Slam

Sam admits that he isn’t sure whether what happened next was real or something he imagined or dreamed. He goes to sleep and wakes up in the middle of the night with Alicia beside him and their baby son crying at the end of the bed. Alicia starts prodding Sam to get up and help the baby, and Sam admits he doesn’t know what to do. He isn’t sure how he got here or where he has been for the past several months but theorizes that Tony Hawk somehow transported him to the future. He goes to help his son settle down but doesn’t know how to hold him, and Alicia wonders what’s wrong with him. Sam, meanwhile, notices that she looks haggard and drained. He finally succeeds in lulling his son back to sleep and returns to bed, expecting to wake up in his own bed the next morning. Instead he wakes to the same reality. He goes downstairs to find Alicia and her parents having breakfast with the baby, whose name is Roof, much to his horror. Alicia’s parents ask if Sam has college this morning, and he has no idea, but leaves the house anyway to avoid suspicion. He goes back to his mum’s house but has no keys to get inside. He wanders the neighborhood and realizes nothing much has changed in the world, but his whole life is different.

Sam wonders why Tony Hawk would have done this to him, considering it’s too late for him to learn a lesson now that the baby is already here. It seems like a cruel joke. As he wanders around, he comes across Rabbit and asks him if he has a kid or not. Rabbit tells Sam that’s something he should know, and notes that he’s seen him with his son several times. Rabbit asks Sam if his son is named Roof because he was conceived on a roof, and Sam admits he has no idea where the name came from. Sam confesses he feels like he lost a year of his life, and Rabbit suggests that Sam vanished after finding out about his son. At home, Sam finds his mum with Roof. They go for a walk together and Sam realizes his mum is pregnant but is too embarrassed to admit he doesn’t know who the father is. That night, Alicia asks Sam if he loves her, and he doesn’t know the answer. He changes Roof’s diaper and is proud of himself. When he wakes up in the morning, he is back in his old life. He feels immense dread at becoming the person he just saw.

Sam decides that his best option is to run away, and chooses to go to Hastings, a town he visited with his mum a few years ago. He realizes he is being cowardly, but says “Roof was every bit as deadly to my chances of going to college to do art and design etc. as an al-Qaeda operative” (115). He packs a few things, grabs his skateboard and money, and takes a train to Hastings. As he sits by the sea and fairgrounds, he thinks about how all of his troubles are behind him and decides to throw his phone into the water. He starts asking around for a job, but everyone laughs at him and points out that the fairground is not exactly bustling. Sam heads to a bed and breakfast, where he finds an elderly man named Mr. Brady who demands help getting down the stairs and outside. Sam reluctantly agrees, and the man offers to pay him 20 quid a day if he keeps helping him up and down the stairs. Sam agrees, confident he can make it on 20 quid a day, and convinces the woman who works at the B&B to let him have a room, assuring her that he isn’t using it to sleep with girls.

In the middle of the night, Sam is woken up by Mr. Brady, who has dropped his remote down the side of his bed. He yells loudly at Sam until Sam goes to help, and as he searches for the remote, he realizes he wants to go home. He feels embarrassed for leaving Alicia and concludes that having a baby can’t possibly be worse than what he is currently enduring. When he gets home the next morning, he finds a police car outside his house, and at first it doesn’t occur to him why they’re there. Inside, his mum is crying, and when she sees him she demands to know where he’s been and why. The police leave, and Sam comes up with a story about being upset over his parents’ divorce, playing on his mother’s guilt. It works, and she goes to work while Sam decides to pay Alicia a visit. He can’t bring himself to approach her door, however, and instead stands outside for a while before going back home.