All Hell Breaks Loose

Chapter Four

The next morning Zach woke up to a knock on his bedroom door – not his bedroom door; Cameron's. He had to remind himself again of where he was and when he was. "Come in," he told whoever stood just outside the room.

Cameron entered and closed the door quickly. "I'm sorry it's early, but last night Abby and I were talking and a thought kind of just hit me. I think maybe I know why we didn't at least switch bodies again after she believed us."

Zach rubbed his sleepy, unrested eyes. "Go on."

"Do you believe in Fate?" Cameron asked hesitantly.

Zach blinked in surprise. "Um, I guess I don't. Not really. Why?"

Cameron paced in front of the bed. He didn't know why he was so anxious explaining his theory, but he was. "Well I do. Last night I was thinking and what if Abby and I were meant to be together?"

Zach rolled his eyes. It was too early in the morning for this crap. "Then I would tell you congratulations, and to go be happy with her."

"No, just listen," Cameron told him. "You got together with Abby and I hated her. So we switched bodies, and then I fell in love with her. When I told her how I felt was the exact same night we told her the truth. We thought that was the key, but what if it was more than her believing? What if it was also her knowing that I love her? So that...So that we could get together in the future, after I went to Arkansas and brought her back with me."

Zach fussed with his head full of Cameron's hair. "You sound crazy. You know that right?"

"Fate wants us together, right? So in the future when we started fighting, Fate didn't like that and sent us back here so I'd figure out my feelings for Abby again."

"You're talking about fate like it's a person or something. And I'm not convinced. If this whole body-switching-time-travelling fiasco revolves around your relationship with Abby, then what the hell am I doing here?"

Cameron stopped pacing and thought about that. After a minute he thought he had the answer. "Because Abby is the key. In this time, she's really in love with you," Cameron couldn't hide the note of bitterness in his voice, "so maybe Fate brought you back to push her away from you and towards me."

"This makes less sense the more you go on," Zach said.

Cameron sat down on the bed and looked into his own green eyes intensely. "Zach, if you were acting like you did two years ago, Abby would never give you up. You loved her too, try as I might to get over that. As long as she knows how much you care about her, or how much she thinks you care about her, she'll never be with me." His voice broke on the last word, and he looked away.

"When we told her the truth last time she knew how much I loved her and she still left us."

"That's because it took us six months to tell her the truth. She was too pissed to care that you loved her."

Zach considered that for a moment. Everything had been his fault after all then. "So you go tell Abby how you feel and at least get us back in the right bodies. Then what? How does that bring us back to our time?"

Cameron thought about that for a second. "Honestly, I don't know. I guess we just hope that switching bodies will take us home the way it brought us here."

Again, Zach ran his hands through his hair. "Alright. I don't know how I feel about Fate playing a hand in our lives, but this theory could have some merit. Go talk to Abby."

Cameron blushed, suddenly sheepish. "The thing is, I don't really know how I feel about her right now." He watched Zach's expression turn exasperated and added, "I mean I love her, of course. I can't ever get over that. But, and there's no way you would know this already, the last thing I said to her was, 'What did I ever see in you?' So I have a lot of...stuff...to work out."