I'll Stop the World (36)

“Charlene’s brother is named Karl. And her dad is Jack.”

This whole conversation is so deeply weird that I almost feel stupid trying to make sense of it. Especially when my brain sluggishly circles back around to the bizarre thing she said a minute ago, and I realize that I am not the problem here. Or at least, not the only problem. At least I know what year it is, unlike this strange girl, who has apparently suffered some sort of break from reality.

“Can I just ask . . . What do you think the date is?” I feel a little dumb that it’s taken me this long to realize that this girl may be more than a few bricks shy of a load.

“September twenty-eighth.”

That’s not right—it’s the thirtieth—but that’s not really what I’m getting at. “What, uh, year?”

She gives me a funny look but answers, “1985. What year do you think it is?”

Okay, seriously, what the hell? I feel like I’m trapped in an episode of The Twilight Zone. “You’re off by a few decades,” I say, reaching into my back pocket to pull out my wallet. I hold up my driver’s license, tapping the date with my index finger. “See?”

I glance at her car, a boxy, old-model sedan, and wonder what she’s doing out here. She said she was at the bonfire, but if she’s living in some kind of delusion, I probably shouldn’t trust her to know where she came from. Did she steal this car? Maybe I should be the one taking her to the hospital.

“Listen,” I say, trying to make my voice as nonthreatening as possible, “I think you’re confused. Where do you live? Let me drive you home.” I don’t really want to devote any more of my evening to this girl, but I feel bad just leaving her here. If she at least knows her address, I can pass her off to her parents or someone else who—and I cannot stress this enough—isn’t me.

She’s shaking her head, frowning as she examines my license, and digs her own out of her purse. “I’m not the one who’s confused, and you are definitely not driving my car.” She fans a handful of multicolored cards under my nose. It takes me a second to figure out what I’m looking at as I try to parse the typewritten text on each card, but after a moment, I realize she’s showing me a driver’s license, library card, and student ID.

The license lists her birthday as August 12, 1968; the library card says it was issued in 1982; and the ID is for the 1985–1986 school year. They’re all issued to a Rose Yin. No photos, though. Is she walking around with her grandmother’s expired documents in her wallet or something?

“Who’s Rose Yin?” I ask, still keeping my voice as nonthreatening as I can.

“I’m Rose Yin,” she huffs. “Obviously.”

I shake my head, holding my hands up in defeat. “You know what? Never mind. I give up. You win. It’s 1985. Have a nice life.”

I turn away from her and begin walking along the sidewalk, toward the south side of the bridge. It’s a two-mile walk to my house, but I don’t think I have it in me to go back to Dave’s tonight, not after getting thrown out and hallucinating a car accident and having to deal with this weird girl and her Back to the Future schtick.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Away,” I call over my shoulder.

Behind me, I hear her car door slam and the engine rumble to life. I wait for her to zip past me, but to my dismay, she pulls up alongside me and rolls down her window, her car idling loudly. “What year do you think it is?”

I ignore her, staring straight ahead. I don’t have a lot of patience on a good day, but tonight I feel like I’m working from a significant deficit.

“Where’d you get that weird shiny driver’s license?”

“DMV, same as anyone else.”

“Come on, where?”

“Why do you think it’s 1985?”

“Because it is. Do you think you’re from the future?”

I sigh. “No, I think I’m from right now.”

“Which is . . . ?”

I roll my eyes. “2023.”

Her forehead wrinkles as her car continues to creep along the bridge next to me. I walk a little faster, knowing I won’t be able to outpace a car but just wanting this bizarre night to be over as soon as possible.

“How’d you get in the middle of the—”

Before she can finish her question, she’s interrupted by flashing red lights flickering on behind us.

My heart thunks into my shoes. Did the police find my car? Is it somewhere stupid, like the middle of the woods or half-submerged at the riverbank, or parked in the Derrins’ living room? All this hellish weekend needs is for me to get arrested for something I don’t even remember, giving Stan yet another reason to wish he’d drowned me as a baby.

“Shoot,” Rose mutters, glancing in her rearview mirror before throwing her car into park and grabbing her purse off the passenger seat.

I consider making a break for it, but quickly decide that running from the cops isn’t the wisest move in any decade. I dig out my wallet again and attempt to sneakily sniff my breath, hoping that the smell of whiskey has faded.

The door to the police car opens, and an officer walks over to Rose’s window. She smiles nervously when she sees him. “Sorry,” she calls through the open window. “I know I wasn’t going the speed limit.”