Life On Repeat

CHAPTER 1

THE MOMENT

The " moment ," as I’ve come to call it, is when the memories of a past life break through the surface. The first moment I remember clearly happened when I turned 14 years old. In that life, my name was Sarah Mackenzie, and I was a ninth-grade student in Mount Washington, New Hampshire. I wasn’t the prettiest girl in the school, or the most outgoing, but I had a few close friends, and for the most part was content in my life. My parents were still married, but I wouldn’t have called it a happy marriage. My mom was into new age discovery and finding herself. My dad called her a hippie, and mostly ignored her and her quest for self-realization. First it was the sweat lodge, followed by the meditation retreat, and floatation therapy after that. He didn’t ask her to stop, so I guess he was supportive of her in his own way. 

That morning started out no different from any other. I woke to my alarm and hit the snooze button—twice. I ignored my mom as she yelled from the bottom of the stairs for me to get up, followed by a much louder yell from my dad telling me to listen to my mother and get out of bed. I begrudgingly flung my blankets aside, put on my fuzzy pink slippers, and trudged down the hall to the bathroom to take a shower. Showers in our house had to be either short or cold. My dad had been working on the pipes to improve the water pressure, but like most of his do-it-yourself projects, it would only be a matter of time before my mom would convince him to hire someone to do it.

After a slightly too long and unpleasantly chilly shower, I went back to my room to find something to wear. I looked in the mirror and frowned at my reflection. I wished I had the color of my mother’s dark blonde hair rather than mine, which was best described as somewhere between mousy brown and the color of dirt. My mom’s blonde came from a box now that she had begun to get the occasional gray hair, but it was still beautiful. I took too long deciding what to wear and ran out of time, so I settled on a tie-dye T-shirt, jeans, and my boring brown hair tied up in a ponytail. I ran downstairs to the kitchen, inhaled a frozen waffle, washed it down with a glass of orange juice, and ran out the door to catch the school bus. As usual, I almost missed it, but my best friend Jan waited for me and begged the driver to hold the bus while I sprinted to the corner. Jan was a free spirit. We were such opposites. She was fearless, while I was not. How we ended up best friends was a mystery to me. She would walk straight up to a boy she liked and tell him he should ask her to the school dance.

It’s 1974, Sarah. You don’t have to wait for the boy to ask you. This is the age of enlightenment, she would say. You have to seize the moment, or it will pass you by.

Jan and I had homeroom and fourth period algebra together. Algebra was not Jan’s favorite class, but I, on the other hand, was more comfortable with numbers than I was with people. On weekends I would help her with her math homework, and she would help me with pretty much everything else, like what clothes to wear to the movies, or what to say to the cute guy in my science class the next time he asked to borrow a pencil.

That day was normal until my class with Jan. We walked into algebra and sat down at our assigned desks. Mr. Gramm seated us alphabetically, so Jan was right behind me. Class began and we were told to open our books to page 48. Just then, Jan poked me in the back. I turned around with a furrowed brow on my face, thinking she was going to start whispering in class again. I hated getting in trouble in front of all the other students. It never seemed to bother her, but I found it absolutely humiliating. Jan leaned toward me.

Are you okay? You look kind of pale. Did you skip breakfast again?

No, I’m fine. I ate. I’m probably just tired. I had a hard time sleeping last night. It was as if I was dreaming with my eyes wide open.

Quiet down girls, Mr. Gramm warned. I turned back around quickly, knowing that I was the one who kept talking this time, so I couldn’t be upset with Jan. Not that I ever really got upset with her. If anything, I wished I could be more like her.

I listened to Mr. Gramm explain today’s lesson while trying to avoid eye contact as he looked for volunteers to come to the front of the classroom. I knew the answer to the equation he had hastily written on the chalkboard, but I hated talking in front of the whole class. I scribbled busily in my notebook, grimacing so it would look like I was having trouble working out the equation. That’s when it started. I looked at my paper, and instead of numbers, I had been writing names. I looked at the page again. Jenny, Thomas, and Andrew were scrawled in big bold letters. Stranger still, I didn’t know a Jenny, Thomas, or Andrew. There was a girl named Jennifer in my science class, and I had once met a Thomas at a church potluck, but I didn’t have friends with those names. Mr. Gramm’s first name may have been Andrew, but there was no reason that I would be writing those names, over and over, on my homework assignment. It was odd, but I assumed I was so bored that my mind was wandering. I’d always been easily distracted, so it wasn’t surprising that my thoughts would drift. Algebra ended, and we filed out into the hallway to go to our next class.

Fifth hour was gym. I despised that class. I changed into my gym uniform, which consisted of a boxy grey shirt with a pair of black shorts that hung past my knees. I had forgotten all about the names written in my notebook, because God help me, we were playing dodgeball. Dodgeball was probably the most sadistic game ever created. The entire point of the game was to throw a hard rubber ball with as much force as possible at another human being. I could see the value of this if one was training as a gladiator, but for a ninth-grade girl with poor coordination, I always felt more like a target than a gladiator.

I didn’t put much effort, if any, into trying to grab a ball to throw at the opposing side. If I couldn’t get an ice cube from the freezer without it slipping through my hands and dropping on to the floor every single time, how was I supposed to accurately throw anything while trying to avoid inbound rubber missiles? It seemed unlikely. Instead, I cowered in the back as much as I could, and tried to hide behind braver souls than I. Just as the girl in front of me was tagged, I heard a voice from behind me. I turned around, but no one was there. . .just balls bouncing off the wall behind me. I shrugged my shoulders, and then whap! It was a direct hit. The hard ball smacked me right on the side of my head, knocking me down to the hard wood floor of the gym. My ears were ringing, but I quickly stood back up, more embarrassed than injured. Then I heard the voice again. The gym teacher blew her whistle, she yelled something at the boy who launched the missile at my head, and I heard it again. . .someone right behind me. This time, it wasn’t spoken like someone talking to me, it was more like laughing. It was a girl’s laughter, but when I turned again, there was still no one there. I was thoroughly confused and wondered if maybe the ball had hit me harder than I realized. The gym teacher, Miss Deacon, asked me if I needed to go see the nurse. I jumped at the opportunity to escape the brutal dodgeball assault and went to lie down in the nurse’s office.

Nurse Susan was waiting for me, having received a call from Miss Deacon that I would be arriving soon. She pointed to the back room and told me to rest while she went for a new ice pack. I laid down on the only cot in the office. It was covered with a pale blue sheet that matched the color of the walls. The office reeked of rubbing alcohol and antiseptic. It seemed more pungent than usual, and I had to pull my shirt up over my nose to block out the smell. I closed my eyes and started to think about the voices I had heard in the gym. I couldn’t place them, but there was something familiar about them. It was like when you see a movie or watch a commercial, and you know you’ve heard the voice before, but just can’t place the name. It was starting to eat away at me. The nurse came back from the supply closet with an ice pack for my head. It didn’t really hurt anymore, but I didn’t want to chance being sent back as a dodgeball target, so I accepted the cold ice pack with a