Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 24 - Rotary Dial

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

As she grew older, somehow Tabitha Small’s ears and cheeks no longer radiated bright pink — almost neon — whenever she was embarrassed, answered a question incorrectly, or when Cissie Sanders publicly accused her of being in love with Ricky Darvish from the other fourth-grade classroom.  

Likewise, as she exited puberty, that same burning color no longer washed over her face like an inescapable billboard of frustration and discomposure whenever she was angered.

Right now, Dr. Tabitha Small was furious. And for the first time since childhood, her face, neck, ears, and everything else felt like they were on fire.

Becca Watts had destroyed the world and everything they knew.

While Tabitha sat on the living room floor, her mother and father were pushed up against each other on the couch as if they were holding each other up from toppling. They trepidatiously held hands, staring blankly, as Tabitha’s face blistered with an inescapable anger. 

Unlike her parents, Dr. Tabitha Small immediately understood everything that happened and remembered everything from before.

While everyone else acted as if they were waking from dreams, Tabitha felt as though she had been instantaneously transported back to her childhood in the span of less than a second. One moment she was pulled from her feet as her car was whisked through the air in the ENH parking lot. Sam and Drake were in the car, and Becca’s husband was caught up in that magnetic pull, as well. The clarity of it all was so clear that at first, Tabitha thought it was still happening.

One moment they were caught up in the terror of it all, facing that monstrous black void. The next she was in her old small room with the pink walls, staring at the kitten calendar pinned to her wall.  She slowly walked over and took the calendar into her hands. The first ten days had been crossed off.  

It was July 11, 1986, and Dr. Tabitha Small was once again stuck in her ten-year-old body.

“Dr. Watts,” Tabitha said.  “You stupid, stupid woman.  What have you done?”

She’d left her bedroom and found her parents sitting with blank stares at the kitchen table. It took two full days after that before they became somewhat coherent again and were able to have even the simplest understanding of Tabitha’s explanations about what had transpired.

In the meantime, Tabitha took to watching the TV where resurrected television anchors commiserated with whatever so-called experts could be rounded up willing to dissect the multitude of ideas to explain what possibly occurred. As they pontificated various theories of how the world blinked into darkness only to be rebirthed into a vaguely familiar world — at a time they’d allegedly experienced once before — Tabitha already knew what happened. The entire world’s populace had returned to this past and was now stuck here, like refugees trapped against their will on a rudderless boat stuck in the middle of the sea.  

More than once, Tabitha absentmindedly tapped the front right pocket of the skinny Wrangler jeans she wore, expecting her cell phone to be there. She was in her childhood body, but many of the habits of her former adulthood, she observed, were retained. There were no cell phones now, of course. There was no internet. There were no quick answers available at the tips of her fingers or by calling out, “Hey Google,” to some random device on top of the refrigerator.

Every time she thought about how difficult it now was to get answers to her questions, her ears started burning again.

She scoured the phonebook from her father’s desk and tried to reach the local television and radio stations. The numbers either rang endlessly or immediately went to busy signals.

“Do libraries carry out-of-state phone books?” Tabitha asked her father.

While he came to a fuller consciousness of his surroundings faster than his wife, he still spent most of his time just watching his daughter dart around the house as if she was just a pet or some sort of curiosity.  

“What do you need a phone book for?” her father asked. He numbly sat next to her mother, who mostly remained silent as she dabbed the unending stream of tears that cascaded down her cheeks in messy rivulets, smearing black ripples of cheap mascara as they dripped from her eyes.

“I need New York,” Tabitha said and pointed to the television. “I need to talk to one of these national news anchors. Could I call information?  411? Did that exist yet?”

“The operator,” her father said.

“What?”

“I don’t think we have 411 yet.  I think you’d just call the operator.  Dial zero.”

Tabitha stood quickly, her swiftness still surprising even after two days back in this old — young — body of hers.  The tingling of seemingly endless energy practically emanated from her body.  She could probably do somersaults and tuck flips again, like the ones from the gymnastics classes her mother forced upon her all those years ago.  

Calling from the kitchen rotary unit — already ancient in 1986 — Tabitha pressed the receiver to her head. Every call she’d attempted since the start of all of this, she let it ring almost thirty times before hanging up. To her surprise, after only three rings an older woman’s crackling yet frenetic voice answered.  

“Who are you trying to call?” the woman asked bluntly.

“New York,” Tabitha said.  “ABC News.  A producer, I guess, if that’s possible.”

There was a pause. The woman on the other end breathed heavily. Tabitha’s stomach lurched.

“I just have a general number,” the operator said.

“For ABC News?”

“That’s what you said, right?”

“New York?”

“Yes, New York.”

“Yes, thank you!” Tabitha said, excitedly. “I’ll take it. Yes, please. Thank you so much.”

“You sound young,” the operator said. “Must be nice to be a kid again.”

“What?”

“How old are you now?”

“Ten, I think,” Tabitha said. “Apparently I’m ten again.”

“I got forty years back and I’m still in my forties,” the operator said. “Already have diabetes. You’d think we could have at least gone somewhere when I could still wear a bikini.”

“I never liked this age,” Tabitha said.

“Well, maybe you’ll like it better this time around,” the operator answered. “So you ready for the number?”

Tabitha grabbed a pencil and scribbled it down before thanking the operator once again. She hung the phone in the cradle and immediately picked it up again and dialed the number. Busy signal. She hung up and tried five more times, receiving the same buzzing tone with each attempt.

“Do you really know something about all this?” her father asked. He stood in the kitchen doorway behind her.  

“I know everything about this,” Tabitha said. She hit the disconnect and dialed again.

“And we’re really here for good?” he asked.  “In 1986, I mean.  Like they’re saying on the television?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Hang up. Dial.

“I can’t believe how much you look like you did back then.  Ten-years-old.”

“Just a few days ago,” Tabitha said, immediately making another attempt with the phone. “According to the calendar I just had a birthday.”

“Oh,” her dad said and looked around as if he expected there to be a cake. “Happy birthday, then.”

Hang up. Dial.

Everything took so much time. Each digit of the phone number she dialed clicked with torturous slowness. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.  Making it even worse, ABC’s New York number had three nines in it.  

“So this has to do with the work you were doing?  That collider thing?”

“Dad,” she said. “Not now.”

“But it does, right?”

Tabitha sighed.  Her parents never understood her work.  Never understood why she went to school for the things she did.  Never understood her research at CERN in Europe. Never thought it appropriate that a girl would want to spend her days in a room full of men in white jackets.  After earning her doctorate, Tabitha quit trying to explain to her parents anything at all about her job.  

“It’s top secret, Dad,” she said, resorting to the excuse she’d discovered most convenient over the years.  “I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

“Then why are you trying to call the news?”

Tabitha got another busy signal and hung up the phone again, her hand still resting on the receiver.  

“Because there’s only one person who knows exactly what went wrong,” Tabitha said. 

“Who’s he?”

“She,” Tabitha corrected. “And even if we find her — and I doubt she wants to be found — she may not want to help us.”

“Then what?”

“Then we find the only other person I know who can help fix this mess.”

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