Chapter 2

Raisin dropped me off at home about 2:30 that afternoon. It was more than a half an hour before the time I was supposed to get home from school, but I knew that both my mom and dad would still be at work. Debbie had already been dropped at her own house. She was walking a little funny as she headed for her front door. We all watched her ass as it retreated. The moment she was out of earshot the interrogation began.

"How was she?" Lonnie asked, nearly slobbering with excitement. "Man, I can't fuckin' believe you scored with Debbie."

"Yeah," Raisin said with a grin. "What a slut. Wait'll everyone hears about this shit!"

"Fuck that bitch," I grumbled, sinking in my seat. "She wouldn't give it up."

"What?" they said in unison.

"But we heard you in there," Raisin protested. "She was moanin' like a fuckin' freight train."

I shook my head. "She's a good actress," I told them. "All she let me do was feel her tits a little through her sweater. Every fuckin' time I tried to put my hand underneath it she'd slap it away. Fuckin' cock-tease."

"You didn't fuck her?" Lonnie asked, crushed. "What were you doing in there all that time?"

"Just makin' out," I said. "Believe me, I tried but that bitch is harder to get into than Fort Knox."

They were looking at me in confusion. The rule of teenaged boys of course is that even if you didn't fuck them, you told people that you did. I could almost see the wheels of irrational logic turning in their heads. If I said I hadn't fucked her when I could easily have claimed I had, I therefore must not have even come close to fucking her. The thought that I might actually have bagged her and was keeping it secret was so foreign a concept to them that they were able to ignore the overwhelming evidence before them and draw the conclusion I wanted them to draw. They probably figured I was even lying about feeling her tits since some embellishment was mandatory.

"That's too fuckin' bad man," Lonnie commiserated. "I really thought someone was gonna bag that bitch this time."

"Nope," I said. "The same old shit. Why do we even try?"

"Some day," Raisin vowed with all the dramatics of Scarlet O'Hara proclaiming she would never go hungry again, "that bitch is gonna give it up."

They bid me a sad farewell as I exited the car and soon the Falcon was roaring down my street, belching huge clouds of black, stinking exhaust from its tailpipe. As they disappeared I sighed with the kind of satisfaction that only a man who has just gotten laid can display. I headed for the house thinking that being fifteen again was all right. I'd wished well.

I was appalled by what I found inside. When the door opened the sound of rock music cranked at top volume hit my ears. The smell of marijuana hit my nose. Tracy was sitting on the couch with Cindy and a football player from school I recognized as Cindy's boyfriend, although I could not remember his name. Cindy and the football player were kissing each other in heated passion while Tracy was flipping through a teen magazine and pretending to ignore what was going on. A plastic bong sat on the coffee table next to a paper plate with pot in it. Pepsis and a bag of chips were sitting next to this. The bong still had tendrils of smoke curling out the top of it. They hadn't even heard me come in the house. I remembered that Tracy had been busted for just such a thing during her senior year when my mother had come home from work unexpectedly and had walked in on just such a scene. God, my sister was a stupid teenager too.

I kicked the plug out of the stereo system, causing their tune to wind down and die. The three people on the couch jerked almost painfully in alarm. Cindy and her boyfriend separated so fast that it looked as if they'd burned each other. Cindy's boyfriend made a grab for the pot on the table. They all stopped when they saw that it was only me. They relaxed a little.

"You scared the shit out of us!" Tracy yelled at me. "You little asshole! What the hell are you doing home now anyway?"

Cindy's boyfriend was giving me a hostile look, a look that made me wonder if another Richie type encounter was brewing.

"The same thing you are," I told her mildly, kicking the door shut. "Cutting school and smoking weed." I looked around the room, shaking my head sadly. "However, I'm a little smarter about the way I do it than you idiots are."

They all gaped at me. It was an expression that I was starting to get used to. I was starting to think of it as The Look.

I stared at Tracy. "What if I'd been Mom coming home from work a little early because she didn't feel good or something? That kind of shit can happen you know. Do you think Mom would call the house to let someone know she's coming home? Why would she do that? Nobody is supposed to be here. You got the music turned up so fuckin' loud you didn't even hear me open the door. The damn door wasn't even locked. You guys are a freakin' bust waiting to happen!"

Cindy and Tracy just stared at me in shock. Like I said, I had always been shy before and to them my personality would have appeared to have changed radically overnight. The old Billy would, upon interrupting their session, have simply blushed and muttered a brief apology before slinking out of the room. They did not know what to say or what to think about what I'd said. But the football player reacted as his personality instinctively commanded him to.

"What the fuck is it to you?" he asked me, glaring.

"Shut your ass, ball boy," I shot back at him. "You're in my house and I wasn't talking to you."

His face reddened with rage. He stood up suddenly. "What did you say to me, you little pussy?"

"Jeff, leave him alone," Cindy spoke, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him back down.

He shook her arm off angrily. "Say that again to me, faggot," he challenged. "I fuckin' dare you."

"You fuckin' dare me?" I said mildly. "Okay." I nodded. "I told you to shut your ass. I then made a derisive remark aimed at your meager football skills. Did you hear me that time?"

"You're dead, kid," he said, starting to move towards me.

"Jeff!" Tracy spoke now. "Leave him alone!"

Jeff continued to head towards me. He was actually planning to beat me up in my own living room in front of my sister who had invited him in there. Christ, why was everyone so violent? No wonder the human race fought so many wars. "Richie Fairview told me I was dead too," I told him. "Right before the ambulance picked him up and took him to the hospital. Would you like to join him there, asshole?"

He stopped. Apparently he had heard that story. His eyes showed immediate doubt as he stared at me. I stared back.

"Go sit your ass down," I told him, "before you get hurt."

He licked his lips nervously, sparing a glance at the two girls.

"I think you'd better do what he says, Jeff," Tracy told him. She was hiding a smirk as she said it. I suddenly realized that Tracy didn't like Cindy's boyfriend too much. Interesting. Was there hope for her yet?

"You're lucky they stopped me," Jeff finally blurted. A pretty pathetic face-saving measure I'm sure even he would agree. He returned to the couch and sat down.

"Yeah, I guess I'm lucky," I said, turning to Tracy. "If I was you I'd open up some windows in this house before Mom and Dad get home. The whole place reeks of pot. Do you guys do this sort of thing a lot?"

"No," Tracy told me, obviously lying.

"Well it's amazing you haven't been busted yet," I said, casting my eyes on Cindy, who was looking at me as if in awe. She was wearing tight jeans and a loose fitting sweater. I'd forgotten how pretty her eyes were. They were a deep blue, the kind of eyes you could melt in. Currently of course, they were very reddened and only about half-staff and her honey-blonde hair was in disarray from Jeff's fingers. Her neck was marred by a red hickey-Jeff's territorial mark. I supposed it was better than peeing on her like a dog with a fire hydrant. I wondered about the possibilities of Cindy. Could I do it? It would be more challenging than Debbie had been.

I gave her a seductive smile and she blushed deeply. Jeff saw it and fumed at me but didn't make a move. Finally, without another word, I headed upstairs to my room, closing the door behind me.

My room was a filthy mess. I was offended by it. During my adult years I'd lost my teenaged sloppiness and had become something of a neat freak. Though I was still feeling the effects of the marijuana I'd smoked earlier and desperately wanted to lie down and take a nap, I began picking up the room.

It took me nearly two hours to get it clean, but it was a fascinating two hours none-the-less. I came across many objects and possessions I had not seen in years. I found places for them and by the time I finished it was quite a startling change. But there was still one thing to do.

While I'd been cleaning I'd heard the sound of my father coming home. I sincerely hoped for Tracy's sake that she had cleaned the house well enough. I guessed she had since she and Cindy were in her room, looking through some magazines as I passed by. Jeff of course, was long gone. Both girls watched me as I went by, shutting up with whatever they had been talking about. I smiled, especially at Cindy, who returned it weakly.

Dad was sitting in his chair and drinking a bottle of beer. The television was on, showing an early edition of the local news. Again I found myself staring at him, marveling on how young he looked, how thin. He wasn't much older than I was in a way. He caught me staring at him and looked at me.

"You okay, Bill?" he asked, concern in his voice.

"Oh sure, Dad." I nodded. "I'm cool. I was just tryin' to picture you with gray hair."

"What?" He chuckled. "Why would you do that?"

"Well, Grandpa has gray hair doesn't he? It stands to reason you will too doesn't it? I was just trying to picture what you would look like."

"That's kind of depressing." He smiled, sipping out of his beer. "What brought you to that subject?"

"Oh, uh, we were studying genetics in anatomy the other day. That's a dominant trait you know?"

"I've heard that," he answered. "What're you up to?"

"Just getting the vacuum cleaner."

Now he really looked at me strange. "The what?"

"The vacuum cleaner," I said. "I just got done cleaning my room and now I need to vacuum it."

"You cleaned your room?" he asked in disbelief. "You?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "It was pretty dirty. Why did you guys ever let me get away with being so messy anyway?"

"What?"

"Never mind," I said, moving towards the living room closet. I opened it and the vacuum was there. "I'll bring it back in a minute."

While I carried the appliance upstairs his puzzled look followed me up.

After I stowed the vacuum back in its closet I went back upstairs to lie down. Though I was exhausted I could not sleep. For one I was afraid. What if I went to sleep and woke up back in my other life? Was that possible? I surely didn't know. What I was dealing with here was way beyond my limited range of knowledge. My very existence back in 1982 was something I'd thought impossible but here I was. Somehow that dying Chinese man had done this to me. How I knew not. Were there any rules? I could conceive of being only allowed one day. It seemed possible that I was only allowed one waking period back here. I was not ready to return yet.

But there was also the possibility that I was stuck here for good. I had to consider that too. In fact I considered that the most likely scenario. There were many ramifications to that possibility and I needed to think them through carefully. How much did I dare to change? How much could I change? What would happen if someone found out about what had happened to me? There were people in the world who would do almost anything to get their hands on me if my situation became known. Governments wanting to know about the next seventeen years, business people wanting to know about stock trends. I could envision my family being held hostage to get me to do their bidding.

My initial thought had been to confide in Tracy, but I wondered if that was so wise. Tracy was after all, a teenager full of teenage stupidity as my earlier discovery graphically pointed out. I no longer thought she could be trusted with a secret of this magnitude. But at the same time I needed to make sure that she did not get in the car with that college student on her graduation night. I had vowed to myself I would prevent her death even if I could change nothing else on my return trip. That conviction was as strong in me as ever. Tracy would not die that night. One way or another I would see to it.

But that brought me back to the one night theory. If I couldn't tell her my secret, but if I was only allowed one night here, how could I make sure of her survival? I thought about that one for a while and finally I came up with something.

That left me to ponder the other questions in my mind. Suppose I was here for good. What else could I change? And how could I better myself and my family? I certainly did not want to end up right back where I was in seventeen years. I wanted to do things differently this time. But how? What could I do?

I reluctantly admitted to myself that I would lose Becky, my daughter in the process. This thought hurt me more than anything ever had before, but it was simply inevitable. Becky had been a very pleasant side effect of a brutal mistake I'd made in my previous life. I simply could not, no matter how much I loved my daughter, repeat that mistake. I couldn't. I told myself I wasn't killing her. She would just never exist in the first place. My mind was able to draw a distinction between those two things; a shaky one, but a distinction.

I lay there for more than two hours, until my mother called me down for dinner. I had a rough plan of sorts in mind by then. It was a plan that would be extensively modified and revised, but it was a plan. I felt better just having one.

Dinner was my mom's tacos. They were fried in grease and would be politically incorrect by today's standards. Each one had to have at least fifty grams of fat. But God they were delicious. I chowed down five of them, shoveling in mounds of rice and beans as accompaniment and then washing the mess down with two sodas from the refrigerator. The only thing that would have made them better would have been a pitcher of margaritas but I figured Mom probably wouldn't whip up a batch for me.

She seemed gratified to see me eat so much. It probably put her worries about drugs aside for the moment. I remembered that I was living in the midst of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" era and that my mom had had her drug worries fueled by the little pamphlets that this era produced. The pamphlets always had "warning signs" that your kids were on drugs printed in them. I remembered how bizarre those so-called warning signs had seemed to me even on my first trip through fifteen. A big one had been "loss of appetite". What was up with that? Maybe if you'd moved all the way through marijuana and had worked your way to a two hundred-dollar a day cocaine habit you would have a loss of appetite. But most teenagers simply smoked pot. Loss of appetite was most definitely not a symptom of marijuana use. They should have put "greatly increased appetite" instead. They should have put in "excessive use of eye drops" as well.

I also remembered that the pamphlets had so called terminology for drugs. The theory was that parents would overhear their kids using these terms and would therefore know they were on drugs. Right, as if the kids would talk about drugs in front of their parents. I remembered having big laughs with my friends as we read these pamphlets, usually while we were stoned. Those who had used drugs in the previous generation had obviously transcribed the terminology. They said that common terms for marijuana were: Tea, Mary Jane, leaf, wonder green, and other such nonsense. None of the terms were current. In my age they called it pot, buds, herb, smoke, KGB, greenbud, and weed; none of which were listed in Nancy's pamphlets. I could imagine the laughter that would have resulted in the eighties if a kid had asked someone if they had any Mary Jane or tea for sale. I was forced to wonder if there had ever been a case of some kid being drawn off the path of drug abuse as a result of those "informational" pamphlets.

Dinner was consumed and another awkward moment occurred when Mom asked me a question just as we were about to start clearing the dishes from the table.

"Billy," she said, "did you clean Anita Browling's windows yesterday like you told her you would?"

I looked up at her, searching my memory banks again. I came up with who Anita Browling was easily enough. She was a divorced neighbor in her late twenties who lived two houses over. She'd split with her husband sometime around the time I was twelve or so and I remembered Dad giving vague explanations about how Mr. Browling had 'found someone else' and left her (for some reason my parents had assumed that Tracy and I would be upset by their D-I-V-O-R-C-E). My parents had, for whatever reason, kind of adopted Anita after her husband left her. She used to come over for dinner once a week. She had two small children that Tracy was volunteered to baby-sit frequently. I was always volunteered to mow her lawn for her since she professed not to know how to run a mower, or to do other small tasks such as cleaning her windows. Both of us were forbidden to take any money from her for our services, a point of resentment that had drawn my sister and I together a little in our teens.

The image in my mind of her was of a slightly chunky woman with large breasts. She was a brunette with short hair and long legs. She would meet another man at about the time of my high school graduation. About the time I moved away from home she would marry him and disappear from Mom and Dad's lives. I remembered thinking back then that I wouldn't mind doing her. But she wasn't so attractive that you could admit to your peers that you would do her, if you can dig that. I also remembered how she used to watch as I mowed the lawn, always dressed in shorts and a loose fitting T-shirt. I remembered catching glimpses of her bra-clad tits when she'd bent over to pull a weed or something. My adult mind, which hadn't thought of her in years, suddenly realized that she'd been displaying herself for me. Had she been hoping for a little action from a teenaged boy?

Before I could follow that train of thought too far I came back to the original question. Had I cleaned her windows yesterday? I had no freaking idea if I had or hadn't. My mother was looking at me, awaiting a response.

"Uh..." I started, trying to think this through. Had I cleaned her windows?

"Bill?" Mom said, deepening her voice. "I told you the other day they were getting really dirty after the windstorm we had. You told me you'd do it before it snowed again."

"Uh..." That gave me a little more information. I was a horrible procrastinator as a teen. Chances were I hadn't done it the first time I'd been asked. "Uh, no, Mom," I finally spat out. "Sorry. I forgot."

"You forgot?"

"Sorry," I squeaked.

"Billy, that is just so typical of you..." she began. Her lecture went on for nearly two minutes. I gave her uh huhs, and okays in all the right places, amazed that I still had the ability to do that after all these years. I sincerely promised that my first stop after school would be Anita Browling's house. Mom seemed satisfied. I found myself hoping that Anita would be home. I knew something the other Billy didn't.

After dinner I went up to my room. I opened my backpack and pulled out my Algebra book. I found some blank paper and a pencil and then opened the book to the first chapter. I began studying.

Tracy had gone out somewhere after dinner and I heard her return about 8:30. I continued to study as I heard her go to her room and slam the door. Downstairs the television was on as Mom and Dad watched whatever sitcom was on in the eighties. I could hear their sporadic laughter drifting up from time to time as well as muffled comments I couldn't understand but which were probably commentary on how TV wasn't the same as it had been a few years ago. I had managed to get a basic concept of the Algebra in the past few hours, working my way to the test questions of Chapter 2. The homework that had been assigned I'd finally figured out and completed.

With a headache behind my eyes I closed up my book and stowed it in my backpack. I still had assignments to complete in my other classes but I decided to catch them up tomorrow. I was studied out.

I changed into a pair of sweat pants from my dresser, wondrous at the fact that I was donning a piece of clothing that would not have even come above my thighs the day before my legs had\would get so much bigger. I put on the longest, baggiest T-shirt I could find and then walked downstairs, passing the living room without even drawing a glance from my parents. A moment of searching led me to a bottle of aspirin in the kitchen cupboard. I grabbed three of them and then opened the refrigerator. I pulled out one of my father's bottles of beer and stuffed it down the front of my sweats. The coolness chilled my skin but I ignored it. The T-shirt covered the large bulge the bottle made in my crotch. I dashed back upstairs and went to the door of Tracy's room.

Music was playing from inside, a teenage heartthrob who currently had all the girls agog but who would soon, I remembered with satisfaction, fade into a land that was even beyond obscurity. I knocked on Tracy's door.

"What?" came a voice from the other side.

Instead of answering I knocked again, not wanting to draw the attention of our parents.

The music turned down and the door creaked open about six inches, enough to allow me to see Tracy's impatient face. She was dressed in a long T-shirt that showed off her legs. Her auburn hair was loosened and falling around her shoulders. For the first time I marveled that my sister was very attractive. No wonder the college student had gone after her.

"What?" she hissed disgustedly at me.

"I need to talk to you for a minute," I told her. "Can I come in?"

"About what?" she asked. "About that crap you were spouting today in school?"

"Yeah." I nodded, seeing in her face that she was fearful about talking on that subject. "About that."

She threw the door open. "Come in," she said finally.

Her room was a pretty neat for a teenager. The bed was made, her books were all stowed in their proper places. Her dresser was cleaned off; all of her makeup in a little tray. The only clutter was the heartthrob singer's album cover, which sat next to her stereo and the rumpled clothes she'd recently removed. She shut the door behind me as I entered.

"Can I sit down?" I asked her as she sat on the edge of her bed.

She waved me impatiently to the chair next to her dresser. The same chair she'd been combing her hair at this morning. I pulled it out and planted myself in it. I pulled the beer out of my pants and set it on the desk. With an expert spin of the cap, it was opened. The three aspirin went into my mouth and were washed down by the glorious taste of the cold beer. I sighed at the first swallow and quickly took another. Tracy watched all this without speaking, without even asking why I had one of Dad's beers.

"Say what you need to and get out," she told me. "I wanna listen to the rest of this album."

For the second time that day I interrupted her music by unplugging the stereo. Once again, it wound down and died, deepening as it went.

"You dick!" she proclaimed. "Why did you..."

"Tracy, listen to me for a minute," I interrupted. "I know you're expected to act a certain way in the presence of your younger brother. You're expected to treat me with contempt in order to show how superior you are. I concede your superiority, okay?"

"What?" she asked, wide-eyed.

"Your friends are nowhere around and I won't tell them that you actually allowed me in your room, allowed me to shut off your precious teeny-bopper music. You can go back to treating me like shit as soon as I leave here but for now I need you to listen very carefully to me and to remember what I'm about to tell you. If you could drop the snotty attitude for a few minutes I'd appreciate it greatly."

She stared. Finally she asked, "What's happened to you, Bill? You've been acting strange all day. It's like you're a different person."

"Never mind that," I told her. "Tracy, do you remember when we were little kids?"

"Yes," she answered carefully.

"We were very close back then. We were playmates. We used to conspire together. You used to call me 'little brother' and I used to call you 'big sister'. Do you remember?"

"No." She shook her head, but cast her eyes aside in a way that told me she was lying.

"Well, you did," I told her. "We were best friends until about the time you started junior high school. From then on I was the object of your scorn. I understand that, Tracy, I really do. You discovered boys, you discovered peer pressure. You grew out of me. It's a natural thing. And I developed interests of my own too. But the fact is, we're still brother and sister and some day we'll be close again. Can you understand that?"

She seemed about to say something snotty once more. Something like, as far as I'm concerned you'll be a piece of shit until you die. But she paused at the last second and her eyes softened. "Yes, Billy," she answered. "I guess some day we will be."

A small triumph but a triumph in any case. "Good." I nodded. "We're getting somewhere. Now here's a harder one. Despite our fighting with each other do you realize that we actually love each other as brother and sister?"

She opened her mouth. This time I was sure she going to say something foul.

"Again," I said before she could, "no one else is here in the room and I'll never tell anyone what you say. We don't have to get into any deep philosophical discussions. I just want an acknowledgement that, as brother and sister, we love each other. We may not always like each other, but we love each other. Right?"

She licked her lips nervously. "I suppose," she finally allowed.

"Okay," I said, taking another drink of my beer. "On that note I want you to listen to me very carefully for a minute. I'm going to tell you something very important. The most important thing you will ever hear in your life. Please don't ask me to explain. I can't do that right now. You will probably think I'm nuts but that doesn't matter as long as you remember what I'm about to say. Remember it well."

"Okay," she said carefully.

I took a deep breath, downing another large drink of beer. I passed the bottle to Tracy and she looked at it for a second and then took a swig. I took faith in the fact that she didn't pause to wipe off my saliva first.

"Now hopefully I'll be able to explain this thing further to you before the time comes," I said. "But there's a chance I won't. There's a chance I'll be the same old Billy you're used to tomorrow. If that is the case I want you to remember this."

"Billy, what are you..."

"Shhh," I hushed her. "On the night you graduate from high school you will tell Mom and Dad you are going to a party at Cindy's house. That will be a lie. What you will be doing instead will be going to a frat party at the university."

"Billy, what?" she cried, her flesh breaking out in goose bumps.

"Listen," I admonished. "I can't explain further right now. I don't even know what the best way of telling you this is. But you have to listen to me. A guy named David Mitchell will want to take you to this frat party. He will be driving a 77 Camero. He will be a football player at the college and very good-looking. Now you will meet him about a month before graduation but it's graduation night you need to worry about. Do not, under any circumstances, get in that car with him that night. No matter what you have to do, no matter what lies you have to tell, do not do it. Your life depends upon this, Tracy. Don't do it no matter what."

"Billy, you're kind of scaring me," she said.

"Good," I told her. "That's my intent. Lisa Sanchez will be part of the group that gets in that car. Her boyfriend will be another college student named Rick Manchester."

"Lisa Sanchez?" Tracy asked. "She's a cheerleader. I don't hang out with her."

"You will," I told her. "I'm giving you the names of all the people in the car so you'll know when the time comes that my information is accurate. I'm hoping that will be enough to keep you out of there. If you can keep Lisa out of there too, so much the better, but the important thing is that you do not get in that car on that night."

I was gratified to see that she was scared shitless by what I was saying. Good. I figured she would obey me even a year and half later when all of the circumstances that I described came together. At least I hoped she would.