Chapter 6: Questions and Answers

Friday, July 1, 1983

Somehow or other, the routine took over my day. Breakfast with the girls was fine. Jasmine seemed her old self, enough so that Angie pulled me aside to make sure I’d told her. She was glad I had, though nervous that so much had gone unsaid.

My classes were good, and I felt like I’d learned a fair bit. Next week we’d have Monday off, due to the holiday, so we had a three-day weekend. I wasn’t sure what to do with that. Oh, we’d be busy on Sunday, and would at least watch the fireworks on Monday, but I wasn’t sure what we’d do otherwise.

I was already a bit burned out on the library. Maybe we could go explore Evanston on Saturday.

I considered bugging Uncle Robert or Aunt Monica, but it felt too soon. On the other hand, if we were going to see Simon and Garfunkel, plans needed to get put into place soon.

I’d seen Laura just once, and she waved me off. I could give her space, for now.

At dinner, Jas and I declared our intention to go for a walk. I think the others knew it was to Mikayla’s, but we hadn’t said that.

My guess was that they knew something was going on, but Paige and Cammie might well figure it was that sort of lust that comes from surviving a crisis. Or just regular teenage lust.

We walked to the apartment in silence. Jas had taken my hand right away. She could’ve broken up without the walk if that was her goal, but holding hands was still a good sign.

When we were halfway there, she stopped and gave me a quick kiss. I kissed back, of course. Gently, like hers.

“I think we’re good,” she said.

“Good,” I said, letting my relief show.

“You were nervous,” she said.

“Of course,” I said.

“That’s good. I was, too,” she said.

She squeezed my hand, and then we resumed walking.

Once inside the apartment, she kissed me a bit more firmly. Then we walked to the couch. She had me sit, then slipped into my lap. Our hands found each other’s again.

“Okay. First question. Why now? Why several days into Northwestern, all of a sudden? The truck? Or is it something more?”

“The latter,” I said.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “It has to be Laura. Laura screams at you, hits you, runs in front of a truck, nearly gets hit, you save her and get hit, and neither of you can explain why this happened except some nonsense about you looking like someone who she doesn’t like. So ... I thought about it, and then I got it. Why would Steve look like someone she doesn’t like, unless Steve is from her past?”

I nodded. “Bingo.”

She blinked. “That easy?”

“That easy. This is guesswork, because we haven’t talked, but ... Laura is basically like me. I knew a version of her before, and she knew a version of me. It’s obvious to me that she didn’t know me, but she probably thinks I’m the guy she knew.”

“This is going to give me a headache! Okay, explain. How do you know she’s not the same girl?”

“Because the Laura that I knew before was in a different grade. More importantly, this one said something about my ‘cousin’. The Laura I knew never met any cousins of mine.”

“I liked your cousins.”

“Yes, and you really like one of my cousins.”

“Nah, I...”

She stopped, eyes widening. “Oh, shit! I forgot! She is your cousin!”

“Yeah. I think that was the one she meant.”

“Was Angie the same the other time?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t really know her then.”

“How ... um ... how did that work?”

“Uncle Frank died a year ago in that life. Angie went to her mother, and from there to reform school, and that’s the last I ever heard of her. I saw her for the last time in 1982 or before that.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know she’s like you instead of just being some psycho?”

“Because I quoted a TV show that my Laura and I watched, along with a bunch of friends, in 1989. This Laura went crazy right after I mentioned it.”

“So she knows that show, so ... yeah. Got it.”

She stopped, hesitated, then nodded to herself.

“So I’m right. The thing with Laura caused you to tell me. But ... that’s not really why. Laura isn’t going to tell me anything. So ... why?”

“I need to say, first, that I was always going to tell you. It’d be completely unfair to, say, propose to you if I knew I couldn’t tell you the biggest secret of my life.”

Her eyes got a little misty for a second. “I ... um ... I...”

“We know it’s too soon. That doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about it.”

“Yes, well ... me, too.”

“So ... Jas, I just asked myself how you’d feel if I told you a few years from now. How I’d feel, too. It would mean telling you that I’d lied to you this summer. It was never going to be easy telling you but, in the end, it came down to making a decision about either lying to you systematically about Laura or telling you now.”

She nodded. “We’ve always said we’d be honest about other girls. This is just a bit ... over the top.”

“I’m not interested in her that way. I mean ... well, hell. I may not know what I mean. The thing is ... even if this Laura was my Laura, I’m not.”

“Let’s come back to that. I have more questions.”

“Ask away.”

“You said that, for all you knew, there wasn’t a Jasmine Nguyen at Memorial your first time. That felt more ... specific ... than just not knowing me.”

I nodded. “It’s at least vaguely possible that there wasn’t. For instance, there was no Cammie Clarke.”

“What?!”

“I guess she could have been there. She wasn’t in Debate with me. The first time I met her, and met you, was in this life.”

She shook her head. “Anyone else?”

“I went to college with a nerdy guy from Memorial. His name was Dave Winton.”

Her eyes got a bit wide.

“His birthday was a few days off from someone we both know.”

“Holy shit!”

I nodded. “Darla’s much more cool.”

She giggled. “Well ... I’m biased, but...”

“I mean it. Dave’s parents always wanted a girl. That’s why they had three boys in my first life. Never got that girl. I think here they were happy they got their girl and stopped.”

She sighed. “This is weird. I believe you, but ... it’s ... I mean ... it’s crazy.”

“One more. Megan Early was there, but this one is ... early. She’s a grade off from her previous self, and the one I knew joined Debate in my junior year, not my sophomore year.”

She shook her head. “I suppose I can see what you mean about not manipulating me, if everything is so different.”

“It’s a mix. Some things are different. A lot is probably the same. There was no Angie in my first life, so I have to try to figure out what I changed, what she changes just by existing, and what’s actually different beyond us. Darla and Megan are beyond that, obviously, but Cammie? Maybe I changed her life freshman year and prevented her parents from sending her to a different school.”

“By different school, you mean one of those pray-the-gay-away places.”

“Maybe. Probably,” I said, nodding.

“Okay. Next question. You said someone accused you of being a space alien, and then you told them. Who?”

“My therapist, Doctor Jane Stanton, aka just Jane.”

“You told your shrink?! I was sure it was going to be Angie!” she said, giggling a bit.

“Had to. Well ... no, I didn’t. But it was either telling her or saying ‘I have a giant secret. You know I do, and you know I know you know. I’m still not telling you.’ That would be ... bad ... for a psychiatrist. She’d probably have told Mom and Dad, and they would have guessed totally wrong about what my secret was.”

“Because no one guesses that.”

“Bingo,” I said.

“Tell me more about your first life. I get the broad outline, though it only sort of makes sense.”

“To set the stage ... think about ... um ... Benny Penske.”

Benny wasn’t too far off first-life me. He wasn’t as handsome (I think, anyway), but he was overweight, nerdy, and shy. Math and computers were his thing. He wasn’t as outgoing as I’d been then, but ... still.

She made a face. “You had to be cuter than Benny Penske.”

“I had the same eyes, which I’m told are cute...”

“Cute is the wrong word, but ... yes. Very much yes.”

I nodded. “I had the same hair, too, and I was ... fundamentally ... me. Just ... fat and clueless.”

“You did Debate? I mean, you more or less said that.”

“I did, in my junior and senior years. Gene and I were partners junior year. Um ... not ... senior year. Janet and Lizzie were there, but aloof. Amit was pretty much himself. Sue was ... Sue without the hormones. I could go on from there, but you get the idea.”

She nodded. “No Drama?”

“I doubt that I even spoke to Steffie. Nothing like what we have.”

“I’m interrupting. Go on.”

“Okay ... so ... I went to one dance during my high school years. That dance was the one at the end of Northwestern, this summer,” I said.

“You were here before?!”

“Not that it’s at all similar, but yes. Anyway ... one dance. I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons with friends, and I did Debate, and I did Computer Math tournaments, and I read a lot, and ... me, but shy and nerdy. I went off to UT and that was pretty much that. Dave Winton and I roomed together and were great friends. I had a nice time, and went to one dance, a big senior dance, when some friends set me up on a blind date. We did manage to kiss, amazingly, and sort-of dated for perhaps three weeks. She neglected to tell me that she had a boyfriend, though, so does that count?”

Jas shook her head, not saying anything.

“Anyway,” I said, “I graduated and went to Purdue for grad school. Early in my second year there, I met this cool senior named Laura. Remember, this is not the Laura that’s here, I’m nearly certain. Anyway, she had a boyfriend, too. She was ... amazing ... from the perspective of a twenty-three year old overweight virgin nerd. Probably from any perspective, but you need to know mine. We were genuinely friends, I think. Laura and I went to a couple of movies, a musical...”

“That’s a relief! That you liked musicals in your other life, I mean!”

I smiled and nodded. “We went out to dinner, we hung out, we talked a lot. I never thought we were dating. She was hopelessly out of my league. Pretty, funny, sexy. She had a boyfriend. They fought a lot and broke up a lot, but she did. I was a fat, boring dweeb.”

She snorted, sounding amused. “I can only picture it by thinking of Benny. Poor Benny.”

“Another reason this Laura isn’t my Laura. I may have been a clueless dweeb who didn’t think we were dating when she thought we were dating, but that’s pity, not slapping me as hard as she could and running in front of a truck. I’m certain I did nothing to make my Laura hate me, and this one hates me right now. Plus ... cousin.”

“Yeah.”

“So,” I said. “Laura graduated and was out of the picture. I graduated and moved to California, then met a woman who met all of my criteria, which were that she would spend time with me, knew we were dating, and was interested in kissing me.”

She snorted again.

“I know. Believe me, I know. We dated for a while. Not that long — you and I have dated for much longer. Then we got engaged and ... well ... hrm. Adding it up, she and I were together about six months longer before we got married than you and I have been together.”

She blinked. “So, not a whirlwind romance, but quick.”

“Yeah. We fought constantly. I should mention that. It’s really important. You know that old saw: ‘Men marry women hoping they won’t change, and women marry men hoping they will?’”

She nodded. “I’ve heard it.”

“You can pretty much flip it around. I hoped desperately that she would change, that she would get secure in our relationship and would really commit to it, emotionally. She hoped that I wouldn’t change, that I’d stay needy and insecure and someone she could manipulate. She threatened to leave ... a lot. I’d guess a few times a month on average, over the whole twenty-something years we were married. Despite all that, we married, moved, bought a house, settled down, adopted kids, and ... managed. One day in 2020 she said she was done and leaving me. It sounded like all of the other times, but it wasn’t.”

She leaned over and hugged me, tightly. “That’s ... really sad. It’s insane thinking of you going through that, but I can see it a little, now, if I squint just right.”

“I’ve spent a long time talking to Jane about this. It’s lucky that I told my shrink, because I needed one, and it’d be a total pain in the butt to find a therapist who would work with a seventeen-year-old to recover from his twenty-five-year failed marriage.”

“Um ... yeah!” she said, giggling a bit. “Okay ... next question. How does it work, doing this all again?”

“I’m really not, most of the time. Things aren’t the same. People aren’t the same. High school was forty years ago from that perspective. I remember big things, but day-to-day? It’s a blur.”

She shook her head a little.

“Sorry. What I meant is: how did you go from being who you were to who you are now?”

“Put simply: I fucked up my first life and decided to do better this time. I know what I want to achieve, and I have some tools to make it happen. They’re not really ... personal ... though. I vaguely knew Mike when Study Group started. I knew junior-year Gene. I knew Mark and Morty and Mel a bit, but not much. It’s mostly all new. I just knew that I wanted friends, wanted to date, wanted to go to dances, wanted to have a life!”

“I’d say you succeeded!”

“Me, too. Well ... I’d say I’m succeeding. It’s always a work in progress. I could get lazy and fat and complacent. I could screw up with you, then wind up with some girl who would just put up with me. Or I could maybe turn into whatever sort of person Laura knew.”

“This is why ... fuck! That explains everything. The studying, the dating, the... everything. It explains why you’re a catalyst that affects everyone. You had a plan, and you knew a lot more about how to get there than anyone else did.”

I nodded a bit, staying quiet.

She hesitated, looking thoughtful. “There’s a missing piece here.”

“Yes.”

“You say you know there are more universes, but ... I mean ... you were in one. Now another. Laura’s would be three, but you only found that out yesterday. That means...”

I waited.

Her eyes narrowed a bit. “You have to know someone else like you. It doesn’t make sense otherwise. You wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss Laura otherwise.”

I nodded. “I do. One more, besides Laura.”

“Who?! Do I know them?”

I nodded again. “You do.”

She hesitated, then opened her eyes wide. “Holy shit! It has to be Angie!”

I nodded. “I made sure it was okay to tell you.”

“Oh, my God!”

“She would rather have been here, since it’s her story, not mine, but explaining why the three of us suddenly need to talk in private after Laura smacked me would ... well, we’re still trying to play things down for Cammie and Paige. They can easily believe you’re upset and need reassurance, but you wouldn’t need it from Angie.”

She bit her lower lip a second, then nodded. “That makes sense. I’ll want to talk to her. I mean, really talk to her.”

“Of course.”

“So ... um ... tell me about that? I mean, even if I want to talk to her, I’m dying of curiosity!”

“Her timeline differs, Jas. Her Frank died in 1983. Her first-life Steve was a complete introvert with almost no social skills. She got to Memorial as a senior with no friends and a socially useless brother, and she was a socialite party girl.”