- Text Size +
Chapter Fifteen


I lay in my bunk listening to the wheels of the tour bus on the highway, watching the street lamps flicker by the window like a strobe light, my chest tight and my face wet from crying. I felt stupid, I felt like a baby. I felt so god damned confused. I didn't know anymore what was the truth, what I'd made up, what I'd dreamed. I wanted to wake up back in Carl's basement, hooked up to that fucking machine again. I wanted Meira to be back, speaking in weird riddles again. I tucked my worn out old comforter under my chin and stared on out the window.

I thought about all the shit I'd been through in the last eight years - all the things that, if this was really 2006, I'd soon be going through. Kevin leaving the band tore me to shreds because it was like being abandoned by another parent. Then Brian would give up on me, too, and I'd lose my best friend and AJ would stop hanging out with me because he was struggling to stay sober enough without my bad influences. And Howie would be there but always with those big sad eyes of his, always waiting for me to clean up and make him proud... Then there were the fans. And my heart problem. The night of the zombies.... And me, forever disappointing Aaron and Angel and BJ and -- and Leslie while we were filming the House of Carters. Leslie dying. My family blaming me... me blaming me... My world spiraling out of control. My liver going to shit. I hugged my knees to my chest. I couldn't go through all of that again. I'd only just barely lived through it once.

I rocked myself under the blankets, terrified just imagining trying to endure that hellish part of my life over again for a second time.

What had future me been thinking, telling me to go back? What was I thinking? I didn't wanna go back. I'd rather die, I thought. Wake me back up in 2014. I'd rather die of the liver disease. Just lemme go. Don't make me go through it all again.

I cried myself to sleep.

I woke up almost an hour later to a thump against the frame of my bunk. "Shit." The whisper was a girl's voice. I rolled over and pushed the curtain of my bunk aside and squinted into the dark.

The light was dim - only what little moonlight made it down the enclosed hallway from the sitting area of the bus, but I could see the outline of her - of her wild hair and her narrow frame. She was clutching the frame of the bathroom door for support, trying to balance as the bus clomped over a couple pot holes in a rough patch of road. She almost tripped. She looked up. Our eyes met.

"Meira?"

"Shit. Shit. Too early." There was a pause... then she shimmered...

"Wait!" I gasped, "Wait, wait don't go. Please."

But she was already gone.

I stared where she'd been, my heart racing. So she was real. Or else... or else I was still dreaming. I reached for my arm and pinched my skin between two fingers. It hurt. I'd never been so relieved for something to hurt in all my life. I lay back in my bunk, letting my curtain close and stared up at the ceiling of it, my heart rushing in my chest. So what did that mean? If Meira was real then... then was the past eight years also real? And if so, what did that mean for me now? Why would future me - if future me did indeed exist - want me to go back? What could I possibly do here that would be worth coming back for?

Well, I thought, what caused the liver disease to begin with?

This. This period in my life. This time when I was constantly being dragged out of random clubs by the Boys. This time when everything in my life was a blurry mess of stumbling from one high to the next, one session of binge drinking to the next, when my career, family and friends were a colorful blur, like side effects of sobriety, things I tried to push away and ignore, believing that the dreams I had when I shot substances into my veins were more important because it numbed the pain that I felt. The pain that I caused by trying to make the pain go away. A nasty, terrible catch-22, whose cycle I'd endlessly spun like a roller coaster I both loathed and loved, whose tracks I couldn't escape and whose car I couldn't stop.

But I could stop it. I could. If I tried hard enough, I could. I had once, I had in the future, and if I wanted to, I could stop it now. Before it even began. Before it could kill me.

I blinked into the dark.

I hadn't needed the time machine to go to the future to find a time in which I could be healed from my liver disease, I'd needed the time machine to go to my past to find the time in which I could have prevented my liver disease.

I hadn't told myself to go back to experience the suffering again. I'd told myself to go back to stop it.

It made so much sense.

I'd given myself a second chance to right everything that had been wrong in my past, to fix every mistake, to undo everything that I'd done that had broken my spirit and made me weak. I'd given myself a chance to be strong.

I hugged a pillow to my chest in the dark, now staring out at the spot where Meira had appeared, half waiting for her to return again. Perhaps making the choice in this time would be enough and she'd come back and rescue me and take me back to the future with her and I wouldn't have to actually live through everything a second time, just making the choice would alter how it'd all gone.

But she didn't and soon enough the sun came up and I'd drifted in that sort of half sleep that comes - you know, when you close your eyes and rest and sleep is present but so is consciousness? I could feel the bus's movement below me, I was aware of the sunlight streaming through the windows of the bus, all orange and glowy... and I heard it when Brian got up to call Leighanne, sitting down on the couch and whispering his conversation.

"Hey... I'm sorry I hung up so quick last night," he was saying, "Nick was MIA and Kev had to go find him..... A bar, where else? Passed out in the bathroom, Kev said.... I wish I understood him better. I feel like it's my fault he's like this. I mean I basically raised him..... What if Baylee turns out like this?" the worry in Brian's voice made it wobble. "Kevin's leavin' the band... and to be honest, I'm kind of thinking about it, too. I can't stand seeing him like this. It was bad enough when it was AJ, but Nick....."

I bit my lip.

I never knew Brian had ever felt like this. I mean, I knew he didn't approve of my drinking. I'd always known that. But I didn't know that he felt responsible. I'd always thought... I dunno, that maybe he was judging me. That maybe he thought I was a horrible person for relying on alcohol.

Maybe I'd been wrong all this time about Brian and me and what all had torn us apart.

Brian kept on talking to Leighanne, but soon enough the topic changed and they were talking about Baylee and his extra curricular activities and foods she was cooking and plans they had for when we returned from the tour.

So as I listened to the rambling, rolling, comforting sound of his voice and the hum of the tires on asphalt, I lay there in my bunk trying to come up with a plan. I needed to sober up, I thought, and I needed to prove it to the fellas that I was better. And then I needed to stop all the bad things from happening. I needed to cancel the House of Carters idea, my family's bullshit was public enough without being on TV - a lesson I'd learned far too late the first time I'd gone through this. And I needed to get closer to Leslie and be there for her more than I'd been the first time.

And then, when it was all said and done, when I got to the future, I'd meet Meira and everything would be perfect.