Chapter 2

April 2, 1984

Sarah was driving me home. Except ... I had to think of her as mom or mommy now. And I had no clue where home really was. Other than in some of the dreams I'd been having every night, I'd never seen the place before.

Yeah, the dreams. They'd been ... I don't know ... pictures into the life of a kid by the name of Chance Buckland Pestle. Except ... somehow ... I WAS Chance Buckland Pestle. Either that or the past 6 weeks were some kind of hallucination or something. I wasn't ruling it out ... but that hadn't bought me any friends my first week or so in the loony bin.

Of course, I wasn't totally stupid, just irritable and more than a little scared. I didn't tell them that my name was Alexander Gustav Markle. I didn't tell them that I had been in a hospital the last time I could remember, had apparently died, and subsequently woken up in the body of an 11-year old boy. I was frightened and mad and alone; the whole thing was scaring the shit out of me, but I wasn't quite ready to live my life in the psych ward forever.

There was more. Lots more. SCARY more. I hadn't found out right away and even when I had, I hadn't believed it. Alex Markle ... me ... I ... had been 69-years old and dying of catastrophic heart failure – maybe even actually died of catastrophic heart failure – in Detroit Memorial Hospital, Detroit, Michigan on September 26^th or 27^th, 2013. I had woken up ... somehow ... in the body of 11-year old Chance Buckland Pestle on February 14^th, 1984.

29 years. I had gone backwards in time 29 years. I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell and carry on and throw the little 11-year old body all over the floor and ... just ... scream. I didn't. Thank GOD, I didn't. Thank God for denial. I had spent much of that first week in the psych ward pretending that this just wasn't happening, talking to no one, spending all of my time just sitting and staring off into space denying that this was even happening to me.

It saved me. If I had gone the other route, I'd still be in the damn place.

Other than being white (or Caucasian, depending on which politically correct magazine you subscribe to) and having identical strange round splats of burn marks on our upper left chest, Chance and I had nothing in common that I could easily discern. Chance was 11 in 1984 – my current 'now' – while Alex – me, dammit – would have been 40 years old in '84. Chance lived in some town called Crystal, Montana – about an hour from Cheming (pronounced 'Shaming'), Montana where I had been entombed in the psych ward of Cheming Central Hospital. Alex – ME – lived his entire life in Detroit, Michigan.

I had a hell of a time keeping things straight in my own head. It wasn't helping that the dreams were filling my head with memories that belonged solely to Chance. It just scared me even more. What happened to Alex if Chance came back and wanted his head back? I didn't mind dying, I'd welcomed it, but I had thought there would be a heaven or hell waiting for me. If not, if obliteration was my final destination, what then?

I often wondered, late at night in that terrible psych ward, if I weren't really going nuts. I wondered if maybe they weren't right to keep me there forever ... or until I woke up in the dead or dying body of Alex.

Slowly, I started to piece together bits of Chance's life. The dreams kept coming, every night, more 'memories' of Chance's life filtering into me. It was slowly building up ... but it wasn't enough for the questions being asked me. It was a fifty thousand piece puzzle and I was holding only a handful of those pieces not to mention putting them into the proper places to form a picture.

After considerable time, I convinced them that I had amnesia. At least, that's what they diagnosed me with when I told them I couldn't remember anything beyond waking up. Complex Focal Retrograde Amnesia was the official diagnosis. I have no idea what that means other than I supposedly can't remember shit; except I can, just not the memories of Chance Pestle. Or at least, not many of them.

It really was enough to give me a major headache.

I guess it made sense in their ordered little world. Things got better after that. I still didn't participate much – just enough to show some cooperation. Group therapy was a joke; there were two kids there who were older than ... than the body I was currently inhabiting ... and both of them were schizophrenics or something. They didn't talk much, not sense anyway, and they could barely function. They scared the shit out of me, though. They watched me. Constantly. I'd turn around and they'd be there, watching me, like I was a fucking television show or something.

Speaking of which, I avoided television. I hadn't really liked the shows the first time around. Cheers. Night Court. Family Ties. It was odd to see Michael J. Fox young again. I think it was part of my personal 'aversion therapy'; if nothing around me said 1984, maybe this didn't exist.

The nights were the worst, though. I didn't want to go to sleep. I was too afraid I'd go to sleep and wake up back in that pain-filled, older body. It was maddening; I had waited so long to die and now ... now, I was starting to like the idea that I might live. Even if the body I was living in was 11 years old. It was enough to drive me mad.

It took me a bit over a month to come to terms with my new existence. The terms weren't jovial; it was more of a 'I guess I'm here so I'll exist ... for now' type of thing. Evidently, I wasn't going to pop back to being Alex anytime soon ... and I didn't want to spend any more time in the loony bin than was necessary.

"Buck? Are you okay?" Sarah asked me.

"Sorry. I must have fallen asleep," I said as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. The dreams were coming faster now though I wasn't certain why. Almost every time I fell asleep I was having another ... even for little cat naps like I'd just taken. I wondered if that meant Chance was coming back. I felt for him, felt inside my brain, but there was nothing there. No presence ... nothing. I shrugged a bit and sat back up straight. I remember reading in Steven Covey's book 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People' about the Circle of Influence and the Circle of Concern – two concentric circles with the circle of influence inside the circle of concern. This was a good example of what Covey meant; whether Chance came back was not something I could predict or, as far as I know, change. So, it was in my circle of concern but not my circle of influence; I should watch for it and examine it but not worry about it and I certainly shouldn't waste my time with it. It was completely outside my control.

I spent a moment in my memory palace and put the new memory there. During my stay at Cheming's finest – and only – hospital, I'd begun creation of a second memory palace; one that was just for the dreams I was having of Chance's life. It let me organize them a bit, though the organization was a bit helter-skelter; I couldn't put the dreams in their own subjective chronological order – just the order in which I had them. It made it difficult to answer questions but it wasn't too bad yet. I'd even started sorting them, just a bit. It gave me something to do when I was sitting on the bed, staring out into space, wondering if Chance was going to come back.

My new name was Chance Buckland Pestle but I went by Buck for short. My new family was headed by Robert Pestle and Sarah Pestle; if they had middle names, nothing in the dreams I'd had so far mentioned them. My dad's parents were Buckland Pestle and Lena Pestle; Grandpa Buck and Grandma Lena. My mom's parents were Samuel and Elizabeth Chalmers; Grandpa Sam and Grandma Ann (just like my children, Sam and Ann, though I didn't know how that fit in the overall picture). I had Aunts and Uncles, though I had been able to put a name to only a few and I wasn't sure, exactly, how they fit together. There was Aunt Laney who was Molly's mom ... but I wasn't sure which Uncle was Molly's dad. There was an Uncle Robert, but I had no idea who his wife and kids were. Uncle Brian who I was pretty sure was married to Aunt Sue and I was fairly certain cousin Martha was their daughter ... it just didn't all fit together.

I knew, though, that I had two sisters, Lana Theresa Pestle who was born on January 12, 1970 and was two years older than me and Susan Gay Pestle who was born on November 6, 1973 and was a year younger than me. My/Chance's birthday was August 31, 1972.

Both Lena and Susan had dark red hair like their mom while I was stuck with auburn hair which was darker than my dad's. Lena, at 13, was filling out. She had definite bumps up top and her body was curving in on the waistline. She was a big tom-boy at heart, and her well-muscled arms and legs showed it. Lena had let her hair grow, unlike her mom's, and unlike her mom's her hair was straight all the way down to the middle of her back; she usually wore it braided, though. She had green eyes, like her mom, though hers were a shade or two darker. Same button nose, though while her lips were just as full as Sarah's her mouth was bigger. She was also taller than me ... but I was used to that from Alex's life.

Susie, at 10, was lean and tall though shorter than Chance. Like Lena, her hair was long and straight. Unlike Lena, she usually wore her hair loose and unlike Lena, she was not a tom-boy. While she had no problem wearing jeans and a tee, she much preferred to wear a frilly dress and have pretend tea with her dolls rather than running around outside and getting dirty. Her eyes, unlike Lena and Sarah's were blue, like Robert's or mine. They weren't quite as blue, though, being a darker, almost gray. She had her mother's button nose and small mouth, but her father's thinner lips. All of the girl's had a round, open face while Robert and I shared a face that was more square and lean.

At 5'1", I was taller now than Alex had been when he/I was 11. I could only hope it meant I'd be taller; if I had to live this life, I wanted it to be a better version than the one Alex had lived.

That, however, was the crux of my problem. The duplicity of Alex's life versus Chance's life was giving me headaches. I was trying, truly trying, to remain Alex ... but more and more I found myself looking at the world through Chance's eyes. I still had all of Alex's memory ... but even that wasn't a deciding factor as Chance's life started to fill in. The time was coming – soon – when I'd have to choose to be one or the other; let Alex dominate Chance's life or let Chance dominate Alex's. Living both lives just wasn't a long term option.

It brought up the last memories I had as Alex. Memories of a dark angel – maybe the angel of death – which had materialized in my room to take me. Her words still echoed in my head. "Do not waste it." If that whole angel thing wasn't a hallucination brought on by impending death, the question was ... what wasn't I supposed to waste? Was I truly being given a second chance? And if I was, what would happen to me – to Alex – if I didn't take it?

Even if I did ultimately choose to live as Chance, something I really would have no alternative to if I remained in his body, could I pull it off? The amnesia was convenient, but bits of Chance's life had been flooding back to me almost from the beginning. Would I lose Alex if I chose to be Chance? And if I did, would I just become Chance for real – the same boy – and would the soul of Alex fade from existence?

Too many questions. There was just too much to think on and I'd been doing too much thinking lately.

I started recognizing roads as we got closer to my new home. Things I'd seen in one or more of Chance's dreams/memories gave me a feeling of recognition even though I'd never truly been here before. We passed the Catholic church where Chance and his parents went to mass. We passed the ice cream parlor where Molly took Lena, Susie and Chance for ice cream when she babysat. We passed ... we passed everything.

I started to cry silently. Everywhere I turned, I could see bits and pieces of Chance's life while Alex's life was ending 29 years and thousands of miles away. I was out of my depth here; I could not see the end of this. I felt like I had felt in that hospital room all those years from now; like I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop and Chance to come back and reclaim his life.