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"What does she look like?" Brian asked, looking around at the barrage of people entering and exiting the Starbucks. It was a popular place to be - as would be expected of a coffee house next to a college, I guess - and the turnaround rate was ridiculously fast.
"I actually don't remember to describe her," I answered, frowning, trying to place Aimee's look to her name in my mind, but nothing came, other than the chipped purple nail-polish. Shows I had no real attraction to her, I thought. "I'll know her when I see her," I added.
Brian frowned, "Well how the hell am I supposed to help you look for her then?" he asked.
I shrugged, "I dunno."
We'd been sitting at the table for what seemed like forever. (Three hours, actually.) It hadn't been until I reached New York that I realized Aimee and I hadn't discussed an actual time to meet.
"Why don't you call her?" Brian suggested, for about the hundredth time.
"I don't wanna seem pushy," I said.
"Asking her what time she wanted to meet up isn't pushy, it's just curious."
But Brian had barely gotten the words out of his mouth when I saw her.
Aimee’s hair was blonde, pale platinum blonde. I remembered suddenly a fleeting thought that she’d looked like Nicole Kidman with Paris Hilton’s hair. The space above her head was still blissfully blank. She scanned the coffee shop, her eyes flitting from one number to the next, before landing on me.
“There she is,” I whispered, nudging Brian.
He turned to look. “Whoa.” Brian might be married, but he still appreciates a nice looking girl, I thought to myself with a laugh.
Aimee approached our table and pulled out a chair, sitting, staring at Brian the entire time.
“Hey,” I greeted her.
Aimee looked at me again. “Hey,” she said, a smile cracking her solemn face. “So, you made it to New York,” she said. “Been here long?”
“Three –“ Brian started, but I kicked him.
“Nah, just got here.”
Aimee looked at Brian with a raised eyebrow, then turned back to me. “So this is your friend?” she asked, “The one you told?” Apparently she was less than impressed with the idea that she had not one, but two Backstreet Boys sitting with her in a Starbucks. I was willing to bet she didn’t even recognize Brian without her sister, Abby, there to point him out.
“Yup,” I said, “Brian.”
“Halloooo,” Brian crooned, tilting his head and pulling a face that would’ve made fans react. Aimee forced a smile and turned away again.
Brian blinked in surprise. At the very least, he usually got a giggle for his silly faces.
Aimee’s eyes darted around the room. She leaned in closer to me, and I saw Brian did the same, so as not to be excluded. “The thing is, Nick, that as a general rule Time Watchers keep a really low profile,” she said quietly.
“Time Watchers?” I asked, the unfamiliar term rolling from my mouth.
“That’s what we are, Nick,” she said, “We’re Time Watchers.”
Brian let out a breath that sounded like a muted “ooooh” and Aimee glanced at him, annoyed. “Sorry,” he whispered. “It just sounds cool.”
“Cool?” Aimee sat up, her glare now pronounced.
Brian winced back.
“You think we’re cool?” she said the word like it was sour.
Brian shrugged, “I just, I mean—“
“Imagine for a second staying the same age, forever, watching everyone you love grow old and die around you.” Aimee’s voice was ice-cold, sharp, and each word pronounced carefully to make the point, yet quiet enough to not be overheard. Brian’s eyes widened. “Imagine for a second that you can never rest. You start feeling stretched thin.”
“Like butter over too much bread,” I intoned, quoting Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings.
Brian looked at me, surprised. “But- But Nick ages,” he stammered, clearly unsure how to make Aimee stop glaring at him.
“I know,” Aimee said. She snapped back to me, her annoyance with Brian forgotten. “I looked into what causes that, and it’s an abnormality.”
“Nick’s always been abnormal,” laughed Brian.
I kicked him under the table again as Aimee closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She definitely, definitely, did not like Brian. Or something.
“It’s called Looping,” she said, her voice lowering again. I leaned in to hear her. This time, Brian didn’t move. “It’s like being stuck on a broken record, or putting a song on repeat. It’s really rare that it happens... Most Time Watchers are frozen at one age, and never move beyond it. Like me.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s just the way it is.”
“But what causes the Looping, then?” I asked.
Aimee shrugged, “It’s likened to cancer in a human being. It’s a random abnormality, caused by an internal malfunction. That’s why I can see your time. It counts down to your next cycle.”
“Is it like post traumatic stress disorder?” Brian asked.
“What?” Aimee barely glanced at him.
“You know, like soldiers get from wars and stuff. When you relive the same experience over and over in your head?”
“This is not in our heads,” she said, her voice almost growling.
Despite Aimee’s attitude, Brian pressed on. “Can it kill him?” He was apparently too intrigued by this information to stay quiet.
Aimee directed the answer to me, as though I’d asked it. “It can’t kill you. It’s a pain in the ass, but it can’t kill you. There’s only one thing that can kill a Time Watcher, and its even more rare than your condition,” she said.
“What is it?” I asked.
She laughed, “It’s unspeakable.”
“Unspeakable?”
“It’s considered unlawful to inform another about how to destroy themselves,” she said, “Similar to assisting suicide.”
“But how can I avoid it if I don’t know what it is?” I asked, frustrated.
“It’s not something you need to avoid, exactly,” she said.
My fingers found the rubber band at my wrist, the idea of death intriguing me. Brian looked at me, nervously, and raised an eyebrow.
“Seriously, its nothing to worry about. If you don’t know about it, it’s that much harder to accidentally do it,” Aimee said.
“Okay so I’m a Time Watcher, I’ve got Looping,” I summed. “I don’t understand. How did this start? Where did I come from?” Who is my real family? I hadn’t even known I was wondering the question as fiercely as I was until the words ran through my mind and got caught halfway to my mouth.
“Time Watchers are either born or created,” Aimee explained. “They are usually born, but some are created.”
“Which was I?” I asked.
Aimee shrugged. “There’s no way to tell. Because you were unregistered with the ministry, there’s no record. But the simple fact that you are unregistered would make me think you were probably created. Being registered at the ministry is like having a birth certificate. It’s extremely unusual to be completely overlooked like you have been. Especially in such a high profile life as the one you’ve got now as a pop star.”
“So the ministry had no clue that I even existed?” I asked.
Brian snorted.
Aimee looked at him again, the ice returning to her voice. “What?”
Brian looked regretful for having drawn attention to himself again. “Just- shouldn’t the government or whatever the ‘ministry’ is have known about him? It just seems like they must not be very vigilant.”
“Do not insult the ministry.” Aimee drew herself up to her full posture and glared down at Brian with stony eyes.
“Whoa, hey,” I said, “Truce, okay?”
Aimee looked at me. “You should not tell anyone about yourself,” her voice was suddenly commanding. “It’s very, very dangerous to do so.”
“Why?” I asked, confused.
“Because that’s how Time Watchers are created.”
Brian blinked rapidly. “What? Wait a minute. I’m not gonna like burst into flames here or something, am I?”
Aimee turned to him, and snapped, “No.”
“Wait!” I cried. A momentary silence in the coffee house, accompanied by some stares, told me I’d been louder than I’d meant to be. We paused the conversation until the prying eyes had turned away again before I continued, “How does telling someone about me make them become a Time Watcher?”
“Because if they know about us, when they die, they are given the option to become one of us,” Aimee said sternly.
Brian shook his head, “Oh hell no.”
“You say that now,” Aimee snapped, “But when the time comes and you’re offered the opportunity to return to a family that needs you, you’d take it, too.”
I knew Brian was imagining Leighanne and Baylee at this, and he fell silent.
“So, what, like you die and you’re like on the verge of Heaven and then God’s all up like, ‘you wanna be a Time Watcher, since you know about’em? Sweet, have fun!’?” I asked.
Aimee rolled her eyes, “Hardly. No, it’s a choice you’ve made before death, a desire to stay with something or somebody else who holds you to the earth, like gravity.”
If I hadn’t been a Time Watcher already, I thought, I would’ve been made one for Claire.
“So what happens?” I asked.
Aimee stared at me. “You don’t remember it yourself?”
“I know nothing from before I was thirteen in 1867,” I answered.
“That’s odd,” Aimee said.
“Do you remember?” I asked.
Aimee nodded, “I was created. My father was a very important man, and he had security guards. One of the guards that he had hired was a Time Watcher, Rodney, and he saved my life. As I grew older, and he remained the same age, we became friendly. It was not until twenty-years had passed that I realized I had grown up and he had never changed. I was a little slow.”
I nodded.
“Anyway, Rodney told me the secret because I persisted; he had no intentions of creating me. Because of his reluctance to grant me a reason to choose this life, we fell out of touch shortly after. I met a man and had a daughter, but died before she was even a year old. However, it was my daughter that I revolved around like gravity. I chose to be a Time Watcher because of her.”
“Did you ever see – Rodney? – the one that told you - again?” I asked.
“I’m married to him,” she replied.
“Is Abby your –“
“My granddaughter,” she replied. “Not my sister.”
“Does she know?”
Aimee shook her head. “Nobody knows about Rodney and I.”
Brian was picking at the edge of the table, a frown on his face, still deep in thought. I felt odd, sitting there, the intricate workings of a world that I was involved in, yet so far apart from, whirling about in my head. I took a sip of the cold coffee I’d bought when we first got to the Starbucks.
“Nick, I think the first thing we need to do is get you registered,” Aimee said.
“You haven’t really told him a lot about the ministry,” Brian pointed out.
Aimee gritted her teeth.
“Well you haven’t,” Brian persisted. “I mean, you can be angry I’m here all you want, but I’m just trying to help Nick out. I know he gets overwhelmed by a lot of information and we know he’s not the best at paying attention and knowing what to ask. So that’s why I’m here. I’m here to make sure he knows what he needs to know about everything.”
Aimee looked at Brian. “And I’m here to tell him what he needs to know.”
“So what is the ministry, then?”
“I told you, it’s like our government.”
“Is it democratic or republican?” I joked.
Both Brian and Aimee looked at me.
“Well, I thought it was an important question,” I mumbled.
“See, you say ministry,” Brian said, “And I think of the ministry of magic in the Harry Potter books. The ones that were always wrong about everything and messing up Harry’s life…”
Aimee steeled again. “The ministry does not ‘mess up’!“
“They didn’t even know Nick existed, how is that not messing up?” Brian retorted.
This question quieted Aimee and she sighed theatrically, and turned away from Brian to look at me again. “The ministry is governed by Elders, who act like judges more than as rulers. They simply keep track of the numbers of Time Watchers, and keep us from telling the entire world about us.”
“Why don’t they want the world to know?” I asked stupidly.
“Because then everyone could live forever,” she lowered her voice even deeper than before, “And for some – that is undesirable,” she added darkly.
I shrugged, “Okay, so how do I register?”
Brian stood up, almost knocking over his chair. “Nick, let’s go. You need to think about this more before you do anything.”
Aimee looked up at him.
“Bri, I wanna know about my past,” I said.
“You know about your past,” he answered. “I just… I’m sorry Nick, I just feel like there’s something kind of weird going on here. I mean I didn’t even do anything and this one here is acting like I’ve committed some horrible crime for being your friend.”
“You are not the one who’s committed the crime,” Aimee snapped at Brian. “You are an innocent bystander, and you shouldn’t have been subjected to our lives. None of this affects you.”
“It affects me in January when my best friend suddenly goes poof,” Brian retorted, a little louder than necessary.
Silence fell over the table for a long minute. During the stretch of time, Brian sat down and poked at the sugar packets in their little plastic bowl at his elbow, looking sheepish for exploding.
“Look, Nick, if you want to think or whatever before you register, that’s fine. Figure out what you want to do though.” She stood up, “Just keep in mind that if anyone could help you stop Looping, it’s going to be the ministry Elders. And at least if you can stop the Looping you’ll have a more normal experience as one of us.” She glanced at Brian coldly. “Don’t make any stupid mistakes, thinking we’re cool or whatever, Brian,” she said. “You won’t like the results.” Then she looked back at me. “You have my number.”
Aimee turned and walked out of the coffee house. I watched the door close behind her, then looked at Brian in dismay.
“She’s touchy,” he commented.
I nodded. “Yeah, she is.”