A pounding on the door made me jump nearly to the ceiling.
"Bill?" Came my mother's voice. "Are you up? C'mon, you gotta get ready for school."
School? "Oh my God." I muttered, staring at the door.
"Bill?" The door creaked open, revealing my mother, only not as I'd seen her the previous week, but as I'd last seen her about seventeen years ago. Her blonde hair had not a trace of gray in it, her face without a wrinkle. She was about thirty pounds overweight, a period she'd gone through, I remembered, when I was an adolescent. Later she would shed all of those extra pounds. Her eyes locked onto me and I realized that I was standing in the middle of the room in my underwear.
"Bill? What are you doing?" She asked, looking at me suspiciously, her mind no doubt thinking about drugs.
"Uh… " I stared back, my mind whirring, "Uh… nothing Mom. Just trying to, uh, wake up."
This seemed to ease her mind a little. "Oh." She said. "Well, hurry up or you're gonna be late for school. Tracy's out of the shower now."
"Tracy?" I said, surprised. "You mean, Tracy, my sister?"
The look she gave me would have been funny under different circumstances. "Yes." She said carefully, her eyes telling me that she was worrying about drugs again. "How many Tracy's live in the house, Bill?"
"Sorry." I said numbly, full of elation. "Still trying to wake up I guess."
She nodded doubtfully and then, with a last worried glare, shut the door.
Tracy! I thought in disbelief. Tracy my older sister. She'd been killed on the night of her high school graduation when the car she'd been riding in, piloted by a drunken college student had plunged into the Spokane River. Tracy, along with one other teenaged girl, had drowned before she could pull herself out of the submerged car. Tracy was alive!
I sat back down on my bed, my mind now well into overload status. Part of me was refusing to believe what my sensory inputs were telling me; that I was a teenager in the early 80's instead of a thirty-two year- old, burned-out paramedic in the late 90's, that my mother was in her mid-thirties now, that my dead sister had just gotten out of the shower, leaving it free for me instead of resting, decomposed, in a sealed coffin in River View cemetery. But the cool, logical part of me was forced to accept the circumstances. I WAS a teenager again. Would I now have to live through the next seventeen years all over? Could I change things? Was I trapped here now? There were so many ramifications that I had to consider. What about Becky, my four year old daughter? What about her? She didn't exist yet. If I was able to change things, and I did so, Becky might never live. This was deep, very deep shit.
I was still sitting there thinking when my door burst open again, revealing my father. Like my mother, Dad looked considerably younger than I was used to. He was dressed in slacks and a sweater, obviously on his way to Milton Junior High School where he had (DID, my mind corrected) taught eighth grade English and Physical Education. He stared me up and down, probably advised to check on me by my worried mother (mom had always worried about me being on drugs, I remembered).
"Are you planning to go to school today?" He asked me after a moment.
I stared back at him for a moment. It was strange. I was unable to take parental authority seriously, so long had I been without it, but my father didn't realize this. Finally I responded. "Yes Dad." I told him. "Just heading for the shower now."
He nodded, seemed about to say something and then decided not to. He closed the door.
I dug through my dresser, pulling out some clothes, marveling over my high school tastes. It seemed I had nothing to wear but 501 jeans and sweaters or T-shirts with rock band emblems printed on them. What was the weather like? I wondered. Was it summer, spring, autumn, or winter? Should I wear the rock band T-shirt or the rock band sweater? A glance outside informed me that it was winter. There was snow on the ground and angry gray clouds drifting overhead. I found a robe (my old red robe!) in my closet and pulled it over my body, opening my door and heading for the bathroom to shower.
As I passed my sister's room I looked in and there she was. Seventeen years old or so, wearing a pair of Wranglers and a fashionable sweater. She sat before her mirror, combing her wet hair with a brush. She gave me a disinterested glance and started to turn back to the mirror but paused when she noticed me staring at her.
"What's your problem dickhead?" She asked me, her voice filled with the sibling contempt that had marked our teenaged years. Contempt I'd always felt sorry for after her death.
I stepped into her room, making her glare at me but I didn't care. "Tracy? My god it's good to see you."
She looked downright hostile now as I stepped forward and threw my arms around her, hugging her to me. Her body stiffened in alarm and confusion as I did this.
"What the fuck is your problem, asshole?" She barked, pushing me away.
There were actually tears in my eyes, I was so glad to see her again. I found myself speechless for a moment.
She looked at my face, disgust evident in her eyes. "You're crying? What kind of sick shit is this? Get the fuck out of my room dickhead."
"Tracy." I told her seriously. "You and I are gonna have to sit down and have a talk together."
"What?!" She said, amazed.
"Later." I told her. Then I asked. "What's the date today?"
"Huh?"
"The date?" I repeated. "You know? Month, day… " I paused. "Year?"
She gaped at me, not answering.
"I'm serious Trace." I told her. "I'll explain later. What's the date?"
"February 18." She said finally. "Wednesday."
I licked my lips for a moment. "And the year?"
"What do you… "
"Just tell me the damn year Tracy!" I commanded, making her jump.
"1982." She said finally. "Why the hell would you ask that?"
I did some quick mental addition. I was born February 10, 1967. That made me fifteen years old, but with the wisdom (such as it was) of a thirty-two year old that had already lived through the future. Tracy was indeed seventeen. She would graduate in June of 1983 and be killed later that night. That gave me a year and a half to save her life. I vowed that, if nothing else changed, I would change that. I would shoot the drunken college student dead before I allowed him to drive my sister around.
"Never mind." I told her. "I'll probably explain it to you later. It's good to see you Tracy. I love you."
"Get the fuck out of here you fuckin' pervert!" She screamed.
"And you love me too." I commented as I exited her room and headed for the shower.
By the time my shower was complete my mind had accepted the facts of the matter. I was fifteen again, it was 1982, and I had the next seventeen years to do over again. What should I do? What would I change? How many past mistakes could I rectify? Could I tell anyone? Would they believe me? And what about Becky? My future daughter preyed on my mind. Was it already too late to have her? I certainly couldn't go through another two years of marriage with that bitch that was her mother again. Could I?
Putting thoughts of Becky aside, I was cheery as I entered the kitchen and sat down to a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. Tracy was already there, eyeing me suspiciously but saying nothing. My father, as had been his habit, was eating an English muffin and reading the newspaper. A quick glance assured me that the date that Tracy had provided was indeed correct. I looked at the headlines printed on the back of the paper.
SCIENTISTS SAY ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS PRESENTS NO DANGER, read one. Oh yeah. The planets were all scheduled to align this year, which had prompted many to predict that the combined gravitational pull would rip up apart or cause earthquakes or some other such nonsense. Nothing had happened, obviously. AT amp;T BREAK-UP LEAVES MANY WONDERING-WHAT NEXT? Read another. I smiled, thinking I could tell them a thing or two about what was next. REAGANOMICS WORKING-PROCLAIM ECONOMISTS, another declared. And it would continue to for another three years or so until the entire economy came to a crashing halt, signaling the beginning of the next depression, or recession as it would be termed.