“—and it won’t come back to bite you?” He pretty much sneers in my face. “Dream on, asshole.”

He stalks away, and I’m trembling. I’ve been teased before but, seriously, no one has threatened me. And so openly, with other guys milling about, bagels in hand. It’s like he isn’t even worried that he’ll get in trouble. Maybe he wouldn’t?

But that’s only half of it. If Ma Elena and Gordo break up early, have I doomed myself by changing the timeline too much? I want to call Ms. Silverthorn and find out what precedents there are for a time slipper who prevented his own birth. I mean, I’m here—I can feel me. If they don’t have me in the future, do I disappear here too? Or do I just stay here, Connecticut Yankee style, continuing to age even though I haven’t been born?

I need to sit down.

I can’t even go back to my room because Vin Weasel and Red are teasing a freshman in front of the entrance to my hall. I can practically hear my bones cracking. Bagel in hand, but with no will to eat it, I stand there making small-talk with some boy in my English class who asks questions about Connecticut, my old school, and eventually about my girlfriend, whose existence he doesn’t doubt at all. I play along as he talks about girls and murmurs things that sound like agreement, even as I steep in my own shame: this is what it means to pull the closet door shut on yourself. As soon as Vin Weasel and Red are gone, I bolt.

Too restless to hang with Ernie for long, I head out across campus. I’ve heard a florist is setting up shop in the cafeteria, and though I didn’t get to 1985 in time to place an order, I’m hoping maybe they have some spare boutonnieres lying around.

I find an Asian family in the kitchen, loading corsages and boutonnieres into one of the walk-in refrigerators to distribute to the dorms later. If they have enough extra, I could get flowers for Leeza and Ma Elena just to be sweet, and maybe even some for Tawny. (Would she know that hers are compensation for guilt?) What I actually want to do, of course, is buy flowers for Chaz. I mean, I know it would have to be discreet, nothing more than a boutonniere. But, wow, I really want to.

An older woman is busy sorting plastic-wrapped packets and paying no attention to me, but when her helper turns around, it’s Malee Somboon-Fox, or just Somboon at this point, I guess. She’s so crazily young and pretty, it’s hard to reconcile her with the principal she will become.

“Hey,” she says. “I remember YOU! You bought the jacket.”

“What are you doing here?” I sputter. “You don’t go to First Secondary!”