Chapter 27-Jake
The pastor was saying something about how life was to be shared. It was making me fall asleep.
My head snapped up, full of knowledge of what could have been, would have been.
My parents. They would still be alive. I would have bought them a nice house. I was a professor at some Army base, teaching soldiers how to control animal instincts while in morph. Rachel, dead. Tobias, living as a hawk, hating me for getting Rachel killed. Cassie, some government bigshot, dating a guy named Ronnie. Marco, a celebrity with a TV show and a huge mansion.
My death. Suffocating in the middle of nowhere, my eyes bulging out, my skin turning blue. Talking with Elfangor and Rachel, warriors who had died long before I had. Watching Cassie find the Time Matrix, and watching her blackmail Crayak and the Ellimist, saving Rachel, and dooming my parents.
How had I missed that? 'There may be unseen consequences due to your actions'. That should have been a red light. Maybe I had grown stupid in that timeline.
"Could the ringbearer come forward, please?" the pastor announced, shaking me out of my thoughts.
I got up and walked stiffly to the front, holding the pillow with the rings on them. My hands were shaking. The rings fell off. A sigh of shock came from the crowd.
"Great," I muttered. I bent down and found the rings, easily enough. There was a collective sigh of relief. I finished walking up to the front.
"Are you okay?" Rachel whispered as she took the ring that Tobias would wear.
"Yeah, I guess. Just thinking about what the Drode said and all, stuff like that." I turned around and seated myself as fast as I could. Any second, my body might have broke out into convulsions.
Cassie didn't deserve to choose between Rachel's life and my parents' life. She wasn't God, or even the Ellimist. It was all her fault, and she should pay for it.
But she didn't know what the consequences would be. The Ellimist, even though he was on our side, always manipulated us in some way. It wouldn't be a surprise that he had allowed Crayak to wipe out my family.
All of a sudden, everyone was standing up, watching Tobias and Rachel proceed down the aisle. I quickly stood up, and watched as they marched to the limo, and on to their honeymoon. I hoped they could enjoy it, instead of pondering what would have happened in the other future.
"That was freaky." Marco had come up to me. "Rachel was dead, Tobias was a loner…kind of weird, watching all of this happen, knowing what had happened."
"Whatever. I'm getting out of here." I started walking to my car. I had places to go, things to do. Thinking about how happy Tobias and Rachel were wasn't going to cheer me up.
I got in my car and started the engine. Just as I was about to pull out, Cassie ran over and knocked on the window. Great.
"What do you want?" I asked after I rolled down the window.
"Where are you going?" Not exactly answering my question.
"Um, I'm catching a bite to eat. You want to come?" It took every ounce of restraint I had not to just drive away and never look back.
"Sure." She opened the passenger door and sat down next to me.
I pulled out, and started driving. Not to where I was planning to go, not to a restaurant, not to anywhere in particular. I was just driving.
The air in the car was crackling with tension. The silence was deafening, and I was getting madder by the second. Why couldn't she say anything?
"Okay, I lied." I couldn't stand it any longer. "We're going to the cemetery."
Cassie didn't say a word. Until we arrived, the tension built back up. If we were two magnets, we were definitely trying to stay as far apart as possible.
I walked up to the headstone. The flowers I had laid their a year ago were long gone. Some idiot probably stole them and gave them to his girlfriend.
I bent down and touched the cold limestone, marking a place in the ground where my parents shouldn't have been. They should have been with me, I said to myself. Not gone. Here. Alive.
"Happy birthday, Mom," I whispered, laying a bundle of roses on the ground. I couldn't hold back anymore. Tears flowed freely from my eyes, slapping the tombstone with a wet splash. My suit would be ruined, but I didn't care. At that moment, I would have traded all the fame, all the money, everything I had to have my parents back, even for a fleeting instant.
"I'm sorry, Jake." Cassie had knelt beside me. Her eyes were watery, probably faking it. Why would she feel sorry? She got what she wanted, just at my expense.
"Yeah, right," I said a little too loudly.
"What?" Cassie pulled back.
I stood up and wiped my eyes. "You think you can play God, don't you?"
"What are you talking about, Jake?" Cassie questioned.
"You just had to have Rachel back, didn't you?" My voice was growing louder with every word. "Just had to, and not even think about what you might be doing."
"What was I supposed to do?" Cassie said helplessly. "If I don't do that, you're still dead, Rachel's dead, and I disgrace myself forever. Plus, the Andalites probably get control of the Time Matrix."
"And my parents are still alive," I screamed. "It's not your choice to decide who lives and who dies. You're not God."
"So you value your parents' life more than Rachel's?" Cassie shot back.
"It doesn't matter what I think. The fact of the matter-"
"Would you rather have your parents back than Rachel?" she repeated.
I sighed. The adrenaline stopped flowing, and I was suddenly tired. "I don't know, I just don't know." I went over and sat on a bench. Cassie sat beside me.
"You can't worry about it, Jake. Your whole life is ahead of you. You can't kill yourself, wondering about what I should have done. You couldn't have done anything. It was my call, and whether you see it as right or wrong, it's too late to change what's happened."
I looked at Cassie's dark brown eyes, eyes I had stared at before for a different reason. "You're right. I really can't do anything about it." I took her hand and looked out at the Pacific Ocean, seagulls flying across the sun.
Cassie squeezed my hand. "You'll see them someday."
I took a last glance at the calm ocean, the epitome of serenity. Would I ever be that calm? Would my soul ever be at peace with what had happened?
I didn't know the answers. Maybe I never would. It would take a whole lifetime to find out, perhaps even longer. But at that moment, looking for something that no longer existed, I was at peace with the past. The future was waiting to be written. I got up and stretched my legs.
"Let's go."