The Temporal Express

The twenty passengers aboard the Temporal Express had nothing in common save for the fact that they were traveling back in time to the same day. Their destination was December 26, 2017, and their twelve-hour journey would leave them off at Grand Central Station, a busy transport hub in New York City. Upon disembarkation, their trackers would be set automatically, and they would have exactly four hours to complete their business.

When it was Brynn’s turn to step into the train, a travel inspector activated her tracker and reminded her of all the rules and regulations. With a million things already on her mind, she began concentrating so intently on memorizing the edicts that she tripped over a carry bag in the aisle and lost her balance. As she began toppling to the floor, her cup of coffee flew into the air, and the warm, brown liquid splashed all over the shirt of her seat-mate, just as he caught her.

After a couple of seconds of shock, Brynn glanced up to see she was in the arms of a middle-aged man with salt and pepper hair and tortoise shell glasses. “Oh my God,” she exclaimed as she jumped backwards, “I’m such a klutz. I’m so sorry.”

She opened her oversized tote bag and began rummaging through, frantically searching for her pack of tissues. When she spotted them, she took out a bunch and began blotting the stain on his shirt. As she dabbed away on his chest he put up his hands to block her.

“Excuse me,” he said as he took the damp tissues out of her hand, “but I usually wait until the second date to have a woman touch me like that.” He laughed at his own joke and smiled warmly. “Now that we know each other so intimately, my name’s Michael, but everyone calls me Mike.” He sat down in seat 2A and offered Brynn his hand.

Brynn’s face turned a deep shade of scarlet and she slunk down in the seat next to him. She shook his outstretched hand and said shyly, “My name’s Brynn but my mother always called me Bumbling Brynn so you might as well too. “She sighed loudly, “I’m such an idiot. Can I buy you a new shirt?”

Mike squirmed in his seat, uncomfortable with this stranger’s self-deprecating manner. His ex-wife used to abuse him verbally, and now any kind of abuse, even self-abuse made him cringe. He mumbled, “Don’t worry about the shirt, Brynn. Really, it’s just a tee shirt.”

For the next few minutes the pair adjusted their seat belts and settled in for the long, bumpy ride. When the train lurched into motion, Brynn took a few long, deep breaths. Things had started off badly and she felt a lump forming in her throat as she reached into her bag and pulled out a book. Reading had always relaxed her, and this one book in particular almost always calmed her down. She rotated the book in her hands and when she opened it to the first page, she heard laughter coming from the direction of her seat-mate.

She turned to face him. “Hey, what’s so funny?”

Mike pulled the identical book out of his briefcase.

“You’re reading Harry Potter,” she blurted out.

“Yep. It’s the book I was reading on December 26, 2017.”

“Me too. My dad bought the series for me for Christmas the day before.” And then he walked out on me, she thought to herself.

“What a crazy coincidence. I got the set for Christmas too. Well, actually it was my younger sister’s gift, but she’s dyslexic, so I volunteered to read her “Sorcerer’s Stone” over winter break. I had read it before like ten times, but it was really fun seeing how excited she got.

“Aww, that was really nice of you taking care of your sister like that.”

“Yeah, we used to be really close before…oh never mind.” He balled his hands into fists as he thought about how his ex-wife had damaged his relationship with his sister.

An awkward silence descended amongst the seat-mates, and they nodded to each other and turned their eyes to their books.

After many attempts to delve in, Brynn realized she was rereading the same line over and over again. She couldn’t concentrate on the words because of how distracted she was. She kept glancing over at Mike and wondering what it was that was so familiar about him. It was driving her nuts. As she searched his face for a clue, Mike looked up and caught her staring.

“Do I have broccoli between my teeth or something?”

Brynn blushed and quickly reached into her tote and pulled out a bag of food. “Uh, I was just about to have a piece of fruit. Would you like one?”

“Oh, sure, thanks.” Brynn handed Mike the bag and openly stared at him as he pulled out an apple.

“How do I know you?” she blurted out.

Mike furrowed his brows. “I’m not sure. I couldn’t concentrate on my book because I was thinking the same thing.”

Brynn rested her chin on her hand, “I grew up in Queens. Did you ever live there?”

He shook his head, “Nah, Brooklyn.”

“Did you ever work in midtown Manhattan?”

“Nah, I hardly ever go into the city. I work in Brooklyn too.”

Brynn closed her eyes in concentration until suddenly she felt a glimmer of a memory beginning to surface. “Hey,” she said her face lighting up, “where’d you go to college?”

“Binghamton.”

“Bingo,” Brynn blurted out. That’s how we know each other.”

For the next hour or so, Mike and Brynn crunched their apples and reminisced about their years in college, trying to figure out how they might have met. Binghamton was a very large school and it was possible that they had only crossed paths in the cafeteria. They compared classes and clubs and discovered they had graduated only one year apart. Finally it dawned on Mike.

“Hey, did you go to that Harry Potter party at the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house?” He danced around in his seat as the memory became clear. “You were the girl dressed as Scabbers, right? That was such an awesome costume.”

“I was,” she said blushing. “I can’t believe you remember me. You know a bunch of the girls made fun of my costume so thank you for that compliment.” Brynn narrowed her eyes as she tried to place him. “Who were you again,” she asked.”

“I was Dumbledore.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and showed her a photo taken twenty-eight years earlier.

She grabbed the device out of his hand and popped on her reading glasses. “Yes. I remember now.” She began to laugh. “Your beard reached all the way to the floor and you had a spider stuck in it. It was hilarious.”

“Yeah,” he joined in laughing, “after my fourth glass of butter beer I tripped on the stupid thing and twisted my ankle.”

Brynn rotated the phone to get a better view, and her jaw dropped open. There she was in the background of the photo with her rat ears sticking up and her tail trailing behind her. Her face fell. “I guess I did look kind of dumb.”

“What? No, just the opposite. I remember thinking how pretty you looked and I tried to find out if you were seeing anyone, but none of my friends knew you.”

She blushed again in preparation for her own confession. “I remember thinking how cute and funny you were and how nice it would be to have you as a friend, but I was too shy to talk to you.”

As she handed the phone back to Mike, she held it up high so that she could get a glimpse of his ring finger. She felt a strange connection to this man and shivered with delight when she discovered his fourth finger was unadorned.

After taking back the phone, Mike stuffed it into his pocket and the two seat-mates smiled wistfully as they disappeared into their memories.

 A couple of minutes later Brynn asked, “So, what do you do, Mike?”

“I’m a high school English teacher. I just love books and I love introducing great literature to my students.

“Aww, that’s really nice,” Brynn said. “Teaching is such an important job.”

“What about you?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain.” Brynn hesitated a moment, “I’m a ghost writer. People send me their ideas and I turn them into books. I actually wrote a trilogy for my cousin and all three books in the series became best sellers.”

“Oh, that’s amazing. What’s your cousin’s name? Maybe I’ve heard of her.”

“Janice Feldman.”

“Oh my God, do you mean you wrote Dawn of the Vampire Zombies? I loved that trilogy. So you’re telling me you write best selling books and your cousin gets all the credit?”

“I guess so. It’s okay. I’ve never really been comfortable around people and I’d die if I had to do any public speaking.”

Mike shook his head in solidarity. “I get it. Everyone thinks I’m this funny, easy-going guy, but I’m really not. I’m actually a closet introvert. I can teach a class of students and make people laugh at a party, but I get nervous when I have to speak at staff meetings.”

Mike reached down and pulled a water bottle out of his bag. As he sat back up, he snuck a peek at Brynn’s ring finger. He was beginning to feel a connection with this woman, and he was relieved to see it was bare. “Hey,” he said, taking a chug of water, “I’m just curious. How many times did you have to enter the lottery before you won your train ticket?”

“Let’s see. I’ve bought lottery tickets every month for almost two years so around twenty-two.”

“Mike’s eyes widened, “Wow, that must have cost a fortune. You must have an extremely urgent reason for traveling back to the past.”

Brynn blew out a long breath. “It did cost a fortune. I had to cash out my entire retirement account. I feel so stupid.”

Mike squirmed again. “I guess I was lucky. I won the train lottery with my second ticket. So,” he said,” crossing his arms in front of his chest, “what’s this big mission you have to accomplish?”

“Well,” Brynn said, her voice beginning to crack. “December 26th was the day my mom started drinking. My father had just walked out on her, on us, and she couldn’t cope.” Tears began to burn her eyes. “Over the next few months she began drinking heavily, and by the time I graduated college, she had lost both her job and her health. I had to move back home and take care of her.” The tears were now streaming down her face, “ it was really hard, and so that’s why I’m traveling back. I’m going to tell my younger self to drop out of college and take better care of mom.”

Mike put his hand on Brynn’s shoulder and began patting it. He said, “She must have been a great mom. You must have really loved her to make such a sacrifice.”

“A great mom?” Her lips curled into a snarl, “You couldn’t be more wrong. She was a super narcissist who made me feel like crap all the time. She called me stupid and klutzy and sometimes when she was drunk she’d throw things at me. Because of her, I’ve never felt good enough.” Brynn’s voice dropped to a whisper, “It’s no wonder I became a ghost writer. She made me feel like a ghost.”

Mike shook his head in confusion. “I don’t understand. Why would you go back to help her?”

“Because she’s dead now and I’m so damned lonely I can barely breathe.” Brynn covered her face with her hands and began to sob.” She choked out, “I’m forty-nine years old and I’ve never been married and never had kids. I was giving myself two more chances at the lottery and if I didn’t win,” she stopped and took a breath. “Well, you can figure it out.”

Mike didn’t know what to say, so he put his arms around Brynn and let her cry on his shoulder. “Do you want to know why I’m going back?”

Mike could feel Brynn nodding her head yes. “I’m going back to tell my younger self not to marry Laura. I’m going to tell young Mike that if he ever meets anyone named Laura to run the other way as fast as he can.”

Brynn looked up. “Why? What happened,” she sniffled.

 Mike’s jaw clenched and he sputtered, “Laura ruined my life. It seems she couldn’t live without designer clothes and purses and thousand-dollar shoes. She had lunch at mega-expensive restaurants every single day while I had to pack a sandwich.”

He took a breath in an attempt to calm down. “But that wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was that she never stopped berating me for being a teacher. His voice became a falsetto as he imitated her, ‘Get a better job,’ she would screech. Anyway, after a few years my credit score was in the crapper and my relationship with my sister was ruined. The pressure was crushing me, but even so, I stayed with her. I  thought maybe we could work it out if we had kids. Turned out she didn’t want any. I guess she didn’t want me either because she was the one that left me.”

“Wow!” Brynn hugged Mike a little tighter. “We are quite the pair of losers. What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to not talk about our families anymore. That’s what we’re going to do.”

Over the next eight hours, the two seat-mates talked non-stop as if their lives depended on it. They shared their lunches, and dinners, barely taking the time to chew. They laughed and they cried and with each passing hour, Brynn felt her heart growing lighter. While everyone else on the train slept, these two seat-mates bared their souls to each other and discovered they had everything important in common. Brynn felt like they had been friends forever.

When the announcement came they were approaching their destination, Mike’s eyes lit up and he jumped out of his seat. “I have a fantastic idea,” he blurted out. “Let’s just scrap what we had planned and instead, let’s tell our younger selves that when they go to the Harry Potter party, they’ll meet someone very special.”

He looked nervously at Brynn and smiled when he saw she was shaking her head yes.

 “I am going to tell my younger self that there will be a girl at the party with long chestnut hair and the most beautiful green eyes. She’ll be dressed as a rat and one day you’ll fall in love with her, so don’t blow it.”

“Yes, yes.” Brynn was grinning from ear to ear. “I’ll tell my younger self that that there’s going to be this really funny, cute guy at the party with a long white beard and when he asks you out, say yes. He’ll become your most special person.”

And just like that, two seat-mates became soul-mates.

Four hours later, when the Temporal Express began its journey back to 2047, seats 2A and 2B were occupied by a loving couple who had recently celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. They would sleep the majority of the ride home as their brains worked hard to set new neural pathways, integrating their current reality.

Meanwhile, a few days later, with his new memories solidly in place, a beloved high school English teacher was getting ready to take his daughter to college. “I’m so excited you’re going to Binghamton,” he said. “Such wonderful memories. That’s where mom and I met.”

“I know dad,” Amanda said in a voice dripping with teenage sarcasm, “you’ve told me like a million times.”

“It was at a Harry Potter party,” her mother chimed in. “Dad and I were such geeks.”

Amanda rolled her eyes. “Mom, I know. You were the rat and dad was the bearded guy. And no one’s said the word geek in like a million years.”

The middle-aged couple kissed before loading their daughter’s luggage into the car.

“Don’t forget,” Brynn said, opening the door for Amanda, “I’m coming up to Binghamton in October for my latest book tour. We’ll have dinner together.”

“Okay Mom.” Amanda turned around to give her mother one last hug before getting in the car.

 “I love you baby,” Brynn called out as she blew a kiss.

“Love you too, Mom. See you in October.”

Amanda climbed into the passenger seat and buckled herself in. It was her first time living away from home, and she began to cry silently. Her dad turned to her and wiped away her tears, “Don’t be nervous honey. You’re going to do great. Like mom and I always tell you, you can do anything.”