Prompt #3: Time Travel (Episode 1)

My story starts with what many epic tales of triumph and tragedy do: a rejection.

This was in the second grade, back when I considered myself a pretty savvy kid. Good at making friends, got solid grades in school, didn't cause too much trouble for my parents. I thought I was a Pretty Big Deal, especially because I was so damn good at hide and seek.

It's around half-way through the school year, everyone settled into their routines of teaching or being taught, when Baladeva Kumar arrived with his family from India. He was not the first Indian child I had seen thanks to the mixed demographic of my inner-city school, but that didn't detract from the wonder and excitement we all felt toward him. He was new, and new things are the world to kids.

The  first time I talked to him was two weeks after his arrival. I had watched him rebuff everyone's attempts at making friends with him -- boys, girls, no matter their grade. He spent recess by himself, kept quiet in class. No one wanted to bother with him anymore -- and that's when I decided it would be perfect for me to come in. Because I was, you know, a Pretty Big Deal.

I went up to him during recess, where he sat on the dingy metal bench reading a book in Hindi. "Hey, Dave," I said. That's what everyone was calling him, not wanting to be bothered with mastering something foreign, in typical American fashion.

"Baladeva," he corrected, not looking up.

Undeterred by his cold demeanor, I sat down beside him. I asked, "What are you reading?"

He said, "Go away."

"That sounds cool."

Baladeva gave me a sideways glare, his mouth twisting up in disapproval. I smiled good-humoredly. I said, "You wanna know somethin', Da-- Baladeva?"

He didn't respond. I went ahead and said what I'd been working up to -- I told him, "Baladeva, you're real beautiful." I was proud of myself because I'd just learned that word -- B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L, byootihfull -- and thought it would impress him and make him be my friend.

Baladeva closed his book, which I took to be a good sign. I smiled even wider when he looked straight at me. He said, "You want to know something, John?"

I said yeah, eager, thrilled that he knew my name.

He said, "I hate this place. I hate everything about it. I hate everyone here. But, guess what? Now I hate you the most." Baladeva narrowed his eyes, his mouth a thin line as he harshly told me, "Go. Away."

It does not seem possible for a person so young to harbor so much disgust for the world, but that's what made his words all the more powerful. I remember feeling incredibly small, speechless and embarrassed. I realized in that moment that I was not a Pretty Big Deal. In fact, I wasn't much of anything at all. The playground was a blurry mess when I looked out at it, frowning.

When the first tear rolled down my face, gravity seemed to increase tenfold. The wind got knocked out of me. I passed out.

I woke up in a field of daisies.

***

I'm not quite sure what year that field was in because what came was a very fast succession of time jumps thanks to my frantic state. After the daisies was a cobbled road, then a vast body of water in which I nearly drowned, then a dirt path. . . I eventually figured out I ought to calm the hell down, hard as it was for such a young kid to do that. This was around eleven years ago now.

Basically, when I get too emotional, I jump through time. At first, I thought it was only negative emotions that set it off -- sadness, anger, fear, that kind of thing. Imagine my surprise when I found myself jumping from the first warm bed I'd slept in in months -- years. Too happy, I guess. That was the last time I got directly involved with people.

Which, honestly, I should have been avoiding people altogether in the first place, though I suppose I couldn't have imagined just how the only way it can get worse than being an involuntary time-traveler is to be a black involuntary time-traveler. Something I wish I could have learned about behind a graffiti'd desk, peering into a battered textbook, taking notes from a worn-down teacher. . .

I miss school.

***

What I've figured out is that I can go as far into the past as is possible, but I can't go further into the future than my timeline corresponding with my current age. Meaning, if I weren't some freak of nature time-traveler and had stayed linear like you're supposed to, I can't go past the day my linear self would have gotten up to. If regular, linear John would have made it to this particular Tuesday in this particular year, then freak of nature, time-jumping John cannot go past that particular Tuesday, no exceptions. In fact, I don't think I could make it up to that Tuesday, but would rather be limited to the Monday before that Tuesday. I've come very close to matching up to linearity, you see, but never quite made it to the exact day.

Those might be the worst times, actually, when I'm only a day or a week or a month behind -- because something else I have discovered is that though I may jump times, I don't jump places. I am jumped into the future or the past of whatever spot I am occupying at that exact point, which has made for some pretty awkward situations if a house has been built up by then, or deadly if a road  has been laid down and there are cars -- or, hell, even horse-drawn carriages (both awkward and deadly).

So trying to restrain myself from seeking out my family when I'm close enough, time-wise, to get to them, is tough. It's horrible. Horrible. I don't know why I don't just leave this area, this state, this country.

I haven't seen my family in over ten years.

***

I'm doing my best to temper myself -- not too happy, not too sad. Instead, I am content. Congenial. Just, you know, goddamn okay. Living more as a wild beast, hiding in the trees, than as a human being -- if I even am human. Maybe an alien switched me out with the real John, like faeries in myths do. Whatever. I'm okay with it. I'm okay with everything. I have to be, unless I want to jump into the middle of a KKK meeting or something.

As I live by stealing food and escaping into nature, I can't help but wonder how Baladeva Kumar doing, and if he's happy that I did as he said, and went away.

~TBC~