The Traveler: A Time Travel Thriller by Fredric Shernoff

Author:Fredric Shernoff [Shernoff, Fredric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Whitemarsh Publishing
Published: 2014-01-03T23:00:00+00:00

2

During the second staff meeting, a young woman sat down across from me at the picnic table where I was pretending to study a packet of policies that had been distributed. Though I had never spoken to her, I recognized her in the same way I recognized everyone at the meeting. I’d spent at least one summer with all of them earlier in my life. We locked eyes for a fraction of a second and I looked away with an awkwardness I hadn’t expected because it wasn’t really part of my time traveling persona. “Hi, I’m Suzy,” she said.

I smiled politely. “I’m Justin.”

“Are you a counselor or…”

“Nah, I’m the computer ‘specialist.’”

She looked impressed. “Wow, I don’t really know too much about computers.”

“There’s really not that much to know,” I said. “The models here are pretty basic and there’s no Internet though the quality of the dialup with the kind of modems widely available would be shoddy at best and…I’m totally boring you, aren’t I?”

Suzy grinned. “Only a little bit.”

“Okay, so tell me about you. You’re a senior counselor?”

She pretended to be hurt. “You mean I don’t look fourteen? Damn.”

It was about that time that I realized she and I were flirting. The fundamental wrongness of it hung in the air, though if Suzy sensed it she gave no sign. She was both a decade younger than me and a decade older than the 1993 Danny Wells. Either way, it was uncomfortable. Not to mention I was still married in some other “when.” Yet for all my morality, sense of purpose and loyalty, I found that I craved the spark that Suzy and I seemed to have shared between us. The chemistry was strong and instantaneous.

She was also astonishingly beautiful. Her light brown hair was long and wavy in a way I associated with the ‘80s but I suppose was still in style at that point in time. She had dark brown eyes—the color of chocolate—and they sparkled in the light of the overhead fluorescents. She was tall and thin and moved in a way that said she knew she had a good body. The more we talked and the more she smiled and laughed, the more transfixed I became.

That night, lying in my bed in the Jenkintown Hotel, I thought about her. I didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing in 2013, but there was no way a girl like that hadn’t found someone and married somewhere along the way. There was a risk that any interaction beyond a friendship between us would be interference with the path she was supposed to take. Not to mention the possibility that she was supposed to have a summer fling with one of the other staff members. My involvement could change the course of multiple lives. I couldn’t believe I was even entertaining those thoughts, but there they were.

As the final week passed before the camp season began, I couldn’t stop thinking about seeing Suzy again. I knew I was becoming obsessed but it was a good obsession, if that makes any sense.

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