Chapter 17: Differences
Lying in bed, her arms tucked neatly by her sides under the thick comforter, Samantha woke up but her eyes remained closed. She was awake deep inside, her senses observing the world, but not yet seeming to belong to it. The blankets had trapped her heat and she was warm evenly over her entire body, so comfortable she could have been suspended in liquid the same temperature as herself.
However, thin concern was the true emotion of her core. It was fighting to get out and to the front. Samantha, the almost conscious part of herself, was fighting against the emotion because she wanted to sleep. It was still dark out and it couldn’t be time for school. The concern was persistent, though, and it was growing, feeding off the information her deadened senses provided. It didn’t hurt, but it chewed and nibbled like a rat at cardboard, until Samantha could no longer ignore it without effort, so she rolled over in bed. The soft mattress she felt beneath her conflicted sharply with something inside, like a memory that was deflating. The comforter pulled up and cold air came in, mixing with the wonderful stagnant air beneath them. Samantha frowned, fought for sleep, and realized with disgust that she had lost.
She sat up, the comforter falling off the front of her nightgown and into her lap, looking around. That thread of concern flared into something like an alarm, bleating red behind her eyes. What was the last thing she remembered? Mr. Henson had her chained to the wall of a basement and had injected her with something. She had felt it crawl up her arms, wiggling towards her heart. She tried to break the chains but her strength was sapped immediately. She had given up and the room had gotten soft and she had passed out and….
Woken up here in bed? Samantha jumped out and her feet hit the cold floor. The feet were clean and unmarked, just like they always were. No mud on her knees and no sign of dirty clothes on her floor. Her hands went over her thin body, checking for anything suspicious. The syringe needle point bright even in the dim light of the basement memory and she yanked the loose end of her night gown up and looked at her outer left thigh. There was no sign of a needle puncture. The skin was clear and unmarked.
She ran a hand back through her hair, feeling as if she had been born again as a baby but in a child’s body. Nothing looked quite as she remembered it but nothing looked different either. Had her plan worked or was she put here by Mr. Henson after he injected her? And was Mark still dead? The memory came up to her conscious thoughts with no warning and no buffer, and she sat down on the bed with no strength in her legs and seemingly no water for tears. She stared at the floor, remembering his body and how it had fallen lifelessly onto the floor. And Mr. Henson had smiled.
Did it work, Samantha wondered, or am I something like a slave now? How could I know?
Samantha stood up and walked out of her room, sensing it was still early but for some reason not looking at her clock. She ran down the dark hall to the kitchen counter, everything looking familiar and different simultaneously. She picked up the phone and dialed her grandfather’s number. She sat with the phone wedged against her ear, leaning against the counter. The ring, click, pause, ring, click, pause repeated several times and an answering machine came on. She heard her grandfather’s voice.
“Hi. I’m not in but expect you to leave a message. Thanks.”
The pause, the beep. “Hi Grandpa. It’s Samantha. Can you call me as soon as you can? Something happened and I need to talk to you.”
Samantha hung up the phone and turned to go back to her bedroom, her mind feeling like colors moving so fast they all look white. She took three steps across the kitchen and stopped. Neil was standing beneath the doorway to the living room, watching her with his arms crossed in front of his chest. Samantha was so startled that she put a hand over her eyes, feeling her legs wobble and the world recede from white to gray. Then the feeling passed and she was standing straight and firm, but still not understanding.
“Grandpa?”
“Who did you think it was,” he asked mildly. “It sounds like you forgot I was staying the night.”
Samantha frowned. Her grandfather wasn’t spending the night because he wasn’t feeling well. Her Dad had told her the night before when he got home. That was why she was able to head out to the tunnel. Neil watched her face progress from complete confusion, to rational deduction, to baffled acceptance, and nodded.
“Why don’t you come into the living room and sit down sweetie? I think you have something to tell me.”
Samantha did as he asked, but she couldn’t remember crossing the room and sitting down. Now she was afraid. Not afraid of whether or not her plan worked, or whether or not she was a slave to Mr. Henson and those operators he worked for, but if she had come back to a world so changed she wouldn’t fit in. Did she save Mark but kill her own place? What if her other friends were somehow never born in this world? Perhaps it would have been better if she had not been born either.
“I am Samantha,” she said suddenly, causing her grandfather to look up from packing his pipe with a sharp, frightened glance.
“I am Samantha Branson,” she said, more loudly this time.
“Yes, you are,” Neil said.
Samantha had never seen him smoke before. She felt like laughing her fright and confusion away, laughing until that was all she could remember, one endless stream of mirth.
“I am Samantha Branson!”
“Yes.”
“You don’t smoke Grandpa.”
“Sure I do. I’ve smoked since I was your age. Terrible habit. Don’t ever start because you can’t stop.”
“I’ve never seen you smoke.”
“Sure you have. Think back sweetie. Think back to when you were a baby. You are one day old and I am outside on the patio there, looking in on a cold November day. I’m out there instead of in here, freezing instead of being warm, because I needed to smoke on my pipe. Your mother refused to let me smoke around you, but you’ve seen it. You saw it on day one.”
“I’ve never seen you smoke.”
“Sure you have. Think back to when you were a baby.”
Samantha closed her eyes, felt the drag of fatigue on her senses, wanting to go back to sleep. What time was it, anyway? She thought about it as hard as she could. It was ridiculous, of course. No one could remember themselves at one day old. But she thought anyway. Her grandfather made it sound desperately important that she try and so she did. She thought about sitting in her mother’s arms and looking toward a dull bright light. She couldn’t really see, not yet, but she could sense. Her warm mother and her food. The tall man with the deep voice that became her father. And a shape behind the dull light, out away from her, surrounded by a cloud. The cloud was smoke.
“You were there,” Samantha said.
“Yes. And remember when you were one year old, at a birthday party in the backyard. Before your mother got the hammock and spa. Out on the patio, on a warm November evening, we were eating and you were crawling on a blanket. I walked away to smoke. And you tried to walk after me. You saw me then too.”
Samantha closed her eyes and thought back. She remembered the rough, hard surface beneath the blanket, and trying to pull the threads out of the weave. There was one thread in particular, bright blue, that had her attention and she couldn’t stop until the thread was free. Above her were mother, father, and Grandpa, talking, eating, and laughing. But that was above her, too far to touch, too strange to manipulate, and so she ignored them. She tried to walk, thinking that it was simple and never remembering that she couldn’t move exactly like this. One shape at the table stood out and pulled away. A cloud rose and she started to move after him, because it was so easy really. She walked off into the wet sticky stuff and fell forward, sensing fright as her face hit the ground.
“I remember,” she said. “I walked after you, but slipped on the grass and hit my face.”
“Yes. You cried for an hour after that one. You didn’t like the way the grass felt.”
“Why can I remember this Grandpa?”
“You should be able to sweetie. Those are your memories. They’re good ones, in fact. You only need to find them all and get them organized. The things that you think are your memories are just stories. They are fictions that you have told yourself over time. You need to let them go.”
Samantha stood bolt upright, one moment sitting relaxed, almost hypnotized, on the couch, the next standing as tense as bridge wire.
“Then it worked,” she said loudly.
“Yes. Whatever it was Sam, it must have worked well indeed. But please stay quiet. Your mother and father will wake.”
“It worked,” Samantha repeated.
“I think you must have changed history. I recognize your behavior well. I wore that particular cloak myself once, when I was much younger.”
Samantha sat back down, frightened all over again.
“I’m remembering two of everything,” she said.
“I know. It will pass quickly. Then it will be like it always has been.”
“I remember two of last night. You were sick, but now I think you were actually well, and you were here for dinner.”
“I was here for dinner. That was real, sweetie. The other memory is fiction. Let it go.”
“But that is why I… That is why I went outside last night. Because you were gone.”
“And why did you go outside,” Neil asked.
Samantha stopped. She had a clear choice here and she wasn’t sure the best choice was to tell her grandfather what had happened. Maybe it already had happened, or maybe it would happen in the future, but she couldn’t tell him until she knew, until she remembered more of her own life. Neil noticed the pause and seemed to be struggling with himself. Samantha figured he wanted to know what had happened just as much as she wanted to tell him, and he was trying to not to ask her directly.
Instead, she asked, “Grandpa? What happened to you yesterday evening when you were my age? Do you remember?”
As she was speaking the double memories conflicted with each other and she could remember her grandfather telling her how he and his friends had attacked Sanford Henson, beaten him up, and tossed him into a canal. The other memory, of a conversation she had with her Grandfather only yesterday, ended much differently.
“We talked about this yesterday,” Neil said, “but I know you aren’t remembering everything yet. As you probably know, that punk had blindsided me when we were playing football and I couldn’t hit him. I tried, and I tried with talent. I had lost control. But he dodged me easily. I was furious that he could beat me like that, so when my friends and I spotted him the next day, out hunting with a BB gun, we attacked him. I’m not proud of it, but we attacked him and got to him too quickly for him to defend himself. We pummeled and kicked that guy and he was only semi-conscious, but I didn’t care. I was so angry and my blood was so far up that I probably could have killed him given the chance. I picked him up and was going to throw him into the canal. It was probably a fifteen foot drop and there were some rocks down there, but I was going to throw him anyway. Then, just as I had him over my head, my strength rippling through my arms and my friends rushing in to help throw him, my strength collapsed. My legs gave out entirely and I fell, and Sanford fell with me, into the dirt on top of the canal bank. That changed the mood very quickly. I could see the anger drop out of my friend’s eyes as they saw both of us lying there. They helped me up and one of my friends carried Sanford back to his house. Of course, we were all still cowards and we left him on his lawn and didn’t fess up, but we brought him back home. I don’t think he ever knew who did it.”
Samantha was listening avidly, feeling the memory become more realistic as his story progressed, making the other version, where her grandfather went home feeling like a returning soldier and Sanford Henson lay bleeding at the bottom of the canal, seem more like a bad dream she had once and remembered briefly upon awakening. More importantly, the story was bringing her other real memories back into clearer focus, and she could feel the tunnel trip draining away into another memory, one that she would soon consciously forget.
The most important question, however, the one that mattered more than all others, still lay hidden behind the clutter. Was Mark missing still? She didn’t yet know.
“That’s a horrible story Grandpa, but I’m glad you didn’t throw him into the canal.”
Neil looked at her intensely, a ring of smoke clouding the space between them. Samantha breathed in deeply, thinking she never wanted to smoke but marveling at the delicious smell of it all the same. Her grandfather looked much the same as she remembered him, but maybe a little thinner and with a few less wrinkles in his face. Or maybe that was just the cloud of smoke disrupting her vision.
“You said much the same when we talked about it yesterday,” Neil said slowly, “but you only condemned me then. You never said anything about the canal. Now why would that be, I wonder?”
Samantha didn’t know how to respond, so she said nothing.
“Because I didn’t lose the strength in my legs because of second thoughts, did I,” Neil said. “I was ready to throw him into that canal, almost hoping that he would hit his head on a rock and split it open. But the strength in my legs ran out because you tried to use your own strength last night. Why?”
“I can’t remember,” Samantha said, lying.
“You can’t remember? Were you trying to stop me? Had you heard my story and the original one had me throwing that poor bastard into the canal? Did he die?”
“No.”
“No to which question Sam? What did I do?”
The mood shifted and her grandfather was up and striding across the room quickly, almost before Samantha could register the movement. His face was terrible, teeth flashing yellow through the smoke, his eyes round and white. He grabbed Samantha by the shoulders and picked her up as if she weighed nothing.
“You tell me what I did and what you tried to stop, because that can’t be done. You have no right to try and dictate my life like that. So you tell me girl. You tell me right now. What did I do to Henson?”
Frightened, realizing that of all the problems she had considered with changing the past, this one had never crossed her mind. What should she do?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about Grandpa.”
“Yes you do. You’ve never been a bad girl so why are you starting now? Tell me what you did.”
“No.”
“Yes,” he said, so quietly that Samantha was chilled to the bone. “You will tell me. You’ve stolen part of my life and I want it back. What did I do to Henson?”
“Grandpa, you’re hurting me.”
He looked down at his hands, buried into the nightgown bunched against her shoulders. Then he looked back at her face, wincing a little, but still keeping the pain carefully inside, and the strength ran out of him. He dropped to one knee, lowering Samantha as slowly as he could. She still hit the cushion of the couch hard enough to bounce. Then he put his hands to his face and, scaring Samantha more than anything else he had done so far, started weeping. His shoulders shook, slowly at first, then savagely. The sounds were quiet, muted and ghostly, but the force was real. Hesitant at first, then with increased conviction, Samantha put her arms around her grandfather’s shoulder, laid her head against his upper back, and hugged him. They remained in that position for several minutes.
He recovered slowly, wiping his eyes with the back of one hand. Samantha thought tears looked strange on such an old face. Instead of getting up, however, Neil sat cross-legged on the ground and Samantha was sitting back on the couch, trying to relax her tense, jittering muscles. She still couldn’t remember if Mark was missing or not and was becoming increasingly frustrated. Her old memories were fading rapidly, the new ones seemed more real, and best of all there was hardly any difference between the two.
“I’m sorry,” her grandfather said for the third time, “I don’t know what happened to me. I’ve never lost control like that since that day by the canal.”
??
?It’s fine, Grandpa,” Samantha said in response for the third time.
“There’s just so much more that happened. Stuff you don’t know. And now I don’t know how much of that changed because of you used your talent last night. I know that whatever happened before is not real. I’ve experienced that several times before, but never on this scale. Could my whole life have changed?”
“I don’t know,” Samantha said.
“Why? Just that one thing. Why did you use your talent last night?”
“It was an accident,” Samantha said, finally.
“What do you mean?”
“After you told me the story about the fight, I guess I was thinking about it and I had a bad dream. It woke me up and I had jumped off the bed. I guess I had jumped off the bed and landed all the way across the room. I don’t know why. I didn’t know dreams could trigger the talent.”
This was the biggest lie she had ever spoken, the first of many as it turned out later on, but it rolled off her tongue easily. It sounded plausible to her own ears, although she had no idea if it was really possible to use talent in a dream. Neil looked at her carefully and nodded his head, almost against his will.
“It’s never happened to me but my old Dad said it happened to him once. But I’m surprised it happened to you since you’ve always been such a sound sleeper. And I guess we got off lucky, didn’t we? Your memories seem the same?”
“Yes, almost exactly. Except that you smoke.”
And what about Mark? Why can’t I remember anything about him? I can remember almost everything else, so why nothing about him?
“I started smoking the day after we attacked Sanford Henson. One of my friends thought that I had a seizure the day before and he had heard that smoking cured seizures.”
Samantha started laughing, cupping her hand over her mouth as she did so. Neil smiled too.
“I know. It sounds ridiculous now but that is how I started.”
Samantha shifted on the cushions, suddenly tired again. She wanted to figure out why Mark was not in her memory but the drowsiness was coming at her quick and hard and she didn’t feel subtle at all. Neil yawned himself, looked at his wristwatch, and pointed it at her.
“Two in the morning on a school night. You picked a great night for this sweetie. You probably should run back to bed and try to get some sleep before morning.”
Samantha nodded and stood up, giving her grandfather another hug, trying not to remember the look of black rage he had given her earlier. He hugged her back and walked over to the corner of the room by the fireplace, where two blankets and a pillow were spread on the floor. Samantha went to her room and slid into bed, amazed to find a remnant of her heat still sleeping under the covers. She wiggled into it gladly.
She closed her eyes, letting herself drift towards sleep but still thinking about Mark and his absence. Why couldn’t she remember him? Was he dead in this world? She fell into unconsciousness with the same fear that had accompanied her earlier that night, inside the basement room two blocks over.
Bright morning woke her at six thirty. Samantha got out of bed and started her morning routine without another thought. She staggered into the bathroom and closed the door. She shrugged off her nightgown and got into the shower. Halfway through the shower she realized things had changed last night but she hadn’t realized it, because those old memories barely existed. They were like photos on newspaper left in the sun for an entire summer, brittle, yellow, and completely faded. She dug at them, fighting with something like panic to retain the memories. But they wouldn’t come back. They were disappearing and soon they would be gone. At that point she would no longer remember the trip into the tunnel, because it had never happened. She would not remember being chained to the wall of a dimly lit basement because it had not happened. It had, of course, and for the time being Samantha knew it, but that time was passing quickly. She had done it to save Mark, her friend. Not much had changed after she used her talent, but no memories of Mark existed either. Had she been successful? She had no idea.
After her shower she brushed her teeth, combed her hair, and put on clothes for the day. She could remember her school completely now. Her wonderful teacher Mr. Stillson, who knew she was a talent and was one himself. Her best friends were Becky and Marissa and they all loved to play in the clubhouse. She wanted to build a new path to the second oak tree, but they hadn’t yet had time. Maybe they could this weekend.
But they had, and they found the entrance to a tunnel. Remember it! Remember it! Don’t let it all happen again.
She remembered Kelvin Zan, the very smart boy in class who she sort of had a crush on, and Mink, the class clown and who sat next to her in the back row and who seemed to have a little crush on her. Samantha knew that made Marissa upset because she liked Mink and wanted to go to the dance with him. So far none of them were going to the dance.
You were going with Mark. Mark! You saved his life!
Who was Mark? Had she read that name in a magazine somewhere? She couldn’t remember, because she certainly knew no Mark in real life.
She went to the living room and ate breakfast, hugging her Mom and Dad, who looked exactly as she remembered them. Neil came in a little while later, sitting at the table, talking and laughing with his son, Thomas. Samantha remembered her mother telling her that Thomas and Neil used to not get along at all, and Samantha still wanted to know why but didn’t have the courage to ask. Or was that a false memory too?
After breakfast, during which her grandfather kept trying to catch her eyes and she kept ignoring him, she got her backpack from the hallway table and went to the door.
“I’ll take her,” Neil said, grabbing his keys.
“Great, thanks Pop,” Thomas said. He gave Samantha a hug. “Have a great day sweetheart.”
“Of course I will Dad,” Samantha said, kissing him on the cheek. He laughed, delighted.
“Did you see that? She kissed me on the cheek!”
I always used to Dad, what’s the matter with you?
Except that was the first time she could ever remember kissing Thomas on the cheek. Samantha turned, feeling a little embarrassed, and caught her grandfather’s eye this time. He smiled and nodded imperceptibly at her, filling her with relief. Grandpa understood what was happening. She relaxed and walked out the door.
“Bye,” she called.
As soon as they walked around the corner, Samantha looked at the house next door, instinctively. The lawn was overgrown, as were the bushes. The roof was red tile, not covered with the new cedar shingles she must have dreamed about. A for sale sign was perched at a rough angle in the front lawn, with a sold flag stuck to the top. Samantha paused, feeling like the earth had been pulled out from underneath her feet.
Mark and Cliff lived there with their parents for the past three years. Now they are gone. Why are they gone? Why can’t I remember Mark at all?
Samantha didn’t know why she was so interested in the house next door, because it looked exactly as it had for the past year, when the Orosco family moved to Texas. But she kept staring at it as if it were the answer to some deep mystery, the nature of which she couldn’t grasp.
“See anything wrong,” Neil asked from behind her.
“No. No. The house looks the same as it always does.”
Neil nodded and walked to the passenger side of his car, and opened the door. Samantha walked up to it but didn’t get in. Neil had walked around the front of the car to the driver’s side, but didn’t open his door right away. He was looking up the street and Samantha saw a car pulling into the driveway of the house next door. Neil laughed, pleased, and turned to Samantha.
“Hold on one moment. I want to go see a friend of mine.”
Neil started walking across the overgrown lawn of the house next door and Samantha watched him go, feeling uninterested and somehow dead. She never felt this way and couldn’t understand why she did now. The world seemed lackluster and empty, as if an essential part of her had been cut away.
Her Grandpa walked up to the car, and a tall man with a bit of a slouch got out of the driver’s side of the car. He saw Neil and waved him over. They shook hands and the man gestured up to the house and they both laughed. Then the man, whom Samantha recognized from somewhere, made a “come-on” gesture to the car. The back door opened and two young boys of the same age but different appearance got out. Samantha started walking around the car and the backpack dropped from her hand and clattered to the driveway. By the time she passed her father’s car she was walking fast and when she reached the lawn next door she was running. She had no idea why she was running.
The boys milled about behind their father, looking up at the house with a morose expression, shared equally between them. Neil heard the sound of Samantha running and turned.
“Samantha! These are you new neighbors, who happen to be old friends of mine.”
Samantha came running up, not daring to look at the boys yet. Neil seemed oblivious to her nervous excitement.
“This is Mr. Wilson, whom I’ve known since his birth. His Dad and I used to hang out together, back when I was about your age. Probably best buddies, you might say. This is my granddaughter Samantha.”
“Pleased to meet you Samantha.”
He shook her hand, smiling. Samantha had an image of him yelling at police officers, but had no idea where the image came from. She smiled back with an effort.
“And these are my two boys.”
Samantha finally turned, and was looking directly into Mark’s eyes from about three feet away. And he was looking back, no fear or curiosity in his face. Instead, there was something like wonder. From a distance, Samantha could hear Mr. Wilson saying something else, probably introducing her to them, but she didn’t care. She recognized him, and that dead part inside of her seemed to fill up with cool water. She looked right at him, remembering nothing but fear, feeling nothing but sweet triumph. He looked back at her steadily still, not uncomfortable in the least, the same sense of wonder she felt reflected on his face. Almost as if he recognized her.
He recognized her.
The moment seemed un-ending, and Samantha later wondered exactly how long they remained in that state, looking at each other as if each had found something they had both been looking for. Samantha knew he was from the before she could no longer remember, and that he shouldn’t remember anything at all, but he did. Maybe not consciously, but deep inside, or maybe in dreams, he did remember.
The moment ended when Cliff punched him in the shoulder, hard. Mark blinked, and smiled so wide that he looked extremely silly. He held out his hand to shake. Samantha reached out her with own and when she touched his hand the last fleeting glimpse of her old life was gone.
“Hello Mark,” Samantha said, shaking his hand, meeting him for the first time.
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