"Free?" I said, looking at her like a rabbit in a set of headlights.
"Yes." She nodded. "I figure I can go with you wherever you go to college. I can get a job practically anywhere with my skills. We can rent a house while you get your degree. The only hard thing is going to be telling your parents about us." She shook her head sadly while I stared with my mouth agape. "That's certainly not going to be fun."
"No," I muttered slowly, numbly. "It wouldn't be fun at all, would it?"
She leaned over and kissed my nose with a quick peck. "But don't worry." She assured me. "It'll work out. Love will find a way. Why don't you go take your shower now? You don't want to make your parents suspicious do you?"
"No." I said. "That wouldn't do at all."
I was deeply troubled once again as I walked home and headed upstairs that evening. I brushed by my mother before she had a chance to get a good look at my face and see my emotions there. As I crawled under my covers and shut off my light I found myself actually grateful for my fight with Julie. It was thoughts of her that had kept me from telling Anita then and there that I had no intention of marrying her or having her follow me to college. In fact I never intended to sleep with her again. But I had to think carefully first about how I was going to break that news to her. It was clear that I was in the process of screwing up her life but good. Instinctive moves to correct this action might not necessarily be the best ones. The situation would need to be reflected upon first.
As I was reflecting I fell asleep. When I woke up a whole new day was beginning.
I half expected Mike to show up at my house in order to walk to school with me since his car was broken. When he didn't, I figured that one of his parents must have given him a ride. I didn't see him during the classroom portion of the day at all but that was hardly unusual. During lunch period, when I still didn't see him I was forced to conclude that he wasn't there. The conclusion was confirmed when I boarded the bus for ROP and he wasn't there either.
Where was he? I wondered worriedly. Was he sick? Had he maybe taken ill during his shift the previous day? Although that nicely explained why he hadn't been on the bus yesterday or today it didn't ring true. I had a premonition of more disaster brewing. A premonition that turned out to be correct.
Mike was supposed to come over to my house for a study session after school and when he didn't show up I called his house, noting that my hands were trembling a little as I dialed. He answered the phone on the second ring.
"Mike?" I asked. "What's up?"
"Nothin'." He told me sourly.
"Where were you today?" I asked him. "Didn't see you in school or at ROP."
There was a long pause. Finally he said, "I got in trouble yesterday dude."
My heart started hammering in my chest as I heard his words. I forced myself to ask, "What kind of trouble?"
"The captain at the station caught me smoking a joint out behind the apparatus bay."
"What?" I asked slowly. "You were smoking a joint there?"
"Yeah." He answered. "I usually smoked them in the car on the way to the station but I didn't have my car. Figures he'd come out to have a smoke just when I was trying to take a few hits."
"And what happened?" I asked next.
"I got suspended for a week." He told me. "I also got kicked out of ROP. They're gonna give me three classes to replace it."
"Mike, Jesus." I said, unable to think of anything else.
"It's cool." He told me. "I didn't really like hangin out at the fuckin fire station anyway. And the captain was an asshole. Anyway I had a meeting with the counselor and my parents today and she said I should give the independent study a try."
"You're not gonna do it are you?" I asked quickly.
"Yeah." He told me. "I am. Fuck going to class for six hours every day."
"Mike." I told him. "This isn't the end. You can still stay in school and graduate next year. You can still get on with the fire department after you graduate. You just have to tell them in the interview that you were a dumb kid and that…"
"Fuck that." Mike said angrily. "I'm going into independent study. We sent in the application today. Should be approved by next week."
"Mike," I pleaded, "We're almost halfway through the school year! You'll be done before you know it! Just hang in there for another few…"
"Fuck it!" He repeated. "I'm staying in that fuckin shithole any longer than I have to. I shoulda gone into independent study in the first place. I'd a been done by now.
"But…"
"I gotta go." He said. "I'll see you around."
With a click he hung up the phone. Slowly I replaced mine in the holder.
I sat for the longest time, trying to think my way through all of the crap that had suddenly come down in the last week but I couldn't. There was too much of it and it was cluttering up my mind. I would no sooner start to think about one aspect when another would push it's way forward, demanding my attention.
I went upstairs to my room and opened up my nightstand drawer. I looked in the cutout section of my bible and found what I needed. I took it out and pocketed it carefully. When Dad got home I asked him if I could use his car for a few hours. He handed me the keys and asked if I would be home for dinner.
"Probably not." I told him, heading out the door.
I drove to the park near the falls; the location of many a kegger. No keggers were going on at the moment since it was daytime and no families were picnicking at the moment since it was October and the weather wasn't quite up for such things. I locked up Dad's car and walked to a trail that led down to the river near the top of the falls. I began hiking.
Twenty minutes later I was standing less than a hundred yards from where the water arced over the cliff. The roar of the falls was very loud and a fine mist from below drifted through the air, blown by the prevailing winds. I found myself a comfortable spot and sat down. I then reached into my pocket and pulled out the half joint that I'd extricated from my bible.
I'd noticed long before I'd been recycled that a little marijuana helped me think deeply about things. It helped keep my thoughts from being sidetracked into something else. Though I was aware of the irony of what I was doing, using the very substance that had brought Mike down in order to help come up with a solution to his problem, as well as the many others that I'd set in motion, I took out a lighter and lit the joint. As I smoked I stared at the falls, watching the water cascade over the edge to its collision with the lower river. The sight was mesmerizing, the sound nothing but white noise. By the time I'd finished the roach my mind was clear and I began trying to think things through.
Patterns. That was what it came down to. There were two separate time lines I was dealing with. What had happened in my first trip from 1982 to 1999 and what was happening in my second trip. When I'd first come over it had seemed so simple. Everything was new, everything was fresh. I had not really believed at all that I would have to worry about the way things had turned out in my first life. But now, after all the things that had happened, I was seeing definite patterns between the two time lines. Though some things had changed I was seeing a definite tendency for things, people especially, to drift into the patterns that had apparently been set for them. As for who or what had set those patterns, I knew not and I cared not. I was only concerned with the question of whether or not the patterns were tendencies or absolute.
Mike. In my previous life he'd gone to independent study and dropped out of school. He'd joined the Air Force a few years later and the few times I heard from him after that he'd seemed to like his job as missile technician in Wyoming. However he was discovered to have marijuana in his system after a random drug test and given a choice between an Article 15 or a dishonorable discharge without criminal complaint, he chose the discharge. In this time line I'd successfully steered him off of that path at it's beginning and onto a different one, that of a firefighter. I'd kept him in high school longer than he had been previously and I'd honestly thought that I'd changed his destiny. But then he was caught using marijuana at the fire station. He was thrown out of ROP and was now planning to re-enter independent study. He'd steered himself right back into the other path with only two days worth of effort. Was he now committed to that path? Was there no way for me to steer him back again? Was it pointless to even try?