DoubleDown V (2 page)

Karen shook her head.  “In a way I’d rather imagine my own truth.  I think she loved to put together collages from nature, picking up stray oak and maple leaves wherever she went and then spending hours rearranging them to tell a story.”

She knelt and touched the granite stone, feeling the etchings of some of the letters.

“This isn’t the one,” she said finally.

Bobby joined her as she walked past a few more tombstones.  None of them interested her.  Only a few had called to her so far.

The sun was starting to set behind them, casting a long shadow through the graveyard.  Karen knew Bobby just wanted her to find the right damned stone so they could leave, but it wasn’t that easy.  It had to be the
right
one.

If she couldn’t find it, she’d come back tomorrow, and the day after that.

“Did you know there’re two thousand people buried here?” asked Bobby.

She ignored him.  A cool breeze blew, and she felt goose bumps rise on her arms.  All of a sudden she moved to her right and fell to her knees in front of an old weathered stone.

“This is the one,” she said.  “I found her.”

Karen Richardson was one month past her fourteenth birthday when time stopped in the middle of dinner.

It didn’t scare her anymore.  Not like the first time it’d happened when she was eight.  Now, it was just another part of her normal life, different than everyone else—at least she’d been pretty sure of that; however, her perception on that front was about to take a big left turn—but what the heck.  It was her life, and the hand she’d been dealt was no better and no worse than her friends’.  Just different.

She glanced around the table at Mom and Dad.  Tina was out somewhere, probably letting that idiot Jimmy Berenstein cop a feel (or more) at the back of Oak Park, a few miles down the road.  Jimmy kept borrowing his dad’s beat-up Toyota, even though the old man gave him shit every time.  At least that was what Tina told her.

Dad was in the middle of lecturing about some election or other and how it was every citizen’s obligation to
VOTE
.  Karen could hear the capitalization in his voice.  Mom had her head down and was intently studying the mashed potatoes on her plate.  Although Dad was supposedly talking to Karen, she knew he was actually including Mom, who didn’t give a rat’s ass about politics.

Karen didn’t either, so she was relieved when time stopped.

Dad’s mouth was open, the last words out of his mouth being, “and the sheep in this town…,” when his voice stopped like the words had hit a brick wall.

She hadn’t been paying attention, but Karen recognized the cone of silence immediately and popped her head up to check Dad’s frozen face.  She could see a stringy bit of ham peeking out of his mouth.  His eyes bulged, which seemed out of character, but she’d never paid much attention to him when he was on a rant.

Mom’s head was lowered, her eyes staring at the mushy potatoes on her plate.  She looked like she was in prayer, possibly asking the Almighty to shut her damned husband up.  Her arms hung beside her, and for a moment, she looked off balance, like she could topple over at any second.

The radio had been playing “Payphone” by Maroon 5 when Karen had been mercifully pulled out of the lecture, at least temporarily.

She had been trying to calculate the minimal amount of food she’d have to eat before being allowed to leave the table.  Now, she just let go of her knife and fork, which dutifully levitated in midair, not caring that she was giving them a reprieve from gravity.

Maybe Mom’s prayer actually worked, but only for Karen, not for herself.

She dabbed her mouth with her napkin, a habit long instilled into her by her mother, who always worried that Karen would leave the table covered in food and that everybody who saw her would stare and wonder what she’d been eating.

Truth was, it’d been several minutes since any food at all had found its way into Karen’s mouth, but she used the napkin without even realizing she’d done so and then folded it neatly in half and placed it beside her plate.

“It’s been a long time,” she said to herself.  As she pushed the chair back and slid out, she tried to think back to when time had last frozen for her.  Two weeks ago?

“Three,” she decided.  “Tina’s birthday.”

She remembered it because time froze while Tina was swinging a baseball bat to smash the ridiculously oversized piñata that Dad had hung in the middle of the back yard.  He’d had to rig a complicated set of guy wires, but Tina was useless at hitting it.  The display became one of the more boring things Karen had ever had to sit through.  When things froze, Karen took advantage, grabbed the bat from Tina’s hands, and took a swing herself, ripping a hole in the piñata.  When time started again a while later, it looked like the giant stuffed elephant had just decided to shit candy, as it rained down in the middle of the lawn, six feet away from where Tina was swinging.

“This time, I just want out of here,” she said.  The day had been wasted, listening to several of Dad’s rants.  She tried to hide in her bedroom at one point, but it was a shared room with Tina, who was there getting everything just so for her hot date with Jimmy.

“Some date,” Karen had muttered, but that only got her a glare from Tina.

“You’re just jealous, little girl.”

“Yeah, right.  Like I want that asshole poking me with his dirty little prick.”

“Shut your mouth!”

Tina had been prancing around the room in her bra and panties, painting her nails and mucking with her hair like she was the freaking queen of Siam or something.

Karen left to go downstairs, figuring that even being lectured at was better than watching Tina get ready for her fuck-fest.

As she walked downstairs, she could hear Tina singing softly.

Maybe I am jealous,
she thought. 
Just a little.

*   *   *

Now she left the house and started to walk down to the beach.  It was usually a forty-five minute walk, and it still felt that way to her, but of course no time at all had actually passed by the time she arrived.

“Free time,” she called it.  Time that nobody else had and she cherished.

Well, nobody else except Bobby Jersey, but she didn’t quite know that yet, not in the front of her brain where she did all her conscious thinking; but maybe deep down in some hidden chamber of her stinky subconscious, she had a clue.  It’s why she kept being drawn to the beach whenever she had her free time show up.

The weather was perfect.  The sun was shining on Laguna and the waves were rolling in just high enough to allow kids to body surf.

Now, though, the waves were frozen, random spikes sticking up from the water.  Karen kicked off her running shoes (she’d forgotten to change into her flip-flops) and walked to the water.

Out of habit she glanced around, but of course there were only manikins lying on the beach—at least that’s what it always looked like.  She walked around a group of teenaged boys and glanced down at them.

“Jeff?”

She stopped and stared, but of course Jeff didn’t answer back, nor did he glance in her direction.  He’d never know she’d been at the beach that day.

Like every tenth-grade student at Central High School, she had a secret crush on Jeff Amsters.  He was the guy that everyone noticed.  He was tall and had perfect brown hair and a smile that seemed to target any girl nearby.  He was the quarterback of the football team and already had college scouts checking him out.

Karen inched closer.  She didn’t recognize the two guys he was sitting with, and she ignored them.  She couldn’t help moving closer and finally crouched onto her knees on the sand in front of him.

“You’re beautiful,” she whispered.  She felt guilty, like she was doing something wrong.  I am, she knew.  I shouldn’t be doing this.

But she moved even closer, so her eyes were only a couple of inches from his.  And his lips.  She wet her own lips and leaned over to kiss him.

She closed her eyes and imagined him kissing her.

After a few seconds she pulled back.

“That was my first kiss,” she said.  “Thank you.”

Her face turned red, and she stood up and walked away from the threesome.  As she walked to the water, she wished that some part of Jeff would remember, but she knew that was just a fantasy.

The water was cool on her toes as she felt sand squish through them.  The sun beat down on her, and beads of sweat formed on her forehead.

Should I?

Karen had sometimes walked along the beach on hot days, knowing this was her own personal space and that it was impossible for anybody to ever see her, but she’d never had the courage before.

“Fuck it,” she said.

She turned her back to the manikins and pulled her blue
I heart L.A.
T-shirt over her head.  She did it as fast as she could so she wouldn’t have a chance to change her mind.  Next came her shorts.

As she stood watching the silent waves in front of her, she took a long breath and unhooked her bra.  She held it along with her other clothes as she stepped out of her panties.

Can’t believe I’m actually doing this.

Out in the water were dozens of swimmers.  She could see the ones close to her, but as the water got deeper, she only saw motionless heads rising above the surface.  Below the surface were bodies frozen in time but still alive.

Karen turned to face the hundreds more people lying on their beach towels.  She stared at Jeff, feeling fear but excitement at standing naked in front of him.  She almost pulled her arms up to cover her breasts, but no, she wanted this.  She felt a weird desire to show off, to let him and everybody else be near her body.  She wanted to exhibit herself and she wasn’t going to let the fear win over the excitement.

But she decided not to walk too close to Jeff.  Thirty feet away was plenty close enough.  The calling would come soon enough.  She always had lots of warning when she was going to go back to normal time, but even so, she imagined him blinking and looking at her with that big smile of his.  Or would he laugh?

She turned to look south along the shoreline and then back out to the water.  The sun felt so nice on her body.

“Next time I’m bringing a towel to sunbathe with,” she said.  She closed her eyes and looked up, feeling the heat on her cheeks.

“You can borrow one of mine.”

She froze, eyes still closed.

Can’t be.

Karen wanted it to be her imagination.  But another part of her—the lonely part that couldn’t share her secret with anybody—had always wished to find somebody else who walked through time.

“I know you heard me.”

It was a male voice.  She blinked her eyes open and saw him standing in front of her.

“Ohmygod….”

She pulled her clothes to her body, trying to cover her breasts and her groin at the same time.  “You can’t watch me.”

“It’s okay.  I’ve been watching you the whole time you’ve been here.”

He looked to be about her age, but she didn’t recognize him.

“Turn the fuck around!”

He laughed.  “I don’t think so.  I’m enjoying the view way too much.”

Her face colored again, and she turned her back to him.  She walked onto the sand and dressed as quickly as she could.  The heat she now felt was not caused by the sun.

“Nothing to be ashamed of, sweetie.  You’ve got a great body.”

“Ohmygod, I can’t believe you watched me.  Who are you?”

“I’m Bobby Jersey.  Who are you?”

“Karen Richardson.”

For a minute neither of them said anything.  Then she said, “How long have you been able to slip through time?”

“Since I was a kid.  I dunno exactly how long.”

“Me too.  I think I was eight.  I thought I was the only one.”

“I thought so, too.  Guess we were both wrong.”

Bobby was several inches taller than Karen.  He wasn’t built like Jeff, but he also wasn’t butt-ugly like some of the creeps she went to school with.

He wore only a dark blue bathing suit.

“You live near here?” she asked.

He smiled, mouth closed, like he was bored and humoring her.

“Watch this,” he said.

Karen no longer was blushing and actually felt curious about this stranger.

Bobby walked over to a middle-aged man standing nearby.  Rolls of fat cascaded over his suit, and his back was covered with splotches of black hair.  He had been throwing a beach ball with a woman (probably his wife, Karen guessed, though why a pretty, slim woman like that would pair up with that ugly old fart was beyond her).  He’d just tossed the ball and it hovered in midair, inches from his outstretched fingertips.  He looked like he was grunting from the trivial exertion; he lived in heart-attack territory, and there was always a chance this could be his last trip to the beach.

Bobby glanced back at Karen and held up his index finger. 
Watch this.

He grabbed the fat guy’s shoulder and pushed.  Jumbo didn’t seem to want to move for a moment, but when Bobby kept pushing, the body leaned to the left.  Bobby kept at it, helping the guy almost all the way to the ground.

Jumbo stayed on his side, looking ridiculous with his outstretched fingers.

“You can’t do that,” said Karen.

But of course he could.  He just shrugged.  “I wish I could be here when time starts again.  His wife is going to think he’s collapsed, and he’ll find himself on the ground without any recollection of falling.  He’ll think he’s going nuts.”

“That’s mean.”

Bobby took a big bow and laughed.  “Gotta have a bit of fun.  Otherwise, life’s too boring.”

“Have you done that before or were you just trying to impress me?”

When he walked back to Karen, the smile was gone.  He stared at her, and for a second he looked as frozen as everyone around them.  Then the corners of his mouth raised a bit, but it wasn’t a happy smile.  It was a smile full of secrets and lies.  He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “You don’t want to know all the things I’ve done, sweetie.  At least not yet, you don’t.”