She has to be in her twenties if she’s already teaching, but she could be somebody’s kid sister. She looks that young. And different, too. Her hair is a trip. The sides are slicked back and held in place with plastic combs, but the top is a mass of curls that spill onto her forehead like bangs, and the back is doing the same thing in the other direction. There is more product in her hair than I have ever seen, each coil individually defined. I’m so startled I can’t do anything but stare, which she does not love.

“Can I help you?” Her voice sounds exactly the same.

“Ms. Silverthorn!” I croak. I can’t think how to follow up, because it’s one thing to allow time travel into my own mind and another to say it out loud.

I recognize the look in her eyes: concern for me, even though I’m a stranger. Her empathetic nature means she’s always ahead of most kids who come to her with a secret. There’s no way she’s ahead of this one, but she’s figured out I am in distress.

“You’re not one of my students, but I am Ms. Silverthorn. So …” She steps away from the door and ushers me in, and even though it’s what I hoped for, I’m also like, whatever happened to stranger danger? I’m relieved when I see that not everything is different. She’s years away from the sectional and the plasma screen TV, but her mother’s rocking chair sits right where it should, and her framed lithograph of James Baldwin is already in place over the faux fireplace, though hung in a cheaper frame.

I need to figure out the fastest way to convince her I’m from the future without having her summon mental health professionals.

I should ask for today’s date and then just google some historical thing that happens today and when it comes true—

My god. I can’t.

There’s. No. Internet.

I have to say something, though, and soon, because she is casually making her way to a phone the size of a toaster, which is, no joke, attached to the wall. Whether she’s calling campus security or the police, I need to stop her.

“Connecticut Yankee!”

She pauses, one hand reaching toward the phone. “I’m sorry?”

“Um, you know how you said what happened to Clarence is a ‘time slip’?”

Her brows rise. “Said to who? We haven’t started it yet.”

“Oh … uh …”

“How did you know I was going to end the semester with that?”

“You always do …”

“I what?”