Another Boring Tour, Right?

The tour feels like it takes forever, me with my hands in my pockets the whole time nodding along as my new landlord explains the layout of the house and the general rules. I guess he's trying to make me feel welcome, but it's having the opposite effect actually and all I can think is how much living in this place is another step on the path towards isolating me from all the other, normal students.

God, maybe that was my parents plan all along.

Lucas is a nice enough guy, sure, and yeah it's not really his fault that shit shook out the way that it did but god I can't help but hate him a little bit. And he seems so full of himself, pointing out all the photos he has on the wall and name-dropping countries that he's been and honestly it's all that I can bring myself to do not to roll my eyes at him.

By the time we reach the kitchen on the first floor I'm already done and planning a path of egress from this. That set of stairs that he mentioned that leads up to my room in the attic is fortunate, I'll use that to get in and out. I was going to have to get a part-time job anyways because, as my father so lovingly put it, 'No child of mine is going to waste good working years without learning to earn money with real sweat and hard work,' but I should be able to funnel some of that off into buying a mini fridge and a hot plate second hand and so I'll be able to mainly keep to my room. I shouldn't have to deal with Lucas at all, I should be able to have a fairly normal year at school.

And I should be able to accomplish everything I want to, everything I planned to. Sure today was a bit of a bump in the road but I've already clearly made a friend and I've got a plan of attack. This is it, the first day of the rest of my life. This is my new beginning.

That was what I thought, my point of view, when Lucas reached the end of the tour in my first go round this life. I was so focused, absolutely fixated, on my own plans for the future that I'd never even stopped to listen. Forest for the trees, I guess, but this time was different.

I couldn't put my finger on what it was exactly, because even though I knew what had changed in this world and even though those changes stopped at the edges of my body I somehow understood that didn't account for all of the differences. I could say that it was that I was living a life without consequences now, that I was secure in my belief that this world didn't matter and therefore nothing that I did while I was in it made a difference because I was going to find the woman who sent me here and make her fix this for me, but the truth is that there is a difference between saying something and really believing it in your heart of hearts, and I don't know that I did.

The world just feels so real and so do I in it. Everything in this world shouldn't have any consequence, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it did. That somehow in spite of my best efforts I'd still be stuck here, still have to deal with things, still have to remain in this body and in this world and so everything I did right now should matter just as much as it did in any other version of this world including the one I'd already gone through. But even all of that couldn't account for the differences.

As Lucas led me around the house I nodded at his explanations and I listened to his words. I followed along, hands clasped in front of me and head up and eyes meeting his. When he made a joke I laughed at it. When he gave me one small tidbit of information I pressed for more.

I learned that he'd gotten a history degree and parlayed that into construction on heritage buildings. Then started up his own contracting business taking care of those buildings until he had a near monopoly on some key processes that had to do with the quirks of how buildings used to be put together and the way that laws required they continue to be maintained. He'd parlayed this expertise into basically managing those kinds of jobs, tasking off trusted contractors to take care of them, and that in time he'd been able to step back and let the people he hired take care of it for him. And I'd learned that while half the pictures were from jobs that he'd done, the other half were from trips he'd taken on his own because he was passionate about travel and passionate about history and engaging when he gave me information about his passion.

And I learned that when we reached the kitchen I didn't want to hide away anymore. I didn't see the purpose in it. I learned something about myself, through talking to him, and maybe that difference had nothing to do with the skin that I happened to be in.

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