Through the Storm

Chapter Nineteen

(This is part one of Chapter Nineteen.)
And I know you've been patiently, secretly waiting for it...there are some cute Scömìche moments in this one. ;) Look out for part two of this chapter!
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Sunday, September 16, 2007, 12:30 a.m.

"Scott!" Kevin shouted in my ear.
I was lying on his bedroom floor, staring at the ceiling. "What year is it?"
"2007," he said slowly.
The room spun and when I sat up and stared at Kevin's giant DNA model on the desk, the blue and red balls swirled around like the birds that fly over a cartoon characters head. I grabbed the front of his shirt and shook him. "I have to call my dad. Like....now."
"Okay." He lifted me up and I slumped over onto him.
"I can't feel my legs," I mumbled before collapsing onto Kevin's bed. I lifted my hand in front of my face, turning it over, expecting it to fade away or turn transparent.

Then the spinning blue and red turned black, along with everything else.

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The first thing I noticed when I woke up the next morning was the lump next to me, sound asleep. I rolled over and stood, lucky that feeling had returned to my legs. But they were week and my head throbbed like a hangover.

Kevin's eyes opened slowly. "You're standing."

"Barely." I clutched my sides, putting pressure against the stabbing pain running up and down my ribs.
Kevin pulled a shirt over his head and opened the bedroom door.
"Let's get you something to eat, man."

Food was the last thing on my mind, but my lack of appetite in the last week had already caused me to lose at least five pounds. Pretty soon I really would disappear.

"Morning, mom," Kevin said to the women in the kitchen flipping pancakes.

"You're up early. I didn't know you had a friend over," Mrs. Olusola turned her back on the griddle and smiled at me.

I tried not to laugh, because Kevin's parents were a big joke to me in 2009. I named them "Paul and Judy" because they made me think of the Dick and Jane books I read in preschool. The ones from the 1950's. They were completely clueless about what their son was up to or capable of. It was all pancakes and sunshine.

"I'm Scott," I said.

Kevin and I sat at the table and he slid my journal in front of me.
"Write down what you remember."

"What was the time on my stopwatch?" I asked.

"A little over two hours."

"And your stopwatch?"

"Four minutes," he answered.

Even though I'd done this so many times with the older Kevin, it was still weird to be gone that long and then come back to find only minutes had passed. But usually it was seconds.

"What did I look like?"

"Just like the other times you recorded with m....with the other guy. You were staring into space, completely unresponsive." He tapped the page again with his finger. "Write."

The memory was choppy and jumbled, but once I started forming a list and Kevin drilled me with questions, most of it seemed to come back.

"Wow, it sounds like you picked the right date. So, now we know, he's definitely an agent of some kind," Kevin said.

Mrs. Olusola slid a giant plate of pancakes in front of each of us. "Who's an agent, honey?"

Kevin shrugged. "It's just this TV show."

She smiled at him. "Orange juice, anyone?"

"Sure," Kevin said.

"No thanks," I said.

"Okay, so, you resemble these mysterious other people....or was he talking about you looking like your younger self? No surprise if that's the case."

"He just said, 'You see the resemblance?' Then he said something about looking like the others....or maybe he said 'other'....like the other me," I said.

Feeling nauseous from my wild adventure last night, I pushed the plate away from me, but Kevin slid it back. "Eat."

I could only force down a few bites before running to the bathroom and puking it back up. While I was brushing my teeth, I heard Kevin talking to his mom. "Probably bad sushi."

"I've got Maalox," I heard Kevin's mom call through the bathroom door.

Kevin was waiting for me outside the bathroom, holding a bottle of Maalox, when I came out. I chugged it straight from the bottle as we walked back to his room, where I promptly fell onto his bed. He shut the door behind him, balancing his plate of pancakes. "It's the time travel that's making you sick. Based on your journal notes and your latest binge and purge, it's obvious."

"Are you sure it's not psychosomatic? Guilt manifesting itself into illness? It never happened until Mitch was shot."

I pulled the covers up to my neck, rolling myself into a shivering ball.

"Someone's taken Psych 101." Kevin sat in his desk chair and continued stuffing his face. "I think it's all relative. Before you went back to 2007, the furthest you'd gone was a couple of days. It's a formula based on the number of years you travel backwards, along with the length of time you stay in the past. You knew that part already because the formulas were in your journal."

I nodded. "But why don't I feel constantly sick in this year?technically, it's the past for me."

He shrugged. "I think it's because this is your home base now. Every other year is the one you shouldn't be in, so bad things are going to happen to you when you travel to those non-home-base time periods. And the longer you stay away from the home base, the worse the symptoms are. It's like your body's actually being pulled apart and maybe you can only stretch so far."

"I guess it makes sense. I just don't get why."

"I think it's safe to say there's a ton of shit we haven't figured out yet."

"Agreed. But.....I really so need to call my dad. I can just ask him if he's a government agent. Tell him
I overheard a conversation or something. It's not like he's the bad guy, right?"

Kevin lifted an eyebrow. "You positive about that? So he rushed you to the hospital when you broke your arm. Big deal. And even if he is good...what if it doesn't matter and he has to turn on you the second he knows you're no longer clueless? Since the jumping around in time is kicking you in the ass, I think you have to limit your jumps to very important tasks. You need to recover, man. For now, I think you should just play dumb around your dad. It'll be easier to get information. From what it sounds like, those guys from the underground hospital wing were not happy to see you, and they knew your dad.....like they're on the same side." He stopped for minute and I could tell his mind was racing.

I sat up and leaned against the wooden headboard.
"Damn. I feel like shit and I was gonna try and get Mitch to go out with me today. He gave me his number last night."

Kevin turned his back to me and fumbled with a stack of papers on his desk. "He's busy."

"He is?"

"I told him I'd help him study for his calc test."

"Great, then I have an excuse to see him. I can tag along on your little study session. Tell him we were hanging out."

He grabbed a pair of jeans from his closet and pulled them on, still not looking at me. "I don't think that's a good idea. He's really freaked about this test-"
"Kevin, what are you not telling me? Did Mitch say something to you?"

He finally looked at me, then sighed. "I wasn't going to bring this up today, but obviously I don't have a choice. After reading all your notes, it seems like...you and Mitch were just having fun. Nothing serious."

"Do you mean 007 Mitch or the other one?"

"007 Mitch?"

"Yeah, it sounds much cooler than 2007 Mitch."

He shook his head and laughed. "Interesting way to decipher. But I mean the other one. From 2009. Anyway...other than guilt about leaving him to die....is anything really different now than it was in the future?"