Page 64 of The Do-Over
“It’ll be better on the street,” she said, pointing.
“They still haven’t plowed,” he observed.
“Nope. It’s been snowing more every night, and knowing Deer Ridge civil services, they’re just going to wait until the weather clears before they do anything. But there’s a little footpath where people have been walking, see? The snow is beaten down a bit there.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s convenient.”
They made it to the footpath and started down the road. “Where are we going?” Rob asked.
“Well, I thought I’d let you decide,” Thea said. “Where would you like to go?”
He hesitated. “I’m not sure.”
“Your last memory when I found you was of the basketball game, so maybe we should start at the high school.”
The high school. The difference was evident in a thousand little ways. The way time had gone by. She wouldn’t have said the high school when they were young. She would have just said at school.
That was what Rob would have said now if he had been the one to refer to the place.
“Sure,” he said. “The high school.”
She turned down Main Street. “I suppose you remember how to get there from here?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I could have done it from your front door. This town is so small that even though I had never been to your house before, I knew exactly where I was.” He glanced at her. “I hadn’t been there, right?”
“No,” she said. “I only moved in about eight years ago. We haven’t seen each other since then.”
Rob nodded. He had figured as much, but he couldn’t be certain of anything he thought he knew about the past, so it was better to ask.
They reached the high school and stopped in front of it.
It was as familiar to Rob as the back of his hand. Actually, it was more familiar, since the back of his hand had aged into something he barely recognized. The school, by contrast, hadn’t changed much at all. It was the same red brick exterior he remembered, the same narrow windows with their cheap institutional blinds visible from the outside, the same old sign on the lawn that had been there when Rob had been a student here.
“I wish we could go in,” Thea said. “But it’s locked.”
“That’s okay,” Rob said. “I remember the inside. I could draw a map of it if I had to.”
“We could go look in the window of the gym, maybe.”
Rob shook his head. “I have so many memories of this place, to be honest,” he said. “I don’t think that being here is going to unlock anything new for me.”
“Are you sure? Maybe if we walk around a little?”
“No. Being here…it’s kind of making me sad.”
“Oh,” Thea said, sounding surprised. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“It’s not your fault. I didn’t know that I’d feel this way. But being here makes me feel like there’s actually somewhere I belong. I feel like if I could walk through those doors, I could step back into my life.”
“You didn’t like your life when you lived here,” Thea reminded him.
“But it’s the only life I’ve ever known,” Rob said. “I can’t be happy about losing it when I don’t have anything else.”
“You do,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “You’ll get it back, Rob. All the good things that have happened to you since high school—you’ll remember them. You’re already making progress. I promise it’s a really good sign when that happens. Everything I’ve seen has been encouraging.”
He nodded. He still felt unhappy and lost. He knew this school. Standing here with Thea was the first thing that had really felt familiar since the accident. But it was an illusion. This building was no longer the place in his memory. It might look the same, but in every other way, it had moved on.
He turned away from the building and Thea followed.
