Retrace

Chapter 1 : Waking Up Is So Cliché

'So much work over so much time; if I think too hard, I might lose my mind'

—The Black Keys, Next Girl

*

A girl woke up in an unfamiliar bed—

No, wait.

She breathed in deep and recognized, albeit against her will, the scents of her childhood home. Her old bedroom. She knew what had happened, even as shock set in and she wrenched her head to the side in a futile effort to avoid the realization.

Hurled backward in time. Along her own timeline, within her own physical shell. One prevailing theory and who knows how many years rolled back in the span of one night.

How cliché can I get? she thought, tinged with hysteria. My story begins with me waking up.

Unseeing, she was staring at the dark recesses of the bookshelves next to her bed; blinking, she brought them into sharper focus. As sharp a focus as she could achieve with severe myopia.

Her mind was still fuzzy with sleep, but still, she knew what she had to do. Unlikely as it was—as anything was—she had planned for this.

Find a notebook.

Write. Write it all down.

And write it as fiction, so it can be explained away within my existing quirks if it's found by anyone else, but still speak loud and clear to past-me if she ever resurfaces to need it.

One sharp canine tooth dug into her lip, seeking blood. Here's hoping she does.

A familiar silver spiral glinted there on the shelf in the faint light of morning. The girl knew before she groped for a pen that there would be one on the shelf beside it. Never paper without a pen, not in her space.

The shuff-crackle of the cover was almost too loud, too real. Rolling onto her stomach, she propped herself up on her elbows, ignoring the way her breasts flopped and squished between them. Not enough flesh there. Not enough growth.

She scribbled in the margin to get the ink flowing, and then she wrote:

'These are the things I know are true:

'I stole that line from Amy Tan, everyone should learn how to masturbate, and it will be two years before I can smoke again. F—I mean, gosh darn it.

...This might be harder than I thought.'

Sucking in a breath, the girl glanced to her right, to the soft lace of her old bedspread. The walls of her bedroom were still painted the old peach color—she wouldn't re-paint til her senior year—and in the cool glow of early morning she could just make out the fuzzy blobs of her desk, her ancient brick of a laptop, her various bookshelves...

But she didn't want to put on her glasses. Not yet. It would make all of this too real.

Setting pen to paper once more, she scrawled:

'Uh, starting with the basics, my name is Dean.' Because why not. 'I am a teenage dude,' because also why not, 'and totally not freaking out about the fact that I just woke up in my old bedroom in what appears to be my old—young—body.'

And it felt weird, no two ways. She had just woken up and yet she had so much energy. Her physical self felt rejuvenated, like she'd just had a whole week at a spa like the one in that show that hasn't aired yet, holy crap.

So many references that would be wasted for so many years. She sighed, almost too loud in the stillness. Why did one of my hyperfixations have to be something as useless as Futurama?

Useless in the grand scheme, anyway. She'd always treasure that nonsense. But right now she could benefit more from a working knowledge of hacking, or stocks, or even just clearer memories of the years she's about to have to live all over again.

'I have no idea what year it is,' she wrote. 'Okay, first order of business, finding a piece of homework or somethi--heyy, there's my phone!' She grabbed it, yanking it free of its charger, hugging it to her bare chest like the palm-sized piece of technology would be enough to keep her afloat. 'I have a phone,' she scribbled. 'Definitely sixteen, then. Good. I can work with public school. That private school would have been hell all over again. Although, it might've been nice to take all my bullies down a few pegs.'

She snorted. 'Who am I kidding,' she continued, 'I'd probably just end up even more ostracized than I was in the first place. And classes were harder there.'

Shifting on her elbows, she spread her legs caddywonkus beneath the blankets. Her body was so small. Half the mass she would have accumulated by the time her memories were present-day again. No wrinkles. No cellulite that mattered. No Cesarean section scar.

Her jaw clenched tight. No toddler. No husband.

'But I'm alone,' she wrote. 'No do-over is worth this weird grief.'

It is weird, she decided with a frown. Because they didn't die—they were unmade, along with the rest of her future.

It hit her then, a truckload of bricks compressing her chest. Memories flash: her husband giving her the eyebrow, her son attempting a somersault, running with both of them at the park and trying not to double over wheezing because she was so out of shape. Her husband in that black-on-black outfit he wore to the fancy restaurant. Their son asleep in his arms. The day he was born. The day she and Bruce met.

She'd made peace with her life—not the best one she could have lived, but she'd made progress. She'd lived. And she had been making such great progress on understanding herself.

Identity is a fickle thing. More so when one waits so long to address its details.

Moreover, she'd lived for a while. Memories of the time in this house had been reduced to mere snapshots, and the polished gems of regrets she had yet to bury. The girl couldn't deny the temptation to do things over differently, but she knew even as the thought crossed her mind, a sinking feeling in her gut, that she would be risking far more than herself if she changed anything.  

'I hope this is the snap-back kind of time travel, the kind with a time limit. Say, twenty-four hours, seventy-two, even a week and I'll be back where I was with a newfound gratitude for how far I've come. Not the kind of time travel wherein I am stuck now, and will not only have to live all these years again, but will have to decide if I want to follow the same path to the same happiness...'

Digging the tip of the pen down into the paper, she added furiously, 'Because if I don't, Rhys will never be born.'