Page 48 of The Backtrack
Rachel let out a massive breath. “So we’re learning that evil forces are among us?”
Sam ran her fingertips over the player. She was no longer afraid, but she needed to understand why. “I think it’s trying to tell me something.”
Rachel sat in the blow-up chair, which squeaked as it met the fabric of her jeans. “Well, put on those headphones and figure out the mystery fast, because the sooner you do the sooner we can toss it into the ocean.”
Sam sat on the floor and put the headphones on. Rachel scooted the blow-up chair over and grabbed her hand. “I’m going to be right here. I’ll make sure nothing bad happens, okay?”
“Okay.” Sam smiled to reassure her, but her stomach twisted into one enormous knot. Still, Sam closed her eyes, squeezed Rachel’s hand and waited for the music to start as she hit the play button.
19
The comfort of holding Rachel’s hand evaporated as The Fray’s “Over My Head” started. Damon had loved this song about wanting so desperately to be understood. It was almost a ballad in the vocals, but undeniably an anthem in the power of the chorus.
When Sam opened her eyes, she was on someone’s lawn and her bare thighs rubbed against long blades of grass. She took the headphones off, and almost immediately heard Damon’s voice behind her.
“Keep your eyes closed.”
He walked up the driveway and led a blindfolded Alt-Sam behind him and toward a slightly rundown beach shack.
As they reached the front, he pulled out a set of keys and unlocked the door. Sam pushed herself up from the lawn and closely followed behind them.
“Okay, ready?” Damon asked.
“I guess,” Alt-Sam said nervously.
Damon undid the bandanna and her younger self blinked against the light. She took a pair of glasses out of her pocket and placed them on.
“Where are we?” Alt-Sam asked.
Good question.
“I know you want to get out of Pearl’s place.” Damon smiled. “So I got us one of our own.”
“Our own place?” Alt-Sam looked skeptical. “How?”
They were moving in together? And Damon had rented them a house without so much as asking Alt-Sam if that’s what she wanted? Well, that was certainly...bold, she supposed.
“Farrah knows a guy and he’s giving us a deal,” Damon explained. “I know it’s rough around the edges, but I can paint the outside, and the yard is big enough for a garden. It’ll be our own place. A project. And we won’t live here forever, just while I go to school and you save up money. You can figure out what you want to do, ya know?”
“Flight school,” Sam reminded herself. “She’s going to flight school.”
Alt-Sam smiled. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Damon grabbed her shoulders and Alt-Sam nodded back. Then he kissed her, lifted her up by grabbing her ass and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he walked backward into the house.
Sam walked through the front door to find Damon peeling off Alt-Sam’s shirt, while Alt-Sam got busy working on his belt buckle. “Now would be a good time to make a to-do list. A two-year plan. You want to focus. Flight school, leaving Tybee. The dream!”
But her shouts were not heard, as they never were, and Alt-Sam and Damon were nearly naked. When her teen self began to shimmy out of her jeans, a neatly folded piece of paper fell out of her pocket. Damon bent to pick it up.
“What’s this?” he asked, a curious look on his face as he began to unfold it.
“Weren’t you about to show me the bedroom?” Alt-Sam asked.
Damon grinned, then tossed the paper toward the door. “As you wish,” he said and picked Alt-Sam up again.
Alt-Sam buried her face in his neck, but her eyes stayed on the paper near the door. As they disappeared into the bedroom, Adult Sam tried to grab the paper, but it stayed face-up on the floor as her hand passed through it. The song neared the end climax, just forty seconds left. The lyrics about the singer being over his head rang out like a plea.
Sam squatted next to the paper and saw the Planned Parenthood stamp at the top. She scanned the document. They were test results. A pregnancy test.
