My shoes were covered in mud as I raced home before the rain got too heavy. I knew better than to come in the front door with those muddy shoes, so I ran around the side of our house, past the oak tree Dad and I planned to put a tree-house in one day. I lifted myself up on my toes to unlatch the wooden gate. Mom had told me I wouldn't be allowed to go out on my own until I could open the gate myself. She told me I was cheating when I showed her I could do it with a stick I’d found. I'm tall enough to do it myself now.
I opened the gate just a little before the end dug into the ground. I squeezed through the space between the heavy wooden door and the post and pushed it shut and it locked itself. Under the shelter of the covered patio, I kicked off my shoes and dipped them in the puddles of water that formed just beyond the concrete slab that extended off of the house. The mud got more wet but didn’t come off like I thought it would. I scraped the side of my shoes on the edge of the patio and it worked well enough. I left the streaks of mud to be washed off by the rain and headed inside, carrying my shoes.
Standing in the dining room I could smell the chicken roasting in the kitchen. On the stove was a pot boiling over and my mom was not there.
“Mom,” I called out. “Mom, somethings boiling over.”
Coming in from the living room my mom passed by me and stirred the contents of the pot, looking a little strange. Her cheeks were pink and it looked like she was wearing lipstick.
“Are you and Dad going out tonight?” I asked her.
“Don't be silly,” she said as she turned down the stove and covered the pot. “Don't go anywhere, we've got company,”
She wiped her hands on a towel, tossed it on the counter and fixed her hair with the aid of her reflection in the stainless steel range hood. She walked up behind me and compelled me forward by her own movement.
Sitting in the living room was a man I had never met before, but he seemed strangely familiar. He had an uneasy smile as my mother ushered me near him. He was sitting on our couch with a drink in his hand, which he laid down on the coffee table. He quickly picked it up again and slid a coaster underneath the glass as he sat it down a second time.
“Edward,” my mother said to the stranger, “this is my son, Eddie.”
Edward stood up and reached out his hand towards me. “Nice to meet you, Eddie,” he said to me.
My mother nudged me a little. “Be polite, Eddie.”
I reached out my hand and shook his. He pretended that I had a strong grip and I was hurting his hand, just like my father sometimes did. I smiled and laughed.
“When I was a kid,” Edward said, “I went by Eddie as well.”
“Edward is going to be renting our extra room in the basement,” my mother said, still standing behind me.
I looked up at her and saw her big smile and her eyes locked onto Edward. She looked down at me and her smile vanished and her cheeks got even more pink.
“Go play in your room until dinner is ready, Eddie,” she said.
“Nice to meet you,” I said as I tore off towards my room. I heard my mom say Dad would help me with my homework when he got home.
My room was my sanctuary. In it, I was able to create my own world. My seemingly endless war between the green and blue plastic armies needed to continue. I looked around my room and tried to remember where I had left off. The blue army patrol stationed on the edge of my bed reminded me of the imminent assault on one of the green bases.
After many casualties, I was eating dinner with Mom, Dad and Edward. The chicken was almost burnt and the mashed potatoes were lumpy, but I ate them anyway. I looked up a few times when I heard the name Edward, thinking they were talking to me, but they weren't. Every now and then I would see Edward glancing at me sideways. Mom couldn't take her eyes off him. Twice I saw her bring an empty fork to her mouth, not aware the food had fallen off as soon as the fork was lifted. I couldn't figure out what the special occasion was, but Mom had brought out a bottle of wine. Edward looked very uneasy throughout dinner, and more so when my mom asked him to help her with the dishes while Dad and I worked on my homework before bed.
* * * * * * *
The sun was in my eyes and I froze just long enough for Johnny Claremont to kick the soccer ball away from me and head down field towards our goal. He nearly made it when the coach's whistle told us practice was over. We cleared our stuff from the field so the older kids could have their scrimmage match. As I dragged the soccer balls I had gathered in a large net towards the coach’s car, I noticed Edward sitting on the benches. I looked around and I didn't see my parents anywhere. I wondered if my parents sent him to walk me home, but when I handed off the net to the coach, Edward was gone.
Johnny came running up to me and he almost leaped on top of me, but I got out of the way in time.
“Was the sun in your eyes, Eddie?” he asked. “You’re usually better about guarding the ball.”
“Yeah, you came out of nowhere,” I replied.
“We're going to be ready for the Eagles on Saturday.”
I agreed with him and then we raced to the corner store to get a soda. I beat him by a few steps and we caught our breath outside the door. Johnny was my best friend, ever since we got caught cheating off each other in math class. Neither one of us were any good at math, so cheating off each other didn't help anyone.
I looked up and saw Edward inside getting a soda from the fountain.
“What is it?” Johnny asked. He must have noticed my expression.
“That guy,” I said. “The guy getting a soda.”
“I saw him watching us practice.”
“Yeah. He's renting a room from us. He moved in last week and I keep seeing him around.”
“That's kind of weird.”
“Yeah. I don't think I want a soda today,” I said and walked away from the store.
We walked home and parted ways when we reached Johnny's street. I continued home and went straight to my room and continued the epic war.
It was late at night and I was startled awake by my door creaking open. My eyes hadn't had time to adjust to the light, but I knew it was Edward. I went numb and pulled the sheets over my head. A few nights before I had gotten up to pee and I saw Edward standing at the end of the hallway. I went into the bathroom quickly and then darted back into my room once I had finished, but he was gone.
I heard the door close and I felt him sit on the edge of my bed. He sat there in silence for a few moments, and I thought about screaming.
“I know you're awake, kid,” Edward said.
I responded by pulling the sheets tighter over me.
“I want to talk to you,” he said. “Can we talk?”
“About what?” I said from under the sheets.
“It's complicated. Real complicated.” He paused and took a deep breath. After he released it he continued. “Have you ever heard of the Special Theory of Relativity?” I didn't respond and I still wanted to scream for my parents. “Of course you haven’t.”
I relaxed slightly when Edward stood up and turned on my bedroom light. I peeked from underneath the covers and he was looking at my blue soldiers guarding an overturned truck. The battle had stopped on account of bedtime.
Edward smiled as he looked at the soldiers. He examined them carefully but he never touched them. He seemed very interested in the positions and placement of the troops. He surveyed the battlefield the same way I did. He waited until I sat up in my bed before he spoke again.
“They say you can never go home again,” he said, then he laughed a little. “You may find this hard to believe, but when I was a kid I had all of these army men. Some were blue and some were green. They would wage a war in my bedroom and it lasted for months.”
He sat down on the bed again. He was wringing his hands nervously. “This isn't how it happened to me. It was different. I was different. I don't understand it, but I don't know what I said. It was so long ago.”
I pulled my feet close to my body and thought about running.
“Okay,” he said. “When I was your age I lived in this house. One day a man rented the spare room in the basement.” He looked at me and I thought, this was what panic looked like. “One night he came into my bedroom and told me a secret. The same secret I am going to share with you.”
I scooted myself all the way to the back of the bed and held on to my knees, never taking my eyes off of him.
“I don't want you to be scared,” he said. “I'm not going to hurt you, or touch you.”
He stood up and walked to the door. He pressed his ear to it and listened. He then turned his attention back to me.
“I don't know exactly how it happened,” he said. “But you and I are the same person. That was the man’s secret, and that’s my secret too. When you grow up, you’ll know what I'm talking about because you’ll find yourself in my position, talking to your younger self. I know it sounds crazy.” I agreed with him, nodding my head. “It didn’t turn out this way when I was a boy. My older self, he seemed more confident than I am now. He, I, knew what to say to make me not feel scared.”
I felt like I was in the pool, having a hard time treading water. I couldn't tell if he was crazy or not, but I didn't understand much of what he said. He kept insisting he was the future me, and there was a cycle of us meeting ourselves over and over again. I never interrupted him because I felt more safe while he was talking. It was the silences that scared me.
After ranting about time travel, someone named Hawking and something about worms, he focused his attention on one of the green squads who had recently fought their way across my dresser and were pinned down behind my alarm clock. He looked carefully at them and started smiling. Then he turned back to me in one of those scary silences.
“I did this all wrong,” he said. “I'm sorry I didn't do this better.”
He walked back to the door and knelt down. I heard something being unzipped. I craned my head over the side of the bed and saw him hunched over a backpack. He retrieved a brown book and zipped the bag back up.
“I want you to have this,” he said. “You don't have to open it if you don't want to. It's yours anyway.” He laid it on the bed and walked out the door. Before he closed it he said good bye and apologized once more.
I waited until I heard our front door close quietly before I picked up the soft leather book. I flipped through the pages which were filled with familiar handwriting. The handwriting at the end was much better than at the beginning of the journal.
* * * * * * *
The boy didn't move as I sat on the edge of the bed. I had finished my story and was flipping through the soft leather journal. I didn't know if I did any better explaining the situation to Eddie than Edward did to me when I was a boy. All I could do was hope for the best. I laid the journal on the bed.
“This one is mine,” I said to Eddie. “Dad bought it for me a few weeks after Edward vanished. I filled it up over the years. This was my life, or, snapshots of it, anyway. I still have the one I left myself when I was a kid.”
I was just making it worse, I thought. I didn't know why I had come back to my childhood home. Maybe I would have been better off if I had stayed away. That goes for all of me. Every time this happens. The cycle of the adult me visiting the child me should probably just stop. At least I know now why Edward left that night. I stood up and said goodbye to Eddie, taking one last look at myself as a child.
In the living room, my mother was sitting on the couch in her nightgown. She glared at me as I passed by.
“What are you, gay?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “I just don't like, older women.”
She scoffed at me as I headed out the door, leaving the house for the last time. I walked towards downtown in hopes of finding a hotel for the night. I didn't know where I would go after that or what I would do. As I walked the lonely streets that night I wondered where the older me went when he left that night, when I was a kid.