2024-10-15 “Maybe This Time” for Shay (born 2001)

Shay Ryder, at the fine old age of 23, took comfort in her routines. They helped her manage her life, keep it simple, and minimized her stress.

Her years as a loner riding her motorcycle to wherever the roads took her were governed by simplicity. She carried what she could carry in saddlebags and a backpack bungee-corded to her seat and relied on her debit card to fill in when necessities arose.

Having moved into a 4 bedroom, 4 bath home on Bank Street in West Village, simplicity had been forfeited to routine. She started her day before sunrise arising from her bed, making it, and going to the kitchen for a routine breakfast; instant oatmeal, english muffin with butter and honey, and a cup of coffee. After doing the dishes, she made her way to the living room, sat on the sofa, and planned her day, and thought about her future. 

And sometimes, her past.

That Tuesday would be typical of most others since taking a job with Habitat Housing. She would line up volunteers for a weekend project. Deal with suppliers. Contract out work that had to be done by professionals.

Like Kent Marlon. His place in her thoughts had changed two Sundays back and in the days following when they had been time-shifted to 1880.

Likewise, the other six, too, had taken over what had before been empty space. There was a connection she felt to them all, something rare for her. Something, perhaps, entirely absent before.

Shay decided she’d call Hannah at lunch time, then told herself to text first. That, she thought, was normal. She wasn’t sure. Social graces had not come easy to her. When she thought she was being friendly, it always seemed to be seen as awkward.

Her days in a prestigious, all-girls high school were lonely. She didn’t fit. She had no desire to match up with a boy from the male version of her school. Honestly, she didn’t know why the other girls thought that was so important. He graduated with the satisfaction that she had never been a fake friend, nor had she endured fake friends.

College had been spent with a few study-partners; males and females. After graduation, she shunned the country-club, society scene and took to the roads.

Looking back to puberty, something about her ways had kept others at a distance. Disconnected. In a moment, to be sure, she could get along with anyone. But there had never been any depth to it.

For reasons, perhaps metaphysical, that was not true with the other 7 time travelers. Hardly knowing anything about them, she still felt a close connection. At least that’s what she thought it was, but she had nothing to compare it to.

She thought to herself that maybe this time things would be different. There were 3 lovely young women and 4 nice, friendly men who seemed to be as comfortable with her as she was with them. Together, they had suffered Memphis’s hot, humid days and muggy nights while planning to stop the lynching. There had been laughter shared. Fears, too.

Shay thought, perhaps, one of the men might eventually see her fondly and she might see him fondly, too. Long, she had hoped to meet a man who saw beyond her being a rich girl with (she had been told more than once) a pretty face.

She thought, perhaps, the girls would see her as a friend. She had always wished someone would see her as an equal, not as competition or as a spoiled daddy’s girl. 

Maybe, Shay thought, this time would be different.

Past situations had always degraded to her being the awkward, oddball girl. Sports teams… church groups… college sorority… Shay had decided she just didn’t know how to be normal in a social setting, so she set off to travel, to have fun one stop at a time, and to then move on; to leave before those she met grew annoyed with her.

Maybe, she thought, this time would be different.