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It had been years. I’d been fading in and out of Now since I had learned what it means, to be Here and Now and Aware of the Time that was slowly falling through my metaphorical hourglass. I didn't know, for a long time, that the other kids could never feel the walls falling in on them like I could, because every time I tried to tell them, they always thought we were playing Ghosts, the game we used to play where we predicted the end of the world. I knew now though, that they could never see it, because they never came back choking on the air like I did. By the time I was probably seven, I had given up on trying.
I used to call it Away. But that was before it occurred to me that ‘away’ meant that I had to go somewhere, which never seemed right. It was like everyone else went somewhere. I stayed. I wandered alone in the rubble of my home, my school, my life. And then it all came back. The walls were as they should be. The people too. It’s like no one noticed. But I did.
And so I started calling it Then, because it almost felt like I'd fallen into another time, rather than another place.
This time, I was at school. The only things that had not completely fallen into ruin around me were my desk and chair. Which was normal. Not that this was probably normal. But usually, the things that I touched were intact.
The building felt dead. There’s no other way to describe the absolute silence that surrounded me, no other way to tell you the way that my heart felt like it was echoing through the emptiness that filled my lungs with ash and dust and squeezed me tightly every time I took a breath. There was me, and there was the dead husk of my life, the piles of ashes and charred walls and falling in ceilings. I was at school, and it was so funny to me that I was there. Because I didn't want to be there, in any sense of the word.
I got up, and I swear, it was like as soon as I moved, dust. It stuck to my clothes, my hair, my skin, and it clung to me like the girls who go here stick to their bad relationships. I'm pretty sure I gave up trying to brush it off of me when I was like, ten. Yes, Charlie Cedar was pretty much always covered in ash and stuff, but it's an aesthetic, shut up. The grey matched the bags under my eyes. Because sleep is for suckers. Obviously.
I'd never been great at being alone. At least, not like this. This kind of alone, where the people were gone, the halls were empty, and my breathing sounded like the loudest thing I'd ever experienced. I could never bring myself to speak Then. It felt like if I ever did, the sound would disturb the old beat up walls, and I was always afraid that that might be the one hit they had left before collapsing. But the thing about being this kind of alone, though, is that you don’t feel alone. It’s like you’re so used to being around others, that your mind believes that there must be others. Even when, my whole life, every time I’d gone to Then, it had always been just me.
I started wandering around my classroom, scuffing my feet through the dirt and things all over the floor. And for the millionth time, I wondered why. I wondered, as I walked in circles around my desk, why I kept coming here, why I was alone, why everything was so grey. The dark sky. The walls. Everything. I felt like I had fallen into a Halsey song.
I picked up my copy of the standardly beat-up-but-still-usable textbook from my desk, which, prior to the accidental time travel, I had been leaning on. History. I pulled the pages apart and opened it down the middle, and I looked at the faces looking back up at me. The pictures of people always looked judgmental to me, but that was fine because I really couldn’t have cared less about what’s in the past. I wanted to know how to save the world from whatever happened to it, even though I was an introverted no one with not a lot of talents or practical knowledge. Over the years I slowly came to the conclusion that it must be the future, because all the aspects of my life had never been destroyed like they were Then.
If Then was the future, something must have gone wrong. I wondered, not for the first time, if something had gone like, explosively wrong. And then I stopped wondering, because once again, I decided that I didn't want to know.
I could never decide if I envied the people who never came here.
If Then was the future, I didn't want to know it was ever coming.
Back to the Present. Monday morning. History class. My teacher was talking about things that happened in the past that we can’t change or fix. I didn't care. I both wanted and didn’t want to know about the future. Which I didn't know if I could change or fix, but my curiosity was killing me anyway. I really hated curiosity, it always wondered things I wished it wouldn't.
When I was in elementary school, the walls started falling around me. I used to try and explain to my friends and my teachers about how every time I turned my back, the world fell apart, but I was always dismissed. I was always what the adults in my life called “imaginative”. So I was left to my devices. I was a lonely kid, but I got used to it. Being in a room full of other people ignoring you always felt less lonely than being alive in a world that's completely dead. I became an introvert out of circumstance. I figured I’d always be alone.
Before I lost all my friends, I used to go to a lot of sleepovers. When we were all little kids, we would go to the library on Fridays and check out the same books filled with ghost stories before heading to Ashley Holland’s house for the night. We slept in a camper or sometimes in tents in the yard, and we would read stories from our books to each other, with flashlights shining beneath our chins. Ashley’s mom was different than most moms I knew, she let Ashley invite girls and boys to her sleepovers. Which I mean, not that there was any real need for concern. We were maybe nine. But there was one boy who always came, who never brought a book. He made his ghost stories up on the spot. His stories always fascinated me, because they were always the most unsettling in the way that it was like he’d been to Then. Garrett Anderson seemed to Know, which, at the time, was probably the most interesting thing about him.
I was never brave enough to try and become real friends with Garrett in elementary school. Even then, I was incredibly socially awkward. I only had friends because they started talking to me first. So, as much as I wanted to know more about Garrett’s stories, I could never find the guts to go up and talk to someone not in my immediate friend group. But alas. By the time I was thirteen, Garrett had moved and had been gone for two years, and Popular Girl Melissa Scott had decided that I was a freak to be avoided at all costs, because, among other things, who believes in ghosts anymore, huh Charlie? My friends who had stuck with me for so many years were suddenly gone, all because Melissa always remembered you in ways you’d rather forget, and she would remind everyone of exactly how freakish you were way back when, and how nobody can take you seriously for who you are now.
The rest of history passed. I took notes, but I couldn't tell you what they were about. I’m pretty sure the only reason I even have notes from today is because the guy who sat next to me and probably the closest thing I had to a friend right then, Derek Davis, elbowed me every time the slide changed. He was way too smart to be sitting with me, and he was also probably the reason I was passing history.
As per the usual for after a trip to Then, I was thinking about Garrett Anderson and his weird and wonderful ghost stories. About how the world looked after the aliens took all the people. About how a meteor hit the Earth, and it wiped out the people like it did the dinosaurs, except for one, who was forever cursed to walk alone with the ghosts of the dead. About people who live in between a place called he called Now and a place he called Never. I was thinking about how every one of his stories seemed to be about me.
That evening, I was in my room. Right then, my bed was on the same wall as the window, but it wouldn't stay there long. I was rearranging my room constantly. I could never keep myself still, I could never make my mind calm down enough to think clearly or sleep well, so it always made sense to me that my room shouldn't stay still either. Sometimes I would change it around so that the next time I woke up Then, I could theoretically see what would be left of my material life, but my room was always empty when I got there. There was only the room, empty, falling in and covered in ash. Sometimes I would sit on the floor - it wasn't carpeted Then - and trace pictures in the ashes, especially when I was younger. I used to feel like Harry Potter at the moment before he knew he was a wizard, drawing himself a birthday cake in the sand. I used to wonder if the reason Hagrid wasn't coming for me was that I never wished myself a happy birthday. But I could never break the silence.
In my room, I had a lava lamp. So I sat on my bed and watched the light trace the walls, and I watched the lamp glow and change. I watched it and I just thought for a while. I wondered what would happen if the entire world lost power for a short period of time. Or a long one. Or indefinitely. Would we be able to survive in the dark? It was barely 5:00, but it was pretty dark already. It was getting to be the darker part of the year. Because here, the sky got to change and express itself, with whatever seasonal mood struck it’s fancy. And maybe it did Then, too, but I could never see it beyond the grey clouds that filled my lungs with dust and my chest with dread. I didn't understand what kind of event could have turned my beautiful sky grey. What had gone wrong? Why? I was thinking myself into circles that always started and ended in why.
I eventually broke my circle of whys, and not for the first or last time, I started wondering what Garrett was thinking about. I hadn't seen him since he moved when I was eleven, a good six years ago, and I really had no way of knowing if his stories were true or just uncannily similar to my life, but I still wondered about him constantly. Did he ever look at the sky and wonder about all the sciences involved in the ozone layer and pollutants? He seemed smart enough to wonder about that sort of thing. Did he wonder if the perma-grey clouds There the result of some really intense pollutination? Was pollutination even a word? Derek would know.
Pollution. That's the word I was looking for. I'm an idiot.
But yeah. Garrett. What kinds of questions did he ask the universe that never got answered? Or, have I completely painted him wrong? Was he still a total science nerd like he was in grade five, or had he completely lost interest? Because, let’s be real, who bases who they are now off of who they were in grade five? I mean, I’d rather be eternally eleven than thirteen any day of the week, but still. We as humans have a tendency to grow. Like trees. Yeah. Trees with really complicated emotions.
And with the sudden realization that I was losing my mind over in the forestry department, I turned off the lamp and put myself to bed.
I woke up. I skipped breakfast. I went to school. Everything was right with the world.
And then I went to history. And there was someone new. Which usually, I really didn't care about.
Except that he introduced himself as Garrett Freaking Anderson. Actually, he just said Garrett Anderson, but you get the picture. Look, I'm not saying I summoned him by obsessing over who he might or might not have been, but I'm not saying that I didn't, either.
I was so overwhelmed by this new development that I literally could not take in any new information for the rest of the day.
He sat behind me and Derek. And I really wanted nothing more than to turn around and ask if he’d been to Then.
Over the next couple of days, when I wasn't completely reeling over the fact that my childhood sleepover acquaintance was back, I was noticing sometimes how Garrett would see someone else from the sleepover group (most of whom are now the Popular Girls who really have no personality besides being Popular I might add), and go try and start a conversation. Then he would usually realize pretty quickly how few things of importance they had to say. And then he would look uncomfortable for a bit while he tried to end the conversation. Which looked awkward as hell, but I'm pretty sure almost every new person who’s showed up here in the past few years has done exactly the same thing. Poor unfortunate souls, they never knew better.
On Friday, he spotted Mavis Reed, one of the few Popular Girls who I suspected of being deeper than a kiddie pool. He walked up to her, smiling and waving, and started to introduce himself. She smiled, a real smile, like she actually cared that he came back. I recalled that they were actually pretty close when we were little.
And then she was gone. Everyone was gone.
Except for Garrett.
Suddenly I knew that I was right about him, however, whatever satisfaction I got from being right was shortly outlived by the sudden realization that if he turned his head, he would be able to see me. Which, to say the least, my socially awkward self was just not ready for. So, I made the most inconspicuous choice I could think of at that moment. And bolted down the hall.
My beanie pretty much immediately flew off my head, completely ruining my whole edgy kind of aesthetic. Which was quickly added to the long list of Reasons Charlie Cedar Doesn't Run. I didn't go back for it.
It was so eerily quiet Then that I heard him turn around. I heard him take a couple steps and then stop. My hat. I was stopped around a corner. Because confrontation was just not for me at that moment. Or ever.
I could hear him take a few more steps, getting closer. And then he stopped again. And I could hear him walking away. Going back to where he was before we came to Then, I assumed. I always found that I went back faster if I was in the same spot as when I left. Apparently, he found that trick too. I heard him shuffling around for a moment in the quiet. And then he was standing with Mavis Reed again. Surrounded by people. And I was back where I started. My hat was in his pocket.
I learned some things that day. I learned that what I had suspected about Garrett was true. I learned that his stories had some basis in reality. And I learned that I needed to buy a new hat. Damn it.
I went home. I was just overwhelmed. Lunch was almost over, and I realized that I had history afterwards. Not only was Garrett in that class, but that was also the class where I was most likely to hear about all the political tensions that I was trying so hard to ignore. They had been coming up more and more. I just Noped Straight The Hell Out of there. I’d tell my parents that I felt sick or something, if they ever even bothered to ask. Which, chances are, they wouldn’t. It wasn't even a real lie. I was feeling so many things, I felt sick to my stomach. I skipped school the next day. And the day after. And then I realized that I tried to skip school on both Saturday and Sunday, which was a little bit redundant, but that's cool I guess.
I did end up going to school on Monday. And paying even less attention than usual, which was an impressive feat, considering how little I usually take in. However, I was painfully aware of every time Garrett was around me. It occurred to me that I probably would sound like every bad movie where someone is hopelessly in love with someone else, but honestly, I was less caught up in “love” than I was in “accidental time travel”. Which, in my opinion, was far more interesting.
History. To the right of Derek, in front of Garrett. And I could not concentrate. Derek kept letting me know when to copy a new slide of notes, but every time I looked up, I couldn't tell what the words were supposed to mean. Garrett looked more put together and generally less crazed than I probably did, but judging by the gentle rhythmic tapping I could hear coming from behind me, he was getting more drumming than writing done. I decided he was fated to become a percussionist. At the end of class, Derek looked down at my empty page and shook his head, before telling me to take his notes for the night to copy. Why he was so nice to me all the time, I had no idea. I took out my phone and took a few pictures of them before handing the scribbler back to Derek before he walked away.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around, and Garrett was standing in front of me, looking a little sheepish.
“Um. Hey. You're Charlie, right? It's been a bit.”
“Yeah, hi. What's up?” I replied. I was talking to him. To the one person I had wanted to talk to since… forever, really.
“Did you get the notes from today? I was a little caught up in something. So. I don't have them.”
“Well, I didn't really get them either. I'm kind of a mess today. But I have pictures of today’s. Do you want them?” Wow, I felt like a moron.
“That’d be great.”
Once we finished having the fakest and most forced conversation ever, he gave me his number and I texted him pictures of Derek’s notes. I thought we were going to walk away when he spoke again.
“Oh, Charlie. I found a hat on Friday. It's in my car. I think it might be yours..?”
Damn damn damn. What was I supposed to say next?
Oh, wait. The obvious choice here was to run away. And that's exactly what I did.
It didn't occur to me until a couple of hours later, when I was at home, that he had my number now. It didn't occur to me at all until his number showed up in a notification. He had sent me a picture of my hat.
Garrett: Is this yours?
Me: Actually, yeah. Where did you find it?
I was trying to get him to say something first. Call me childish, but it was like I had a secret I needed someone else to talk about first.
Garrett: I bet you’d Never guess.
Me: That was some pretty interesting capitalization. Is there something you’d like to say? Because, if so, Then you'd better get on with it.
Garrett: Only that even when we were kids, I’ve never seen you run that fast before.
Me: Existential terror can do that to you
Me: Come to think of it, so can social anxiety.
Me: Really, it's hard to tell which I'm feeling more of at any given moment.
Garrett: Ha. I missed how quick you are.
He’d bothered to miss me. That was nice of him.
I wasn't really sure what to say next. So, I just went with;
Me: And I missed your ghost stories.
Garrett: No you haven’t, you've been living them. All I did was embellish them a little.
Me: ...with aliens?
Garrett: Yeah! When are aliens not a necessary addition?
Me: You know what? You're right. Thank you
Garrett: Just doing what’s right
I plugged my phone in after that. We hadn't actually said a lot, but it was the most meaningful conversation I’d had in years. It felt good to know I wasn't the only person to see Then. Really good. Because that meant that I wasn't crazy. Or at the very least, I wasn’t the only one losing their mind.
Over the next couple days, Garrett and I talked a bunch more. Most of our conversations were about nothing in particular, but I enjoyed talking to someone who wasn't Derek. Nothing against Derek, talking to him just didn't feel as good as talking to Garrett. It was like I Actually had an Actual friend. He also gave me my hat back.
Thursday came. We decided to hang out after school so we could talk more in person. We went to the library in town, because it was close by, and as we discovered, we were both absolutely dreadful at making decisions, so we got in his car and drove until we found a place to go. We picked some books filled with ghost stories off the shelves, and sat at a table and read them like we used to at Ashley Holland’s sleepovers. Well, like I used to, anyway. And that's how we spent more than an hour. We just read each other stories we thought were frightening when we were kids.
Eventually, we got tired of the stories, and we started talking about anything. He told me about how he moved to Ohio and back. He joked that Ohio had even fewer buildings than Halifax.
“So… why, exactly, did your family decide to move to Ohio, of all places?”
“Actually, my family has a genetic condition where we crave corn more than anything, so my parents decided that Ohio was the place for us,” he said with a smile. I smiled too.
“And what made you come back?”
“While we were in Ohio, my dad got infected with a virus that made him need the ocean more than he needed the corn, and Lake Erie just wasn't cutting it.”
“You know what? I respect that.”
Reality flickered for a split second. I barely reacted. But I noticed. Garrett noticed too. I took a breath in and I could taste Then.
“You know, I’ve always hated the taste of broken things,” I said quietly.
“I know what you mean,” he said.
“How long have you been seeing it?”
“My whole life. How about you?”
“As long as I can remember.” I paused. “What do you think it is?”
He looked thoughtful for a few seconds. “I think it’s something gone wrong.”
“Are you still as much of a science nerd as you were in elementary school?”
He smirked. “Yeah, actually. In fact, I am even more of a science nerd than I was in elementary school. I have reached peak nerdiness.” He made his fingers into circles around his eyes for glasses and did his best to look Peak Nerd.
“Oh wow.”
“Yeah. Why do you ask?”
I glanced out the window briefly, for no real reason other than the fact that I was certain was about to sound incredibly stupid. “Because I’m wondering what your Scientific Opinion is on the clouds.” I looked down at the table. “The grey ones,” I muttered helpfully.
“Hmm.” He was quiet for a minute. “I’ve actually thought about this a lot. They’re pretty dark, and they’re always there. Also, if you’re outside, there are no plants. Not even in Ohio, where there are supposed to be cornfields everywhere. Nothing. I think the clouds block out the sun enough to prevent the plants from recovering from... Whatever happened that made them pretty much completely disappear. I think the clouds are a result of humans screwing up the Earth to the point of no return.”
“Oh. Cheery.” A beat. “And what exactly do you think happened to the plants?”
“Something big happened. It's not just the plants that are affected either. I mean, obviously. You’ve noticed how all the buildings are pretty much completely empty and blown out?” I nodded, and he continued, “Well, here, the buildings are pretty ruined, but in the States, it's a lot worse. A lot of them are just straight up... gone. So, I’m thinking there had to be something, an event of some sort, that created a blast somewhere closer to Ohio than Nova Scotia, and was big enough to destroy everything on a really large scale.”
“Oh. Well, that sounds… Dramatic…”
“Yeah. I have a ton of ideas about the effects of whatever happened, but I don’t have a lot of theories about the cause. Mostly because I don’t like to think about what could happen to become the cause.” He paused. “It kind of scares me a little. A lot. Because there are so many things that are out of my control. I’m just along for the ride, you know?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I get that.”
Garrett took a breath. “I can’t watch the news. I almost never go online, because I don’t want to know. I’d rather die unaware that it’s happening than to watch as the world goes up in flames around me.”
“Me too. I have this recurring nightmare where I’m on a sinking boat, and it’s like we’re all going to drown, and it's going to be my fault, because I was the only one who could see the holes and I never learned how to fix them.”
“Everything is bad.”
“Yeah. Everything is bad.”
Garrett dropped me off at my house. Despite the depressing change in topic, we actually had a nice couple of hours together. It was nice to feel like I wasn’t the only one who felt hopeless sometimes. Which sounds incredibly selfish, but it was nice to know it wasn't just me.
Friday was an interesting day. At one point, reality flickered for about ten seconds, and afterwards, I got a text.
Garrett: You felt that?
Me: Yeah.
Honestly? Then still scared me. I was just so accustomed to the fact that I could sometimes see what’s left after the humans are gone, that I barely reacted anymore. I imagined that it was like when you're terminally ill, and you're told that you only have so long to live, and so you try and carry on as if you were unaware. I knew the world was dying, and I just kept pretending everything was fine.
I walked out of more than one class that day. I assumed I wasn't the only one, because there were a lot of empty seats that day. People started talking about politics, and they all sounded… afraid? Once again, I just really didn't want to know. So I walked out and pretended everything was fine, even though things were very obviously Not Fine, judging by the expressions on most people’s faces, and the frantic attention they were giving their phones. Then kept flickering in and out, like the world’s most anxiety-inducing strobe light, and I was so incredibly overwhelmed I thought I might cry. I must have fit right into the freaked out teenagers all around me.
After leaving multiple classes, I decided that being around people was just not for me, and I left school again. I went home, because the home life is the alone life, and that sounded perfect right about then. Then was still strobing like the weirdest rave of all time.
I decided that two weeks of the furniture in my room being in the same places was far too long, and I spent the rest of the afternoon fixing that. Garrett texted me.
Garrett: I think something’s happening.
Garrett: Yeah, something’s definitely wrong
Garrett: Also are you alright? You looked freaked earlier
I didn't answer him. I didn't want to know what was happening. I really wanted to pretend that my sinking boat was still floating, and if you go deep enough into denial, you’ll believe anything.
Which is why, when the bombs came from North Korea to North America, I was in my room, sitting on the bed I had just moved from one wall to the other, opening a text from Garrett.
Garrett: I’m glad I found you. See you Then.