TIme After Time

Sam shakes his head and gives me a pitying look. “I swear, man, it’s like you’re back but you’re not.”

I avoid his eyes as I spin the combination dial.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

11

After an hour at the climbing gym with Sam and a rushed dinner with my parents, I head upstairs to start on my homework. I navigate to the school website and check this week’s assignments. I have a couple of hours of reading for Chemistry, a paper due in two weeks on the rise of the Tigris-Euphrates civilization, and an essay I’m supposed to begin writing for English.

I lean back with my arms folded behind my head, staring up at the ceiling. Until recently, I’d never really thought much about my bedroom. Mom had it professionally decorated when we moved in four years ago, and I don’t recall picking out a single thing.

Unlike Anna’s room, there are no posters on my walls, no maps of the world, no bookshelves filled with trophies and CD cases. It’s just really white. White walls. White ceiling. White rug. White comforter. The desk is glass and metal, but that does very little to break up the monotony. The only color in the room comes from the huge canvas painting my mom bought at an art auction a couple of years ago, and the red glass bowl—overflowing with ticket stubs from every live concert I’ve ever seen—that’s perched on the nightstand next to my bed. Aside from that bowl, this room could belong to anyone.

Anna was only in my bedroom for a matter of minutes, but in that short amount of time, she must have seen it for what it is: a room that looks like it’s staged for an upcoming sale.

I should start on homework, but instead I reach for my phone. It’s a little after nine o’clock here and an hour later in Boulder. I type out a message to Brooke:

U there?

I wait for her to reply, and finally the phone chirps.

Yup. Studying.

How was your first day back?

I type in one word:

Sucked.

Brooke’s reply appears quickly.

Sorry. :(

I stare at the screen, thinking about what to say. Finally I type:

I miss her.

I look at the words before I hit send. A few minutes pass before Brooke replies.

I know. Go do something to take your mind off it.

That’s what the climbing was for, but it just made me wish I were outside on real rocks and reminded me of my first date with Anna.

Like what?

I picture Brooke letting out an exasperated huff when she reads my message. She comes back with three rapid-fire responses:

IDK.

Something fun.

Something good.

I go back to my computer, where I find myself drifting off into thoughts about college admissions and catching up with everyone else on extracurricular activities. I search for volunteer opportunities and find hundreds in San Francisco alone, ranging from part-time jobs that support senior citizens to working with kids in the city’s poorer neighborhoods.

This one site catches my eye, and the reason isn’t entirely lost on me. I click on it, check out the programs, and watch the video. Then I navigate back to the map. The building is in the heart of the Tenderloin, only a block away from where last Saturday’s fire took place.

It’s not as if I’ve forgotten about it. It’s been hanging out in the back of my mind for the last three days. But now that this map is filling the screen, I can’t block it out of my mind anymore. Without even thinking about what I’m about to do, I move the cursor to the search field and type the words “Tenderloin fire.”

There’s a long list of links and I click on the most recent one. It basically says the same thing the TV news story reported last Saturday morning: an apartment fire on the third floor killed two children, a five-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. Neighbors called 911. Source of fire remains unknown. Investigation underway.

I scroll down to the bottom of the screen and find an update to the story: investigators are still trying to determine the cause. The parents aren’t speaking to the media.

When I click the corner of the window, the browser closes and the story disappears. I push my chair away from my desk and reach for the enormous English book I was given today during class. I flop down on my bed and start reading. I’m only a couple of paragraphs into the homework assignment when my mind starts wandering again.

I stand up and return to my desk. I open the bottom drawer and dig deep, shuffling through a collection of postcards I’ve bought to give to Anna, little scraps of paper I’ve saved for no particular reason, and climbing maps folded haphazardly and stuffed inside. At the bottom, I feel the red notebook I hid when I got back from Evanston last weekend. I open it to a dog-eared page near the back.

The calculations are especially messy, stretching across the binding and continuing down the sides. Even the pencil marks themselves have a bit of a manic look to them, but with complete clarity, I remember writing them and know precisely what they mean.

I barely knew Emma at the time, but I stayed up all night calculating and weighing the risks of altering an entire day to prevent an accident and possibly save her life. Sure, I’d gone back before—five minutes here, ten minutes there, each time changing totally minor, completely insignificant events. But I’d never gone back that far or deliberately changed that many minor things. I didn’t even know if it would be possible. And even though it was, I decided I would never do it again.

But looking at the dates and calculations reminds me how I felt when it was all over and I saw the look of pure relief on Anna’s face. She practically skipped down the driveway after seeing Emma that Saturday morning —all of her various internal organs intact and the skin on her face scratch-free and perfect—and as I stared at her through the windshield, this feeling of intense pride washed over me. I had done that. I made that happen. It was the first time I’d ever felt that maybe I had been wrong about this gift of mine. It was the first time I’d wondered if maybe Dad was right.

Now I run my finger along the pages, thinking about the look on his face as we stood in the kitchen last week, watching the news on the screen. He wanted to say something, but he knew I wasn’t supposed to travel anymore. Besides, I’d told him so many times that he probably knew it was senseless to bring it up again: I don’t change things.

I wonder what he’d say if he knew that I once did.

For Emma, I’d gone back fifty-two hours. Could I go back even further?

I turn to a clean page and start scribbling some new calculations. I know I’ll never be able to answer the big ethical questions with any certainty, but a few minutes later, I’ve figured out the math. I’ll need to go back about sixty-four hours. Two and a half…almost three days. I’d have to stay back there,