Chapter 59: Check-In

Saturday, February 27, 1982

Our meeting with Jane wasn’t until 2pm. Angie and I headed over to the UH Law Library. Ostensibly, we were doing some research for Debate. In fact, I was checking the status of the law around dances and people of the same gender. It took us half an hour to find Fricke v. Lynch, a 1980 Supreme Court decision that affirmed that schools couldn’t bar same-gender couples from school dances. Schools often violated the ruling, but the law was clear, and on our side. What to do with it, I didn’t know, but at least we had some legal backup.

For once, this was a regularly-scheduled meeting with Jane. It’d been such a long time. I had to remember that she was ‘Dr. Stanton’ and not ‘Jane’ while Mom was in earshot, and that hugs were out.

Once we were in her office, we hugged, then sat.

“How’ve you been, Steve? And I have to say, this feels strange, now.”

“For me, too. Not bad, just different, after all the joint meetings. Before we start, I should ask — is there anything different about this, since it’s a ‘Mom’ meeting? As in, officially it’s on her nickel.”

She shook her head. “No, there’s nothing different here. The new confidentiality agreement is the same either time.”

“Worth checking. You’re already in an awkward position with Mom, knowing so many things about us that she can’t. Plus, we understand caution around the inevitable dual relationship.” She nodded at that. “Anyway, it’s been good. We did well at the last tournament. Meg has let us know that she won’t be upset if we skip the next one, which I’m likely to do. I need time outside of activities. They’re all going well, though.”

“Play practice?”

“The chorus is coming together. Understudy is daunting. I’ve got so much to remember. It’ll happen, it’ll just take a while.”

She nodded. “And your girlfriend? Or girlfriends?”

“One girlfriend, many friends that are girls.” She smirked. “No big changes. Yet. I have a date with Sheila tonight, so who knows? There’s one small change. Medium-sized change? Jasmine and I were tested for STDs and are clean and have dispensed with condoms between us.”

“That is interesting. She’s obviously on birth control?”

“No chances taken. The pill and also an IUD.”

“If that doesn’t do it, God wanted her to get pregnant. To me, that speaks to a heightened level of intimacy.”

“I think that’s fair. She said that it affected her more than she thought it would. I would say it did the same for me. She used the word ‘primal’ to describe how it affected her. Even though she can’t — barring divine intervention or ridiculously bad luck — get pregnant, her body doesn’t know that.”

Jane nodded. “If you were anyone else, I’d tell you to be very careful of her feelings. Since you’re you, I’m telling you to be very careful of her feelings, anyway.” She grinned a bit at me. “You may be unnaturally mature and, in a very different way, I think she is, too, based on what I’m told, but she’s still fifteen and things can happen. That said, I trust you to handle things well.”

“Thanks, Jane. I appreciate it.”

“So, anything else of note?”

“Definitely. We did an interesting unit in history this week.” I went through the whole unit; how it was a repeat from before, how we’d worked things out, how I didn’t know the kids from the other class. She jumped in as I was wrapping up.

“So, you’re going to tell me you knew one of the other kids, right?”

I shook my head. “Not exactly. I’m going to tell you I didn’t know one of the other kids at all, which has significant implications.”

She frowned. “Explain, please.”

“I’m sure you remember me mentioning Dave Winton, who was my friend the longest in my previous go-round. We were friends for forty years.”

“Yes, and your concerns about him: introducing him to his wife, things like that. He’s different now?”

I chuckled softly. “Oh, yes. I think different is an understatement. There is no Dave Winton, Jane.”

She blinked. “You’re sure? Not just at some other school?”

“Oh, no, I’m sure. That’s because I met Darla Winton during the history exercise.”

She sat back and blinked again. Faster. “Dave is a girl now?”

“Darla isn’t Dave. Darla is ... well, if I guess right, Darla is what happened when Dave’s parents wound up not having sex on a particular day and did a day or two earlier.”

“I ... have no idea what to say. That’s obviously something only you could know. Even Angie didn’t know Dave, I don’t think.”

“No. In fact, she thought she did, but in fact, she knew a Dan Wilton.”

“Going to ask her on a date?” Jane smirked a bit.

“No. Definitely no. That would be one of the most awkward dates ever, I think. I know far too much about the Winton family, or at least, how it was. I’d be double-checking everything I said, plus, I mean, while I know she’s her own person, part of me can’t help but see her as a female version of Dave, which is beyond odd.”

“This lets you off the hook, though. No worries about destroying Dave’s future, as he doesn’t have one. And the woman you introduced Dave to is probably not at all interested in Darla.”

I snickered. “I imagine not. And of course, that goes into the list of unanswered, and currently unanswerable, questions. Did God or the universe or whatever let me off the hook on this one? If so, why? Or is this just some strange quirk of fate? The first divergence that I am aware of between this reality and my previous one is a concussion in elementary school. Well, or was, until Darla, she’d have to be the first difference now. But is that the first? Or are there others? Am I even me, exactly? I think I’m me. I’m pretty sure. But, for instance, this me can sing; the previous me couldn’t. I’ve got control of my weight in a way the other me never did. Is that just diet and exercise, or is my body a bit different? Frank died three years earlier in this world. Is that just when the heart attack got him, or was he not quite the same person, but rather one with a slightly worse heart? This universe’s Sharon went farther off the rails than the other’s. Is she the same? On and on it goes. Once you poke at it, it’s hard to stop.”

Jane shook her head. “As you said, unanswered and currently unanswerable. Everyone plays what-if, but you and Angie have insights into what-ifs that the rest of us don’t.”

“And yet we know almost nothing, too. Socrates would be proud, I guess. In many cases ... we just don’t know. If I hadn’t been close to Dave Winton, Darla would just be a cute girl. There could be dozens of people who are there who weren’t, or who aren’t there who were, or are the wrong gender, or maybe they were tall and thin and now they’re short and heavyset. Who knows? I only knew maybe a couple of hundred people out of twice that for my grade, eight times that for the school.”

She chuckled at that. “Just concentrate on doing your best, as we’ve said. Which brings me around to the other question I have. The history exercise: was this really a recreation of your first time, everything the same?”

“Well ... no. Of course not. There was no Angie, before. I wasn’t close friends with Mel, and Darla didn’t even exist. It literally couldn’t have been ‘everything the same.’ I’m not at all the me I was either. But if you mean, as close as possible, that’s what I tried to do. Yes, we really did build a 10-way alliance, and yes, we floored the teachers, and yes, Mr. Myerson came to talk to us.”

“That’s what I was asking, I think, really. This is a place where it’d have been easy to use your knowledge wrongly, I think, and make yourself cool and important and create a moment because you knew what could be. But if you did it before, with no foreknowledge, then that seems fair. In a way, next year is more a concern, that way. In theory, you’ll be at the same tournaments you’ve been to before and could misuse something.”