Trust me I know what happens next

A My Chemical Romance song reached Sarah’s ears as her eyes shot open. She recognized the song as her cell phone’s ring tone but wasn’t sure where she was. It was dark. Her brain managed to wake up and identify her surroundings as the forest in the park at night. She sat up. Her hand felt her cell and she quickly answered it.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Sarah!” it was Kate. “We thought that if your phone rang it’d be easier to find it. I see it worked so hurry up! It’s been like fifteen minutes since you went looking for it and Lesley’s being a bitch ‘cause she’s wet.”

“Yeah…Sure.” she got up off the ground and looked around, “I’m coming.” it seemed like it had been only a few minutes and the whole meeting Gerard Way in 1994 had never happened. Had she hit her head and imagined it all?

She got up and walked back to the car. Everyone was waiting for her. She went sat inside the car with a “Finally!” from Kate. Lesley drove everyone to their houses complaining all the way. Sarah’s house was the last stop.

“Bye, Sarah!”

“Hey, how long did you wait for me before?” asked Sarah while getting out of the car.

“I don’t know, fifteen minutes? Why?”

“I fell and I might have hit my head. I think I passed out and my phone woke me up. I had the weirdest dream.”

“Are you alright?” she got a nod as a reply and smiled satisfied. “You better get home and get some rest, okay?”

“You’re probably right.”

“See yоu tomorrow!”

Sarah shut the door and waved. She turned around and walked to her door. Quietly she
went inside. She was very tired and went straight to her room. While she was going through her usual before bed routine she couldn’t get the thought that she hadn’t dreamed out of her head. It hardly let her sleep. Some time around 2AM she decided she would google time travel first thing after breakfast.

Sarah’s window faced the east and if she forgets to close the curtains like she did last night she is awoken by the persistent morning sunlight at the brake of dawn. Today was one of those days and she groaned, burying her face in the pillow. She knew she either had to get up, close the curtains and go back to sleeping or start her day a bit earlier than usual on Saturdays. Leaving her warm bed seemed impossible but inevitable. She summed up all of her willpower to sit up and half-open her eyes. Her messy room came into view and she walked over to her window letting her legs lead her.

She looked at the front yard and yawn. She reached for the curtain and right before pulling it she remembered the events from last night. Her brain, that wasn’t completely awake before those memories, was now working faster than needed. She ran to the bathroom, washed her face and brushed her teeth at Olympic speed and continued with the same pace down the stairs. Of course, no one was up yet and she ate her bowl of cereal alone. For her it was the most important meal of the day and nothing - not even unnatural events – could make her miss it. She ditched her empty bowl in the sink and ran to her computer.
She sat down in front of it and quickly turned it on. After an hour of searching the net she was fairly disappointed; there wasn’t much but she was now sure it had been real. She did read through a few theories that concerned her. It turned out that not everything she did had already happened. According to the grandma paradox if she did anything that would change the future dramatically like murdering her grandma before she had children would force her to go back to an alternate universe where she didn’t exist instead of returning to her original time. That really worried her. What if she changed the past in a way that My Chemical Romance is never created? She asked herself if she should even go back if she finds a way to do so, that is.

She returned to her research and scrolled down the page. One of the results caught her attention. It led to a site that explained how time travel could be done. It was all suggestions and the examples given seemed to show that it had almost always happened by accident. Reading through the information she decided that it had most probably been a time portal. It took her half an hour to read everything. Her mother was awake by the time she was done.

Time portals could appear practically everywhere. It was enough for energy to pile up in one spot, tearing reality, and electricity was the second important ingredient. Usually storms created the perfect circumstances for a portal but they were considered extremely unstable and didn’t always offer a two-way ticket. A lot of stories about unfortunate travelers that didn’t have the luck to go home were told. Sarah was amazed at how well things had worked out for her.

There definitely hadn’t been a storm yesterday or during the whole last week. So how had the portal been triggered? If Sarah could find out how it had happened she could do it again. The voice at the back of her head was telling her it was the worst idea ever but her curiosity was eating at her. She knew that if she didn’t do it she would spend the rest of her days thinking what it would have been like. But it also bothered her that the chances of her appearing next to Gerard Way were slim and probably wouldn’t happen. So even if she took the risk it could be all for nothing.

She found a page that explained some portals send people to places they were thinking about while stepping inside it. That answered some questions but she couldn’t remember thinking about Gerard of New Jersey in any way. Perhaps it had been on a subconscious
level?

Her phone rang and dragged her back to the real world. It was Cody.

“Hey, what’s up?” he seemed a bit too cheerful for that time of the day.

“Just listening to music.” she didn’t really have a reason to lie, she could have just said she was googling stuff but she did it anyway. “You?”

“ Well, nothing in particular,” his tone was warning her that he was going to say something important, ”just sitting here alone at Starbucks staring at this random flyer for a free concert at the Blackout …. You know, the usual.” she could feel him smile and she herself couldn’t help but squeal out of joy. She loved going to concerts even if she hadn’t heard of the band that was playing. “Yup, I’m rad.”

“Which band?!” she asked jumping up and down.

“Oh my God, Cody! Thank you for informing me so kindly! You’re my best friend and I’d die for you!” he said sarcastically with what was supposed to be an imitation of a girl’s voice.

“Wow, that’s a long name! No, seriously?”

“Nighttime Sky. It’s a local band but I haven’t heard of them before.”

“If you haven’t then probably no one has. So are we all going?”

“Yes. I’m calling everyone individually so I can hear their reactions. It’s actually tonight at eight. I saw the flyer ten minutes ago, we almost missed and it’s free! The Blackout needs

to advertise stuff like this more.”

“I think I’m gonna make it.”

“I’ve got to call Damien now. See you there!”

“Bye!”

She asked her parents if she could go and they let her. She thanked them and went to her room. She looked at the clock; it was10:30AM, she had plenty of time. She could just lie around all day and do nothing though it seemed there really wasn’t anything interesting to do. She had homework to do but she wasn’t THAT bored. She looked around and decided it was about time she cleaned up her room. It took her and hour and a half to do it but she still
had lots of time before she had to get ready for the concert.

She basically spent the entire afternoon trying to come up with what to do before deciding it was never too early to get ready. She took a shower and took her time with her hair and makeup. She was done by 6PM. She ate a bowl of cereal and watched cartoons until it was 7 and she had to go.

It was still light out so she didn’t mind walking to the bus stop alone. It was about 10 minutes away from her home. Her thoughts occupied her for the most part of the trip and before she noticed she was already there. The only person in sight was an old lady with an oversized bag decorated with flowers but she couldn’t shake off the feeling there was another person somewhere close. She looked behind her shoulder cautiously. Green Point was known for basically being built in a forest and every way you turned you could always see it. Behind the bus stop there were only trees. For all her life Sarah never stopped being scared of the possibility that something or someone might jump right out of them and kill her. Her paranoia weakened as she grew but it was still there and the fear was still
whispering from the back of her mind. She ignored it and turned around.

The bus came shortly after that and she got on it with the old lady following. She sat down at the front and started gazing out the window. There weren’t many people on the streets, any now and then she would see someone she knew. In less than five minutes she was at The
Blackout. Her friends weren’t there as she had come early. It wasn’t the first time she’d done that, sometimes she thought she had spent the majority of her life waiting for people. Her personal record was an hour and a half.

Thankfully she wasn’t improving it today since Joey arrived five minutes after her. They started talking about the concert and the new band. Pretty soon the whole group was there except for Kate and Nick who apparently couldn’t come. They went inside. The crowd consisted of about a hundred people. It was a bit uncommon for a concert in the town to have such a small audience since it was one of the few things to do if you were into
something different from pop and rap.

They managed to get near to the stage easily and the band began to play. They were good but nothing special. They had five members and the vocalist was really enthusiastic about his music so he put on quite a show. They did a few cover songs but had their own too. Sarah was getting into it jumping around and head-banging with her friends when someone jabbed her in the ribs. She felt sudden strong pain.

Cody saw her and pointed over to the bathroom asking her if she wanted him to come. She nodded and they made their way through the crowd. She went inside the women’s bathroom while he was waiting outside. The minute she shut the door the music was deafened and the sound was reduced to just a muffled beat. There was no one there. Sarah looked at herself in the mirror covered lipstick signs and scribbles. She splashed her face with water and lifted up her shirt to see the damage done. She’d never had a fractured rib before but to her it seemed like it really was broken. There was a bruise and it hurt to breathe. She kind of expected it to hurt more but she was still beginning to panic.
She leaned against the dirty wall and winced. She had to call her mother to take her to a hospital or something. She took out her cell phone and punched in her mother’s number. After some explaining her parents were on the way and yelling at her that this was what happened at concerts and they gave her the speech of the dangers the world holds. Sarah got the faint feeling she wasn’t going to another concert for a while. Three girls went inside the bathroom and began fixing their makeup in the mirror while talking excitedly about some guy that was there and she felt she had to leave.

Cody was still waiting for her. They went outside to wait for her parents. Cody kept asking her if she was okay and she reassured him she was fine. There were other people outside smoking. She hated the smell of cigarettes smoke. And felt relieved when her parents’ car stopped in front of her. She hugged Cody goodbye and winced from the hug but she didn’t complain. She got inside while listening to her father’s rumble about today’s teenagers.
While she was shutting the door something caught her attention. Or rather SOMEONE. A guy that appeared to be in his twenties and wore a hat looked exactly like a Gerard Way double. He even had a leather jacket on despite it being not cold at all. He looked her straight in the eyes and got the weirdest facial expression that went from shocked to happy, to disappointed in a few seconds. The car drove off and she turned around to look at him.
He was now in the middle of the street waving at her.

She wondered if a broken rib could make her delusional.