So Totally (2 page)

I still didn’t even know where I was really staying that night. My plan was more like a goal than a plan. I wanted to have fun and I didn’t want my drunk mother to interfere or drive. That was pretty much all I’d come up with. I really needed to work on my organizational skills.

I couldn’t have Grady bring me home in the wee hours of the morning, and I couldn’t stay with him all night. Wherever he was staying. Maybe his car, I don’t know. See? If I ever offer to plan your wedding or sweet sixteen or something, do yourself a favor and run away screaming.

Besides, if I let him drive me after he’d been drinking, I lost all moral ground in the argument with myself about why I didn’t want my mom to pick me up.

We danced a few more times, switching partners occasionally. Despite my earlier sarcasm, the dance turned out to be a lot of fun. Until I noticed my friend Kristen holding her stomach and grimacing. Honestly, why do people not pay attention to the signs that they are about to throw up?

“Hey Kristen, fetching shade of green you’re wearing. Need some help to the ladies’?”

“No, I’m—” She clapped a hand over her mouth and started belching.

Ugh.

I helped her into the bathroom and held her hair while she puked up spiked punch.

“Are you coming to the bonfire?” she asked, still hanging over the porcelain.

“You aren’t still going, are you?” I asked.

She nodded. “I always feel better after I puke. I’ll be fine.”

Seriously?

The horking experience, and the smell, put a damper on my own bonfire plans. It wasn’t fair. Surrounded by my peers, I couldn’t figure out why I wrestled with my conscience while they didn’t appear to be bothered by theirs. Or their stomachs. Maybe I thought too much.

It was probably the lying about going to “Hannah’s” that was freaking me out. I should have just grown a pair and told my mother that she couldn’t keep my social life hostage just because she was going through a bad divorce and a friend of hers wrapped herself around a tree once.

If it was okay for her to drink herself to sleep at night, it was okay for me to go to the beach after a dance. I mean, it wasn’t like mine was the first generation to have bonfires any more than mine was the first to use crepe paper streamers to decorate a gymnasium.

I hustled Kristen out the door and into her date’s waiting car. Then I went back to the bathroom to wash my hands because she’d managed to throw up on her clothes so I felt gross after touching her. The experience made me lose my enthusiasm for the keg, but I still wanted to go to the party.

Through the walls of the bathroom, I could hear Cyndi Lauper singing “Time After Time,” which bummed me out because I actually loved that song and would have liked to dance to it. Instead I was in the bathroom feeling lousy about myself, smelling like vomit, while Grady was maybe hooking up with someone who was actually fun. I looked up and met my reflection in the mirror. I stared at myself and tried to figure out who that girl really was. And did I like her?

I came to the conclusion that really…I didn’t. I’d always been a little jaded for my age, and I latched on to sarcasm pretty early. But this last year? I’d turned sour. Even I didn’t enjoy my company.

And I wasn’t just sour. I was scared. Especially about Dad’s upcoming wedding. Mom and I were barely holding it together now—what if she spiraled further? Every day, we lowered ourselves a rung deeper into the abyss, and part of me felt like as long as we were still holding on to the ladder, all was not lost. But one misstep…

I grasped the sink and leaned into the mirror closer so I could peer into my own eyes. The thing is, my reflection blinked.

Only I hadn’t.

My blood ran cold and the bumps on my arms raised goose bumps of their own. The next breath hitched in my throat, and my reflection matched my movements, only she was a fraction behind me. Like watching video on computer with low RAM, her movements were choppy and off. I felt like I was having déjà vu that went déjà wrong.

I couldn’t swallow. It couldn’t be real.

My reflection held her hand up to the mirror. I hesitated, but then I felt strangely compelled to mimic her. I placed my hand on my side of the glass so that our fingers lined up. The edges of my vision clouded over like frost on a window and we both leaned our foreheads on the mirror.

I could still hear the music, but it sounded hollow and tinny. I faded as Cyndi sang, “…the second hand unwinds” and I wondered, dimly, who would find me if I was lost.

“OH
MY God! Are you okay?”

Probably not. Nobody ever was when someone asked that question. Yet it’s always the first thing we ask someone in distress?

I opened my eyes and glanced around the room, trying to figure out where I was and who was talking to me. Not my room. It smelled like disinfectant and vomit. I wrinkled my forehead in concentration, but that made the pounding in my head hurt worse.

Gray linoleum. Paper towels on the floor. Bright fluorescent light. Girls’ bathroom.

Okay, that was the where. What about the how and the why? As a rule, I sit on the bathroom floor only like never, so something had to have happened to get me down there. My head hurt and my mouth tasted metallic. God, did somebody drug me?

I wiggled my fingers and toes and looked up to see who was talking to me. She looked familiar, but I didn’t recognize her. Then again, things were still pretty hazy. I touched my head to feel for lumps and my fingers got stuck. That’s right…hairspray. It started coming back to me in little flashes. The hairspray, the jelly shoes, the mirror.

Oh God, the mirror.

The girl reached her hand down and helped me to my feet. I wobbled unsteadily but made it to vertical eventually.

“Thanks.”

“You don’t look very good.”

I nodded and leaned into her.

“I don’t recognize you. Are you a freshman or something?” she asked me.

I opened my mouth to say no, but we reached the gym doors and my reality got lost again. The music hadn’t changed, but the costumes were gone. Almost everyone was wearing jeans and tennis shoes.

“You look better already. You okay?”

I nodded.

“I love your outfit. Are you new? My name is Heather.”

I couldn’t shake the feeling that all was not well with the universe. Heather’s voice was familiar…slightly. My mind grasped for an explanation, but it was like trying to hold fog in my hands. I angled my head, which now felt heavy and awkward, and took a really good look at Heather.

Oh crap.

“Mom?”

It wasn’t possible of course.

The kaleidoscope of color from the lights did nothing to mask the concern in her eyes—familiar green eyes. I’m sure she thought I was high, and it wasn’t the first time I’d gotten that particular look from her.

“What did you say?”

I cleared my throat. “Sorry, I had something in my throat.”

She didn’t recognize me. We were exactly the same height and had the same shade of red hair. My body curved more than hers did, and for a change I think I was heavier than her—but tell that to her jeans. She must have needed help getting into them, they were so tight. And yeah, purple jelly shoes.
Jesus, Mom.

I looked around the gym and didn’t recognize anyone. Well, except for my mother. Only she was a teenager and didn’t know me. My thoughts flitted back to the bathroom. Maybe I was really still in there, passed out. How sad that I was wishing for
that
to be the truth.

I searched for hidden cameras even though I knew that nobody would have gone through this much trouble to punk me. I grasped for anything that would make sense, because hanging out with my teenaged mother made none at all.

Amadeus was rocking everyone, and I scanned the area for something or someone or anything that would make sense of my strange night. Truthfully, at that point, I’d mentally checked out a little. I couldn’t decide if I was dreaming or had accidentally swallowed somebody else’s medication, and my mind refused to process the events.

None of the banners on the gym wall were from after 1985. I thought again about the mirror and seeing myself not be myself. The headache that had been beginning hit full strength like an ice pick between the eyes. I needed to get out of there, but where could I have go?

I took off blindly, weaving through the crowd and unable to see over anyone’s head because I was short and they all had incredibly tall hair. Oh God, where was I? That really wasn’t the question, was it? I knew exactly
where
I was. The gym remained eerily familiar yet somehow out of context. The banners were different on the wall, but the polish and lines on the floor hadn’t changed.

No, where wasn’t my problem. Oh God,
when
was I?

“Wait!” Heather yelled from behind me, but I kept going. “Wait!”

We hit the doors to the foyer at the same time and I fled to the corner of the atrium.

“Are you okay?” She grasped my elbow and her concern cut like a knife because I had never needed my mom’s concern more than at that very moment, only she didn’t even know my name.

“Do you want me to take you home?”

I shook my head. Unless she had a DeLorean and maybe a spare flux capacitor, that wasn’t likely to happen.

“I’ll be all right.” What else could I say? “But…thanks.”

“What’s your name?”

“Carrington.”

“Oh my God. I love that name! You are so lucky.”

Yep, she was my mom, all right.

I kept searching her face for some kind of recognition. Logically, that didn’t track, of course. But since logic had very little to do with my predicament, it seemed reasonable that maybe a piece of her would know me on some level.

“Are you new?” she asked.

“Kind of.”

She scrunched her face up. I’d seen that expression before, usually when she was trying to balance the checkbook or figure out her taxes.

“Well, I mean, yes. I’m new, but I haven’t started yet. I just wanted to check out the sitch…you know…see what it was like here.”

“It must be hard to be new, huh? Especially here. Most of us have known each other since kindergarten. My name is Heather; I probably already told you that. You want to hang with us after the dance? We’re going to the beach. Bonfire and keg. It’ll be fun and you can meet some other kids from school.”

Okay. Yes, a part of me got pissed off. I mean, I’d been beating myself up most of the night for wanting to go to a kegger but not wanting to be a disappointment to my mother—and now she wanted to take me to one?

“Sounds like fun.” Except…then what?

“Do you want to call your mom and just tell her you’ll be spending the night at my house?”

Did I ever.

I nodded and pretended to make a call at the public phone at the other end of the hall while she and a group of other girls huddled together. Probably talking about me. Despite my outfit, I didn’t fit in. I knew it and they knew it.

They turned out to be really nice. We all piled into my mom’s car, and she peeled out of the parking lot to the tune of “Dancing on the Ceiling.” To which they all sang along. Loudly. Off-key too. Then someone lit a cigarette. I felt like the only grown-up in the car. Cosmic joke, anyone?

Thank God I hadn’t dressed up in full-on costume that night. Apparently, during the ‘80s, nobody really dressed like Madonna except for Madonna. The night would have been a lot more difficult if I’d have worn a cone-shaped bra. Just sayin.

As it was, it was difficult enough. I, for one, didn’t want to go to a kegger with my mom. Ever. Especially not the same night I: a) traveled time or b)overdosed on some wicked, scary punch. I wanted, at that moment, to go home. I missed my room, my bed, Mr. Bear, and my iPod. I didn’t want to be the victim of sci-fi gone awry.

I leaned back into my seat and watched my small town look familiar and different by turns. The old library stood tall, not yet torn down to make room for Hootenanny’s, our quaint hometown answer to T.G.I. Friday’s. O’Malley’s gas station hadn’t changed over the decades.

Decades. I was somehow in a car about ten years before I was born. It was impossible, but it was happening. What did I know about time travel? I remembered movies and some stories I’d been forced to read. What was that word? Pantox? Pandora? Paradox? That was it: paradox.

If I screwed up, I could wipe myself off the timeline, couldn’t I? Crap. I shouldn’t have talked to my mom. Now she’d met me before she birthed me. That couldn’t be a good thing.

I panicked. The headache hit again, full-force and not helped by the cigarette smoke in the car. I had to think. When did Mom and Dad meet? 1990? So, probably I wasn’t going to screw that up. But what if I did? What if…? I needed help. Serious help. Maybe I should have gone back to the bathroom at the gym and stared in the mirror. Or maybe that would take me someplace else. What if I spent the rest of my life ping-ponging through the ages?

I rubbed my temples and tried to relax, which wasn’t easy while “Heather” drove. She rode the breaks to the beat of the music and she kept talking and laughing with the girl in the passenger seat instead of looking at the road. No wonder she had reservations about letting me drive. Gawd.