Remember Me (Weaver Series) (2 page)

He also instilled in me that
“a man (or woman) is only as good as his word.” He’d never forgive me if I used my strange ability to break my word.  Besides, I wasn’t entirely sure that I could actually do it a second time.  Truth was, I didn’t understand my abilities at all.  As much as my gift was a part of me, it was somewhat like trying to wrap my brain around concepts that were never properly explained to me.  It didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but what in life does?  For example, how do you explain a child who can sit down at the piano and play Mozart, or rattle off mathematical equations?  I remember reading once about a nine-year-old little boy who was already in college and astounding his professors with concepts that he came up with all on his own.  That wasn’t easily explained away. 

Well, I guess
my abilities are different from those comparisons since I don’t actually share my “gift” with the whole world.  At least not with folks knowing directly.  Not that I know exactly what I’m doing.  Maybe my ability is more like trying to explain crop circles, UFO sightings, or Bigfoot.  All I know is that I can change things.  I can make things happen differently.  It’s like taking the “do-over” concept to an entirely different level and right now that aspect plagued me because I sure was fighting myself about trying to undo my Papaw’s death. 

S
o much so that I even thought about undoing my promise to him.  After a whole lot of internal arguing with myself I finally decided that it would just be plain wrong.  I just missed him so much, and I knew that Mamaw missed him even more.  Is it possible that loosing the one you love could make you crazy?  Without that one person that makes your world make sense, you cannot think straight.  Maybe love keeps us safe, makes us complete – whole.  Like my Mamaw and Papaw.  They were one package.  It made perfect sense. 

Sighing, I thought of
him
– that is, the random voice that had recently taken up residence in my head.  A voice so gentle and warm – almost familiar even.  His words were vague and confusing at times…but it almost didn’t matter what he said.  Just hearing
him
did something to me.  Sort of like an awakening and now I was driven with an urge I could not explain.  My knees went weak at the thought of
him
and then my resolve stiffened.  I took a final look around my room, shut my eyes, thought of my destination, and pushed the walls of reality away like a heavy blanket on a hot night.

A
cacophony of voices surrounded me as I opened my eyes again.  You’d think that appearing in the corridor of a busy airport would draw attention, but shifting in and out of time has never been something that folks notice.  I don’t get that, but I’ve played with it enough to know they don’t.  Like when Momma or Daddy had one of those long lectures for me, or a teacher started to ramble, and once or twice during a long church sermon.  I’d just pop myself down to the bayou for a while.  When I would return, it was as if I had never left.  That part is pretty convenient! Albeit, I would sometimes wonder what I might have missed if I’d left things alone.

Here I
go
, I thought nervously and adjusted my floppy bag over my shoulder.  There was no turning back now.  I was going to find
him
.  Smiling inwardly, I quickened my pace and headed toward a coffee shop.  It was going to be a long day and I’d be mixing the reality of the natural world with my abilities to travel.  A little caffeine was in order. 

Coffee in hand,
I made my way through the busy terminal. I sent a mental demand to my feet to keep moving and another to my nerves to stay calm because otherwise I might panic about this whole idea. I was distantly aware of the sentiment passing around me.  Sorrow, worry, anger, anxiety -- the usual emotions, as thick and lumpy as a bad gravy.  These aspects were intensified by the volume of people around me.  There’s an added element of peace that I get from living in such a small town.  In other words, crowds can be exhausting for me.  Consider how you would feel if a crowd of people shouted all of their problems, fears, regrets, or hopes right in your face.  That’s sort of what it is like for me.  I don’t hear people shouting, I just get hit with waves of knowledge that feels like an emotional data download.  Beyond the waves of emotion are the endless roads of possibilities for each person and each situation.

A tall brunette woman in a black business suit brushed by me.  Her black heels were steadily clicking with purpose.  I could feel her confidence – and knew the outcome of the meeting she was headed to.  She would lay off several people before the day was over, then she would miss her return flight on purpose to avoid going home to a husband she no longer loved.  She’d spend the night in a hotel room with a few too many glasses of wine, and a state of melancholy she knew far too well.  I didn’t know much about the business world that went on in city living, but I didn’t like what I saw.  She loved the power of her position and at the same time, she felt trapped in her life.  I didn’t understand the images that filled my head, but her selfishness made me nauseated.

I swallowed hard and picked up my pace to pass her. 
A red haired little girl ran ahead of her parents, her pink bear backpack bobbing up and down as she went by me.  I knew she would leave it under the seat on the plane.  I changed that.  Silly of me to waste time on something so minor, but I knew how much the little girl loved it.  I
knew
too much.  It used to be that I could only feel things.  On occasion, I’d get a glimpse of something.  Mostly it was like an intuition; a good or bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.  Now it is different.  I
knew
stuff about people as soon as I looked at them.  I saw things they did in my head as if their past memories were my own.  On top of that, I knew their future memories. 

Ever since my Papaw died
-- and that lovely male voice started whispering in my head, my odd ability to change things had blossomed.  Now it was on steroids or something.  I no longer had to wait for something to occur in order to change it.  The fact was, I was ridiculously aware of anything to do with events in time; and I could manipulate it forward or backward.  Maybe that should have scared me, but it didn’t.  Somewhere deep in my core it felt right –Even normal. 

As I began to acclimate to my
surroundings, I allowed myself to slow down a little and absorb the moment.  I took a careful sip from my large latte, and realized I was about to have some extra time.  In approximately fifteen minutes, there would be an announcement of an unfortunate delay due to maintenance requirements. I saw a video monitor of flight numbers and times in my mind and realized another hour would pass before my flight departed. 

I
didn’t change any of this because I decided I needed the extra time.  There are instances when I disagree, and push back -- and others when I just let time be.  This was one of those ‘let it be’ instances.  I needed to do this slowly, and very carefully.  Of course, it was possible to make the necessary adjustments and place myself at my final destination, but I would miss everything in between.  I didn’t dare take that risk since I didn’t understand exactly what I was looking for.  Besides, I was pushing my extra senses beyond my comfort zone as it was.  

I pulled a book from my bag
and took a seat at the end of a connected row of gray plastic chairs. The pages of a good book offered a safe place to hide.  With a mind like mine, hiding from the events of any moment (present or visible future) isn’t easy.  To say I love books well, that would be an understatement.  If the story is good, I can shift my focus and actually escape for a while.  As another added benefit, I also learn about the world beyond my little neck of the woods.  Places, styles, romance – you name it.  Books can be better teachers than people ever could.  I do think that aside from personal experience, a book is the best way to learn just about anything.  Well, the internet helps too, but since our  connections were so slow, (another added benefit of living in a rural area) I didn’t spend much time online.  To say my sheltered life lacked true insight is about the equivalent of asking a farmer to do the work of a doctor (or vice-versa).  Even still, my ability to muddle through things often surprised even me.  I managed quite nicely between intuition and collecting information from books.

This day was different
.  Everything familiar and mundane in my life was about to change, and I had no intention of actually reading.  Books also afford me the convenient appearance of normality.  I buried my nose in a tattered copy of
Wuthering Heights
and focused internally on some much needed arrangements.  This was the first time I had left my family (other than a class camping trip in my senior year) and I needed to set up my reasons.  I’d only been gone for about an hour, but my folks would be waking up soon.  Establishing things as I planned would take some work.

I
decided it best to use school as a motive for my departure and gave myself a college career in California.  I expected I might actually be there for some time and my being away at college seemed plausible -- at least more so than me just moving away to another state all by myself for a job or something.  Not that plausibility is a critical factor in anything I change, but it had been known to stir confusion.  Like the time I tried to give myself a horse when there was no money in my parent’s budget for said horse.  That’s a change I had to undo when the arguments between my folks started.  They each blamed the other for such an irresponsible decision.  In the end, I was unable to enjoy my beautiful chestnut Quarter horse.  I had named him Kisses because he would come up to me when I sat on the fence and let me kiss his strong muzzle.  I loved that sweet horse, and undoing my decisions left my heart broken.  The worst part of it all was being unable to share with my family why I was so sad.

That’s another aspect of my “gift” that I had to learn along the way
.  You can’t bring up things that you “fix” or “undo” to people that no longer have the memories.  Once it’s gone, it’s just gone.  People simply don’t have those memories anymore.  It’s like a game of concentration that’s gone bad, or a puzzle that has way too many little bitty pieces. When I’d slip up on some detail (especially when I was younger), people would just think I was crazy.  Judgment errors along the way had taught me a thing or two.  As a result, I like to keep the changes I make as close to natural as possible.  I’m not really the worldly type, but I had always been reasonably good in school so I figured it would do. 

It was October but I planted the memories of my departure from Little Rock in late August.  I figured this would work best because it seemed like a natural progression that I would go off to college at the end of summer.  I didn’t want to leave any holes, or gaps in my efforts to make these adjustments to time.  Time is something easily rearranged if you keep your plans clear as you move along.  Otherwise, it’s just messy and can cause strange side effects.  That’s the truth behind déjà vu. 

In fact, the French have a whole bunch of words to explain the side effects of what I do
.  I learned about that from a Cajun English teacher that I confused the beans out of when I re-did her class three times in a row in the same day so that I could study the dynamics of shifts in verb tenses.  I found the whole idea of the logical movement of pros a fascinating parallel to my life.  Of course, there’s no such thing as perfect tenses for me! The next day I came to class surprised to find the usually impeccable woman a disheveled wreck.  Mrs. Ledet did not seem to notice that her blouse was buttoned incorrectly, or that she had no makeup on.  She spent the whole hour rambling to equally glassy-eyed students about déjà vu, jamais vu, and presque vu.  The latter best describes how I feel about the mystery voice in my head.  It was seriously difficult not to repeat that hour of class a few times because it was even more interesting to me.  Fortunately, I’d thought my plans through this time…well as much as I could anyway.

With a new year of school starting, life in our sleepy little town would get very busy. 
Bailey, my little sister would be starting her first year of high school and our folks would find enough issues with her cheerleading activities to keep them focused.  In the meantime, I would be able to concentrate on the strange pull I felt to
him
.  I couldn’t give
him
a name because it just wasn’t there yet.  I could hear his laugh and see his smile in my mind…but the details of who he was just hid from me like a grey goose in a fog.  It wasn’t until three days ago that I even knew my phantom had specific intentions.  He had never asked anything of me directly.  Everything up until this point had been random images, whispers that I didn’t always understand, and brief glimpses that made no sense. I was sound asleep and his whispering voice woke me up saying, “Joey, you have to come to California, we have unfinished business.” He quickly whispered instructions that I scribbled on a notepad as fast as I could.  Hence, my hasty quest to hop on an airplane and scuttle my butt to Los Angeles (something just a smidge terrifying to be honest).

As
I sat with my eyes locked on the page, quietly tying up the final details of my changes I was abruptly caught off guard.

“
Kalan!” 
I heard the shout so clearly that I jumped in my seat. 

I
t was more like I
felt
it deep inside my head.  Something was wrong.  Confronted with the vivid images that followed, I dropped my coffee and the hot contents of the cup splashed fiercely down my dress, burning my legs.  I hardly noticed.  My mind was focused on the inside of a car.  A female voice – a passenger who seemed somehow familiar to me was screaming what I instinctively realized was
his
name.  I could feel her fear as I watched the changing images of sky, chaparral brush, windshield, and flying debris.  Her thoughts were frantic and determined at the same time.  She was afraid, angry, and oddly hopeful all at once.  The car was rolling violently down the side of a rocky mountain.  When I say I watched, I should clarify that I usually cannot see anything in my own world.  It’s like I’m transported to the location of what I see.  It’s like a glimpse of time captured on a video, and I’m in it…but of course I’m not really transported.  I’m sure I just look like I am zoning out or something.