Nina. In her previous life she'd been taunted and ignored throughout her school years, eventually turning into a bitter, though highly educated person. It would be readily apparent to every person that dealt with her on a regular basis in my first life that she suffered from a raging inferiority complex. She was driven by the desire to appear smarter, better, faster, more competent, more everything, than everyone else around her. She was driven by this desire because deep inside she would always be the butt of everyone's jokes and would always feel she was inferior to everyone. The facade she would put up to convince herself and others to the contrary would often be brutal to those it touched. But in this timeline I'd steered her off of that path. I'd befriended her and, with the help of others, showed her that she really was a good person. For the longest time it seemed she could not fall into her original pattern. And then yours truly, in my idiocy, jerked her heart out of her chest and stomped on it. Now she was back to eating alone in the cafeteria, back to being uncommunicative with everyone. She was on her way to college and medical school next year. In the nineties would she show up in the emergency room in Spokane once again with the same chip on her shoulder, the same attitude? Although the trip took a different pathway than before it sure seemed to me she was heading for the same place.
Tracy. This was the problem that concerned me more than anything else. In the previous time line a football player named David Mitchell had gotten drunk one night and driven my sister into the Spokane River, killing her. I'd prevented that from occurring, true enough, but it was disquieting to me that the Camero had STILL crashed into the river, that Lisa Sanchez had STILL been killed in the accident, and that Barbie Langston, who had taken Tracy's place in the car, had NOT been killed. And now Tracy was dating a baseball player named Darren Maxwell. Was it coincidence that he had the same initials? Was fate simply waiting for another chance to claim Tracy, who's demise was already written in some celestial book somewhere? If so, was there anything I could do about it? Was there anything she could do about it?
And that brought me to the troubling problem of Anita. She, for a change of pace, had deviated way off of the path that she'd taken before. She had not gone out with the man that she was going to marry in the previous time line and had instead fallen in love with me after I'd initiated an affair with her. She called her intended a pinhead in fact. Why was Anita different? Or was she?
I stared at the falls and ran all these things through my mind, one by one. Mike, Anita, Tracy, Myself, Beirut, trying to determine if there were any absolutes, any hard, fast rules to this thing. I stayed there for a long time, staring and thinking, thinking and staring, watching the water rush by in the river.
Was fate, I wondered, like that river? A liquid stream rushing along towards a fixed destination. All of the billions of drops of water in that river were destined to end up, eventually, in the ocean. You could take a few drops out and move them back upstream a few feet or a few miles but they would still end up passing by the same point again, they would still end up in the ocean. A few drops would occasionally splash out of the stream for a while, seeming to free themselves of the current but they would eventually be brought right back into the flow. That was their destiny. That was their fate.
But was it possible for a few drops to occasionally escape that river, to find a new path? Sometimes it was. They could be taken away clinging to the bathing suit of a child or scooped up by a motorist whose vehicle had overheated and deposited into a radiator. They could be lapped away from the river by a deer or a coyote or a bear or even a stray dog. Though most of the drops were fated to continue on their way to the Pacific Ocean; it was possible for some to escape, wasn't it?
When I finally left I was soaked from the mist, shivering, probably on the verge of hypothermia, and I had a bitch of a headache.
But I felt better all the same.
Chapter 6
Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher
But I flew too high
Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man
Though my mind could think I still was a madman
I hear the voices when I'm dreaming
I can hear them say:
Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more
KANSAS
I awoke in a better mood the next morning even though nothing had really changed. Everything was falling or had fallen down around me and it was time to start picking up the pieces. I was determined to take action; to strike back at FATE. During my mind session the day before I'd realized that both Anita and myself were walking examples that fate could be changed.
It may not be easy to do, but it was possible. If things did not improve, or if they got worse from my interference, at least I'd be able to say that I'd tried.
After breakfast I went to our den and dug through my Dad's filing cabinet. After a minute of rummaging I came up with the letter that Tracy had sent us. I opened it up and scanned through it until I found the section I wanted.
"I have a job now," I read, "working at the campus book store as a clerk. I have to…" I scanned further, skipping over the brief description of her job duties. "I work 5:00 to closing at 8:00, Monday through Friday. It's fun I suppose. At least the money will help…"
5:00 to 8:00 Tracy would be in the UC Berkeley bookstore. I memorized that information and then put the letter back.
A few minutes later I was bundling up and preparing for the long walk to school. As I stepped outside the house I was grateful to see it was not raining. The sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was so bright it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to it. It was a beautiful fall morning it appeared.
My happiness at the appearance of the sun quickly deflated when I felt the wind. It was blowing about twenty miles an hour, sending leaves and other debris parading down the street. The moving air was icy and cold, feeling as if it had just came off a glacier. My exposed cheeks immediately reddened and my eyes began to tear. With a sigh I pulled my hood tight, lowered my face, and moved out. This walking to school shit was getting old fast. One way or another, I swore to myself, I was not going to do it much longer.
My first stop upon arriving at school was the administration building. I walked into the main lobby area where two secretaries were working behind a counter. Both were banging away on IBM typewriters. Two student volunteers, both girls, one of whom had once been to my room to 'study', were doing some filing. The one I'd had relations with in the past was the only person in the room to pay my entrance any attention. She gave me a sly smile and then went back to what she was doing.
I walked up to the counter and stood politely for a few seconds. The nearest secretary continued to type, not even glancing my way, although there was no way she could have failed to notice my presence.
"Excuse me?" I finally said.
"You can't use the phone in here." She said impatiently, without even looking up or moving her hands from the typewriter keys. "There's a payphone outside. If you don't have a dime, you're gonna have to borrow one from somewhere else. We're not a bank."