even water or air.
“Trace is gonna help me move the furniture in the living room. When we’re finished, will you vacuum in there while we go get the keg?”
“Keg? Brady, you said there wouldn’t be any drinking,” I reminded him, finally able to turn my full attention toward someone, anyone other than Trace.
“It’s just beer, Peyton. Calm down.”
Brady rolled his eyes in that degrading way that I hated and, as always, I wanted to slap the blue right out of them. It was infuriating.
“And just where do you think you’re gonna get a keg? You do realize that you’re only a twenty-one year old bullet-proof god in your mind, right?”
An uncharacteristic blush stole into Brady’s cheeks. He rarely ever reacted to my barbs, other than with a cheeky grin or snide comment. He never blushed or got angry. He didn’t give my opinions or commentary that much credit.
I saw his eyes flicker once to Lacey and quickly return to me, his lips thinning into an unhappy line.
“Just let me worry about that, Debbie Downer,” he groused, turning on his heel and stalking past Trace, who still stood at the edge of the doorway, watching me silently.
After a few more seconds of wordlessly observing me, Trace turned and walked away, leaving me with Lacey. When I turned back to my task of cleaning the bathroom, I saw Lacey’s discombobulated expression and wondered if she had any idea what had transpired. It didn’t appear that she did, and her first words confirmed it.
“I have a headache and I feel weird,” she stated fuzzily.
“Maybe it’s the fumes. Why don’t you go supervise the boys and make sure they don’t do something stupid while I finish up in here, k?”
Nodding robotically, Lacey made her way from the room, leaving me alone with my confusing thoughts and bizarre blend of déjà vu and a brand new reality.
********
The rest of the day went smoothly. No one hulked out or sprouted strange new appendages or tried to kill or drain anyone else. It would’ve been far too easy to think I’d imagined it all, that Lacey, Brady and Trace were the exact same people I’d known the day before. Only they weren’t. And I hadn’t imagined it. I felt it in the air like a thick cloud of malevolence that surrounded me. Things had changed. Forever. Something was happening to the people around me. And something was happening to me.
Brady and Trace disappeared just after dinner, about the time that Lacey went home to get ready. I took the opportunity to do my own grooming, dressing in the clothes that I felt like I’d only shed a few hours before. But I hadn’t. They were hanging in my closet, clean, wrinkle-free, and unworn just as they had been when I’d dressed in them the day before.
As I dried my hair, I couldn’t help but wonder what new revelations the night might bring and how the fight between Trace and Brady would play out, if it would be any different. I wondered if I should take measures to try and stop it before it started, but I didn’t know how that might affect the outcome of other things. I mean, I’d seen dozens of movies that served as cautionary tales about messing with the fabric of time and destiny and all that. Of course, I never dreamed in a thousand years that it was actually possible to do any such thing. But now I wasn’t so sure.
Regardless, I felt that it was imperative that I keep things going as smoothly as possible between Trace and Brady, not only for their benefit, but for mine and everyone else’s, too. Maybe the universe was giving me a second chance to keep the peace between them. If that was the case, I didn’t intend to squander it.
Brady returned a couple hours later with the first of the party-goers. Somewhere along the way, he’d traded Trace for half the football team. They filed in behind him, through the front door, each carrying an armful of goodies. It wasn’t long after that when all the
“Trace is gonna help me move the furniture in the living room. When we’re finished, will you vacuum in there while we go get the keg?”
“Keg? Brady, you said there wouldn’t be any drinking,” I reminded him, finally able to turn my full attention toward someone, anyone other than Trace.
“It’s just beer, Peyton. Calm down.”
Brady rolled his eyes in that degrading way that I hated and, as always, I wanted to slap the blue right out of them. It was infuriating.
“And just where do you think you’re gonna get a keg? You do realize that you’re only a twenty-one year old bullet-proof god in your mind, right?”
An uncharacteristic blush stole into Brady’s cheeks. He rarely ever reacted to my barbs, other than with a cheeky grin or snide comment. He never blushed or got angry. He didn’t give my opinions or commentary that much credit.
I saw his eyes flicker once to Lacey and quickly return to me, his lips thinning into an unhappy line.
“Just let me worry about that, Debbie Downer,” he groused, turning on his heel and stalking past Trace, who still stood at the edge of the doorway, watching me silently.
After a few more seconds of wordlessly observing me, Trace turned and walked away, leaving me with Lacey. When I turned back to my task of cleaning the bathroom, I saw Lacey’s discombobulated expression and wondered if she had any idea what had transpired. It didn’t appear that she did, and her first words confirmed it.
“I have a headache and I feel weird,” she stated fuzzily.
“Maybe it’s the fumes. Why don’t you go supervise the boys and make sure they don’t do something stupid while I finish up in here, k?”
Nodding robotically, Lacey made her way from the room, leaving me alone with my confusing thoughts and bizarre blend of déjà vu and a brand new reality.
********
The rest of the day went smoothly. No one hulked out or sprouted strange new appendages or tried to kill or drain anyone else. It would’ve been far too easy to think I’d imagined it all, that Lacey, Brady and Trace were the exact same people I’d known the day before. Only they weren’t. And I hadn’t imagined it. I felt it in the air like a thick cloud of malevolence that surrounded me. Things had changed. Forever. Something was happening to the people around me. And something was happening to me.
Brady and Trace disappeared just after dinner, about the time that Lacey went home to get ready. I took the opportunity to do my own grooming, dressing in the clothes that I felt like I’d only shed a few hours before. But I hadn’t. They were hanging in my closet, clean, wrinkle-free, and unworn just as they had been when I’d dressed in them the day before.
As I dried my hair, I couldn’t help but wonder what new revelations the night might bring and how the fight between Trace and Brady would play out, if it would be any different. I wondered if I should take measures to try and stop it before it started, but I didn’t know how that might affect the outcome of other things. I mean, I’d seen dozens of movies that served as cautionary tales about messing with the fabric of time and destiny and all that. Of course, I never dreamed in a thousand years that it was actually possible to do any such thing. But now I wasn’t so sure.
Regardless, I felt that it was imperative that I keep things going as smoothly as possible between Trace and Brady, not only for their benefit, but for mine and everyone else’s, too. Maybe the universe was giving me a second chance to keep the peace between them. If that was the case, I didn’t intend to squander it.
Brady returned a couple hours later with the first of the party-goers. Somewhere along the way, he’d traded Trace for half the football team. They filed in behind him, through the front door, each carrying an armful of goodies. It wasn’t long after that when all the
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