“Whatever. And when you searched for the profile, just now, it was gone, right?”
“Right.”
“What if the site administrator just took it down?”
“You mean coincidentally, just a few hours after I first read it?”
“It’s a possibility. Or, you could have hallucinated the entry.”
I thought about this.
“Wait. There was that piece in the
“Do you have a copy?”
“No. I can’t bring anything back, remember?”
“But this newspaper has to exist.”
She turned away from me, as if making a mental note to herself.
“You say you went back and got her out of that basement, but you didn’t prevent her abduction.”
“Right!”
“I’ll check the
“You know about the
The morgue was part of Temple University’s Urban Archives center, and was basically the clips files of the long-defunct newspaper. Before the Internet, if you wanted to look up a piece of Philadelphia history, you had to go to the morgue and look through dozens of tiny manila envelopes, each stuffed with little yellowed clippings, which had been cut by hand and dated by some long-forgotten staffer. It was basically a steampunk version of Google, and it had been my secret reporting weapon for years.
But it was old news to Meghan.
“We went there freshman year. Our English professor took us on a field trip. Doesn’t every college send their freshmen down there?”
Finally, Meghan turned her attention back to my numb arm and fingers, asking if I could wiggle them, or feel anything when she poked my forearm with a fork. Which she did. Repeatedly. Up and down my skin. But nothing.
“Okay, this is kind of scary. Let me take you to the hospital.”
“No. I hate those places. Plus, I’m pretty sure I don’t have health insurance.”
“Even if I do believe your crazy ass story about the pills—and the jury’s still out, by the way—why wouldn’t you want to have your arm checked? You could have pinched a nerve. You could lose feeling in it forever.”
“I just need to sleep. And what do you mean the jury’s still out? Have you found a single hole in my story?”
“Not yet. But I haven’t found any proof either.”
I thought about it for a moment. Then it hit me.
“Okay then. I’ll give you proof.”
Meghan held the steak knife with both hands, fingers on the handle and the dull edge of the blade. She looked up at me, pointed down at the pill. “Good enough?”
“No. Cut it again. I don’t want to be out long.”
“So an eighth, then? And let me repeat that this is a stupendously bad idea.”
“Just cut the pill.”
“For all we know, these pills are causing the numbness. And the hallucinations.”
“They’re not hallucinations.”
Meghan handed me the tiny sliver of the pill anyway.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Right up there.”
I pointed to the chipped wooden molding around the bathroom door. The molding was the same in 1972 as it was today. It hadn’t even been painted, as far as I could tell.
“I’m going to go back and carve your initials into that molding.”
“You’re such a romantic.”
Her initials were MC. Not long after I’d met Meghan and learned her last name was “Charles”—names didn’t get more Main Line than that—I started calling her MC Meghan, which not only failed to make literal sense, but also annoyed her to no end.
Meghan eyed the molding skeptically, even reaching up to brush it with her fingertips, as if I’d already carved her initials there, then covered it up with a generous helping of dust.
“Again for the record…”
“This is stupid, I know.”
I popped the pill in my mouth then laid down on the couch.
“See you in a little while. Watch that doorway.”
Dizziness. Head throbs. Weak limbs. Then my eyelids felt like they were a thousand pounds each.
I woke up in the office back in 1972. And yes, my right arm was gone, all the way up to the shoulder. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but I was. And more than a little horrified. The missing limb really threw my balance off. I swear to God, I felt myself tilting to one side.
Plus, I’d have to do my initial-carving one-handed.
There was nothing sharper than a butter knife in the kitchenette drawer. Not the most ideal cutting tool. Carving those two letters might take me the entire trip back to the past, but so be it. I would love to be there, in the present, to watch Meghan’s face when her initials start to carve themselves into the paint-chipped wood. Would they slowly appear, one stroke at a time? Or would she blink and then see all at once, the new reality conforming around her?
I wondered if Grandpop Henry, sometime down the road, would notice the initials and take a moment to ponder them.
The idea that I was about to change reality hit me hard. I’d read enough sci-fi novels growing up to know about the so-called butterfly effect—change one thing in the past, and the ripple effects could be potentially disastrous. Would something as simple as initials on a door frame make a difference? Sure, maybe if I carved a message like STAY OUT OF NYC ON 9-11-01 or BUY MICROSOFT. Initials were innocuous, though…right?
Then again, I had prevented a little girl’s death a few hours ago. And now there was one more person in the world who previously hadn’t been with us. Had someone died in her place? Had she grown up to do something awful? What havoc had I already wreaked?
I’d just pressed the tip of the knife to the molding when there was a loud scream outside my door.
The cry of a boy.
I knew I shouldn’t go to the door. I should just proceed with my original plan and start carving Meghan Charles’s initials into the wooden molding around my grandpop’s bathroom door.
But you’re only blessed with this kind of insight after the fact. After everything’s been taken away from you, and it’s too late to change a thing.
Instead, I walked across the room and pressed my ear to the pebbled glass.
I heard heavy footsteps.
There was the sound of slapping, and then another cry, and footsteps running down the hall. And then the gunshot slam of the door down on the ground floor. After a few minutes I managed to open the front door.
Bright sunshine. It was morning. The intensity of the light made me blink. My vision turned white. I dropped the butter knife. I slammed the door shut and crouched down and turned my back to the door and leaned against it and concentrated on breathing slowly.
I heard Erna’s shrill voice filling the hallway:
“Listen to me! You have to be quiet! Do you want us to get kicked out of here? Thrown out on the street to
