame at the family reunion. I’m sure.”

“So...”

“We’re not in a universe that matches mine identically. We didn’t do that. We have no influence on either team, really. I mean, there’s the butterfly effect, or the idea that somehow we influenced Ryan in some way that caused him to somehow affect the game. But ... in my opinion, that’s crazy talk. Even if it’s true, the connection is so infinitesimal that we could never predict it, which means, practically, we’re in a brand-new universe that just looks a whole lot like ours.”

“We knew that, though. This isn’t either of our first universes, though it’s damn close most of the time.”

“We did, but I guess I hadn’t internalized it. Megan’s different. Darla’s really different. Frank died in a different year from either other universe. Why not a Cardinals win? Almost everything still looks the same after that as before. Gerry will be thrilled. Well, or he’ll be pissed, if he bet the Brewers. But he won’t be that pissed. I’m just glad I didn’t bet the farm. Twenty thousand is a lot of money, but — in the big picture — we can afford it. If the universe cooperates, we can win more on other games, make more on the stock market, make far more betting on Dell.”

“And if this is a universe where IBM swats the little Texas upstart?”

I shrugged. “Ten thousand would be too big of an investment at the point I hope to make it. We’re not going to go broke betting on Dell.”

“That works for me. Are you okay?”

“Honestly? Shaken. I feel like I should have seen this coming. I mean, I said it the other day, right? What else is hidden out there just waiting? If I were really a baseball fan, I’d maybe have known that some player wasn’t the same. Some stat was wrong. Something. I suspect the data was out there somewhere. Nowhere I could’ve ever found it, but still. Now I’ll be waiting for the next shoe to drop.”

Angie nodded. “Well ... discounting the solipsist time-traveler impostor-syndrome theory, anyway ... I think we can still say that we know enough to make much better guesses than most people. It was still Milwaukee in the game, after all. The next bet will probably be good, and the next. Maybe we’ll lose — it’s a different world. But ... I’m pretty sure we’ll do better than anyone else could, overall.”

“Yeah. No, that’s completely right,” I said, nodding. “I’m looking at a few trees and missing the forest. Hundreds of people are pretty much who they were, enough to be well-known and fairly predictable. Houston is... Houston. I have yet to find a road that’s not where it should be or anything like that. The similarities vastly outweigh the differences.”

“Dell still has that paper-subscription business. He’s the same guy.”

“Yeah, that, too.”

“We’ll be fine, thanks ... no. No, that’s wrong.”

“Huh? What, sis?”

“Well,” she said, shaking her head a little, “I was going to say we’ll be fine because of all the bets that went right. But that’s not it. Even if they’d gone wrong, we’d be still fine because we’re us. That’s way more important than the money we have right now. If we were just regular middle-class kids with normal amounts of money, I’d still be head and shoulders above my old self.”

I gave her a squeeze. “Thanks, Ang. That puts it in perspective better than I could have. We have so much going for us.”

“I’m going to stay here tonight. Mom will figure I was upset about the game.”

“And you were.”

“Well, yeah, just not for the reason she’d expect.”

“Definitely not.”

We rubbed noses.

“You’re right. The big thing is, I love you, always, Ang.”

“And I love you forever, Steve.”

Both sighing, we snuggled up and went to sleep.

Friday, October 22, 1982

The universe wasn’t done messing with us. I guess it wanted to make a point.

I started it off, innocently enough, in Debate. I was cutting up one last newspaper before pep rally, which should start any minute.

“Hey, Al Haig’s out today. I had him as an Extemp topic before, about who’d replace him. George Schultz is a good pick, I think.”

“Al who?” Angie said. “Just joking. I wonder who’ll be in charge now?”

“Um,” I said. “George Schultz, like I just said.”

“No, I mean, who’ll ‘be in charge here!’”

Blank faces looked at Angie, mine included. I was getting a sudden bad feeling and was hoping this wasn’t going to go seriously sideways.

Cammie said, “Um ... I’m ... not following.”

Angie blinked. “Reagan. When Al Haig said ‘I’m in charge here!’”

More blank faces. “You know, when Reagan was s...”

Whatever Angie was going to say — I had no idea — she realized it wasn’t working, and fixed it. Clumsily, but I’m pretty sure there was no graceful way out of it. “When Reagan was sent to the hospital for some tests, I think. Haig claimed he was in charge because of succession.”

“But ... that’s not right. It’d be George Bush,” Janet said.

“I know! That’s why it was so funny!” Angie said.

“Huh,” Amit said. “Well ... I totally missed it. Still, that’s pretty bad.”

“Really bad,” Lizzie said, nodding. “Surprised I missed it, but I did, too.”

The bell rang for pep rally, and we all headed out.

Jasmine, not surprisingly, held hands with me. Also not surprisingly, she’d picked up on it. “You sounded like you were going to say something else, Ang.”

Angie blushed. “I got all confused. I was going to say ‘When Reagan got sick,’ but then I remembered it was just a checkup, nothing serious.”

“Ahh. Okay. Yeah, I kinda remember him going in for a few things. I mean, he’s not young!”

“Nope, not at all.”

We headed into the gym, where the noise was deafening, to find my former dating partner flying through the air. As distracting as she was, trying to figure out what in the heck Angie might have been about to say was more distracting. I had a weird feeling in my stomach that said another piece of what had seemed like stable ground might be turning into quicksand.

We didn’t get any time alone for a while. The pep rally was boisterous — no surprise there — and my car was packed, with Jasmine, Paige, Sheila, and Amit.

The game itself was closer, but for a team billed as one of the few remaining strong opponents, not close enough. 21-7 at half, 35-14 final score. Alief Elsik never led, and was only within seven when it was 7-0.

I tried to see if Angie wanted to go for a walk at one point, but she waved me off. Probably for the best. This didn’t feel like it’d be a brief conversation.

A win against Northbrook — virtually guaranteed — would clinch District and make us the home team. Even without that win, another team would need to win the rest of their games to have a chance.

I ran everyone else home. Jasmine and I again demurred when Angie volunteered to nap in the car. We’d made some plans for tomorrow — just a date, nothing fancy, I thought — and could afford to wait.

Once I’d walked Jasmine to her door and given her a goodnight kiss (no PDA monitors here!), I headed back to the car, got in, buckled up, and got us moving.

Then I glanced over to Angie. “Okay, sis. Spill it.”

“Um ... this is going to sound weird, I think.”

“I was pretty sure of that.”

“Reagan ... wasn’t, um... shot ... was he?”

“I’m certain I’d have noticed that. Wait? You mean during his Presidency?”

She nodded, looking ... something. Confused? Almost embarrassed? All of the above?

“Yeah. So, um ... I mean, you know first-go-round me didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to politics and stuff, right? Dating, gossip ... bad boyfriends ... drugs ... much more my thing.”

“And you are still not to kick yourself over that.”

“Noted. But that’s the thing. Even silly first-life airhead Angie knew about it when Reagan was shot. Everyone knew about it.”

“Wait ... you’re dead serious, I take it? In your world, Reagan was shot?”

She nodded. “It was ... see? I have no fucking clue when it was. 1981? 1982? The only thing I know for sure is that Al Haig was Secretary of State. And I know that because, like everyone knew Reagan had been shot, ‘cuz duh, of course you hear about if the President gets shot, everyone knew Haig had said ‘I’m in charge here’ ... except maybe he said control or command or whatever, I don’t know, but I know everyone repeated it with ‘charge’...”

She paused, took a deep breath, then restarted. “I’m making a mess of it. Reagan gets shot. He’s in the hospital, incapacitated. Someone asks Haig who’s in charge and he says he is, because somehow he thinks Secretary of State is next in the order of succession. I mean, Bush wasn’t shot, so clearly Bush is in charge. And then Tip O’Neill. Now, first-go-round Angie wouldn’t have known who Tip was from Adam, but she knew George ‘Voodoo Economics’ Bush. And obviously the VP is in charge when the President is incapacitated. So, everyone laughed at Haig, and it became this huge joke to say you were in charge when you totally weren’t.”