As much as I hate to admit it, being knocked out is super common in time travel stories. In Hangin’ Out with Cici, she gets bonked on the head (on a bus, which doesn’t seem like a big place for head injuries, but no stranger than a school auditorium). The good news is that she wakes up back in her regular life at the end. Hopefully, I will, too.

Listen to me. My recently torpedoed head is already making room for this to be true. That’s not adaptability; that’s insanity.

“Off the lawn, Townie.”

I scramble up to face the speaker. A backlit silhouette, like my last image of Ms. Silverthorn, fills my view. The afternoon sun outlines a massive brown torso, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust.

The first detail I can make out: three little hatch marks in a perfect fade.

Holy crap. It’s Gordo. As in, my dad.

I really have time traveled to the ’80s—and whoa, actually thinking the words makes me nauseous again. I’m shaking all over at the very idea, despite how much I used to love that stuff. Used to? I’m already past-tensing my own future life? Oh my god oh my god oh my god.

Breathe. Breathe.

“Did you hear me, ass wipe?” He sounds outraged that I have not immediately obeyed his command.

Now I know the exact year: 1985. Gordo only attended ASA during his senior year, after being kicked out of another boarding school, which he went to after being kicked out of the one before that. I can’t help but think that 1985 means ASA is still a church school, and he could get busted for swearing and, for that matter, smoking, which his stinky shirt suggests he isn’t great at hiding. If it’s 1985, he and Mom have just started dating, which means that she was attracted to this smelly, hulking, rage monster. (And also that, regardless of what she says, he has always been the guy he was when he left us.) Gross.

He grabs my shirt collar—um, hands off!—which starts to give because it’s silk and not really meant for wrestling. His aggression jolts me into clarity and I slap his meat paw away. He is so surprised that he actually takes a step back. His voice gets even lower and meaner. “You haven’t heard what we do to Townies here?”

“You mean when you’re done shaving each other’s backs?”

“What did you say?” He knows this is an insult of some kind even if it doesn’t quite make sense, and I see he is tensing up to punch my lights out. Trust me, I will lose this fight. I don’t do so much as yoga, much less karate. I have to redirect.