Living in the Past

[Holly Crowne]

”Marci, let’s go! We’re going to be late!”

It takes me a minute. Marci. Not me. What time is it? After four. Too early. Why’s it so bright in here? Wait. Not my clock. Not Abby’s.

Not my timeline.

I need to concentrate. Bury the echoes. There it is. Twenty minutes? Couldn’t wait twenty minutes?

”Come on!”

“I’m comin’,” I mutter before I remember she’s not talking to me. These are probably the worst ones. The ones so real I’m not sure I haven’t somehow gone back.

There’s no point in trying to go back to sleep for twenty minutes. Might as well get up and get ready. I try to be quiet, but with Abby, it doesn’t really matter. That girl could sleep through a category five hurricane, a tornado, and a freight train running through the back yard. I wake her up and make sure she’s stirring before I go down to the commons.

It’s quieter down there. Don’t ask me how one place can be so stuck in the past and another just two flights down can be utterly quiet. It’s eerie.

Breakfast in the cafeteria is normal enough. Sometimes I’d rather be stuck in the past than have to look at that food. It tastes OK most of the time, but it doesn’t look OK.

If I get enough time after breakfast to clear my head, I can usually make it until lunch. Then I can prepare for the rest of the day. Today’s not my best day, though. The explosion in Ms. Posie’s chemistry class catches me off guard, but that’s only because it isn’t Ms. Posie that causes it. It isn’t big. Just enough to draw attention to the lesson. It sure got mine, and I can’t shake it off for the rest of her class. I don’t know who the other teacher is, but I can’t concentrate on Ms. Posie’s lesson. I can’t concentrate on his either, but I guess I’m not supposed to. If Ms. Posie notices, she doesn’t say anything. Guess she knows I’ll come by after school to see what I missed.

After my last class I go back to visit Ms. Posie, who seems far less put out than she could. Most of the teachers here are really nice. Then I wander campus to find a quiet spot. It’s still cold. The commons are too noisy, and I’m too tired to filter it out today. The library is, too. The theater is quiet, so I find a seat there to rest and do some homework.

By the time I’m done, there’s a gathering in Talos. Some of the other students are on the pier. It’s a bit chilly for the beach, but I guess that’s where people want to hang. There are lots of echoes at the beach, a little less on the pier, but they’re all fleeting. Easy to tune out. Some boats are still sailing, so it’s kind of a nice view.

I stay until the cold gets to me, and I remember I told Momma I’d give her a call. She wants to know how my week’s going. I tell her some days are better than others, which is pretty true. I tell her about this morning. Probably one of the worse times my powers have hit me in a while. I talk to Alan, Rose, and Kevin. Everybody misses me, and I miss them, of course. But I still don’t miss home. Momma wants to know if I’ve called Papa. I haven’t. Not since January. She thinks I should. She’s still disappointed I didn’t call him for Valentine’s Day.

I meet up with Chris to see if he still wants to go the bunker. I told him before I’d show him how I might be able to use my powers on patrol. He said he could do the same. The commons are still noisy. Not because there is anyone there now. There is only Chris.

Chris is nice. He tries to distract me from the past. Any distraction helps, but only so much. Either I have the focus to push it away, or I don’t. If not, there’s not much anyone else can do about it. Still, he tries so hard. Sometimes he helps, just because he provides a distraction. Sometimes I just pretend and smile, and that makes him happy.

There’s only a little buzz in the bunker. What I call white noise. Sounds I can’t quite hear. Flashes of people gone so fast I wonder if I they were even there to begin with. They’re even easier to tune out than the beach. In a few minutes, I don’t even notice them anymore.

He shows me his levitation spell. He uses it on me so I can sort of fly. It’s pretty cool, being weightless. When he turns me upside-down, I figure I’ve had enough.

I show him a couple of things. How I can phase out of normal time, almost like being invisible. He thinks that’s neat. I have some drones set to just wander around. I can slow them down without slowing Chris. That’s good. I’ve never tried that with another person nearby. But I still can’t pull an echo into now and get it to fight. The echoes just ignore the drones. Someone asked me the day I was here for orientation if I could make them fight. Guess I still can’t.

It’s frustrating. There must be something I can get them to do.

Chris tries a couple more spells. He’s still not that good with lightning. He knocks himself on his butt. Then he burns his hand. I don’t know what happens next, but I think I help make it better. When I look at his hand, I can see the signs. Signs of what the eggheads call temporal distortion.

It still feels weird saying or thinking those kinds of words.

As days go, it’s not my worst, but it’s far from my best. Missing Ms. Posie’s class is kind of embarrassing. I’m used to it by now, though. And almost nobody here teases me about it. Sometimes I wonder what I was like before I was so distracted all the time. It’s funny that I can’t really remember anymore. Momma says I’m not much different. Just more preoccupied some days.

And I hardly ever smile anymore. She wishes I would smile more. I try to tell her I do. Just not around people. People don’t give me much cause to smile. But that’s got nothing to do with the changes caused by having powers.