Traveler by L.E. DeLano (book suggestions .txt) 📕

“I’m really sorry,” I say again.

“Oh, it’s okay. It was worth it to hear you take that woman down.” She gives me a conspiratorial grin. “We’re all in this together, right?”

I nod. “Right. Anyway, it was nice meeting you…” I look at the little boy.

“Mark,” she prompts.

I squat back down, looking him in the eye. “Mark. It was nice to meet you.” I put out my hand and he looks at it a moment. Finally, he takes it, shaking it twice.

“Bye,” I say, straightening up. I look back over my shoulder as I walk away, and Mark is still standing by the table. He is waving at me. I wave back and then rush to the bathroom, so I can get myself home.

When I come through, I am fuming. I am so angry at Mario, I’m practically vibrating with it.

That gives way to shock as I stare at my new reflection in the mirror.

“You cut my hair?” I say in disbelief. “You cut my hair!”

I stare in dismay at my new bangs, hanging just at my brow line. I haven’t had bangs since sixth grade, and it’s taken me all those years to grow them out again. She—I—up and decided to do myself a favor and give me bangs again. She also ate almost an entire box of crackers while lying in my bed. Ugh!

My fingers poke and shove at my bangs, but there’s no way to change this. They’re even a little crooked. I look down at the scissors lying on my dresser, and the locks of hair tossed into my trash can.

“Why would you do something like that?” I demand, looking in the mirror again. Great. Now I have to stop at the haircut place by Wickley’s and get these things straightened out. And spend another six years growing them out again.

As I’m heading out the door, Danny calls out after me.

“Are you coming back, Jessa?”

I stop in the doorway to reassure him. “Yes, Danny. I just have to run an errand, okay?”

“Are you coming back?” he clarifies.

It’s spooky how he knows this. His brain doesn’t work like ours, I know, but it’s spooky and comforting at the same time. Danny will always know the real me, I guess.

“Yes, Danny. I’ll be back, just like this.”

“With your new hair?”

I grit my teeth. “Yes, Danny. With my new hair.”

My hair gets fixed—well, as fixed as it can get—and after dinner I get involved in writing a new story. Eventually, I make myself go to bed because I’ve got a lot I want to say to a certain Dreamer.

He’s waiting for me in the classroom, sitting behind the teacher’s desk and tapping a pen against the desktop.

“What the hell!” I round on him. “You made me throw a soda on a kid who was … you know!”

“Yes,” he says, more than a bit perturbed. “And you just wrecked the whole scenario.”

“What? You’re mad at me?” I sputter. “I terrified that kid!”

“I didn’t ask you to flatten him,” Mario points out, standing up and coming around the desk. “Just spill on him. You went overboard.”

“I didn’t mean to. And how could it be helping anyone to have me drown him with my soda?”

“Well, if you had done what I told you,” Mario says, “everything would have worked out fine. The kid would have been upset, the worker would have rushed out, and he would have offered to let the kid have an official Greaver’s Pizza apron to wear. He would have taken care to tie the ties so it covered the kid just right, and he would have written the kid’s name on it with the green marker, because green is the kid’s favorite color. And the mother—who’s single, by the way—would have noticed all of this and thanked him and blushed when he told her it was fine, and starting next week, they’d be back to dine every Friday night, until he finally asked her out.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh.” Mario glares, obviously pissed at me. “He’s going to make a great stepfather, by the way. Only now I have to find some other way to get them back on track, all because you couldn’t do what you were asked.”

“Was I supposed to just let him scream?”

“Yes. Do what I ask you and don’t get crazy embellishing things.” He sits back down behind the desk and laces his fingers together, eyeing me. “Incidentally, your words to the other woman created some ripples, too, but they’re nothing bad, as far as I can tell. They just … alter some things.”

“Doesn’t everything alter something?” I grumble.

“Yes. But not everything altered is terribly important. We all live a lot of boring lives, believe it or not. So many of the decisions we think are very important are really only that way to us. They don’t always impact ourselves and others in a truly life-changing way and therefore … no ripple.”

I wish for a moment I could travel back to the pizza parlor and get myself an underage drink.

“Well, if you’re going to use me for this stuff, you’re going to have to know that I’m going to react sometimes. I couldn’t just walk away,” I snap at him.

“Travelers have to learn to be unbiased, Jessa,” he reminds me firmly. “If you let yourself get too involved in the other realities, you won’t be able to do the job correctly. And that could have big repercussions. That’s why we send you out. Making changes in your own reality is hard to do without feeling invested.”

“I can’t be unbiased about everything! And definitely not about this!”

“You’re going to have to learn to be.”

“So … what? I lose all my empathy? I don’t care who I’m screwing with or what I do to them? Are you going to have me pushing people into traffic next?”

“You need to calm down.”

“The hell with that!” I shout. “And to hell with you! I’m done here!” I stomp out of the classroom and through the red door to find