As his uncle changed the radio station again, Jace asked, “Why not food?”
“Huh? Oh, it’s not a Super Target yet. Won’t be expanded until 2003 or so. But it still has frozen meals and snacks. Anyway, we’re going mostly for clothes today.”
“I hate clothes shopping… And, man, Kettle looks like crap,” Jace commented after they passed by another batch of fast-food restaurants and gas stations.
“Not like it looks much better in twenty-five years, either. Sure, the road is fixed up and most of the places had been… will be refurbished or rebuilt, but it’s never not going to be an ugly, six-mile-long strip of dollar stores and cheap meals.”
When the Target sign appeared at the intersection ahead, Wes switched back to Royal Valley’s pop station, heard what was playing, and began to tap his hands on the steering wheel to the beat of Sheryl Crow’s All I Wanna Do. Thankfully, he didn’t go so far as to start singing along and embarrassing Jace as much as it was possible. Most of the songs across the stations were ones he had never heard, but there were a few that his uncle had played on Pandora when he visited his apartment, to annoy him.
So far on the drive, he had heard that tune about not chasing waterfalls, the one about the singer being a loser so somebody should kill him, a guy exclaiming that “this is how we do it,” and something about driving while “sipping on gin and juice.” He didn’t exactly get many of them, but he liked that he could understand most of the lyrics.
“It’s all so easy to start singing to, once you’ve heard ’em five of six times, you know?” Wes commented and pulled into the parking lot. “Not that the present doesn’t have songs you can pick up also, sure, but I think you too often have no idea what the artist is going on about. That, or it’s just something about partying and drug use again.”
“I usually like the beat more than the words,” Jace said with a shrug.
The two got out of the car and looked around at the shopping plaza, with the big, bulky Target as its centerpiece. Next door was a piano store that would eventually be absorbed into its neighbor’s future Super variant.
“That place doesn’t exist anymore. Does it sell pianos?” Jace questioned.
“Yup. Ivory Tickling… Always thought it was such a weird name. I barely ever saw anyone in there. Kind of a wonder it lasts another… two years, I think?”
“The whole plaza looks different. I think only the shoe store is the same.”
“Heh, yeah, you got it. You really don’t appreciate just how many times buildings swap owners over the years. Everything gets shuffled up slowly over decades.”
Once they made it past the sliding doors with the red frames, Jace was greeted with a familiar sight—and smell. The white and red warehouse-like place with the hundreds of fluorescent tubes had its usual aroma and generally looked the same, although the neon light signage was an aspect long forgotten in his time.
“Okay, so the layout is pretty similar.” Wes stopped and turned to Jace before they had stepped off the entrance area’s gray carpet that transitioned to tile. “You’re eleven. Lucy raised you to be a responsible kid. And I got a lot of foodstuff to buy for us. So, grab a cart, go look around a bit, and find yourself a few shirts and pairs of pants. Or shorts, since you clearly like them in the summer. Just pick what looks good to you.”
“I… I dunno, I don’t do much clothes shopping. What if I won’t fit in?”
“Kid, it’s all 90s clothes, remember? I would suggest a shirt that has the words ‘No Fear’ on it, and maybe one with a Looney Tunes character that looks like a gangster. But stay away from any giant pairs of jeans. They will not look good on you.”
“Uncle Wes, I’m not sure… I’m kinda still a little scared about being alone.”
“C’mon, Jace. You know this store. It just has fewer groceries. Go out there and discover stuff. We’re gonna be here for a bit. I have a lot of things to pick up.”
Wes gave him a pat on the back, grabbed a cart, and headed off on his own.
Once the adult had disappeared beyond the clothing and jewelry sections, Jace awkwardly pulled out one of the bright red shopping carts and pushed it across the clean white tile to the electronics section at the end of the store, since he was more curious about current video games than clothes at the moment. Having been one of the shorter students in his class, he could just barely see above the handlebar.
On the way, he paid attention to the families walking around, to see what the kids were wearing. He didn’t like most of what he saw, and by the time he was approaching the glass cabinets filled with boxed 16-bit cartridges, he had all but decided to simply try and pick out some threads that would form a close approximation to his modern outfit.
He paused before passing the movie and music racks to look around. He noticed that the CD selection was about as big as in the future version of the store. But in this time, it was more of an emerging media than one that had experienced its peak and was diminishing. Movie-wise, the shelves were all filled with videotapes—the Disney ones in their bigger “book” type packaging. He had never seen a tape in person, but examples of people enjoying the VHS era had appeared in some scenes from Wes’ movie collection.
He pushed his cart up to the video game aisle, left it by the end cap, and went in for a closer look. All of the cases were behind glass, instead of being out and attached to pull cords that would let him see the back. He first took in the sight of the tiny Sony PlayStation portion of the shelves, brand new and only having about a dozen games. In between it and the soon-to-disappear Nintendo Entertainment System section was a sliver of discs for the Sega Saturn, next to the last of the company’s Genesis games, its star player being the fastest ever blue hedgehog’s Sonic & Knuckles title.
By far the largest library belonged to the Super Nintendo, and it was a good year for the system. Titles like the sci-fi side scrollers Super Metroid and Mega Man 7, and the roleplaying epic Chrono Trigger, coincidentally about time travelers, were all at the top of the shelf. The gorilla-platformer Donkey Kong Country and the quirky modern-day RPG Earthbound, in its big box that came with a player’s guide, were also standouts.
He recognized a few of the titles from the times Wes had gone into long rants about this era being a golden age for gaming, but he was more taken aback by the fact that the store was asking for $70 for some of them. Kirby’s Dream Land 2, the pink puffball’s sequel in the Game Boy partition, was cheap by comparison at thirty bucks.
Jace swung around the back to check out the television display wall and had to let out a small laugh. With all twenty of the big old tube sets playing The Lion King, only one of which could even break the thirty-two-inch barrier, he wondered why they bothered to display them at all. Their screens were dark and low-resolution, the sound was either tinny or had too much bass, and even just the plastic shells were too ugly for him to accept them as legitimate portals to TV land. How did anyone put up with them?
Then he remembered that he’d be spending any television-watching time with a unit that was probably even older than any of those on the store’s shelves.
He sighed to himself and returned to his cart—only to find that it wasn’t there. He glanced into several nearby aisles, and quickly realized that it was completely gone.
“Ugh, 90s jerks…” he grumbled, having concluded that someone had taken it.
Instead of going back to get another one, he proceeded to the toy section. Once he arrived at their colorful corridors, he had to take a moment to ponder a curiosity. A sign marker separated one section specifically into a “Girls’ Toys” zone, which was very pink. He had an early memory of that still being the case when he was young, but by the time he was six, all of the toy placements had blended together. He remembered it being another one of those small changes that his mom seemed way too excited about.
Jace went through a few of the aisles and looked around. The Lego sets seemed interesting, as none of them were licensed yet, and they were all much simpler and had cool backdrops. A former brickhead, he did enjoy seeing boxes of to-the-point themes like Castle and Pirates, as well as the sci-fi underwater creations that made up Aquazone.
Aside from the masses of Legos, he also looked at or picked up and touched things like Power Rangers and G.I. Joe action figures, Nickelodeon’s toy that was little more than colorful blobs of slime which they called Gak, the tiny vehicles from Micro Machines—many of which were Star Wars related—and the equally small character of Mighty Max, who came with clamshell play sets that became animal heads when closed.
He had already learned about Pogs from his uncle, and the store only had a small selection left since the popularity of the children’s “gambling toy,” or printed milk caps, wasn’t quite what it used to be. But across from them on the other side was something more peculiar to Jace: a modern and final variation of Stretch Armstrong, the man who had limbs that could be pulled to extreme lengths. There was one left in stock.
He picked up the box and looked at the sides and back, remembering a particular picture of his uncle in one of his mom’s photo albums. He’d gotten the toy on his ninth, or maybe tenth birthday, and there was a picture of little Wes trying to tear the arms off with his ignored cake in the background. The snapshot had always stood out to Jace, because despite Wes’ constant insistence that his childhood was amazing, it was one of the few pictures Jace had seen where he actually looked genuinely happy.
As he was looking at the box, something inexplicable happened. The cardboard shell jittered and distorted for a split second before disappearing from his hands. And it wasn’t like someone had just yanked it from his palms; though they retained their grasping position, it felt as if they were never holding the box to begin with.
Startled, he quickly found it back on the shelf, exactly where it was before he had picked it up. He tried to rationalize what had just happened; if it had at all, or was only true in his mind. Cautiously and hesitantly, he grabbed a Street Sharks beefy shark-man action figure box, then studied and moved it in his hands in every way possible. Once he was sure that the anomaly wouldn’t repeat, he began to put it back on the shelf.
And it suddenly completed the return journey on its own, “jumping” from just inches away back to where it had been taken. Freaked out, Jace took a step back and peered down at his now untrustworthy hands. He realized what might have actually happened to his shopping cart, and then began to question if he was still real or not.
“Jace?” he heard his uncle exclaim and turned to see him. “What are you doin’ here? Thought you’d be at least browsing clothes. We’re gonna end up doing it together at this rate… Not that that’s terrible or anything. I could give you some tips.”
“What are you doing here? Buying toys?” Jace asked, noticing that Wes’ shopping cart, left behind, was still empty. “Aren’t you s’posed to be getting food for us?”
“Yeah, sure. I just ended up wanting to look around first. Ya know, even after only being here for a year last visit, the stuff in stock had really changed by the time I left. Thought I’d see what the store was like the moment we arrived. Oh, hey! I didn’t know they had a Stretch!” He beamed and went over to pick it up. “Man, it took me a week until I first came to the store last time. Must’a just missed him.”
“Uh, there’s something weird going on… with… objects?”
“Huh? What’s weird?” Wes asked and put the toy back.
Jace stared at his hands like they were ready to betray him again at any moment. “Maybe I’m going crazy, but the things I’m holding or whatever… They keep ‘glitching’ on me, like I never touched them at all. What the heck’s going on?”
“Um, hm. You’re touching stuff and then… Oh! Oh, yeah, that. You too, huh? My only advice is to not worry about it and keep trying.”
“Keep trying? What does that mean? What if I disappear or something?”
“You won’t. It’s not that dramatic. Same thing happened to me for a few weeks. I think… reality just needs some time to realize you’re here. Maybe when you travel through it, there’s a lot of displacement and quantum-y stuff that has to happen and be resolved. But don’t worry; you should become a true resident of 1995 soon. The glitch was happening to me a bit in 2020, but here, it’s gone. Maybe this year’s still used to me.”
“You know, you must be the worst time traveler ever. You have no idea how any of this works, do you? Did you even learn anything about it while you were here?”
“Never claimed that I did, kiddo.” Wes let out a sigh and looked around at the bright packaging with a smile. “Ya know, every time I pass through a toy section in a store, it brings me right back…”
“To what? Sitting around playing with toys?”
“No, to my crowning childhood achievement. Remember? Toys ‘R’ Us used to have this contest with Nickelodeon, and if you won, you got to run around the place for a few minutes and put anything you want into all the shopping carts you need. And I was one of those lucky few! It’s a big reason I consider myself an ultimate 90s kid.”
Jace looked at his uncle incredulously. “Oh, this again. That sounds awesome and everything, but I’m still not sure if you’re lying. It sounds so made-up.”
“No way, no lie! I just haven’t gotten around to showing you the run yet. I’m sure it’s on YouTube, but I was always too nervous to look it up. I did recently digitize the footage we recorded, though—so I can show you sometime soon. I got your mom some Barbie dolls, and this big stuffed teddy bear she treated more like a pillow.”
Jace rubbed the back of his neck. “I mean, that does sound a little amazing…”
“You have no idea. Maybe I’ll have to convince you of its degree of amazingness. Anyway, that doesn’t actually happen until next year, just before middle school.”
“I thought you liked this year the most.”
“Aw, well, yeah. The Toy Run was definitely the highlight of ’96, but as a year in its entirety, this one’s still my hallmark. It’s just too bad we don’t get to see its first half.”
“That’s really… neat,” Jace said flatly after a few moments of watching his uncle stare up at the ceiling in listless nostalgic bliss. “But I think I should get to the clothes.”
“Oh. Yeah. Heh, better hope they don’t flicker right off of you later on, right?”
“Maybe… as long as you touch them they won’t, since you don’t seem to have that problem. Because you’re… more real, or whatever?”
“Sounds logical. You really are smart for an eleven-year-old, Jace.”
“Too bad being smart doesn’t count for anything…” he muttered to himself.
“What was that?”
“N-nothing.”
“All right, enough reminiscing. Let’s just go ahead and get you some threads.”
Wes was about to go around the corner and retrieve his big red cart, but he suddenly stopped, looked at something, and hurriedly spun around and returned to Jace. Before he knew what was happening, Wes had grabbed his hand and quickly pulled him to the other side of the aisle. Assuming that they were now hiding from someone, Jace watched as his uncle peeked back into the hall of toys, and then did so himself.
“What’s going on?” he whispered.
“Didn’t think I was here…” Wes murmured back. “Unplanned, I swear.”
Jace watched as a young boy and his mother rounded the corner and stopped in front of the Super Soaker display. He instantly recognized the younger version of his great aunt, but it took another few seconds to identify the kid near her.
Little Wes had a baggy gray and red shirt, cargo shorts that went past his knees, and plain socks snug in his black and white sneakers. But his understated clothes were not what made him stand out. His red baseball cap, tilted a little to the side, and the gray plastic brick clipped onto his shorts were what made him unique, as did his mannerisms.
The ten-year-old wasn’t exactly the happy, carefree kid Jace had imagined. Even after only observing him for a second, he saw that he had the appearance of an eternally impatient child, at least at the moment. He was in a constant state of motion, whether crossing or uncrossing his arms, tapping his feet, or just swaying from side to side.
“That’s… you…” Jace said.
“Yeah. I think I remember this day now. I’m getting a new water gun, one of the big ones. And if I am… I think I break it in during a game later today.”
“A game?”
“Guess I’ll be telling you soon; this adds a stop to our schedule. The important thing is to be careful. We’re not ready to interact with my younger self.”
“What do you mean not ready? I thought…”
“I mean we shouldn’t interact with Little Wes at all. Yeah, we should only watch him from a distance, like we are right now. Don’t want any of those pesky paradoxes.”
As the young Wes pointed to several Super Soaker models during what looked like an argument with his mom, Jace asked, “What’s that thing at your side?”
“Game Boy power adapter. I always had a Game Boy in my pocket, ready to play at any time. If I was anywhere near an outlet, I’d plug in and save some batteries.”
“It’s gotta be this one, Mom!” Little Wes had increased his volume enough to be audible. “I need the range! It’s the longest of all the guns. The commercial said so!”
“All right. Fine,” she relented. “But I don’t see what’s wrong with your last one.”
“The last one was good! The water tank backpack thing is cool and everything, but the games never last long enough and I don’t need all that extra water!”
“Okay, sweetheart, okay. Whatever keeps you running around getting exercise. Oh, geez, look at the size of this thing. And do they have to look so… aggressive?”
The kid smiled as he grabbed the biggest water gun on the shelf and squeezed it against his chest—and as the box was so long, it ran from his neck to his knees. Satisfied for the day, he placed it carefully into his mother’s shopping cart, which was filled with new clothes for the two of them, and went off with her. Once the coast was clear, Wes and Jace stepped back out into the open, and exchanged a quick glance.
“Um…” Jace hesitated before commenting.
“What? What’d you think of me? I was a cool kid, huh?”
“I mean… I don’t talk to my mom like that…”
“Okay. What, you want a reward? She still spoils you anyway, doesn’t she?”
“Uncle Wes… My first impression is that you… were kind of a brat?”
“All right, look, I got a little excited and wantsy around toys,” he said defensively. “I liked to keep up on trends, you know? New things often become status symbols.”
“I see kids like that in the present, too. And then I watch as they get dragged out of the store screaming and crying, and kicking and—”
“Hold on there, bud. I did not resort to tantrums. I never let myself lose my cool. I didn’t ask for all the toys in the world, either. But when I saw something I knew I needed, like, legitimately, I could be assertive. I would make my case. And then I would be very grateful. Those three steps always worked for me.”
“But the way you…”
“Jace. Jace, listen to me for a second.” Wes placed a hand on his shoulder and took a breath. “My mom would let me know if I ever went too far. She had me young, so, in some ways, to me, she was more like… an older sister, or a really cool babysitter. We kind of, ah, bounced off of each other, you know? It was my dad that flooded me with toys for a while, but that was just to win my approval. But getting stuff from her… That was different. I respected, maybe even treasured her gifts.
“Also, there’s nothing wrong with standing up for yourself a little, even at your age. Show some backbone. Do you have any experience in those things? You can ask for something and take it like a man when you get shot down, instead of turning into a little delinquent by throwing a hissy fit about it. Anyway, I’m sure we’ve given my kid self enough time to get some space from us, so let’s find you some threads.”
Jace stood there for a few seconds to think about his uncle’s little lesson, and then caught up and joined him in the boys’ clothing department.
Popping into his sight right away was a rack full of multi-colored pastel polo shirts, all of which looked dull and faded in Jace’s future vision. He didn’t understand why he also saw a shirt with an angry hip-hop-loving Tweety bird on it, much less an entire line of other similarly themed Looney Tunes characters, even though Wes had “warned” him earlier. Thankfully, solid color unbranded clothing still existed, too.
Wes looked at the options. “So, we just need a couple pairs of pants and shorts, and maybe… eight shirts or so. What do you have in mind?”
“I’m fine with looking pretty much like I do now, but why do I need all of that if we’re just staying until the weekend?”
“Oh, you know, just in case… Hey, you’ll get to take a new wardrobe with you back into the future—surprise your friends with clothes they can’t find anywhere.”
“I don’t care about ‘surprising’ anyone. Can I just get a bunch of simple shirts without logos or pictures? Mostly blues. Maybe a gray or two. Oh, and a slate.”
“How about we compromise and just get you one 1995 version of your current outfit, for days when you feel insecure, and you trust me with all the other days? I’m no style expert, but I know how to make you look good enough where kids won’t make fun of you. I can get you into a set the young me would be proud of.”
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“Why is that important?”
“Because Little Wes could be quietly critical of others’ fashion sense. Luckily, I know my own standards. So, if you win my approval, that means you’re gravy.”
“I still don’t see why…” Jace trailed off when he noticed a trio of giggling teenage girls going by, who stopped for a moment, looked at his out-of-time getup, laughed to each other, and then moved on.
“That’s why, right there. So, do you want a Mortal Kombat shirt, with the dragon on it? How about this Mystery Science Theater one? Oh, here’s some nice Metallica art. Or, you could always go with some classic Simpsons flair.”
“Stupid 90s teen girls…” Jace grumbled and tugged at his sleeves. “Bet if they looked back and saw themselves now, they’d be the ones feeling dumb…”
“Stop being vindictive and pick out some tops over here.”
Jace tried to, but as an indecisive kid who was way out of his element on what constituted functioning fashion for the decade, he let his uncle do most of the work. By the time they were done, the cart was full of clothing, which Wes insisted all needed to be tried on. After handing it off to Jace, he asked for a card with a “9” on it at the fitting rooms desk. The overworked clerk, with racks full of rejected shirts, pants, and dresses to sort through, hastily gave them one without giving the pair much of a look.
“I really don’t need you to come in with me,” Jace insisted as Wes followed him into a changing room, his arms full of clothing. “I can dress myself.”
“And I’m proud of you for that,” Wes replied and placed the haul on the room’s bench. “But you’re still unstable, so if you had brought them in, they could’ve zapped right back out of here, and then security might think you were shoplifting.”
Jace got the point. He looked at the hill of fabric and reflected on how dreadfully boring it was to go shopping for clothes, no matter the current trends.
“Take your time, make sure you look good in all this stuff. I got a lot of shopping to do myself, so when you’re done… I guess you better just wait in here, so the clothes don’t snap back inside, out of your grasp. I’ll come get you when I’m done.”
“You’re sticking me in a fitting room? What am I supposed to do to kill time?”
“Um, here.” Wes reached into one of his deep pockets and pulled out a Game Boy that was in pretty good shape. “Play some Tetris. Baby’s first handheld game.”
Jace took it and tried to find the power button. “Gee. Thanks.”
Wes gave him a wave and left him alone. After a few moments in the quiet room, which also had the same smell as it did in the future, Jace came to a startling realization: the changing rooms were very likely not updated at all in the following twenty-five years.
? ?
An hour later, with two carts by their Target Café table that were filled with red and white bags, Jace nibbled at a small bag of popcorn and watched Wes munch a hot dog and sip from his second soda of the day. He remembered what was still in his pocket, next to his iPhone, and took out the Game Boy to return it.
“Keep it. It’s yours,” Wes said after a belch. “I wanted to give you a Game Boy Pocket—they’re smaller and lighter—but they won’t be out for over a year. It’ll help you fit in, give you something to play. I bought it before I went back to the present.”
Jace returned the bulky gray portable to his shorts and brought up something he had been wanting to for the last few minutes, “You know, hot dogs are really, really bad for you. Mom lets me have an organic turkey dog, like, once a month.”
Wes took a bigger, more determined bite to emphasize that he didn’t really care for Jace’s health tips. “Look at me. Do I tip the scales? Strike you as really unhealthy? If I ate like this all the time, maybe I would—heck, maybe I’d be dead. But I feel like trying some of the food from my youth while I’m here. I appreciate that Luce watches out for you, but it’s not great to go through life criticizing others’ habits.”
Jace bit his lip to keep himself from saying something about his uncle’s soda consumption as well, and simply asked instead, “So… where to next?”
Wes finished his dog, stood up and stretched as if to celebrate his victory over food, and proclaimed, “Time to find a hotel room. And then the adventure continues.”
Jace fell back in his chair and sighed. “Haven’t we had enough adventure today?”
The back of the car stuffed with their purchases, Wes pulled up to a Days Inn.
“It feels weird staying at a hotel in our own city,” Jace noted as they stepped out.
“Yeah, and it kind of is. It’s like you’re a tourist in your hometown,” Wes replied before they went through the sliding doors. “You wouldn’t have had a reason to come to this place until you started visiting your mom and me in the nursing home.”
Check-ins had just opened, and Wes looked confident that he’d get a good room despite it being the height of the tourism season. He asked for a non-smoking with two beds, a microwave and a fridge, and said he’d be paying upfront for four days, with cash.
As Jace was looking at things in the lobby, Wes tugged on his sleeve. He turned to see the wad of cash his uncle had in his hand and was trying to pass off to him.
“Jace, pay the nice lady while I start getting our things, okay?”
After he dropped the money into his palm and had taken the luggage trolley to their bags, Jace suddenly realized, in disgust, what Wes had just done. But, feeling he had no choice, he forced a grin and gave the money to the desk clerk.
“Thank you, young man!” She smiled and began counting the bills. “Are you on vacation with your dad? Our theme park opens soon, you know. Are you having fun?”
“S-sure,” Jace stammered. “Lots of fun…”
“Okay, we seem to be all set here.” She typed on her loud old mechanical keyboard to confirm a few things, and then handed Jace a pair of metal keys. “Your room number is 203. Have a good stay, and call us if you need anything at all!”
“Yeah. Great. Um, thanks.”
Hoping that the money would stay in the register, Jace rejoined Wes once he returned with the shopping bag-laden trolley and went with him into the elevator, with a bit of a scowl on his face. On the ride up, Wes checked his pockets.
“Looking for something?” Jace muttered. “I don’t think it’s gonna work. That ‘nice lady’ touched the money last, so it probably won’t come back to you.”
“Hey,” Wes shrugged, “it was worth a try.”
“You just tried to rip off the hotel! And it was over a hundred bucks!”
“And yet, there’s really no harm or foul, because maybe I was planning to come back a third time and reset everything again anyway. You’ll realize at some point that this city is kind of our playground. I’m not saying we should hurt anyone, but…”
“You think there’s no consequences, so it doesn’t matter if we do bad things?”
“Sort of,” Wes said with another shrug as they stepped off into the hallway. “I don’t plan on getting myself arrested, but what’s wrong with bending the rules in our favor a little, using a few cheat codes? I’m already gonna exploit the stock market a bit.”
“You know, Uncle Wesley, you’re… You can be a real assclown sometimes.”
Wes held back a laugh that turned into a snort. “Where’d you hear that classic? Too bad clowns stopped being funny after the big scare of ’16, though.”
“Yeah, well…” Jace demurred once they stopped at their door. “You don’t have to tell me. I lived it. I still have nightmares from my seventh birthday party.”
Wes put the key in and turned the knob. “If you don’t want to do the kinds of things you can do as a time traveler, that’s fine, bud. But I’m here to have some fun.”
“It’s just that it all sounds really… selfish.”
As soon as the door opened, Jace walked in and dropped himself onto the bed by the window, where he turned to see the view. Far past the pool were the suburbs—his future house somewhere within them—and the distant desert foothills beyond.
“I’m gonna go take care of a few final things in fifteen or so,” Wes explained as he packed the minifridge full of snacks and drinks. “And when I get back, we can check out the big water gun game me and my gang’ll have just before sunset.”
“You have a gun fight with your gang? Sounds hardcore,” Jace said with snark.
“With water. We usually have them late in the afternoon. We’ll do a little spying, so you’ll get to see my friends and my old side of the neighborhood, and how we kept ourselves entertained. Hey, come over here and check out the food stash.”
Jace flipped around and looked down from the end of the bed.
“Don’t you think you went a little overboard?” he asked, staring at the full fridge.
“Maybe.” Wes took more things out from the bags and tried to organize them to optimize space in a way so they’d actually all fit. “But I kept seeing stuff I wanted you to try. I’m still kind of surprised at how much the store had.”
Jace picked up a six-pack of tall plastic bottles filled with green liquid.
“Squeezits,” Wes said. “Apple juice flavor, supposedly. The gimmick is… you squeeze the bottle to drink them. Not around anymore. Got Capri Sun, too.” He held up a box of forty silver pouches. “Variety pack. These lasted—you must’ve had a few.”
“Mom doesn’t usually let me have drinks with so much sugar,” Jace said, looking at the nutrition facts. “Is everything junk food? Didn’t you get any meals?”
“Hey, we’ll get meals. No worries. In the meantime, when you’re hungry, try one of these.” He ripped off a package of Dunkaroos from its brethren and tossed it up to him. “Cookies with dippable frosting. Great stuff. I think they’re still around, too. But maybe only online. Oh, and here.” He next gave Jace a strawberry-flavored Push Pop. “It’s like lipstick candy, for kids. Keep it in your pocket and satisfy your sweet tooth whenever you want. Some of us always had one on hand.”
“I know what these are already. But what’s so special about the Trix cereal?”
Wes took the red box out of the bag. “Truth is, it was never a favorite of mine. But the green and blue pieces exist again, so I thought it’d be worth a purchase. There’s something to be said about getting to eat discontinued food, right?”
Jace subtly shook his head. “I… I dunno. I don’t really see the excitement.”
“Of course, you don’t. None of the snacks you like have gone extinct yet.”
“That’s not exactly true. There were these nice, organic shortbread biscuits made in California that I liked as a kid, and they’re not around anymore.”
“See? You do know tragedy. Here,” Wes unwrapped a strawberry Fruit by the Foot and handed it to him, “try a bite of this. You’ve had a fruiter footer before, right?”
“A what? Oh. I’ve traded for a few at lunch before.”
“The ones they make in the present aren’t anything like these babies. Go on.”
Jace sighed again and tore a small piece off the paper, which he quickly ate. “Hm. Well, it’s thicker and chewier. And it’s like it has tiny seeds in it or something.”
“I know, right? The texture is completely different! By the way, it’s not like I’m still eating all this crap as an adult on a daily basis. But I dp try them sometimes, to see what the survivors have become. Uh, let’s see, what else did I get…” He reached into a bag and pulled out a couple of Lunchables packs. “Got some classics here. A nachos and a ‘Mega Pizza.’ And some cheese and cracker Handi Snacks, too.”
“Gross… the fake cheese in stuff like that makes me feel sick.”
“Then don’t eat the cheese,” Wes said with a shrug. “And in the last bag… Some good old Kid Cuisines. Consider them emergency meals. Look, see how they still have a polar bear chef character on them? Isn’t that… you know, different?”
“I really hope we don’t eat like this the whole time,” Jace said, Wes still trying to cram it all into their small cold box. “Do you even do any of your own cooking?”
“I can cook. When I’m not lazy enough to not do it.”
Jace turned his arms into a pillow and looked up at the ceiling. “Mom makes me all of my lunches. She says I shouldn’t eat what the school gives us. Even though she also says California has higher cafeteria standards. The food still has ‘too many carbs.’ I don’t even know what a carb is…” he said tiredly and closed his eyes.
“I figured. I have a pretty clear picture of what kind of mom she is. She surprised me; she was different as a kid. Problem is, she doesn’t realize what she’s doing to you.”
“She’s a nice mom…” Jace whispered. “Too nice, sometimes…”
“And what do the other kids think when they see you bringing in your recyclable brown bag every day, and reading little notes from Mommy?”
Jace didn’t respond, but he felt his face muscles twitch.
“Hey. Buddy. I think this would be a good time to have a little chat.”
“About what?” he asked after his eyes shot open and he saw the serious-looking adult staring down at him, with his arms crossed.
“Even if we had actually gone camping, I probably would’ve still brought this up. And, um, trust me—I’m not looking forward to this, either.”
“What are you talking about? Oh, no… Did Mom tell you to talk to me?”
“You’re having school problems. Or, you were. No point in hiding it; I watched you graduate, kiddo. You looked pretty mad. Didn’t even look the principal in the eye.”
Jace turned over so he wouldn’t have to look Wes in the eye, either. “It’s nothing. Just something stupid that happened at the end of the year. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Okay.” Wes sat on the bed, right next to him. “Time to take a crack at being a parent. Listen to me—it does still matter. You think things will get better when you go to middle school in a few months? You’d be wrong. It’ll all just get worse.”
“Can you let me rest for now? I’ll… I’ll deal with it when we go back.”
“I doubt it. So, what went down? You were happy back in fourth grade, weren’t you? Who are the little punks that made your life a living hell?”
He waited for a response, but Jace had none to give.
“I can stay here all day,” Wes said. “And it’ll only keep getting more awkward.”
“They’re… they’re all jealous because I’m smart, that’s all.”
“You think your friends are jealous? Because you’re intelligent? Jace, I, uh, I hate to break this to you, but no one’s ever envious of a kid who has a high IQ.”
Unable to see his face, Wes had assumed that his nephew was close to tears by this point—until Jace suddenly shot straight up and spat fire instead.
“Yeah, they must be, because why else would they treat me the way they did? Like school didn’t have enough morons already, and then even my own friends turned on me at the start of the year, for no reason at all! They all went and joined the idiot squad!”
“Hoo, boy, this sounds like psychiatrist field day territory… All right. I can help if you give me a shot, but you have to, A: be candid and don’t lie about anything, and B: cool your jets. Remember, none of the kids that were mean to you exist yet. You can say anything you want, and they’ll never know you talked crap! Does that make it easier?”
“N-no! Not really…”
“They’re that bad, huh? You think they’re going to reach through time and space to make fun of you right now? This is against my better judgment, but how about you just spill it. Say what’s on your mind. Let it allll out. And then I’ll tell you what I think.”
“No. I don’t want to. You know, you’d be a terrible dad.”
“I’m sure, but c’mon. I wanna hear about it. Honest. Please, Jacey-poo?”
“Shut up! Stop treating me like a baby. I… I can take care of myself!”
“Okay, let’s play pretend. I’m a hired hitman who can take out these kids. I seriously have no qualms about disappearing a bunch of prepubescents. All I need is a good reason. So now it’s up to you to convince me to do this job.”
“I don’t want you to kill them! Just… beating them up a little might be good.”
“Whoa, hold on. You know I was kidding, right? Like, to test you? But you legit want me to kick their butts, don’t you? Oh, man. That’s not good, kiddo… Look, I had a few jerks and problems growing up, too, but I never resorted to physical violence.”
“Y-yeah, well… Good for you. It’s not like I’d be able to do anything anyway. I’m not strong or tough. I’ve never even gotten detention. I just want things to go back to the way they were, when no one was being a jackass to me.”
“Maybe you did something to deserve the treatment?”
“What? No, I didn’t!”
“How do I know, if you won’t tell me anything? Look, just lay it on me. We need to toughen you up, get you some confidence. And I don’t think you’ll have enough fun on this trip while keeping it bottled up. It’s important to be able to relax”
“All right! Fine. Fine…” Jace took a deep breath. “Give me a second to think… It all kind of started a while ago. So. At the end of fourth grade, I had this big fight with my friend Jamie, because we had an argument about stuff in the mobile MMORPG we were both playing. He was way off when he said I was playing the Cyber-Mage class all wrong. But he’s clueless—he can’t even get the character’s background lore right!”
“Keep going…” Wes mumbled as Jace took a hate-bite out of his fruit roll.
“I guess it kind of got out of control, and we never had a chance to patch things up before summer break. Me and Mom went on vacation in Canada, and Jamie must’ve thought I was ignoring him and was still angry, but actually, I just stopped caring. So… when we get back, my email’s full of messages from him about why I wasn’t responding, even though he knows my mom bans social media and most messaging on our trips.
“Now it’s not about the Cyber-Mage anymore, that I was right about by the way, but all this crap about how I should be a better friend. He tells me to apologize for a few things I said to him, that were actually also true. I don’t say sorry, because I didn’t do anything wrong, so he starts talking to our other friends, making stuff up about me to be a jerk. It keeps getting worse because we don’t see each other until school starts again.”
“Yeah…” Wes yawned. “Drama…”
“By the time we do go back to school, he’s totally changed! I’m not even sharing a class with Jamie anymore, but Austin and Chad keep bugging me by saying stupid things and trying to turn it all into a joke, even though they also hurt my feelings and know it. At lunch, they ignore me and sit with Jamie instead. They even leave a seat open just to mock me, like they’re pretending I could sit with them. I wasn’t going to fall for that.”
“Uh… Jace…”
“And then they must’ve started spreading rumors about me through the entire school, because kids I didn’t even know that well kept coming up to me and calling me this stupid nickname everyone knows I hate. This one girl I actually kind of liked, but who probably didn’t know I existed before, even began using it and laughing about it.”
“Jace?”
“This crap went on all year! Even a few teachers called me that stupid nickname! Do you know what it’s like to ignore someone and hope they get the hint? It either works, or it doesn’t! It’s not like you can ignore someone more. The only thing I could do was prove that I was smarter than them, like none of their jokes bothered me anymore.”
“Jace! Hey, shut up a second and—”
“You shut up. I’m telling you, this all started because I know things, and I was always correcting others. I like people to be accurate with their facts, is that so bad? Is knowledge something to mock? No! Why do you think Mom makes me flash cards and keeps them up to date, and has me read five Wikipedia articles a day? She wants me to know things! She says it’s how I help defeat the anti-intellect… ism… Anti… intellecta… The dumbness going on in the world. But it’s more than just me being smart! They also made fun of my height! Jamie, Chad, and Austin and Laurie are all taller than me, and I was the second-shortest in my class, so it was always… ‘Jacey,’ and… ‘Little J.’ And…”
“… And are you done?” Wes asked as Jace took a hyperventilation break.
“N-no!” he huffed and took another bite of strawberry tape—only to realize that he had eaten it all and was now biting into paper. “I mean… Yeah. That’s about it.”
“Okay. Can you repeat all of that? I stopped listening, because I stopped caring.”
“W-what? You stopped listening?! I’ve never told anyone all this stuff before!”
“Buddy! Chill. I’m kidding. But most people really would have stopped, because you’re whining. Like, a lot. No one wants to help a kid who whines about everything.”
“But—”
“Shh. My turn now. To start… Aw, man…” Wes rubbed his forehead. “All right, you’re not gonna like what I’m about to say. But I want you to hear this. Your mom is a good parent overall, but you’re lucky you have me, because she would just coddle you if you told her all this, right before going down the route of giving bad advice.
“From the sound of it, you’re the one at fault here. Yeah, this is mostly on you.”
“Um, no? No, it’s not! They were the ones being total a-holes!”
“I’ll preface this by saying that kids your age shouldn’t be on social media at all. You need to graduate your in-person communication course first. But, not much we can do about that. Your problem… is that you took all of this way too personally. And I’m guessing this didn’t start with some argument about a digital space wizard character.”
“Cyber-Mage! His official bio says that he flies around on a starship called Gallant and joins the Galactic Council of Heroes to avenge his people back on Brendal IV.”
“It’s great that you have an endless library of trivia in your head, and I do too, but you gotta learn when to read those books out loud. Kids don’t not like you because you’re smart, Jace. Heck, you probably got your friends because you’re smart and witty. Every circle of buddies wants a guy like that, the thinker with the juicy info. And it’s okay if you’re shy—I knew a lot of shy kids—but there’s a big difference between being soft-spoken, and being a kid who thinks highly of himself and limits his communication down to nothing but smart-ass remarks. Newsflash: your friends weren’t trying to make fun of you. They were trying to make light of the situation; slap your back, laugh it off.”
“There’s no way. They just wanted to keep the feud going.”
“That’s only what you think. Sure, things escalated a little, but I promise you that by the time school started again, your friends were already way past a stupid tiff. They were looking to have a sense of camaraderie with you again. It’s what friends do.”
“Camrad… What? They wanted to be friends by teasing me and being bullies?”
“Yes! I mean, no. That’s just how you saw it. Tell me, Jace, did you ever tell them to stop? Did they know you thought they were being ‘a-holes?’ Or did you react only by ignoring them, and then taking it up a notch when you started insulting them?”
“I… I, uh…”
“You acquired a victim complex somewhere along the line. That’s all. You took something too personally, thought it meant more than it actually did, and you started this loop in your head that you never took a step back from and looked at differently. Okay, so tell me, why do you think some kids bully others?”
“Because they’re stupid.”
“Good. I can see we’re making real progress,” Wes sighed. “No, wrong. Granted, there have probably been a few real sociopaths in the public school system—I shared my days with one or two—but for the most part, your peers only want to feel some sort of connection to you, whether they like you or not. They want to be able to see what you’re thinking, and that doesn’t even always have to be through verbal means. When you turn away from your own need for social connection and try to make yourself feel nothing inside, or just become super-defensive, then, yeah, this is what happens.”
Jace looked up at his uncle, and finally gave what he was saying some thought. Wes then stood, went over to the window, and stared out at the city.
“Look… I don’t have a degree in this stuff. I never really needed any; I managed to figure out how people work all on my own. It was my gift, by the time I was a teen. You don’t need to get into the complexities. The basics are usually enough.
“Trust me when I say it will only get worse. Especially if you end up in a class full of strangers, whose first impression of you will be who you are right now. You aren’t ‘cool’ or ‘mysterious’ by hiding up in a tower. You gotta come down. Laugh at the good, bad, and stupid times. You’ll have lots of each. Sheesh… Before we all had smart phones, honesty was everything between kids. We were experts on reading a face.”
“You say all that… But you can still be a real jerk sometimes, Uncle Wes.”
He turned around and shook his head. “Haven’t I made it clear by now? I don’t see myself as being a ‘jerk’ to you. I’m your wise uncle who wants to help you.”
Jace sulked and looked at the floor. “At least… it felt good getting all that out.”
“Take some time to think about these revelations and realize that, probably, most of what I said is good advice. Probably. I’ll leave you alone for a few hours. Relax, watch TV. Remember, we’re here to have fun, but practice your social skills on some local kids when you can. Try to make a few friends. Then when you get back, you’ll be better off.”
“Make friends? Why? I’m going to leave soon and I’ll never see them again.”
“Don’t think about that. Just try to be open to any you come across while you are here,” Wes said as he headed to the door. “Don’t answer the phone or let anyone in. Ya know, all the stuff I’m sure your mom has drilled into you since you were born.”
“Wes…?” Jace spoke up before he left. “If you’re good at talking to people, why do you hate work so much, and your boss, and have, like… no adult friends?”
He wanted to give a reasonable, thought out and logical response, but Wes could only muster, “Because things change,” before he closed and locked the door.
Jace stayed sprawled out on the empty bed in the quiet hotel room for a few minutes, looking up at the ceiling while the large and loud air conditioner whirred away under the window. Maybe his uncle was smarter than he thought, and actually made a few good points. But he wasn’t an eleven-year-old who easily admitted his own faults.
“What does he know?” he mumbled. “He didn’t see how mean they all got…”
He eyed the Dunkaroos pack, and finally relented to Wes’ insistence to try and take it easy while on this trip, the strangest of all vacations. He flipped over, tore off the plastic top, and grabbed a room temperature Capri Sun from the minifridge.
After sinking into a throne of hotel pillows, he grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. After the loud thlump sound of the electron gun fired, Jerry Springer blasted into the room, and he scrambled to turn down the volume and change the channel. He went through the twenty available twice, stopping on HBO to watch a bit of Highlander.
Right as Sean Connery’s sword fight began, the TV shut off—because according to the universe, it had never been on, since Jace had never picked up the remote; it was back on the nightstand between the beds. He angrily grabbed it and brought the old clunker back to life, and again, two women fighting over a man blared into the room.
After he fixed the channel and volume, but before he could take another bite of frosted kangaroo cookie, things reversed again. Frustrated, he wondered if everything he had eaten could leave his stomach and return to their packaging. What if he starved?
He got up, reached to turn on the TV with the button at its bottom, and was greeted by shouts of “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” He fumbled with the cheap plastic tabs until he changed the channel, and kept pressing to surf through them. Moments after he thought he “had it” and leaned back a bit, time burped and the TV switched off for a third time.
After he re-retrieved the remote, he thought about throwing it at the screen and seeing if that would be permanent. Instead, he performed the breathing exercises his mom had taught him to use whenever he got infuriated, and threw in a mantra, too.
“I’m real…” he murmured in a meditative state. “I’m really here… I’m in 1995, not 2020… I’m really… really, really-really here. So… let me do things. For real.”
He opened his eyes, calmly turned on the TV, and steadily went to Nickelodeon, currently playing an early Rugrats episode. He took in the feeling of being in the past, in a hotel, and tried to enjoy doing nothing more than relaxing in a nice, cold room as talking babies went on an adventure. All was right with his world. There was no way the—
No, it happened again. Right now, he simply had no ability to watch TV on his own. Maybe he couldn’t operate any machinery at all. And yet, he realized that anything his uncle had given him so far hadn’t suffered the temporal glitch. His shopping cart, the toys, the remote—those were all things that Jace alone had interacted with.
Whatever the reason for that, he was tired of trying to watch some retro shows, and had to find something else to do. He played Tetris for a few minutes, but soon only wanted a non-puzzle game for his handheld. Maybe Wes was picking one up?
With a new goal in mind, Jace dropped to the carpeted floor and scooted over to the remaining Target bags, spilling out of the open closet. He peeked at them, and then dug into each bundle a little. But they turned out to be nothing but adult clothes.
Now very bored, he sprawled out on the floor and stared at the ceiling. Then went to see if anyone was swimming in the pool. Finally, he returned to the bed, finished his snack, and played free games on his phone, which he assumed had the power of a billion Game Boys. Wes had yet to provide him with a fresh charge, so he watched his battery.
Unsure if his guardian would even allow a recharge, he stopped playing his games after several minutes, and with options exhausted, closed his eyes and let himself fall asleep among the empty packaging and wrappers of kid snacks on the bed.
? ?
Wes’ voice woke him up sometime later, “Yo, I’m back.”
Jace groggily felt sun on his eyelids and saw that it was low in the sky. He looked at Wes, holding a bag from a place called Radio Shack, and two from an outdoor store.
“Got sick of TV?” he asked. “Did you learn anything?”
“Not much… I couldn’t keep it on.” Jace yawned. “Only thing I really noticed is that car commercials don’t have that ‘do not attempt’ text on the bottom.”
“Heh. Half the time, the car’s just driving normally on a road. ‘Do not attempt’ to use your vehicular product, right? Sorry about that. I should’a turned it on for you.”
“I dunno. That might’ve been even worse. It probably would’ve kept going back to that Jerry Springer show. But I think if you hand me things, maybe it won’t happen.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Not like I had a partner last time to try stuff with. Here.”
Wes tossed him a bag, and Jace took out a box with a picture of a primitive, ugly, clunky cell phone. He looked surprised as he opened it and pulled out a Motorola.
“What, didn’t think they existed? These don’t have texting yet, but hey, at least we can talk to each other. It ain’t cheap, though. Emergencies only. And in the other bag…” He took out a pair of binoculars and asked, “Ready to spy on some kids?”
Jace rubbed his eyes. “I think we had a teacher who got arrested for doing that.”