“Ooh, good song,” she says, cranking up the volume. She reclines the seat back and stares up at the sky. I don’t know what it is. I just drive, listening to the lyrics.
Can anybody fly this thing?
Before my head explodes or my head starts to ring.
I can feel Brooke turning her head to look at me every once in a while, but I ignore it, keeping my eyes fixed on the road in front of me, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. Our house is only a block away now. It’s early. I’m not at all ready to go home. And this song is right. Anna and I have been living life inside a bubble.
“Mind if I keep driving around for a bit?” I ask her.
She kicks her feet up to the dashboard and reclines back even farther. “I was hoping you would. I like this view,” she says as she stares out the open roof, into the sky. Instead of taking a left turn toward our house, I take a right toward the Great Highway.
The Ocean Beach parking lot is dark and empty, and I pull into a spot facing the Pacific. I twist the key backward in the ignition, cutting the engine without killing the music. We’re quiet for a long time.
Finally, Brooke speaks. “Why are you doing this, Bennett?”
I lean back against the headrest and let out a heavy exhale. “Please don’t… Not tonight.”
Brooke twists in her seat to face me. “On a completely different timeline that no longer exists, Anna came looking for you, remember? Because she felt so strongly that you were supposed to be in her life. Doesn’t that mean anything?”
I shrug. “I thought it did, but no…apparently it doesn’t.” I haven’t looked at the page in my notebook in months, but I don’t need to. I’ve read those words from her letter so many times I’ve committed them to memory. Someday soon, we will meet. And then you will leave for good. But I think I can fix it…”
“You’re making this far more complicated than it is, Bennett.”
“It’s very complicated, Brooke.”
“No. You saw her with another guy and you freaked.”
“I think there’s a little more to it than that.”
Brooke stares at me.
I fix my eyes on the sky and comb my hands through my hair. “Look, I know what I saw. She’ll have a better life without me. Every time I go back there, I’m just keeping her away from the future she’s supposed to have.”
“But that’s not the future she wants.” Brooke tucks her hair behind her ears and leans across the console. “Besides, what’s to say she won’t do it all over again anyway? You saw her happy in two thousand five, but when she gets to two thousand eleven she could make the same decision she made last time—to go back and find you again.”
“Why, because we’re, like, destined to be together or something?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah.”
“You’re just a romantic.”
“Maybe. But I’m also quite logical.” I let my head fall to the right and stare at her. “What you saw doesn’t matter because that future isn’t set in stone and you know it. Everything single decision you’ve made beyond that moment is changing what you saw.”
“Or, it’s changing nothing.”
“If you’re not part of her life, you’ll never know.” Brooke doesn’t take her eyes off me. “Go talk to her.”
I know she’s right. I went more than a month without speaking to Anna once before, and that was excruciating. I can’t believe I’m doing it by choice this time. I rest my elbows on the steering wheel and hold my head in my hands. “I will.”
“Hey,” she says, and I twist my neck to look at her. “Now.”
“I’m not going right now.”
She cranks up the heat and rubs her hands together in front of the vent. “I’ll be fine here. Come back in twenty minutes or so. I’ll wait.”
“I’m not going right now,” I repeat, this time slowly and with more emphasis on each word, because apparently she didn’t hear me the first time.
“Bennett…” she says, almost under her breath. “Anna’s stuck there waiting for you.” She gives me this sad look, like she’s upset about what happened between the two of us. But then she says, “How could—” and stops without finishing her thought. But she doesn’t have to say another word. All I have to do is look at her, and even though I’ve never seen this expression on her face before, I know exactly what she’s thinking. She’s ashamed of me. And she should be. She’s right. How could I have done that to Anna?
I need to go. Now. Besides, I’ve been missing her like crazy tonight.
Without giving myself any more time to think about it, I grab my wool coat off the backseat and pull my arms into it. Closing my eyes, I picture the one place I know I’ll find Anna completely alone.
34
The sun is barely peeking over the horizon when I arrive at the Northwestern University track. Unlike all the times I was here before, there’s just a light dusting of snow on the metal benches, and when I take my hand to brush it clean, it flutters into the wind, flying away in all directions.
I see Anna right away. She’s down on the track, speeding around the curves, her legs reaching out in long strides, her arms pumping hard by her sides. I don’t know what she’s listening to on her Discman but I can see her lips moving and that makes me smile.
She comes around the bend to the long edge of the track, facing me, but her eyes are fixed on the ground like she’s lost in thought. I don’t move, but something must get her attention, because just as she’s about to turn the next bend, she steals a glance into the bleachers.
She spots me, but it takes a few seconds for it to register. She slows her pace to jog and stops at the base of the stairs, squinting up at me like it’s totally possible that her mind is playing tricks on her. I lift my hand and wave.
Anna bolts up the stairs, taking them two at a time, but when she reaches the fourth row, she stops and doesn’t come any closer. I can tell from the look on her face I should stay where I am.
“What are you doing here?” She takes her headphones off and wraps them around the back of her neck, never taking her eyes off me. “I thought you were coming for Christmas. That’s still four days away.” Her voice sounds wobbly and not at all like hers.
“So did I. But…this couldn’t wait.”
Anna looks around the track, then back at me. She presses her lips into a thin line. “What couldn’t wait?”
“I owe you a massive apology.” I brush the snow off the bench next to me. “Do you want to sit down?”
She walks toward me but stops short. Hugging her arms to her chest, she looks down at the icy bench and shakes her head no.
“I just wanted to say how sorry I am about that day…at the hospital…I was so…I don’t know why I got so angry.”
She sighs. “I wish you’d let me explain,” she says quietly.
It’s clear from the determined look on her face that she has something important to tell me, so even though I don’t think she owes me an explanation at all, I sit quietly and let her speak.
“I didn’t mean to push you so hard to do things over. I was never trying to get you to change your rules or change…anything about who you are. That’s the last thing I’d ever want.” She plays with her fingernails as she shifts her weight from one leg to the other. “I guess I’m just…fascinated. Not just by what you can do, but by…” She looks out toward the track and covers her face with her hand. “Wow. I thought I had a few more days to get this speech down. This really isn’t coming out the way I thought it would.”