Al Steiner: Doing It All Over

As I passed my sister's room I looked in and there she was. Seventeen years old or so, wearing a pair of Wranglers and a fashionable sweater. She sat before her mirror, combing her wet hair with a brush. She gave me a disinterested glance and started to turn back to the mirror but paused when she noticed me staring at her.

"What's your problem dickhead?" She asked me, her voice filled with the sibling contempt that had marked our teenaged years. Contempt I'd always felt sorry for after her death.

I stepped into her room, making her glare at me but I didn't care. "Tracy? My god it's good to see you."

She looked downright hostile now as I stepped forward and threw my arms around her, hugging her to me. Her body stiffened in alarm and confusion as I did this.

"What the fuck is your problem, asshole?" She barked, pushing me away.

There were actually tears in my eyes, I was so glad to see her again. I found myself speechless for a moment.

She looked at my face, disgust evident in her eyes. "You're crying? What kind of sick shit is this? Get the fuck out of my room dickhead."

"Tracy." I told her seriously. "You and I are gonna have to sit down and have a talk together."

"What?!" She said, amazed.

"Later." I told her. Then I asked. "What's the date today?"

"Huh?"

"The date?" I repeated. "You know? Month, day… " I paused. "Year?"

She gaped at me, not answering.

"I'm serious Trace." I told her. "I'll explain later. What's the date?"

"February 18." She said finally. "Wednesday."

I licked my lips for a moment. "And the year?"

"What do you… "

"Just tell me the damn year Tracy!" I commanded, making her jump.

"1982." She said finally. "Why the hell would you ask that?"

I did some quick mental addition. I was born February 10, 1967. That made me fifteen years old, but with the wisdom (such as it was) of a thirty-two year old that had already lived through the future. Tracy was indeed seventeen. She would graduate in June of 1983 and be killed later that night. That gave me a year and a half to save her life. I vowed that, if nothing else changed, I would change that. I would shoot the drunken college student dead before I allowed him to drive my sister around.

"Never mind." I told her. "I'll probably explain it to you later. It's good to see you Tracy. I love you."

"Get the fuck out of here you fuckin' pervert!" She screamed.

"And you love me too." I commented as I exited her room and headed for the shower.

By the time my shower was complete my mind had accepted the facts of the matter. I was fifteen again, it was 1982, and I had the next seventeen years to do over again. What should I do? What would I change? How many past mistakes could I rectify? Could I tell anyone? Would they believe me? And what about Becky? My future daughter preyed on my mind. Was it already too late to have her? I certainly couldn't go through another two years of marriage with that bitch that was her mother again. Could I?

Putting thoughts of Becky aside, I was cheery as I entered the kitchen and sat down to a bowl of cereal at the kitchen table. Tracy was already there, eyeing me suspiciously but saying nothing. My father, as had been his habit, was eating an English muffin and reading the newspaper. A quick glance assured me that the date that Tracy had provided was indeed correct. I looked at the headlines printed on the back of the paper.

SCIENTISTS SAY ALIGNMENT OF PLANETS PRESENTS NO DANGER, read one. Oh yeah. The planets were all scheduled to align this year, which had prompted many to predict that the combined gravitational pull would rip up apart or cause earthquakes or some other such nonsense. Nothing had happened, obviously. ATT BREAK-UP LEAVES MANY WONDERING-WHAT NEXT? Read another. I smiled, thinking I could tell them a thing or two about what was next. REAGANOMICS WORKING-PROCLAIM ECONOMISTS, another declared. And it would continue to for another three years or so until the entire economy came to a crashing halt, signaling the beginning of the next depression, or recession as it would be termed.

I finished up my breakfast and found, after some searching, my backpack which contained all of my schoolbooks and papers. If my fifteen-year- old self was true to form, I knew my homework wouldn't be done and my assignments wouldn't be read. That was something I would have to rectify, I figured. One of the things I regretted later in life were my poor high school grades and study habits, which precluded me from getting into a top-rated college. How hard could the work possibly be now?

A knock on the door signaled the arrival of Mike Meachen, my best friend back in high school. Mike was a year older than I and had always been the dominant member of our friendship. From Mike I learned how to smoke marijuana, how to drink beer, how to smoke cigarettes, how to cut school. Mike would drop out in the eleventh grade and work a few menial jobs for a few years before taking his GED and joining the Air Force where he was eventually dishonorably discharged for marijuana use. I hadn't talked to him in years but the last I'd heard he was still living with his parents. Could I steer Mike onto a different path? I wondered as I went to the door and bade my family farewell.

Though I was expecting it, it was still startling to see him as a sixteen-year-old again.

"Sup?" He muttered to me, his version of 'what's up?'.

"Not much." I told him, careful to give no hint of the startling change in me just yet. I closed the door behind me and we started the two-mile walk to our high school.

I was surprised at the immaturity of his conversation as we trodded to school. It centered on his phony sexual exploits with girls I'd never met, which girls at our school he'd like to fuck, and other adolescent posturing. I had to remind myself that my conversation back then had been pretty much the same and that I now had seventeen years of maturity over him. I nodded and responded to his statements with appropriateness. He noticed no change in me. I'd always been quiet anyway.

As we got close to the school feelings of unreality washed over me again. I was seeing people that I hadn't seen in years. But I was seeing them as they were then, not as my mind was telling me they should look now (I had to keep reminding myself that NOW was THEN). They were in ones, two, and even groups of six or more, heading for school. Boys and girls both. I saw Steve Johan, who would join the Army after graduation and be killed in a helicopter crash. I saw Nina Blackmore, a skinny, nerdish, friendless girl who would go to medical school and work as an emergency room doctor at Spokane's trauma center. She would also acquire good looks early in college as her body filled out and marry a rich neurosurgeon. I saw Carrie Founder, one of the best looking girls in the school giggling with some of the other elite. Carrie I knew, would marry a loser and pump out four kids before divorcing. During that period she would put on nearly a hundred pounds. Eventually, she would end up living in a trailer park with some other white-trash loser. As I paramedic I would one day pick her up for overdosing on anti-depressant medicines and pretend I didn't know her. I saw lots of others that I hadn't thought of in years and others who's faces I recognized but who's names I could not come up with.

I would be lying if I said that my attention was not distracted by the girls. Like many men there was a special place in the part of my mind that controlled lust that was obsessed with the idea of bagging a teenager. It was no doubt because they were forbidden. It was something I'd never done or attempted to do before, knowing that the risks were not worth the benefits. But things were different now, weren't they? A horny part of my mind asked me. I was a teenager now! I could do it legally!