Page 8 of The Marigold Trail
I f I’d thought a full night's sleep would wake me from this reality, even after yesterday’s failed attempt at a twenty minute nap, the sound of an old plastic digital clock and the site of my grandma’s youthful face when I hit the snooze button a few too many times, told me otherwise. I wasn’t getting out of this alternate universe with sleep.
“Hey Erica, do you believe in time travel? Do you think it’s possible?” I’ll wait for her answer and then try explaining. “Would you believe me if I told you I’ve time traveled and I need to find one of those clear phones, with color wires inside? At least I think that’s how I got here.”
I lay up in bed against the back of the white metal bed frame under a baby blue tie quilt, practicing the words out loud. It sounds so ridiculous. I feel like a fool saying it to myself. I might as well say something like “If I plan to stab someone today should I wear a pink tutu or something more clean-cut like a pencil skirt? Oh, and I think I’ll enjoy it, do you think I’ll enjoy it?” Either sentence is going to get me committed to a mental hospital.
I mean is there a good way to tell someone you don’t belong in their century? That wasn’t a hypothetical I ever practiced growing up. We always stuck to things like “If I won the lottery…” or “If you had to choose between eating only rats for the rest of your life or peeing through your nose, which would you choose?”
I wished I would’ve asked better hypotheticals or had it at least come up in my shower thoughts. Even more so, I wished I had an explanation. There’s no way I could just bring this up casually. I get nervous just thinking about the other person's reaction. I wouldn’t take anyone seriously who came at me with a question like that.
I rub my tired eyes and swallow the strange sight around me. If sleeping near band posters, teddy bear wall art, and the three-foot stack of magazines on top of a checkered blue record carrying case wasn’t odd enough, my mom calling me “sis” all night last night is the culmination of odd things.
My young uncles wrestle each other in the wood-paneled living room as I walk past the buffalo and carrot-orange-colored couch. Erica—it’s so hard not to think of her as Mom —extends her legs outwards in a split stretch a few feet away while she watches a morning show I don’t recognize on a vintage TV cabinet. The cabinet has an accordion door curtain and at least nine potted plants on top of it.
“Are you riding with me or Diana today? If you’re riding with Diana you better get your butt moving. She’ll be here any minute,” Erica says, with the look of judgment as she scans me from head to toe. She holds her gaze on my dark ink-splattered eyes that currently suffer from an old makeup and crusty eye sauce combination and I can’t tell what she finds worse, that or the baggy blue sweats and smelly oversized tee that I picked up off the floor.
Diana’s coming to get me? Diana, born in 1993 Diana? She’s here? In 1987? The once Jamba-Juice-loving, Harry-Potter-obsessed, purple-Air-Force-One-sporting, now cowboy-kissing, floral-dress-wearing woman I know, is here with me in 1987?
I run back to the room 1987 had assigned me, my socks slipping off against the carpet on the way, the way my life is currently slipping out of my hands. I stare at a poster of piggies-doing-jazzercise above the dresser drawer as the horn buzzes outside. I don’t bother changing my clothes and shove the FBI badge into the waistband of my baggy blue sweats, then catch myself staring at a familiar white-faced geisha figurine sitting on the dresser when I should be running outside to find out what Diana’s doing here in the 1980s. So much in this room reminds me of my mom’s things, but here in this time they’re mine? “Who knows…” I mumble and rush out of the room.
“I’m going with Diana,” I shout when I reach the front door. If Diana is in the eighties with me maybe she’ll have some answers.
Diana bobs her head up and down in the front seat of a little cherry-red sports car, to a powerful beat I can hear from the middle of the lawn. Her passenger window is rolled down and she greets me with “Morning! Hop in.”
I lean against her car window, admiring her short rounded afro—a look I haven’t seen her wear since high school. She’s wearing an acid-wash denim dress with a pink waist belt and I wonder if all women in this era have a hard time staying away from denim that has to be rubbed away with stones for hours on end.
She continues messing with the volume dial without looking in my direction as if this is routine for her.
“Did you bring your sister’s Depeche Mode tape?”
“I don’t know where that is. She was asking for it yesterday,” I say, recalling yesterday’s moment when I first set eyes on my eighteen-year-old mother as she questioned me about the cassette tape I had supposedly borrowed from her.
“Don’t you usually shove her tapes in your Tootsie Roll can? It’s probably there,” she says, then looks up at me. Thick, white hoop earrings dangle beneath her earlobes. She’s ready to shoo me away with her hand, so that I retreat back into the house to search for a Tootsie Roll can.
“Do you remember where I put that last?” I say, not knowing if I can meet the expectation and find such a novel item. Eighties me owns a Tootsie Roll can that holds pilfered goods?
“I mean the only place I know of is the bottom drawer of your dresser where you stash the real Tootsie Rolls. Is it not there?”
“Be right back,” I say heading toward the sidewalk path framed with trimmed bushes and planted flowers that curve up to the front screen door.
I grab for the bottom dresser drawer handle and open it wide once I’m back in the room. There it is. A six-inch long tube wide enough to hold a cassette tape inside, floating amongst a sea of pinky-sized Tootsie Rolls. The drawer is three-quarters full of them.
Back at the car I hand the cassette tape over to Diana. She slides it into the player and whisks me out of the cul-de-sac, massacring her way through the Depeche Mode lyrics as we drive.
“You look a little haggard today. Is everything okay?” Diana says, turning the volume down so that I can hear her over the music as we pull into the school parking lot.
I want so badly to confide in her. She's always been easygoing and I can’t help but wonder how she would react if I told her what I’d just experienced. Maybe she’s having the same experience as me? Is it possible that she is also a guest to this time period and unsure of how to bring it up?
If that’s the case I’d rather bring it up to her now than wait for time to tell me. But what if she isn’t and she doesn’t believe me? She’d never commit me to a mental hospital. That’s against the best friend code right? The most I’d get from her was a soft scolding about saying stupid things. And if she did take it the wrong way, creating trouble in her sweet, only rainbow-and-butterfly-filled mind, she’d scrunch up her pretty button nose like The Hulk’s fist, and whisper threats in my direction like a passive aggressive debater.
In her defense, this tactic worked quite well when she was frustrated. It was hard to counter. Sarcasm was the only way to match it.
My first encounter with Diana's quiet frustration came long ago when she'd discovered I was storing love notes to her brother under a baseball cap in the back of my closet. She’d threatened that she'd tell Ben my little secret if I didnt get rid of my shameless shrine—the baseball cap was his. I’d stolen it from his room. The moment she learned of my crush, she made sure to confront me with the expected serious question. “You really like that disgusting snob? Well then, who would you choose if we were in danger and you could only save one of us?”
“I’d drag you by a rope tied to the back of the horse Ben and I are riding. It might be painful but it would be an exotic way to go,” I’d said, mirroring her soft tone with obvious sarcasm.
Even back then I could throw a punch with words in the face of mockery. It worked. She laughed it off and has only threatened that embarrassing story a few more times since, including a few years ago when she used it as a cute attempt to set Ben and me up. Obviously, it didn’t work, and I laughed his unenthusiastic response off with a shrug, while remarking how silly young crushes are.
The memory makes me even more concerned about our separation. We’d been separated not even forty-eight hours. What was he doing? Was he searching for me? Had I disappeared from him the same way he’d disappeared from me? Kenny would threaten him at work if they hadn’t already gotten to him during the weekend. What if my departure had made things harder for him? If he involved anyone else in a search for me, that would surely complicate things. I hoped he was staying silent.
“I’m not feeling myself today. It seems like things are turned upside down lately,” I say, explaining my grisly appearance as we find an open parking spot close to the school entrance.
“Yesterday was all sorts of weird and I’m just trying to figure out why,” I continue. Diana listens intently. “Have you ever had something so strange happen to you that you wonder if time travel or mixed dimensions exist?” Diana’s empty eyes and genuine smile tell me she hasn’t, but she tries to empathize anyway.
“Whatever you need, I’m here. I suppose life can feel so out of sorts that it doesn’t feel real anymore.” This time her face shows more concern. She’s clearly not experiencing the same thing I am. I don’t see how diving into an explanation any further will get me anywhere, so I leave it at that and close the car door behind me.
“My sister’s good with that kind of stuff. She’s into reading philosophy and finding inner peace lately when she’s not working the night shift at the hospital. Maybe she could help,” Diana says. My mouth hangs to the floor. What does she mean by that? Diana doesn’t have a sister. It’s always been just her and Ben.
“Your sister?”
“Yeah. Come over after school. I’m sure she’ll be there. Maybe she’ll lend you a book.”
If Diana has a sister that exists in this world, does Ben Brown exist here?
Ben was with me before I disappeared in front of his eyes. Did he join me? If I could find him here, maybe I had a chance at figuring this out. I could get him to tell me what happened with the flickering lights and my old transparent phone. Maybe he’d know how to send us back.
Diana swings her car door shut and I follow behind. When we walk through the school together, I take in the teal, color-blocked halls around me. It’s hard to describe the feeling of walking through this high school thirty years before it was actually “mine” to claim. The feeling’s indescribable, but the smell and sounds are distinct. If this hallway were a scent, it would be a sheet of Scratch ’n Sniff stickers. I can’t help but notice the edge of my mouth turn up at the stale smell.
A group of rough-looking junior or senior boys that could pass for working-class adults trudge by in Levi’s, knocking their thick boots across the floor with a masculine swagger. The sound echoes off the poster-filled walls amongst spirited group chatter and the scent shifts to locker-room Drakkar Noir, a citrusy cologne that almost masks the BO seeping from a few open muscle tees.
“Is Ben around?” I ask Diana.
“Since when are you wanting to know where he’s at first thing in the morning?” Diana says.
Good. He is here! The sense of urgency to find him is unbearable. Waiting isn’t an option. I will scour the building for my best friend’s brother if I have to.
“I need to see him. Now!” I say, marching a few steps to the right to peek over the group of fluffy-haired teens deep in conversation. Could he be down one of these stuffed yellow hallways? Classes hadn’t started yet.
“Easy, Atta.” Diana pulls a smile and concerned eyes. “I thought you weren’t talking to him? Isn’t he avoiding you right now?”
“What do you mean avoiding me?” I ask.
“I’m not sure. Didn’t you say he was angry with you the last couple of weeks and pretending you’re just empty air in front of him?”
“I doubt that’s the case.” Ben’s been severely annoyed with me many times but never angry with me to the point of not talking. He’s not the type to use the silent treatment.
Why did nothing make sense in this eighties alternate universe? Yesterday’s me, the one that these eighties people seem to know, isn’t the me I know. I have no recollection of Depeche Mode tapes and now Ben’s silent treatment.
“Well, I must find him regardless,” I say fidgeting with the locker next to Diana’s assuming it’s mine. I don’t have the code. I know I’m not going to get it open and she’s not questioning my actions, so it must be mine. Click. Click. Click. I roll random numbers, faking my actions so as not to cause suspicion in front of her.
“Hey, Di! Hey, Atta!” A familiar Philly accent says, walking up behind us. I turn, thankful for an excuse to quit this bad locker-opening acting. Evan, who I’d seen just two days ago at the reunion, stands right in front of me. His floppy surfer bangs that normally hang like curtains around his long rounded face are fluffier. Must be a perm.
His young face is the face I’m most familiar with, since I’d only seen him slightly aged earlier this week. One night of seeing adult Evan isn’t washing away how I saw him most of my early life. Here he is. The same teenager I grew up with but here in this eighties atmosphere.
It’s as if my generation was transposed in with our parents’ generation, restarting life at seventeen to wear cherry-red letterman jackets with teal trim and tie bandanas across our foreheads for fun. So far these notable differences stood out the most along with everyone greeting each other with headlocks instead of hugs. Every other student in this generation seemed to do this as I passed by this morning.
A sly look crawls up his face, and he slides a folded piece of paper into my hand as if we’re Vada and Thomas from My Girl exchanging spit handshakes. I smile back awkwardly and feel my eyes sheepishly fall to the brown speckled floor. He doesn’t seem to notice the heat of confusion emanating from my cheeks and saunters off, turning his baseball cap backward on his mountain of hair. A bendy square of thick paper with strudel-like layers now floats in my hand and Diana is oblivious to the whole transaction.
“You can always count on Evan to keep up relationships. I feel like he’s always trying to be the peacemaker between Tyler and I,” Diana says with an arm full of books.
They must be in the in-between stages of their high school love-hate relationship. I recall that being a rocky road for them for a while, before it eventually turned into a mushy-kisses-in-the-park and sharing-cheezits-through-each-others-car-windows kind of relationship.
I’m pretty sure I look like a gerenuk—the antelope with a giraffe-like neck and an unusually small head standing on its hind legs whistling amongst the shrubbery, waiting for the hallway to empty. Diana’s in class and I don’t plan on filling my time in eighties Golden High with anything but searching for her absent brother.
The last hallway straggler exits to the right and I’m left with the hallway to myself. I peel open the little lined paper that’s been tucked in between my fingers, carefully unwrapping the creased corners, to discover an ongoing pen-and-pencil conversation with remarkably familiar writing—I recognize it as my own—and responding sloppy, slanted writing on the right. Ms. Clark, 2 nd Period is written at the top left.
I’m really sorry about Ty. He shouldn’t have gone that far with Diana. I would’ve pulled it out of the car before she saw it if I knew he was going to do that.
She really hates snakes and it was dead and bloody, so I don’t think she’ll forgive him anytime soon, but you’re forgiven. We all know Ty can’t be supervised, even by you.
I realize I’m reading a conversation between Evan, and what I presume is myself. A slight grin escapes me. Diana does hate snakes. Snakes are her worst fear next to being asked to clog at the county fair. I still remember the time she was asked to join a clogging group in middle school and was so upset. She could barely articulate a few sloppy sentences through her tears. “Do I look like I’d be a good clogger? Atta, seriously, please tell me the truth. This is almost as humiliating as failing a four-foot pole vault at a track meet.” Pole vaulting was her pride and joy. Middle school Diana had a melodramatic side.
He can’t be managed. Say a prayer for me. I run with a dangerous crowd. BTW your white dress looks cute today.
Thank you. I like it too! If only he’d chosen to “rattlesnake” my car. Then we could avoid these two interacting with each other and I could audition for a Carrie sequel.
She got blood on her clothes? Shoot! You don’t even have a car, so wishful thinking. Do you like horror films?
Not really? Do you like the worst movie genre in the history of mankind?
Love it! Give me anything with an adrenaline rush.
Ah, now I get why you chose Tyler as your best friend.
You may be on to something… I could take a short break from the addiction though. How about the theater this weekend?
You and me + popcorn.
Can I pick?
Your pick. 7pm, Saturday. I’ll pick you up?
The rest of the page is empty waiting for an answer from me.
No, I will not go to the movies with seventeen-year-old Evan. I slide the note into my sweatpants pockets and head down the hall.
Another bell rings and thirty classroom windows later, I realize I’m conducting this operation all wrong. I’m treating this like an ordinary day at work—though I’m missing a sense of purpose, washed hair, and decent attire—and it’s clear, peeking through the tiny doggy-door-sized windows to see nothing but front-row desk seats and a teacher writing on the classroom chalkboard isn’t getting me anywhere.
I gather my thoughts, chewing on my nail next to five full-length lockers and an uplifting wall of school-color-themed posters, before I make my way to the office to request Ben’s schedule. Easy enough. I don’t know why that wasn’t my first thought.
The hallway is so peaceful while second period is in session, a complete contrast to the boisterous festival noise made by countless small groups and cliques prior to the morning bell. The office is just a hallway over, past the group of girls in baggy sweaters and Reebok hightops studying together with notecards. I continue my walk to the office as two kids light up cigarettes in the boy’s bathroom entryway.
The silence becomes disrupted by two pairs of sneakers running down the hallway in my direction. A boy carrying a large bird diorama with a bit of difficulty is being chased by another classmate in desperation. The closer he gets, the more my senses tell me that I know this person.
It turns out that those are Tyler’s beady blue eyes behind that greater yellowlegs beak. Professional birdwatcher Tyler. Had we really missed all the signs growing up? Here he stands with a bird diorama in hand, and I feel the soft punch of two worlds colliding.
“Tyler, get back here! How could you claim that as yours and leave me with nothing to present?” the kid behind him yells.
Tyler stops a few feet away from me and turns back around to face the person he’s wronged, dropping his head, raising the dramatics as if he’s a general at war accepting defeat and his last effort for peace is to hold out the diorama as a surrendering gift. The kid takes the cardboard theater-shaped box and smacks the side of Tyler’s shoulder.
“You didn’t get any of the bird’s names right. Good luck even getting a passing grade on this after I present today. Your paper doesn’t even match your presentation,” the boy says, almost too comfortable with the situation. It’s as if he expects this from Tyler and therefore is less outraged. He’s not wrong. That was how I felt toward Tyler most days.
“Why were you running away with that?” I ask my sandy-blonde friend whose curls are currently sculpted into a short mullet. It’s a new look for him that he actually pulls off quite well.
As soon as I think it, I question my taste in style. First, I’m appreciating the neighbor cop’s mullet—to be fair he was riding a motorcycle which always boosts the appeal—and now I’m even subconsciously complimenting Tyler’s styled mullet.
“The dude stood up after I finished my speech and chased after me. I had to bring the fight out into the hallway or the teacher would know it wasn’t mine.”
“I think the teacher’s going to know regardless,” I say, letting my smile wind through my words. He sends a smarmy smirk back and then studies my face, glancing all the way down to my toes.
“You lose your hairbrush, Atta?” I know he’s referring to my hair with one side noticeably straighter than the other.
“Don’t avoid the topic. I know what I look like today.”
“Like you should’ve just stayed in bed?”
“ Actually, have you seen Ben around? Do you know what class he has?” I whip the conversation in a different direction.
“Ben, Diana’s brother Ben? The one who’s told you multiple times he’s not speaking to you. That Ben?” I nod to confirm. That’s two people now telling me Ben is avoiding me. “I think he’s in the gym. Hey, if you find him tell him I need to talk to him too.” He casts a look around the hall, as if making sure something doesn’t pop out of the corner, and then springs his hands up toward my hair.
“Let me smooth those rat tails out for ya,” he says, patting down the side of my head with closed-fingered hands, the way an older brother would successfully torture a sibling. I fend him off with a couple of swats until he’s discouraged from touching my head anymore.
I pass by the school office, completely ignoring it, as I head toward the gym. The gym doors are closed and I presume physical education class is in session, but this is urgent.
The doors take a good gust of strength from both of my arms to open and I look up to see the gymnasium is wide and high, just as it was in 2010, which would be twenty-some years in the future, except the plastic-coated bleachers are now solid wood bleachers seated ten rows high and claiming half of the room.
A group of students, in various colored sweats with elastic cuffs and oversized tees, jog toward the bleachers where a skinny man with a whistle and towel tucked into the waistband of his shorts points to the next exercise written in blue expo marker on a small whiteboard. 50 Pushups.
There he is, standing the furthest away from the PE teacher and closest to the wood-paneled wall I have my back to. There’s my partner, the man I’ve laughed, studied, and theorized with almost every day for the past five years. The man that’s had my back in the most terrifying of conditions. The man that tries picking a fight to distract me right before I’m about to win the entire game of Risk. The one I’ve loved for as long as I can remember and whose face is the last thing I saw before waking up in this unknown world.
Ben Brown.