The Last 3 Minutes – Episode 3

Sita

Michigan - September 1985 – Eighteen days until

Sita woke before her alarm.

She went to the mirror, stared at herself and marveled. Just looking, no one could tell. She was a time traveler. That was her secret malady. She could travel backward three minutes in time. 

It started the summer when she was an effusive six-year old. The twins were three. Even with Gina around, Amma was overwhelmed every day. Sita enjoyed being her helper. She was swinging at the playground. Amma was there, talking to another haggard mother, the twins jabbering and running around her ankles. Sita thought she should get down and play with her brother and sister, give Amma a break. But she was having so much fun. She swung high, kicking her legs, her long hair whipping back. Hari looked over at her. She blew out her cheeks, bugged out her eyes, and gave him a huge smile. “Watch this!” Sita mouthed. Then she launched herself out of the seat. She had seen other children do it, though her parents had told her not to. She loved the idea of flying. Sita arced in the air, spread her arms wide, and cried in joy. 

Suddenly, her stomach flipped and fluttered. It was like wings inside, like the vast beating wings of the wandering albatross that she heard about on a TV documentary. The dizziness and foggy brain swept over her. She felt like she was still rising, not falling. Finally, she felt a whoosh, a drop. She was sitting again, swinging, not flying at all.

She had no idea what to make of it. 

After that start, the time travel happened every few weeks. She told Amma and her father about it because when you are six years old, you must tell your parents everything. She told them about the stomach, the wings, the dizziness, the drop. She said was getting do-overs. It was like in school when you were playing kickball, and you missed badly. Sometimes the other children would let you have a do-over. She was giving do-overs in life without even asking. 

Her parents were mystified. At first, they thought it was endearing. They treated it as if she were an unexceptional child with an imaginary friend. But the time travel kept happening. Sita complained. She worried, even though her brain was not yet equipped for worry. Soon, Amma’s dread caught up with Sita’s. Amma began to fear the worst: a brain tumor or some degenerative disease. Doctors hummed over Sita, Amma asking a million questions, her father fretting quietly behind. 

The doctors came in a parade: the good one, the weird one, the mean one, the ugly one. They came armed with sonogram probes, PET scanners, needles, and sometimes mere stethoscopes. As she closed her eyes and endured all of it, Sita made lists of monsters worse than what she was: vampires, zombies, werewolves, bigfoot. The specialists found nothing wrong, and eventually, Sita realized that lying was the best cure. She downplayed the symptoms, learned to sail through the episodes without making a face, and by the time she was eight, she announced she was no longer traveling back in time. She was in remission. She learned to use that very word, and for a while, her parents believed her. 

But something nagged at Amma; she watched Sita like a hawk. Amma knew something was not right. Whether it was just a mother’s intuition, obsessive watching of Sita’s every tic and expression, or both, Amma eventually grew certain that Sita was still experiencing something strange. Amma made a case to her father. When Sita turned thirteen, they signed her up for Dr. Durbala. 

Over all that time, Sita tried to piece it together herself. After distrusting her mind and senses for a couple of years, she knew it was real. She could travel back in time precisely three minutes. It seemed totally useless. What was the point of traveling back three minutes? Was it a joke, a defective superpower? 

She was ordinary. She wanted to be ordinary. She should have been ordinary.

Do-overs were useful in theory. But she could not control when the time travel started. It merely happened. Most of the time, it was annoying in its worthlessness. She would be minding her own business, living a boring girl’s life, reading, playing outside, cleaning her room. Then it would hit her, the wave, the wings, the rise and fall. She had no way to predict or direct when she would go back three minutes. Sometimes she willed it to happen. Something trivial might have happened, like using the wrong color marker on her drawing. Or something bigger, a fight with Amma, a badly skinned knee, a misunderstanding with Ana. Sita would hope, pray, demand that the time travel start. But it was not like flipping a switch. 

She got used to it, as much as any human being can get accustomed to a temporal rebellion. When she was twelve, the time travel started to happen every few days, not weeks. 

And then something even stranger erupted. 

It was the Indian holiday Diwali, just two weeks after her twelfth birthday. They had eaten a huge meal of butter rice, dal, pumpkin, and spinach. After dark, they went out to the backyard to light off some fireworks that their father had procured. He lit a screeching bottle rocket. Casey and Hari fooled around with their sparklers, playing with them like swords. Sita told them to stop, but Casey bumped into Hari, and his red-hot sparkler hit Sita’s arm. She felt a searing pain. She cursed. She wished she could go back in time. 

And then she did. The flutter, the wings, the rise up and fall. She was astonished, relieved. She was not sure why it worked. She watched her father light the bottle rocket. The twins messed around. She told them to stop and stepped away to be safe. She was safe, the burn averted. 

But without warning came the flutter again, the wave swept over her once more. Up and down. Back three minutes. She did not ask for it. She did not know what had happened. She returned to the moment when the bottle rocket launched. The burn was averted. Then the scene replayed itself again. Again. And again. With each cycle, she grew more panicked, terrified of infinity, thinking she would never stop returning to that same moment in time when her father lit the fuse. Then after the fourth loop, she was inexplicably freed, and she moved forward in time once more. It was hours before she felt calm again. 

That glitch in time travel happened every four or five months. Not so often that she went stark raving mad, but often enough that she was perpetually worried about getting stuck in a loop. Just as she did not know when the time travel would start, she did not know what triggered the loop or why it ended after three, four, five repetitions like a plane flying in distressed circles before it landed. She did not know how long she could endure the anxiety of this new twist. 

Sita took Hari into her confidence a year ago and told him everything. She was tired of keeping all that worry bottled up inside. She thought with far-fetched hope that Hari might understand or be able to explain the time travel. He liked science and science fiction. He knew about computers and technology. But even a nerdy, precocious twelve-year old boy could not provide any useful theories. Still, he was there when she needed to talk to someone about the weird things that happened almost every day, things that were starting to accelerate. 

She was proud of the fact that other people thought she had it all together. She kept the balls in the air, remaining a star student and a good daughter, playing the violin and great tennis. Even after her father died, everything stayed in a tight, breathable order. She managed her condition, the three minutes, the loops. But until this summer, she did not think she could ever stop any of it, bend it, or control it.

Now, she opened her blue clothes hamper and pulled out the jeans and yellow t-shirt from yesterday. The old clothes didn’t smell too bad. So she put them back on. She took another look in the mirror, still ruminating and burdened by yesterday’s near-disaster, the van slamming into Amma’s car, and then a new version, no crash. Both experiences felt so real, every detail precise and thick. In her head, both versions carried equal weight, equal meaning. 

Finally, she headed downstairs. In the kitchen, everyone was already at breakfast once again. She stood once again in the hallway watching them. Cousin Ram was making breakfast. Amma was at the other counter, writing the lunch notes. Hari was in a white shirt and had the wool cap, too. She wondered if everyone was wearing the same thing as yesterday. She leaned against the wall so she would not lose her balance, thinking for a moment that she was reliving yesterday. But that was not how her time travel worked. She glanced at the newspaper Hari was reading. The photos on the front page were different this morning. It was not the same day. Ram went to the table with a couple of plates. They were having bagels, not waffles. Casey did not fling anything at Hari. Sita allowed herself to drop the weight and the worry. 

She walked into the kitchen, arranging a morning smile on her face, a pale version of good morning on her lips. She wanted to get out of her head. She needed to eat something. 

***

She walked to school quickly. “Normal,” she reminded herself the whole way, “Keep it all normal.” 

Over the years, the time travel happened at school, of course. Fortunately, no one could peer inside her head. She would spin back three minutes. Her eyes might be shut. She might sway. Her friends would ask if she was okay. “Just Sita,” they would mutter to each other. People who did not know her would think she was going to vomit, or that she was a stoner. 

At Red Cedar, the first-day banner was gone. Sita found the girls near the flagpole as the school buses disgorged children. 

“Are you trying out for tennis again this year?” Jenn asked her as they headed inside. 

“I don’t know,” Sita mumbled. 

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Stephanie cried. “You’re incredible. The team needs you.”

“You’ve got to,” Jenn insisted, “Tryouts are today. You’ll be our best player this year.” 

“I didn't bring my racket,” Sita said. 

 “Jenn, lend her one of yours!” Ana ordered. 

“Definitely,” Jenn said, “And I have an extra t-shirt and shorts in my bag.”

Sita nodded even though she had not played since the spring, and was rusty. She was going to look awful on the court. 

“There! Done!” said Ana triumphantly, putting her hand on Sita’s back and keeping it there down the length of the hall, like Ana was steering her. In math class, Ana insisted they work together when Ms. Goldstein asked them to work in pairs again. About twenty minutes into the period, Ana started to ruminate about Stephen Bates once more. Somehow, she knew everything about the boy. When he was little he lived in Ohio. He had two younger brothers. His dad was an orthodontist. He liked pineapple on pizza, on and on. In the middle of Ana’s monologue, Sita looked up and saw the classroom door open. 

She laughed so sharply that she startled Ana, who stopped drawing on the chalkboard and turned. Ana’s face turned a horrible crimson. She actually gagged as if she were going to lose her breakfast. The room got quiet while the students all watched Stephen Bates. 

He went to Ms. Goldstein’s desk and gave her a note on the counselor’s pink paper. He carried his cool very casually. He was tall with long, light brown hair that curled over his ears. He wore jeans that were rolled up at the ankles, a light blue shirt, and a silvery vest on top of that. He didn’t look like the usual football player. 

Ana was breathing hard, panting like she was unable to get enough air. “Oh God,” she whispered with tremulous repetition. When she finally became unstuck, she asked quickly, “Do you think he heard me before? I was being so loud. My voice carries, you know.”

“Don’t worry,” Sita said, “The room was pretty loud with everyone talking. He wouldn’t have heard you out in the hall.”

Stephen Bates headed their way. Ana was standing close to Sita, and she could feel Ana’s body sag as if she might fall. Sita took her hand and squeezed it. 

“Hey,” Stephen said to them, glancing down at their clasped hands. 

“Hey” Sita echoed. 

“I’m Stephen.” 

Ana nodded mutely. 

“And you’re Sita?” he asked. “You’ve got a brother and sister in seventh – the twins. Casey, man, she’s wild!”

Sita was not surprised at Casey’s notoriety, and besides, Stephen’s sister was Casey’s good friend. 

“Are you in this class now?” she asked.

“My schedule got changed around so I’d have more time for football in the afternoon.”

Ana could not yet utter a word. Sita was still holding her hand, which had gotten sweaty. To fill the silence, Sita asked with genuine ignorance, “What position do you play?”

“Wide receiver. But Coach thinks I might make a good quarterback. Paul Gonzales, who’s our QB now, he got injured. Not sure he’ll make it through the season.”

“Wow.” She was running out of things to say. 

Stephen continued to look intently at her. “Miss G there told me to join your group for the rest of the period. She said you could help me catch up. I’m pretty sure she thinks you’re the smartest one in this class.”

Sita smiled awkwardly. 

Ana hardly said anything for the rest of the class, and she left quickly when the bell rang. 

“Thanks a lot,” Stephen said to Sita as they left the room together. “Glad to help, Stephen,” she said. 

“You can call me Steve, by the way.” He flashed a toothy grin, and then he was absorbed by a rowdy group of boys. 

She was not sure what to make of him as she walked up to English. On the stairs, she ran into Chris Chen again. “Not going to fall down this time, huh?” he quipped. 

“I only do the weird stuff on the first day of school,” she said. “Back to normal business today.”

“Did you read the story Mr. Kim assigned us?” Chris asked.

“I read it twice over the summer, and then I read it again last night. I really like it.”

“It was okay,” he muttered, “English is not my thing, I guess.”

“So what is your thing then?”

“Music.” He pointed at his black t-shirt with a trumpeter. 

“Jazz?” she asked.

He nodded. “My other thing is building stuff.”

“Like what?” she said. 

“Model airplanes and rockets.”

Sita thought the new boy was sweet, but in danger of being eaten alive at the school. 

In the classroom, Mr. Kim greeted each student by name. He had managed to memorize everyone’s overnight. He had also arranged all the desks in a big circle. Sita chose a seat at random. Chris sat down next to her. The chairs were close, and her hand brushed Chris’s leg as they were getting settled. During class, they dove into the Ursula K LeGuin story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.” Most of the students hated it. Parker Roose denounced it, and asked when the class would read something fun. When Mr. Kim called on Chris to share his thoughts, he hemmed and hawed until Mr. Kim finally released him. As the spotlight shifted, Chris turned to Sita, his goofy smile somehow reassuring. 

Later, when the bell rang and Sita was leaving, Mr. Kim stopped her to ask, “How are you doing today?”

“So far so good,” she said blandly. 

“Come by my classroom this afternoon after last period. I’m free, and a bunch of my old students will be here so we can all catch up.”

“I’m going for tennis again. The first tryout is this afternoon.”

“That’s great! Another time then.”

She looked around. Only a few kids were left in the room. She had not really expected Chris to wait for her, and yet she was disappointed that he was gone. 

***

Sita’s biology teacher was Parvati Chetty, an Indian friend of Amma’s, confirming for her once more that all Indian people knew one other. Today, Mrs. Chetty asked her to sit in the front row. She praised everything Sita said, and pointed her out to everyone as a model student. Sita would have rather been standing in class naked. 

Mrs. Chetty’s lecture was slow torture. She narrated from an ancient textbook while half the class was asleep or gossiping. Near the end of class, Sita was getting drowsy, too. Suddenly, Rachel Nadler leaned over, gagged, and vomited explosively, the contents of her stomach hitting the floor and splattering everywhere, including Sita’s Nikes. The classroom erupted. 

Mrs. Chetty started running back and forth in front of the class like they were under attack. She waved her arms around, crying, “We need to call for help.”

Rachel looked terrified, spittle threading from her mouth to the desk. A tall girl Sita did not know got up and stepped gingerly to Rachel, helping her up. “We have to get you to the bathroom,” the tall girl said. 

Rachel nodded meekly, and allowed herself to be led away. A couple of boys went to fetch the janitor. Mrs. Chetty told everyone else to go stand in the hall. Sita sat for a moment. The smell was overpowering. She wanted to throw away her treasured shoes. She wanted it undone. 

Something lurched inside her. A memory of her father flickered. She looked up at the clock in front of the room. It was 11:08. She remembered how her father sang totally out-of-tune to help her sleep when she had the flu last year. It was just weeks before he died. 

Then came the flutter in her stomach, mild now. She felt dizzy, elated, too. She went soaring up, and then dropped gently. She felt proud, and grateful that wishing to go back made it happen. But she was not exactly sure how she accomplished it.

The students were all sitting in the room again. It was 11:05. Mrs. Chetty droned sonorously. Sita looked up, saw Rachel’s head bob, and jumped from her seat. Everyone stared at her. Then Rachel vomited, and the class erupted all over again. As the groans, shrieks, and cackling frothed around her, Sita smiled despite herself and admired her clean shoes. 

At 11:08 there was a little flutter again. Sita’s body tensed. She thought she could stop it. She pushed back. But the inexorable wave came. 

“Oh, shit,” she said as she rolled back. 

11:05. 

Rachel had not done it yet. Then her head bobbed. Sita jumped out of her seat to avoid it. 

She looped from 11:05 to 11:08. No one else on the ride had any idea. No one felt imprisoned. She started to panic, emitting a stream of “fucks,” terrified that she would not emerge from those three minutes, that she would forever watch the broken film of Rachel vomiting. 

After the third loop, she was freed. Just as when she was stuck before, she had no idea why normal time resumed. She breathed heavily, and left Mrs. Chetty’s room when the custodian came to tend to the mess. She was shaking, too, but no one noticed that either. 

***

She did not look for Ana and the other girls at lunch. She took her red sack outside to the big hill behind the school buildings. It was a warm September day, the sky a perfect blue with a slight breeze. 

She found a spot under the shade of a big oak. She sat on the ground and spread out the lunch Amma had made for her: a roast beef sandwich, some corn chips, a banana, and a slightly melted Hershey’s kiss. Sita munched on the sandwich, brooding, her mind adrift. There were students past the periphery of the school grounds, across Boering Street, smoking but not hiding it. Others tore off in their cars, headed for the nearby Burger King before the next period. She thought about what happened in Mrs. Chetty’s class. She thought about yesterday and the white van. They had told her in India that she would soon be able to flip the switch on her own. They had not told her how to handle the loops, and she had not stuck around to actually learn how to flip the switch when she wanted to. 

Suddenly she heard a quiet voice saying, “Hey, Sita.”

She looked up and saw a boy grinning at her. 

In her fog, she did not react.  The boy asked, “Mind if I join you?”

“Huh? What?” She blinked, staring up at him. He was backlit by the sun. 

“Oh, you!” she said finally.

“Yeah, it’s me.” Chris Chen wore his goofy grin, not dismayed that she failed to recognize him. He leaned close and nudged her with his elbow.

She suddenly felt certain that he had said those words before. They had had this conversation already. 

She did not say anything. He persisted, “So can I sit with you for lunch?”

She wanted to ask him why he was not eating in the cafeteria like the normal kids. She also wanted to ask him why he had already decided they were friends. She wanted to ask herself why she had somehow decided they were friends, too. But instead of those questions, all that came out was a little grunt and then, “Um–”

His grin faded. “I mean if you’re busy or just want to be alone, I can go sit somewhere else.” He gestured vaguely behind him. 

She suddenly felt very bad for him. The boy had no idea that he was dealing with a girl who was going mad. 

“No, sorry. You should join me. I’d like the company.”

He hesitated. 

“Please.” She patted the ground. “Plus I’ve got chips to share.”

He sat, crossing his legs, not too near her. She tried to make up for her prior rudeness. “This is a good spot,” she said, “I like it here on nice days.”

“So this is your spot?”

“Yes, I own it.” 

She shared a handful of her corn chips. 

“These are good,” he mumbled with his mouth full. 

“So when did you move to Hamilton?”

Chris finished chewing. “Over the summer. My mom is a professor, and she got a new job here.”

“So do you like it so far?”

“It’s alright. But you know, everything’s different.”

“Red Cedar is a good school. I’ve been here since sixth grade, and I went to elementary school down the road. You have to get past some of the snobbery. But everyone is pretty nice.”

“I probably shouldn’t even tell you this, but in two days, I’ve already heard a whole bunch of people say you’re the smartest kid in school.”

“Not true,” she said laughing. “I’d say Vanessa Drecker is the smartest. Then James Liu. I’m in third place, tops.”

“Well, maybe I should be friends with Vaneesa and James. I need all the help I can get.”

“You don’t like school?” she asked. 

“No, I like it a lot. I just don’t have a good attention span for it.”

“I don’t have a great attention span either. My mind wanders a lot.”

“I know.”

“How do you know that already? We only just met yesterday.”

“Sorry.” He stammered, then paused. “Just blurted that out.”

She understood. “You’ve already heard people talking about my fine qualities, huh?” She looked down, largely  amused, then muttered, “This school.” 

“God, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep apologizing.”

“It’s funny how much kids around here like talking about everyone else.”

“So you heard them say that I have a weird memory, that I blank out?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I won’t press you for details.” Then she added after a beat, “ I wasn’t always this crazy.”

“That’s not a good word, ‘crazy,’” Chris said, suddenly serious.

“I was just kidding around. I can say it about myself, right?”

They were quiet for a while before Chris finally spoke again. “My mom was sick for a while. She was in a hospital for a few weeks. People who were supposedly our friends said she was crazy. Even my grandparents said that. But she was just depressed and needed time.”

“Oh, Chris.”

“She’s fine now. I think moving here actually helped her.” He stared out into the distance, nodded to let her know that he was okay. Then he said, “Anyway, I didn’t sit with you to tell you about my mom.”

“My dad died on New Year’s Day,” she revealed. 

“Wow. That’s so…. Wow, Sita.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s awful.”

She nodded. 

“What happened?”

“Heart attack. A massive one.”

“Where was he?”

“Driving to work. He worked a lot. He was a surgeon.”

At a loss for words, Chris looked down at his hands. Sita had seen the same thing many times. “It’s okay,” she said. “My family and I, we’re getting better, but still sad. We think about him all the time.” But that wasn’t really true. She said it because that line was part of the Conversation. She did not really think about her father all the time. 

Chris said quietly, “I wish we all had a word better than sorry for when we lose someone.” 

“Me, too.” She waited for a well practiced moment, and then changed the subject. “So why did you come sit out here?”

“So we can bare our souls to each other.” He laughed. 

“Well, you got even more than you bargained for. I’m not even sure why I trust you. I barely know you.”

“You will come to trust me because of my cool musical taste.”

She smiled. “I guess we’ll just have to see if we become friends or not.”

The bell rang. They did not get up at first. They watched the cafeteria emptying. Waves of kids started passing into the other buildings. Finally, without a word, Sita and Chris gathered their things, and walked down the hill. They passed through a glass door decked with stickers and fingerprints. Then they said their goodbyes and headed their separate ways, swept into the simmering crowd.

***

At tryouts that afternoon, Coach paired Sita and Jenn to warm up. The moment Sita picked up the aluminum racket, she felt an old joy. Though it had been four months since she last played tennis, the muscle memory remained undimmed. Running cross court, stepping into the swing, and nailing the yellow ball – it was the natural flow her body needed to reclaim. She fired her groundstrokes and gunned volleys. She forgot about time. Jenn cheered when Sita shot a winner.

Half an hour later, deep into practice, she was running to hit a ball in the right court when she caught a glimpse of Hari. She swung, and missed badly. 

Hari stood outside the tall fence, grinning foolishly, and waving. “Hey, kid!” Jenn shouted. 

“What are you doing here?” Sita demanded, out-of-breath.

“I came to watch.”

“You made me miss that ball!”

“You used to like it when I watched, remember?”

Sita shook her head, unwilling to expend the minor energy for words. She picked up a couple of balls and put one in her pocket. 

“So I can stay?” he asked.

“Whatever, sure.”

“Everyone else is just warming up,” he said. “But you and Jenn look like you’re playing a match.”

“We’re pushing each other.”

The flow vanished. Sita hit a series of clunkers, buried balls in the net, and missed wildly twice more. 

“Don’t beat yourself up!” Jenn said. 

Coach strolled by soon after. She lingered for a while as Sita continued to struggle, and she watched with a puzzled expression. “Slow down, Sita,” she said. “You’re trying too hard.” 

After Coach walked away, Jenn said they needed a break. Still prickling with embarrassment, Sita bent down and pretended to tie her shoe. She wondered if she should just go home and call it a day. Then she saw three boys walking towards the courts. They were loud kids in seventh grade, and they had been tormenting Hari for years. The ringleader of the group was Otter Hansen, who ruined other children’s lives because he was stuck with an animal first name. 

“Honking Hairy,” Otter bellowed as his pack approached Hari. 

“You ready?” Jenn asked Sita.

Sita shook her head, pointing her racket at the boys.

“Just ignore them.” 

Sita continued to watch the boys tramp over to Hari. Otter poked her brother with a thick finger, and said, “You need a haircut.”

Hari did not respond. He rarely did. 

“You going to get a girlfriend this year?” a boy named Brandon Hess barked.

“He doesn’t need a girlfriend,” said the third boy, Matt Long, “He’s got his big sisters.”

“You should see him in the locker room!” Otter roared. “I stole his socks yesterday. Stuffed them down the toilet!”

As they chuckled,  Hari stood blinking.

“Why do we call him Honking Hairy?” Brandon asked. 

“Because,” Otter said, “he’s always blowing his runny nose.”

Brandon nodded. He did not seem to remember their old joke. Sita felt hot with outrage.

“Hey Honking Hairy,” Otter said, “How ‘bout you do our math homework for us twice a week.”

Jenn stood close to Sita now. “Leave Hari alone!” she shouted at the boys. 

They turned and looked over, moving together like a single ogre. One of them said, “Are those big girls going to help you now, Hairy?” 

Hari closed his eyes and stood like he was waiting for them to just disappear. 

Sita’s muscles tightened. She gripped the tennis racket so hard it felt like she might break the handle. She ran for the gate in the fence, blasting through it. Behind her, Jenn cried, “Sita? Wait!”

Hari’s eyes popped open when he heard the gate crash. The animals had no time to react. Words rushed through Sita’s head. Curses. Hateful things. But she did not open her mouth. She felt powerful, dangerous, and deadly. She was armed. She swung. The racket connected. A beautiful and bright red rose blossomed from Otter’s nose. She kicked. Her foot felt a jolt of energy as it swept and sliced into a knee. Matt bent double. She heard a voice like Hari’s, but she was not sure. A voice was saying, “No! Don’t.” She aimed the butt of the racket, and it cracked a mouthful of teeth. Brandon put both hands to his mouth, howling. She relished the gaudy and terrified expressions on the animals’ faces. She could feel her muscles tensing, then releasing with each blow that she landed. She watched the boys fall slowly, one by one. She never knew vengeance could feel so good. She was not aware that such an exhilarating feeling had lurked inside her. She was Sita, the destroyer. 

She looked down and saw the battered boys crawling on all fours, so wounded they made no noise. 

“Why did you do that?” Hari whispered. “This is awful!”

She stared at him, then the boys, not fully comprehending.

Jenn stood nearby, not saying anything, a look of disgust and disbelief etched in her face. “Sita?” she whimpered. 

“You’re going to get arrested,” Hari said. 

 Finally, Sita crouched down to Brandon. “Are you okay?” she asked. 

With a grotesque mouth full of blood, he spluttered, “What the fuck?”. 

She turned to Otter. “You were so horrible to him.”

His swollen nose filled his hands.

Matt was lying on his back, staring blankly up at the sky. 

“Shit,” Hari whispered. He never cursed. 

“I’m sorry,” Sita said.

She knew she had no choice. Even with the risk of getting stuck in a loop, she had to do it. She focused as if she knew how to do it. She grasped for a memory of her father. A fragment came to her, an evening when they went ice skating. The wave swept over her, utterly smooth this time. There was no flying up and falling. Just a flicker, static, reverse.

And then. Time and untime. 

***

Her eyes were closed. She had no desire to open them. For a moment she could not quite remember where she was. Then she realized when she was. 

“You ready?” a voice asked behind her. It seemed very far away. 

She opened her eyes and looked down. The court. She felt as if a heavy gear shifted in her brain. She held a racket. Three ugly boys waddled beyond the fence. Three boys went to her brother. 

Otter jabbed him with a chunky finger. He growled, “You need a haircut.”

Hari said nothing. 

She was elated, relieved, quivering. 

“You going to get a girlfriend this year?” Brandon shouted. 

The whole thing replayed so vividly that she anticipated the lines, almost started repeating them.

“Why do we call him Honking Hairy?” Brandon asked. 

Hari stood mute. 

Her muscles felt hot and eager. She ran towards the gate. It swung hard and clattered against the fence. Jenn’s voice again. “Sita? Wait!”

Hari’s eyes popped open. 

She stormed towards Otter, coming inches from his curdled face as he stared at her. Then she froze. 

“What? What are you going to do, huh?” 

The other boys repeated it, sneering at me. The standoff continued quietly as Sita counted silently in her head. Three minutes had passed, and no loop snared her. 

“You’re just a girl!” Otter cackled. 

Finally freed, Sita said, “I think you better leave him alone.”

“Or what?” Otter asked. “Huh? What are you gonna do to me?”

She gazed into his watery red eyes. 

“Or what?” he asked again, his voice now tinged with the slightest anxiety. 

She raised the racket, swinging it in the air and smiling. “Your sister, Jackie, is in my grade.”

“So?” Otter’s voice grew slightly higher. “Who cares?”

“She might be interested to know that you keep a whole stash of magazines in your locker.”

“How do you –” Otter spat, stopped, and started again, “That’s just…. Jackie won’t care anyway.”

Sita shrugged. 

The boy squirmed against her glare, and grunted. Then he turned to his pals. “Fuck it. Come on guys, let’s go.”

Slowly and reluctantly, the three of them turned and walked away.

Brandon turned back and spat, “You’re just a girl!”

“This isn’t done, Mrs. Hairy.” Then Otter added, “Bitch.”

Hari sighed. Jenn, next to him now, put an arm around his shoulder. He stood without moving or saying anything for a long time. Finally, he lifted his head up, looking at Sita with both sadness and annoyance. “I don’t know if I should thank you,” he said quietly. 

“You don’t need to thank me.” 

He breathed deeply. “It’s just kind of embarrassing.”

“I know, but I couldn’t let them do that to you. Not again.”

“Again?” He raised an eyebrow.

“We have to go back to tennis,” Jenn said.

“See you at home?” Sita asked Hari softly. 

He nodded, hoisted his backpack, and headed up towards Meridian Road and the route home. 

---

Sita

India - July 1985

The day after the thief took her bag, Sunny Iya brought it back to her. She did not ask how he had done it. She hugged him fiercely, and promised herself to be more vigilant. Sunny Iya was unconcerned about the whole incident. It was his nature, everyone said. Whenever something upsetting happened, he smiled, he shared some wise words, and told people to let the fear and worry slide away. 

They had a simple breakfast, idlis and sambar, the fat little bananas called elaichi. Amma said she wanted them to have a quiet day, so there were few plans afterward. Casey looked bored and annoyed again; she was already done with India. Hari found a book about mythology in Sunny Iya’s library and a spot on the cool floor to read. 

Sita sat on the front porch, reveling in the quiet, sketching a few things in her notebook: a leafy banana tree, a stucco archway, a cow nosing the ground near the gate. Sunny Iya came to admire her work. 

“You are a real artist,” he said, “Your mother also tells me you are an extraordinary student.”

“Amma likes to brag sometimes.”

Sunny Iya sat down on the bench next to her. “India is a beautiful place,” he said, as a spectacular yellow and back hornbill careened across the sky. “Would you like to go on another walk today?”

“Sure. I like exploring.” 

“Very good! I have an old friend in the next village. It’s about five miles each way.”

“Count me in!”

When Sita told Amma, she was worried about going so far on foot. 

Sunny Iya was prepared. “Asha, I would like to go see my old friend Lakshmi. I owe her a visit.” Before Amma could object, he went on, “It’s just a walk to Kattipuram, a quiet path, no cars or scooters, just a few cyclists and cows. I don’t think the sun will be too bothersome for Sita.”

Amma looked very skeptical. “Lakshmi?” 

“Have you met her?” Sita asked. 

Amma shook her head. “Only when I was very young. I don’t remember her. But she and your Iya have been friends for a very long time.”

“My friend Lakshmi does not receive visitors very often,” Iya explained. “Though we’re dear friends, I do not get to see her much. ”

Amma sighed. “Fine. Please be back before it gets dark.”

 Sunny Iya put together a small tiffin carrier with rice, chickpeas, and fruit for lunch. He filled a stainless steel canister with water. Sita offered to carry the backpack, but he insisted he could do it.

Unlike yesterday, he walked briskly and with almost single-minded purpose. He did not talk much. Sita thought she saw a little worry crossing his face. A few times, he touched the white scar on his chin. She filled the silence with stories about Hamilton, playing tennis and the violin. She talked about her father, too, and all the silly things he used to do. 

“You were so lucky, Cheetu-chelam,” Sunny Iya said. 

There were few people to greet along the route, only a few children whacking cricket balls in a field and a priest sitting outside his temple. They made it to the village of Kattipuram in less than two hours. It was a much smaller place than Pachaippatti. There were no cars, no main square or shops, just a little thatched hut where a boy was selling cigarettes, fried snacks, and guavas. “You don’t have to worry about your bag being snatched out here.” Sunny Iya laughed. “We’ll hardly see any people. Even the district buses don’t come out this far.”

Sunny Iya told her that four ancient families had mansions here, but the buildings had all fallen into disrepair. The owners rarely came to the village to tend to their properties. His friend’s house was the most remote one. The path was barely passable, it was so overgrown with bushes and creepers. 

“So how do you know this friend?” I asked. “Did you grow up together or something?”

“Lakshmi Ayah?” He paused for longer than she expected. “She’s older than me. She lived in Pachaippatti as a child. We did know each other, and then she moved away, and we lost contact. Eventually, we got back in touch.”

She had an odd feeling, though not a bad one. She wondered if this woman and Sunny Iya were romantically involved. She tried not to laugh, thinking it was utterly preposterous. 

Sunny Iya went on, “Lakshmi Ayah was active in politics during India’s independence struggle with the British. In 1942, I was still a young man full of ideas. Some people called me a hot-head. Let’s just say that Lakshmi Ayah helped me channel those ideas.”

“You, Sunny Iya, a hot-head? I can’t believe it.”

“I was a rather reckless young fellow. Lakshmi Ayah and I have remained close since that time. Some people think she’s an eccentric old woman, but she is a pillar of the community in ways those people don’t even realize. She and I sometimes have greater differences now than we used to. You may see a little of that today. We enjoy sparring with each other.” He chuckled. 

They passed through the encroaching forest and reached a mansion that did not seem as if it could be inhabited, looking more like a forbidding and enormous pile of rubble than a functioning house. Monkeys hunched in the windows. A snake with white stripes slid past them not ten feet away. 

Sunny Iya was unfazed. “Lakshmi Ayah is a widow. Her husband’s family built this house in the middle of the nineteenth century. They used to host British officers here. But now she lives alone except for a servant, and she has no interest in restoring the place to its former glory.”

“How can she stay here? It’s overrun!”

“She doesn’t mind the animals. They provide company.”

They climbed a huge set of crumbling stairs up to a vast, rusty gate. 

“Richly dressed guards with turbans used to stand at attention at these gates,” Sunny Iya said. 

The rusty gate whined when Sunny Iya opened it, and there was an echo through the front hall. She felt a little tingle, something familiar, something she could not pinpoint. 

“Don’t we have to knock or something?” she asked.

“Lakshmi Ayah doesn’t keep the house locked. She has nothing valuable, and she can take care of herself if someone came in to make mischief.”

They walked through the granite entryway, down a narrow corridor, and then into a large hall. A woman sweeping the floor looked up without warmth. She spoke to Sunny Iya briefly in Tamil, and then left. 

He said nothing. 

“What happened?” Sita asked.

“Lakshmi is not here yet,” Sunny Iya said, “She was called away this morning.”

“Called away?”

Sunny Iya shook his head slowly, saying, “As I told you and your mother this morning, Lakshmi Ayah travels often. She spends a lot of time outside of the village, but I didn’t think she was going anywhere today. She went somewhere with her car and driver. That woman who talked to me is Valli. She is Lakshmi Ayah’s attendant. She helps around the house and handles minor affairs. She would not tell me where Lakshmi Ayah has gone.” 

He suggested they eat, so they sat on the floor. Sita ate slowly, but felt uneasy in the house. She watched a pale brown gecko squiggle down a soot-stained wall and then scurry back up again. She had seen the gecko before. The exact way it moved back up the wall. 

Sunny Iya did not eat much. He packed up the food, and then paced the hall, looking at his watch. 

“You are seeing another side of me, no?” he said. 

Sita had no response. She walked around the hall herself, then went down another corridor into a smaller sitting room. There were a few framed pictures on the wall. One picture was of the house in better days. And there was a wide photo, a shot of a large group of people in three rows. On a table were dried flowers and a photo of a young man. There were a few dusty cushions on the ground, and a mat woven of straw. Sita felt her breath coming in spurts, her heart beating faster. She had seen the mat before – not merely a similar one at Sunny Iya’s house, but this very mat. The dusty cushions, too, with their faded blue chevron pattern on a red background. She had seen all of it.

She pushed the thought back, and tried to slow her breathing. She hurried back to the large hall and Sunny Iya. 

“Have we….” she asked, and then stopped. “Have we come here before?”

“Yes,” he admitted. He looked at her, an inexplicable sadness in his eyes. “But you were not even a year old.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why do I remember this place if I was only here as a baby?”

“I don’t know,” he murmured. “You should not remember this house.”

“Who is she?” she demanded.  Who is Lakshmi?”

“You will call her Lakshmi Ayah since she is your elder.” 

For the first time, Sunny Iya infuriated her. 

“Please just tell me,” she said. 

From the front of the house came the sound of the gate. There were footsteps and quiet voices. Then the attendant, Valli, came into the hall, followed by another woman. 

Sita had dreamt of her. No, Sita had actually seen her. She knew the stern, beautiful face, the way the woman moved, the whole shape of her. The woman had long black hair parted in the middle. She wore a red sari, and a sleek black vest. She had a dark complexion and a red bindi on her forehead. She was thin, but tall and imposing. It was hard to tell her age. She was carrying a thin book under her arm.

“Dr. Sunny,” she said simply without any greeting or warmth.

“Dear Lakshmi Akka! Did something unexpected happen?” Sunny Iya asked, “You went away without any word or warning. Valli wouldn’t tell me anything.”

“It is not her position to tell you,” Lakshmi said. “And you should not consider it too much trouble to wait a little while.” She patted the book under her arm. “I was late to meet you because I needed to gather some information related to my book.”

Sunny Iya nodded as if that explained everything. “I brought my granddaughter with me,” he said. 

“I am pleased.”

She did not look pleased. She studied Sita, and Sita stared back. There was a long uncomfortable silence. 

Finally, Lakshmi said, “Sita, my girl, the shape of your mouth and eyes is unchanged. Did you know you came to visit me once when you were an infant?”

“Sunny Iya just told me,” Sita said quietly. 

“Only now, hmm?”

Sunny Iya seemed to diminish further. 

“Why are we here, Iya?” Sita asked. “Just tell me.”

“You are here because I insisted,” Lakshmi said. “Now let us all sit.” She took a place on a floor mat and put down her book. Sunny Iya joined her. Then she called loudly for Valli. The woman appeared quickly, and Lakshmi barked, “Valli, bring us some coffee. We cannot be rude to our guests.”

She looked around the room. “I love my home,” she said. “But it is not what it used to be. My husband and I, we used to entertain dignitaries, thinkers, and leaders of all kinds. Indira Gandhi herself once came here when she was a young woman.” Then she paused and sighed. “The last year has been full of terrible tragedy in India. Indira was assassinated. Those bloody riots consumed Delhi. Then a few weeks ago, that Air India plane was blown out of the sky by murderous thugs!”

“What are we doing here?” Sita asked again. 

“Join us here on the mat,” the woman said, “You don’t need to be a petulant teenager.” 

Sita sat down but not too close to either of them. 

Lakshmi began, “Now I shall explain –”

Sunny Iya cut her off with a harsh “No!” His eyes softened as he looked at Sita. “I will explain to her first. I owe her that.”

“Iya?” Sita said, feeling her breath coming fast. 

He nervously edged closer to her, took her hand in his, and squeezed it gently. His fingers felt warm and reassuring, but she felt him tremble. He started, “What I have to tell you is difficult to describe in words. But I know you will understand.”

It dawned on her at last

Sunny Iya paused again, and Lakshmi butted in, saying, “A long time ago....”

“I will explain,” Sunny Iya snapped. 

Sita slapped the floor. “Just tell me already!” 

At that moment Valli returned carrying stainless steel cups of coffee and a plate of twisty murukku, the fried rice snack. She put everything on the floor near the sitting mat and retreated. Sita did not touch any of it. 

Sunny Iya took a cup, sipped his coffee, and said, “You are unique, Chittu-chelam. You are truly special.”

Her heart started skipping. She wanted to know. And she did not want to. 

He continued, “Immediately after your bag was stolen, do you remember that I fell down?”

“Yes.”

“I imagine it looked very strange, as if I were trying to chase the thief and tripped. ”

Sita nodded. 

“I was trying to recover the bag, but not in the way you would expect.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you ever wondered if it is possible to change an event that has already happened? Do you think one could go back in time? To make a different choice? To fix a flaw? To recover something?”

“Go back?” Sita muttered. 

She realized that a normal person would have started laughing. Or perhaps a normal person would have assumed that her grandfather had lost his mind. 

Sunny Iya asked, “Have you ever experienced anything like this? It may have just started a few weeks ago.”

“Weeks?” Sita said.

“Have you experienced it?” Sunny Iya asked.

“Yes,” she whispered. “For more than weeks.”

“Months?” he asked. 

“Years.”

“What!” he cried. 

“Since I was six years old.”

She saw that Lakshmi had a knowing and eerie smile on her face again. 

Sunny Iya looked astonished and terrified. “I had no idea. I did not expect you would have started so soon! My God, Cheetu-chelam! You’ve had these experiences since you were six!”

She nodded. 

“Did you tell anyone? Did you –”

Lakshmi cut him off. “We can discuss that later. Tell her what she is!”

Sunny Iya hesitated. Then he said, “You are a sevaka, a person who has an ability called shakti. You cannot go far back in time, but a few minutes.” He paused and touched the scar on his chin. “Time spools backward, and suddenly, a word can be taken back and something else said in its place, and action can be withdrawn and redone. An injury can be prevented. If a small child runs into a road and is struck by a bus, it is possible to go back in time and push the child out of harm’s way before the tragedy happens. Yesterday when the thief took your bag, I tried to go back and prevent him from taking it in the first place.” Then he looked down. “But something went wrong. I did not go back in time. I merely fell down.”

“Something went wrong?” Sita asked. 

“He is getting old!” Lakshmi said. 

Sita started laughing maniacally. She felt untethered from the earth. “I used to think I was crazy,” she said. “I thought I was having hallucinations. You can ask Dr. Durbala. She’ll tell you.” 

“Who is Dr. Durbala?” Sunny Iya asked. 

“My therapist! The doctor I’ve been seeing for almost two years because of the unnatural thoughts and experiences in my head.”

 “Those are not unnatural,” Sunny Iya said. “Other people would not understand. You are experiencing shakti, going back in time three minutes. It can be very disorienting, especially since you were so young and unable to control it. For that, I am very sorry.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me before? Why did you wait until you brought me here?”

“This was something both of us had to explain to you,” he said. “You cannot imagine how pained and full of regret I am. I did not know it started when you were six years old.”

“Why did both of you have to tell me?” Sita demanded.

“Because,” Lakshmi said slowly, “I have the ability, too. We three have it! We are all able to travel back in time.”

Sunny Iya whispered her words again, “We three!” Then he added, “I was more successful in retrieving your bag this morning. I left very early. I know many people in Pachaippatti, and one of the young men I talked to told me who might have stolen your bag. I went to this scoundrel’s house. He was still asleep and snoring. The first time I went into his house, it took me some time to find the bag. The thief awoke and I ran out. Then I went back three minutes in time, and tried again. I knew exactly where to go, and I was quieter. I managed to retrieve the bag without disturbing the thief.”

The question burst from Sita’s mouth. “Can I be cured? Can I get rid of this thing, shakti?”

The lady’s laugh was painful. “No! Can you be cured of your hands and fingers? Can you be rid of your lungs and heart?”

The silence bloomed for a long time until Sunny Iya finally said softly, “You are a sevaka. You will learn to control shakti. You will understand how to move the switch that turns shakti on. Lakshmi Ayah and I will teach you. And we will tell you the full history of shakti and how it came into the world.”

Again, a part of her wanted to know everything, and another part hoped that by not knowing, she would be free of it. She asked, “What good is it, huh? What’s the point of traveling back three minutes?”

Sunny Iya nodded. “Going back three minutes is a powerful thing if you are in the right time and place.”

Lakshmi said, “You were born a strong sevaka. In you, shakti is even greater than your grandfather’s. That’s why you have had so many experiences of time travel from a young age. I sensed all of this in you when I saw you as a baby. I touched your tiny hands to my book.”

“That book?” Sita asked.

She picked up the book at her knee and touched its old cover. “This book tells important truths about shakti, though it is quite oblique, almost impenetrable. I have been studying it for a long time. Today, before you came here, I was in a town fifty kilometers away where I found three missing pages from the book.” She pulled some folded torn paper from the inside back cover. 

She looked triumphant, then tucked the papers back into the book, and pushed it under her knee. 

Sita did not know what to make of it, and asked another burning question, “Does Amma have shakti?”

“No,” Sunny Iya said. “No one else in the family has it besides you and me.”

“Perhaps there are or will be others,” Lakshmi said. “We do not know yet.”

He grimaced. 

Sita asked, “Are there sevaka from other places besides India?” Sunny Iya nodded. “Yes, we believe other people around the world have it, too. There are other sevaka in America, I am sure. But we are not connected in any way. We must find one another, one by one, just as Lakshmi Ayah and I found each other.”

“You should have told me sooner,” Sita said to him again. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“I know,” he rasped. 

“Can you really  control it?” Sita asked him. 

It was Laksmhmi who nodded. Then she cocked her head and bit her lip in fake sympathy. “Your father’s death was a great tragedy in your family.”

“What does that have to do with shakti?”

“You must face death,” she said imperiously. “It is something your grandfather and I knew before, and my book also says this again and again. If you wish to control shakti, you must first understand that life and death are woven closely together in the universe. You see, the memories of those we have lost help drive shakti. You must learn to use the memory of your father to trigger the time travel. If he had not died, you would still have shakti, of course. But his passing makes you more powerful. When you need to go back three minutes, you will remember him, and with that memory, you will not experience the side effects, the uncomfortable feeling in your stomach, the feeling of being lifted up and dropped. With the memory, you will smoothly travel back three minutes. You will also learn to suppress shakti, so you do not go back in time when you don’t want to. With practice, you will not have unexpected episodes.”

“Episodes?” Sita snorted. “Is that what you call them? I don’t want to use Dad to go back three minutes.”

“If you do not learn, you will only be tortured by it,” Lakshmi said. “When you least expect it, you will be thrown back three minutes. Or worse! Have you ever experienced a loop in time?”

“What?” Sita felt like she was going to gag. 

Lakshmi nodded. “Have you ever gotten stuck? I know it has happened to you. You have gone back three minutes, then looped back again and again, living those same minutes over and over.”

“How do you know that?” Sita asked.

But Lakshmi did not answer that question. Instead she said, “The loop in time is the great danger of shakti.” 

Sunny Iya added, “It can be unpredictable. Shakti demands focus, quiet, calm, gratitude, strength. Even a strong sevaka can get stuck if she does not focus properly or if she is careless or overconfident. But there is always the danger, being stuck in a loop, the three minutes repeating many times, until finally the loop snaps.”

“It is a horror!” Lakshmi said with incredible, almost unnecessary force. “Being stuck, entombed in time!” She looked down at the book near her knee. 

Sunny Iya gave her a strange, quizzical look, then turned to Sita once more. His voice was kind, though she did not want to hear it. “You are strong. You do not need to suffer.”

“Can you take me home now?” she begged Sunny Iya. “Please.”

“There is more,” Lakshmi intoned. 

“I don’t want to know more!” Sita said 

Lakshmi’s voice was severe. “If you refuse, then I will to speak to your brother and sister.”

Panic shot through Sita’s body. “What?” 

Lakshmi nodded. “The twins may be sevaka, too. I would like to see them. I will be able to sense their shakti.”

“They don’t have it. They’ve never had any of my symptoms. I know! They’ve never gone back three minutes.”

“It may just be weaker in them,” Lakshmi said. “In you, shakti emerged very early, but for them, it may start as it did for me and your grandfather, in early adolescence. I will find out.”

“No. Leave them out of it. Leave my Dad out of it!”

Sita stood up and walked away unsteadily. 

“Wait,” Sunny Iya cried. “We will take it slowly. Shakti is part of who you are, but there is nothing to be afraid of. You will understand….”

Sita kept going. As she was about to leave the room, she gripped the massive teak door. She saw that the frame was carved with hundreds of small figures, animal and human. At her eye level was a gnarled tree with twisting branches that reached out from the door frame itself. It was stunning, strange, and beautiful. She had seen that design before, too. She rubbed her forefinger on the carved tree, feeling the smooth, worn finish. She had felt the tree like this before. It was intensely, sickeningly familiar. 

Still not turning to Lakshmi and Sunny Iya, she said in a loud voice, “I remember this place. I have strong memories of everything. I have been here before, right? I mean, not as a baby, but when I was older.”

Neither of them said anything. 

“Tell me!” Sita shouted. “Have I been here before, or am I just going crazy again?”

“No,” Sunny Iya replied wearily. You came here as a baby, but not again until today.”

Sita felt like she could not move. 

Finally, Lakshmi said, “It is impossible. You could not have such memories. That kind of deja vu is....” The old woman stopped, paused, and did not continue. 

It was enough. Sita started walking, faster and faster, gasping for fresh air as she rushed out of the vast and gloomy house.