Chapter Three: A Good Impression
“Cole, Eat your dinner. We’ll talk about it later.”
“Ma, this is a huge chance I’ve got. I gotta take it.”
Across the gleaming mahogany dining table, his mother shook her head, her rounded face drawn tightly into a frown. Ever since Cole had first brought up the decision to apply for the time travel experiment, she’d expertly avoided a real discussion about it. She would change the subject or tell him to eat his food anytime he mentioned it. And if Cole didn’t have any food in front of him, she would insist he was hungry and rush off to prepare him something. Cole had to admire the strategy; he couldn’t talk if his face was stuffed with lasagna or antipasto.
Beside her sat Cole’s father, a surly man with a head full of premature gray hairs and light brown eyes that nearly always glinted with irritation. Cole had never understood how his parents fit together. His ma was so sweet, always wanting to take care of everyone. She was the one he would miss…His father was perpetually angry, always snapping and throwing his weight around. His dad was tall and the times they’d gotten into arguments, he towered over Cole, shouting down at him like he was goading Cole into a fight that Cole would never be able to win. His brother Jason smirked from the far end of the table, tipping his chair back until the dining table chair pressed into the corduroy armchair of the living room. Tall and broad-shouldered, Jason took after their dad in size and looks. Cole had gotten his mom’s short stature and thick mop of hair.
Their house was a small ranch, one of those dwellings where none of the common areas had any real separation. The dining area was only an L-shaped section of the living room that Cole’s parents had positioned an armchair in front of to provide a sense of separation and give it as much of a ‘formal dining room’ ambiance as could be mustered in such a small house.
Behind the side of the table where Cole’s parents sat, avoiding his eyes and ignoring the mention of Speculative Science Enterprises, there was the synthetic counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area. The kitchen was blue and white and covered in ducks. Every room that Cole’s mother touched became covered in ducks, except for her bedroom which was where she hid the obsession deemed too tacky for the rest of the house, even by her. Mickey and Minnie Mouse stuffed animals, toys, clocks, blankets, and figurines covered every wall and every surface. Cole couldn’t stand the absolute kitsch sometimes. He couldn’t stand how cute and senseless everything was.
Maybe that was why his own bedroom was an homage to anime and conspiracy theories. He needed a reprieve from the ducklings and flowers and Disney characters that crept stealthily from every corner, poking into his brain.
He hadn’t missed this house while he was in prison. He’d missed his mom, but not the house itself. His mom had always had his back, visiting him in prison over those six long years. While his dad had wanted to disown him over it, his mom had convinced herself that Clay had tricked Cole somehow, and that he was the innocent bystander.
‘Sure, Ma,’ Cole had thought during the trial, when his mother had given her character witness testimony. ‘I cooked up a whole batch of napalm on my own, and yeah, it didn’t work, but I still made it. But I’m the innocent one. All Clay. Better for you to believe that it’s all Clay.’
He’d been released before Clay because everyone could see Clay was the leader. Cole hadn’t noticed it at the time. Cole had never thought he was the follower. The beta of the alpha-beta duo. That was what his defense attorney had called him. Beta. As humiliating as that was, at least it had helped him out with sentencing, and while the world remained viciously angry at him, while the hate-mail still came, his mom kept on believing that he’d never really been a part of it. She understood that his angry, teenage self wasn’t his true self, that he’d only gotten caught up in the thrill of the plan, the dream of it all, because he was someone with power and influence in that dark and twisted dream, and that was all he’d wanted back then.
Still he wanted it, in a way. He wanted to be important. He wanted to make a mark on the world, but not an ugly one. He wanted to do something good. This time travel experiment could be his chance to do something good and real and important. He wanted to undo the damage of his past, and the only way to do that was to go to the past.
“Ma, we gotta talk about this,” Cole tried again. “They want me to go to Boston next week.”
His father snorted. “Don’t you have work next week?”
Mom darted a hand forward, fussing with the lasagna and doling another heaping spoonful until Cole’s plate.
Cole rolled his eyes. At least Dad was acknowledging what he’d said. “I do have work next week, but I work at McDonald’s. It don’t matter. Besides, Speculative Science is paying for the trip.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” his mother murmured.
“There is no later. I gotta call the lady back and tell ’em if they should book my ticket or not.”
“Boston,” Jason interjected. “Ain’t that like six hours away? Where’s that? In Maine?”
“For Chrissakes,” Cole muttered. “Do us all a favor and stay in school.”
“What happens if they pick you?” Dad asked. The older man’s eyes narrowed, focusing on Cole with a new level of scrutiny.
“If they choose me, I’ll be a part of their experiment. They’ll send me back in time.”
“To when? What year?”
Shrugging, Cole fought through the sea of nerves swirling through him. He didn’t want a yelling match with his dad. Well….less of a match and more his dad shouting while Cole looked down at his lap and waited for the verbal assault to end. He always wanted to stand up for himself, but in the moment, could never summon the nerve. “Haven’t you been watching them on the news and all?” Cole asked with a forced carelessness. “They have to work it out with the volunteers. Something about it won’t work unless the volunteers really want to go. But they did say it’s gotta be sometime after 1950. They need us to show back up at the office and show ’em it worked.”
“Why can’t you do that if you go back before 1950?” Jason asked.
“Because we’ll be dead if we go back any earlier than that. It’s 2016, and I’m twenty-four. If I go back to 1950 then I’ll be ninety-one by the time it’s 2016 again.”
“But 1950 to now isn’t ninety years.”
“I give up,” Cole sighed.
“I don’t like any of this,” Mom muttered. “I don’t like it at all. You’re going to just show up again as an old man?”
“Exactly.”
“Why? For what?”
Cole stared at her. “For a new life. For a new chance.”
“You have lots of chances here. Things could have turned out much worse for you.”
“Call them and tell them you aren’t interested,” his father instructed. The way he said it, like he’d just decided this was what Cole would do and he fully expected Cole to do as he said. It filled Cole with a frenetic anger, like stew brought to a boil too soon, popping and splattering without warning.
“I am going,” Cole announced.
His father looked up from his plate. His mouth was tight, thin lips pursed. He stared at Cole like he didn’t quite recognize him.
Propelled onward by some inertia, some force that Cole couldn’t name, he kept foing. He projected his voice, forcing into his words a confidence that he didn’t feel. “I am going, and if they take me, then I’m going to time travel.” His heart hammered as he stared at his father, waiting for a reaction, waiting for an explosion. He wasn’t backing down. He wasn’t.
His father frowned. Something shifted in his eyes and he looked for a moment like he might say something more, but then he only ate another mouthful of lasagna and nodded. The anger left his eyes. Cole realized the old guy was probably relieved to be rid of Cole.
Cole’s heart slowed and the tension left his joints. What settled into him in its absence was something hollow and aching.
Dad had never treated Cole the same as Jason. They’d never had any real kind of connection. Cole knew that his father resented him for being small and unathletic and weird. On more than one occasion in middle school, his dad had ransacked his room, throwing away all of his mangas and anime dvds. He’d bought them with his own birthday money and dad had just chucked them. ‘You’re gonna grow up to be some kind of freak.’ And Cole knew that he’d done exactly that, in his dad’s eyes at least.
At the end of the table, Jason shook his head, smiling as he enjoyed the show.
“That’s all there is to it,” Cole murmured, staring down at the lacy white tablecloth. “I want to get out of here. Go back to before I ruined it all.”
A silence fell over the table. The four of them ate, while the duck clock ticked loudly on the wall by the sliding back door.
His mother was the first to speak again, rising to clear the table and clearing her throat, she said, “We’d better go to the store tomorrow, Coley.”
“For what?”
She turned away, shimmying around the counter and through the small entry to the kitchen. Dumping the food scraps into the garbage disposal, she kept her back turned to Cole as she spoke. “You need some new shirts. You want to look good for your interview.”
Look good for his interview? Was she really supporting him in this?
“I think you should get a blue shirt,” she continued. “A nice dark blue shirt will make a good impression.”
A good impression.
Cole really hoped so.
~I love this book and it’s almost ready to be published, but not quite. I’m proofreading and making minor changes right now, so I thought eh, why not serialize it here on wordpress for a bit? I used to serialize another book here on this blog (which we will all just never talk about ever again) and mixing blogging with fiction serialization was super fun. Anyway, here is the romance novel that I wrote during the period of my life when I was literally the most horny I have ever fucking been. I wrote it the summer I turned 30 and holy hell, nobody told me my sex drive was gonna go crazy like that. Anyway, here’s a thing I wrote to keep myself from going insane as my body felt on the verge on constant implosion for about 6 months straight (marginally better now). Okay, that’s it. Bye!~
