Purple Blues [Elvis]

Chapter 28 - Was All That A Dream?

"I do? Maybe the other me, before 1956."

Concern filled Grandma's features. I took my phone back and looked up YouTube. I watched the Ed Sullivan Show videos that I had watched before, only this time... I was in them, sitting on that stool. I looked up the video where I was first filmed, and I looked up other videos of our interviews and appearances, and Grandma listened as I watched. After, I went back to the images and looked up my name with his. Up popped all sorts of pictures of the two of us. More tears came...

"It wasn't a dream."

"What?"

"It wasn't a dream, Grandma!" I hollered. "I was really there! This is me, not some other girl! How do you think I was right about everything that happens, huh?! Cell phones, TV, all of it!"

She swiped my phone away. "Oh, Katelyn, will you please stop it? You're scaring me."

"How do you explain all of this?!"

She let out a heavy sigh. "It was all a publicity thing that girl did. She was right, and yes, many people believed she was from the future, but really, it was all things she came up with. I myself didn't believe her back then. I was more jealous than anything else, that she was Elvis's sweetheart."

"But... her name is the same as mine."

"Yes, just the first one. Your last name is Haines." She shook her head as she stared at me. "Maybe you should just stay home from school. You're going a little crazy here."

All that wasn't a dream. I was really there.

"No, Grandma. I'm going to school."

I opened the car door and got out. Before I shut it, Grandma said, "Hey, I thought that you wanted me to come with you to talk to your principal."

"No need to involve the principal. I can deal with this on my own."

I left the car and cantered up to the school entrance. I saw the group of boys who liked to make fun of me. Their ringleader saw me first and he made a nasty smirk, a far cry from Elvis's smirk. "Hey, isn't it the jailbird spawn?"

My whole body heated with fury. "Okay, enough is enough!" I screamed at him. "So what? I was born in a prison. Big deal! Everyone has to be born somewhere. How about you all just keep your rotten comments to yourselves, huh?" He about said something, but, "I said enough! Making those comments makes you scum, not me. You just leave me alone!"

I stormed off, and I heard that group of guys snicker. One of them said, "Whoa, dude, you've been told!"

"Shut up!"

That felt good. Insanely good. It was about time I did that. But before, I didn't have the confidence. Thanks to 1956, I got it. And I could admit, it was refreshing to walk by people and not have them freak out that I was there. I thought I would hate it.

I went inside the school and to my locker. I stared at my backpack for a moment. I got my phone out and pulled up YouTube again. For the second time since I watched it in the car, I watched the video of Elvis coming in and interrupting my interview with Ed Sullivan.

"It all really happened."

I looked up and saw some girls with purple in their hair, more so than I remembered from before I got sent back in time. I really did set a trend, just like Elvis did.

I got back to my phone and scrolled through the videos of me and Elvis, read comments and made comments. A video came up that made my heart jump. The title read, "Elvis Sings Loving You To 50s Sweetheart Katelyn Brier".

"This is dated 1968," I mumbled. "That's when he does his comeback concert."

I clicked on it, curious. At the beginning of the video, he said, since this was a performance at one of his concerts, and he wore black leather, "Ladies and Gentlemen, I wanna sing somethin' special for ya, a song that I recorded about eleven years ago. As ya'll may know, I had a relationship with a girl named Katelyn Brier back then, a girl you'll remember as the girl from the future. Honestly, folks, it broke my heart when she suddenly left, and I don't think I really recovered from it, so... I just wanna convey a little bit of what I felt then and some of what I feel now concernin' that matter. And to Katelyn, wherever you are, I hope you're able to see and listen to this someday." He started singing.

My eyes wet, I covered my mouth as I listened, taking in each word, and watching his sad blue eyes as he sings. I left him abruptly, right before he left for Memphis. He came back and I was gone. That broke him, enough to sing this song for me over a decade later.

I looked at other videos and saw that the 1968 video wasn't the only one with my name in the title. I tapped on one, dated 1957, a black-and white one, one in which he sings the same song. It looked to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. Elvis gave a little introduction before his song, just saying, "Friends, I wanna sing y'all a song tonight, a song that I wanna dedicate to Katelyn Brier who left so suddenly last year, as y'all know. Katelyn, if you're out there somewhere, I just want you to know, I miss you more than anythin'. I love you and wish you would come back."

He started singing and my tears flowed. I found other performances that he dedicated to me. Some from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and even one from the 90s, all different songs... And after every one, he wiped his eyes of tears, even as a sixty-year-old man.

I stared at my phone screen after the sixth video I watched, my heart hurting. I broke his heart. He moved on and married and had four kids, yes, but from all those songs, I gathered that he couldn't forget me, that maybe he loved me until he died.

We were each other's first real, deep love, a love that people say impacts you the most. It was true. I knew that I would never forget him, the love I felt for him, or the experiences I had with him back in 1956, for the rest of my life. He never forgot, either, until the end.