Just Plain Weird (44 page)

         
“I don’t understand how you remember,” I said. “You weren’t supposed to remember a thing.”

         
“Mmmm?” she said, still distracted by her thoughts. “Oh, that…” she said, but didn’t go on to explain. “I’m sorry, Travis, I just saw everything going a little more smoothly-- our reuniting and all. I certainly never thought you would pass out. That’s not the way I pictured things. I thought maybe it would be very romantic and all. Ah, maybe I just built it all up too much.”

         
“But how did you remember?” I insisted.

         
“I didn’t,” she said, and dropped her arms. She reached out and grabbed my hand as though it was so natural a gesture she had been doing for years, although in this reality it was the first time. “I didn’t remember a thing-- not at first. About a year ago, I started having these weird dreams. They were like dreams but somehow not like dreams. They were about everything that happened, except that they were all jumbled up. As time went, I had them more and more often and they started to follow an order and-- well, let’s just say there were a few weeks there when I thought I was losing my mind. It was like having memories that never really happened. I can’t tell you how strange that seems. It was only after a while that I realized what I was experiencing weren’t my memories but yours. Everything fell into place and began to make sense, then.”

         
“How could you be having my memories?”

         
“The artifact did something to me, I think. You remember how it seemed as if I was reading your mind. Well, I really was. I think the artifact made that happen, and even then I knew why. We were worrying about never seeing each other again, and even if we did meet by chance, you would be a total stranger to me. I think the artifact fixed it so that I could read your mind then, and also after everything was returned the reality we’re in now. That way I could know everything that happened by remembering your memories. That was the little secret I knew before I left you. Otherwise I wouldn’t have left so calmly, I promise you that-- Doc would have had to drag me outside for sure,” she said, chuckling at the thought.

         
“So you remember everything?” I asked.

         
“Everything,” she assured me, and bobbed her eyebrows in a mischievous way. “I know everything afterward, too,” she went on, more somberly. “Like when you hurt your leg. Believe it or not, I actually felt the pain. Sometimes, I used to wake in the middle of the night screaming. I had to tell Doc I was having nightmares. I know you waited, like I asked, even though there were times you really doubted that it all ever happened. That’s pretty darned romantic, if you ask me. I know a lot of things, Travis. I know your father sat around for months waiting for fate to send him the perfect job. I know he’s got that gross toenail trimming habit. I know your mother really, really needs to quit smoking. I know that you’ve loved me from the first time you saw me, even before the artifact had any influence on you, and you, you creep, never said a word, which you should have, because, well, it sort of important.” She stopped suddenly there, at the side of the road, as cars passed us. She faced me fully, and asked, “What now, Travis?”

         
“We go on, I supposed,” I said.

         
“You mean this time without the craziness?”

         
“Yeah.”

         
“Is that even possible? I mean, I’ve been thinking about it, and even without the craziness, it seems pretty scary.”

         
“That’s normal,” I said. “That’s life.”

         
“Is it?”

         
“Yeah.”

         
“Then we’re all right?”

         
“Totally.”

         
“And the artifact never contacted you?”

         
“No,” I said. “I was online for hours every week for months, and I never heard a word from it.”

         
“So nothing weird is going to come up again-- nothing will ever keep us apart again.”

         
She sighed in relief, as though she needed to hear it from someone else that from now on everything would be all right. She grabbed my hand and we resumed walking. The sun was starting to slip down into the west, there was a chill in the air, and I had no idea where we were headed. She suddenly jerked free of me, all excited, and started walking backward out in front of me.

         
“Hey,” she said. “You remember that night-- that night before we tried to fix everything and accidentally messed up the world?” she asked, as though I could ever forget. “We were trying to figure out something to do, something wild, and all we did was go home, eat pizza and watch movies. Why don’t we do something right now, something totally crazy?”

         
“Like drive off a cliff?” I asked.

         
She frowned. “I don’t think we could do anything
that
crazy. The artifact isn’t around to heal us if we get hurt. I mean something else. It’s perfect, really. We just met, right? That’s what everyone thinks. So let’s do something absolutely scandalous. How much money you have on you?”

         
“About eight bucks,”

         
“Great,” she said, really on a roll now. “We’ll get a cheap hotel room--”

         
“For eight bucks?”

         
“-- and we’ll make out all night.”

         
“For eight bucks?”

         
“Oh, all right,” she said. “Not enough money, right. Well, there’s a big park up the road. We’ll strip naked and run through the park--”

         
“We will?”

         
“-- I have a good tan all over, if you get my meaning. We’ll run naked through the dark.”

         
“Why?”

         
“Why? Because, that’s why?”

         
“You ever hear of poison oak?” I asked.

         
“There’s no poison oak here,” she said. “Or is there? Okay, something else then. How about… how about…”

         
She kept on rattling off ideas, each more harebrained than the last. All I saw in our immediate future was a pizza and a movie. Yet I kept following her, listening, until it finally occurred to me that maybe I believed in fate, after all. If you just go with the flow, no matter what weird things happen along the way, you always end up exactly where you belong.