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- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
- | |
- | There Ain't No Justice |
- | |
- | #124 |
- | |
- |---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
- - Flashback 2: The Wonder Years -
- by Tal Meta & Angelique
-
-
- ...Oh well. Something would come to me. It always did.
-
- It was something of a surprise to me when the Fire department arrived
- instead. They disarmed me, and took me into custody until the State Police
- arrived. Nobody seemed quite sure what had happened, except for Michele and
- myself... she seemed to be in shock, and I was keeping my own counsel, trying
- furiously to decide, at long last, exactly what tact to take.
-
- Louis was slow in recovering from the bump on his head. Part of me
- hoped he'd have a scar; maybe it'd serve him as a reminder. Blood was all over
- his face... head wounds have the charming quality of bleeding tenaciously. As
- far as I was concerned, it made him look like the demon I considered him to be.
-
- Michele's mother arrived before the police did. She'd never liked me
- before, but I could see the hatred pouring out of her eyes, for what I'd done
- to her son. I already knew her story; she'd protect Louis at all costs...
- Michele's safety was secondary at best. No matter; the family was full of
- misfits. I wondered, for the nth time, how such a group had produced Michele
- at all.
-
- The State Police arrived shortly thereafter, and whisked me off to the
- nearest station. Lady got left behind, somehow; I never did get an accurate
- report of what had become of her... Part of me hoped that someone would take
- care of her, but to my dismay I knew it was equally possible that she never did
- find a new home, and that she'd wind up another feral dog preying on the local
- livestock. I'd decided to play ignorant, for the moment. I was just a simple
- runaway, yeah, that's the ticket. I spent several hours in a cell by myself,
- until my parents arrived... all three of them.
-
- Predictably, they all began arguing over whose fault this was.
-
- For my part, I kept silent, and tried to look confused and scared.
- Well, I suppose the scared part was mostly natural. I had a natural fear of
- police stations; I'd spent too much time in my mid-twenties inside such
- places, and I somehow doubted that the questioning this time would be as
- polite as it had been the last time. Murder was a bit more serious than
- disorderly conduct.
-
- Of course, I'd forgotten one important fact... I was a kid.
-
- It was kind of patronizing, the way they talked to me; but on the
- other hand, I realized it was for the best. I was very, very careful taking
- any tests they gave me. I kept trying to judge the kinds of answers I'd have
- given a quarter century ago but I didn't really remember the way that kid had
- felt about most things. I didn't have any good explanations for all the bugs
- I'd planted, so I used the story that I'd been using them to keep track of
- when people were out so I could go in and steal food. They seemed to buy it
- well enough, although it earned me my share of long, questioning stares. I
- practiced looking naive & innocent, and the art of gently pushing their minds
- into thinking I was as harmless and juvenile as I looked.
-
- But not careful enough, it seemed, on the tests. After the Grand Jury
- decided not to prosecute me for the death of Roger (sufficient evidence
- existed to prove that he was high as a kite on cocaine, and his taped
- conversation with Louis was rather to-the-point concerning his intentions). I
- was remanded into the care of Dr. Karen Fitzhugh, at the Shoreline Behavioral
- Center of NJ. For the next 16 months, I kept up with my schoolwork, dreamed
- about Michele, and played a life and death psych game with Dr. Karen, as I
- called her.
-
- Dr. Karen tried hypnotising me once or twice, and seemed genuinely
- unhappy that I seemed to be a poor subject. After a while, I tried playing
- along with her about it, but I kept having to mentally push her away from the
- idea that I was telling her what she wanted to hear, which in turn left me
- having to mentally push her away from the idea that I was influening her mind
- about the success or failure of a particular line of questioning. I genuinely
- LIKED Dr. Karen; under other circumstances I imagined that I might want to get
- to know her better... but under the current state of events, she was my worst
- enemy.
-
- So we looked at ink blots, and I tired to keep my responses juvenile.
- Word association was a deadly trap; even a precocious preadolescent shouldn't
- know too many outright sexual terms, and I sometimes let myself give honest
- answers just to muddle her results. I'd have to keep myself from leading her
- towards thinking I was possessed or anything metaphysical like that; I often
- wondered how close to the truth that might have been.
-
- I think they tried messing with various chemicals in my food once or
- twice, too, but my mind was still keen enough to recognise when I was feeling
- TOO good. The last thing I needed to do was reveal under some drug that I was
- a some kind of time traveller from the year 2000... they'd lock me up and never
- let me go, even if they didn't believe me. What they'd do if they did believe
- me scared me even more.
-
- Eventually, however, I was released from the center with a clean bill
- of mental health. In the intervening sixteen months, my father & step-mother
- had gotten divorced (again), and my mother and her boyfriend Jason had moved
- in together in a little house in Jackson, right next door to a certain
- kennel... Jason and I had always had a good relationship, before. Even if he
- was due to leave my mother in about four years, he'd been the closest thing
- I'd had to a real "father figure" during my so-called formative years. I took
- the same room I had, ages before, and prepared to spend the long summer
- getting ready for the seventh grade...
-
- ---
-
-
- Her name was Kathy Post. We'd never been "friends" before; if
- anything, I'd given her every reason to hate my guts the last time I'd passed
- this way. But I'd looked back on our encounters years later and realized that
- a good part of the reasons behind my tormenting her had been simple childhood
- politics... the thought of admitting to liking a girl at twelve, especially to
- myself, had been the worst sort of heresy. However, my body was slowly but
- surely getting older, and as it aged, it changed. Some of the changes were
- very pleasant; it was nice to be able to look at a woman again and get the
- right kind of feelings... even if they were considerably stronger than I
- remembered. The acne I knew was coming I could probably live without, though.
-
- My weeks in the woods had left me lean and hard. I'd decided that THIS
- time, I was going to keep that physique, unlike when I'd graduated USAF Boot
- Camp and Survival School. Being an overweight teenager had more social stigma
- than I wanted to endure again. Kathy and I got along well, which pleased me.
- In a matter of a few weeks, we were inseperable, and I found that I cared for
- her a great deal. We spent the summer of '77 roving the sandpits that abutted
- both our houses, learning about love, and we went to see Star Wars 23 times
- together. I only slipped once, when she asked me if I thought Luke & Leia
- would get together, and I joked that incest was best...
-
- We never got past second base, but that was fine... I had plenty of
- time. It was interesting to see how different my life might have been, had I
- ever bothered to walk the half mile that seperated our homes.
-
- School held few surprises for me. I got assigned to all the same
- classes, managed to make (I think) most of the same friends. I didn't remember
- the layout of Jackson Middle school nearly as well as I thought I had, so the
- first few days were full of late arrivals and searches for my locker. Even
- though Kathy and I were an "item", I kept looking out for Michele... even
- though I was pretty sure she wouldn't arrive until next year. I did find
- Linda, though.
-
- Linda Conneley had been what you might call the class mattress. Even
- at thirteen, she had a reputation for stealing other girl's boyfriends. But
- she and I had been close friends, even if we'd never been lovers. We started
- out just talking in class, and soon thereafter I dumped Kathy and started
- carrying Linda's books from class to class...
-
- About mid-November I rode my bike five miles across town to visit
- Linda at home. I have to give Linda's mother this: she allowed us our privacy.
- We spent most of the day exploring one another's topography through our
- clothes, which I considered quite promising.
-
- By the end of December, we were lovers. While it felt good to touch,
- and be touched by a woman that way, I kept feeling as though there should be
- something more. I kept turning those feelings over and over in my mind, but
- couldn't come up with any answers.
-
- 1978 brought two surprises. In late February, Linda broke down in
- tears and told me that I'd gotten her pregnant. Now mind you; I'd always,
- always, ALWAYS used a condom when we made love. What I'd forgotten was that
- the surgery that would close off the "second hole" in my penis hadn't been
- performed until I was 22... nine years from "now". Semen had leaked out,
- and made its way to her womb. The second surprise was that I caught a glimpse
- of Michele in the hall at school.
-
- ---
-
-
- I'd always believed in a double standard where abortions were concerned.
- While I had no problem with women getting them if they so chose, I was
- somewhat less liberal where my own offspring were concerned. I had perhaps one
- of the hardest decisions of my life ahead of me - at thirteen, Linda and I
- weren't anywhere near old enough to raise a child together. Emotionally, I
- knew she wasn't ready, and my job prospects were less than encouraging.
-
- I turned it over and over in my mind a thousand times over the next
- three weeks, but the best answer was always the one I liked the least. So it
- was with a heavy heart that I went with her to the free clinic to have our
- child aborted. We cried together afterwards, and I think that started both of
- us healing. We stopped seeing one another quite so often, after that.
-
- Seeing Michele did me no good whatsoever. I had expected, given the
- circumstances I'd brought about, that the formerly withdrawn, painfully shy
- and seriously troubled girl would have become at least a shadow of the bright,
- forceful woman I knew she'd someday become once she'd come to grips with what
- had been done to her.
-
- It hadn't happened. If anything, she was even more withdrawn than I
- remembered. One especially warm April afternoon, I made the trek over to her
- house; something always stopped me short of approaching her in school. I
- picked a spot near the small barn that housed her family's three horses in the
- back yard, (What is it with me and trees, anyway?) and waited for her to
- appear.
-
- Contrary to my expectations, she did not take the trail I expected her
- to. She set out on horseback across the street from her house, off towards the
- power lines that crossed most of the town. I waited for several hours, but
- eventually, I was forced to return home. (My mother had nothing resembling a
- say in my comings and goings, but the last thing I needed was her reporting my
- absence to the local police - it wouldn't take much thinking on their part to
- remember the last time I'd gone missing; odds were they'd put two and two
- together and find me here, since my records wouldn't be sealed for another five
- years.
-
- The next weekend brought me better success, if you'd call it that. I
- waited this time along the route I figured she'd take again, and about midday
- she finally appeared astride her horse. Damned if I could remember it's name,
- though... I'd met it maybe once, a decade in the "future".
-
- "Hello Michele. Nice day for horseback riding, isn't it?" I asked, as
- I bounded up along side of her.
-
- "I guess so." she said quietly, her eyes not meeting mine.
-
- "Umm, I'm Frank Henderson. We have the same lunch period at school."
-
- "Do you live around here?" she asked, still not meeting my eyes.
-
- I reached out with my senses, trying to get a fix on what she was
- feeling. The link that we'd shared as adults was gone, of course, but our last
- meeting had proven to me that we could still tce... head woer, even if only on
- the surface. She was curious about me (even I couldn't stop the rumors that
- surrounded me & Linda, afterall), and she could sense what I was doing. I
- thought I saw in her mind a growing recognition, a memory of our last meeting,
- so I decided to bring that spark to a flame.
-
- "No" I said, "but I live close enough. I wanted to ask you... how have
- you been doing, since I, uh, saved you that day?"
-
- "That was you?!" I felt her mind click, and recognize me at last. What
- I didn't expect was the sudden flash of guilt, and fear, centered around ME,
- that knocked me off my feet (which was probably a good thing, at that), as she
- whirled her horse around and hissed at me "Stay away from me! Leave me alone!
- I never want to see you again!" as she galloped away.
-
- I sat there, in the dirt, trying like mad to figure out what had
- happened. I'd saved her, for chrissakes, and she's afraid of me? I made my way
- home by a different route, pondering this bizarre turn of fate as I walked.
- Echoes of the guilt and terror she'd felt upon recognising me gave me
- nightmares for several days. I tried reaching out to her in dreams (we'd
- always been able to reach each other that way before) but every time I did it
- became a nightmare for her.
-
- I tried seeing her again, but was greeted that time by her father, who
- had been chopping firewood in the backyard. Brandishing the axe, he told me in
- no uncertain terms to stay off his property, and to leave his daughter alone.
- As far as he was concerned, I was a murderer, and a psychopath, and that he
- ought to drop me right where I stood for the betterment of the world in
- general.
-
- So I tried the dreams again. When we'd first started courting each
- other, in our late teens, our minds became so alike in some ways that we each
- had a "copy" of the other person in our minds whenever we needed it. I drew on
- that old mental image, cloaked myself within it, and appeared to her in her
- dream as she had been the last time I'd seen her, when she and I were both
- thirty-five.
-
- Wrapping myself in that illusion, I came to her as herself, and asked
- her the same question I had before; what had her life been like the past three
- years since she'd nearly been raped. The images I saw flicker in her mind
- astounded me. Her brother, in the hospital with a concussion (he did wind up
- with a small scar on his left temple, I discovered). Roger's funeral, with her
- family's eyes turned towards her, blaming her for her part in his death. Her
- mother's voice, insisting, over and over, that Michele -must- have done or said
- something to encourage Roger to act as he had. Both of her parents reviling me
- as a murderer, some dangerous and psychotic waif who had stalked them all and
- brought only ruin. And through it all I saw the picture of myself in her mind,
- twisting from savior to persecutor, and then to tormentor.
-
- I had sought to cure her of the greatest hurt that had ever been done to
- her, and in the process, replaced the image of Roger with my own.
-
- A few weeks after that incident, I heard from a friend that she and
- her family had moved away. Any hope I had of regaining her trust (or her love)
- was gone. I kicked myself, mentally, and vowed that if I ever had a chance to
- replay this life again, I'd just shoot Roger and get away... playing hero had
- gained me nothing at all, and cost me more than I was prepared to accept.
-
- ---
-
- Several more months went by, and at long last school ended for the
- summer. Linda and I eventually started seeing one another regularly again,
- although the day I found the box signalled yet another hiatus in our state of
- inseperability.
-
- It had been a Sunday, and Linda had to attend her aunt's wedding
- upstate. So I was knocking about the sandpits behind my house, enjoying the
- freedom that summer brings and imagining that the clouds overhead were
- actually a fleet of ships sailing overhead. One of the more "permanent"
- features of the sand pits was a formation I always had called "the island".
-
- In reality, it was just a hill at the center of a pit that they'd
- never finished digging out. The water table was often high enough that the
- hill at the center was surrounded by water, sometimes several feet deep. It
- was a breeding ground for frogs and mosquitoes, but it was nonetheless a
- pretty spot. In my original lurid adolescence, I'd imagined that it contained
- a secret chamber where I kept a harem of women to feed my every desire. Even
- after I'd moved away originally, I'd come back to this spot every so often to
- check up on it; I'd had alot of good times around here.
-
- Kathy and I even spent a fair amount of time necking there, during our
- brief relationship. We'd even gone skinny dipping there once, late at night.
- Something about the island seemed different that day, and no amount of flexing
- my brain would reveal exactly what was wrong. I had climbed the one tree that
- jutted haphazardly from the southwest face of it, and was almost drifting off
- to sleep in the warm sun when the tree's roots gave way and plunged me into
- the water.
-
- Cursing, I sloggged my way back to the shore of the island to inspect
- the base of the tree, and to my amazement found a large metal container of
- some sort. Alarm bells were going off at the back of my brain as I uncovered
- it, raising to a shrill screech as I found the locking mechanism.
-
- Rather than a simple key or combination, the seal on the box required
- a certain shape to be fitted into it.... a shape I knew well. For a number of
- years, I'd kept an oddly shaped hunk of metal I'd found in some nearby fields
- as an amulet. The shape required to open the box was the same as that
- amulet... and I didn't have it! I hurriedly reburied the box (it was far too
- large and heavy to drag up the side of the pit in the middle of the
- afternoon!) and set out at a dead run for the fields where I'd found my amulet
- originally.
-
- Naturally, it was nowhere to be found. Okay, Tal, lets retrace our
- steps here, a bit, shan't we? You remember about where you found it; but do
- you remember WHEN? I tried remembering, but it was so long ago... I knew I'd
- had it before my Freshman year of High School, but that was still a year away.
- While I was thinking about that, another thought intruded on my consciousness:
- why the shape of my amulet?
-
- I had given up trying to figure out how I'd managed to wake up in my
- ten year old body three years before. Whatever had caused it, or triggered it,
- simply was not in my collection of memories. Dwelling on that thought alone, I
- realized that quite a few things might possibly not be in my memory; I
- remembered my 35th birthday, but not much beyond that. Was I older than I
- thought I was, even counting the last three years?
-
- Obviously, whatever was in that box was mine, or had been mine, or at
- the very least, was intended for me. I'd never told anyone my "secret chamber"
- fantasy, and it struck me as too much of a coincidence that the box was hidden
- among the roots of the very tree whose branches had, in my fantasy, been the
- instruments for opening the chamber within the hill itself. And the fact that
- the only visible means of opening it was my old amulet (a piece of jewelry,
- it should be mentioned, that Michele had worn for quite some time until she
- lost it in a parking lot a few weeks before one of our more final breakups)
- said that it was mine, all mine.
-
- I spent most of that night swatting mosquitoes and dragging that
- damned box up the side of the pit and then home through the woods. A handle
- somewhere would have been a nice touch, I chastized myself. Obviously,
- whatever purpose the damned thing was designed to serve presupposed that I'd
- be able to open it when I found it. It was slow going; the damned thing
- weighed nearly 200lbs, and was the size of a refrigerator. Whatever was inside
- had damned well be worth the effort, I decided.
-
- I stashed it in the garage that ran alongside my room. Stopping in the
- fields on my way to Linda's house became a daily ritual, one I followed even
- on days I couldn't see her. Even still, it was six long weeks before I found
- what I was looking for, and then it was on a day that I couldn't very well
- just turn around and go home. When I finally did make it home, later that
- night, I wasted no time slipping into the garage and putting the amulet to
- use.
-
- Pressing the amulet into place, I held my breath and waited. A very
- quiet clicking sound began as the amulet fit into the mechanism, then slipped
- down and inside the box, and with a snap and a whoosh of air, the container
- opened.
-
- Inside was a mass of styrofoam packing material, which I clawed away
- with a vengence, revealing a dozen metal attache cases, a monitor, several
- peripherals, a laptop computer, and another, larger tower case. My breath left
- me in a gasp when I saw that case; it had been mine, back in 2000, which was
- as far "back" as I could remember. The familiar OS/2 Merlin sticker gleamed at
- me as I rocked back on my heels and began to laugh.
-
- Forgetting the computer parts for the moment, I turned my attention to
- the attache cases. Each bore a label, and on each label was a year. The
- earliest one I could find was marked 1985 in my own handwriting. Each one had
- a combination lock on it as well. The lock looked as if were designed to
- accept a date as the combination... but nothing about 1985 rang any bells for
- me. So I reached for the one that read 1988. Trying to think like myself,
- which is no mean feat with the holes my memory seemed to have, I pondered what
- the most important day had been for me, in 1988.... it had been a busy year. I
- typed in the date I lost my virginity... nothing. I tried the date when
- Michele and I had broken up, vowing never to see or speak to one another
- again... again, nothing. Finally I tried the day we'd first... my fingers
- tapped out 010188... and it clicked open. Inside, I found it full of vaguely
- used $100 bills... over $250,000 worth.
-
- All of them dated 1988.
-
- Each of the other containers probably contained a similar amount, I
- knew, bearing the same date as the year on the label of the box. Okay; I was
- now a multi-millionaire. Or would be, in another seven years. On a guess, I
- reached for the 1993 case and punched in 090593, the first time I'd spoken to
- her since she'd called me in 1989 to tell me she'd gotten engaged, and was
- unsurprised when it, too, opened and revealed another quarter-mil in somewhat
- abused 1993 currency. Whatever the intent, the dates that had worked thusfar
- were dates that had a common thread... Michele.
-
- ---
-
- The computer posed the biggest problem, in the end. The attache cases
- were easily hidden around the property. The laptop I could hide under my bed.
- But the computer and its attendant peripherals would be hard to hide, and
- harder to explain. I cast about for quite some time, and finally located a
- large console-style TV someone was throwing out, and had Jason help me drag it
- home. Once there, I tore it apart and gutted it, replacing the majority of its
- internal components with the contents of the tower case. The printer I stuffed
- in the back (nobody in 1978 had even HEARD of LaserJets). I mounted the
- monitor in the cavity where the original 19" screen had been, and surrounded
- it with duct tape to keep it in place. The speakers were still in fair shape, so
- I wired them to the SoundBlaster card, making the system complete.
-
- It looked ugly, but it worked... or at least, it worked when I was
- alone and threw the right switches, which I'd hidden underneath. Any other
- time it showed a fancy mess of low-rez static. I doubt anyone ever even
- noticed that phone line that snaked into the back. I even managed to get the
- phonograph portion of the console working... although I completely disabled the
- radio. Who wanted to listen to disco?
-
- Finally armed with some familiar technology, I set about exploring the
- data I'd brought along for whatever purpose my trip back in time was supposed to
- accomplish. Several of the CD microdisks contained extensive stock market
- reports, dated from 1985 on (no big surprise there). Several others were of a
- more personal nature; all six GodNet CDs, and all 666 issues of TANJ. There were
- also alot of games that I'd never gotten around to playing... and I'd have bet
- my pancreas that my friend Andrea (the ultimate Star Wars groupie) would sell
- her soul to be able to play _Fall of the Republic_ (let alone read the scripts
- to any of the five movies that had yet to be released!)
-
- Only one file remained barred to me; C:\DIARY\TM_MEMORIES.ASC. It
- contained a single PGP'd file that refused to unlock to my normal passphrase.
- Something told me that if I could unlock that file, everything would suddenly
- become very clear to me. Whatever I'd done to get to this point, I'd -expected-
- a memory loss! If only I could remember the passcode!
-
- Since I had basically everything I needed information-wise at my
- fingertips, I tried calling the "great" boards of the past; Metal Shop, Dragon
- Fire, RipCo, P-80 Systems, you name it. Some of them didn't even exist yet; on
- others I gained something of a reputation as being omniscient... usually by
- refering to people by their real names, courtesy of files they'd written years
- in the future. I half considered putting up a BBS of my own again, and leaving
- every single file from each of the GodNet CDs online for the modeming public to
- gawk at, but that would have attracted all the wrong kinds of attention.
-
- ---
-
- Summer eventually ended, as summers always do, and I entered the eighth
- grade for the second time in my life. Linda and I were still together, but we
- seemed to be cooling towards one another; she was constantly accusing me of
- seeing other girls (actually, I was spending my time trying to beat Wing
- Commander X) and was generally becoming entirely too possessive for my taste.
- After a few more weeks, we both just stopped calling each other, and we sought
- out different seats in the classes we shared.
-
- With Linda gone, I was surprised to suddenly have the attention of Lydia
- Boswell. Lydia wasn't really my "type"... she was popular, a tad bit flighty,
- and was generally the type of girl I avoided getting involved with at any age.
- However, her slim, athletic build and gorgeous long blonde hair offered a
- pleasant change from the steady diet of brunettes I'd been involved with in
- the past few years. She was Captain of the cheerleading team; watching her
- practice became one of my favorite extracurricular activities pretty quickly.
-
- Lydia was also a "good girl"... not generally the sort of woman who'd
- have much of a hold on my attention for very long, I knew only too well. But she
- was a surprisingly passionate kisser; I had enough hopes of getting her to go
- farther to keep seeing her, at least for a little while longer.
-
- About mid October, we had an away game at Freehold, which I planned on
- accompanying Lydia to. I'd been having odd dreams lately, and random snatches
- of memory would come and go, usually too quickly for me to hang onto. Many of
- those dreams seemed to center on or around my daughter, Moire, giving me a
- completely new spin on what my future might be.
-
- Janice.
-
- Janice had gone to Freehold, and had played in the band there. She would
- almost certainly be at the game... as the day got closer and closer, my mind
- seemed to become very focused, almost as if some great and momentous event were
- about to come to pass. My mental abilities hadn't diminished any over the past
- few years, but as my body changed, they grew more and more erratic, seeming to
- ebb and flow with my body's production of hormones.
-
- One of the things that had always bothered me in my relationship with
- Janice was that there always seemed to have been something in her past that
- she'd never speak about, some hurt that had never quite healed. Might things go
- differently for the both of us, if I intervened in her life now, before any of
- that had a chance to happen? My failure with changing Michele's life made me
- cautious, but I had high hopes that this might, indeed, be possible.
-
- I shrugged off any reservations I felt about it; I doubted it would
- involve having to shoot anyone this time. But I was feeling anxious and edgy as
- we rode the bus to the game. Something wonderous was going to happen, I felt
- certain.
-
- The game was going pretty well for our side; by the last five minutes of
- the fourth quarter we were ahead 14 to 6, and the team seemed pretty certain of
- its victory. I'd spent most of the game on the bench next to Lydia, alternately
- admiring her lithe body as she contorted it through the motions of the cheers,
- and making attempts at catching Janice's eye from across the field.
-
- I'd spotted Janice at half-time, and she'd looked just the way she had
- in some of the old pictures I'd seen of her at the time, with long, straight
- auburn hair and a smile that could light up the night like only one other I
- knew. I'd caught her eye once or twice, and imagined that I could feel that she
- was as interested in me as I was in her.
-
- In the final play of the game, our side had just hit Freehold's
- quarterback hard, and the ball shot into the air and practically dropped into
- the arms of one of the running backs. He started running with it, and the twenty
- yards seperating him and the goal posts were as clear as the autumn sky. As he
- crossed the goal line, he threw down the ball as the crowd on our side of the
- stadium cheered to the sound of the final buzzer, ending the game.
-
- The crowd from our side swarmed out onto the field, lifting him up and
- carrying him for several dozen yards, amid a chorus of whoops and cheers. Losing
- myself in the press of bodies, I started towards the opposite side, where I
- could see the band from their side was beginning to put away their instruments,
- so I made my way across the field to where I'd seen Janice was seated.
-
- As I walked up to her, I could see two of her friends giggling and
- whispering behind her, making her blush. When I was about five feet away, that
- feeling I had before intensified tenfold, and just as I was about to speak, I
- heard a familiar voice behind me, saying "If you think I'm going to let you take
- one more step, Tal, you're out of your mind."
-
- Slowly, I turned....
-
- It was Michele.
-
- And she'd called me by a name I wouldn't use for eight more years.
-
-
-
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