Chapter Three: Maybe Someday You'll Look Up
It wasn't hard to get out of school. All Casey had to do was walk into the nurse's office and she was sent home. Apparently she looked really sick. She sure did feel like she was. She ran home, hoping and praying no one else was there.
The house was empty. She closed the door behind her, and leaned against it, taking deep breaths and trying to calm herself down.
"It's just dream. Just a dream. A nightmare. I'll wake up, and Derek will be making fun of me for thinking this was real. Sam won't be dead. Emily will be with Sheldon; Kendra won't be a pregnant high-school dropout. Everything will be back to normal." The words sounded convincing, but Casey had a hard time believing even herself. She ran to the stairs, and looked at all the pictures hanging on the wall, searching for some sign of Derek, to prove that this all was some horrible nasty prank that everyone was taking too far.
She saw the family picture she was looking for. There she was, sitting in the middle of the couch with Edwin. Lizzie was sitting on her other side on the arm of the couch, and Marti was sitting on the other arm, beside Edwin. Nora and George were standing up behind Casey and Edwin. No trace of Derek. It looked like the picture they had taken with Derek, but they were in different poses, and it didn't look like Derek could have been photo-shopped out of it. Casey let out an aggravated scream, why could she remember Derek and no one else could?
She ran up the stairs and threw herself onto the bed. This couldn't be happening. How could a wish like that come true? It was said in the heat of an argument. Those types of wishes shouldn't come true. Why couldn't birthday wishes or wishes on falling stars come true? Selfish and angry wishes shouldn't come true. She yelled into her pillow, frustrated, confused, and scared.
How could this happen? People don't just disappear off the face of the earth. Casey tried to remember if something happened last night after she had yelled at Derek, but she couldn't remember anything. It was as if the moments after the fight never happened. She gasped. Maybe they didn't anymore. Maybe that was when the changes happened. She wished Derek had never been born, and that was what she got. Right after she wished for it.
She ran downstairs and tried to eat something, because she had left her lunch uneaten at the table with Emily and Eric. Her stomach rumbled and she frowned. How could she think of eating when she just wished her step-brother out of existence? She took a deep breath, and decided that she needed to eat something, or all this stress, plus the lack of food would cause a breakdown. She pulled out a package of crackers, and started munching on them while she thought about her predicament.
Maybe, just maybe, Derek did exist. Just not in her life. Maybe he was someone different living somewhere else with different people. It was possible. She wished he, Derek, had never been born. She didn't say that she wished the human being had never been born. It was a feeble hope, but it was the only one she had.
She took another cracker, and imagined a happy Derek in a non-Derek life. She imagined his name was Greg, and that he was the only boy and the youngest in a family of six kids. She smiled. That was better. If she just pretended this Greg kid was real, maybe she could get through this horrible new reality.
She needed a drink now, so she poured herself some water, and tried to think about all the positives that could come out of life without Derek. Funny, at any other moment, she could list off the things; but now that she was finally rid of him, she could only think about the negatives.
One. Sam is dead. She just couldn't wrap her mind around that. It was unbelievable. A life without Derek had turned him into a party freak druggie. And it got him killed. She knew Derek was not the best of friends, but, it appeared, Derek had kept Sam out of trouble. Having Derek as a friend apparently kept him on the right side of the road.
And Kendra? She had gone out with Derek, but they had broken up, she could have gone out with any other guy even with Derek in existence. It was an odd concept for Casey to grasp, but it appeared that going out with Derek made Kendra a better person, and made her make better decisions. At least on boyfriends, anyway.
But what about the whole Emily thing? Derek didn't have anything to do with her and Sheldon getting together. But, Emily had liked Derek for so long, that she never thought of dating anyone else, until Derek got Kendra. Then, she figured she would give Sheldon a chance. Without Derek blocking her love vision, she was open to all sorts of opportunities, and was obviously very happy with Eric.
But what she couldn't understand was that Edwin seemed normal, but Emily had laughed at the thought of him helping her with cheerleading tryouts. Maybe, being the only guy in the house made him man up, and be a manly man. Instead of the weird, quirky Edwin he normally was. That had to be it. Hopefully it wasn't like the dream she had after her surgery, and Edwin was an even bigger jerk than Derek.
She grabbed another cracker and stuffed it into her mouth. She tried to picture 'Greg' in his family of all girls, but somehow it just made her feel worse. She had put Derek from being the top dog in a house, to being the youngest with five older sisters. Somehow, the vision didn't comfort her anymore.
She sighed and shoved the crackers away. She was now too confused to eat. This was what she had wanted. She had wished for it, and it had come true. Why couldn't she just enjoy it?
Because it was wrong. It was wrong to wish your step-brother out of existence just because of one lousy week. This was going in circles. Yes it was wrong, but there was nothing she could do about it. The wish had been wished and granted.
Wait. The wish! Maybe if she wished it to be undone, she'd wake up like nothing had happened. It made sense to her! So she cleared her throat, and thought of how she should word it. She wanted to cover any and all loopholes, so she would just wish for her last wish to be undone. She wouldn't say anything about Derek being born again, because she did not want to see a little baby Derek come home from the hospital.
"I wish the last wish I made about Derek had never happened!" she cried, yelling to no one, and acting as if she were fighting with someone, like last time.
She closed her eyes, hoping that it worked, and she would wake up from this nightmare. She opened one eye, afraid of what she might see, or not see. Nope. She was still in the kitchen. Maybe it did work, and nothing changed around the house, because even with Derek there, no one would be home.
She ran back over to the pictures and immediately found the family photo. It was the same as when she looked at it just a few minutes ago. She let out an irritated breath. Maybe the wish doesn't work like that. Maybe she had to go to sleep and wake up, and then everything would be back to normal.
Too bad she was tired. Well, she would enjoy her one Derek-free day, and then she would go to sleep tonight, and wake up the next morning to find everything back to normal. Hopefully. She sighed, and tried to smile, acting like everything was fine. She just had to get through this day and then everything will be back to the way they're supposed to be. How often do you get to spend a whole day with the person you hate the most out of existence? Casey decided she needed to enjoy it while it lasted, because hopefully it would end tomorrow.
She took a deep breath, and then went upstairs to her room. She figured since she was missing school, she might as well do something productive. She grabbed her math book out of her bag and began to do the homework that she had gotten in her first period class.
As she wrote down the second answer, she realized that she was doing a very poor job of enjoying her Derek-free day. Though, it was nice to have peace and quiet while she did her work for once. Without the loud music coming from the room next door, or the interruptions as he came into her room every so often to annoy her. She smiled and began working on the next problem, pushing Derek out of her head and factorial equations in.
--
Two hours later, she had done all her homework, and cleaned out the crackers. She was bored. She wished she wasn't, she couldn't even think of ways to enjoy the non-Derek day. She needed something to occupy herself. She sauntered over to the couch, grabbing the remote. She didn't want to watch T.V, because she could do that with Derek here as well, but at least there wouldn't be any fights over the remote.
She looked down at the remote in her hand. It was odd holding something that someone, who supposedly never existed, had touched and fought over. She frowned and reminded herself, for the fiftieth time, that is was a Derek-free day, and that she should stop thinking about him.
She turned on the T.V and began flipping through the channels, looking for something to watch that wouldn't lower her I.Q. She finally found something somewhat suitable. As she stared at the screen, she looked to her left and noticed something she hadn't noticed earlier.
Derek's chair. It was gone. Casey knew he had claimed it as his own, but Casey had thought that it was in the house because of Abby and George, she had no idea Derek was any part of the reason they got it, or kept it. Its replacement was a white chair with a rounded back. It looked like a cylinder cut in half. That was definitely her mom's choice. She rolled her eyes and directed her attention back to the show.
But, yet, she still could not focus, she began to think about what else would change without Derek around. Marti. Derek was her biggest influence. What would she be like with Edwin being her only brother? And what about Edwin? How did he change without Derek around? From what she had already put together earlier, it seemed that only his personality changed. Hopefully that didn't mean he was meaner than usual.
And she was sure that Lizzie never got better at hockey. Casey smiled as she tried to imagine what Lizzie would have done if Derek had been appointed her new coach by their parents. She probably would have talked her way into quitting. Casey frowned again; she had found yet another example of how Derek had a positive effect on someone.
The other example was someone she didn't want to think about. Sam. She really didn't want to believe it. She wasn't in denial about Derek not being alive anymore. But she just didn't want to believe that Sam wasn't either. She decided right then and there that she wanted to go visit his grave. That would make it more real to her.
She turned the television off, grabbed her coat and looked around for the keys to the Prince. Then she realized that without Derek there to protest that they not give it away, they would have gotten rid of it when they got the new car. She sighed, and wondered what she drove if they didn't have the Prince.
She saw a set of keys on the table and hurried over to grab them. She hurried out into the garage to see what the keys went into. And there it was. Beautiful and at her fingertips. A white sports car. She squealed. Now, with this, she could enjoy her Derek-free day, because she was not looking forward to sharing Derek's car one-third of the time.
She hopped in and pulled out of the garage. For a second she forgot where she was going. Then, with a sobering breath, she remembered, and turned her car toward the direction of the cemetery. It wasn't a long drive, but it was long enough for her to go over every second she had ever spent with Sam. Even though she broke up with him, and went out with Max, she still remembered how amazing he was. She couldn't believe he was dead. When everything changed back to normal tomorrow she was going to run up to Sam and give him a big hug, and let him know just what he means to her.
She took a deep breath, and turned into the entrance. She parked off to the side and began to search for Sam's grave. She finally found it near the back. It was a large white one, with his name written on the top, and then his birth and death dates. Casey noticed that it had been over a year since it happened. She knelt down next to it, and lovingly touched the engraved marks of his name. She felt tears in her eyes, as she realized he didn't even know her when he died. But, yet, here she was, standing at his grave, remembering every single memory that they had together.
"Sam, this isn't how you were supposed to go. Your death was all my fault. If I hadn't wished Derek out of existence. You never would have become what you did. And you never would have died like this." Tears were falling freely down her face now, "I'm so sorry Sam. So sorry."
She touched her lips with her fingertips, and then gently slid them across the top of the grave. She wiped away her tears, and left the grave feeling like the world's biggest jerk. She looked up ahead of her and saw someone walking toward her. At first she was a little worried, wondering if it would be someone she didn't know, but who knew her. She had no idea what could happen in this new twisted reality. But then she noticed that it was Emily. Casey felt a smile spread across her face as she realized that her best friend was just that, her best friend, no matter what changed.
Emily hurried over to her, a worried look on her face, "Casey, why are you in a cemetery?" she asked, looking to see if she could spot the grave she had just come from.
"I came to visit an old friend." Casey said truthfully.
"Who do you know that died?" Emily asked.
"You wouldn't believe even if I told you."
Emily raised her eyebrows, "What are you talking about?"
"Em, please, let's just drop it." The tears were obviously not gone, because Emily caught sight of one falling down her cheek and instantly shut up.
"Come on, Case. Eric's friend is throwing a party tonight. Want to come with us?"
Casey looked up quickly, "Did you just say 'Derek'?"
Emily moved her head back, as if she was taken aback, "No, I said 'Eric'… my boyfriend's name… I don't know a Derek. Do you? If so, who is he?"
Casey laughed a little bit, "No, I just thought you said Derek is all. It sounds like Eric; it's an easy mix up."
"Sure…" Emily didn't sound convinced, "Wait, is Derek this friend you're visiting?"
Casey shook her head, "No. It doesn't matter. When's this party?" Casey forced a smile and linked arms with her best friend and led her to the car. If this was her last night in this stupid reality, she was at least going to enjoy it.
She smiled over at Emily and Emily smiled back. They got into Casey's car and drove away. Casey looked back at the cemetery in her rearview mirror and said one last good-bye to the alternate-reality Sam.