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  “What did you say?”

  I cleared my throat. “Sorry, I had something in my throat.”

  She didn’t recognize me. We were exactly the same height and had the same shade of red hair. My body curved more than hers did, and for a change I think I was heavier than her—but tell that to her jeans. She must have needed help getting into them, they were so tight. And yeah, purple jelly shoes. Jesus, Mom.

  I looked around the gym and didn’t recognize anyone. Well, except for my mother. Only she was a teenager and didn’t know me. My thoughts flitted back to the bathroom. Maybe I was really still in there, passed out. How sad that I was wishing for that to be the truth.

  I searched for hidden cameras even though I knew that nobody would have gone through this much trouble to punk me. I grasped for anything that would make sense, because hanging out with my teenaged mother made none at all.

  Amadeus was rocking everyone, and I scanned the area for something or someone or anything that would make sense of my strange night. Truthfully, at that point, I’d mentally checked out a little. I couldn’t decide if I was dreaming or had accidentally swallowed somebody else’s medication, and my mind refused to process the events.

  None of the banners on the gym wall were from after 1985. I thought again about the mirror and seeing myself not be myself. The headache that had been beginning hit full strength like an ice pick between the eyes. I needed to get out of there, but where could I have go?

  I took off blindly, weaving through the crowd and unable to see over anyone’s head because I was short and they all had incredibly tall hair. Oh God, where was I? That really wasn’t the question, was it? I knew exactly where I was. The gym remained eerily familiar yet somehow out of context. The banners were different on the wall, but the polish and lines on the floor hadn’t changed.

  No, where wasn’t my problem. Oh God, when was I?

  “Wait!” Heather yelled from behind me, but I kept going. “Wait!”

  We hit the doors to the foyer at the same time and I fled to the corner of the atrium.

  “Are you okay?” She grasped my elbow and her concern cut like a knife because I had never needed my mom’s concern more than at that very moment, only she didn’t even know my name.

  “Do you want me to take you home?”

  I shook my head. Unless she had a DeLorean and maybe a spare flux capacitor, that wasn’t likely to happen.

  “I’ll be all right.” What else could I say? “But…thanks.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Carrington.”

  “Oh my God. I love that name! You are so lucky.”

  Yep, she was my mom, all right.

  I kept searching her face for some kind of recognition. Logically, that didn’t track, of course. But since logic had very little to do with my predicament, it seemed reasonable that maybe a piece of her would know me on some level.

  “Are you new?” she asked.

  “Kind of.”

  She scrunched her face up. I’d seen that expression before, usually when she was trying to balance the checkbook or figure out her taxes.

  “Well, I mean, yes. I’m new, but I haven’t started yet. I just wanted to check out the sitch…you know…see what it was like here.”

  “It must be hard to be new, huh? Especially here. Most of us have known each other since kindergarten. My name is Heather; I probably already told you that. You want to hang with us after the dance? We’re going to the beach. Bonfire and keg. It’ll be fun and you can meet some other kids from school.”

  Okay. Yes, a part of me got pissed off. I mean, I’d been beating myself up most of the night for wanting to go to a kegger but not wanting to be a disappointment to my mother—and now she wanted to take me to one?

  “Sounds like fun.” Except…then what?

  “Do you want to call your mom and just tell her you’ll be spending the night at my house?”

  Did I ever.

  I nodded and pretended to make a call at the public phone at the other end of the hall while she and a group of other girls huddled together. Probably talking about me. Despite my outfit, I didn’t fit in. I knew it and they knew it.

  They turned out to be really nice. We all piled into my mom’s car, and she peeled out of the parking lot to the tune of “Dancing on the Ceiling.” To which they all sang along. Loudly. Off-key too. Then someone lit a cigarette. I felt like the only grown-up in the car. Cosmic joke, anyone?

  Thank God I hadn’t dressed up in full-on costume that night. Apparently, during the ‘80s, nobody really dressed like Madonna except for Madonna. The night would have been a lot more difficult if I’d have worn a cone-shaped bra. Just sayin.

  As it was, it was difficult enough. I, for one, didn’t want to go to a kegger with my mom. Ever. Especially not the same night I: a) traveled time or b)overdosed on some wicked, scary punch. I wanted, at that moment, to go home. I missed my room, my bed, Mr. Bear, and my iPod. I didn’t want to be the victim of sci-fi gone awry.

  I leaned back into my seat and watched my small town look familiar and different by turns. The old library stood tall, not yet torn down to make room for Hootenanny’s, our quaint hometown answer to T.G.I. Friday’s. O’Malley’s gas station hadn’t changed over the decades.

  Decades. I was somehow in a car about ten years before I was born. It was impossible, but it was happening. What did I know about time travel? I remembered movies and some stories I’d been forced to read. What was that word? Pantox? Pandora? Paradox? That was it: paradox.

  If I screwed up, I could wipe myself off the timeline, couldn’t I? Crap. I shouldn’t have talked to my mom. Now she’d met me before she birthed me. That couldn’t be a good thing.

  I panicked. The headache hit again, full-force and not helped by the cigarette smoke in the car. I had to think. When did Mom and Dad meet? 1990? So, probably I wasn’t going to screw that up. But what if I did? What if…? I needed help. Serious help. Maybe I should have gone back to the bathroom at the gym and stared in the mirror. Or maybe that would take me someplace else. What if I spent the rest of my life ping-ponging through the ages?

  I rubbed my temples and tried to relax, which wasn’t easy while “Heather” drove. She rode the breaks to the beat of the music and she kept talking and laughing with the girl in the passenger seat instead of looking at the road. No wonder she had reservations about letting me drive. Gawd.

  We arrived at the beach in one piece. The fire was going and the keg already attracted a crowd holding red plastic cups. The salty air and the familiar sights soothed me. Some things in life were constant. Red cups and beer kegs didn’t change.

  Mom—er, Heather—opened up her trunk and pulled out a couple two-liter bottles of orange wine cooler. Well, like I said, some things were constant. My mother and wine apparently. I’d never seen it come in a two-liter plastic bottle, though. It looked like Tang.

  The jelly shoes and beach sand were bad partners, so I removed them and sat on a log in front of the fire, declining offers of alcohol. No beer buzz necessary. I already didn’t know what year it was.

  “You look cold.”

  Over my shoulder, a boy my age (ha) offered me a blanket.

  “Thanks.”

  He smiled and sat next to me. Totally cute. “I’m Otto. Otto Wickman.”

  I smiled. “Carrington.”

  Fantastic. The mayor was about to flirt with me. And he was thirty-one flavors of hotness and I was going to have to pass.

  We kept the convo light. Boys, even the ones decades older than me, flirted the same way. I kept steering the topic back to him, laughed at his jokes, but didn’t return the subtle lean when he pushed closer. He smiled, moved back to starting position, and scanned the crowd for his next mark while remaining polite and charming. Total politician, but overall nice guy.

  He moved on, eventually, assuring me I could return his blanket on Monday. Two seconds later, Heather took his spot.

  “Ohmygod. You move fast. Did he ask you ou
t?” She offered me a drink.

  I shook my head. “No and no,” I answered. “We just talked.”

  “Otto is an awesome kisser.” She smiled, and I almost gagged. I didn’t want to imagine that, thanks. Heather was young and skinny, but she was still my mother.

  “Are you guys…a thing?” She had neglected to tell me, in all her stories of yore, that she’d kissed the mayor of Serendipity Falls when they were in school.

  “No, not anymore. But it’s no big. You can totally have him.”

  Oh joy. I can have my mom’s cast-offs?

  Focus, Carrington. “No. Really. He’s not my type anyway.”

  She tucked her hair behind her ear. It reminded me of how she always did that to mine. It used to drive me crazy, and the minute she turned her back, I used to shake it back out.

  “He’s not your type?”

  I shook my head.

  “I see. Which part of cute-smart-rich-nice don’t you like?”

  I laughed. So, finally I found the source of my own sarcasm. “The part where I’m the new girl and I need to get settled before I make out with a random guy at a kegger.”

  “Totally good plan. But I’ll watch out for you and make sure you don’t make out with anyone undignified.”

  Oddly, that made me feel better.

  “So you haven’t been drinking. Are you totally straight or just straight tonight?”

  My first instinct was “totally straight,” but then I realized she wasn’t asking if I was a lesbian, she wanted to know if I partied—’80s term. “Kind of just tonight,” I assured her. “Nerves and booze are a bad combination.”

  “How do you feel about nerves and pizza?”

  “Something about gooey cheese totally relaxes my nerves.”

  She handed me her keys. “I’m taking advantage of you being new and sober.”

  “Cool.”

  “We can crash at my house and watch videos on MTV.”

  “MTV plays videos?” Huh.

  “You’re kind of a strange girl, Carrington.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  And then I went to my first slumber party at my grandma’s house.

  I COULDN’T sleep. Heather (Mom), Sissy, and Jennifer fell asleep during Sixteen Candles, which we watched on a videotape with bad tracking. I was surprised that she conked out. In the twenty-first century, I believe she’d classify that as the ultimate insult to all things Molly Ringwald.

  Too restless to watch any more videos, I wandered down the hall and sat on the familiar stairs overlooking the living room. Grandpa snored in his recliner in front of the television, and the sound and sight of him brought tears to my eyes. He looked so young.

  When I was little, my parents would bring me to this house on date night. Grandma and Grandpa would take me out for cheeseburgers and then we’d come back and watch a movie. Grandma would tuck me in my mom’s old bed, and I’d lie there sleepless for hours until I finally couldn’t stand the dark anymore. I’d amble down the hallway and settle on the stairs to watch Grandpa snooze.

  I remembered the smell of the paint on the banister rails, the feel of my footie jammies pulling on me when they were too small, the heaviness of my eyelids when sleep finally came for me. Grandpa usually woke up at some point, and he’d pick me up and carry me back to bed, tucking me in and patting my head. The next morning, Grandma always made pancakes, and while we ate, Mom and Dad showed up to take me home.

  Sitting on the stairs this time claimed my heart in a really achy way. I longed for the ease of childhood—but if I had to face this strange experience, at least I had my family. Kind of.

  The next morning, I knew I had to come up with a plan. At the very least, a story. I had forty dollars in my pocket, but I couldn’t spend it for another twenty years according to the print date. I was going to need food, shelter, and probably psychiatric counseling—none of which I wanted to think about while eating Grandma’s pancakes in the kitchen that hadn’t changed much since the ‘80s. Funny how I’d never noticed the sameness of it while growing up.

  Jennifer and Sissy went home, leaving me alone with Heather finally. We sat on her bed reading magazines. The styles had changed a lot, but other than the pictures, I don’t think the magazines were all that different. The articles still preached “be your own person” and “make your own style” while they printed a hundred glossy pages showing you how to be like everyone else.

  It was hard to focus because I felt guilty for still being there. It would have been best to leave. I kept thinking I could screw up history and the future and God knew what else. But then again, Heather and the grandparents were my blood. Just because they didn’t actually know me didn’t mean they wouldn’t love me, right? Where else could I go?

  “Earth to Carrington.” She waved her hand in front of my face.

  I meant to say something light, laugh off my spaciness. Instead, our eyes met and I said, “Heather, I’m in big trouble.”

  She nodded. “I kinda figured. Spill.”

  Sure. I’m your time-traveling daughter from the future didn’t feel like the right approach. “I’m…in the…Witness Protection Program.” I have no idea where that came from, but her eyes widened and she leaned closer, so I fingered the rosebud quilt (that’s still on the bed in my time, by the way) and kept going. “My parents and I…um…got separated. I’m really worried.”

  “Oh my God. You’re all alone?”

  I nodded. “And that is all I can tell you. For your safety and mine. I’m sorry, I wish I could give you the whole story but…”

  “Is it really bad? Like horrid?”

  I nodded solemnly.

  “You can totally stay here.”

  “I…shouldn’t.” I lowered my voice and looked around the room suspiciously. “I don’t want to put your family in…danger.” Man, I was good.

  She wouldn’t let me go on. I was staying with her until I found my parents and that was final. She’d always wanted a sister.

  Heather made up a story to tell her parents so they would let me stay. Grandma was always soft-hearted, but it felt awfully weird when Heather told me she’d convinced Grandma into letting my stay by telling her my parents drank too much.

  Okay—so food and shelter were taken care of, for a little while, and I could put off the counseling for now. But getting out of my mess meant I needed to figure out how I got into it first. That might take some doing.

  Heather drove me around for a “grand tour” of the town I grew up in. Despite my obvious sarcasm, it was probably a good thing because a lot had changed. We ended up at the arcade—which in 2011 is a really lame clothes store that caters to old women who cruise. As in the seas, not the streets.

  None of Heather’s crowd actually played video games at the arcade. A few of the boys did, but mostly it was just a good place to hang out. The snack bar sold fifteen different kinds of soda and you could get it in cups bigger than your head. There were also televisions in all the corners showing MTV videos. Not that you could hear the music over the hundred different games.

  Her friends squealed a welcome when we walked in the door, and from then on they grated on my nerves. My thoughts were hyperfocused on things that seemed so much bigger than who mashed with whom last night. For one thing, I didn’t know anyone they were talking about, and for another—for crying out loud, who cares?

  I inhaled deeply and tried to plug back in to the conversation—I didn’t want to be Ms. Buzzkill. Plus, I might be stuck here forever, so it was possible I might really need to know who made out with whom last night. How depressing.

  Sissy and her boyfriend, Jake, were having “relationship issues.” This necessitated a lot of attention from Heather. Still, it was nice to watch Mom in friend mode. She listened intently and every time she agreed with Sissy, she nodded and her big bangs flopped around. I had to hide my smile, because I thought it was really cute.

  It occurred to me that the arcade might be a good place to recruit some help. All
the computer games should draw the nerds like a mall draws cheerleaders. And I needed a nerd or two with specialized knowledge. For one thing, I could use some help with the paradox issue.

  Also, I needed to figure out how to hack myself into the school’s computer system so I could attend school without the benefit of previous records and parental signatures. School would have been lower on the list of things to do to straighten out my breach of the space-time continuum, but the mirror in the girls’ room was possibly my ride home, so I required an all-access pass.

  I struck up a conversation with the nearest girl at the table since Heather was busy dispensing guy advice to Sissy. “Jennifer, I need help with science.”

  She sipped her diet drink and looked at me over the rim. “I’m probably not the one to ask.”

  “No?” Shocker. “But I bet you know who can tutor me.” Her vacant stare didn’t encourage me. I gestured to the rest of the room. “Which of those guys watches too much Star Trek?” She shrugged. “Who breaks the curve in science class?” She bit her lip. “Carries around a worn out copy of The Hobbit?”

  “Oh!” She set down her cup and pointed to two boys playing a space game in the corner. “Those two tried to get my brother to play Dungeons & Dragons last year.”

  Bingo.

  “I’ll be right back.” I slid from chair and maneuvered the maze of flash and noise, completely zeroed in on my targets.

  In the ‘80s, as in the future, nerds are never as exaggerated as, say, movie nerds. Regular nerds might have a feature (usually the hair) that stands out as being “different” from the teeming masses of us who would just die if we were singled out as not fitting in. A lot of times, it was just their IQ. Most are normal kids who just don’t put as much emphasis on what they look like as the rest of us.

  The two in front of me were not like that.

  They were movie nerds. One of them even had headgear on. He played the space game while the other watched and critiqued.