as1.e6 – Right Now

as1.e6

Right Now (Van Halen)

            Third grade was where my long-term plans could begin to take shape. This was the time when kids were beginning to understand how the world worked, and often put their developing personalities on full display, fearlessly. It was also primetime for friend-making, and I wasn’t going to waste a day and risk someone else snagging or getting into the trio I had in mind. They were perfect for the band I wanted to work up to creating, and even better, we all shared a class this year, and in fact for the first time.

            The moment I stepped off the bus into a clear blue first-day-of-school morning, I breathed in the city air, jostled my backpack to shift its heavy contents, and headed to the doors with a light step. To avoid the mingling crowds, River went on ahead of me.

            “Last year you’re here, Riv! You should enjoy it more!” I shouted to him.

            He turned at the steps, offered no argument, and gave me a wave before he went inside. For many kids, I guess sentimental feelings don’t develop until later in life. As my eyes moved downwards, they picked up on a familiar mop of hair by the concrete banister in front of the entrance. I side-stepped over to find Morris, sulking again.

            “Maisy…” the second-grader muttered. “What are you smiling about?”

            “Just happy to be back at school. I know, it’s a controversial opinion.”

            He huffed. “I thought I ‘graduated’ last year when I got done with first grade. My parents kept telling me I’d have to come back at the end of summer. I thought they were just joking. Ugh. Do I really have to do all this for eleven more years? I feel ready for life.”

            I let out the smallest of laughs that he didn’t pick up on. “Don’t we all.”

            “Why was my mom so excited about a new backpack and shoes, anyway? Ugh!”

            I sighed sympathetically and said before I went inside, “Hang in there, Morris.”

            Once I hit the noisy halls, I realized I was too anxious to go through all of the rigmarole of first day orientation and student-teacher introductions. I didn’t need to relive any of that, so I didn’t hesitate in skipping right into the good stuff. I whisked myself away from the main entrance of the school, to the rear doors with a full stomach instead of a full backpack, and faced a playground that was now familiar to us all. Eddie and Liesel walked past me, and flipped around when they realized I was lagging.

            “Maze! We gonna hang out and talk about our summers, or what?” Liesel yelled.

            I picked up in the corner of my vision a pink raincoat with legs disappear behind one of the school’s support columns on the left, where watchful Mrs. Sundren couldn’t see. There was something I wanted to take care of before word got around about the magic of the “secret” school store. I needed to optimize time, so I had to beat the rush.

            “I’ll catch up later!” I shouted back, and they shrugged and went on without me.

            As soon as our recess monitor bellowed out her first reminder of the rules for us new third-graders to kids fighting over the tetherball, I slipped away to tag behind Cass. She wasn’t going to get a chance to set up shop first, but that was okay. I did at least hang back and let her open up the metal hatch and slide inside, and a moment after I heard the heels of her shoes scraping against payment, I moved into her eyeline.

            “Hey,” I heard her call to me in her regular voice once she saw my sneakers from the abandoned and otherwise sealed school basement. She let out a cough and changed her tone into more of a guttural one to mimic a certain character. “Ahem, I mean, uh… Hey. Hey, Georgie. You want a balloon, Georgie? I got one here, just for you. Heheh.”

            I knelt down so I could see her eyes peeping back at me from the darkness of a forbidden place where kids were not supposed to play. She grinned and dropped the act.

            “Three red balloons for a nickel,” she said, then grabbed a plastic jar full of the uninflated things and plopped it on the sill of the entrance. “Ya want? It’s a good deal.”

            “Hi, Cass,” I said, my heart swelling a little from the good memories of the place. “I’m not having a party anytime soon, but I do have a special request, right off the bat.” I pulled out from my pocket a crumpled piece of notebook paper, which she unfolded to take a glance at. “There’s this old guitar I want to fix up and surprise my family with. It’s got some frayed, worn strings, and I figured I’d just replace ’em all. I put a few specifics on the list; nothing you can’t find over at Sam Ash. Oh, and… the fee, of course.”

            I handed over a couple bucks, which she pocketed along with the note.

            “Well. Aren’t you an eager one, Maze.” She leaned in and put her elbow on the sill to accompany her confident shop-keep pose. “Yes, this is a service we provide here at the RVE School Store. It’s just hard for kids to buy stuff when they want to, ya know? It isn’t always nefarious, either. Sometimes, we just wanna surprise someone. But it’s always, ‘you gotta go through the folks first, ask permission, get them to drive us somewhere…’ It's like, you do give us an allowance, so just let us spend our savings how we want.”

            “And that’s where you—”

            “That’s where I come in…” She raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t sneak over to a higher grade’s recess and shop here, did you? You act like you’ve done this before.”

            “Oh, I’ve just heard about it from my brother, River. He’s in fifth grade now.”

            “Is he now? Then he might’ve gotten to know my big sis.” She squinted her eyes and glanced around, adding, “Despite what you may have heard, this is not nepotism. We are separated by two grades, so she wasn’t the one who approved and trained me.”

            “I’d never accuse you of that, my fair school merchant.”

            “Good. It’s hard work, continuing this legacy. Put in a good word for me, okay?”

            “Sure. You should probably get to icing those drinks.”

            “Gah! The drinks. I should have your strings by Friday. Receipt provided then.”

            She got to it by taking out of an old toy box a few bottles and cans of sodas and Yoohoo, along with some juice boxes and Capri Sun pouches. She stuck them all in the bucket of ice that was kept somewhat insulated within an old broken school boiler’s rusted-out cavity. If I remembered right, ice duty was handled by the fourth graders.

            “Just one more thing, Cass. How’s your hatch-closing game?” I asked her.

            “Pah. You think I got this job if my reaction time wasn’t on point?”

            She didn’t even have to demonstrate; by coincidence, Mrs. Sundren had started an early patrol and was already on top of me with a, “Ms. Wilkins. What are you doing?”

            Although a touch of first-day panic had appeared on her face, the training took over, and Cass hit the collapsible rod keeping the hatch raised. As a heavy piece of old iron, it slammed closed in a split second—its impact muffled by a gasket of soft rubber that surrounded an opening the adults thought hadn’t been used in years. A false locking bar, super-glued on and complete with an actual padlock, maintained that illusion.

            “Nothing, Mrs. Sundren!” I said in my innocent voice and stood up, bringing relief to my knees before they began to strain. “I was just following a lizard.”

            “I see… Well, try to stay where I can keep an eye on you. We have enough troublemakers already. Go on, now—go play with your friends.”

            “Maze, go! Don’t blow this for me on my first day!” Cass whispered through the hatch.

            I smiled and skipped away. From my memory, there was nothing that our recess monitor liked to see more than a child acting like it was a Sunday afternoon in the 1950s.

            “Where did you run off to?” Edmond asked me despite his clear lack of interest, once I rejoined them up on the fort. “You didn’t go to that secret store thing, did you?”

            “What if I did?” I replied, feeling cheeky as he eyed me suspiciously, his chin on his arms as they sat crossed on a railing. “Were you going to ask me to buy you a thing?”

            “Peh, no? I bet all it has in stock is some overpriced junk.”

            “You should take a look sometime. You might be surprised.”

            “What are we gonna do today, Maze?” Liesel asked as she sprawled out on the nearby rope net that led up to the slide platform; a feature of playgrounds I hadn’t seen in decades, since they must’ve been a safety hazard. “We too old for hide-and-seek yet? Or should we just talk about all the cool stuff we did over break? Last week, I—”

            “Leese, we hung out every day this summer. We know what we did,” Eddie moaned.

            I scanned the grounds to locate my quarry, and on my second pass, I found the three chilling out against some of the old pine trees at the edge of the play area, not far from Edmond’s old truck tire. It looked like they’d been unbothered… until now.

            I told my pals, “We got some cool kids in our class—did you see them? I think they’re into music, so we should go say hi. They might even be friendly, you know?”

            “Oh, you wanna try making some new friends? That could be neat,” Liesel said excitedly and sat up on the ropes. “No better time to do that than the first day, right?”

            “They’ll probably hate our guts,” Edmond assumed with a cold shrug.

            “You think that about everyone. C’mon, Eddie. Let’s at least say hi.”

            He obliged with another one of his groans, and tagged behind us as we went over to meet three of our peers whom we had barely interacted with over the years so far. As soon as we were close enough to be perceived as a threat, they stopped chatting, looked up at us, and reacted to our presence in different, personality-defining ways.

            Hayden Nicolson. One of the cooler and laid-back kids in our grade, from what little I could remember of him. Kept something of a modest Afro, and was known for his green hoodies and jackets; an uncommon outerwear color around here. Keeping his hands in his pockets as he leaned back against a tree and chewed gum, he sized us up. He was going to be our drummer, and didn’t know it yet. Probably didn’t play yet, either.

            “Yooo…” he pushed out. “You guys want something? We don’t really do games.”

            Adelina Esparto. Today, to celebrate the first day of school, she was dressed in her Monday best. Shiny shoes, leggings, a lovely yellow blouse, and a headband. On the downside, such clothes really limited your sitting options at recess, so she had just been standing next to a tree instead, where she crossed her arms defensively. She might have already gotten started playing violin, like the rest of her five sisters. I could already hear a few songs in my head that might incorporate strings, but I really needed another guitarist.

            “Hayden, that’s Maisy and Liesel. And that grouchy boy,” she told her friend, and I felt the huff from Edmond on the back of my neck. “They’re into music, I think.”

            “Ah, yeah?” the other boy, who was sitting lazily on a tree root, spoke up after his interest was mildly piqued. He stumbled his way into a standing position and leaned in to study us without leaving the shade, his eyes seemingly half-closed permanently. He let out a yawn and ruffled the hair on the back of his head. “Beanie girl—seen her around.”

            “It’s Maisy,” Liesel introduced me. “Are you wearing a Pig Pit shirt? Gross…”

            “Hm?” He looked down and tugged at his red shirt with a juicy burger on it that was dripping cheese. “Oh. So that’s what I put on today. Hey, Maisy, you watch MTV?”

            “Um. Yeah, of course,” I replied.

            He scratched at his chin. “You, uh… You don’t watch Beavis and Butt-Head, do ya? Me and my big bro were watching it all summer, and, like… s’funny…”

            “Quince, dude, there’s no way she watches that,” Hayden said with a laugh.

            “Nah, I watch it,” I said to Quincy, emulating his lackadaisical attitude. “I like that they talk about music videos. And I think they should give Daria her own show.”

            He smirked. “Oh, yeah? Heh… I’unno, maybe. Name’s Quincy.” He pointed to himself with a thumb. “Only kid in the school with a ‘Q’ name. That’s me.”

            “We don’t know that yet this year, Quince,” Adelina replied. “We’d have to find a list of the new kindergarteners again. And you need a better claim to fame, buddy.”

            And Quincy Chambers. A fine specimen and example of “unassuming,” he somehow goes on to play a mean bass guitar in high school. His special ability was to fall asleep pretty much anywhere he wanted, whenever the time felt right, but he’d always claim it wasn’t a medical condition. Maybe dreamland was just where he preferred to spend his free time. The problem was, his stoner brother could be a bad influence.

            “We thought, maybe we could hang out together?” I got it out there before the silence among us became awkward. They just stared at me flatly, unsure how to respond, so I went for it and said something I’d just undo if it came out wrong. “I have a dream, guys. I want to start a band by middle school. And I want to find our bandmates now.”

            “A band? You wanna be a rocker or something?” Hayden said, pushing himself off his tree. “We don’t even know each other. And me and Quince don’t play anything. Heck, Ady’s only got the violin, and I don’t see what good that’ll do ya.”

            He popped a bubble and got closer to us. Once he began to invade Edmond’s space, the “grouch” of the trio grimaced a little and side-stepped away.

            “Edmond, right?” Hayden asked him. “Scared of black people or something?” When he saw Edmond get really nervous and his cheeks turning red, he let out another laugh and added, “I’m just messin’ with ya. You guys actually play yet?”

            “Guitar, and keyboard,” I answered. “Eddie… Well, he’s our muse for now.”

            “Muse…” Adelina let out a snort as she chuckled. “I like that.”

            Quincy let out another yawn and came in for a closer study himself, randomly asking us, “You guys see Jurassic Park this summer? I didn’t fall asleep for that one.”

            “Uh-huh…” Liesel said, and kept an eye on Quincy as he approached from Edmond’s other side, threatening to trap him between two strangers. “Um, guys, you should maybe give Eddie some space. He’s a little tense around new acquaintances.”

            “Aw, Quince doesn’t bite,” Adelina assured us. “If Edmond’s a bit shy, maybe he could keep back and watch from a distance as we do… whatever you’re inviting us to.”

            “But that’s what he used to always do,” Liesel said. “We’ve been trying to get him to come out of his shell. Look, it helps if we’re doing something—even just walking. He doesn’t like small talk, or milling about, or… anything where we stand around, really.”

            “We could check out the store,” Hayden suggested, and we turned to look at it. When we saw that a big line was forming, flush against the wall, he sighed. “Or not.”

            “We can go later in the week,” Adelina said. “I got no money in my pockets today, anyway. I don’t even have pockets right now, in fact… Look how dolled up they made me. Same thing, every year,” she moaned. “You guys wanna chat somewhere?”

            “Hold up, Ady,” Hayden replied and stepped in front of his friends, playing up his protective nature. “These three don’t know anything about us. Do you really just wanna let them roll up on us and try to get in with our crew?”

            “Since when do we have a crew?” Adelina scoffed with a subtle roll of her eyes.

            “You say you want to make a band out of the six of us?” Hayden stared at me with crossed arms. “Our dads—plus my mom—have a band of their own, you know. We listen to a lot of music and see so many shows for our age. Can you impress me?”

            “You don’t have to ‘impress’ him,” Adelina told me. “He’s not usually like this.”

            But I was just fine with having to pass a test first, the sooner the better. “What do you got, Hayden?” I asked, matching his confidence. “Trivia? Name-that-tune?”

            “Nah, nothing so laid-back. Play some guitar for us, Maze. In front of everyone.”

            “Hm. Sorry, must’ve left my guitar in my other pants’ pocket today.”

            “I’m talking air guitar, baby,” Hayden said and pantomimed a solo for a second. “None of the setup and tuning… but all of the looking ridiculous while doing it.”

            Quincy sniffed. “He makes me do this all the time. Nice getting a break from it.”

            “Maisy, you don’t have to humiliate yourself,” Adelina countered. “I really don’t know what’s gotten into him. Hayden, you’re treating her like some kind of rival!”

            “You think I’ll humiliate myself?” I smirked. “Now I want to do it even more.”

            “You got guts, Maze…” Edmond murmured to me.

            “I’ll do it up on the fort, where the whole grade can see,” I stated boldly as I pointed at the structure. “I’ll play so hard that the audience will swear they hear music. Got a song in mind? I can do Freebird, but something so fast might just confuse people.”

            Hayden shrugged. “I’ll leave that up to you. Play whatever you’re comfortable with, because what I want to see is how you handle the discomfort.”

            “Maze, this is dumb,” Liesel groaned. “Air guitar doesn’t prove anything.”

            “I got this,” I assured my friends. “Give me a chance. Well, Hayden, shall we?”

            I didn’t know enough about the kid to be sure yet if this was all in good faith, he just wanted to play a joke on me, or if not even he knew where this was coming from.

            It was too late to back out now, so the six of us went over to the fort. Liesel, the best at working a crowd among us, got the couple dozen kids near or on the structure to clear out, settle down, and get ready for a “special event” as I climbed up to the largest platform. Even with my abilities, I was a touch nervous about this whole thing, but that was to be expected. It would be the first time I had performed in front of an audience in months of my time, and how many of these kids even understood the air guitar concept?

            “Um, hi, everyone,” Quincy spoke up. “Today, we have a… performance for you? Maisy here is gonna play a song or two on an invisible guitar you can’t hear. But if she’s really good… and, I guess if you know anything about guitars… it’ll still look cool.”

            There were some confused mutterings among the crowd around just what the heck they were about to see, but that was okay; newbies might’ve been easier to impress. By the time Brady had come out from under the platform where he held his therapy sessions—“Player One” Pete seemed to be his patient today—I was just finishing up my breathing exercises and felt ready to get into the zone. To me, air guitar was neither a game nor a farce, but rather, a spontaneous necessity that kept my hands busy. I could strum out a new song back in the future without ever picking up a real instrument.

            I took one more deep breath, closed my eyes, and manifested a packed Friday night at Club Clamor in my mind. My trusty Stratocaster materialized in my arms at just the right size for my kiddy arms, and I could actually feel its weight; I might as well have been holding an unplugged axe with active camouflage. I even adjusted its onboard dials, specifically for the song I was about to jam out to. I didn’t want to cut my fingers on the invisible strings, so I plucked my non-existent guitar pick off the not-there chain around my neck. Muscle memory took hold, and my left-hand fingers curled onto the fretboard.

            It was good to be back.

            The key to doing good air guitar, was to play a guitar. Keep the fingers where they belonged, focus on the chord changes, and don’t get any more expressive with your arms than you would normally. If you took it seriously and didn’t flail around, you might fool people like a certain naked emperor once did. But could I still pull it off?

            Van Halen’s Right Now was the first song that came to mind; its guitar took some time to become prominent, but it eventually progressed into a shred-tastic solo. I’d hit the notes hard and keep my hand positioned to make the strikes visible to the crowd.

            My sound wasn’t sonic, and my frequencies were out of range, but you didn’t need to hear the music to feel it. I wasn’t completely quiet during my performance, of course—I wanted to give my audience something to listen to, so I hummed most of the song. And while I never considered my vocals anything special, I did put up a pair of fingers on my right hand each time I shouted out the song’s “right now!” lyric.

            “Isn’t that Maisy?” I could hear one of my confused classmates say.

            “Yeah,” replied another. “I thought she was one of the shy kids.”

            “What the heck is she doing up there?”

            “Rocking out, I guess… Man, if only she actually had a guitar.”

            When I got to that sweet and not overly-long solo near the end, I really let loose and felt it in my core. For a second, I was transported back or forward in time, playing with my bandmates better than I had in years. I glanced at the reactions, and saw some genuine looks of wonder. Liesel and Edmond were staring at me with big eyes, neither one of them quite sure what to make of all this. Even Quincy’s eyes were three-quarters open, and it was hard to tell if Hayden and Adelina were borderline slack-jawed by the fact that I’d taken on this insane challenge confidently, or if they were simply shocked. And then there was Claudia, giving me a befuddled stink eye as she stood next to Vera.

            With my heart pounding and my skin sweating under the sun, I wrapped up the song. There was a smattering of applause, and a couple cheers—one from Liesel—but most of the kids still didn’t know quite what to think, and kept staring, stupefied.

            All right, fine. I could do one more. I figured, if I played a second song, it’d help the stragglers understand what I was doing better. Next up: the band’s over-played hit, Jump. I started on this one hard, subbing the famous synths that open and carry the song with multi-string sweeps. I was sinking into myself, and ready for a three-part setlist.

            Unfortunately… I didn’t get very far into it. The audience, and my behavior that I was certain Mrs. Sundren couldn’t understand, had attracted her attention. She stomped over, and some kids reflexively scattered before she had even given her reasons.

            “All right, enough!” she ordered. “Maisy! No rock concerts on the playground!”

            “Aww, but Mrs. Sundren, she’s not even playing any music!” Adelina protested.

            “Yeah, what rule is she breaking?” Quincy bravely asked her.

            “Um, hm… ah…” Mrs. Sundren tried to find an excuse. “Unlawful assembly!”

            “Dang…” Hayden grunted. “There’s never any beating that one.”

            It was over, and the crowd was moments from turning their backs and breaking up. But before that happened… might as well jump! I’d done my share of dangerous stunts back in the day, and knew how to land on my feet and hands at the same moment to spread out the impact. Worst case, I figured, I’d break something and try again.

            I dropped off the side of the fort and hit the mulch. It stung a little, but I didn’t feel any new fractures, so I ended my performance by getting back up and throwing out twin devil horns. Some kids got it and hollered before they left; most just walked off, as confused as they were at the start. Claudia gave me a nasty little sneer on her way out.

            “Ms. Wilkins. Do not do that again,” Mrs. Sundren sighed upon seeing that I was okay. “And try taking up playing a real instrument, if you have all this excess energy.”

            She caught sight of a pair of boys by the swings trying to take their shirts off for any number of reasons, and promptly left to put out another fire.

            “I can’t believe you actually went through with it at all, Maisy,” Hayden told me, looking like he had just nibbled on humble pie. “That was completely nuts. But your confidence—and how you really looked like you knew what you were doing… I, uh…”

            “He’s trying to say that he’s impressed,” Adelina said with an amused smile.

            “No more stupid bets, or whatever you called that, okay?” Liesel replied.

            Quincy came up to me, with an obvious question. “What’d you play, anyway?”

            “Oh, just a couple of Van Halen tunes,” I huffed out and caught my breath.

            Edmond, still keeping his distance from the other trio, seemed to have watched my session more closely, or with a different perspective. He remarked, “Maze, the way you ‘played’ up there… It was almost like you’ve handled an electric guitar before—”

            But he was cut off by a sudden shrill scream from the direction of the newly-opened secret store. We all turned to see Cass, emerging from the hatch as customers who had been waiting in line backed away, some with shirts raised to their noses.

            “Stink bomb!” she shouted as she rushed out with a shoebox that was emitting more noxious vapors by the second. “Clear a path! We got a stink bomb!”

            “A stink bomb…?” Quincy muttered, showing only minor interest as Cass ran by us. “Tch. That’s really old school. My bro says he only ever saw one in all his years here.”

            “I didn’t know she sold those,” Liesel said. “Think it was down there too long?”

            Cass made it to the edge of the trees, where she opened the box, reached in to pull out the smoking ball of stench to the detriment of herself, and tossed it deep into the “woods” that were free of any of our peers for the moment. With the emergency seemingly handled by our diligent school merchant, we went over to check on her.

            “You okay, Cass?” Adelina asked with a tone of sympathy, which was sort of immediately betrayed by her needing to pinch her nose. “Gah! Oh, that reeks… I mean, um… What happened? Was that merchandise that went bad or something?”

            “We don’t sell those—it’s way too risky!” Cass exclaimed. She took a beat to calm down and remove her raincoat, which had absorbed some of the blast. “It went off when I opened this shoebox. Pencil grips and erasers are the only things supposed to be in there. Harmless! The box must’ve been booby-trapped by some gormless numpty.”

            “It was?!” Liesel recoiled in shock. “Who would do such a thing?”

            “Who do you think? I got a look at the inside of the box top, and…” Cass took it off and flipped it around. “My sis told me about this rubbish ‘rivalry’ of ours. Ugh, now I need to find a way to get the stink out of these goods. Be a shame to toss it all.”

            Upon seeing the text scrawled with Sharpie on the box top, near a glued metal pin that must’ve triggered the bomb, Edmond glowered. The look of righteous fury on his face was so strong, that we must’ve all briefly forgotten my performance or the stink bomb itself. When he noticed us staring at him, he quickly softened his expression.

            “Happy… first day… of school,” Quincy read off the sloppy writing. “From the fifth-graders at… Eats Haven. I mean East Haven. Wait a minute, we’re not fifthies!”

            “Like the loser idiots care what grade’s shop-keep opens the box first,” Edmond said spitefully. “I remember hearing that they pulled this crap on the older kids when we were in first grade! They gave us a break last year, and now it’s starting again!”

            Hayden tried to placate him, “Edmond, chill, bro. It’s not that serious.”

            But it didn’t work, and he got right into swearing revenge. “We have to hit them back somehow, or they’ll just ramp this up. Gah! How’d they smuggle that in, anyway?”

            “Eddie, let it go,” Liesel advised. “It’s probably a one-off thing. Escalating it will just make it worse. Who cares about a dumb prank? Don’t let ’em get a rise out of you.”

            “Pfft. Good luck with that. See what happens,” he scoffed and set off on his own.

            “Wow,” Adelina sighed. “You two seem chill, but that kid? He needs work.”

            I didn’t want to lose the momentum I had going with the Ady-Hayden-Quincy trio, and nothing all that memorable was happening at home, so for the next few hours of how I perceived time, I stuck around in recess. The bell would ring, and I’d head out the doors with everyone else. The six of us would hang out together; socializing, mostly, since Hayden and Quince weren’t really about that moving around thing so much. Then the bell would ring, and I’d skip ahead before going back inside, to the next bell.

            For the first time, I used my powers to cheat a little. I would undo any socially awkward comment I made, or keep Liesel and Edmond from making their own by just talking over them before they said something stupid. These tweaks I made built up over time, and if my fellow kids had gotten a chance to grow up already like I had, they very easily could’ve detected my subtle “social engineering,” the perfection and the timing of every comment I made, subject I broached, and taste or opinion I shared. Fine, yes, I was partaking in benevolent manipulation, but I wanted all of us to become fast friends, as quickly as possible. If just to maximize the limited time we had to grow up together.

            There was only so much I could do for Edmond, though, who was not eager to double the size of our friend circle. He wasn’t mean, but nor was he friendly, and he kept on guard like he saw one if not more of the others as intruders. I couldn’t help him with that; it was something he’d have to improve upon all on his own. The best thing I could do was to demonstrate how you could get new friends and keep the old.

            Being stuck in recess for five days in a row in an endless loop was not exactly the “carefree childhood paradise” I expected it to be. When you’re reliving the same forty minutes on repeat, it all just blends together into chaos, noise, and a blur of motion.

            I was doing my best to shut all of that out as I focused on building rapport and trust with Hayden’s “crew.” We needed to become more than close classmates. If we reached the point where we started calling ourselves actual friends, and even just one of us had a play date or hangout with another at either’s home inside a month of school starting, then I’d call it a success. Five days of recess, I told myself, and I’d consider my kickstart complete. The rest could take its natural course afterwards.

            On Tuesday, we chilled in the shade and talked about movies. Wednesday was the same, but the topic shifted to TV shows. By Thursday, we were comfortable enough to get into more personal tastes, like music. And Friday? The possibilities were endless.

            “Here you go, Maisy,” Cass said when it was my turn to step up to the store hatch. She held up a Sam Ash bag, delicately sealed with a piece of pink tape that matched her recently-washed raincoat. “Your special order, as requested.”

            “You’re a lifesaver,” I told her. “Did you have any trouble finding them?”

            “Seeing as how I know nothing about instruments and had never been in the place before, I, uh… Let’s just say the clerk was very helpful in finding the authentic Martins you wanted. That’ll be eight dollars, please. Thank you for shopping at the school store.”

            “Here.” I handed her a ten-dollar bill; my allowance. Hopefully the other me, if she actually could forgive me, would. “Invest the change into cleaning supplies.”

            “Ha-ha…” Cass sighed and gratefully took the money. “It still stinks down here, you know. Luckily, most of our goods stay sealed up until point of sale.”

            “Because of mildew? Or bugs?”

            “Um.” She moved her eyes elsewhere in shame. “More like rats and raccoons.”

            “Can we hurry this up?” Claudia of all people barked from the end of the line. I stood and turned to see her looking impatient. “Ugh, it’s Maisy… Some people have a pack of designer slap bracelets to pass around, you know! Not that you’re getting one.”

            I knew better than to engage, so without so much as an eye roll, I headed off to let the boy in line have his turn. He asked for a pack of those Pogs milk caps I never got into, and when I heard him opening them behind me instead of walking somewhere else with the roll first, I knew Claudia would direct her self-importance at him next.

            Crap. Was she going to grow into a problem for me? My first time around, she had probably seen me as another faceless girl among the masses to ignore. If I started making waves with my second chance, I’d likely draw her ire eventually.

            A problem for later; friends were far more important than enemies.

            “Oh, Maze—did your strings come in?” Liesel asked as I approached the central fort, which we’d been given a chance to hang out on today.

            The other four shifted their attention to me as I climbed up the ladder, with bag in hand. Edmond was the only one across the bridge and by the slide, maybe in case he felt the need to bail. I hoped he wouldn’t start getting paranoid that we were going to kick him out of our cool kids’ club. The week must’ve been rough for him.

            “Maze, lemme see?” Quincy requested and shuffled over.

            I took the box out of the bag and handed it to him for his quick study.

            “The picture on the front… These look a lot like the ones my brother used, at least when he still played.” He gave the box a rattle and handed it back. “Well, at least they aren’t cat guts. That’s what Ady plays on with her violin, you know.”

            She scowled and balled her hands into fists. “Quince, I told you to stop saying that. You know it’s not true! That one Tom and Jerry episode really messed you up… Oh! Speaking of shows. Liesel, I checked out an episode of Ghostwriter yesterday after school. It’s not bad. My sisters all hog the TV and we mostly watch cable, not PBS, so I never would’ve known about it. I had no idea what was going on, but the concept is cool.”

            Edmond worked up the courage to speak up and ask, “Is that the show with that weird-looking dot-ghost thing that talks on a computer screen to help solve mysteries?”

            “Yes, Eddie,” Liesel replied. “I think it’s great. Lenni’s a really cool character, too. She’s got that self-assurance and a little bit of sass, and she plays a keyboard.”

            “No wonder you like her,” Adelina said. “What other shows do you watch?”

            I knew from experience that this was not a question Liesel took lightly. She would never call herself a couch potato, but boy could she watch a lot of TV. Given a chance, she’d go on ten-minute-long tirades about what was “awesome,” or “lame,” and then talk and talk about plots and characters. Eddie and I had yet to find the nerve to tell her that listeners lose focus on lists pretty quickly and generally didn’t enjoy them.

            Thankfully, we were interrupted before Liesel could begin when Enzo came out of the woods, looking quite flustered. “Those jerks did it again!” he yelled, attracting the attention of half the grade. “East Haven struck again! Come look—you gotta see this!”

            Cool. More playground drama. Just what I needed to end a week of recess on.

            Our group hopped down to check out what Pizza Boy had discovered, though it looked like all of us aside from Eddie were more curious than angry; this dumb rivalry, for now, bent more towards entertaining, or at most mildly irritating instead of a “let’s all get angry and plot revenge” type of attitude. Except in Edmond’s case.

            Along with a dozen or so other kids, we followed Enzo to a cluster of pines that had been marked at shoulder’s height with bright orange spray paint.

            “What’d they do? Vandalize some bark?” Heather asked with a glasses nudge.

            “No idea how they’re getting into school, but that’s not a big deal,” Hayden said.

            “No, watch—stand over here,” Enzo instructed. “You gotta look at it just right, or you won’t see it. The graffiti could’ve been here all week and no one noticed.”

            The gaggle of third-graders shifted positions until the parallax of the trees aligned and matched up the orange paint. Spread across the trunks closer and furthest from us were the letters “RVE SUX.” Simple, to the point, and a good optimization of paint.

            “What does… S-U-X stand for again?” Quincy wondered with a chin scratch.

            “Quince, c’mon man,” Hayden huffed. “You’re sleepy, not stupid.”

            “You have to admit. It’s a good execution using 3D space,” Wren, already easily the tallest kid in our grade, remarked. “Ah, well. It won’t be on there forever.”

            “See what East Haven does?” Edmond snapped. “What’d we even do to ’em to deserve this treatment? If they keep pushing us, they’re gonna get what’s coming!”

            “Edmond. Bro. You gotta take it easier than that,” Quincy said, and placed a hand on his shoulder—which was very clearly undesired. “You’re giving ’em what they want.”

            “I’m not your bro. Dude.” Edmond wriggled out of Quincy’s grasp and scowled. “Why aren’t you all angrier about this crap? Don’t you know it’ll keep getting worse?”

            “If it gets worse, we’ll all handle it together,” Adelina said calmly. “It’s not worth worrying about. They’re gonna get bored eventually if we don’t respond.”

            Edmond seemed resistant to Ady’s words, as well, but his expression did soften when she gave him that comforting look of hers. In contrast, when Quincy offered up another one of his chill, reassuring half-smiles and put a hand on his shoulder a second time, Eddie promptly went back to frowning, shoved it off, and walked away from us.

            “Maze. Are you seeing what I see with Eddie?” Liesel whispered at my side.

            “Yup,” I murmured back. “I started to suspect it a while ago.”

            “Suspect what?” Quincy, ever oblivious, asked us. “That he’s a hothead?”

            “He’s got a problem with other dudes, Quince,” Hayden replied flatly.

            “Huh?! That doesn’t even make sense. Does he hate himself, then?”

            Brady stepped away from the other tree-gawkers and said matter-of-factly, “Mr. Palmer’s not a misandrist, at least from what I can see. But he does have trust issues. We shared first grade, and he let something slip about his history with East Haven.”

            “Oooh, Eddie has a dark, mysterious past?” Adelina replied giddily. “Do tell!”

            Brady pressed his clipboard against his chest. “Please, Ms. Esparto. I don’t gossip.”

            Admittedly, my recess tour ended on a disappointing note for all of us; even me, despite never being big into the rumor mill myself. I needed to find out what Edmond was hiding, so I could help him get past it and have a chance to work on his confidence. But he was the kind of kid that was resistant to—and fought back against—any prying. I would just have to keep walking on eggshells when I was around him. Hopefully, only for a little longer. Once he cracked all on his own, we’d be there to support him.

            Thankfully, I got a break from all the school-days melodrama the next morning when something I had been looking forward to finally arrived. It was a little risky, since it never happened in the original timeline, but I just had to make an exception here.

            “Please, Olive!” I had begged her the previous weekend, not that long after she was officiated with parenting duties once more and had to bear the brunt of her siblings’ whining and requests again. “We don’t even have to buy anything. It’ll be fun!”

            She had relented with a sigh, and picked up the newspaper from the table as we had our Saturday morning breakfast. “Tenth annual Desert Tree Yard Market…” she read from the blurb in the classifieds. “All right, fine. I guess it is a nice neighborhood.”

            And now here we were, back in the sprawling suburbs. All three of us this time. Olive parked near the district’s other elementary school, Sherman Miller, and we stepped out into a little corner of domestic paradise. Not every house participated in the mass yard sale, since it would be a lot to ask anyone to do it once a year, but a good quarter or so of the homes did have manned pop-ups out front. Some driveways only had a single foldout table, but a few made it look like the owners were selling everything.

            “This is Desert Tree?” River said, looking around as we crossed a street. “It sure is a lot nicer than I thought it’d be. How do they get it so green in a desert?”

            “Have you really not been to this neighborhood before, Riv?” Olive replied.

            He shook his head. “No Little League fields here, far as I know, so no reason to visit. It does feel like being back home, though. And wow—there are a lot of yard sales.”

            “You two should only spend your allowances on something that feels special, or that you really want,” Olive advised us. “We don’t have the room for random junk.”

            Good thing I had just gotten my weekly five bucks again, not that it went far.

            We hit up the three houses on one side of the first block we happened to go to, each of the sales run by nice older folks seeking to reduce their material burdens.

            For my family, steeped in the nostalgia of some lost golden era of Americana and counterculture, the more mature the yard-sellers, the better. Olive and our folks loved the odd knick-knacks, made by obscure, defunct companies, and one-of-a-kind crafts projects or self-made gifts were the best. Browsing whatever could fit on a driveway, Olive first picked out a graphic tee for a Bee-Gees tour, and later, a ceramic jewelry box in the shape of a rooster… from a table full of other rooster motifs. She was soon on something of a spree, and between chatting up the locals with a smile on her face, she also grabbed a Leonard Cohen vinyl album and a hand-knit tote bag to carry it all in.

            River, on the other hand, was endlessly fascinated by old-fashioned tchotchkes and gave everything a curious glance—but was being frugal with his money, however much of it he had saved up. He was either waiting for a used thing that stood out, or had his heart set on something from the start. A signed baseball bat or mitt, maybe. He could always be aloof about his tastes in stuff he wanted, even when asking for presents.

            The first block seemed to bring Olive at her limit already, but we headed over to the next one nevertheless. And… no one was selling on the side we walked. But the next one across the street looked promising, mostly because it looked very musical. Running ahead of my sibs, I came up on tables full of records, tapes, and a few 8-track titles. But what really caught my eye, because it seemed early in the format to be selling so many of them, were the CDs. I pulled cases out of their slots in a wire rack that wasn’t for sale, and saw that many went for five bucks. They were mostly from obscure bands or genres I seldom listened to, but that was okay; I’d heard all the mainstream stuff, anyway.

            I’ve always remained a big believer in CDs. When they first arrived in the mid-80s, with Dire Straits and Bowie at the front of the pack with releases, their data size of around 700 megabytes was astounding, given the cost of hard drives in the era. It was still impressive even now, given how recently the word “gigabyte” entered the public’s tech lexicon. Threat of disc rot aside, they were an old, enduring pinnacle of audio archival. We may have had a big collection already, but I’d be spending much of my allowances on new albums, just to hear all my favorites again as they came out; what choice did I have? I only seriously listened to lossless, and digital storage costs were now prohibitive.

            “Got a few games here, too. If you’re interested,” said the boy behind the table as he leaned back in a foldout chair. “It’s mostly crap, though. I’m talking LJN junk.”

            I scooted over to get a look at the redhead behind the big CD shelf. He looked to be River’s age, and was sipping on a Dr. Pepper. When he saw me, his wry little smile widened a bit more and he sat up to look presentable; he must’ve been that kind of boy.

            “Oh, heh… Hi. Let me know if I can help you find something. These CDs are mostly my parents’. A few belong to my stepsis. They, um… go through a lot of ’em, but only half or so are ‘keepers.’ Got some old Walkmans for sale, too. Next table over.”

            “Did you say you have video games?” River asked as he made it over, and Olive got to browsing the CDs with stars in her eyes right next to me. “I have a… Nintendo.”

            “If you mean an NES, yeah—I got six here on the cheap.” The boy shoved a short stack of dark gray square cartridges over for River to examine. None of their tags exceeded ten bucks. “Gotta warn you, though. These are ‘grandma presents;’ the games people who know nothin’ about games get for you. Only buy ’em if you’re desperate.”

            “You’re not really much of a salesman, are you?” I noted.

            The kid shrugged. “Hey, I’m just being honest. If he’s a smoother-talker, he could probably turn a profit on the playground, by convincing a kid these are great.”

            “Yeah, I’m not really into that kind of thing,” River said and looked at the cover art for ‘classics’ like Jaws, Friday the 13^th, and Back to the Future. “Got anything else?”

            “Oh, sure. I’ll just go to the back and bring out the secret inventory. No, buddy! I’m holding onto my good titles. For now, at least. Maybe come back next year?”

            “Argh, I shouldn’t have spent so much already,” Olive groaned as she checked another CD and the woven tote bag swayed in her arms. “Some of these are gems.”

            It was then that I noticed what was inside the house’s open garage: a beautiful set of drums. I couldn’t tell their make and model since I was no expert in percussion, but I had to wonder if the light purple that covered the drums was a custom job. As I stared at the instruments and imagined Hayden banging on them, a screen door slammed.

            “Caught ya staring. They’re not for sale,” a teenager said after sneaking up on me.

            I turned and saw a girl with side-cut hair who must’ve been the sister, smirking at me with crossed arms. “Do you… play those?” I asked, not timidly but in admiration.

            “Well, I’m trying to,” she said, giving her neck a crack. “Me and some high school buddies are forming a garage band. These ones belonged to my mom.” She glanced over at her stepbrother. “My mom. They need some fixing up, but they mean a lot to me.”

            “They’re really cool. I, um… I’m something of a guitarist myself.”

            “Oh, yeah? Respect for starting so young. Are you from around here? I know most of the neighbor kids that are always running about, but I’ve never seen you.”

            “We’re from the city. But Desert Tree feels more like our old neighborhood.”

            “Sweet. Nothing like holding onto a little nostalgia. Anyway, I’m gonna practice; maybe it’ll help advertise to all these ‘window shoppers’ that we’re selling music here.”

            “Or just scare them away, sis!” the boy yelled, getting himself a scoffing grunt.

            “Well, have fun with that,” I told the awesome teen. “I might see you around.”

            She gave me a thumbs-up before going into the garage and sitting on the throne. Once she started on a beat with already-half-decent timing, I returned to River. I wanted to look through the CDs that were on sale, but then the kid brought something up.

            “A guy named Terrence, five houses down, is having a real game sale. He’s even got Super Nintendo stuff! But don’t ask him why.” He learned in to add quietly, “It’s a punishment. A really bad one. His mom’s makin’ him do it, since he keeps being a bully.”

            “Wow. Harsh,” River replied. “But if he’s a bully… will he want to beat me up?”

            The boy snickered. “I mean, he might want to, but I think his mom’s still letting him keep the cash. To invest in something educational? I have no idea; it’s a weird way to discipline someone. I’m pretty sure if he pounds you, he’s not getting a sale, so…”

            “Maze, can we head over there?” River asked me, more determined than usual. “We can come back and look at the CDs some more. I kinda want to buy something.”

            Strange. What video game temptation had gotten him so antsy? Since it was close by, Olive allowed us to head off on our own as she continued to go through albums.

            The house was just a skip away, and there was indeed a modest collection of Nintendo and Sega titles out on display. The tough-looking boy at the table did appear capable of being a bully, but with his mom monitoring him from inside the garage, he was a dog on a leash. A few other kids were browsing his outgoing library. I assumed he would have more unwanted customers if not for the local reputation he’d likely built up.

            River saw something right away and his eyes sparkled. I’d never seen him even almost shove other people away before to get somewhere, but today, he came very close.

            In excited and short bursts, he exclaimed, “Hi. I see you have an SNES on sale that’s in good condition. I really want it. Will you sell it to me? I have money.”

            With the realization that he could lose an entire console today, Terrence grumbled forcefully, “Great. I don’t really want to sell it, you know. So, maybe if…” He stopped and shuddered the moment he heard a cough from his mother. “Ugh. What I meant to say is…” a long sigh, “sixty bucks, and it’s yours. Just take good care of it, okay?”

            “S-sure! You bet I will.” River took out his junior wallet and started fishing out bills. Terrence took them reluctantly, and flinched when River looked at the carts that were covering the table next. “Looks like I still have enough for a game, too…”

            Cripes, Riv came out here loaded. I had no idea what he originally spent all this money on, but I did remember that, before, he didn’t get a used Super Nintendo until his 1995 birthday, along with Donkey Kong Country. Which has a killer soundtrack. Maybe this was some buildup from my light meddling so far? Small changes, over time. Chaos theory.

            Before I could ponder for long, I heard the sound of bicycle spokes behind me, followed by a screeching stop. I turned to see Charlie right there, at the end of the drive. Three of his buddies, Wes included, kept going without him as he stared at me. They then came to stops of their own in an empty intersection, at which point Charlie gave them a signal that he just needed a second. That was all the signal I needed, too.

            I snuck away from River and asked Charlie in a low voice, “Are you in there?”

            “What do you think, Maze?” he replied in a hushed tone. “Got hit by a memory of seeing your beanie today, so I came back to investigate. What are you doing in my territory?” He waited for me to break like I used to whenever he pretended to be all threatening, but I wasn’t falling for it. He relaxed and said, “It’s been a while since we last talked. We should really catch up. I looked up your school schedule—the next time you get a half-day, come by, okay? I’m really itching to tell you about the fun I’ve had.”

            “What fun? You know I don’t like it when you sound ominous and—”

            But he didn’t let me finish, and blurted “Gotta go!” before slamming his pedals.

            Damn it, Chuck. You’ll never change, will you? I had to let it go for now when I heard River shuffling up behind me, a SNES his hands, yet disappointment on his face.

            “Terrence won’t negotiate at all. I can’t get the game, too. I’m five bucks short.”

            I sighed. Poor, long-suffering River. He needed a hug. And a Lincoln, apparently.

            “Maze! No, I couldn’t…” he gasped when I took my one bill out of my pocket.

            “You can’t go home with nothing to play, Riv. You can pay me back later.”

            Until 2040, I was a solo act. I even busked a few times. I’d take some gigs with other bands when they needed to fill a guitar position, but I never really played with any single group a second time. I didn’t like those awkward reunions, and they felt worse the more time that passed since I last saw someone. I’ve always felt overly-obligated to stay in touch with anyone I so much as said “hi” to, and when I don’t do so about 99% of the time, a feeling of guilt makes me prefer to just move on from past acquaintances.

            It's probably a fear of commitment, or general social anxiety. Something I began to deal with in the mid 2020s, but never got diagnosed or actually worked to resolve. I wasn’t like that as a kid, even though Liesel was my only steady real friend growing up, and so far, I hadn’t brought that side of myself back with me. Charlie was probably right when he said we weren’t going to last much longer. Even among well-adjusted couples in the 2040s, relationships had become tough to maintain. And we weren’t one of them.

            When I joined the Bad Lizards, I left behind low-paying single guitar gigs for a cover band dreaming to go big with originals; a tired old story. I didn’t care about how successful we might’ve become. Playing with others, even if imperfectly, was what my life needed. It seemed like I began to recover from what befell our family. There were regrets that I only, finally began playing music so late in life, but then again, I’ve never felt my age—to the point where being a kid again didn’t feel too different. Other than the return of the old rules, being shorter, and having less-refined motor functions. And not going to a job during the day that in no way grew my skill with a guitar is nice, too.

            Thinking about them, I miss Shawna, Sam, and Rich and playing music together, but I chose to come back for a reason when I was given the once-in-a-lifetime chance to. Odds are, I’ll never jam with them again, but I won’t let our time together, or the help they gave me in finding my own confidence, go to waste. A little bit of the spirit of Bad Lizards will go into my next band, whatever its name might be. I can see it clearly.

            Myself, on lead guitar. Maybe even singing female vocals if I worked up to it and got a few lessons. Hayden, keeping the beat on the drums. Quincy, awake on the bass. Adelina, tempo on some songs, and on occasion, maybe even strings. And Edmond?

            He doesn’t know it yet, but in eighth grade, he’ll sing for the school. Impressively.

            “Which way do I go now, Maze?” River asked me later that night, as he ran about in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past’s Eastern Palace for the very first time. “This dungeon is such a, um… maze. The bow is cool, but I don’t know where to go now.”

            I’d lost my place in the guide Terrence “kindly” included, since it really brought me back. The high-effort illustrations fleshed out the world, making it bigger than what could fit onto a 16-bit cartridge at the time. Publishers didn’t do it like this anymore.

            “Maisy,” River said impatiently over the sound of pink-haired Link’s low health beeping, “you’re going through the book to see all the art again. C’mon, I think I need help finding some big key so I can fight the boss. You’re my navigator, remember?”

            “I dunno,” I said with a playful shrug, “I’m reading stuff about Hyrule.”

            He sighed, brought up the game’s internal dungeon map, and replied, “Do you remember when you were, like, maybe five, and helped me get through the first Zelda?”

            “Sure. You needed the info from the instruction book to beat it.”

            “Well, be my adventure buddy again and tell me where to go, okay?”

            “Aw, Riv,” Olive cooed from the couch, where she was reading from one of her Poirot books. “You’re trying to include your little sis, like the old days in Chicago.”

            “Don’t turn it into a thing, Olive,” he said with a groan.

            “Are you liking your new game? It does look pretty,” she said, when any gamer would use the compliment of ‘good graphics’ instead. “Why’d you want it so badly?”

            “Got tired of hearing about it from all the other kids in class this year and last. I wanted to play it, but needed to get the console first, and… Oooh, there’s the key.”

            “Hm. It’s not like you to give into peer pressure. But I love seeing you working together. And I suppose this means you’ll want to go to Video Klub more often.”

            “Guess so. There are a lot of games I want to try. Maze, what’s up here…?”

            I looked at the screen and replied, “Wait, get a fairy first! That’s the boss—”

            “Gah!” River panicked when Link stepped into the room with the six armos knights, all while a single hit would result in a game over. “Aah! What do I do?”

            After running around avoiding the bouncing bosses for a solid minute, he fought back and whittled away their health. He freaked out again when the last one standing turned red and angry, but somehow beat it, too. All on his first try, with half a heart.

            Once he calmed down, he smiled and we high-fived. It was a good, new memory.