A Tiroir is a Drawer

I'd fixed up my houses, initially, before we had money. More than that, though, I'd spent a life knowing that 'Engineer' is a mindset far before it's an occupation.

I stopped in the garage and looked around. I could fix this!

The only issue would be with my dad. He thought tool use was alchemy.

Tabling this idea, I walked in the back door and saw Mom was in-process making blueberry pancakes for me (and her, possibly Dad if he was home... the car was...so he was). I grabbed the phone really quick, looked in the ... WOW... 'yellow pages'! Nostalgia!

I dialed, and was super-aware Mom was listening as I was standing there. "Hello. How much is a 4x8 sheet of drywall? Batt insulation? ... Delivery?... Thanks."

The price per sheet plus delivery sounded tiny.. until I translated into minimum wage hours. Ug.

Mom was intrigued. I explained what we needed and why I was considering it. She said she'd have to talk about the expense with Dad, which I knew would translate to, "can't afford it". Still, Maybe I could still do it based on a part time job, it'd only be like $100 bucks in materials.

We didn't have a lot of money lying around. If I got a job, I'd have to limit myself to what I was supposed to know, as a teenager. My professional life had been programming and leading engineering teams, which called for tech and soft-skills that wouldn't exist in 1986. Later it'd be handy (read: $$++) since I could anticipate tech advances and be an expert before there were any other experts.

In the short term? I'd probably have to bust my nuts at a drive through window.

I went upstairs and found my shower was Much Happier given that "full water pressure" shower heads still existed. I'd bought several from China in the last couple of decades to avoid the Scretchingly-Painful-Mist of modern U.S. shower heads.

Coming back down refreshed, I had a nice breakfast with Mom and was just entranced at her seeming so young and vital, thin and fit. On my Earth, she'd died of a heart attack about 15 years after this, a few years after my father's passing.

She grew up on a farm eating lard so yeah, healthy living wasn't her habit, or Dad's.

I dug into breakfast and delighted in the pancakes, which it turned out was because the eggs were cooked with four bacon strips. Even the toast had a freakin' tablespoon of butter on it!

Damn, it tasted good, though!

After breakfast, I helped clean up, and casually mentioned it'd be good if she could limit my bacon to just one or maybe 2 strips, I didn't want the extra fat, and it probably wasn't good for her heart, either.

She laughed and said I was running enough to burn off any calories I took in, which was probably true, but I knew that in my former life, I hadn't kept running. The pounds had piled on, until I had a bad physical exam where the doc gave me numbers and I realized I had to change my ways. Congestive heart disease and dead relatives have a way of focusing the mind.

Going back upstairs, I dressed to do some garage cleanup. If I removed drywall, Dad would have to let me put up new stuff.

According to my checkbook balance, I had enough to buy materials myself, so I was safe.

By the end of the day, I'd cleaned out the garage of our to-keep stuff and piled it carefully under a tarp in the backyard. Then, I started taking out the drywall.

I think Mom was super-surprised when she got home from work, both seeing my progress and probably also that I was wearing eye protection and a dust mask. Her idea of safety was probably based on her 'Hold My Beer' relatives, so attention to safety had to be a surprise.

Plus, hers was a different era.

I'd lived through a pandemic or five, I knew how important dust masks were, but for her edification I said I had to protect my lungs for running.

Really, she also had to be disturbed by the mess, but I'd broken up the drywall as I went and had a huge pile of garbage bags (all under 40 pounds to be nice to the garbage men) in the backyard just inside the fence gate.

Mom's head shaking as she walked into the house made me suddenly more self-aware that she perceived me as a teenager, not as a capable handyman. I was probably scaring her with the expense and complication, and that wasn't nice of me.

After changing into casual clothes, she came out to look again and I mentioned needing insulation next. She took pity on me, then climbed in the car to pick up the fiberglass batt insulation and a staple gun I told her I needed from the hardware store.

The thing was, I wondered if we'd be eating beans for a week just because I'd gone ahead and done this without permission or money.

Dad got home and saw the work I'd done and was worried, of course, but also confused why I'd gone to the effort.

I told the truth, the same thing that I told Mom, that I wanted to move into the spare bedroom but it was always too cold. It was cold because it needed insulation and I was fixing that.

Dad got that part, but I could see him squinting trying to figure out the project cost, then went inside and I kept cleaning up.

After dinner, I had plans!

That morning while working away, I had decided to move up my schedule (I'd planned out what I'd do in order to capture the heart of a girl I knew), and called a friend of mine to set up something for the evening.

The goal was to not be a 16 year old virgin for long, this time around!

My plan (as previously developed, on my old Earth) would counteract my utterly hopeless dating life. I HAD to fix that. I had several overlapping backup plans, and the first / easiest one would start by hanging out at Rich's house.

Calling back to double-check, he said he'd already invited Amy (our mutual friend and another Lost Love interest), and that I could show up anytime. This was really damned exciting, I missed seeing him and Amy both, many decades had gone by since my last times with them.

== Chapter: Thursday Evening, 6:30 pm ==

Showered and shaved, I walked over to Rich's house. I would have biked, but the snow was slightly too deep. It was only 5 blocks and easy enough.

Along the way, I was passed by no less than six different groups of runners, and many more as individuals, though they were going all different directions. At first I thought there might be some kind of 5k race going on, but some people were jogging next to each other and chatting, and others were working hard.

One group (mostly of younger, maybe junior-high age range but with some adults) was set up in a park doing 100 meter sprints. The area they were in had a paved section that looked like it was just for that purpose, with a ton of monkey-bars, chin-up bars, etc., all spread around, some of it in use.

People in this universe were Seriously into fitness!

I had to wonder what Amy would look like, young again, and Brian, too. She'd still be as pretty as ever, I was sure, but I lost track of her for a long while and when I saw her last, either age or her cancer had taken a toll. In this age, that future wouldn't happen, and I was confident I could warn her off of cigarettes. In my 'verse, she'd started smoking in college, after we went our separate ways.

I should describe Amy.

Amy was awkward and bumbling and fun, and a geek and a really good friend to all of us. No matter what the weather, she'd always have on four layers of thick oversized clothes, trying to hide the fact that she had boobs, which we all knew very well, but she was nervous about somehow.

When it came to referencing sex, or boobs, or dicks, or whatever, Amy was exactly at our speed. Some girls immediately went to ewww-yuck or disgusting-stop-it attitudes, super fast, but not Amy. I realized at the time she was unusual, probably, but we just had fun together.

In my personal timeline, we (the other guys in our group) could say whatever we wanted, make dirty jokes or whatever, and she'd just roll with it and laugh with us. Sometimes she'd even make a joke herself, but usually she was much quieter on those topics than we were.

I think each of us (guys) had at one time tried asking her out, but she'd told us 'not a chance, I want to like you as friends and if we do the dating thing and it stops, then it breaks up the group!'

We had to accept that, and since she cracked funny jokes, we let it go.

Still, I did have fantasies sometimes, fantasies that lingered five more decades.

Really, not all my fantasies were about Amy. I also imagined far more what-if's about Rich's sister, Jane.

In my RE-DO life and in the Evening's Goals, it was Jane that was the target of my PLAN.

Jane was two years older than us. She was sweet - which is to say, Very Beautiful, sexy, interesting, and said oddball things. I think she was a lot more into the normal scene than we were, but sometimes she went and did downright geeky stuff.

After our movie ended (the non-network TV station had good creature features like the Abbott and Costello flick we'd watched), Amy, Rich, and I started playing euchre.

Euchre is a card game that requires "cheating" as much as possible, but also catching each other cheating if we could. It was a brain-heavy game, exactly our speed, since we were more than slightly brain heavy. With 3 players, we had to play the cutthroat version, which could be even more complex but we'd always liked it.

Jane came downstairs to where we were playing, and watched for a bit before she asked me, probably just to be nice, "So, did you do all the stuff you wanted to do over winter break?"

I kept looking at my cards and said with an air of outright honesty, "I missed three things during break, Jane. And, before you ask, NO, it's not fast cars, hookers, and cocaine."

Amy and Rich laughed. We were so lame the idea of just identifying a hooker was probably way beyond us, and I'm sure Jane and Amy knew it.

Jane looked at me with some exasperated disdain and said, "Yeah?" I could tell she expected me to say something semi-serious and totally extra-geeky, like that I'd gotten a game console or computer thing for Christmas or something.

I had a different plan, as I said. I had pre-memorized lines, because seriously, I was not nearly cool enough to do it on the fly. Probably.

Now was the time and I was ready. Ready? Really?... Yes. Ready.

Pulling my cards together and setting them face down on the table, I stood up.

She was behind Rich, so I took a step to make sure I was closer and hit her with wide eyes that I hoped would come across as tenderness. Reciting from a corny movie I'd memorized the lines of, I spoke (calmly, not over-emphasizing, but more matter of fact), "What I've missed on this break is, the Warm Embrace of your Smile, the time-stopping vertigo of falling in your deep eyes, and... the chance to caress your soul and body with equal fervor."

As I'd worked that afternoon, I had practiced this phrase. I was nervous, but not like a high-school nervous, I had life experience. I could deliver lines. I aimed to spout the words naturally, like listing out a grocery list, as if it was anywhere near normal for anyone ever.

My friends had stopped playing and looked at me.

Jane looked at me with her mouth increasingly open, so totally surprised she couldn't move. I kept my eyes on hers, changing the tilt of my head slightly and perhaps self-consciously licking my lips. I looked at her lips and pictured kissing them.

We stayed this way for maybe ten whole seconds. Silence. It was epic.

Looking down at my cards on the table, I knew they'd peek the moment I walked away. It was part of the game, the whole point of the game was 'cheating'.

I said, "We'll be back, I need a glass of water. Jane, shall we?"

"Uh... Yes, please?"

We walked upstairs, I was leading.

On the stairs, I asked Jane, "So, you know which college you're going to?"

I knew her answer already, I'd done some research before I left.

"Haven't decided."

"Ah." Bullshit, I thought. She had gone to Miami of Ohio because Wash-U St. Louis was too expensive for her parents.

We got up to the kitchen. She passed me and got a glass before I could get there, then waited as I got some ice cubes from their freezer. I'd spent many, many hours in that house, there was no need to ask where things were.

She was waiting for me with the glass and the water.

My mind flashed to filling a glass like that with 2 shots of rum and triple sec and making it Better.

Alas, not in this reality. Here, I had work to do. I had to fix my former life.

I said, "I said that, just now, because I wanted to talk with you alone. I memorized it, obviously. I'm not that suave."

She laughed, kind of nervously, "I know, Kev. Don't need to tell me."

Just looking down at her (she was slightly shorter) with a serious face, I ignored that and said, "Yes. You do know. And I know you. Which is really why I have to tell you what I'm going to tell you. You have to keep it to yourself, though, no matter how tempting it will be to tell other people. Can I trust you?"

She stepped in, half-smiling. "Secrets?"

I took a sip of water and said, "Yeah."

Glancing over at the downstairs stairway, I didn't want to be overheard from there, and the hallway to her parent's den where they were watching TV was dark so they were probably already upstairs.

I motioned to her to follow me to their front room, well away. She followed me and we stopped on the far side of her formal front room, not somewhere that got a lot of use.

I talked in a low voice. "Jane. I... sometimes have odd dreams. Like, sleeping, nighttime dreams, yeah, but ... very vivid, WAY different from normal dreams. When I wake up, I write down, sometimes, what was in the dream. Sometimes they're crap, or seriously oddball, like... giant skyscrapers underwater, super-fast airplanes, whatever. Most of the time, it's weird-ass shit. But sometimes, the things I dream... come true."

She nodded with a half-smile, like this was another oddball thing to say, and she was waiting for me to finish and get to the part that mattered - the punchline.

"You can laugh if you want. I was kind of freaked out for a while, too. I got accused of being crazy and then figured out fast it's counterproductive to tell people. So. I'm kind of breaking my own rule, to tell you Anything At All."

"Fine, fine...?" She didn't believe me. She thought this was a setup, probably. She was pretty savvy, usually.

"It's just that, sometimes the dreams pile on one another, as a stream, a BIG stream, like my head is going to explode big. Each part had... overtones, piled on top of each other."

"And...?"

I sighed. The time had come. The big revelation: "The space shuttle, Challenger, is going to blow up. About... a month from now. After takeoff. There's an astronaut onboard, a teacher named McAuliff, and a guy named Onizuka. I remember that much. Everybody dies. Weather related thing, it was too cold to launch. Not anyone's fault, I think."

She was shaking her head no at me, "Come on."

I nodded.

She asked, "What makes you think this is true? The government, wouldn't they need to know, their secrets would be...?"

"As if! Won't do any good. I mean, I've told people about my visions before, they were in trouble, but nobody believes me. So, yeah. NASA's not gonna listen to some snot-nosed guy who had a 'dream' or something. But, that's not the important thing for you, anyway."

"Me?"

"Yeah. With you, I got a flood, it happens sometimes. A set of images, that are an over-time thing."

She nodded, but her eyebrows were together, questioning.

I said, "Just let me finish. I have to get this off my chest. It's vital we both know it. If we do something, we can change our future, or not. It's ... not fixed. We can decide."

"It doesn't always happen?"

"One time, I saw that someone I knew was going to die in a car accident, so I let the air out of their car's tires. They didn't die. So, yeah, I can change things. Totally worth it. So, yeah. I'm pretty sure that I see possible... or even probable futures."

"And... you said... me? We?"

"You. Me. We're watching TV in our den - my parent's den, at my house. We've just been upstairs, in my new room over the garage, making love. The TV says, a nuclear power plant, at a place in Ukraine - the Soviet Union - called 'Chernobyl', it's blown up. Melted down. Huge disaster there."

She nodded, I kept going.

"Then, the scene changes, and you're pregnant, you're not going to Miami-Ohio University anymore. You have the baby. We get married. We have twins later? There's lots more? You're a runner, then, I think, something really active. There's lots of scenes of you working out in a gym."

She was looking at me with knitted eyebrows, so I had to go on.

"Anyway, the scene changes, then it's one of our daughters, she has invented, or worked on, a kind of solar electric panel that helps to save mankind, someone is saying, in... an awards speech for her. They say, it's super-important, it has saved 'uncounted lives'? Not sure what that means. I guess it means we need to have a bunch of kids. But... It's odd, the other part of this vision? It's not just us. It's Amy, too, she's there in some of these images. She's our... nanny? But, then, she's there later, and she's ... wife to both of us? She has kids, too? It's ... kind of jumbled, then, in motion."

She was aghast to start with, repulsed, then intrigued. I watched the whole thing play out. "You're completely full of shit."

I nodded dejectedly, "Yeah, I hope so. For the sake of those astronauts, and the people living around that reactor."

"What was the name?"

"Chernobyl. Easy to remember. I doubt any singer, much less Cher, would ever win a Nobel prize."

She nodded, smiling, not sure of me, "Most singers don't."

Pausing then, I waited for her to think.

"Why aren't you telling anyone else?"

"No one would believe me. And, if I did, and I was right, especially about the space shuttle, you can bet the FBI would be knocking on my door and carting me off. As a movie said once, "These are the kind of people that lock you up in a room and throw away the room."

She laughed again, "You watch funny movies."

"That one won't come out until ... June, this year. I think."

"You're ... serious."

"Sorry. And, I'm really, _really_ sorry in other ways, too."

"Why are you apologizing?"

"You don't get to go to Miami-Ohio. Whatever your life plan was, it's ... it could be WAY different. We end up in Toronto. I think you and I both go to U Toronto. Not sure about Amy."

"Have you told her?"

I thought about it, "Nope. Not sure when to do that? Probably soon, guess I should. Otherwise she'll never believe us, and if one of our kids is that important... it's not worth the risk to avoid it. Still, sometimes the dreams change, they dance around with small details. I don't want to tell her too early in case the vision changes."

"You're not giving me much choice in this. Psycho Kevin or realize-later-you-were-right Kevin."

I shrugged.

"Why would we go there? Plus, we're still in high school."

I shook my head, "Oh, we can definitely get married. Illinois law says parental permission. That's actually the easiest thing."

She gave me a look like I was being oddball, but then sat down on the sofa.

I sat next to her. Waiting was killing me, but I had to be patient. I'm not good with patience. ADHD does that.

She asked, "I have to presume you're making all this up to make fun of me, or get me in trouble, or trick me somehow. It's ... too... fantasy-like. You can't just spring this on someone. I might not have been home tonight."

"Yes. You were."

"You knew that?"

"No. But it's not exactly tough to find you. I've been here enough."

"Why do this tonight?"

"Just had this dream this week. Plus, it's long enough ahead of time to wrap your mind around it. Wait for things to fall into place."