The Long Wait for Tomorrow (19 page)

“You seem to be taking quite an interest in him now.”

“I like the new Kelly McDermott.” Bill smiled, smacking the ball out into the trees.

The sun crawled across the sky, burning the ground beneath their feet.

“I think Kelly’s …” Patrick didn’t want to get into detail, but he felt as though he needed to sound it out. “I think he’s trying to be all right.”

“You know”—Bill plunked down another ball and turned to face Patrick—“once a change has occurred … once you’ve gone too far, once the world is no longer the one it was yesterday … it’s very hard to go back. Most people kind of get the idea and try to make the present match up as best it can. But it’s just an excuse.”

“For what?”

“To keep from going forward.” Bill’s face looked sadly resigned. He ran a hand over his head, down past his gray ponytail. “I like the new Kelly McDermott, but I don’t know how welcome he is around here. We’re just not ready …”

Patrick didn’t know what to say.

He didn’t think there was anything
to
say.

“It’s like we’re all just waiting for tomorrow,” Bill murmured, taking his position alongside the golf ball. Patrick gave him his space, wiping off sweat with his priceless Armani jacket. The pair of them kept quiet as Bill continued to rocket those miniature comets over the desolate field. As lunchtime drew to a close, they made their way across to collect the ones they could find.

t wasn’t much more than Zack and a few members of the football team who saw how it started. They would say, later, that it began with Kelly. With Kelly laughing at Cody, unapologetically laughing
at
him. Around a dozen students had seen the simple argument escalate to an incomprehensible shouting match over that freshman geek with all the upper-level math and science classes. By the time the first unsuccessful punch was thrown, the crowd count stood at around fifty.

That was when Patrick had happened upon the scene, making it around fifty-one.

He cut into the crowd, bursting through the membrane to find Kelly and Cody rolling around on the ground, between grass and gravel. Close body blows, arms a tangle as they continued to shout through clenched teeth.

“What did you do?!”

“Fuck you!”

“Tell me!”

“I’ll
kill you
, you fucking—”

“What did you
do
to him?!”

Patrick was frantically seeking a chance to intervene when Coach Redwood shoved his way past the cheering students and yanked Kelly off of his only son and heir. Cody vaulted to
his feet. He charged once more, under the impression that his father might actually continue to hold on to Kelly, allowing Cody to pound some respect into the insurgent McDermott.

Apparently, even Redwood had his limits in public. Grabbing hold of Kelly’s jacket with one arm, he launched out his free hand. It was spot on, fingers wrapping around his son’s arm in an iron grip. He swung Cody, sent him flying backward.

“Cody, you stay back!” he barked, pointing. “Stay
back
!”

“You tell me what happened!” Kelly yelled, struggling to break loose.

“You shut up!” Redwood ordered. “Shut up!”

“He started it!” Cody fumed. His face was smudged with dirt, a bit of blood crusted around his ear. “I didn’t—”

“I won’t have this!” Redwood shoved Kelly away, then grabbed him again. He dragged him toward Cody, whom he collected in his other hand. “Not when we’ve got state tonight! You two want to kill each other afterward, fine! Move it!”

Shoving Kelly through the wall of students while dragging his son behind, Redwood made off with the two. A few people kept watch as the coach headed off toward the proverbial woodshed. Most, however, turned to Patrick as the crowd dispersed. Not seeking any answers, because few people ever talked to him. Though their faces displayed no shortage of questions.

And he knew it wouldn’t be long before someone was going to want some answers.

But Patrick wasn’t one for being proactive. He spent the last few minutes of lunch wandering the campus, looking around
unenthusiastically. Searching for answers the same way he had always pretended to search for people at school dances, anything to keep from actually having to dance. Students floated past him, every now and then engaging him in a question-and-answer routine that was growing tired.

So tired that Patrick eventually snapped: “He’s a time traveler, OK?”

The sophomore girl who stood before him took a moment to digest this information. Her bright yellow dress lifted gently in the breeze, exposing sandals and green painted toenails. For a moment, Patrick was certain she would simply walk away, disgusted with his disregard for her genuine concern over Kelly McDermott.

But her expression remained benign as the daisies in her tangled sandy hair.

“Well …,” she mused, smiling sweetly with deeply stoned eyes. “No cure for that.”

“No,” Patrick agreed, a little angry at how absolutely right this little hippie girl was. “No, there’s no cure for time travel. Nothing to be done.”

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“Didn’t you just hear me?” Patrick replied, laughing nervously at the opportunity to actually have this conversation with
someone.
“Nothing to be done.”

“Yeah, but you can still … you know, help him.”

“Help him?”

“No cure for cancer, either.”

“No.”

“So you accept it, right? And then you find ways to live with it. Work around the rest of the world.”

It was almost fitting, this advice from someone renting a summer home outside reality. “You really think that works?”

“Works for my mom and me,” the girl said with a funny little sigh.

Patrick held back the sympathetic wince, swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“Your mom … the cancer and everything.”

Patrick was taken aback by her sudden laughter. “My mom doesn’t have
cancer….
”

She giggled, snorted, and absently brushed a finger along his collar, then wandered away.

Son of a bitch, though
, Patrick’s angels marveled as the bell rang, signaling the end of lunch hour.
Even without all that tragedy, the pothead’s got a point.

Patrick didn’t know how he knew Kelly would be sitting on the bleachers. Or he told himself he didn’t know. Now that he had finally decided on a course of action, Patrick’s angels were taking every opportunity to demonstrate the dangers of flirting with Kelly’s madness. Their babbling voices did all they could to shove his face in it, the tight grip of a master’s hand forcing his dog to see just what he’d done to the living-room rug.

Kelly doesn’t remember.

He’s going back to the scene of the crime without even realizing it.

It’s been far too long for him, twenty years.

“Shut up,” Patrick told them, ascending the aluminum seats.

Kelly was sitting second row from the top. White threads like loose nerves hanging from the shoulder seam of his letter jacket. His eyes were closed. A distressed scowl did away with any illusions of narcolepsy or transcendental meditation. Shallow breaths, hands resting on either knee. Fingers tapping out Morse-code nonsense.

Patrick stood by his side, wondering if Kelly even knew he was there. He raised his hand in an unseen greeting. “Hey.”

Kelly opened his eyes. He didn’t acknowledge Patrick, just breathed in. Eyes gazing upon the stadium, the hollowed remains of an aluminum tortoise.

“Um …” Patrick wasn’t sure if people actually said things like what he was about to ask. The occasion had never come up, and the fact was almost depressing enough to keep him from trying. “Do you … want to talk about it?”

“If I do, it won’t be what you want to hear,” Kelly said. His words were steeped with defeat, uncharacteristic of both the old and new Kelly McDermott. “I know what’s expected of me, now.”

Patrick took the space next to Kelly, sitting on his own hands.

“Now that I’m actually here, it’s so strange….” Kelly scratched his nose. “It’s so strange. I’m here, physically here, and yet … I can’t come back. I tried. Tried talking shit with my teammates, grinning like an idiot. Taking crap from Sedgwick. Listening to that cream-puff talk about community and togetherness, while he stands around, just looking for a problem to make him feel like he’s in control. And Redwood, that
big renegade ass hole. I hate fuckers who just want to win. Who can’t live without that validation, a goddamn proof of purchase.”

Kelly shook his head, clenched his fists, and released. “I hate bullies. I hate them, Patrick, and this is who I’ve got to be now. And I can’t.”

“You were …” Patrick tried to stop himself from going along with it, but he couldn’t help it. “You were never really a bully.”

“Yeah?” Kelly scoffed, disgusted. “Then what was I?”

“You …just were, I guess.”

“I tried so hard today. To be whatever that was, to keep from …” Kelly looked at Patrick with beseeching eyes. “This is really happening, Patrick…. I know you don’t believe me. I can hardly believe it myself. Maybe I’m still back there in that institution, maybe none of this is real. But I don’t think so. In fact, I don’t even know what to think. I don’t know what I’m doing here, how this is even possible….” Kelly paused, nodding with enough momentum to get his body rocking. Psyching himself into a decision. “But now I have to know. I have to figure this out, Patrick.”

“Because something bad is going to happen?” Patrick said.

“Do you at least believe me about that?”

Patrick didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t believe. He did, in fact, feel that Kelly was very right about this. Even worse, he was certain this wasn’t just some prediction with fair odds in its favor. This was more than neutral pessimism, because there was always something horrible looking to sink its teeth into any life unfortunate enough to wander too close.

Something bad was going to happen, something with far-reaching consequences.

Patrick believed it, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to break from what he knew to be true and authentic. Didn’t want to waltz into the void with Kelly McDermott, and he couldn’t bring himself to answer.

“Because if you
do
believe me,” Kelly told him, “then you need to help me. Whether or not you believe that the Kelly McDermott sitting here is not the Kelly you once knew.”

“Then I need you to listen to me,” Patrick insisted, standing up to face Kelly. “It doesn’t matter whether you came from twenty years in the future or five minutes from now. Nobody likes who they are, you understand?”

“I like who I am just fine.”

“Well, you’re a teenager now,” Patrick informed him. “And the only thing that matters is who you’re supposed to be. I want to figure out what’s going on as much as you, but
until we do …
You need to stick to script. Keep it as loose as you like, but you have a responsibility to the present.”

“Meaning?”

“At the very least, you have to play in that game tonight.” Patrick leaned close. “And you have to win.”

Kelly stared up at him with a blank expression.

For a moment, Patrick thought his lecture had turned him catatonic.

He was about to wave a hand in front of his eyes, contemplated a crack across the face, when Kelly finally spoke: “Jenna can’t know.”

Patrick stiffened. “Can’t know what?”

“Jenna does not get involved in this,” Kelly ordered.

“You can’t just keep Jenna out of this.”

“When it comes to this, I can do a whole lot of whatever I please,” Kelly said. “You want me to march in rank and file, fine. But if something bad is going to happen, if I’m so determined to wreak havoc on the present, as you’ve so kindly pointed out—”

“Kelly—”

“
If
that is the case, I don’t want Jenna to end up hurt or
dead
!”

“Oh!” Patrick raised his arms high. “And I guess it’s all right if that’s how
I
end up.”

“Something tells me that we just might deserve it, Patrick.”

Patrick lowered his arms, slowly.

From behind him, he could hear the sound of the flag whipping briskly in a sudden, unexpected gust of wind.