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It’s the morning of November 8th and Carey’s phone alarm is ringing. He has a second look at the time, because he swears he set it for an hour later, and he notices something else: the lock screen says it’s the 15th.
So does google. The weather app says it’s -1 and sunny, and also that it is the 15th of November. That’s—weird. Carey rolls over and something crinkles.
There is a piece of paper safety-pinned to his shirt. That is also weird, but he feels better as soon as he sees it. Some kind of stupid joke, then. It’s a folded piece of notebook paper that almost falls apart when he unpins it. It’s fragile, like it got wet or something. He opens it and reads: Dear Carey.
And then he stops, because that’s his own handwriting. It is absolutely 100% his, and he doesn’t remember writing it. He doesn’t feel better anymore.
He reads on.
You have a week of amnesia. This is apparently normal. Don’t tell anyone.
1 Don’t go near gate G3 at the Windsor airport on Sunday night
2 Don’t go over PK’s place next week
3 Don’t go to the gym on Friday afternoon
4 DON’T PLAY THE NOV 22 GAME IN BOSTON
This last one is underlined twice.
Then, scrawled messily across the bottom of the sheet:
Last three games all wins Wild: 4-1 Jets: 3-0 Bruins: 5-1
good luck
p.s. “seriously don’t tell anyone”
Carey turns the paper over, but he already knows there’s nothing on the back. He reads it over again and it still doesn’t mean anything. It’s some kind of fucking—instructions, but he doesn’t know what for. He didn’t get drunk last night—
Oh, right. He doesn’t remember last night. The last night he remembers was a week ago, so it doesn’t matter if he only had one drink then. He sits back down on the edge of his bed.
It might still be a joke. Maybe someone copied his handwriting. Maybe he got blackout drunk last night and wrote it then, even though he doesn’t feel like he’d been drinking. In fact, he feels just about as well-rested as he’s felt all year. That kind of makes it worse, somehow.
Carey has no idea what he should do about this. Or, he’s pretty sure what he should do is see a doctor or something, only he’s also pretty sure he doesn’t want to. He feels fine, and there’s the note.
The note is the real problem, because, well, it’s from himself. Or at least it seems to be. In most situations, Carey is inclined to trust himself. This should probably not be one of those situations.
The doorbell rings.
Carey can’t think of anyone who’d be coming to his house at this hour of the morning. The note doesn’t say anything about anyone else being aware of this, but it’s not a very comprehensive note.
The doorbell rings again, three times in quick succession.
Carey slowly heads for the stairs.
It’s unsettling, thinking that your body has been up to god-knows-what for a week. Carey eyes himself in the hallway mirror as he passes. His face hasn’t taken any damage, at least.
The person at the door has given up on the bell and proceeded to pounding. Maybe they’ll know what’s going on, although the note seemed to indicate that would be a bad thing.
“Coming!” Carey calls, but the pounding doesn’t let up till he opens the door, letting in a rush of cold air and icy morning light.
It’s PK. His coat is unzipped, even with the temperatures hovering below freezing.
“Hey,” says PK, sounding slightly out-of-breath, maybe from all the knocking. “Is your doorbell broken?”
“What are you doing here?” asks Carey. “It’s not even 8 yet.”
“You okay? Everything all good here?”
“What—” Carey blinks at him for a moment. “I don’t know, you’re the one who was banging on my door. You tell me what’s going on.”
“We-ell,” says PK. “Nothing, I guess. Can’t I just come over for a visit?”
“Uh,” says Carey, but PK is already walking past him into the house.
Maybe Carey isn’t the only one? But he can’t just ask PK point-blank if he has amnesia. And it doesn’t seem very likely, anyway.
“Seriously,” he says. “What’s the deal?”
“I dunno, I felt like maybe—something happened. And I figured I’d better check.”
Carey’s not sure what to say to that, because something definitely did happen.
“What do you mean?” Carey asks. “Like a dream or something?”
“Not exactly.” PK scratches his head. “Or, maybe. I don’t know, I don’t really remember.”
“Well,” says Carey. He needs to pick someone’s brain for the events of last week, although PK is one of the more dangerous options he can think of. “Want to stay for breakfast?”
PK happily agrees, although his enthusiasm for food seems to be warring with embarrassment.
“Sorry about barging in,” he says. “I don’t know, it was just—weird.”
“Do you think it was...because of anything last night?” Carey ventures, although he’s not sure there’s anything that could’ve happened last night that would explain this.
“Hey, just because some people don’t go to bed at 8pm on Friday nights doesn’t mean they’re getting drunk. It was just—really weird, that’s all.”
“Yeah,” Carey agrees. “Really weird.”
“Well, it’s one of those things,” says PK. “A premonition.”
“Do you get a lot of premonitions?”
“No, that’s why I figured I’d better pay attention to it, right? If it’s right, maybe your house is on fire and I have to save you. If it’s wrong, you feed me breakfast.” PK smiles beatifically at him.
Carey doubts this whole thing is related to whatever weird dreams PK had, and those probably were alcohol-induced. He’s a little afraid that any topic he brings up will only get him caught out on his lack of last-week-related knowledge, so he mostly watches PK eat and doesn’t eat very much himself. PK doesn’t seem to notice how creepy this is, and when they’re finished Carey lets him go, although he’s still none the wiser about the situation.
Carey tries not to think about how PK came running right over here on a vague hunch there was something wrong. That’s—oddly satisfying in a way, but also disturbing, considering that something is actually wrong.
He’ll have to see PK again in a little while anyway, because they’re playing the Wild tonight.
Wait. Shit. They’re playing the Flyers. And Carey will see everyone else on the team too, and presumably all of them remember the past week.
Carey pulls the note out of his pocket and rereads it. That’s still his handwriting telling him not to tell anyone. The numbered don’ts feel somewhat...ominous in tone, especially the last. What the fuck has he forgotten? He can’t remember any of the past week, and the only thing he’d bothered to tell himself about the missing time was the scores of their games. In fact, he seemed more concerned with telling himself about—the future?
Well, that just makes even less fucking sense. And why are there quotes around the postscript?
Carey hadn’t realised he was so terrible at writing notes, although now that he thinks about it, he definitely is. He should work on that.
*
It’s a lot easier to get through the rest of the day than he’d expected. Maybe there really was nothing important happening last week besides the games. Most conversation seems to be retreading the same topics. Probably it’s always like that, and Carey never noticed before. Thank god they’re boring.
They win the game, and it’s messy but he’ll take it. Nobody else seems to have noticed that there is something horribly wrong with him—even PK, who doesn’t talk about premonitions anymore.
They file off the plane in Windsor late that night, and Carey pays a little more attention to the airport than usual. He supposedly doesn’t have to avoid anything here until tomorrow. It seems very unlikely that something would ever happen in the Windsor airport.
*
Carey wakes up abruptly in his Detroit hotel room, three minutes before his alarm goes off. His heart is pounding and he feels sick. He sits in the middle of the bed with his arms wrapped around his knees, waiting for his heart rate to slow, and doesn’t come up with a reason for it. He doesn’t normally have nightmares, and he can’t remember if that was one. Maybe it’s a side effect of not being able to remember anything in general.
He still feels a little off by the time they head to morning skate at the Joe. But he isn’t starting this one, which gives him even less incentive to tell anyone about the amnesia thing. Maybe his memory will be back by the next game. He watches a drill, everyone flashing by. And suddenly, he’s pretty sure he does remember something. Specifically, eating breakfast last Tuesday, which is an incredibly useless thing to remember. He stares blankly toward the ice, trying to recall what came next. They played the Jets last Tuesday. He got a shutout, and it’s ridiculous that he’d remember the breakfast before that. He looks up at the scrape of blades to see PK heading toward him.
He opens his mouth to say something, and then a piece of the Jets game is back in his head like it never left. Just the sensations, the volume of the crowd and breath not quite caught and the guys knocking him around. And on the tail of that there’s something else, like a memory of that memory, and this time it doesn’t feel so good. Carey concentrates, trying to get hold of it before it slips.
PK clears his throat dramatically.
“What?” Carey snaps.
“Uh, sorry,” says PK. “I guess you were in a zone there or something.”
And Carey’s got it, suddenly: there’s a stoppage of play and he’s thinking of the Winnipeg game and wishing he wasn’t. It’s early in the third and they’re down 4-0 to the Penguins. It feels clear and real and he’d be happy to have another memory back if it’s something that actually happened. He doesn’t think it is.
“So,” he says. “The Penguins are in Montreal this coming Tuesday, right?”
“Yeah?” PK gives him a confused look.
“Right. Well,” says Carey, and nods toward the ice. “You heading back out there?”
PK gives him another weird look before he goes.
Carey might be starting to remember last week. This is good. But it seems that he is also starting to remember next week.
That’s—probably not so good.
*
Carey had been hoping that was the beginning of a flood, but he doesn’t remember anything new by the time they’re heading back to the hotel. He’s gone over the Penguins memory approximately 300 times by now, but he doesn’t remember any more of the game.
The fucking note mostly talked about the future. Carey brought it with him; he’d folded it up very small and put it in the inner pocket of his suit jacket after he’d given up on rereading it last night.
“This is gonna sound weird,” says PK as they head down the hallway, “but—are you having any weird dreams?”
“...Maybe?” says Carey. He doesn’t think dreams are really the problem here. “Did you get more, uh, premonitions?”
PK frowns. “Kind of? Although not really premonitions. More like nightmares, it was weird.” He stops in front of one of the doors and looks at Carey.
Carey wants, more than anything, to just tell him the whole thing. But it’s—too vague. Right now it would sound more like a head injury than whatever the hell he thinks it might really be, and he doesn’t think PK would like that much. Carey has an idea, though, for later.
“I had some kind of dream this morning,” he says slowly. “I don’t remember what. But it’s just dreams, right?”
“Yeah...” PK trails off and doesn’t look convinced, but he shrugs.
They head off to their respective rooms. Carey naps and doesn’t dream about anything.
*
Their flight back to Montreal is a little delayed. Carey has been trying to casually ask people about any recent strange dreams without sounding completely insane. He doesn’t think he’s ever asked anyone before, and he’s probably coming across more intensely awkward than casual.
Chucky looks blankly back at him. “I always have weird dreams. Especially on the road. I had a dream where Larry was like, possessed by a ghost, and we had to burn down the arena to escape.”
“Oh, uh,” says Carey. “Huh.” That probably isn’t related. Hopefully not.
Anyways, he has a plan. He heads toward gate G3. It seems deserted, unsurprisingly with barely anyone flying out of Windsor at this hour, and then he spots some movement around the corner of a sign advertising WestJet. Carey approaches cautiously.
It’s—there’s a fucking ref standing behind the sign, in full uniform. He takes a step to the right and he recognizes the guy. It’s—Tim Peel? Carey just stares at him for a second. Tim Peel looks up and they make eye contact.
“Hey—” Carey starts toward him.
Tim Peel takes a couple steps backwards, wobbling a little.
“Wait,” says Carey.
Tim Peel shakes his head urgently, and vanishes.
“Oh,” says Carey, one hand still extended. He lowers it slowly and looks at the spot where Tim Peel most definitely no longer is. He still doesn’t think it’s all a problem with his own brain, but that was—distinctly more impossible than thinking he remembers the future. Maybe Tim Peel was some kind of hallucination, because fuck knows there isn’t any normal explanation for him being here, and then suddenly not being here.
But Carey has a note in his suit jacket pocket telling him he shouldn’t be at gate G3 tonight, and that doesn’t feel too much like a coincidence. Even though Tim Peel had been wearing skates. Carey thinks this falls under the don’t tell anybody category of the note he wrote himself, if only because he’s definitely getting benched if he does. And possibly committed.
It’s almost midnight by the time they board the plane. Carey claims the seat next to PK, and gets a look.
“Something weird is going on,” says Carey under his breath. “You’re right. I don’t know if it’s the dreams or what, but it’s definitely something.”
“Knew it,” says PK. “Weird vibes, you know? I’m not gonna ignore that.”
“Do you—believe in stuff like that?” Carey isn’t sure what kind of stuff that would even be.
PK shrugs. “I keep an open mind? Anyways, I asked a couple guys about dreams. Patches had a dream about dogs. They were all brown dogs, if you think that means anything.”
“Gally had a dream that you were a dog,” Carey says. “I don’t know if you were brown, though.”
“Of course I would be a brown dog,” says PK. “If I was a dog I would be a chocolate lab. If I was anything else then Gally is just wrong.”
“You’ve thought about this?”
“Of course,” says PK. “I mean, you need to know that kind of thing before you get any dogs, right? Or else you might be in competition. With the dog.”
Carey has two labs. He’s watched PK play what looked like very amicable games of fetch with them, but maybe they were really battles for dominance.
“By the way,” says Carey, because he doesn’t really want to know about the dogs, “do you know how to get ahold of Tim Peel?”
“What? I don’t, but I guess somebody would know. Why?”
“I...have something I need to ask him.”
“O-kay.” PK does not pursue that line of inquiry further.
Carey worries about it, even with the dimness of the cabin and the vibrations lulling him into near-stupor. PK sags against the window and Carey wonders why he’s not supposed to go over PK’s place this week. That doesn’t seem fair, that kind of demand with no explanation. Maybe Tim Peel will be there again, and Carey thinks he’ll be too, because Tim Peel is possibly the best lead on this so far.
PK twitches in his sleep and Carey wonders what he’s dreaming this time.
*
On Monday morning, Carey remembers all of last Friday night. Nothing had happened. He hadn’t gone to bed at 8pm, but it had been well before midnight and he hadn’t gotten drunk, or hit his head, or—made a bargain with the devil, or whatever else could possibly have happened Friday night and hadn’t. He’d set his alarm and gone to sleep, and in the morning he’d thought it was November 8th.
He’s got little flashes of other days, including some that he doesn’t think were last week. But it’s mostly those bits between November 8th and now, coming in at random and telling him nothing.
He remembers something from this Thursday, against the Blues. It doesn’t feel right, and he doesn’t know why. Well, logically every memory of the future shouldn’t feel right, but some of them feel worse than others. And this one of the Blues game feels especially bad, even though they’re winning. Carey remembers PK getting an assist on the goal that takes them to 2-1. He remembers watching from his crease and feeling good about it, but—not feeling right.
He carefully unfolds the note. It’s not like there’s anything he’s missed, and it’s going to fall apart before long. With those instructions, there must be something in it. It’s not gonna be arbitrary.
Because his—his future self. He’s coming around to that idea. His future self might’ve been trying to warn him about something.
Four things, maybe, but especially that Boston game. Whatever it is, it’s worse than Tim Peel, and Carey thinks that is sufficiently alarming.
The first thing he’d forgotten was the Saturday night game, the 8th of November—one week previous. And the last thing on the list is the Saturday night game a week later. He hasn’t remembered anything past the 22nd. He actually hasn’t remembered anything past the 21st, but whatever. It still holds up. There’s something in there taking shape in his mind, although he’s not sure what it looks like yet. He wishes Tim Peel would call him back.
*
If he’s any closer to actually knowing what this is, he can’t tell and it’s not helping much. Because now it is Tuesday, and he remembers Tuesday. Or part of it—he realises, by the time he gets on the ice, that it was never very clear at all. He remembers being down 2-0, but not exactly how they got there, and when it happens again he doesn’t know whether it happened the same. It’s all blurry memories that he can’t match up with specific plays on the ice. He isn’t sure it’s really the same game until the Penguins get the fourth goal.
But—it still isn’t the same. There’s a stoppage of play and he isn’t thinking about the Winnipeg game this time. Or, he’s thinking about thinking about the Winnipeg game, which is something entirely different and altogether more unpleasant.
Maybe it’s not the same thing at all, but it’s too similar.
What if he was trying to warn himself about something, and what if he can’t do anything about it? What if everything will happen just like the first time, even if he kind of knows it’s coming? Carey would feel helpless enough watching the clock tick down on a 4-0 loss, but this is—worse.
*
Wednesday is useless. They’re skating, and Carey wonders if maybe they shouldn’t be. It’s not the kind of morning that leaves a good taste in your mouth, and he’s on-edge for all of it.
He doesn’t want to talk to PK about dreams, although he woke up in a cold sweat from something last night. It’s a pity he’s better at remembering things that haven’t happened than his own dreams.
He doesn’t want to talk to PK at all. He doesn’t think the reason is anything to do with snapping a six-game win streak. He doesn’t know for sure, but an educated guess tells him it’s more about the future than the past.
It hits him toward the end of practice, a panicked kind of regret that’s mostly fuck over and over. Just a flash and it’s gone, and Carey doesn’t know what it was about. But he knows who it was about.
PK’s been great all day, upbeat but not too cheerful, and sometime by next weekend they aren’t talking. He doesn’t know why, and he’s pretty sure it was his own fault somehow.
He watches PK. He’s staring, he knows he is, and it’s not long before PK notices. Their eyes meet, half a rink and all the space from what Carey hasn’t said yet.
Carey thinks, oh, fuck. What the fuck did I do.
*
“Let’s get dinner tonight,” says PK. “There’s this new place I wanted to check out. I bet you’d like it. Prusty’s coming too.”
Under normal circumstances, Carey would never have considered saying no. Maybe he should just this once.
But there’s no fucking reason to avoid PK now. Or is there? Carey restrains himself from actually looking at the note again. Maybe something happens at PK’s place. Maybe he—what, he thinks. He’s got kind of a suspicion, stirring in the back of his head. He doesn’t want to meet it head-on.
“Why are you doing that?” PK demands suddenly.
Carey starts. “Doing what?”
“With your hand.”
Carey looks down at his hands. Had he been doing anything with them? He gets a sudden sense of vertigo, like he’s teetering on the edge of some memory. “What?” he says.
“Never mind,” says PK.
*
Carey tries calling again that afternoon. Tim Peel picks up his phone this time.
“You have to stop calling me,” he says.
“But I saw you at the airport. You saw me too, I know you did. And you were wearing skates.”
“I’m sorry, but I really can’t talk about this.”
“But—”
Tim Peel hangs up on him.
*
Dinner is—fine, all things considered. Neither PK nor Prusty talk much about last week, and by now Carey feels like he remembers enough to keep up the act pretty easily when he doesn’t.
PK wants to check out some store that’s about 30 seconds away, something about Christmas gifts and it’ll only take five minutes, he swears. Prusty is already headed home but Carey can’t help but wait.
It’s still early in the evening, and there’s a crowd of shoppers in the atrium. Carey waits for PK and tries to keep out of the way. He turns around again, looking over the place—
And on the other side of the fountain, there he is.
It’s himself, he’s easy enough to recognise, especially when he’s still wearing most of his gear. He’s soaked in water and looking mad as hell. He watches himself shake his head, spraying droplets in an arc around him.
And disappearing into the crowd behind him, stripes again...
Carey ignores himself and goes after the stripes. He’d bet anything it’s Tim Peel this time too, and that Tim Peel knows a lot more than Carey does.
But there are a lot of people in between, and nobody appreciates it when he runs right into them, and by the time he crosses the atrium Tim Peel is nowhere to be seen. He turns back, but the wetter version of himself has disappeared as well.
The only familiar person to materialise out of the crowd is PK.
“Hey,” says PK, looking delighted to see him, although Carey would never have bailed. “Wanna head over to my place? We’re like, right down the street from it.”
This is where Carey’s supposed to say no. He is suddenly and utterly sure of this. He’s supposed to politely beg off and go home to Candiac, and stay away from his gym on Friday and sit out the Boston game, and maybe all will be right come Sunday.
“Yeah,” says Carey. He wets his lips. “Let’s do that.”
He doesn’t think it’s going to come right; it’s already too wrong for that. Outside the temperature has dropped and the snow is coming down in tiny, icy flakes. They flicker like sparks under the streetlights.
*
PK’s place isn’t that close but it’s not too far. They get into the elevator, and Carey’s cold but not any colder than he’s used to.
He feels like he ought to know what happens next. On a typical evening Carey might still’ve expected something, just from the look he half-caught on PK’s face as they were stepping out of the elevator.
But Carey doesn’t know how to bring any of it up. PK perches on one of the stools, and Carey should really sit down, but he also feels like he shouldn’t.
Carey wonders if it was because he told PK, and PK didn’t believe him. Carey can’t think of too many other things it could be.
There are a couple, though, and he is going to try them all. It’s driving him crazy not knowing, and forewarned is forearmed, and all that.
“There’s—something I haven’t been telling you,” Carey starts.
“Oh, really?” PK leans forward on the stool, gaze sharpening.
It’s gonna be fucking awful. There’s no way PK will believe a word of it. “Uh,” says Carey.
PK waits.
“It’s just—I think I might’ve time-travelled, or something,” says Carey, and then there’s the whole story spilling out. PK doesn’t say anything. He listens, and he nods at the appropriate points, and when Carey nears the end of it he waits some more.
“I don’t know,” says Carey. “It obviously sounds completely ridiculous.”
“...Yes,” says PK. “But it—kind of fits?”
“With the dreams?”
PK flicks him a sideways glance and nods. “So you’ve got, a, a note? From yourself?”
“Yeah. There are things I’m not supposed to do. I’m not supposed to play on Saturday.”
“Is it just you, or everyone?” PK asks. “I mean, what if the roof caves in or something?”
“I think I would’ve mentioned,” says Carey dubiously. “Here, just have a look.” He pulls out the note, because he’s considered showing PK at about 14 other points in the past couple days and of course he brought it with him, and hands it over.
“Have you been showering with this thing?” PK unfolds it gingerly.
“I—fell in a fountain, or something. I don’t know.”
PK raises his eyebrows, but reads the note in silence. His eyebrows go up even higher.
“That’s my handwriting, isn’t it?” Carey says.
“Uh, I guess? I mean, I don’t see yours that often.” PK looks at the note awhile longer. Carey can’t tell whether he believes him and is afraid to speculate either way.
“So,” says PK finally, “you aren’t supposed to be here, huh.”
Carey says, “Something—went wrong. We weren’t—we weren’t talking.”
“Not talking?” PK repeats.
“Sometime this week. Maybe tonight. I don’t know. I think you hated me, for—something.”
“I don’t believe you,” says PK. “There’s no way. There’s no way anything could go that wrong between us.”
“I can think of a couple things,” says Carey.
Maybe Carey isn’t supposed to kiss PK. There are a lot of reasons he’s never tried it before, mysterious notes from the future not among them but probably as good as any.
Carey is not sure he really gives a fuck if that was it. He leans in and presses his lips to PK’s.
And Carey feels PK kissing back, and his sudden smile into it. That wasn’t it. Carey is pretty sure he already knew that PK is—not the guy who’d worry about it too much. That was never PK.
PK pulls back a bit. “Shh,” he says, trailing two fingers down the side of Carey’s face.
“Didn’t say anything.”
“You’re thinking really loud.”
“I think—” says Carey. “I think I might’ve turned you down. Then.”
“You just kissed me,” says PK.
“There’s—I could’ve done it in another universe.” And he would’ve had reasons. He still has reasons. Teammates, and what if PK gets the C, and what if it doesn’t work. Carey doesn’t want a grand decision between him and someone else, not again.
“Another universe?” says PK. “Is that how you think this works?”
“I don’t know,” says Carey. “Because I mean, I told you about it, and I couldn’t have told you last time if it, uh, if it hadn’t happened yet?”
“Right.”
“Do you—believe me at all?”
PK looks at him for a moment. “I have, like, a lot of incentive to believe you haven’t recently gone insane.”
“Oh,” says Carey. “Yeah, well. I haven’t.”
And it’s PK making the move next time, with Carey hemmed in against the countertop and not wanting to go anywhere anyway.
“Yeah,” PK is murmuring. “Yeah, c'mon, you like it just like that, don’t—”
“Oh my god,” says Carey, pulling away. “Are you ever gonna shut up? Just shut your mouth.”
PK obediently clamps his lips shut, staying still even when Carey tries to kiss him again.
“You know what, fuck this,” says Carey, and pushes PK around the corner and into the bedroom.
“Oh wow,” says PK. “You're really doing this, huh.”
“I said, shut up.”
Carey knocks him onto the bed, and he goes easily. He sprawls on his back, shirt riding up across his abs. He’s breathing a little harder than normal, and Carey takes a moment to look his fill.
“What?” says PK. “Do you want me to start stripping?”
“Well,” says Carey, because he doesn’t really want to say yes.
PK probably begins with every intention of putting on a show, but it only lasts about five seconds. Carey’s finished with putting this off.
*
“So, about Friday,” says PK.
“What?” Carey mumbles.
“The note, man, the note. Gym on Friday. We need a plan.”
“What?” says Carey again. “Why?”
“Well, I’ve just been thinking. We need to catch Tim Peel, right?”
“Catch him?” says Carey, with vague visions of man-sized traps behind his eyes.
“Yeah. So,” says PK, “here’s what I was thinking...”
*
This isn’t going to work. They don’t even know if Tim Peel is going to be here.
They’re staking out either side of the main room, but Carey wonders whether PK will see anything if there’s something to be seen. Nobody seemed to notice anything on Wednesday, and surely 20 seconds or whatever it had been would be long enough for someone to see.
“Are you paying close attention to your door?” says PK’s voice in his ear.
“Yes, okay,” says Carey. “And I haven’t seen anything. Honestly, I don’t think we’re going to.”
It’s been over half an hour already. Carey has hidden behind a plant five times to avoid possible fans. PK has insisted on keeping in constant contact, and eventually Carey’s phone will just run out of battery and they’ll sadly be forced to give this up.
“Carey,” says PK suddenly. “I just—something weird happened.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure,” says PK unhelpfully. “It was kind of like...”
Carey doesn’t hear the rest of it, because he’s just come face to face with himself.
He’s standing right there, making eye contact, looking perturbed. There’s blood all down the front of his jersey.
“Shit,” says his other self, and flickers abruptly out of existence.
Carey looks at the space where he’d been. There isn’t any blood on the floor.
“Oh,” says Carey. “I remember now.”
He doesn’t remember all of it. Not precisely when it happened, or even exactly how, but he remembers the immediate aftermath. So he remembers PK, and—Tim Peel. In his blurry vision it’s just any zebra, but he knows better now.
“Carey,” says PK’s voice, sharper now. “Carey?”
This time he hears it twice, and he looks up and sees PK coming toward him.
“Carey?” says PK again. The hand holding the phone is hanging down by his side now. “Are you okay?”
Carey looks at him. “I, I saw myself, I guess. You couldn’t see him?”
PK shakes his head slowly. “I heard him, though. I think. You said ‘where are we,’ and it wasn’t the you on the phone.”
“Don’t freak out,” says Carey slowly, “but—I kind of took a skate to the throat, I guess.”
“But,” says PK. “That’s—shouldn’t it have—”
“It was a fluke thing, I think,” says Carey. “Don’t freak out.”
“What if I want to freak out? Aren’t you freaking out?”
“A little,” Carey admits.
“You’re serious,” says PK.
“Do you think it would make a good joke?” Carey snaps.
“I—no. It’s just.” PK watches him a minute. “I dreamed it. Not—exactly, just. The blood?”
“Oh,” says Carey.
“How’d it happen?” asks PK. “Do you remember that part?”
Carey shrugs. “A little bit.”
“Who was it? I mean, whose...?”
Carey doesn’t mean to look away.
“Oh, fuck,” says PK. “It was me, wasn’t it?”
“I don’t really remember.” But Carey probably remembers enough. There probably wasn’t anyone else it could’ve been. “Tim Peel was there,” he adds.
“Oh no,” says PK, momentarily distracted. “Tim Peel is one of the refs for the Boston game?
“It might be a good thing? It seems like he was the one doing it.”
“Tim Peel can’t time travel,” says PK. “That’s crazy. And it’s. It isn’t—are you sure that’s what it was?”
“It was a fluke thing,” Carey says. It’s not—the kind of thing that could ever happen twice.
“Are you sure?”
Carey’s pretty sure it won’t be the same. He’s been seeing himself and talking to PK and remembering things. It’s not the same at all.
“Are you, you know,” says PK. “Are you alright, now?”
“It’s—like a dream.” All those memories have felt more like dreams than reality. Maybe they were dreams. They didn’t happen, aren’t going to happen. He doesn’t remember what it felt like, although maybe it didn’t feel like anything. That kind of thing sometimes doesn’t.
All things considered, it’s probably for the best if he never remembers.
“It never happened,” says Carey. “It’s not real.”
“I guess,” says PK. “Or maybe it’s just that it hasn’t happened yet.”
“It never happened,” says Carey again.
*
They go to Boston. Carey is trying to think up something that can be wrong with him without the team shipping him back to Montreal in a knee-jerk mumps quarantine.
“Maybe I should just play,” he tells PK in the morning.
“Are you crazy?” asks PK. “Of course you shouldn’t play. Do you want to tempt fate?”
“It isn’t fate. It’s Tim Peel and time travel.”
“Close enough,” says PK. Carey figures, well, PK was the one having dreams and premonitions. That’s not the same as instructions from yourself. The instructions tell him not to play, but he’s broken the others and the universe hasn’t fallen apart. Besides, there’s some part of Carey that thinks—well, best get back on the horse. That he never actually fell off of.
“But it’s Boston,” says Carey.
PK just shakes his head. He knows perfectly well that he’d do exactly the same, and there’s no point in trying to get him to admit it.
*
It’s the middle of morning skate and Carey’s in his crease and not thinking about anything he wouldn’t be thinking about normally. Not in the least. Or he isn’t by the time they’re leaving the ice, anyway, and it’s nobody’s business but his own. And maybe PK’s and Tim Peel’s, but who knows where Tim Peel is right now.
He glides over to the boards and suddenly remembers what happened after.
He pushes PK aside before he can head to the locker room.
“Hey. Hey. I remember about Tim Peel now. Well, sort of.”
“Oh?” says PK, very drawn-out and eyebrows-raised.
“It was definitely him.” Carey knew that already, but it’s nice to have confirmation. “He knew how to do it. Well, sort of.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I just know I wasn’t supposed to remember anything, or remind myself about anything in the note,” says Carey. “And then you forget the same amount beforehand, too? Like, the same amount of time as you go back.”
“Why?” PK demands.
“I don’t know. He didn’t explain anything!”
“Well,” says PK. “I know how to fix that.”
*
Carey doesn’t know exactly how PK does it, but about an hour later he shoves Carey ahead of him into a little office somewhere in the TD Garden, and Tim Peel is already inside.
He clearly hasn’t been told anything, because he sees Carey and goes dead white. It’s interesting to watch. Carey is momentarily worried that they’re going to have an unconscious Tim Peel on their hands.
Then Tim Peel takes a deep breath and says, “Well, might as well get this over with.”
“Good,” says PK. “Let’s start with, what the fuck is going on? Why are you time-travelling with my goalie?”
Tim Peel groans. “He wasn’t supposed to tell you about that. And he knows that, if he knows about the time-travelling.”
“So it was time-travelling, then,” says Carey.
Tim Peel’s gaze turns toward him. “What the fuck else would it have been? Do you even remember anything at all?”
“I remember some things,” says Carey defensively. He isn’t used to time travel and there is no reason he should be jumping to that conclusion, whatever Tim Peel thinks. “For instance, I remember how I am not supposed to remember anything.”
“You shouldn’t have remembered! You wouldn’t have if you’d followed the rules.”
“I was already remembering before I saw you,” Carey says. “So was PK, kind of. Dreams, at least.”
“Oh. Well.” Tim Peel looks unhappy about that, but not overly astonished. “Look, sometimes these things don’t work the way they’re supposed to, alright? It’s tricky.”
“I don’t care,” says PK. “You should have explained this shit. He tried calling you seventeen times.”
PK had been the 18th, last night in Carey’s hotel room. He’d clearly already figured out the best time to make suggestions, and Carey was going to have to have a think about this in the near future.
“I can’t just tell him everything! He might decide to tell someone else that I told him!”
“Would someone believe me?” asks Carey curiously.
Tim Peel won’t meet his eyes, which is pretty interesting. Maybe he’s not the only one pulling this shit. That’s—worrying.
“What was up with the gym, though?” asks PK. “Can you at least tell me that?”
“We had to get back to a time when I was asleep,” says Carey. He remembers that part. “He went to the wrong spots. It took a lot of tries.” One of them had been inside of a fountain.
“It would’ve taken a lot less if you hadn’t wanted to go back before Wednesday,” Tim Peel says. “The week of amnesia was completely your own fault.”
Carey could kind of remember thinking he might as well at that point. He still isn’t sure exactly how he’d handled it so badly on that other Wednesday night, but it’s probably worth it that it never happened.
“Is it safe for him to play?” PK asks.
“Of course it’s safe,” says Tim Peel, sounding irritated. “What would be the point, otherwise?”
“The score of the Pittsburgh game was the same,” says Carey. “I remembered it being 4-0 before it ever happened.”
“That doesn’t make it the same game,” says Tim Peel. “Knowing about it in advance isn’t going to fix a whole team’s bad hockey.”
“Knowing about it in advance doesn’t fix your bad calls,” says PK.
“Have you been listening to a word of this?” Tim Peel snaps. “I don’t know in advance. I can only go back and try to remedy my mistake.”
“But now with bonus amnesia,” says PK, sounding like this explains a lot of things for him.
Tim Peel scowls at him. “You don’t understand.”
“No, I do not,” says PK.
“Look,” says Carey, “honestly, I don’t think this is a good time to have a fight about it. We have a game.”
“Do you have any idea how grateful you should be?” asks Tim Peel, glaring at both of them. “None of the other guys would’ve done it. Not one of them.”
“I could’ve taken my chances,” says Carey.
“You didn’t want to then.”
Fair enough. So he took them with Tim Peel instead. It’s not like he’d go back and do it over again—and besides, any do-overs would require Tim Peel anyway.
“Really,” continues Tim Peel toward PK, sounding more peeved by the second. “You weren’t going to have your starting goaltender for awhile, if—”
“Thanks!” Carey calls over his shoulder, dragging PK out of the room.
*
Carey gets a shutout. Nobody time-travels, or bleeds.
PK says something to Tim Peel, during a stoppage of play near the end of the third. Tim Peel looks pleased.
*
“Okay,” says PK, when they finally get back to Montreal, and they’re finally alone. “What all do you remember? Do you know what the deal is with Tim Peel?”
“No,” says Carey. “I still don’t really know, and I don’t want to explain this now. It’s 1 am.”
“Why the fuck did you come back to my place if you’re just gonna go to sleep?”
“I don’t want to talk,” says Carey.
There is an interlude, but PK is back on the subject before too long.
“But, seriously,” he says. “What about the—”
Carey kisses him again. He really should’ve already tried this method of shutting PK up; it’s more effective than most.
“We need to talk to Tim Peel some more,” says PK, some time later.
“What the—can you stop?” Carey will care about it in the morning. He doesn’t now, not with PK straddling him.
“I bet it’s all of them,” says PK. “All those damn zebras.”
“This is the wrong time for this,” says Carey between his teeth, and PK mostly gets the idea. Carey will probably want to know the rest of it eventually, but there’s a time and place and he likes this one better when he’s not thinking about Tim Peel.
*
There’s definitely a limited period of time where PK will stay quiet. Carey will probably learn the exact length before long.
“Save a horse,” says PK, “ride a cowboy,” and, “okay, yeah, you’ve heard that one before, don’t—”
Carey shuts him up for awhile after that.