Remember tomorrow, p.14
Remember Tomorrow, page 14
Laura lobbed a pitch over home plate. I swung and cracked a grounder down the first-base line. Mike raced after it. Laura pitched underhand, softball style, and was actually surprisingly accurate, enough to the point she probably could have played on the girls’ softball team. She pitched more accurately than I did though her slow deliveries were easy to hit. She enjoyed pitching, probably since she didn’t have to run all over retrieving balls. I preferred her pitching to Mike’s, whose fastballs made me look like the amateur I was.
I hit a couple more balls although I whiffed a few too—one pretty badly, eliciting giggles from Laura. I couldn’t help but laugh at my own ineptness as well, but I liked making Laura laugh so didn’t mind that I sucked.
The CD switched to the best song on the disc, “Runaway Train,” as I got ready for another pitch. Mike had picked up the most recent Soul Asylum CD, but his stereo wasn’t portable, so we were listening on my boom box.
Laura wound up for another pitch but then paused as her eyes tracked over to my left and she stiffened. Mike looked concerned, too, and walked back in toward the infield, his face grim.
I quickly saw the reason. Tommy Tomlinson and his three pals were quickly approaching on their bikes, making a beeline right for us. We had no time to run or hide—they’d already spotted us.
“What’ve we got here, Ty?” Tommy yelled as he skidded to a stop beside the old battered wooden bleachers.
“Looks like Turd and his pussy friends,” Ty answered.
Tommy got off his bike and strutted toward us, his fellow bullies a couple steps behind. Mike and I had moved up to stand protectively near Laura.
“What do you want, Tommy?” Laura asked.
“What kinda faggot music is that?” asked Ernesto, one of the other bullies.
“Sucks donkey balls.” Tommy kicked my boom box over in the grass, and the music stopped with a screech.
“Hey!” I started forward, fists clenched at my sides.
“Hey, what?” Tommy challenged.
“Leave my radio alone.”
Tommy grinned. “Or what, Turd?”
Ernesto tripped me as I walked past him to get to my boom box, worried Tommy had broken it. I fell to my hands and knees, and the four laughed. Tommy’s large shoe crashed into my ribs when I tried to get up, sending me rolling over in pain, clutching my side.
“You gonna do somethin’, Mikey?” Tommy challenged.
I could see Mike wanted to jump to my defense, but four on one wasn’t good odds.
Tommy pointed at Mike. “Grab him.”
Ernesto and the fourth kid, a redhead with buck teeth, grabbed Mike’s arms and held him after a brief struggle.
“Leave them alone!” Laura, all four-foot-ten of her, strode up to Tommy and gave him a good shove to the chest.
The bully towered over her, but he rocked back a step. He laughed, then shoved her back. Laura sprawled onto her backside in the dirt, eyes wide with surprise. Mike gave a shout of indignation, but Buck Tooth slugged him in the stomach and he folded over, wheezing.
At the sight of my friends being abused, Laura especially, a surge of fury like I’d never known came over me in an instant. Ignoring the pain in my side, I got to my feet and dashed over to my Louisville Slugger, which I’d dropped halfway to the pitcher’s mound.
Ty was the closest, so I gave him a good whack across the shoulder blades. He yowled like an angry cat and reeled away. I surged past him and laid into Tommy just as he turned. The bat clipped his jaw and rocked his head back. The next blow struck his hastily raised forearm squarely, and bone snapped. He screamed and fell on his ass. I rained three or four more good blows down on his thigh, back, and shoulder as he curled up in the dirt.
A couple threatening steps toward the two assholes holding Mike was enough to send them running for their bikes. Mike was staring at me wide-eyed, as was Laura, who still sat in the dirt, her hat knocked off.
“Are you okay?” I extended a hand and helped her up.
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She gave me a hug, which I gladly returned.
“Yo Tommy, you comin’?” Ty called.
The other three bullies were already on their bikes, ready to take off but waiting for their fallen ringleader.
The chief bully was still on the ground, tears streaking his red face. He got slowly to his feet.
“Find someone else to pick on,” I said threateningly, bringing the bat back as if to take another swing.
Tommy took off at a shambling run, clutching his broken arm awkwardly to his chest. Mike helped him on his way with a swift kick to the rump.
Tommy got on his bike clumsily, then the four of them took off, hurling curses and flipping us off.
My sudden jolt of courage and rage evaporated, and I sank to my knees. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah.” Mike clapped me on the shoulder. “Dude, that was awesome!”
“I guess I did kinda go Casino on his ass, huh?” I grinned.
“Casino?” Mike looked puzzled.
Oh, maybe that movie hasn’t come out yet. I was thinking of the brutal beatdown scene in the cornfield with baseball bats. “Oh, nothing,” I muttered.
The three of us shared a triumphant group hug for a moment, then decided we’d better vacate the area in case Tommy’s dad came looking for us. He was an older version of his son, a brute who worked at one of the local garages. Lonny Tomlinson frequented Luke’s Pub and drove an obnoxiously loud seventies Camaro. Gossip had it he was a regular guest of Sheriff Coleman’s holding cells for drunk-and-disorderly conduct. I doubted he’d be at all pleased to receive a hospital bill for treatment of his son’s broken arm.
My boom box seemed okay, much to my relief. The CD had been knocked loose from the tray when it was kicked over. It had a fresh scratch but still seemed to play just fine once I righted the boom box and reset the disc.
The three of us had victorious smiles on our faces as we walked home, and for good reason. Tommy and his goons never picked on us again after that. When I thought about it later, I realized the difference was Laura. In my past timeline, I’d never had the courage to stand up to them and was bullied relentlessly throughout high school, as were Mike and many other kids. Laura and I had no longer been close in my earlier timeline, but now that we were, she was the catalyst to fuel my courage.
-45-
Jun. 23, 1994
Perhaps I had gone a bit overboard when I unloaded on Tommy Tomlinson at the ball field yesterday, but it was well deserved. Tommy’s father obviously didn’t think so, unfortunately.
“Where’s that goddamn kid of yours, Charlotte?” a man downstairs shouted. “I want to talk to him.”
“What the hell do you want, Lonny?” Mom’s voice had steel in it, a rarity except for when she disciplined me though I hadn’t needed much of that for several years.
“I wanna talk to your kid!”
“Not happening. You can talk to me instead.”
“Fine. You know what that little shit did to my boy? He and his friends jumped him in the park and beat the hell out of him with their baseball bats! I ought to report them to the sheriff. Hell, maybe I’ll find me a lawyer and sue your ass till you ain’t got a dime left to your name!”
Ouch. This isn’t going well. I sat on the top landing, listening to the argument below. Mom held her ground, and I could tell from her rigid posture she was angry. I could just make out the bulk of Lonny Tomlinson on the porch and imagined his face red with anger and his eyes bleary from drinking the prior night.
“Your bully of a kid got a beating from some other children in the neighborhood? I’d say it was well deserved.”
“Bullshit. He was attacked! And I had to fuckin’ fork over three hundred and fifty bucks at the damn hospital for X-rays, a cast, and whatever other shit they did to fix up my kid’s arm!”
“Tommy probably has seventy or eighty pounds on my son,” Mom shot back, “and his friends aren’t any bigger. One of them is a seventy-pound girl.”
“That don’t matter. My boy got ambushed. You too dumb to know what that means?”
Mom’s voice was icy. “I know what self-defense means. And I highly doubt the sheriff will be interested in arresting three fourteen-year-olds for defending themselves against a known bully. And I should know—I serve Vernon his coffee every morning. And I hear you aren’t exactly on his Christmas-card list.”
Good for you, Mom! I sat there with a fierce grin on my face. I just wished she had stood up to Dean like that. A moment later, something clicked. Vernon? Didn’t know Coleman’s first name was Vernon. Actually, that fits—he does look like a Vernon.
A loud thump came from downstairs—probably Lonny slamming his fist against the doorframe. “Think you’re smart, huh, Charlotte? You ain’t heard the end of this, bitch!”
Lonny stormed off the porch, and Mom shut the door, resting her forehead against it for a long moment. Lonny’s Camaro roared to life outside. He gunned the engine as loud as he could several times to annoy all the neighbors, then he took off with a squeal of burning rubber.
“You all right, Mom?” I asked once the room quieted.
She looked up and gave me a strained smile. “You heard all that?”
“Kinda hard not to.”
“Yeah, guess so.” She laughed. “You want to come down here and tell me what happened?”
I did so, starting with us playing ball and Tommy and his goons arriving. The story went off the tracks at some point as I mentioned how Tommy bullied lots of kids, myself included on several occasions. By the time I was done, I was so emotional that I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“I’m proud of you, Jason” was Mom’s unexpected response.
“You are?” I blinked at her in surprise.
“Yes, I am. You stood up for yourself and your friends. I just wish you hadn’t broken that punk’s arm.”
“Yeah, probably took it a little too far. But he won’t be able to sue us—Mike and Laura will back me up. And you said Vernon won’t do anything about it.”
“Sheriff Coleman probably won’t,” she said. “But we’re barely getting by as it is. I can’t afford a lawyer to defend ourselves in court if that idiot actually tries to sue us. Even if we won…”
“Then we could recoup our legal costs, right?”
She looked at me in surprise for a moment then laughed. “Sometimes I forget you’re only fourteen, honey.” She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “You seem so grown up lately—I’m proud of you. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know, Mom.” I hugged her back.
-46-
Sep. 6, 1994
First day of high school. Again. Did anyone actually like high school the first time around? Well, I suppose the cool, popular kids might have. Neither descriptor applied to me, however. In my original timeline, I’d dropped out after my junior year while trying to come back from my accident. The brutal combination of being months behind in my classes, the tough rehabilitation, and the ongoing bullying all ended up being too much to take, so I dropped out. My grades hadn’t been terrible, and the teachers had given me a break due to the extenuating circumstances, but the whole ordeal was still too tough. And I hadn’t been especially motivated about school to begin with.
Now that I’m a little older and wiser, this should be a breeze, right?
“Guess we go to the auditorium,” Mike said, pointing at a sign. He didn’t seem any more enthused than I did about school.
Freshman Orientation in Auditorium, the sign said helpfully with an arrow pointing toward the far end of the main school building.
“Come on.” Laura grabbed my arm and pulled when I hesitated. A straight-A student, she was looking forward to high school and taking more advanced classes.
I was feeling almost as nervous as I had the night of my accident before confronting Dean and taking the car. The bad memories—or more precisely, the bad impressions I retained from high school—were powerful. I remembered very little of it, other than how traumatizing it had been.
But now I had my two best friends with me, along with the benefit of a little extra wisdom, or so I hoped.
I can do this.
The three of us went inside the auditorium. And surprisingly, that was the start of a mostly good four years of high school.
-47-
October 1994
What had formerly been our Super Mario challenge nights in Laura’s basement had morphed into Street Fighter challenges instead since that game was all the rage—and for good reason. It rocked!
Mike always played the military guy, unsurprisingly. Laura preferred the girl, Chun-Li, and I liked to mix it up so that we didn’t always end up having the same boring matchups over and over.
We were fairly evenly matched at first since the game was new to us. I beat Laura more often than not, getting some amount of revenge over all the drubbings I’d suffered during our numerous Super Mario World bouts. Mike quickly became the master of Street Fighter II, though, able to execute the most complex special moves with little difficulty. At first, I wondered if he secretly had his own game system at home and practiced like crazy, but he didn’t. He was just a natural.
Molly enjoyed hanging out with us too, for where there were teenagers with potato chips and other snacks, there were bound to be a number of tasty treats thrown her way and crumbs left behind. She seemed just as happy as the rest of us during those get-togethers.
Laura’s sister, Jennifer, had gone away to Mesa State College in Grand Junction to study psychology. Her boyfriend, Brad, had gone there too.
School was going pretty well. Biology and political science were pretty easy. Algebra, on the other hand, was a royal pain in the ass, but Laura was there to help me out, as usual. Mike, too, was struggling, so we met regularly after school a couple times a week to study together.
I was disappointed to find out the music class being offered was only for students who played band instruments, like clarinets, horns, and the like. But I was still studying with my tutor, Mr. Lewis, as long as Mom’s tips were good enough. He seemed puzzled but delighted that my skill had increased so much over the past year, even mentioning on one occasion that I seemed to have taken an extra couple years of classes. I could only smile and tell him I’d simply been practicing hard. I’m not sure if he bought it, but he just went with the flow, which was cool with me.
-48-
Apr. 15, 1995
We celebrated my fifteenth birthday with a barbecue at our house a couple days after the fact on a Saturday, with burgers and hot dogs off the grill. April was normally hit or miss weatherwise, but that week had been nice and warm, though the weather prognosticators were predicting a brief return of winter in a few days. But I planned to enjoy the hell out of the nice weather while I could.
Mike and Laura came over, of course, with Molly in tow. Laura had floated the idea of inviting her friend Hannah and a few other people she was acquainted with at school, but I told her not to, that I preferred just us being there.
Mom grilled up the burgers and dogs, and we jammed some CDs on my boom box. My eyes lit up when I opened their gifts. White Zombie’s Astro-Creep: 2000, just released a few days earlier, came from Mike. And Laura got me Megadeth’s Youthanasia. The two were obviously in cahoots since Laura gave me a CD I actually really wanted. I’d have probably ended up with some U2 or Aerosmith if it was up to her.
Upon Laura’s request, I broke out my guitar and played a couple songs for them: GnR’s “Patience” and Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer.” Mike and Laura joined me, singing the parts they knew as I played, the latter with a better voice than the former. Both were big fans of my performing by then, which gave me a good feeling. Mike had been distraught when his dad didn’t allow him to get a drum set, which he had wanted so that the two of us could rock out in his basement.
That was a good day, maybe one of the best of my childhood. Close competition would have been the day I’d seen Laura again for the first time in this new timeline, when I first played for her and we got ice cream from the truck.
The only bad thing was that Mom had started working a second job at the Roadhouse the week prior, and she was on shift there that night. Despite my pleas, she had applied and accepted a job there after learning one of her friends was making almost double at the Roadhouse what my mom was in tips at the diner, and we desperately needed the money. I couldn’t fault her for that, especially since she’d bought me my very own TV and VCR for my birthday.
My new gifts worked out great. The three of us ordered pizza after Mom went to work and watched a double feature in my room. DVDs were going to be out in another few years, and the VHS tape was oblivious to the fact it was in the early stages of its death throes, but we had good times nonetheless. We went down to Blockbuster and, after the usual half hour or more of indecision, came back with The Crow, which was an awesome flick with an equally great soundtrack that immediately went on my to-get list. The second movie we rented was Street Fighter. We probably picked that one out since we loved the game, plus it had Van Damme in it. I had a sneaking suspicion it would probably suck, based on a ghosting memory from another timeline, and that suspicion was later confirmed. The flick was pretty terrible, but at least it was laughably bad. All in all, we had fun laughing at the latter, and all of us honestly enjoyed The Crow a great deal.
School was actually going quite well. Having my two best friends beside me for support and no longer getting bullied all the time made a big difference. I had even managed to avoid any detention this time around, with no Ds or Fs to be found on my report card. Nor had I been hanging out with any undesirables to smoke pot or score booze.
