While we gain speed, I look ahead but see no sign of the black SUV. Jennifer is out of my life again.
I slide down into my seat and put my head into my hands.
No one says anything.
I doze on and off in the van. After being jostled, I wake up hungry. I check the time on the van dashboard. It’s more than an hour later, past noon.
Ivy stretches her arm over the seat between us and nudges me. “Hey, dummy. There’s your girlfriend.” She points to my right.
I swivel. It’s the black SUV! Jennifer’s in the back. They turn off the highway into a combination gas station and restaurant. We’re somewhere near Barrie.
“Dad, pull over!” I shout.
Mom shakes her head. “We’re not eating there. I packed sandwiches.” Saving money.
“I need the bathroom,” I blurt.
My dad turns into the gas station.
“It’s that girl,” says Simon.
We rock to a stop and I bolt out the door.
“Don’t forget to split the money with us,” shouts Simon.
“Don’t be long, Luke,” says my dad.
I race into the service center. Bathrooms are down the hall to my right. Straight ahead, there’s a self-serve buffet and several tables, half-filled. I don’t see her.
Metal clicks on metal, repeatedly. I turn to the sound and there at the junk food machines is Jennifer.
Seeing her restores my equilibrium. Fourteen years old, cute and curvy, she’s trying to get something out of the machine but it jammed so she keeps punching the knob.
The movement causes her hair to sway over her shoulders. Her face is scrubbed clean of makeup. When she spots me, her eyes are clear and sharp and gorgeous.
My tongue trips over itself to figure out what to say.
Hello!
I want to grab her and kiss her.
Hello where’ve you been? Where are you going in the future?
Her tanned legs stretch forever beneath her blue shorts. She studies me. “Hey, didn’t I see you at the last gas station?”
So she doesn’t know my name. I can’t tell her we know each other in the future, or it’ll hurt her, like Burgen warned.
“That was me. Eighty-five dollars unleaded. Need some help?”
“The knob’s stuck.”
I make my way to the candy machine and give it a hard slam. A package of peanuts falls down the shoot, where she retrieves them with a slender hand. “Thanks. Want some?”
“Sure.”
She unwraps the package and I marvel that I’m with her. Lemon shampoo this time, highlights in her hair, two earrings on each lobe.
“Where you headed?” She munches on the nuts and I’m mesmerized by the way her lips move.
I try to answer nonchalant, like bumping into her is no big deal. My heart is pounding.
Wow, she’s beautiful
. “Going to see my grandfather in Parry Sound. You?”
“On the way to Wasaga Beach. My dad’s brother lives there.”
“You’ve got an uncle in Canada?” I ask abruptly.
She frowns, as if wondering why I know that she’s not from Canada.
“Your plates.” I point in the direction of her SUV. “They’re from Illinois.”
“Oh, right. For a minute there, I thought you might be able to read my mind.” She giggles.
I grin, but my face sears from the near-miss. “What were you doing in Holden?”
“House-hunting. My parents are thinking of moving there.”
You do move there!
I want to shout, I want to tell her that we’re going to meet and that we’re going to like each other and that there’s going to be much more between us…But how can I?
Footsteps shuffle behind me. I turn. Guess who? My mom, Ivy, and Simon. Headed to the bathrooms apparently. Mortified, I scowl at them to make sure they DO NOT INTERFERE, but my mom can’t help herself.
“I hope you do the right thing, young lady,” she says to Jennifer.
I groan.
The three of them disappear behind various doors.
I face Jennifer again. She frowns, waiting for me to explain what that meant.
I shrug as if I don’t know those people or what that lady said.
However, I need to remove Jennifer from this hallway before they come out again. I walk us away from that area toward the restaurant tables.
I bite into the peanuts Jennifer gave me. “You’ll like it in Holden. We have lots of peanuts.”
She giggles again. It makes me happy that I made her laugh. How can I stretch this moment to last forever? I want her to come with me to my grandpa’s. I want to go with her to her family’s place…but then I’d be defeating the reason I’m here. To correct my third mistake and see my grandfather one last time. It wouldn’t be fair to him if I were distracted by Jennifer.
I waiver. It’s hard to make the choice I know I need to and leave her again.
“Jennifer!” Her mom appears from the doorway of the restaurant and her voice is like a stab in the chest. “You ready to join us?”
“Coming,” she says.
Don’t go
. Can’t I reach out and touch her hand or something? Can’t I grab her by the waist and confess how much she means to me? Can’t I run away with her?
She steps toward her mom into the restaurant, takes a look back at me and smiles. “I’ll know where to find you if we move to Holden.”
“Right.” That’s true. I cheer that she might come looking for me at the gas station.
“Bye,” she says softly.
“Bye.”
I watch her bounce away and ache to know the meaning behind our meeting. Had I always pumped gas for her at that time? Did I only happen to notice this time, and therefore chased her down to this place?
The bathroom doors screech open and out comes my family threesome.
“Did you get it, Luke?” whispers Simon. “Get the money?”
“I…I made a mistake. She’s not the girl who took my money.”
“Tough luck.” Ivy crosses her arms.
“Want me to talk to the other girl’s parents?” my mom offers, pushing back her hair.
“Definitely no. Let’s go.”
Before we leave the station, I memorize Jennifer’s Illinois plate numbers and burn the image of her SUV into my brain. Maybe the information will help me somehow in real time.
I take my time opening the van door and shutting it behind me, looking back in hopes of another glimpse of Jennifer.
I get none.
My throat struggles with an aching burn for the entire two hours until we reach Parry Sound. We snake our way through the town along the cliffs of Georgian Bay. The waters of Lake Huron are a quiet blue, a calm contrast to my heated thoughts. Why did I meet Jennifer in this timeline only to have her escape my grasp? And why do I have to give up going after her in order to come
here
?
We pull into my grandpa’s driveway. Resentful, I kick the seat in front of me as I exit the van. Hell. This is exactly how I felt the first time I declined visiting him. I was so pissed that he was on his way out and that I was being forced to see him like this, that I took it out on him and refused to come.
I rub my hands on my thighs and try to ease the snap of my anger.
His brown brick bungalow sits on a corner. Shrubs are overgrown, tall weeds line the path, but the grass was neatly cut by someone, and the lake behind it goes on forever.
My mom is the first to reach the front door. She presses the doorbell and after a few moments, the door swings open and Grandpa’s standing there.
The comforting sight of him makes my eyes water and sting.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Well don’t just stand there staring at me, come in.” Grandpa shuffles backward, rolling his oxygen tank to allow us room. The tie of his rumpled robe drags behind him. He runs a hand through thinning, gray hair. He’s got a clear tube beneath his nostrils that tucks over his ears, behind his back, and connects to the tank.
“What’s that tube under your nose?” asks short little Simon.
“Extra air that makes me smarter than you.”
“Oh,” says Simon. “How do you keep it on?”
“First, I boiled two kids and made this gluey soup–”
“Grandpa!” says Mom.
Simon laughs. “I know he’s kidding.”
“Well,” says Mom, “Enough questions, Simon. Give your Grandpa a hug.”
“I might bite you with my bear teeth,” growls Grandpa, looming huge over him and pretending he’s a grizzly. I notice the gray notches of hair he missed when he shaved his cheeks. Simon readily climbs under his arms.
Grandpa turns to me. “How’s the big teenager?”
“Good.”
“Too good for the rest of us?”
“Well...no...I...ahh...”
“Your mother said you weren’t coming.”
Oh
. He heard. My face heats to a thousand degrees. “I changed my mind.”
“Think you’re gonna get something in my will, do you?” He narrows his old eyes on me.
I shake my head. “No...I...ahh...”
Geez, I’m not sure it’s a good idea that I came. I don’t want anything from him. I just want to see him one last time. He’s making it difficult and I’m at a loss for words.
“And you, Ivy,” he says, wobbling to my sister, “are too pretty to let out the door. Come in, come in, before those trashy boys across the street see you.”
At the threshold, she turns and glances back at the row of narrow houses. She flicks her long black hair behind her ear, orange fingernails glinting. “What boys?”
Grandpa couldn’t have made those boys more attractive to her if he’d tried. She’s always interested in boys. The wilder, the better. And she’s always interested in
how
they got trashy, or
why
they’re dangerous. Weird.
“Hi, George.” My dad enters past us into the hallway and stacks two pieces of luggage on the linoleum floor. They shake hands. “Good to see you.”
“How was the drive?” asks Grandpa.
“Good,” says my dad.
My mom turns to Grandpa and gives him a big hug. “Dad. You look...wonderful.”
“Ha. Good one. Best I’ve heard all month. Well, it’s been a while since I’ve had so many people in my house...don’t know where to put you all. This way to the kitchen.”
He pads away in ragged slippers.
How could someone so full of sarcasm, humor, and sore feelings, be dead in two weeks?
∞
Two hours later while my parents are sorting through a pile of Grandpa’s bills and papers in the kitchen, he’s sitting on the sofa surrounded by the three of us – his grandkids. There’s an old movie playing in the background. I rub my ribs, wondering why they’re sore again, and plant my feet on an ottoman, grateful for a rest although I don’t know why I’m tired.
I am conscious of the time. I only have six hours total, according to Burgen, then I’ll be transported back. I’ve figured out how to handle it – I’ll find a private spot, use my dice to get back to the present, wait out six hours there, then use the dice again to return here to the precise moment that I left, and no one will know that I was even gone. I’ll have to continue this the entire weekend. Right now, I’ve got fifty-seven minutes to go, according to Grandpa’s wall clock, before my first six hours are up.
Ivy tugs on the venetian blinds to peer across the street at the neighboring house. “How old are those terrible boys, Grandpa?”
“Those devils? Sixteen, seventeen. As soon as they got a license to drive, they turned wild. Crusading down the street in their father’s convertible, radio full blast. They’ve got moron friends who park in front of
my
house.”
“You don’t have a car anymore, do you Grandpa?” asks Simon.
“No, but it doesn’t mean I won’t buy another. Or what if a fire truck needs to park outside my door? What if my friend with the tractor comes over? Where’s he gonna park?”
Simon smirks and mumbles. “…tractor…” He lifts a glass of ginger ale and drinks. “It’s flat, Grandpa.”
“Yeah, that bottle’s about a year old.”
“Eww.” Ivy pulls away from hers.
“We just have to pump it with more bubbles. Watch.” Grandpa removes his nasal prongs, about to dunk them into Simon’s glass when my Mom shrieks from the kitchen.
“Grandpa!”
He stops midair.
Simon and Ivy laugh, although my heart does a nervous kick at watching him remove his tubing. How long can he survive without his oxygen? He’s not going to keel over right here, is he?
My mom pokes her head into the living room. “That’s your oxygen.”
Grandpa explains, “It’s just a little magic trick.”
“Can I try it?” says Simon.
“No,” says my mom.
Grandpa changes his mind and reapplies the tubing to his face.
When my mom disappears, I pull out a bag of red candy. “I brought you something, Grandpa.”
“For me? How’d you know I like cinnamon hearts?”
“You told us it’s your favorite candy. When we were here on Valentine’s Day two years ago.”
“You remember that?”
“Yeah,” says Ivy. “You had that big green bowl full of them and we got our teeth and hands smeared–”
“You can’t eat those!” My mom calls from the kitchen. “They’ll stain your dentures!”
The expression on his face makes him look so old and alone and sad.
Grandpa shrugs at me and the candies. “She’s right.”
Suddenly it becomes very important that he enjoy these candies. I bought them at our store just for him. I know he loves them.
“I’ll clean your dentures,” I say quietly.
Simon and Ivy stare at me in surprise.
I mean it.
Grandpa studies me real hard. He swallows, leans over and rubs my head. “You’d do that?”
“Yeah, I would. Anything you need. Take a few, Gramps.”
He peeks toward the kitchen. The coast is clear. He helps himself to a few red hearts and pops them onto his tongue. We all do.
Man, best candy I ever had.
“They’re good,” he says. “And don’t worry, wise guy. I can still brush my own dentures.”
∞
I’m in the dining room, looking at old photos on the side cabinet. I’ve found an old baseball and am tossing it from hand to hand. I lean over and stare into a faded photo at the young face of my grandfather. I can’t get over it. He used to be handsome. His hair was reddish-brown, he had the build of a warrior, and the way he’s looking at my grandma… He’s standing next to her on a pier. Her curly blond hair is blowing across her face, he’s trying to catch the strands, and she’s proudly holding up a big fish.