Page 17 of The Backtrack
“Myles iscool?” Sam mimicked. “Didn’t he almost get expelled for tagging the gym? And didn’t he misspell the wordfreshmanin said graffiti?”
She was not trying to make fun of Myles per se, but she also wanted to remind Damon that he wasn’t the only one who remembered things.
“People can change,” Damon said.Sam disagreed.
“Unless you’re still in a vampire cult?” he finished.
Marissa giggled at Damon’s joke and, despite herself, Sam had a hard time hiding the grin that crossed her face. She supposed she deserved that friendly dig. “On that note, I think this vampire is going to head home. I need to get in my coffin before the sun comes out and reveals my glittery skin to the world.”
“Really? It’s early. The band’s just getting warmed up.”
“Yeah, you should stay,” Marissa said. Judging by the way her nails dug into Damon’s arm, though, she didn’t really mean it.
Sam pushed herself up from the table, and all of the buttery food and sour beer finally made themselves known. Damon had called this a homecoming dinner and, in a way, Sam wanted to go home more than anything. “Marissa, maybe I’ll see you soon?” Sam tried to give what she hoped was a friendly expression.
Marissa took the bait, because she left Damon’s side, threw her arms around Sam and hugged her with the kind of intensity usually reserved for children greeting puppies. “It wassowonderful to see you!”
And Sam hugged her back, because there was nothing else to do in that moment. But her gaze locked on to Damon, who watched them both, and she wondered if he was just as thrown by all of this as she was.
Be happy for Damon, Sam kept repeating to herself.Be happy. But she wasn’t. She felt a numb kind of sadness that almost shut her thoughts down entirely.
When she got out of the car, the street was quiet, save for the loud hum of crickets that filled the air and surrounded her. Grandma Pearl had left the porch light on, and Sam found that acknowledgment of her presence a small comfort.
Once she was back in her room, Sam peeled her dress off, the scent of butter embedded in the fabric. In her dresser drawer, she found an old pair of flannel sweatpants and a worn Urban Outfitters T-shirt that read, “Getting Lucky in Kentucky.” She was 100 percent sure she hadn’t known what that phrase meant when she’d bought it, but she did now as she tugged it over her head. She sat on the edge of her bed and massaged her temples. With her grandma’s accident, the house and relearning who Damon was, her first full day in Tybee might as well have been a full month. If every day was going to be like this, she wasn’t entirely sure she could keep up with the pace.
The responsibility of landing a plane safely was absolutely less intense than the interpersonal muddiness she was having to wade through. Not only had she been roasted by Damon and hisnewbestie, Myles, but she’d also hammered a lobster claw so aggressively she was fairly certain she’d nearly splintered the table.
Coming back to Tybee was supposed to be easy, in that she had moved on from this place and the people she’d grown up with, Damon included. She’d arrived and expected to really confirm that leaving had been the right choice. After all, she’d built a great, big, exciting life for herself. She lived abroad. She traveled the world. So why was the only thing occupying her thoughts the heat of Damon’s palm on the small of her back? This was a guy she’d turned down so many years ago, yet he somehow still had a line directly to her. But he’d found someone else in Marissa. It wasn’t like Sam was expecting him to pick up where they’d left off in high school—in fact, she’d hoped for the opposite: that Damon had forgotten the way Sam ended them when they were fifteen. So how come she was so jealous?
She was determined to just sleep the night off, but couldn’t help clock the CD player on the floor. Looking at the thing was a blatant reminder wrapped in a bow of how she’d once been the center of Damon’s world—the person he made mix CDs for—but now she wasn’t. Marissa was.
She regretted not throwing the Walkman and Damon’s CD out along with the collection of black nail polish, because like a moth to some funhouse flame, she reached for it. Her first thought was that she just wanted to hear one more song that Damon had picked for her. Damon was no longer hers—and really, never had been. But seeing him with Marissa rubbed salt in a wound Sam wasn’t even aware she’d had.
Maybe it was ridiculous, but wouldn’t listening to another track be a safe way for her to relive their friendship? Her day had been so chaotic that she almost felt hungover from the lack of control, but if she could sit and listen to a song, that might help her relax, just as music used to when she was a teenager.
She was also wildly aware that by indulging this urge, she might sink herself deeper into the Damon quicksand. But she let that thought come and go quickly as she sat on the bed and put the headphones on. Wallowing was apparently her next item on the night’s to-do list, and after an evening of watching Damon and Marissa, she needed a break. She didn’t know what was queued next as the screen lit up; she just wanted to hear a song Damon had chosen specifically for her.
“Okay, Damon, let’s hear it,” she whispered as she pressed Play.
6
As the screen lit up, she let her body lean against the wall. Electric guitar gave way to drums as The Darkness’s “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” began. She and Damon had scream-sang these lyrics so many times on their daily drive to school. It was a song about falling head over heels for someone, and just pure fun, as if Damon had carefully curated this knowing what her future self wanted. She let out a relieved sigh and closed her eyes but, as she did, awhooshof air surrounded her. She was suddenly weightless and then dropped—the same feeling as being at the top of a roller coaster and taking the plunge down. She wanted to scream but found herself unable to. Eventually, the fake ride stopped, and she opened her eyes just as a loud bell sounded nearby.
Her shoulder landed against a row of metal lockers as she hurriedly pushed herself to standing.
She stared down the length of a sanitized hallway and realized she was back at the scene of the crime: high school. But instead of being outside in the parking lot, it was daytime, and light streamed through the windows highlighting a school banner that proudly celebrated a 2007 basketball victory for the Tybee Typhoons. Once again, Sam was no longer at home, but seeing some other version of her life. She forced herself to breathe and quickly removed the headphones just as The Darkness began to sing about wanting to kiss every minute and hour of the day.
Maybe she was having another lucid dream. Or her CD player was a portal to a different dimension. Either way, she bit her tongue to stop from screaming.
She’d been in terrifying scenarios while flying, and there were three things she always told herself to get through those:Stay calm. Don’t panic. There’s a way out of this.
But when she eventually stopped biting her tongue, the words, “No, no, no, no, no,” kept coming.
Whatever was happening couldn’t be good. No one would believe her if she said that every time she listened to her old CD player, she found herself back in high school. Hell, even she didn’t fully buy that, and she was living it. Her hands fumbled as she tucked the headphones around her neck.
The classroom doors flung open and teenagers began to flood the hallway like a plague of locusts. She grimaced at the sight of JanSport backpacks covered in iron-on patches. There were denim miniskirts, Ugg booties, super low-rise jeans, newsboy caps, shrugs that tied in the front, spaghetti strap tank tops worn over T-shirts, Von Dutch hats and the unmistakable scent of Axe body spray.
She watched the parade of clothing nostalgia march by and pressed herself against a locker. What would happen if she touched or bumped into someone? Would she be a phantom they could walk through? She reached a hand out and gasped when her fingers vanished into a passing girl’s bubble-hem tube-top dress. She pulled her hand back, still perfectly intact, and gaped at it. But while she was in the middle of a brain melt, no one even seemed to notice she was there.
