Chapter 2

06:00, August 20, 1983.

I woke up the next morning with the worst hangover I’ve ever had. “Man,” I thought, “I must have drunk the bar dry last night to feel this shitty.”

That’s when I suddenly remembered. I’d only had two drinks at the bar before that drug addict had come in and tried to rob the place. I’d severed his Flexor Tendon Bundle in his gun hand and the nerves associated with that bundle rendered his hand useless. Then, the strangely cute bartender offered me a free drink, and that’s when everything became fuzzy.

I went to roll over in bed because the space I was laying in felt lumpy. Almost like the worn-out mattress I’d slept on when I was a kid. It was the one thing I’d made sure and changed the first time I had to buy my mattress. I bought a top-of-the-line luxury mattress and replaced it every five years. To my surprise, when I rolled over, I fell off the bed and landed on a very familiar orange and brown shag carpet.

I sat up and looked around quickly. Holy shit, I was in a room that didn’t exist anymore. I was in my childhood bedroom. Sometime in the eighties. I didn’t know exactly when, but I recognized the posters on the wall. Brooke Shields in her Calvin Kleins was beside my bed on the wall. Christy Brinkley in her swimsuit was at the foot of my bed in that little bikini that didn’t hide any of her delicious curves. Man had that poster inspired many fantasies to relieve the sexual frustrations of a teenage boy. On the closet door was my poster of Catherine Bach in her famous Daisy Dukes and bikini top. Against the wall, at the foot of my bed, was the old particle board desk my dad had salvaged from somewhere that he expected me to do my homework on every night.

I stood and stumbled to the desk to see my Far-side desk calendar. According to it, the date was August 20, 1983, two days before my fifteenth birthday and the day we got new neighbors. The Snodgrass family would pull up in a U-haul any minute now. Today I would meet Amaryllis Snodgrass, the prettiest fifteen-year-old girl I’d ever seen. In five days, I would walk away from Kent Buckley, Aaron James, and Todd Carlton while they gang-raped my new neighbor. Or at least that was what had happened during my first time through this year. Two days later, she killed herself. The first time only Kent, Aaron, Todd, and myself what had happened, so no one understood her suicide. The letter Amaryllisleft only said she couldn’t stand living, and that she was sorry for the pain she would cause her parents. Then she swallowed her mom’s prescription sleeping pills with a bottle of her dad’s favorite Bourbon, climbed into a bubble bath, and died.

Only I knew I could have saved her. Yes, I would have gotten beaten badly, but it would have saved Amaryllis. If this was real, if I wasn’t dreaming, but back in my fifteen-year-old body, then I could do things differently. I just had to know if I was really here. Really fifteen again. If I was, then I could change things. Especially since I had all the memories and knowledge and hopefully, the skills of the fifty-five-year-old special forces sailor to call upon.

That caused me to open my closet to get dressed and see myself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. Oh yeah, I was my fifteen-year-old self; skinny, weak, and pathetic. It wouldn’t make much difference in five days, but I was determined to start the PT regimen I’d followed from the day I decided to try out for the S.E.A.L. teams. I’d have to build up to it, but I could start today. There was no way I could run five miles, do 200 push-ups and crunches or 50 pull-ups and I’d need to bike to the Y to swim, but at least we had a family pass there. I could even start using the Nautilus machines to build muscle. But first breakfast and let my mom know I wanted to get fit. After all, school started in two weeks right after Labor Day. Time to start down that less-traveled road.

I looked in my dresser and found an embarrassing pair of gym shorts. I had forgotten that in the 80s gym shorts were short and loose-legged, which at fifteen could lead to an embarrassing escape of privates. For gym class, we had been required to wear a jockstrap or the old tighty whities briefs. As an adult, I had worn biker briefs when I wore underwear, which wasn’t often. I was a Special Forces Sailor, commando was the uniform of the day most days.

Once dressed, I headed down for breakfast. In the kitchen, sitting at the table, were both of my parents. Dad had dressed for the office and Mom was sipping a cup of coffee in her bathrobe. She didn’t function well without a pot of coffee under her belt.

Dad, on the other hand, didn’t function well, period. He was a mean, belligerent bully, which made him the perfect president of Angel Falls Saving and Loan. He took personal joy in denying loans to people. Worse than that, it seemed to me that he took extra pleasure in finding reasons to hurt me. It covered me in bruises a lot, but never in places that showed. He would come home from work and have a few ‘drinks to unwind’, but mostly that just made him meaner, and I was the one he took his displeasure out on.

Oh, everyone in our family knew; my mom, my sisters, and my grandparents, but in the eighties, you didn’t speak about such things. If I told anyone, unlike just a decade later, I wouldn’t be seeing a person from CPS, instead I would be told that I must have deserved the punishment given to me. After all, ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’.

My parents looked shocked to see me. I was still operating on a lifetime of early mornings, and even though I was fifteen again, my body was still on 55-year-old me time. It was around six-thirty in the morning so I was actually about an hour late getting up for old me but extremely early for fifteen-year-old me. “You’re up early. Want to tell me why?”

Dad was frowning at me. “I’m almost fifteen now. I thought it was time to stop slacking and start making some changes in my life.”

“What changes?”

“Getting up earlier, for one. I decided it was time to start exercising, too. I’m tired of being small and weak. Exercising and running will be my focus, followed by a trip on my bike to the YMCA for some strength machines and a swim. When school starts, I’m going to talk to my counselor about testing out of some classes and trying to get into some college prep courses.”

Dad snorted. “Right, that will last until your first muscle cramp. As for school, what makes you think you can test out? You’ve never been a strong student.”

I nodded my head. “You’re right, Dad. I’ve taken the easy way all my life. I just thought maybe it was time to man up and start making the changes I want to see in my life. After all, I’m in a new school this year, out of junior high and into high school. Time enough to pick up the pace and make something of myself. Don’t you think so?”