PENNED

“Ready, Angie?” Parker asked me.

I glanced at the computer as it finished running its comprehensive preliminary test for the fifth time in a row. The screen flashed green. We were all set.

“As I’ll ever be,” I answered with a forced grin. We were about to make the impossible possible. I was about to become the first human to time travel. I’m not sure what could prepare me for that.

The project had begun almost three years ago when Parker and I were both undergrads. We were in the same upper level physics class with Dr. Bean. No, I swear that’s his name. For whatever reason, Dr. Bean liked us and invited us to work on his time travel experiments. Well, he didn’t tell us they were time travel experiments. He just said that we’d be on the “cutting edge of physics research.”

Whatever the case, Parker and I were hooked right away. Even when we figured out what Dr. Bean was trying to do, we didn’t back away from the challenge. Even when Dr. Bean died of a stroke in the middle of our research (the guy was ancient), and the school pulled funding, we couldn’t stop. We found some crazy billionaire to keep funding us, and pulled about a thousand all-nighters.

But it was worth it. Because now, we were going to make history.

I stood in place while Parker made his way up my body checking all of the equipment I had on me. When he reached my face, he pause and brushed a stray lock of hair out of the way.

I pressed Parker’s hand to my cheek and then pushed it back to him. “I’ll be fine. All of our calculations say this is going to work.”

“Calculations mean nothing to a guy who is about to send his girlfriend into the past.”

“I’ll be fine,” I repeated holding his head with my hands. It wasn’t that I necessarily believed it with all my heart. I just wanted to ease his mind.

He nodded solemnly and stepped back out of the pod. The pod was the anchor point. It didn’t matter where we went into the past, we would always return to the pod about 20 seconds later.

“How far back are you going?”

“About ten years,” I said innocently, entering the date into the machine.

He raised an eyebrow. I knew what he was thinking. Ten years was a little farther back than most of our projections, but it was about more to me than projections. You see, Parker has this tattoo on his the inside of his forearm with a date from ten years ago. I’d asked him about it, but he never wanted to talk about it. Maybe it was overly snoopy, but I’m a scientist. Curiosity runs in my blood.

But in either case, I wasn’t about to tell Parker about my secret mission. The pod was smart enough to find the person I was looking for in the past and send me to their general area on the date I specified. More than likely, I wouldn’t even be able to find him.

“Alright,” Parker said, pulling me out of my thoughts, “you’ll have about two hours on the ground wherever you land. Are you sure you’re ready.”

I gave him a look, and he put his hands up in the air. He dropped the other one and held up just the one hand and began the countdown.

 Five.

I heard the gears in the pod start whirring.

Four.

Parker kept his countdown going with one hand and hovered the other one over the emergency
shutdown, just in case.

Three.

I suddenly felt like I was floating. I looked down, but my feet were still on the ground.

Two.

The air around me shimmered.

One.

Suddenly, my whole world shifted. I felt like I tripped forward and was yanked through an ocean of sludge.

Then it was over. My vision cleared and I was sitting on my butt in the middle of some sort of park. A German shepherd was frozen in front of me with its mouth half open, hovering over a rubber ball, looking at me like I’d just fell out of the sky. I stood up, and he scurried back.

His owner walked through a copse of trees, and his dog bolted over to him. “What’s wrong, Shark?” He looked up and saw me. “Oh hi. Sorry about him, he’s not usually this much of scaredy cat.”

I smiled naturally and tossed him the ball. “No problem.” I paused, considering whether what I was about to say. “Hey, would you mind telling me the date?”

“It’s June 16th,” he said with a raised eyebrow.

I wanted to ask the year, but I didn’t want to act suspicious. “Thanks.” I waited until he’d left and then walked out through the trees. I was in some sort of park. I looked around for Parker, or rather, Parker at a younger age. Actually, I wasn’t sure I was going to recognize him. But I couldn’t see him anywhere.

So I started walking. The park was pretty. I was a little warm wearing all of the equipment I was under my long sleeved shirt in the middle of summer. I came to a bridge over a long gorge, and I wondered for the first time where on earth I was. The area was mountainous at least. Maybe Colorado? Virginia? Geography was never my strong suit.

I looked over the edge of the bridge and had to hold onto the edge to stop the waves of vertigo.
“Long way down, huh?” I heard a young male voice say.

I looked up to see a teenage boy standing on the edge of the bridge. I would tell from the look in his eyes something was wrong.

“Um… yes,” I said.

“Would be easy to just…” He nudged a pebble off the edge of the bridge. I didn’t hear it hit the bottom below.

Now I knew something was wrong. “You, uh, you alright?”

He looked down at me. “No.”

“Okay.” I could felt my heartbeat pounding through my neck. “Can I help?”

While he stared at me, I wondered if what I was doing was right. Was I trying to stop this kid? This was the past. Stopping him could be very bad. Or good. But looking at him, so hurt, so lost, I made my choice.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

He looked away from me. His eyes shined. “My sister’s dead. She was my best friend.”

I took a deep breath and then swallowed. “What happened?”

“Cancer. Nothing I could do. Nothing anyone could do. First my mom, and now my sister.”

I was starting to panic. I knew the pain of losing someone. My dad had died when I was around this kid’s age. What could I say to him? I didn’t even know who he was. “What’s your name?”

“John.”

“Okay, John. Maybe you can come down, and we’ll talk about this.”

He looked back down at me, angrily this time. “Why? Why should I? Who would care?”

I set my jaw. “Your sister, for starters.”

I could tell him I’d thrown him now. He opened his mouth to say something, but I didn’t let him. “She was your best friend. That’s what you said, right? How do you think she’d feel if you throw yourself off this bridge?”

“She’s not here anymore.”

Then I saw the little silver cross necklace hanging from his fist. It must have been hers, I realized. “But she’s somewhere, right? You believe that?”

He just looked at me. I could see the tears forming at the edge of his eyes.

“If she is, she’s watching you right now. She’s screaming for you to listen to me. She wants you to live your life the best you can.”

Now he was sniffling heavily. The first tear rolled down his cheek. But he still held onto the bridge with a death grip. I stepped closer to him, reaching my hand up.

“If you have to, do it for her. Live for her.”

He reached out his hand slowly. I lunged forward and grabbed it, pulling back quickly. He stepped off the ledge and into my arms. He collapsed, sobbing. I knelt with him and just held him. He sobbed for almost 40 minutes.

Finally, his sobbing subsided to just sniffles. “Thank you,” he whispered.

I stood up and helped him to stand. “Are you alright?” I asked softly.

He nodded, but said, “Not yet. But I will be.”

That was the most I could wish for. “What will you do now?”

He looked down at the little silver cross in his hands. “I’m going home. I’m going to hug my dad.”

I nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”

He suddenly wrapped me in a bone-crushing hug. “Thank you again.”

I knew now that I did the right thing. Whatever came in the future because of this, I did the right thing. I’d came here looking to satisfy my curiosity, but I’d found something so much more important.

He let go and stepped back, his face turning pink, realizing that I was an adult female, and he was a teenage boy.

“You’re welcome,” I said with a smile.

He started to walk away. “Hey wait!” I called. “What was your name again?”

“John,” he said. “But I usually go by my middle name. Parker.”

The kid turned around before he could see my jaw drop open. Parker. My Parker. I could see it now. The ice blue eyes. The unruly black hair. That was Parker when he was fifteen.

I suddenly felt weak. I found a bench to sit on. My mouth felt dry. I just couldn’t believe it. I sat on that bench for the rest of the time I had left in the past. Soon, I felt the pod calling me home. Home to Parker. My vision shifted and I felting the tipping feeling again, and then I was back.

I blinked to clear my vision, and Parker was there. He was rapidly unhooking me from the equipment.
“That was the longest 20 seconds of my life,” he said.

I almost knocked him off his feet with a ferocious hug. I let go after a minute and he just looked at me bewildered. Then he looked down at the date display inside the pod. He looked at me with a new sense of wonder. “It was you. You were the one on the bridge. I can’t believe I never realized it.”

He stepped back. “Are you mad?” I asked.

He laughed. “Mad? How could I ever be mad? You saved my life.”

Then he pulled me in for a kiss. Then, he whispered in my ear. “You know, I guess this means you saved my life twice.”

“Twice? When was the second time?”

He grinned widely. “When you agreed to go out with me. You saved me from spending the rest of my life alone.”

Turns out I saved Parker’s life three times. Because a year later, I agreed to marry him.

*Disclaimer: artwork not mine