Old Habits, Page 2

When I was in fifth grade, I pushed Justin Gallagher down the stairs.

  Our class at Hastings Elementary was putting on a play and Justin had gotten the lead, while I was cast as his understudy. On one hand, it was a prestigious award, since if Justin were to become sick (or fall down the stairs due to some horrible accident and unprecedented act of nature), I would become the lead. But on the other hand, if Justin were to remain healthy, I would merely get to stand in the background, dressed as a tree.

  So, at the time, the choice was clear: Justin had to go.

  Looking back, it really wasn’t a big deal. Justin recovered after having to wear one of those ridiculous black boots on his leg for six weeks, while I replaced him in the play, and coincidentally forgot my lines twenty minutes into the first performance. In the end, I hadn’t turned out to be the star I thought I would, but I still got what I wanted.

  As Gabe and I rode down the interstate in our stolen black mobster-van, Justin Gallagher and his injured leg floated into my mind. Had that been the beginning of it all? Had pushing him down the stairs for my own, personal gain set off a chain reaction eventually lead to me being responsible for ruining my own life, not to mention the lives of everyone I had come into contact within the past few months?

  I couldn’t know for sure, but for some reason, it gave me a small sense of peace to think if I could somehow develop the ability to travel back in time to 1996 and not push Justin down the stairs, then I never would have started selling drugs with Gabe, never would have gotten in over my head, never would have gotten my best friend Airic killed, and never would have had to flee my hometown with the one person I was most terrified of in life. Maybe had I not pushed Justin down the stairs, my little brother wouldn’t have been exposed to the world of crime at the age of thirteen, my girlfriend Riley wouldn’t have watched as both our lives disintegrated around us, and four people wouldn’t have been shot in the living room of my parents’ house.

  Those were the thoughts crossing my mind as we fled Hastings, but by the time we had passed through Kansas and Colorado, I’d realized time travel doesn’t exist, and the past cannot be changed.

  And though, according to The Terminator, the future is not set in stone, I was still doing a pretty good job of screwing mine up. As Gabe and I set up shop in California, trying to escape our separate pasts and make a new life for ourselves, our connected past found a sure-fire way to catch up to us, and things were about to go from bad to worse; much, much worse.

  (Times, They are A-Changin’)