Class of 1983: A Young Adult Time Travel Romance Page 6

  “Nebraska? What is that?” asked the girl.

  Just as Peggy was about to start crawling towards the F’s and make her escape, he spoke again, stopping her in her tracks.

  “Springsteen,” Sammy said as Peggy's stomach gave a flip. She had that album. She loved Springsteen.

  “Isn’t he that guy that like, working class people listen to?” the girl asked.

  “What, like me and my dad?” Sammy asked.

  The girl laughed flirtatiously, her laugh coming scarily closer. Peggy was about to be found crouching on the ground like some kind of deranged insect.

  “I’m totally joking Sammy, I just adore Springfield.”

  Peggy rolled her eyes. Springfield?

  “Oh. My. God,” said the girl who was now standing right above her.

  Peggy looked up from the floor holding her Journey record. “I dropped it,” she said staring up at them. They were so obviously together. The hottest couple she’d ever seen. He was so amazingly good looking even in his school uniform. His desert tan and hair all messed up like he didn’t give a damn. Her with her Guns-N-Roses music video model looks.

  The girl rolled her eyes. “How embarrassing for the new girl. Twice in one day.” She was right. Peggy was a disaster.

  Sammy looked down at her, the corner of his mouth raised slightly, it was that smirk that he was always doing in his yearbook picture and in her thoughts.

  The temperature in the store suddenly rose about a gazillion degrees and her mouth went dry, and when he put his Springsteen album under his arm and held out a hand to her she didn't know what to do. But when he didn't pull away or laugh or look at her like she was a total idiot she held her hand out in return.

  The muscles in his arm tensed as he pulled her to her feet. She found herself staring at his arm and dropped the record again. She put a hand to her face and cursed under her breath. Sammy bent down, picked it up, looked at what it was and handed it back to her and just as she was about to open her mouth to say thanks, he walked off, the blonde linking her arm around his waist and only turning back to give Peggy a dirty look.

  “Peggy?” asked Janet, “are you ready to go?”

  “I was going to get this, but I just realized all my money is... at home,” she said.

  “I'll get it,” Janet said. “You can pay me back later.”

  “No, I can't do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I feel weird about you buying it for me, I'll just put it back.”

  “Take it,” said Ray overhearing them and ushering them over to the counter.

  “I can’t just take a record,” Peggy said.

  “I owe your aunt,” he said before Janet could protest.

  “Ray,” Janet said.

  “Please, and let me take you out for dinner too, then we’ll call it square,” he bargained.

  Janet giggled and then nodded. “Can't argue with that.”

  “Thanks Ray,” Peggy said taking the record which he had put in a paper bag for her.

  Janet grinned, Peggy sighed, and they left the store. Both women reeling from their two separate encounters.

  “So, you and Ray huh?” Peggy prodded when they were back on the road.

  “He's nice,” Janet said casually.

  “You luurrrve him,” Peggy giggled.

  “I've spent a lot of time and money in that store, it's about time he asked me out.”

  Peggy laughed.

  “His last name isn’t Willis though, it’s Wiley,” Janet said.

  “Maybe the future can change,” said Peggy.

  “Maybe,” said Janet as she started the car.

  Peggy looked out the window as they drove through the town which was so familiar and yet so different, and she thought about a boy. A boy who was thirty-three years too old for her and she wondered if her future could change too.

  Nine

  Mellow Yellow

  Walking into Janet’s house was a feast for the senses. The house was full of pot plants, wicker furniture and piles of books and magazines. It was the complete opposite of the show home she lived in.

  Peggy caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror beside the front door. She looked like crap. Had Sammy Ruthven actually touched her? Had he touched her looking like this? She took a deep breath inhaling the lived-in smell of Janet’s house.

  “Your room,” said Janet pointing through some ferns to the left of the entrance way.

  Two red couches sat in front of a fluffy white rug all surrounded by more plants and a couple of glass topped tables. Total wicker overload. In one corner near the window sat the tiniest TV she’d ever seen. It was smaller than her laptop.

  “My room?” Peggy asked. “You mean I’m staying here?”

  “If you want to stay in 1983 you can stay here.” Janet said hanging her purse on a peg by the door and shrugging off her suit jacket.

  “What, for like, ever?” Peggy asked.

  “Sure, if you want.”

  “I could stay here forever?”

  “It's going to take you a little time to adjust. That's normal,” said Janet.

  “Adjust?” Peggy asked slipping off her shoes and pushing them neatly under a table by the door which was covered in a mess of letters, lipsticks, cigarette packets and pens. She followed Janet into the kitchen which was about a quarter of the size of the kitchen in the show home. A pale pink counter jutted out in the middle of the small room taking up most of the space, but Janet had still managed to squeeze in a small round dining table and chairs in a corner.

  “I’m dying to renovate this kitchen,” said Janet leaning over the counter from the serving side. Peggy sat up at one of the bar stools opposite, her feet dangling beneath her.

  “I like it like this,” Peggy said. The kitchen was crammed with furniture, magazines, pencil pots, notepads, jewelry, make up, it was a total mess. It was the homeliest kitchen she'd ever been in.

  “I want it red. Red counter,” Janet said running her hands over the pink that Peggy thought was so pretty. “Keep the grey cabinets, red and grey, dramatic.”

  “No, keep the pink. How about pink and mint green?” suggested Peggy.

  “Sounds a little too much like Dee's Diner,” Janet said.

  “Dee's looks cool,” said Peggy shrugging.

  “I don’t do pastels,” Janet made a face.

  “I know,” said Peggy, “but I do.”

  Janet gave her a look.

  “What?” asked Peggy.

  “I only just met you, but I kind of feel like I know you already. Is that weird?”

  “This whole thing is pretty weird,” said Peggy.

  “I know how you’re feeling. You probably won't feel normal for a few days. It will take a couple of weeks, hell maybe even months to really get a grip on things. Oh, who am I kidding? I still don't know if I have a grip on things. Do you want a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  Janet placed two wine glasses between them.

  “Wine?” asked Peggy.

  “Not a chance, I don’t drink. And there’s no drinking in the house. House rule.” Janet grabbed a huge bottle of something yellow from the fridge and grinned.

  “We're drinking Mellow Yellow out of wine glasses?” Peggy asked.

  “I figure if you’re going to drink Mellow Yellow, you should do it in style.”

  Peggy laughed, lifting her glass to cheers her teacher, new friend, fake aunt, whatever she was.

  Janet slid a bag of corn chips over the counter towards her. Peggy hadn’t realized how hungry she was and started devouring them.

  “Hungry?” asked Janet.

  “Starving.”

  “I’ll get a pizza on, is Hawaiian OK?”

  “Perfect.”

  “We need music.” Janet ran out to the lounge room, kicking off her heels and leaving them in the middle of the kitchen floor as she went. The sounds of Michael Jackson soon filled the house, asking Peggy if she wanted to be starting something.

  “Did you ever
hear the story about the Santolsa nuns?” Janet asked when she came back.

  “Yeah, sure, something about witches dressed as nuns to escape getting burned at the stake or something?”

  “The story goes,” began Janet, sitting at the stool next to Peggy and leaning close, as if to share a secret. “That there were once three nuns, they weren’t witches exactly, they were nuns with special powers.”

  “I wish I had a special power,” Peggy said sipping on her Mellow Yellow.

  “You just time travelled today, and you think you don’t have special powers?”

  Peggy shrugged.

  “There are many stories about the three nuns,” Janet went on, “three sisters, all throughout history. In each story they are the same ages, as if they were immortal.”

  “OK, so what’s this got to do with anything?”

  “I don’t think they were immortal.”

  “Huh?”

  “There are only three reasons that you could keep turning up throughout history looking the same.”

  “Oh yeah? What are those reasons?”

  “Being immortal, being a vampire, or,” she paused for effect, “a time traveler.”

  “Right, but vampires are immortal, so that’s really only two reasons.”

  Janet ignored her. “I know you still think maybe this is a dream, but you need to understand the basic rules of time travel.”

  Peggy laughed.

  “This is serious,” Janet said in her teacher voice.

  Peggy felt herself sit up straighter and start paying better attention, just like she would in class when Mrs. Willis noticed her slacking off.

  “Just humor me for a minute,” Janet softened.

  Peggy nodded.

  “Let’s start with the basics. What happened today was that you time travelled.”

  “OK,” said Peggy.

  “If you want to go back to your present you can, but you need to wait until dawn.”

  “Huh?”

  “You couldn't go back right now, but as soon as it's dawn tomorrow, you can travel back, the portal needs to reset, otherwise you’ll go too far back. Got it?”

  Peggy nodded.

  “But there are certain conditions that may mean you can’t get back here, or there,” Janet explained.

  “Like what?”

  “If someone gets in the book room between you, which is why it's imperative that you lock the door behind you.”

  Peggy frowned trying to remember if she locked the door behind her.

  “Or if your situation changes.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “This sounds kind of hard to believe, but the book room, it helps people,” Janet said.

  “You're right, that is hard to believe,” Peggy said. She could feel a massive headache coming on and put her hands to her head.

  “We can talk more about this later, when your head clears. Let's eat.” Janet pulled a crispy slightly burnt pizza out of the oven, threw it on a plate and grinned as if she'd just cooked a meal worthy of a prize.

  * * *

  “Come dance,” Janet said as she cranked up the sound on the record player which was about ten times bigger than the TV.

  Peggy put her drink down on the coffee table and danced with her teacher. She had never danced with her mother as a child, but if she had, she was quite sure this is what it would have felt like. Fun, silly, like home. They did the twist, the can-can, attempted swing dancing and then fell to the floor laughing.

  “When is your present?” asked Peggy staring up at the nicotine stained ceiling.

  “I’m from the nineties,” Janet said.

  “Why didn't you ever go back?” Peggy asked. “To your present I mean.”

  “Nothing to go back for,” Janet shrugged.

  “Sorry.”

  “It's fine,” Janet waved her hand away. “I was about to be put into foster care when I found the key. This opportunity to change everything. To find a new life, and I grabbed it with both hands and put it in my pocket, and the rest, as they say, is history. Or future.” She shrugged and grabbed her pack of cigarettes off the table.

  “Sorry,” Peggy said again.

  Janet crawled over to a shelf where two unicorn bookends held a small selection of books in place. She pulled one out and handed it to her.

  “The Nuns of Santolsa,” Peggy read, holding the small black leather-bound book in her hands.

  “Read it when you've recovered a bit,” Janet said.

  Peggy held the book and closed her eyes. The sounds and smells of the eighties filled the room. Michael Jackson, Hawaiian pizza, old cigarette smoke and that weird wicker smell. She let herself imagine for a moment that this was real. It was what she had done so many times before in her bedroom at home. Pretending to be somewhere else, somewhen else.

  But when she opened her eyes, she was still there. Janet in her electric blue skirt, holding a wine glass full of Mellow Yellow and dancing around on the shaggy white rug with her eyes closed and a serene smile on her face.

  Janet's eyes popped open as she felt some drink spill on her hand.

  “Oops!” she giggled.

  Peggy had no trouble at all imagining old Mrs. Willis doing the same thing when she thought no one was looking.

  And she wondered if Mrs. Willis still lived in the same house in her present.

  And she wondered if this was her present now.

  Ten

  Interlude I

  “We should go a little further,” said Sister Maria.

  The summer sun was setting at the end of another long day of walking through the desert. It had been a long and arduous journey with nothing for comfort but a horse and a small clapped-out wagon which had already been the worse for wear when they began their journey two months previous.

  “We must stop, we need rest,” Sister Helena said coldly. She was tired, not only of walking, but of running, hiding, starving.

  “There looks to be a farm ahead,” Sister Maria said. “I should think they will give us three nuns assistance if we only ask.”

  “No,” said Helena, her eyes blazing with defiance. “We stop now. This is the place here, on top of this hill.”

  “We should do as Sister Maria suggests,” said Sister Catherine nodding serenely, sweat running down her face. She had been wearing the same habit for some months now and had begun to lose all sense of smell of herself. Her companions on the other hand smelt terrible, but it was not in her nature or her beliefs to think too long about that or ever speak of it out loud.

  “Why do you both always get to have the final say?” Helena complained. “I want to stop.”

  “If you stop, you stop without us,” Maria said.

  “Just a little further Sister Helena, perhaps they will have bread.” Catherine knew Helena would never say no to a fresh bit of bread or anything edible, for much of Helena’s difficulty in their quest was due to a lack of enough food. Catherine and Maria were enlightened beyond those cravings, but Helena was more of the body.

  “I do not care for bread! Leave me. Leave me!” she shouted.

  “Come, Sister Catherine,” said Maria, ignoring the young girl before her who was throwing herself onto the burnt orange dust in a tantrum.

  “Without our Helena?” Catherine asked. Her big eyes wide with disbelief. They had both at times found Helena to try their patience, but to leave her in the desert alone would be beyond cruel.

  “If Helena wishes to be left here, then we shall leave her,” said Sister Maria.

  “As you say, Sister Maria. Come quickly after us Helena, won't you?”

  “Never! I will never go anywhere with you!” Helena wailed after them into the setting sun.

  Eleven

  San Dimas

  “Wake up, it's nearly time for school.”

  She rolled over refusing to believe it, and why was her mother hassling her about school anyway? Her mom was usually gone by six if she was there at all. She reached over to the nightstand for her phone,
but the nightstand wasn’t there.

  “There's coffee.”

  Coffee? Her mom had made coffee? She continued to feel around for the nightstand. As she began to groggily wake, she frowned. She couldn’t feel her own cotton sheets beneath her. She must’ve fallen asleep on the couch again.

  “Wake up!” Her mother was becoming impatient now. “Peggy!”

  Peggy? Peggy's eyes flew open.

  She looked around the bright room, the pot plants and retro furniture and watched as Pat Benatar, dressed in a red skirt suit and matching lipstick almost disappeared into the red lounge chair across from her. No, not Pat Benatar, Janet.

  “It’s my second favorite mug, so be careful with it,” Janet said, motioning to the steaming mug on the coffee table.

  Peggy sat up and looked at the Bryan Adams 1982 tour mug and blinked. “What… when?” she asked rubbing her eyes and then picking up the mug and inhaling the delicious aroma.

  “When do you think?” Janet asked turning on the small wooden box of a TV.

  A good-looking man in a tight brown suit with too curly to be natural blonde hair appeared. “Another sunny day in Santolsa today for you folks,” he said. “Cooler in the evening again, and overnight it gets damn cold.” He pointed to a bad drawing of a map of the area with a long stick.

  “If you want more sugar there’s some in the cabinet above the kettle, I only put in one,” Janet said.

  Peggy smiled. “One sugar is perfect” she said. No one at her house had ever made her coffee before, except for Jack when he'd stayed over. Jack was king of cappuccino. It was a shame the manager of the coffee shop at the Mega Mini Mall didn’t agree.

  “Thanks, I could get used to this,” Peggy said sleepily, pushing up the sleeves of spotty pajamas Janet had left for her in the bathroom late last night with a towel, face cloth and offer for her to use anything in the bathroom.

  Peggy looked out the window and wondered. “Is this really real?” she asked quietly.

  “Yuh huh,” said Janet.

  Peggy frowned. “My head feels like it's splitting in two.”