Page 26 of The Backtrack
When Sam came back to the room, she wanted to get out as many details as she could before she forgot. She went to her desk and pulled out a Lisa Frank notebook she hadn’t yet tossed—she didn’t have the heart to put Hunter the Leopard into the trash. She opened to a clean page and started writing everything she could remember from the playlist.
SAM AND DAMON’S MAGICAL PLAYLIST
Track One: “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence. Otherworldly song about being understood by another human. Tybee High parking lot. Questionable amounts of eyeliner. Alt-Sam kisses Damon. Missing earring is found.
Track Two: “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” by The Darkness. A bop about being head over heels for someone. Alt-Sam and Damon are officially dating. Myles continues to disappoint. Marissa didn’t have an awkward phase in high school. JanSport backpacks are timeless.
Track Three: “Supermassive Black Hole” by Muse. Inarguably the best song and movie scene pairing ever. Damon and Alt-Sam make out duringTwilightand get kicked out. One too many hickies.
Track Four: “Want You Bad” by The Offspring. A banger about a bad boy wanting to corrupt a good girl. Myles gets owned by Alt-Sam. Damon skips detention. Alt-Sam skips her extracurricular. I miss Dunkaroos.
Sam scratched her index finger across her forehead. There had to be a bigger point to all of this beyond showing Alt-Sam’s life with Damon, right? But none of her notes added up to any grand realization. There did, however, seem to be a connection to the songs and what she’d seen. When she’d listened to “Bring Me to Life,” she’d watched as Damon and Alt-Sam lit each other up, metaphorically speaking. And “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” paired well with Damon asking Alt-Sam to be his girlfriend.
Unless the realization was simple: she’d made a mistake in letting go of Damon. Because, while she didn’t love Alt-Sam ditching Spirit Committee meetings, her other self was having way more fun than Sam ever did in high school.
But that would mean the life she had now wasn’t where she was supposed to be—even though she loved flying, and her little apartment and her adventures. Was the CD showing her that she could be even happier, if only Damon was folded into everything? Was that even an option anymore?
Maybe she’d missed some important detail in the other visions where she hadn’t paid close attention. Going back for a relisten made sense, given her experiment. The CD player was next to her, and she hit the back button, but the display stayed stuck on the next queued song. She hit the next button, but it wouldn’t skip to the next track, either. Okay, so she couldn’t revisit the visions. Well, she was definitely going to chalk this up to more possessed CD weirdness.
Sam brought the notebook onto the bed and stared at the page. She could listen to another song. But how would seeing herself so deeply entrenched with Damon, when he wasn’t anywhere close to her now, help? And if she was right about the CD player trying to point out her biggest mistake, would she even be able to fix it?
She put the notebook and CD player on her desk, more than a little annoyed at herself, yes, but at the playlist, too. She shouldn’t be defensive, but all of a sudden she felt attacked for her choices and the suggestion that they were the wrong ones. Yes, she’d wondered what would’ve happened, but she’d also assumed she’d done the right thing bynotkissing Damon.
Was rage sleep a thing? Because she wanted to rage sleep hard. Or, at least pretend to sleep so she’d have an excuse not to touch the player again. So she got ready for bed, flipped the lights off and closed her eyes, willing her brain to think about anything but the past.
10
“Are you Amish?” Pearl asked.
Sam had not slept well. Instead of sleeping, she’d spent most of the night telling herself to go to bed but was unable to do so because she just wanted to listen to more songs on the CD player. And now she was finding a parking spot in front of the Rocha house, and she couldn’t be totally sure—lack of sleep, and all—but her grandma seemed to be asking a bizarre question.
“What?” Sam watched the backup camera as she parallel parked.
“Your sleeves are down to your wrists and your dress has a collar,” Pearl clarified.
“You’d rather I dress like an ad for Margaritaville?” Sam countered. Pearl was festive in a Hawaiian shirt that matched her neon cast. “This is from Paris. It’s Parisian.”
Pearl pointedly yawned. “What it is, is a hot one. You’ll get swamp pits. Don’t come crying to me when you’re swimming before you’ve gotten into the pool.”
Pearl opened the car door and got out. Sam looked down at her outfit. She’d put this on to feel confident. The dress was chic. It hugged her curves. It made her feel sexy. And she’d be lying if she said that she didn’t want Damon to see her that way, especially after the visions she’d had that suggested they were better together than apart.
She wasn’t able to explain that to Pearl, though, so she’d just take her chances with the swamp pits and hope for the best.
As soon as she got out of the car, a dog the size of a bag of airplane peanuts came bounding out the front door toward them.
“Is that Rusty?” Sam asked and slammed the car door shut. She held a bouquet of pansies. Yes, Dream Damon had told her they were her mom’s favorite. And yes, she’d bought them specifically to see if he’d been right.
“No.” Pearl pursed her lips. “This is Rusty 2.0. We don’t much care for each other as you can probably tell.”
Indeed, the dog—which was almost a copy-and-paste replica of the miniature pinscher Damon had grown up with—got out multiple barks and growls at Pearl. Pearl, for her part, growled back, which forced the dog to turn its attention to Sam. Much to her surprise, the dog quickly mounted her calf and began a long and luxurious series of thrusts.
She regretted her decision to wear a dress that didn’t cover all of her legs as she tried to gently shake the dog off.
“Making friends already, Sam-Sam,” Damon called out.
She managed to forcibly remove the dog, though Rusty 2.0’s tongue hung out and his gaze remained fixed on the spot he’d violated. “Yeah, well, they say the South is super friendly!”
Sam quickly walked away from the dog. She gave Damon a hug and lingered in his embrace for perhaps a beat too long. To be fair, their bodies fit together and being wrapped in his arms was even more satisfying than finding the perfect carry-on bag that stowed easily under a seat.
