Time Flying by Dan Garmen Read Free Book Online

Bran and ducked out the door, right on time at 7:30, making a welcome escape. The vertigo had returned, as had the pain in my leg, but I found the El Camino in the driveway with Dean and Betsy standing by, ready to go to school.
     
     
    In the parking lot, I parted ways with my younger passengers, Betsy and Dean heading left and me, remembering the routine, to the right. I felt strange and almost euphoric, walking across the parking lot in the crisp, April air. I couldn't remember smelling air this clean in a long time, so long I'd forgotten it even could be this clear. What have we done to the air? I thought, then again, maybe because I've got my 17 year old senses back I'm finally experiencing the world unfiltered by age. When I got close enough to the flow of people funneling into door #5, I began seeing faces gone from my memory for decades. I recognized friends, as well as people whose faces I recognized, but with no name attached to them in 1976, let alone on this day. Oh wait, I thought, this is 1976 again. Right .
    The noise rushed into the building as well, everything so vivid. The sights and smells were overwhelming, and the sounds were too loud, with an almost metallic edge, as if I wasn't hearing plain old analog sound, but rather a distorted digitized version of the original sounds, causing the vertigo to rush back into my head In response, I edged over to walk along the wall, in case I lost my balance. It was a good think I did, too, because as soon as I reached the edge of the flowing crowd, the dizziness rose in a crescendo and the world twisted violently sideways. I grabbed for the wall, my hand touching the cool metal of a locker and fell against the narrow door, sliding down to the floor. My head lolled back and smacked the locker door, sounding a loose, metallic crash attracting the attention of several kids walking by. Three boys, who 13 years old or so, stepped over, and looking down at me asked 'you ok?’
    I opened my eyes and with considerable effort, focused on each of their faces. I nodded.
    “You're Rich Girrard, aren't you?” asked the one on the left, the smallest of the three. 'The basketball guy,' he added.
    “Yea,” I said, a little embarrassed, but not as much as I would have been, had this happened when I was doing all this for the first time. “Help me up, would you?” I wanted to get back on my feet, but nothing seemed to work, I couldn’t even raise my hand for the three to grab to pull me up.
    “Stay down for a minute,” a deep voice interjected from behind the boys. “Just sit and collect yourself.”
    I looked up at a face I hadn't seen since the day I graduated. Coach Tom MacLaren, who had died minutes before the tipoff of a midseason game in 1980, stood before me, looking down, concerned. Our last two conversations, three weeks after I had graduated, had been strained, but more polite than the reamings I'd received when I was at the bottom of my descent into surrender after the accident, a descent that had started not far from the time I seemed to be living in at the present. In late April of 1976, the Coach and I had no problems yet, he, expecting me to recover and take up my place on his team again in a few months, and me wondering if I ever again would have a pain-free day. With the exception of falling in the hallway, I'd lived this all before. If everything from here played out in the same way, the pain would rule my life until I discovered the wonderful world of self-administered opiates. By the time I would recover from the mess I would make of everything, Coach MacLaren would be dead and forever lost to me, our last words to each other full of bitterness.
    None of that had happened yet, however, so he stood in the school hallway, his heavy black framed glasses centered perfectly on his face, below the neatly maintained flat-top haircut. Stocky, wearing a plaid sport jacket, black dress pants and a blue shirt. He could be mistaken for nothing but a coach, and I loved