Save Me From Myself Chapter 1
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I used to have a recurring dream...
A dream where I was on a boat out on the sea, off the coast of Africa. I didn’t know anyone else on the ship, except for one person, and she was a reason I was on that vessel to begin with. The details have become sketchy over the years…like a collage of events taken out of time and context slowly disintegrating into dust. Did I see her smile at me or was that the camera in my mind? Did we swim in a pool with blue and green rocks on the bottom or was I remembering an aquarium I used to own? Was I holding her hand, telling her much I loved her, or only imaging doing so?
I still have dreams are still about her and they still take place on a small island, but the water lies still and murky and a boat lies capsized next to a rocky atoll which I always find myself standing on, looking out at the decrepit scene before me. It’s so deadly silent; I can hear my heart breaking as I step down from the rocks and into the shallow water and walk to beach.
The drab beach, like the rest of the island appeared dead in my mind, as everything looked grey and heavy. Each time I recall this dream I found myself looking back to the ocean, not one wave splashed on the sand. There was not a bird in the grey sky, only silence. I would then look back to the island and that was when everything became hazy and I would wake up.
There was one time, the dream continued, and as I turned my head back to the island, a figure stood on a mountain in the distance, waving to me. I couldn’t make out who it was at first, but the silhouette kept waving to me, waving as in a “come here” motion, not one of goodbye. With a desire to figure out the mystery, I’d take a step away from the beach and with that one step, everything changed:
The small boat, once sunken into the water was once again riding the waves. The water turned a translucent blue, and I could see fish darting through the current of the noisy tide. I could hear the sounds: Birds in the sky, the wind blowing through my hair and the roar of the surf crashing onto the sand. Colors and feelings flooded in to create a water-colored reality.
I stepped back further away from the shore and closer to the person calling out to me. I could see it was girl, and I could hear her voice, but I couldn’t recognize it.
“Jason,” she said, her voice as calm as a whisper but louder than Coach Register’s booming voice through a bullhorn during PE.
There was a crashing noise on the beach below and I saw it: the human-sized tornado with piecing red eyes. It looked up and our eyes locked. It was then I realized who was upon the hill, so I high-tailed it to the summit.
The wind rushed harder, causing me to turn around to and see the tornado was hundreds of feet tall, it’s eyes still marked on me. I climbed up as my life depended on it! I reached the top I could see her red hair, blue eyes, and a smile that could have caused the launch of millions of ships.
I had only a second to yell out her name as the tornado slammed into me with a deafening “Beep! Beep! Beep!”
“Tiffany!”
Awakened by the annoying buzzer of my alarm was both a relief and a tragedy, a relief that I was not torn to pieces by the dark forces of nature; and tragic because I was finally able to spend some time with her and couldn’t remember everything that happened.
That morning was once again a school day, a Tuesday, I believe. Mom had decided if I didn’t wake up to my alarm then I would miss the bus and then have to walk two-point-one miles to Prattville Junior High. Being late would mean missing Band.
Twenty-five minutes later, I stood on the side of the road, a few houses up the street from my own, next to Keith Grayson: my only friend at the tim. He was thirteen as well, but he had that “over the summer” growth spurt and he towered over me, and he also had a bit of a mustache.
“Did you try to call her?”
“Wasn’t the right time,” I replied.
“And how many times have I heard that?”
“Twenty-one, at last count.”
Keith, being my friend, lived by the the unwritten code of brotherhood to call me out when I was being an idiot—which had become a daily occurrence. There were multiple times that I talked over my “problem” with Keith, and he always gave the same answer: “Just go and talk to her.”
“I need to find the right time,” would be my constant reply, and that morning was no different.
“The right time for you will be two years from now. You’ll call directory assistance, even though she lives in, I don’t know, Missouri, and you’re living somewhere in Washington state. Let’s see…that’s about sixteen hundred and thirty miles away.”
I looked to him and nodded, which when translated to teenager meant, ‘I do not want to admit you’re right but, you’re right.’
“When she answers, she’ll make the comment that she suspected you had a crush her.”
I looked down the street and envisioned her running my way, with that friendly smile and what looked like the wings of an angel, glimmering in the early morning light, which was one of the many ways she appeared to me, but it was only the flashing strobe light of the bus.
“Sixteen. Hundred. When you could have said something to her when you both went to the same school. Allow that to sink in.”
We stepped onto the sort of overcrowded, kind-of-smelly school bus and sat down. The bus at once lurched forward onward to the school, as we were the last stop.
I opened my backpack, took out a binder, and handed it to Keith. We made a deal to compare notes, and by compare, I mean I worked the problems, and Keith copied the answers.
“I’m looking for ‘that’ moment,” I replied as I looked out the window. “It’s got to happen a certain way, and just rushing into it won’t work.”
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Why don’t you just ask her?”
“I’m looking for a sign.”
“You want a sign?” Keith opened the binder and scribbled out a note:
“Look…at…me. I’m…stupid. Thanks. That really helps.”
“Anytime, Jase.”
“You can give me back my history homework now.”
After the agonizing ride to school, with my body feeling every bump and pothole, we arrived at Prattville Junior High School, a school so old that Methuselah attended it when he was in seventh grade. The school was made up of two buildings that created a square-like shape, or circle; let’s just say you could walk from the front and make a complete ring without doubling back—unless you had to go to the gym, which was a place I never really liked to go to.
I spent most of my school day in the new building (which had central air-conditioning, the rest did not); it included my first class, band.
The band room was cavernous, from the fact that it was two stories in height. You couldn’t yell at someone from one side of the room to the other due to the acoustic material on the wall. The seventh-grade band, made up of four classes, would combine to form one large wannabe concert band. There were fifty or so students in each class; but in my class, there was only one person who mattered.
I caught a glimpse of her as I walked through the room and to a file cabinet that held my music folder, and that was usually all it took for me to have a good day. I won’t compare her to a café mocha, but one shot…umm, look, and I knew the day would be okay. She was like armor against the slings and arrows of junior high life.
I played the oboe in the band, a difficult instrument to play, let alone master. No one ever told me that it was more of a concert band instrument and that junior high schools did not have the sheet music for it. More often than not, our band director, Mr. Drose, would have to create handwritten versions of the sheet music due to my instrument’s timbre. I was the only one who played it too, so if I made an error, it was easy to hear it above all the other instruments. If played wrong, the oboe sounds like a duck dying in extreme agony. There were days that I played so badly I feared a swarm of hunters in camouflage and waders would storm the band room.
I would do what I could to prepare for the start of class and be at the ready. I talked to a few people while passing by with my stand or chair. Then
I would grab my music folder (which was quite large) and hope that the stand I had would hold it without tipping over.
It was important to have everything ready before the second bell rang, as I didn’t want to look like a fool in front of her so after placing my music stand and folder in front of my chair, which was dead center of the flute section, I ran to the storage room to grab my instrument case. The goal was to grab the case, turn about face, and then run to the water fountain in order to soak the double reed the oboe used.
There were days where I felt jealous of the clarinet players with their simple reeds that didn’t require a ten-minute soak in water and didn’t cost twenty dollars a piece. I almost thought of taking up the flute, but the last thing I wanted to do was slam the face of the person to the left me as I would most likely turn my head to said direction if someone called out my name.
My instrument was gone. I stood and wondered if it had been stolen or misplaced by someone. I knew for the fact I did not bring it home to practice…although I should have. I walked back into the main room, sat in my chair, and pondered where my oboe had gone to.
“Jason Dennereck?”
“Yes, Mr. Drose?”
“Where is your instrument?”
I could see the vein in Mr. Drose’s forehead start its ascension. It had sensed a student who did not have his instrument out and ready.
“Mr. Dennereck?” Mr. Drose’s words were always proper, even when delivered in pure sarcasm.
“Yes, sir?”
“You do realize we only have an hour?”
“Yes, sir,”
“So why do you feel like wasting the class?”
I never figured out until a year later that he was always speaking rhetorically when he asked that, so I replied with “I can’t find my instrument, sir.”
He would then order the offender—me, in this case—to go out into the hall for the rest of the hour. At the end of class, everyone dissembled and placed their instruments in the storage room, moved their chairs to the back of the room and the stands to the far side of the room. They then would walk out the double doors and see me, with the proverbial dunce cap on my head, the scarlet I around my neck, and the sign above my head that read, “Girls, don’t date this guy. He forgot to bring his instrument to class today. Imagine what he’ll forget to do in high school. Or later?
He will always forget your anniversary!”
If that wasn’t bad enough, Mr. Drose then called me into his office and, basically, went over everything he said earlier with a more irritated tone. I nodded to everything he said, even when he said I should handcuff my instrument case to my arm in the morning so I wouldn’t forget it. I started to believe I had indeed left my oboe at home, sitting next to my hamster’s cage.
So, with a verbal lashing and a late note, I proceeded to my second period class in the old building: life science with Mrs. Smith.
Mrs. Smith, like Mr. Drose, spoke in rhetorical questions, but only when I knew the answer. Any other time, such as asking what the primary function of the Golgi Apparatus was or the chemical comprehension of cytoplasm, I was expected to know the answer. I have to be honest; I went from sixth grade science—where we made cells out of Knox Jell-O and various forms of buttons—to Anatomy 303 with a workbook possibly drawn and written by Henry Grey himself. I sat in the back of the classroom, not by choice, but I wasn’t going to complain about it, as it gave me some cover to try and complete a section of my workbook—which I had forgotten to do…can we sense a pattern here?
I had my mind on other things, things that could happen if I only had the right moment. Could I walk into one of her classes and give my heart to her? I mean, she already had it…but how could I tell her. There were days, contrary to what I have ever told Keith, that I thought I could ask her. I would go up right in front of the class and tell her what I thought about when I saw her for the first time, and then reality would literally kick in, knock me off my feet, and I’d abandon that thought for another day. I never actually got within five feet of her when I was brave enough. It was only when my stomach was full of butterflies, and my tongue was as huge as a burrito that I could get near her. At that point, she would say “hi” and I would say “hi” back…and that was about it. I guess it’s a roundabout way of saying that I was interested in life science, just not on the cellular level.
* * *
“What happened?” Keith asked as I stood next to him on a dusty and rocky track in a pair of shorts, T-shirt, and old gym shoes. It was PE, a class I hated more than math but less than a trip to the orthodontist.
Why did I hate the class? It wasn’t because I was lazy. I had a fond disliking of the class because I wasn’t really good at anything except for soccer—which we seldom, if ever, played as there were over fifty-six kids in the class. It would be more of “mob ball” than any organized sport.
We had all assembled on the track that day to “run the mile,” or as I think the coaches like to put it: “We don’t know what to do with all of you, and it’s a blazing hot day, so we want you to run until you pass out of throw up. Line up!”
“Forgot my instrument at home and got sent to the hall.”
“I don’t remember you carrying it home yesterday.”
“You too? I was sure I didn’t bring it home. But Mr. Drose made me stand in front of his office for the entire period and everyone gawked at me as they left,” I replied as the scene replayed in my head repeatedly.
“And I assume she saw it all?”
“Witnessed the whole scene along with the rest of the class, like a firing squad. I might as well give up.”
“Have you even tried to begin with?”
“I’ve been working on it.”
“Just be glad she’s not in this class with you.” Keith commented as he got down into a runner’s position,
“Oh yeah, I’d love her to see me cough and drag myself across this track. While I might get ‘bless his heart’ points, I don’t see it helping.”
“I hear you,” Keith replied as he took off in a sprint. I was right behind him, well, maybe 200 feet behind, but I tried to keep up with him. I ran like the wind, or perhaps a light breeze, or…well, like the best I could without feeling like barfing up my lungs—which usually placed me in the back of the line, continuously lapped by everyone else.
I enjoyed physical fitness, and I liked running, like, say, after a soccer ball, or to the head of the line at Pizza Hut…or if there was a new and obscure-sounding Nintendo game that was just released. Oh yeah, I would be panting like a dog out of breath, but I’d be there.
Keith had already cleared the first turn while I had just moved from a quick jog to running like a sloth. Keith’s words burned into my head of the thought of Tiffany watching me, even if at hundreds of feet, caused a shiver to run down my spine.
“Out of the way!” A voice yelled out as an arm pushed me aside and I tumbled to the ground. I looked up, looking for the jerk who thought it funny to knock me down, but no one was there. I shook the dust off my legs and took notice of the small patches of blood on my knees and then started jogging again as a mass of boys blew past me—I had been lapped by everyone. Keith passed by and then slowed down.
“You fall?
“No, I was pushed.”
“Good luck finding out by who,” Keith replied as he looked around. “Probably just a nobody with nothing better to do.”
“Yeah, that’s a good way to put it.”
“See you next lap, Jase!” Keith yelled as he took off once again.
“That’s funny, Keith, it really is.” I said with just a pinch of sarcasm as I started running. I had confidence I could still get around the track at least once before the end of the period.
I had gotten into a steady groove with my knees not hurting as much as I thought they would when I felt a hand push down on my shoulder, causing me to lose my balance and this time, I went down on my side, but I was able to see the person who brought me down…he was wearing the same shorts and t-shirt I had on.
“You jerk!” I yelled, and instantly regretted doing so, out of fear he would turn around and pummel me. He just kept on running.
* * *
My next class was math, a class that took me several days later to understand the concept of what we did the previous week. I won’t say I zoned out during the lectures, but I also won’t say I heard every word Mr. Jackson said.
“And if you divide that answer…”
I thought about the crazy morning I had: a missing instrument and then what happened in PE.
“And multiply it…”
My unknown assailant wore the same clothes as I did, down to the shoes.
“Then the problem’s resolution…”
Prattville Junior Hight was huge, with over two hundred students, there could have been someone who had similar clothes. That had to be it, I had to be thinking about it too much,
“If you turn to page forty-two…”
But why did he knock me down a second time? Or was there a group of them and just two were able to carry out “Operation: Humiliation.”
“Jason?”
I tensed up and looked to the front of the classroom, expecting to see Mr. Jackson’s face in its usual scowl. It was there, and he was scowling, but he wasn’t moving.
I squinted to see that he was frozen at the blackboard, chalk in hand. He wasn’t looking at the class, and he wasn’t looking at me either; like someone mashed the pause button of life.
“Jason?” a voice that didn’t sound like “old teacher, it kind of sounded like, like me,” said.
“Over here.”
I slowly turned my head to see someone who looked exactly like me standing next to my desk, with his hands in the position to flip it over. I stared at him for what seemed like an eternity.
“You can stop staring now, it’s kind of creepy.”
“Who—?”
“Who do you think I am?”
I looked around the room and saw everyone else was frozen in the moment.
“I have no idea, but you look—”
“I don’t look like you, Jason. I am you.”
He walked up to Mr. Jackson, who stood next to the blackboard, and moved him over like a chess piece.
“How?”
“Let’s stay on task.” He replied as walked back to my desk. “Come up to the front.”
I cautiously crawled out of the desk and slowly walked up to the blackboard as he grabbed a piece of chalk.
“Your fears. Let’s name them.”
“But if you’re me, don’t you already know what they are?”
“I’ve forgotten how stubborn I was back then,” my clone shook his head. “Back then? Are you, we, time travelers?”
“No, there’s no blue police box on the roof or a DeLorean parked out front.”
“Outstanding make-up job,” I replied.
He dropped the chalk into the tray, shook his head, and gave me a look that shouted, “I still can’t believe I said that.”
“I’m about to say a few other things if you don’t tell me who you are.”
“Jason Alexander Dennereck. 597 Marlyn Drive. You’re afraid people will know you still have a hamster; that you watch ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’, and there was a time a roach crawled on your face. But that’s not your biggest fear. You’re scared of something greater.”
What could be greater than a two-inch cockroach deciding your forehead was the perfect spot to relax?
Once again, I found myself staring at him and wondered if I was dreaming.
“I don’t know how much time I have to help you.”
“With what?”
“Something that’s going to effect our lives in five years,” he replied as he sat on Mr. Jackson’s desk. “I think I’m going to have to force you to do this, Jason.”
“Do what?”
“I knew I was dense, but, really, seriously?” He yelled as he slapped his hands to his face. “We must talk, parablu, speak, with Tiffany Creighton.”
With that, he faded away, and I found myself standing at the door of the classroom with a very awake Mr. Jackson looking at me…complete with scowl.
Save Me From Myself Chapter 2
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I sat at a table by myself at lunch. Not that I wanted to be anti-social, it was just that I must have had a glazed-eye look, and it probably freaked people out a bit, so in what probably looked like a variation of the parting of the Red Sea, the student body steered clear of me. I would have wanted to avoid myself as well as I stared blankly at my brown-bagged lunch and the watery ring of where my soda sat just a bit earlier…a soda that was now missing.
“Hey, Jase, what’s up?”
Keith stood on the other side of the table and sat down.
“Ah, no-nothing.”
“Well, I failed my history assignment. You might want to check your answers before sixth period.”
“I’ll do that, I—”
“Forget you lunch ?”
I reached at the bag and saw that it was empty.
“No, I think someone stole it.”
“You feeling okay?” Keith asked as he sat down across the table from me.
“I’m going to say something that sounds crazy.”
“You’re actually going to talk to Tiffany, right? ‘Cause that’s crazy coming from you.”
I glared at him for a moment and then sighed. “Yes, but no, not that.”
“Then this’ll be good. What’cha got?”
“Have you seen anyone who looks like me?”
“Not lately. Does your reflection in a mirror count?”
“No.”
Keith took a sandwich out of his lunch bad and passed half of it to me. “You think you have an evil clone walking around the school? Oh wait, are you the evil one?”
“Seriously,” I replied as I took a bite of the sandwich, it was overly sweet peanut butter. “I mean the guy who knocked me down during PE looked like me.”
“And the same clothes?”
“Yeah, so you can see what I’m talking about that.”
“I have a suggestion.”
“What?” I asked, hoping Keith could shed some light on this mystery.
“Don’t talk to her about that.”
“Maybe I should,” I leaped to my feet, sandwich still in hand. “She might know someone who looks like me. I need to ask her.”
“I believe your evil clone theory more than you actually talking to her about anything.”
“Mr. Dennereck.”
Keith’s eyes went wide as he stared at the source of the voice behind me. I spun around to meet up with the eyes of the vice principal, Mr. Irwin.
“Come with me.”
We walked out of the lunchroom in total silence.
Suspension?
Detention?
I had no idea what was going to become of me. I had never met the principal of the school, and it was written on some form of ancient tablet or fortune cookie that if Mr. Irwin even whispered your name, you were destined to serve detention every day until the end of the school year or until you died, whichever likely came first. We turned a corner in the hallway and stepped into his office.
“Sit down, Mr. Dennereck.”
Mr Irwin’s office was in the eighth-grade hallway, a place I had never stepped foot in. There was a line that started in front of the gym that went all the way up to the front office that I refused to cross. The office door was a simple door with the name “Mr. Erwin” at the top of it, so high I had to jump up to see it clearly. It also at that moment I realized his name was spelled with an “E” and not an “I.”
The inside of the office was kind of empty. There was a large chair behind a desk with a small chair on the other side of the desk. My assumption was so he could tower above a student while passing judgment.
“Mr. Dennereck.”
“Yes sir?”
“I hear you disrupted Mr. Jackson’s class last period.”
“I wasn’t trying to, I—” I stopped short of saying I was speaking to my time-traveling self, my dimension clone, or a being of quantum mechanics. Anything I said would sound like I was trying to make fun of him or Mr. Jackson. I had no choice but to throw myself down onto the mercy of the court. “Well, I was just—”
The intercom on Mr. Erwin’s desk crackled to life. “Mr. Erwin to the lunchroom! We have a severe case of mass vomiting.”
Mr. Erwin’s expression cycled through disgust, dread, and then discipline—he knew he had to handle the issue.
“Stay here, Mr. Dennereck.”
I nodded as Mr Erwin stood up from his desk, opened the door, and walked out.
The door closed behind him, and I turned back, facing the now empty chair. I had, perhaps, five minutes to ponder my fate yet again: Detention? A parent, teacher conference? Forty lashes with a cat-o-nine tails?”
The door opened behind me, and I tensed up, dreading the continuation of the trial.
“We have to go!” My clone stood to my right and grabbed me by the shoulder.
“How did you do that?” I asked as we left the office.
“Again, with the questions,” he said with a sigh. “I still can’t believe I was this difficult to deal with.”
“Can I ask one more question?”
“I’d rather you didn’t, but you’re going to anyway.”
“Where are we going?”
“Can I answer your question with a question?”
“I think you just did,” I replied.
“Touché. On a trip!” He replied as he accelerated his pace. “Keep up and no matter what, keep running!”
I took off running, trying to keep up with him and witnessed him run through the wall! I had three seconds to either slow down and save my nose from a fracture or to keep on running. Considering how the morning had been going so far, I decided to keep on running—I closed my eyes right before the impending impact.
I opened my eyes to a view of trees, cabins, and…lots of mud on my shoes. We stood at the foot of a muddy hill on the far side of a campground.
“No, no, no,” I stammered. “This is just a dream or something.”
“Go with the ‘or something.’ Take a deep breath, Jase. Smell that mist in the air.”
“Day two of Camp Lee, Church youth group trip,” I replied as I looked around to see the pool to the side of us.
“Yep,” the other Jason replied.
“I have a few memories of this place.”
“Good or bad?”
“A little bit of both, actually.”
The other Jason walked ahead of me. “Let’s climb up the hill.”
“Why?”
“Because the group is going to walk down that muddy path any moment now.”
He nodded.
I can’t…We can’t change anything here. This is just a memory.”
“More than that. We are here. There’s three of us here, actually. And two of us have no idea on what to do.”
“And you.”
He nodded again.
“Want to fill me in?”
“There’s a chance that we stop our other self from leaving the cabin, allowing one of us to take his place and say more than ‘hello’ to her. Let’s go.”
I took another deep breath and then felt a rain drop fall onto my face.
“We forget our Bible and had to go back for it,” my out-of-time counterpart said as we fast-tracked up the hill. “We need to find it first and hide it.
That’s where you come in.” He jumped into the woods, and I trailed behind.
The cabins, one for the guys and the other for the girls, were situated on a hill with a steep and muddy path leading up to it. It had multiple bunk beds and reminded me of an army barrack.
He abruptly stopped as a wave of boys left the cabin. “Operation Intrude N313 goes into effect in three…two…one…”
I saw myself step out of the cabin and recalled how new I was to the youth group of First Baptist Church of Prattville. So new I had not integrated into the hierarchy of the seventh grade. We would begin Sunday School with everyone in a main room, eating donuts and getting an overview of the lesson for that day before being separated by genders—something I had never seen in a church beforehand. I found myself at odds with the other boys in the group: their attitudes about others were so two-faced to me. I had been attending that church for two months before school and still felt a disconnect, but I hoped this two-day Bible camp would help me understand myself and find someone who was like me.
My alternate self grabbed my arm and shoved me forward and I ran to the cabin, up onto the porch and inside. I frantically ran through the cabin, trying to remember exactly where my stuff was in the midst of beds. I saw my Bible, a leather-bound-book given to me by my sixth-grade Sunday School teachers. I picked it up and moved it to the bed at the end of the cabin…but then thought about it being trampled on, ripped, or not getting it back. I moved back to my bed, laid it back down and high-tailed it out through the rear entrance before the front door opened again.
I ran as fast as I could from the cabin and then felt my legs giving out on me, as if someone had tripped me. Maybe I had struck a tree root or something. My eyes opened to see a pair of shoes standing in front of my face.
“You didn’t hide it?”
I shook my head as I looked up to see my doppelgänger help me up.
“I’ll take care of our…past self. You, go and talk to her.”
I nodded and continued my run to meet up with the group. They were passing by the pool as were on our way to the camp’s sanctuary building. I didn’t see Tiffany from my vantage point as I could not recall what she wore that day. But if I could get ahead of the group her face, then I could complete the mission.
I ran as fast as I could to meet up and pass the group, in an attempt to lock eyes with her, but I didn’t want to put her on the spot.
“But you know the future beyond this day…” I whispered to myself. “What are you waiting for?”
I took a few steps to get closer to her but then stopped. Instead, I looked up the hill and ran back up the path. I saw my older self standing in the middle of the path looking at the ground.
He whispered something and closed his eyes.
The trees, the path, everything around us melted away to reveal the hallway at Prattville Junior High. I found myself staring at the annoyed face of Mr. Erwin who stood at the other end of the hall.
Save Me From Myself Chapter 3
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The other Jason walked down the hallway toward Mr. Erwin.
“Get out of here,” he called back to me, and I took off the other way, running past the office, out the door, and back to the lunchroom. I figured my homeroom teacher, Mrs. Smith, would be waiting for me in the hallway, since my homeroom class was about across from the lunchroom exit door. However, the clock on the wall had only moved maybe, five minutes.
“That was quick,” Keith said. “Mr. Erwin came back in and walked around the room, like he was looking for something. So, what happened?”
“Nothing really…just about…about what happened in Band this morning.”
Keith nodded as he handed me a carrot stick. “Oh yeah, he said something about a sea of vomit all over the room. I’d love to see that in all its
“Stand By Me” glory.”
“Sounds like it,” I replied as I saw myself walking past the door.
The walk from homeroom to History, my fifth period class, felt like a death march. I only had a textbook, binder, and a pencil in my hands, but I was mentally burdened by what Tiffany would think of me when I walked into the classroom. I envisioned taking a step into the class, focusing on the desk three rows and one desk back from my own, as it was the only way I could ever look at Tiffany without her—or anyone—noticing.
However, on that day I fought against looking at her. I dreaded the thought of how she must have felt about what happened in Band. The berating from Mr. Drose, plus the proverbial dunce cap of shame atop my head, equalled “no chance” for me. Instead, I raced to my desk and spent time reading from my textbook before the start of the test I was sure to fail due to my terrible study notes. I like to think I was exceptionally good with history. I wasn’t great at “making history,” but I could recall the reign of Charlemagne and the population of Cairo, circa 1988.
“I’ve been thinking…” A familiar sounding voice said from behind me.
My eyes widened and I nearly crushed my pencil lead on my test paper.
“I’ve been thinking that maybe we’re going about this all wrong.”
I only nodded as our teacher, Mrs. Bowling, looked up at the class. She didn’t see my replica stepping to the side of my desk.
“Going to the past isn’t going to help us, not now at least,” he said as he walked to the front of the classroom and sat on Mrs. Bowling’s desk.
“The present is what we need to focus on.”
My present, at that moment, had me trying to suppress a shocked facial expression.
“We need to send her a note. We need to take charge and start the conversation.”
I slowly and abruptly nodded my head.
“Of course, talk only goes so far. Actions speak louder than words, you know.”
I looked to see Mrs. Bowling stand up from her desk and pass through my facsimile. He jumped onto the side of her desk as Mrs. Bowling stood next to the blackboard. He flipped though a few pages of the teacher’s textbook on her desk.
“Do you want to know a secret?” He asked continued to flip through pages.
I barely nodded my head again.
“The future is not particularly all that great. Yeah, we got handheld computers, twenty-four cable TV, and a house in the suburbs.”
I raised my eyes to him.
“Don’t get me wrong…all of those things are great…but, there is a bit of loneliness with being connected to everyone and everything twenty-four seven. Your mind…it goes places, and you miss out on things. Do you know my daughters played basketball, and I missed their championship game?”
With that, my pencil lead cracked, causing several eyes to shift to me.
“Sharpen your pencil, Jason,” Mrs. Bowling said as she walked back to her desk.
“I was there, I was at the game, but I was hyper-focused, like a laser beam, on my phone bill, and the conversation went into talking about phone technology. I was at a basketball game, hearing the crowds cheer as someone made a half-court shot, but I wasn’t really there.”
I walked to the pencil sharpener located near the door.
“I think it all started here, or it ended here…It all depends on how one looks at time.”
The crank turned slowly as he got up from Mrs. Bowling’s desk and she sat down in her chair.
“We need to strategize. How can we get her attention, besides breaking our pencil…and grinding it down to a stub.”
I stopped sharpening the pencil and walked back to my desk.
“I know her favorite color is red. Perhaps you could get her a bouquet of flowers. No matter the cost. We need to make a great impression. It is imperative. Only the greatest and best display of affection will do. That’s how we’ll show her how we feel. We will get the biggest bouquet of flowers money can buy!” He walked to the classroom door. “And tomorrow morning, before Band starts, we will walk up to her, and hand said flowers to her.”
I couldn’t hide behind my fear of talking to her, but I nodded to him.
“Dynamite plan, Jase!” He yelled as he opened the door and walked out.
At the same time, an office worker entered and handed a note to Mrs. Bowling.
I went back to reading my textbook…or at least I went back to reading the same sentence over and over.
My seventh period class might as well have been an exercise in slow torture: like sitting in the back seat of a station wagon on a 450-mile road trip with parents who believe that the car doesn’t stop until it needs gas or it blows a tire. Meanwhile, you have had two cans of Mountain Dew, an apple, and you hope that no one mentions anything to do with running water. The time ticked by ever so slowly until the final bell rang. When I ran out of the building, I was so worked up that I almost thought about running all the way home, or at least maybe across town, but, no, it was best to go home first to scrounge up what little money I had.
“Again, we hiked here for what?”
I set my bike’s kickstand and got off while Keith merely stepped off and allowed his to crash to the ground in front of a flower shop. The store was about two miles away from our houses.
“I’m going to buy the biggest bouquet of flowers that…” I fished into my pocket and hastily counted as we walked inside. “…fifteen dollars and forty-two cents can buy.”
“And you’re getting this for Tiffany, right?” Keith asked.
“Yes.”
A bell jingled as we walked into front of the shop. There were decorations on display. There were ones for weddings, and I stole a glance at them, as to not give Keith any ammunition to us against me. We walked to the far wall lined by several flower-filled refrigeration coolers.
“Jase, have you looked at these prices?” Keith whispered as we walked past a case of lilies and daisies.
“No.”
“Thirty dollars for a bouquet of lilies. Twenty-five for whatever these are.”
“What does it say about roses?”
“Forty dollars for a dozen, twenty for half, and single flowers for six bucks. The prices do not make any sense to me.”
I stared at the single flowers. If I only got one, then I would look like I was cheap.
“One or two?” I asked.
“Maybe one and some chocolates?” Keith replied. “We can stop by the gas station.”
“I don’t know if she likes chocolate.”
“But you know she likes roses?”
“Don’t all girls like roses?”
“And I think they all like chocolate too. My sister eats it like it’s the last thing on earth. I don’t think she’s ever gotten flowers before though.”
“Okay, so flowers and a box of chocolates?”
“If you’re looking to save some money, you can just buy a bag of Snickers—”
“And find a handful of dandelions to go with it?”
“They’re free, right? Maybe she loves the beauty of nature and will one day take photos of plants and flowers. Wildflowers say a lot.”
I opened the cooler as Keith continued with his pep talk.
“I’m just saying you should save your money. She might ask you to drop dead.”
“I don’t think she’d say that.”
I reached deep inside and moved the flowers around, in my attempt to find the perfect ones. No droops. No damaged petals. No, they had to be just on the brink of blooming so I could surprise her with a full bloom.
“This will help me. It shows tha—”
“That you have no idea how this works, do you?”
“You’re right, Keith. I have no idea how this is going to turn out. I’m kind of winging it, but I have a feeling this will work. These will be my way of getting my foot in the door.”
“Getting your foot in the door? More like getting your face slammed in it.”
We walked up to a register. The clerk took the flowers and smiled at me.
“For a girlfriend?”
“I hope so.”
“Well, good luck to you.”
“Lady," Keith interjected, "I’ve been telling him that all along.”
I bolted out of the store so fast; I still do not recall if I got all my change.
I hung the bag on my handlebars as Keith scraped his bike off the ground.
“Keith, it’s the thought that counts. Girls like to be shown that they mean something to you.”
“By buying them dead flowers?”
“They’re not dead,” I replied as we took off down the street.
“Ah yes, I recall your past science test scores on photosynthesis. Go on.”
“If I could buy her a diamond, I would.”
“You do know what that means, right?”
“That I might possibly love her or that I’m crazy?”
“Both, but with more emphasis on the crazy!”
“I’m going to walk into that school, give her these.”
“Okay,” Keith started as he pedaled a few feet ahead of me, “you get an “A” for effort. But, this may be too much. You can’t tell her you’ll marry her someday.”
“Why not?”
“We’re in seventh grade.”
I stared blankly at Keith as he darted behind due to an on-coming car approaching us. “And I the flowers would be overkill,” he replied.
I put my feet down on the pedals and slowed to s stop. “Don’t…don’t harsh my dream.”
“I know it’s your dream, Jason.”
“And you tell me to talk to her. I need a reason to talk to her. I just can’t walk up to her with nothing. These will help me do that.”
Keith shook his head. “Let’s get the zombie plants home so they don’t wilt.”
I made it home and carefully placed the flowers in the fridge. My mom asked who they were for and I avoided the question. She nodded her head, which I took as a confirmation that I didn’t have to explain anything. Racing up to my room, I saw the light was on, which was not how I left it.
I opened the door to see my reversed chronological twin sitting at my desk, playing “Contra” on the Nintendo.
“Did you get it?” He asked as I closed the door. “I don’t remember this game being this hard.”
“I got two. They look nice.”
“Awesome,” he replied.
My glance moved back and forth from him to the TV. “Will this change our future?”
“It only takes a spark to get a fire going,” he said as he turned off the Nintendo and turned to me. “Nothing has happened yet, we won’t know until tomorrow.”
“What’s wrong with our future?”
“Our future,”” He stammered for a moment, stood up, and walked to the window that looked out to the street. “It’s…it’s fine, but…but there was a chance to make it different, and we did not do that the first time, or the second, or the third,” he finished with a sigh.
“If it’s fine, then why are we doing this?”
He turned around and pointed a finger into my chest. “Tell me that you don’t love her.”
“I do, but—”
“But nothing. Our plan has to succeed.”
“What happens if we don’t?” I asked, getting a little angry at the situation and the fact he left the game in the system and didn’t put it back in the box.
“Fine, you want to know? I’ll show you!” He grabbed my arm and threw me at the window. I felt a moment of panic that I was about to smash the glass with my face and then, after recovering from the severe cuts I was bound to get, have my dad take my allowance for several months.
I held out my hands, fell through the wall, and landed in the bedroom of a strange house. I was alone, the other Jason didn’t follow.