The nurse checks out my pupils and then my limbs and seems convinced I am in no danger beyond bruising and a few days of headaches. As soon as she steps out of the room to get an ice pack, I kiss Cheng for all I’m worth. I don’t care where or when I am: I’ve earned it.

When the nurse returns, Ms. Silverthorn is with her, eager to see how I’m faring. Nearly as much as I needed to kiss my boyfriend, I now need to talk to her, so I ask Cheng and the nurse if they can leave us alone. The nurse seems a little surprised but agrees, and Cheng, the living embodiment of roll-with-it, just gives me a quick hug and is out the door, no questions asked.

Ms. Silverthorn looks worried, and I can see she’s wondering if there’s more to the story of how I got injured. It’s almost funny, because she has no idea. So I tell her.

“It happened today.”

No reaction.

“Connecticut Yankee happened.” I see a flicker of something in her eyes. “To me.”

There we go! A quick succession of emotions—No! Yes! Finally!—fill the canvas of her face like Bob Ross brushstrokes making happy little trees.

“Well, it certainly took you long enough!” And she laughs a laugh I’ve never quite heard from her before, an intimate one that says we share a secret.

She doesn’t want to have this discussion in the nurse’s office, so we head back to her classroom, which emptied out a few hours ago. She sits at her desk and leans back, savoring the chance to talk about a secret she’s carried twice as long as I’ve been alive. (That’s a trippy notion, let me tell you.)

“When you showed up your freshman year, I had a flash that you looked like my Luis. But it was confusing because you came to orientation with Laney. You never told me, back in the day, that she was your mother.”

“I know … it seemed like an impossibility on top of an impossibility. I thought maybe one thing at a time would be enough.”

“I have lived decades making peace with that craziness.” She looks out the window, and I’m guessing she sees that last day. “You can imagine my heart rate when Helen stopped the car and you were gone. I told her you ran off, and she was so upset about everything she actually went with it. But Ernie saw it … that poor boy! Picture me trying to explain to a church school student that you were a time traveler. If he hadn’t seen your disappearing act himself, he’d never have been able to digest such a thing. I convinced him that we needed to keep this to ourselves. Though, of course, he told Chaz.”

“So Chaz lived?”