Friday, November 25th, 2016

Pete was still in my head. So that part of the plan didn't work.

When Eric touched the faded freckles scattered across my cheek, he'd triggered a memory of him. On the day I had dinner with his family, Pete and I had sat on the porch steps with his dog and taken in the summer evening neighborhood sights and sounds. Kids running through a sprinkler and riding bikes, a radio broadcast of a baseball game drifting through an open window. Pete had compared me to Anne of Green Gables and touched the tip of my nose to point out my freckles.

I needed some concrete evidence that the other part of the plan had worked. More than what Paul had told me. I needed to see with my own eyes that my effort wasn't for nothing.

The links I'd saved to the articles about the Conley sisters' disappearance were broken, and when I searched again, I found nothing about Michelle and Elizabeth going missing. That led me to believe that they hadn't disappeared, at least in the way they had before, but I didn't have proof yet that they were both present and accounted for after Thanksgiving in 1993.

When my Google searches turned up nothing, I decided to take the old-fashioned route and head to the public library. There was a copy of every yearbook from Palmer High School in the small local history section and one of them would hopefully give me the proof I needed.

Before I had to be at work at four o'clock, I'd do some research at the library. Then I'd meet up with Kaitlin at Lou's because there was something she said she needed to tell me in person. After that, if Eric was home, I'd stop by the Rockmore House. By the time I arrived at the Shipyard, I hoped to have answers to some of my lingering questions.

The local history section was tucked away in a far, poorly-lit corner of the library, as if the history of Palmer and its surroundings areas was worth hiding. I sat on the floor and ran my finger along the embossed years on the spines of the yearbooks all the way to 1993. Inside the purple and teal cover of the 1993 yearbook, I found Michelle Conley among the faces of the junior class. But the yearbook from 1994, which would have been her senior year and the one that would prove if she'd made it or not, was missing.

I couldn't resist pulling a yearbook from 1951 from the shelf. Because Pete left school after his sophomore year, it would have been the last yearbook in which he might have made an appearance. All of the candid photos had short, quippy captions. Smile, Harvey! Poker faced percussionists! Rembrandts in training! Belles of the ball! When I found Pete's picture, I couldn't suppress my smile. He was cute, with his hair trimmed close, teeth still a little too big for his thin face, and sporting a lopsided grin.

Pete was in the track team photo and on the following page in a solo shot, jumping a hurdle in a sleeveless shirt and white shorts, his face set in determination. Daddy Long Legs! I spotted him in the back row of the Choral Club group photo and my smile faded. I didn't think I'd ever heard him sing.

I'd fooled myself into thinking I knew this person, who once ran track and sang in a school choir and who knew what else? But I didn't know him at all. Not really. At one point he was real to me, but he'd become an almost mythical being of my own invention that no one else could ever live up to. I closed the yearbook. That was enough.

"Is the 1994 yearbook checked out?" I asked the librarian at the desk. Brenda, according to her name tag. It was the day after Thanksgiving and Brenda's festive holiday sweater indicated that she was already in the Christmas spirit, but her sour expression suggested otherwise.

"The yearbooks are reference materials that aren't available to check out. A few of them have unfortunately gone missing over the years. The only way we can replace the yearbooks is if someone donates them."

"Oh, okay." It was hard to hide my disappointment. "Thank you."

"My daughter graduated in ninety-four," Brenda said. "I can find out if she still has her copy that you could take a look at. Who are you hoping to find, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Um, I was looking for Michelle Conley."

I waited for Brenda's face to turn somber, as she remembered the mysterious tragedy at the train bridge. What does she want with Michelle? she had to have been thinking. Couldn't the poor girl rest in peace?

But instead her face lit up in recognition. "Michelle was one of my daughter's best friends in school! They still keep in touch, actually. Michelle lives in Chicago now, but her older sister, Elizabeth, is still around. Last I heard, she was a teacher at Mayville High School."

~~~~~~

"So, as predicted, my grandma had a few glasses of wine on Thanksgiving," Kaitlin said conspiratorially. She leaned over the table and the steam from her vanilla latte fogged her glasses. "I asked her if she knew your great-grandma, and she went off. She said some really wild stuff."

"Like what?" I was mostly intrigued, but a little bit scared.

"Okay, so I kind of egged her on, because she already said that thing about the Bouchard women being witches. I asked if your great-grandma had hexed her. Then she said they put a spell on everyone in town that lasted for generations. Okay, this gets pretty creepy, are you sure you want to hear?"

"Yeah," I said. My toes were nervously and uncontrollably tapping against the floor. "Put it all out there."

"Remember that she's definitely making all this up. I don't believe any of it. So, she said Marie's daughter, who would be your grandma, drowned in the river when she was eighteen. She claims that 'those witches' brought her back from the dead. She said, 'That girl was dead, but no one seemed to think anything of it when she reappeared days later.' And then I could barely tell what she was saying because she got all quiet and muttered to herself about mind tricks and multiple lives." Kaitlin leaned back in her chair after delivering this information and sighed deeply, like she was relieved to get it off of her chest. "That's all I got."

"Well. That was weird." I wrapped my hands around my drink and rubbed my chewed thumbnails over the little mountain scene etched into the mug. "Thanks for the intel, Kait."

"You don't seem that freaked out," Kaitlin observed. "I was freaked out. I could barely fall asleep last night."

"I'm sure there's a very reasonable explanation for whatever she thinks happened."

~~~~~~

At the last minute, I made a minor change to the plan Liz and I had made to erase my time travel history, so I could forget Pete and move on with my life. But the new version of the plan still included a way to erase him and all of my time travel related memories, so I wasn't sure why I still remembered everything.

Sylvia Harrison's desperate pleas for her son messed me up. Ever since the nightmare I had a few days before that, when instead of holding onto the straps on my life jacket, the boy in the water was swept away by the current, I'd had lingering doubts that completely preventing my visits to 1953 was the right choice. My run-in with Sylvia justified them.

Once Dad confirmed that my fall out of the boat was a memory and not only a dream, I couldn't rule out the possibility that when I was little I may have traveled back to the moment Pete was struggling in the river as a boy. It was possible that my life jacket had saved us both.

If I'd saved Pete not once, but twice, I couldn't stand back and leave his fate up to, well, fate. And I still didn't trust Liz enough to leave it up to her, either. Initially, she didn't want me in 1953 at all, because I was too close to Pete and she didn't want her family's timeline to change.

So, in my note to Liz, I'd asked her to be in Palmer during the week of August 16th, 1953. I asked her to keep Rose from swimming in the river on the evening Pete and I were at the drive-in, but if she wasn't successful in doing that, I asked her to be there to help me find Rose if she disappeared. I requested that she meet me at a boat repair and service shop that I remembered passing on the side of the road when Rose and I were walking back toward Palmer after our return from 1886.

If we avoided the bar where I'd used the phone to call Liz, and therefore avoided Pete's step-dad, Frank, we'd prevent the fight that resulted in Frank being knocked out, which may have been the reason Pete left town. Then I would never have been hit by a car and Liz would have time to erase everything from my memory while I was still there. If everything went as I'd hoped, Pete would have the life in Palmer that he imagined.

The last thing I wanted was for Liz to tell me to travel back to 2016 through the river instead of the pool. Then the image that haunted Eric, of me floating in the pool at night surrounded by my own blood, would be gone, too.

~~~~~~

After texting Eric to make sure he was home, I waited for him at his front door. We hadn't actually talked about anything that had happened over the past couple of days and I needed to find out if he still knew anything. Maybe I was going to remember it all no matter what, like how I remembered both versions of the last few years of my grandma's life, or how when I reversed time, I remained completely aware of how those seconds could have, or would have, been different.

"What's up?" Eric asked when he opened the door in a sweatshirt and shorts. He crossed his arms over his chest and frowned.

"I just have a question," I stared at his bare feet. And the shiny hair on his legs. Why did guys wear shorts in the winter? "Uh, do you remember witnessing any... suspicious activity at the pool last summer? Possibly involving me?"

When I raised my eyes, he looked annoyed, but then it shifted to curiosity. "Um, do you remember anything like that?"

"I remember all of it. I was just checking to see if you do, too."

"Yeah," he sighed. "Nothing is different, is it?"

"Well, it sounds like Liz and Michelle both are alive and well in 2016. So that's different." I was glad to have someone to share the good news with, and I bounced up and down a little in a subdued happy dance. Eric didn't seem to share my excitement.

"That's great," he said in a dull voice. "Mission accomplished."

Dr. Navarro, still in a fuzzy robe over plaid pajama pants, crept up behind Eric and said, "Vanessa, come in! Don't stand there with the door open, Eric, it's freezing." Then she padded away in her slippers.

But Eric didn't invite me in. "Was that it?" he asked.

"Yeah, I have to get to work." The truth was that I still had almost an hour until my shift, but it seemed like he didn't want me to stick around.

"Alright. Later."

And then the heavy door of the Rockmore House shut in my face.

~~~~~~

In the Mayville High staff directory, there was only one Elizabeth and her picture was a near-perfect match to the Liz I knew. Elizabeth Hall, Science, [email protected].

I emailed her while I sat at the break room table at the Shipyard. I knew she wouldn't receive it until Monday, but I couldn't wait.

Hi Liz,

You may not remember me, but we met in 1993 and went to a Stones concert together at one point. I was down near the site of the Olympia recently. Can you believe it's gone? We lost touch after that show, didn't we? So, how's life? Could we talk sometime?

I signed with my name and phone number and waited.

~~~~~~

After hearing nothing for a week, I drove to Mayville High after school one day and waited for Liz in the staff parking lot. When I saw her leave the school, I jumped out of my car and walked toward her. She smiled politely as we crossed paths and I almost kept walking.

"Ms. Hall?" I blurted instead.

She stopped and appeared disconcerted as she was probably trying to determine if I was a student, past or present.

"It's Vanessa. Do you remember me?" The suspicion in her eyes suggested that she did. "I know it's been a long time, but I was hoping you could help me figure something out."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I don't remember having you in any of my classes, Vanessa. You must have the wrong teacher." Then she quickly strode away, her long black puffer coat swishing as she walked.

"It's about Pete. Your uncle?" She ignored me and walked faster. I tossed out key words and phrases while I followed shortly behind her. "The Rolling Stones? 1969? The Olympia? You met Paul there. Or Ethan, or whatever. I saw him the other day."

She stopped. "You mean you saw him at the Olympia," she said without turning around.

"And I saw him after that. This year. A few days ago."

Liz turned to face me. Her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold. Her long, wavy brown hair puddled in the hood of her coat. She looked softer than 1993 Liz, with her dark burgundy hair and heavy eyeliner and permanent scowl.

"My son is waiting in the car. I can't talk about this now, or ever. Please don't bother me again."

There was muffled heavy metal music drifting from a nearby vehicle and we both glanced in the direction the sound was coming from. She sighed when she laid eyes on him.

Her son was like fourteen. He was thrashing around to the music in the passenger seat, completely unaware of everything around him.

"I think he'll be okay for a minute," I said. "Please?"

"Alright. What is it you're trying to figure out?"

"At the train bridge, I gave you a note asking you to be in Palmer in 1953 to help me, with some other details. And it doesn't seem like it worked out. Why didn't it work?"

"I have no idea. That was over twenty years ago. Is there anything else?" she asked impatiently.

"When my grandma Rose came back from 1886, did you erase her time there from her memory?"

"I tried my best to, yeah."

"Can you do that for me?"

She made a face like she was rolling a sour candy around on her tongue. That was the scowl I remembered. "What part do you want to forget?"

"All of it. Everything that happened and everyone I met in the when I traveled to the past. You must understand that. It seems like you've put it all behind you, too." Her defensive stance relaxed a bit and her expression softened and suddenly she looked like a mom who wanted to give me a hug. "I don't know if it ever happened to my grandma again, but probably not, because you erased her memory of it."

"It's basically hypnosis. It's not magic or anything. The mind can be easily convinced that things that didn't happen did, and vice versa."

"Yeah, I heard a lot about that the other day." I pulled Ethan's card from my pocket and handed it to Liz. "The date on the back is when the exhibit opens. It's all about memory and alternate timelines and stuff like that." She blinked rapidly as she read the card and tried to give it back to me. "You can keep it," I said.

She pocketed the card. "It's not a perfect process. Especially if I'm trying to make you forget months worth of memories. You might end up with flashes of scenes in your head that seem like memories that you don't understand or that don't fit. You'll probably dismiss them as dreams, or something from a book you read, or a story someone told you, or a scene from a movie you saw. You'll feel kind of dissociated from them, in a way."

"But you could try?"

She nodded with her face set in determination and a hint of mischief. For as different and grown up as she seemed, the Liz I'd known was still in there somewhere.

"I could try."