Surfacing (Spark Saga) (5 page)

             
“Good game the other night,” Cricket says cheerfully.  “Way to pass that ball.”

             
“Thanks,” Zach says, moving on.  “Catch you later.”

             
When he is out of earshot, Cricket says, “Mark this down in your history book, Zach Webb actually spoke to me.  Now there’s an event.”

             
I don’t ask, but instead, finish my combination, pop open my locker, and shut it.  “There. It works.  Ready to go back to class?”

             
“No, not really,” Cricket sighs.  “But if we must.”

             
All the way back to class, I feel funny, like somehow, Zach Webb’s eyes are still on me.  They looked at me so intensely.  But I can’t imagine why.

             
Suddenly Cricket stops and turns to face me, takes a deep breath.  “Do you remember?”

             
“What?” 
Here we go… I don’t know if I can handle people constantly drilling me about what I remember.

             
She nods in the direction Zach went.  “Zach.”

             
“What about him?” 
              Cricket looks around nervously.  “The building downtown.  Where we went with Alex.  Zach’s…hangout.”  She said, with a tentative whisper.

             
Well, this sucks.  I have no idea what she’s talking about, and I’m not sure I want to.  This could be interesting…or complete and utter embarrassment.

             
I shake my head.

             
She takes me arm.  “C’mon.  I’ll fill you in.”

             
As we walk slowly back to class, she tells me the story of the night we broke into Zach’s parents’ building, how I started looking through his files, the confrontation between Alex and Zach.

             
“What was that all about anyway?” She asks. 

             
Crap. 
My stomach whirls, my mind racing.  “I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about.”

             
“Well, then, we will just have to find out, won’t we?”  She smiles mischievously.

             
Great.  An adventure.  Not just an adventure, but a mysterious adventure, centered on ME. 
Why can’t I just wield a magic wand and make everyone else’s memories disappear?  On the other hand, why can’t I magically restore my own?  It might be harder—I mean, at least the way it is, I have an excuse.  The thought of trying to explain my past behaviors makes me literally dizzy.  I can’t explain what I don’t know anything about.  Worse, knowing something about myself and still not being able to explain it.  This gives me a giant-sized headache. 

              All through classes that morning, I basically keep quiet, take a lot of notes, and watch the clock.  Honestly, I feel like I know most of the material pretty well, which was a relief.  I was afraid I would be totally blank and have to somehow fake my way through until someone figured out that I was a mental fledgling and send me back to the ninth grade.  The thing that bothers me more than anything is how disconnected I feel… like I am having an out of body experience or something.  I am, indeed, Tess Turner—in fact, my teachers keep confirming this by calling out my name—and I am seemingly who I am supposed to be.  My brain seems pretty much intact.  But everyone acts so strange and nervous around me, sort of like they don’t know me.  And I know for a fact that’s not true.  They all know me.  And most of them I at least recognize.  Not that I have much to say to them—I mean, I never was the most popular girl in school.  Not that I am unpopular and mysteriously unapproachable.  It is like I have some disease.  Cricket and Dani are the only ones who talk to me.  And, luckily, Cricket is my peer mentor for the first week of school, so at least I am not all alone in my alien bubble.

That night,
this weird ringing in my ears starts.  It begins suddenly, waking me up at midnight from a deep sleep.  I cup my hand over my ears and get up to look out the window.  It sounds like someone was running a high-pitched drill outside.  But there is nothing there.  I become frightened; my hands start shaking.  For a few minutes, it seems I have entered another world, an alternate universe of sound or something.  A monotonous, urgent drill has me in its grip and I feel paralyzed by fear and confusion.  What is happening?  And why the heck is it happening to me?

             
I sit down on the edge of my bed, and finally the sound fades.  I rub my forehead, as it began to ache.  Next, a jumble of words form in my mind.

I have been waiting for this day forever, it seems.

What do you mean?

To talk to you, to see you.  It’s as if you’ve been lost.

But I’m not lost.

Never mind all that.  I want to teach you everything. 

Everything?

Ah, yes.  It all begins with tiny flickers of light, sparks…like shooting stars…

              This all must be some sort of really intense dream.  I lie back down and close my eyes, but I am wide awake, so I start thinking about the next day…another day at school, the stares and the silence.  All I want to do is go to sleep and not wake up for a week.  That seems to be something I’m pretty good at, and, it has its advantages.  Forgetting the past is at the top of the list.  But if there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that forgetting doesn’t make things go away.  The world goes on, without you, and sometimes, you’re just out of luck.  Out of luck and clueless.  It’s like showing up for a test that everyone else has studied for, and I’m just left staring at a blank page, hoping for a miracle.

Zach

             
In truth, I have only read
The Time Machine
all the way through once, when I found it in my father’s things, shortly after he died.  Over the years, I have picked it up on occasion, skimming through, pausing on this or that passage that interested me, but I have never given it a deep, careful reading.  I never noticed the missing pages.  Upon examination, in fact, the text seems to flow from one to the next, as if there were no pages missing at all.  I take note and indulge in the irony of this, as my father probably perused the entire book, looking for just the right place—out of all possible places—to leave his message.  After all, it had to be hidden, and hidden well.  Indeed, it was.

             
I find myself wondering if there are parts of life that are hidden.  Like the pages in the book, things hidden beneath the obvious surface—a surface so seamlessly constructed as to appear indelible.  Are there hidden spaces in me, for example?  Revelations, memories, and knowledge that could prove useful in some way, as yet undiscovered?  Of course.  The book is tangible evidence of it.  And yet, there are no spaces that cannot be accessed, no hidden mysteries which we cannot locate, if we simply pry back the layers of what we see to be true.  The concept of time travel confirms this.  And yet, it was a concept meant to be discovered, almost intuitively.  To force it upon someone could prove disastrous.  My father’s words echo in my mind: 
People destroy what they do not understand…

             
I ran across Tess at school today.  She was standing at the lockers with her friend Cricket, and I could not avoid looking at her.  If only she knew—if she
really
knew—the truth about me, about us.  My heart screams out to tell her.  I must fight the urge, every minute, not to grasp her in my arms and tell her how we came to be, the story of our love that began in another time and place.  And yet, I know to do so would be foolish.  Her skepticism and unbelief would prove insurmountable.  I convinced her last time around because I had knowledge about the accident that landed her in a coma when she was 13 years old.  Granted, that was information I could have obtained anywhere, had Tess put some thought into it.  But it was enough, in the moment, to convince her to give me a chance.  It wasn’t until I revealed specific details about her life—the Project Zero logs—that she began to really believe me.  She could not deny the things I knew.  And that intrigued her.  How could anyone possibly know that much?  How could it be, if not fate?

             
I entertain the thought, of course, that it would be possible to repeat my previous method…if not for the fact that I am dating her best friend.  Never mind the impossibility of getting her to listen to even one word of my outlandish story.  The fact remains that Dani stands between us.  At the first sign of my interest in her, Tess would recoil at my perceived betrayal of her friend.  And in reality, she would be right.  What was I doing?  What have I gotten myself into?  Dani and I have been together for years.  Friends first, then—that night at the park, when she called me to rescue her from Braden Cooper.  I’m not sure which one of us kissed the other one first, but at some point, something in my mind changed from friend to something more, and I stopped to simply look in her eyes. 
You’re so pretty
, I’d said. 
I’ve always thought so. 

I was worried about taking her home in that condition, so I decided to pull over at the park for a while and let her sober up.  Her parents weren’t expecting her home until at least midnight anyway, since they’d given her special permission to be out late for
Homecoming.  I groped around in the back of the car looking for a bottle of water I’d left there the day before and gave it to her.  “Drink this, it will help.”

             
She took a couple of sips, then contorted her mouth into a frown.  I thought she might be going to throw up, but then she just threw her arms around me and pulled me awkwardly closer.  “You’re the best, you know that?”  She slurred.  “I love you, man.”

             
After hanging there for a few minutes, she got a semi-serious look on her face.  “Do you have any regrets?”

             
“What do you mean?”

             
“I mean regrets—in life—you know.”

             
I considered this for a moment.  Of course, there were things I’d done or said in life that I wished I hadn’t.  Like telling dad I hated him once in the heat of an argument over some television show I was watching that he didn’t approve.  When regret delivers a physical stab of pain, like it did right then and there, you know it’s for real.  Because my dad was gone now, and I could never take that back.  “Yeah, I guess.  I told my dad I hated him once.”

             
“That’s nothing.  I’ve told both my parents that more than once.  They know I don’t really hate them.  It’s just they make me so effin’ mad sometimes you know?”  She snuggled her face into my shoulder.  “Anyway, that’s not what I meant,” she said, with a furtive grin.

             
My chest was starting to sweat under my shirt, and my mouth was getting dry so I grabbed the water bottle and took a drink.  “What do you mean then?”

             
She placed her hand on my chin, turning my head toward her.  “I mean, I only have one regret.”

             
I was really getting nervous by this time because I was starting to feel warm all over and my stomach had this tingly ache that crept down my legs.  “What’s that?”  I asked, shifting my body in the seat to ward off the weird feelings that were taking over.

             
“I just wish I’d kissed you first,” she said, coming closer.  Her face was right in front of me, and even though it smelled like schnapps, I forgave her for it because I was numb with shock by that point.  Plus, I was struck completely speechless, which was a good thing, because she planted one on me, right then.  It was a little sloppy and slippery, but man, I didn’t care.  I had wanted to kiss her for
four years
.  Perfection wasn’t an issue.

She kissed me again, this time with determination, as if, claiming me.  And I was, apparently, in the mood to be claimed.  She's stayed with me all these years…And to be honest, we are good together.  We work.  Our friends accept that we are a couple…no one would expect us to be anything different. 
Dani and Zach
…it's a reality that goes without saying.

             
Of course, I feel guilty for what I know.  For what I know threatens everything that is—everything that is expected of me, everything that will happen from this moment on.  What I know is this:  Dani Chase is not the girl I am going to end up with.  She is not the woman I will marry.  This is undeniable.  My father’s research proves it.  I have been given a glimpse into the future, and I cannot deny what I have seen.  The only problem is—what do I do with this glimpse, this potentially unsettling information?  Am I to trust it, unwaveringly?  Do I assume, beyond all reasonable doubt, that I will someday marry Tess Turner?  Or do I entertain the possibility that what I do today, the steps I willingly choose, will have some irreversible impact on the future? 

             
In other words, do I have a choice?  And if so, how can I possibly choose between them?

             
As if the stars are aligned to serve up heaps of irony, Dani texts me.  She rarely calls me, preferring text instead.  I sigh and trace my thumb over the screen on my phone.