What would you do if you could go back to being your eighteen year old self? Timothy Dane. Yeah, I'd fuck him, that's what I'd do. I scrolled through my social media page and clicked on his profile, gazing into those baby blue eyes and rugged handsome smile, completely ignoring the fact that his wife was also staring at me in the picture. It's funny how some people change a lot in twenty years and some really don't—Timothy Dane was one of the guys who didn't. I mean, sure, he was a smidge older looking but he was still ripped, gorgeous...god, am I seriously getting wet thinking about him? How fucking pathetic. I looked at his wife and couldn't help the sneer on my face—Angela Boomer Dane. What a dumb name. She was one of those who looked the same now too—still had that dull, short straight brown hair, those same overly plucked eyebrows in a ridiculous curve that made her seem like she was always surprised. They started dating as sophomores and married after college—cliché high school sweethearts. Disgusting.
I stubbed out my cigarette in the ashtray on the table and leaned back in the patio chair on my porch, staring out into the rain. I rarely smoked—that shit will kill you—but when I got stressed I needed to do something so puff puff I went. I knew I shouldn't. Mom died of lung cancer, she smoked like a chimney after I was born for almost twenty years. Almost, I say—because she died just after I started college, middle of my freshman year. By the time they found the cancer it was too late; she fought, but in the end all it did was leave a wake of medical bills for me to pay off after her death. I had to drop out, kiss my dreams goodbye and start working two shithole jobs to get out of debt. If the house hadn't been in Grandpa's name still, I would have lost that too. Luckily it was though, but by the time I paid off mom's medical bills Pops went too—thankfully, he was old enough that all that was taken care of by his life insurance. Mom, on the other hand, wasn't.
I stared at the digital image of Timothy Dane's face, clicking through his pictures to see his happy kids and perfect magazine life—what? You know what, you can eat a dick. Don't you judge me, you know you use social media to stalk people too fucker. At least I'm not above pretending like I don't. Fine, whatever—I clicked out of his profile and back to the event page, my thumb hovering over the buttons. Yes...No...Maybe. Ugh. Was it already my twentieth class reunion? Am I that fucking old—thirty eight. Yup, I'm that fucking old. I clicked Maybe, though if I'm being honest, we both know it is a hard No. I mean, I'm disgusted with myself, with my life. I'm thirty eight, I've gained seventy pounds since senior year, I literally have nothing to show for myself—no husband, no kids, no nothing. I've got a job, but not one that I'd admit to any of
those
people, fuck, I work at a gas station. And not one of those fancy gas stations, like the ghetto kind in the neighborhood where no one who comes in is white. Frankly, I'm the whitest person who has ever set foot in there and that's saying something because I'm only half. What's the other half? Like everything, little bit of this, little bit of that—like making soup without a recipe, you just clean out the fridge and throw that shit in a pot, add water and bam, you've got soup. The only good thing about being a mutt is you look 'exotic.' Mom always said we would make great spies—our looks pretty much blended in with any ethnicity, we could look mixed, Indian, Native American, Asian, whatever.
The one that I always got was Hispanic. I suppose it didn't help that my boss at the ghetto gas station was Mexican. Thank goodness I took Spanish all throughout high school. I know, you don't really learn enough to carry on a conversation with anyone older than five, but getting the basics down really helped. Once I started working there, I was thrown into the trenches and forced to speak a language that wasn't my own every day. That's the only good thing about that job, aside from my pathetic paycheck, was that I'm now fluent in another language. Yup, I know all the bad, dirty words too.
Spanish class, wow, that's a blast from the past—it was one of two classes my senior year that I had with Timothy Dane, in fact I sat next to him. He fucking sucked at it and if memory serves right, he almost failed until the football coach personally paid for a tutor so he wouldn't lose his varsity linebacker. I scrolled through the list of people who said they were attending the reunion and it brought back some memories—I hadn't seen a single one of these people since graduation, though I was 'friends' with them now. Stupid, right? I mean, yeah, I'll accept your friend request even though you said like three words to me and never pronounced my name right. Gives me something more to feel bad about while I'm eating cereal for dinner like a loser and scrolling through their professional family photos in matching plaid shirts against a burlap background.
I leaned back in the chair and sighed—if I could go back and just change one or two things, what would it be? Would I become the popular girl? A cheerleader instead of some quiet emo goth freak that everyone avoided? No. I knew exactly the moment I'd go back to, because it was the one that affected me the hardest. It made my life unbearable. I closed my eyes and dredged up that memory.
...
"Catarina?" It was my mom's voice.
I drew in a deep breath, the smell of second hand smoke and grease filling my lungs. When I opened my eyes, I saw her sitting across the table from me in the crappy diner we frequented when she didn't feel like cooking. There was a cig hanging out of her mouth, her face looking at me like she was waiting for an answer. I could never recall the question, but I remembered everything else about that night. I always felt like that was the night I should have told her to quit smoking, to go see a doctor because in a year, she'd be dead.
You know what? It's my day dream so this time, I'm going to do something about it. I reached across the table, grabbed the cigarette out of her mouth and stubbed it out into the ashtray, "Quit being so fucking selfish! In one year, you'll die of lung cancer—I know this for a fact. In almost nine months your cough will get so bad that you will finally drag yourself to the doctor only to discover that it is too late—then, you die. You die and you leave me all alone and you know what, Mom? My life is shit because of it. Because you're not there. So for once in your life will you just listen to me and stop smoking? Go to the fucking doctor tomorrow and demand they do tests—if they would have caught it sooner, you would have lived." I was pissed, my voice was angry and there were tears running down my face. It was all true, this one moment fucked my life to hell. I hated that she smoked but I never had the balls to do anything about it.
Mom looked shocked; she put the menu down, her hands shaking. Right then, the waitress came over, "Do you know what you ladies want?"
"A club and fries," I said before looking over at my Mom—her mouth was still open, "And she'll have the strip steak, medium well with a baked potato and extra sour cream. And I mean, a lot of sour cream, like an entire bowl."
The waitress nodded and walked off. I sighed, "I'm going to wash my hands." I got up and went to the bathroom, leaving my Mom gaping behind me.
When I walked in and caught a look at my eighteen year old self, I laughed. I watched my reflection reach up and touch my black hair, painstakingly straightened by hand every day, stupid bangs curled into that fake round tunnel, thick black make up and lipstick twelve shades too dark. I had a dumb velvet choker on, a baggy button up black shirt and a long black skirt with combat boots. Wretched fashions of the past. I pulled up the hem of the shirt and looked at my flat stomach—god, how I wished I had that body back. To think, I was always mortified that I weighed 130, because all those other twig bitches thought 110 was fat. I'd kill to weigh 130 again—if I had known then, what I knew at thirty eight, how different my life would have ended up.
I saw teenage me roll my eyes before shutting them—yeah, this was too painful of a memory to dredge up. Back then I had the world in the palm of my hand—I could have been anything, done anything, but instead I squandered it. Hindsight is a bitch.
When I opened my eyes, I expected to see my front lawn just beyond my porch, my overweight ass stuffed into a patio chair while I stalked former classmates online. But, that isn't what I saw—I opened my eyes and I was still in the bathroom of that crappy diner, staring at my eighteen year old self. What the fuck. I blinked again. I reached up and slapped my stupid emo face—nothing happened. Well, I mean my face hurt and was a little red but it was still there.
I leaned on the sink and stared at myself—was this really happening? I mean, I would have killed for the chance to go back and change things but that wasn't a possibility. Maybe I had finally lost it. Or maybe, just maybe...
Woah. What would you do if you could go back to being your eighteen year old self?
I'm not going to fuck it up this time, that's for damn sure. I washed my hands and went out into the diner, sat across from my mom. She didn't light up another cig in my absence, so that was good. I looked up at her face and almost burst into tears—I missed her so much. I held it together and gave her a smile, "How was work?"
She looked at me odd but started laughing, before telling me about her day. It was the most normal, boring conversation we had while eating, but it was something I always missed later in life.
We got home before seven, it was a Thursday. As we pulled into the garage, I sat there for a moment before talking to her again, "I'm serious, Mom. You need to call the doctor tomorrow. I know that you've been having problems breathing for a while now and you just think it is a linger cold, but it isn't. Promise me. Promise me you'll call."
She looked at me—her face was blank, but I saw the worry in her eyes. She smiled and reached out, touching my cheek, "Okay baby. I'll call first thing in the morning."
"And no more smoking."
She grimaced, "No more smoking. I'll pick up a patch before work."
What a fucking relief that was—now I just had to make sure she stuck to it. When we got out of the car and I saw my reflection in the window, I almost flinched. "I think I'm going to go to the thrift store down the street and pick up some different clothes."
Mom looked at me with a frown, "More black?"
I shook my head, waving my hand over my body "No, I'm over this."
"Thank god," she muttered under her breath. She fished out her wallet and handed me forty bucks, "Here, as long as it isn't black I honestly don't care what you wear."
I laughed, giving her a hug before I tucked the money into my pocket and wandered out of the garage. It was a little cool for a fall night but I didn't care. I couldn't believe it, even still—it was impossible, but somehow my thirty-eight year old consciousness was thrown back into my eighteen year old body. I got a second chance to make something of myself. Well, most likely I was just passed out in the chair on my porch, snoring away and having some wicked hangover dream, but you know what? Who the fuck cares—I'm going to go with the flow.
I walked into the thrift store and smiled—eighteen year old me wouldn't have been caught
dead
here. Who would have known in a few decades, second hand shopping would be cool? I tried to remember what the mid nineties were like—ugh. Plaid, horizontal stripes, ribbed shirts, midriffs, shiny, pink and coveralls. No thank you. I remembered that seventies style clothing was coming back around so I scoured the store and found some decent vintage clothes. Wow, forty dollars bought a lot back then.
I wandered home just before dark with a huge bag in each hand; Mom was watching TV so I stripped the tags off and stuffed everything into the wash before heading to my room. Ah, the room of my teenage years—nothing like what you would think, mind you. I would have bet that most girls in my school had posters of boy bands, hunks from movies, stupid cats or whatever was pink but not me—maps. Maps covered my walls; I always wanted to travel the world, see new things, meet different people, experience other cultures, I just never had the chance. I kicked off my combat boots and ran into the small attached bathroom, scrubbing the shit off of my face, finally seeing the perfect complexion underneath all of that foundation. It made me smile. Eighteen year old me was actually attractive, hot even—I was just always too awkward and quiet to make anything come out of it. Not this time, though.
I changed into PJs and flopped onto the twin bed, pulling out my homework.
