Chapter Thirty-seven -- End of Forever

We found ourselves in the same place. I was naked and my backside was cold. The only warmth  came from Sid cuddled around me like a mother cat. His eyelids danced open. 

"It's still you," he mumbled, flashing me those sparkling eyes framed with those familiar smile lines. I hadn't seen nearly enough of that recently. 

"Yeah, it's me. But it looks like nothing's changed."

He buried his head into the back of my neck, then stretched-- I felt the rush of his spine popping. He lolled on his back. He closed his eyes and yawned, then reached his hand into mine and gave it a protective squeeze.

"Um, Wes," he said with a lazy grin, "where are our clothes?"

I sat up, looking around. I didn't see them. Fuck. This wasn't good.

My skin prickled from the cold wind coming off  Lake Michigan, and I chaffed my arms to get them warm.

"Tossing them off like that probably wasn't a good idea," he recollected.

"At the time, it was musical." I started to stand. "Although, you know technically they weren't our clothes. Who knows what they did with them-- maybe shrugged them off running down the beach. They could be half way to Wisconsin by now." 

Sid head turned to the large clump of blueberry bushes. I looked too. A slight willow tree up on the dune moved.

"Did you see that?" he whispered.

I nodded.

"I hear something too." He stepped forward, and I grabbed his arm.

The wind whistling across the sand was all I heard. 

"What?" I asked. 

"Giggling. I heard giggling."

I turned my head up the dune again.

"I hear it too... it sounds like..." I straightened up. "It does sound like someone laughing." I saw my ratty t-shirt waving from behind the willow tree like some rescue flag. 

Giggles. More giggles.

I smiled.

"Give us back our clothes right now Lynn!" I hollered. "It's not funny!"

"Come and get them!" She jumped out. Green and white polka dot bikini top with faded and frayed cut offs danced and waved my jeans above her head, then with a wicked look hitched them between her legs and ground into them like some exotic dancer.

"Hey, those are mine!" I squeaked.

My scrawny self started up the dune. Sid laughed as I darted my lily white ass after her, cussing her out under my breath. Man the dune was steep. She pranced along the crest, molesting our clothes while sand flew behind her. Now Sid's shirt was getting attention-- she made a production as she rubbed Sid's shirt on her breasts and moaned, "Give it to me stud."

I heard hysterics from the other side of the dune. Fuck. Alan and Les were watching Lynn Live.

I was at the top of the dune-- sure as shit Les and Alan were rolling with laughter on the other side.

"Look at that manly, boy belly with peach fuzz," Alan shrieked. 

"What are you laughing about peasants?!" I spread my arms wide. "Gaze on my Adonis like beauty." I turned to Lynn, who was now within an arm's length of me. "Listen," I said to her under my breath, "you're making me look bad in front of my boyfriend."

"Good!" She chirped, scattering our clothes and laughing at me as she ducked over the dune to the guys on the other side.

The laughter faded on as they ran off.

"Better get back to the cabin you two!" Les hollered over his shoulder.

I picked up our clothes, bare-ass sticking out in the breeze, then tried my best to run back down the dune and look self-important. Well, as self-important as a skinny white boy can look running naked down a dune-- not an easy feat to achieve when you trip simultaneously on your dangling belt and a large chunk of driftwood. I landed face first with my mouth open.

Maybe if I just laid there Sid wouldn't notice the love of his life was a klutz. Sure, I thought, he wouldn't, and my mouth's not full of sand either. The sand squeaked near my head, and I saw Sid's toes peeking near. The cool cast of his shadow fell on my back while I weakly tried to think of something profound to say to him. I turned my head and opened my mouth, but wet sand plopped out. "Gawd," I mumbled pressing my head into my forearm, now that's sophistication. He took his belt from my hand and slapped me a good one on my ass. I yelped.

"Sorry," he laughed, "I guess seeing those nice round globes wagging in the air like that was just too hard to resist. Must be men with Adonis-esque physique have that effect on me."

I laughed at myself as he helped me up. We pulled on our clothes then followed our friends footprints in the sand to the cottage. 

I didn't need to hear or see any more. Alan's chuckles. The Lynn's antics. We were home. A mixture of fear and relief trickled through me. With sadness, I looked over to where the Pitcher's thistle was last night, and it was no longer there. Neither was my sister. 

We walked the line of dunes back. I saw the cottage. As we neared the back door, Alan came out on the breezeway. 

"I was amazed at how fast you could sprint," he laughed at me. "But don't blame Lynn too much. We told her to go out there and get your attention. Figured you had enough alone time."

He leaned against the doorframe. "You remember we're heading home this morning, right?"

"Yeah, sure..." I said.

Alan shook his head and pulled at a thread at the bottom of his washed out orange tank top. 

"You two have been stranger than usual lately. Hope you're over it."

"Yeah, we're over it," Sid said, kicking sand at me.

I blushed and began perving over how good that belt felt on my bare ass. 

"We were just so glad you both made up last night-- we didn't want to disturb you," Alan smirked.

I caught Sid winking at Alan over my shoulder. 

"We thought you'd be safe since Shackleton is still missing. But still, we were getting worried. You never know. I think Les went out to check more than a few times last night."

What is it with the winking? I was beginning to think everyone I encountered had Tourette's.

"We gotta get going," Alan said, opening the screen door. "Everyone else is packed."

Lynn greeted me by throwing one of my crusty old shirts in my face. 

"Hurry up," she said. "I'd like to stop at Cherry Point before we go." 

Then Sid and I went up to the loft and dug through the dresser, scrounging the drawers and packing. 

I stopped, looking at Sid all hunched over trying to get another pair of jeans into his suitcase.

"I was thinking about what Alan said earlier," I said, "about our counterparts making up last night. We consummated our relationship in another dimension again? That's cool."

"God, Wes... You're so daft sometimes... They already had. How do you think they switched with us to begin with?"

Sid lifted up the mattress and pointed. I guess they came prepared. I wasn't sure whose lube was under the the mattress, but I put it in my case since I had room.

I tucked a dirty pair of boxers inside my backpack. Sid's suitcase was brimming with clothes.  I didn't have that problem. I packed light. A few t-shirts, holey jeans, cut-offs, swim trunks and that pair of boxers.  I stared inside it.

"What's wrong?" Sid asked.  Then he realized. "It's your sister, isn't it. The last time we were here..." 

"Yeah. It's like losing her all over again. I don't want to lose us too."

"Ah, hell Wes, you don't have to worry about that-- I'm in this forever with you. I mean it. Forever."

I could hear the wheels turning in Sid's head the rest of the time we packed. Thinking about mortality, immortality and Blake's poem. I was too. Not as hard as Sid of course. I was also thinking about the lube and how good his cock would feel working my ass. Most all I just needed him to comfort me. 

"Sid?"

"Yeah?"

"Think  we'd have time, to you know, mess around?"

He searched the floor, scanning under the bed for anything we might have missed. 

"No Wes, I don't think we have time to 'mess around'-- I think they're waiting for us to get downstairs." Sid sat on top his suitcase to get it latched.

"Ok, geeze, just asking..." 

"Let's go-- we need to get home. We've got to figure that message out."

I slung my bag over my shoulder. Sid grabbed his suitcase and pulled the trapdoor open. I looked back at the bed.

"Where is home, exactly?" I asked.

--------------------------------------

Most of the ride back was wholly uneventful. Even the stop at Cherry Point was flat. I spent most of my time running through my brain what Peter Deal and Angela had told us while shoving my face with sticky cherry strudel. And what was the answer to the Blake's poem? 

I knew we had big problems-- I felt like an ant stuck to the bottom of a shoe. I felt helpless and hopeless. Not even strudel mania worked. 

Mostly I thought about Karen. I scratched my chest where my heart should be, but I didn't feel happy. We were back. I should feel something more than this. Karen wasn't here. No sister. My chest felt like it was being pressed with granite slabs.

I sniffed and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. 

Then it all became too much. Instead, I mindlessly watched cars whiz by for the last twenty miles while listening to oldies on the radio and licking my fingers clean. 

The whole while Sid sat next to me. Sid was somewhere else. Thinking.

I rolled the window down a crack as we came into town. I missed the smell of the lake. 

"Alan?" Sid said as he scrunched closer to me. "I need to stop at the university library before we head back home."

"Ok," Alan said.

Home. There was that word again. 

Sid slid down the seat and rested his head on my shoulder. He rested his hand on my knee and gave it a gentle squeeze. I laid my head on his and closed my eyes. I felt that old tug on my heart. I wasn't a tin man after all. My mother always told me that home is where you make it. I knew now she was right. 

"You going to check how the computer lab is doing?" I asked.

"Yeah, and I want to check out a book..."

I raised my eyebrow and burrowed into his neck.

"...a book of poetry. Blake's poetry," he said.

"Hmm. Should have thought of that before."

"We've been kind of busy..."

I must have dozed because I woke to sound of gravel from the library driveway crunching under the tires. 

I blew on Sid's cheek and the corner of his mouth curled up. I pushed my back into the seat. 

"Wait here," Sid yawned as he opened the door. "I won't be long."

I heard Lynn mumbling  to Alan in the front seat. Then the words, "Work, work, work."

"What did you say?" I asked.

"That's all Sid has been doing lately," Lynn complained. "Work, work, work."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Lynn turned around in her seat. "You know," she looked at me flustered. "We thought taking you both to the cottage would get his mind off this obsession with finding out the secret, but I see we just postponed it."  

"Well, at least they got that lovin' feeling back," Alan cracked.

"Shut up," Lynn said, slapping Alan's arm.

"Why do you call it an obsession?" I asked.

"Well, that's what you called it-- what the hell Wes?"

Shit. He looked at me like I was an alien.

"Um, I guess sleeping on the beach did it to me," I said. Well, it was the truth. "I understand now why Sid is so preoccupied by this. I mean this could solve our problem with Shackleton."

My eye began to twitch. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Always does that when I'm stressed. Or lie. 

"Are you kidding? Solve it? More like compound it-- at least that's what you said before to him," Alan said. "What happened last night anyway? Before you said that this wasn't something Sid should do. You made all those apocalyptic references. What was it you called it?  'The end of forever' or some horse shit like that. Now you act like this is the solution. Which is it?"

 "I don't know."

Twitch. Twitch. Twitch.

I looked out up into the third floor library windows. What was the end of forever? 

Sid came out with two books in his hand, and my eye was still twitching.