She had just gotten married and she showed up one day cradling something in her arms.  She wasn’t handling it all very well, but at times she clutched it up close to her like she was a child.  She was changed.  She was always a different sort of girl, kind of odd, but friendly.  She became Mormon, she came out of her shell for awhile.  Thought life was improving. 

She got married. Not the best decision for her age, but no devastatingly horrid harm done.  Then she showed up and she was horrid.  Quiet, psychologically damaged.  Holding on to this thing.  Taking it away might tear the life out of her.  I nudged her around a little, tried to get her to talk, but she smiled shyly and kept bending her neck away from me, back hunched, but always stupidly smiling.  She was a child now.

The thing she was holding was a baby in a basket.  I asked her, darling, where did the baby come from, and she turned away from me again and wouldn’t answer me but she still smiled blankly and I had the feeling she was gone behind her eyes and nothing changed for the better, really.

I decided to time travel; to do this, I just went to sleep for six years, woke up, and didn’t age.  But every time I awoke, I was disorientated and flailing.  The purpose of this was to finish my finals, at first, but soon it became an undetermined mission.  As a few centuries passed (the year was 1300-something), I couldn’t tell if people were making up the future or if it was actually like this.  Because it wasn’t so different.  Advertising was still directed towards me, and the trees that make Oregon’s landscape so familiar weren’t gone, at least not yet.  But everything had a pale blue tinge to it, and a lot of Oregon’s trees were an unhealthy red.  Nothing was very different, but I was very aware that I was in the future.  The worst part was that my family and everyone I knew, except one acquaintance (also time-traveling), were gone. 

My pain was the pain of disbelief, only a dull throb.

There was a war going on and all the maidens had bonnets and guns.  I was caught up in the tragedy but at the same time, I was worried.  My mom had completely rearranged my room and I hated the feeling of it.  I couldn’t sleep in a room where I was uncomfortable with every aspect.

This gal, she had recently lost a lot of weight, she showed me the meaning of homosexual love.  I ran into an old friend, a gay friend, and we walked hand in hand to that political section of the store where it was okay to be gay.  I curled up with my friend and the gal showed me that he was in love with me (we kissed) and that he was not.  She kissed him.  She wanted to make love with me.

I told her gently as we walked up the dusty hill to my house that I couldn’t do it, just because she wasn’t the right person.  A mouse popped up out of a hole and we were surrounded with squeaks as the mouse grew larger.  It tackled the gal and became her friend.  We walked to my house and I helped the gal carry some stuff back down to her car.  It was a gorgeous blue day at the beginning of summer.  I was sucked up in the thrall of the year (how could I enjoy the weather when there was a war going on?).

I helped the gal carry some more stuff to her car and this time we drove for about fifteen minutes on thin roads to a community college, but I found I couldn’t get a ride back until she did so I contemplated hitchhiking.

My car had been missing for a month, and there it was again under a tree by the courthouse, blue and all ready for me to just climb back in again.  I did so.  Started the ignition (or maybe I didn’t), and two hooligans started pounding on my window.

They taunted me, I banged on the plug that makes the doors lock, but I didn’t drive away.  The skinny hooligan slithered through the crack in my window and sat beside me, messing with me.  The fat hooligan got in the car and they both drove away.  I sat in the backseat without a seatbelt, whimpering.  The hooligans made no move to stop me from using my phone.  I called 911, after many minutes of fumbling, and some nice lady picked up.  After shaking out my words, she told me

“Dearie, you have to dial 541 THEN 911 to get the emergency operator.”

Minutes wasted.

I dialed 541 911 and spent hours explaining to the (apparently local) operator what had happened.

Then the hooligans drove me home, and they passed out in my car in front of my gate and I lightly jumped out to walk home with my dad.

New things.