s1.e5

Shoe Horn

            With Lucy’s shoe tucked away in the glove box so Jace wouldn’t have to keep looking at it, he lazily watched the passing landscape of Kettle Road as he and his uncle made the long journey to the item’s owner’s house, back in Desert Tree. The era’s pop music was playing on the radio, but at a very low volume this time.

            “What’s the plan?” Jace eventually asked.

            “What do you mean?” Wes replied, resting on an arm as he drove with the other.

            “To get the stupid shoe back to her without being caught, duh.”

            “Uh, I dunno. I guess I’ll just walk up to the front door, drop it off, knock, and leave? What’s to plan? This is a simple errand. I thought I implied that.”

            “Nothing’s been simple up to now… That’s all.”

            “Well, this is where things turn around for us. You’ll see.”

            “Yeah, right…” Jace let out a bigger sigh than usual. “You’re the adult. You’re supposed to plan stuff, but things always become hot garbage when you’re in charge.”

            “Buddy,” Wes replied at a stoplight, “not everything is planned out. Not every little thing needs a plan. Don’t obsess too much trying to give order to chaos.”

            “But we’re in the past! Anything we do could screw up the present. You should be acting like a scientist or something, being really careful and planning everything out.”

            “Jace. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Adults aren’t these indomitable, perfect people. Yeah, we all think that when we’re young, that our parents are the best and invincible to failure, and they’re there to write the guidebook of your life, but none of that is really true. Adults are just kids who have discovered cynicism.”

            “What are you talking about? I’m just asking you to be more careful.”

            “I’m making a point here. Do you still believe in Santa?”

            “What?” Jace had no idea what he was trying to tell him, so without knowing a proper way to argue, he could only reply with, “Uh, no. Not really.”

            “Okay. Well, Santa is part of the ‘plan’ we all perceive our parents of having. He’s another element of the storybook they desperately want to write for us. Then you realize it was your parents putting the gifts under the tree the whole time. But that’s okay, since they’ll still get you anything you ask for. If they don’t, then it’s just because they forgot. Until you understand the concept of money, what they need to buy you your presents.”

            “Uncle Wes, I really don’t care about this stuff right now.”

            After the light turned green and he got back to driving, he continued, “I’m saying adults have flaws often worth forgiving. It’s more important that they keep trying to be a good dad or mom. That brings us to something I’ve been wanting to touch on.”

            Jace looked at him. “Please don’t start talking about my dad again.”

            “I won’t. But I do want to know how things have been going between you two recently. You usually don’t tell me when I ask, but now we’re stuck in a car together.”

            “Everything’s fine. I only stay at his house every other weekend. Sometimes. We watch movies and go places. He’s nice to me. We don’t talk about Mom.”

            “Do you… keep anything over there?”

            “No. All I have is a room and a bed. It’s like a sleepover. He calls me ‘buddy’ a lot, just like you do. Sometimes he tries to throw a football around. That’s the only thing I don’t like doing. Just because he doesn’t like Mom doesn’t mean we don’t get along. I know he screws up sometimes, but he tries to make up for it.”

            A little surprised, Wes hesitated before replying, “You’re… much more mature than I was at your age, at least about our… similar situation.”

            “I know. I’ve been around your kid self, remember?”

            “But, still, some adults make good parents, but not good partners. The way your dad treated my sister when you were younger, maybe before you can remember… I can’t forgive him for that. And she really should change your last name to her own.”

            “Jace Elaine? Ew. That doesn’t sound right. Not at all. Can we stop talking about this now? Every time you bring up my dad, you just get angry.”

            Wes wanted to argue that fact and say more, he but had to admit, Jace was right.

            Taking advantage of the lull and hoping to change the subject before Wes might have started talking about his dad again, Jace thought of something to talk about.

            “So, um… I saw a few episodes of the old Rugrats, and I was wondering… So, Angelica can understand and talk to both the babies and the parents, right?”

            “Yeah. That’s how things work in that universe.”

            “And she’s like, three years old, right?”

            “Uh-huh. And mean and selfish. But nonetheless a great, iconic character.”

            “But doesn’t it imply that she could translate what the babies are saying to their parents? What if the real world was like that? It would be crazy. And what age do kids in that show… How old are they when they can’t understand babies anymore? And here’s the freakiest thing of all. When she becomes an adult, will she remember that she used to talk with babies? What if she becomes a scientist and studies why she had the ability?”

            “Whoa, Jace. You got some sharp critical thinking skills. But not everything in a kid’s show is going to make sense or needs to be thought about. If you’re still a youthful lad yourself and you’re already thinking about stuff like that… I dunno, bud. You might grow up trying to look behind the curtain of everything.”

            “Is that bad?”

            “It might not help your making-friends situation. At least not if you start out that way whenever they talk about something they like.” Things were quiet for a few blocks, until Wes returned to the topic. “Anyway, at least you and your dad seem to get along.”

            “Not this again.”

            “Don’t worry, I’m just going to talk about myself for a second. But for a reason! I swear. I’m trying to explain why I’m always so concerned about you and your dad.”

            “Oh, goody! I get to hear about my uncle’s amazing childhood again.”

            Wes didn’t respond with a snarky remark this time. After some awkward seconds of silence, Jace turned and saw that he seemed to be deeply contemplative.

            “It’s… because we’re going to your mom’s house. You’ve never seen the inside of it aside from a few photos—and I’m sure she hasn’t told you much about her time there. I know she was treated well and everything. Spoiled, probably. I hated the place. Every time I visited, I was reminded of this rift between the two sides of my family.”

            “It’s kind of a nice place, isn’t it?”

            “A bit. Not that Desert Tree had any mansions, but the house was definitely in its nice, ‘luxury’ corner. And everything about that house… The look, how clean it was, even how it smelled… I dunno, it was all fake to me, like it wasn’t lived in. Like you couldn’t leave your mark on it. My house had personality, all these little nicks and scratches and imperfections. I guess it’s because their place was built the same year they bought it, so it was brand new. Mine was built with the rest of the neighborhood, so it was older, lived in. Hers was manufactured off a factory line. Maybe I just have a bias against all houses built past the 70s, really. They’re too… perfect, sterile. Cold.

            “But it’s just a house. My main reason for not liking it were the people who lived in it. I hated my dad’s second wife as a kid. As an adult, I know that hating anyone is a waste of passion and energy, but kids hate things all the time, or at least think they do. It’s the only way they know how to express one side of their strongest feelings. You still hate some stuff, right? If you do, it’s probably because you don’t understand that thing.”

            “I still hate my stupid once-friends because they became jerks.”

            “Yeah, well, then you get where I’m coming from. I haven’t felt this way for a long time, but I hated going to Lucy’s. Her mom didn’t like me at all. Thought I was a delinquent, even though I didn’t get in trouble all that often. And Dad pretended to like me. He tried as hard as he could to make us ‘friends,’ without actually trying. Sure, he gave me presents. Took me and Luce to movies. Even played video games with me.

            “But he also bought me things I already had or didn’t want, paid no attention to film ratings—me and your mom experienced our share of violence and language at the cineplex—and he was a sore loser as a gamer. Here was a guy in his forties who would actually rage quit when I beat him. He even broke a few controllers over the years.”

            “Your dad couldn’t have been all bad…”

            “No. I mean, he did try. Superficially. Like, he never put any effort into getting to know me. Never asked me about my day or showed any interest in my own interests. But I’m sure he thought he was doing a good job. Never belittled me. Didn’t even make me do chores at his house other than cleaning my plate after dinner. And that was only twice a month, as literally every Saturday I was over, we had pizza delivered. Every one.”

            “I don’t actually remember even meeting my mom’s parents…”

            “Nope. And that says a lot. They only ever saw you when you were a baby.”

            Without warning, at a stoplight by yet another Kettle strip mall, everything in the car suddenly shut off. Wes immediately tried to restart the engine without so much as a curse word, but without success. It was like the Honda made no effort to run.

            “Aw, crap,” he moaned and tried the hazard lights, which thankfully still worked. As red turned to green and traffic moved around him, he sighed, “Eddie let us down.”

            “Eddie? Who’s Eddie? You got the car from a guy named Odie, didn’t you?”

            “Oh. Yeah. Eddie, Odie… Whatever. Guess Ol’ Odie wasn’t all that ‘Onest.” Wes looked around at the nearby businesses, and to his fortune, there just so happened to be an auto-repair chain on the right. “I’m guessing it’s the alternator. If they don’t have any in stock, we might be out of a car for the next few days.”

            “What?! How are we going to go to King Arcade tomorrow? Or back to our room? What if we can’t even get back to the present?”

            “Jace, relax. There are taxis and buses. Now get out and push.”

            “I’ll tell Mom you made me push a car in busy traffic.”

            “I was kidding! Haven’t you memorized what my jape face looks like yet? Just stay there. I’ll rescue us. Your uncle’s a hero! A hero with disposable money!”

            Jace rolled his eyes. Wes waited for another red light, got out, and with the kind of effort that reminded him that he was out of shape, pushed the car from the doorframe and guided it into the plaza entrance on the intersection’s other road.

            “Hoo-boy,” the young country boy mechanic outside the garage greeted Wes as he wiped off oil from his fingers with a dirty cloth. “Saw the whole thing. Ya’ll got lucky, huh? Yer car sure picked a good place to break down, save ya a tow.”

            “Yeah, yeah. Hey, could we make this quick? We got places to be.”

            “Sure, sure. I mean, we’ll do our best. Well, hey, fella,” the mechanic said to Jace through the closed passenger window. “Why didn’t ya get out and push for your dad?”

            Jace groaned, heavily.

            After waiting inside the lobby for a few minutes, which had non-working air conditioning and little more than a water cooler with styrofoam cups and a television showing a golf tournament with poor reception, Jace saw his uncle come back in, Lucy’s shoe in hand. He tossed it down to him and slid his hands into his pockets.

            “Yep. Alternator. They have it, but it’ll take a few hours to install.”

            “Then I guess the quest to give my mom her shoe back failed. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be, and, like, time is telling us to back off and stop messing with it.”

            “Brilliant theory, Jace, but, nah—now I’m even more determined to see this through. Her house is probably about a thirty-minute walk from here.”

            “B-but… Come on. Man…”

            “You could use some exercise anyway after wasting away watching television.”

            “And who was behind that genius idea?”

            Jace soon found himself walking down Kettle’s cracked old sidewalk under the hot summer sun, the evaporating rain puddles making everything quite humid. After a few blocks, they turned onto Moson Street, which would lead them straight to Desert Tree, eventually. Moson turned into a residential area of small apartments a little further in, and the busy and loud traffic from Kettle soon fell into the distant background.

            Being the first to break an uncomfortable silence for once, Jace looked at his still unusually sullen uncle and tried his hand at an astute remark. “So, you have dad issues. It’s okay—I know a lot of kids with dad issues. You gotta work past them.”

            “Are you trying to give me advice again? Bud, you have no idea. You don’t even know the extent of your daddy issues. You’re not old enough yet, you lack context.”

            “Whatever. When did your parents split up, anyway?”

            “I hate saying this, and I rarely ever do about anything, but I’m not comfortable talking about that. ‘Not comfortable.’ Ugh, God that’s sickeningly affable.”

            “It must really upset you, I guess. Mom says I ‘volunteer information’ too easily. But it always feels rude to me when anyone asks me something, to just say no.”

            “Well, it shouldn’t be. You don’t owe others anything. You tell them what you want them to know. Sometimes they’re just looking for something to use against you.”

            “Yeah… maybe. Your dad never talked about time travel or anything, right?”

            “What? No. We watched Back to the Future together, but that’s about it. Why?”

            “I dunno, just looking for some kind of reason why we’re here in the first place.”

            “It’s a random, strange thing that happened in a random, strange world. Look, since you’re growing up and family… I’ll tell you a little. But I don’t have daddy issues,” he reiterated. “I’m way past any I might have had. They divorced when I was one year old, man. So, no memories; I didn’t grow up knowing what it’s like having married parents.”

            “Oh. I guess mine were married until I was six, so… I have some memories.”

            “Yeah, and the thing is, as much of a jerk as your dad can be, mine was a real… well, he was a bastard. At one point, at least. Then he spent the following years trying to make up for it. You’re an only child, but try to imagine being young, and knowing you have a sister about your age… But it happens that she lives in another, nicer house, and you only get to see her a few times a month, and you’re not sure why she doesn’t live with you. Lucy mostly had a whole different life than I did. And that was weird to me.

            “When I was eight, Mom sat me down and explained—in her serious way that I didn’t see very often—that while I was an oven bun, Dad had… a ‘lady friend’ that he liked more, and that when she found out that they were also having a baby, well, that was the moment she knew it was irreconcilable. She actually used that big word with me. It pops up a lot in divorce cases. What I’ll never understand is that, the way I reason it at least, Dad freaked out when he realized my mom was having a kid, but was okay with his mistress having one; he saw the three of them as a compatible family, but not us. Who knows why. Of course, as you saw… Lucy was not a happy child.”

            “So… does that mean… You think you had a better childhood than she did?”

            “Sorry to bum you out or just confuse you with all these ugly adult problems. But, yes, our early years were a stark contrast. I don’t know if mine would have been worse if Dad had stayed, or if it was all Lucy’s mom’s fault, but whenever I visited, I could always tell that something in their parenting of her was… off.”

            “How so?” Jace asked tepidly but curiously.

            “Eh. I’m not going to get into it. I don’t really know enough anyway, and I don’t want to gossip about your own mom. What matters is how she’s taken care of you.”

            “One of my friends called me a mama’s boy once…”

            “Ha, is that old insult still around? Just be glad you got a good one.”

            “She really did change a lot over the years… Or at some point.”

            “College opened her up socially. She wasn’t surrounded by ‘imbeciles,’ as she’d call most of her high school peers. Instead, she made friends with people she liked and lived independently. We went to Royal U. and stayed local, sure, but we had dorms.”

            “Did you guys hang out in college?”

            “More often than we did before, sure. We had a few mutual friends.”

            “Did you do drugs?”

            “Jace—w-what? Why would you ask something like that?”

            “Jamie told me that everyone in college does drugs. I mean, some are legal now.”

            “Come on. He’s, at most, half right,” Wes said and read Jace’s face, to see that he thought he was being serious. “Joking. I already told you, I’ve always been clean, and your mom has definitely also never touched the stuff. Sheesh… does everyone your age take narcotic use so casually? When I was ten, it was drilled into us how serious they were. I mean, if you did them, you were probably a ‘hardcore bad guy’, or just a loser.”

            “I dunno,” Jace shrugged, “we just kinda joked about it all the time.”

            “Kids really are growing up too fast these days… Uh, our days…”

            After another block of travel but no dialogue, Jace looked around at the deeper segment of the neighborhood, far from both his own and Wes’ childhood homes. This part of Desert Tree was one that he had rarely seen. It may as well have been in another city altogether. But while none of the houses looked familiar, the trees still did.

            “The trees aren’t as big… or old, I guess. Not like I’m used to.”

            “They can grow a lot in twenty-five years. The Desert Tree you’re used to is… aged, grown up. Your mom is kind of an exception to most of the local kids I knew. She stayed. Or rather, came back. It’s still a young neighborhood in our time, but any kids you see out and about here—they most likely moved away by the time you were born.”

            The muffled sound of someone pounding away at a drum set carried through the air and into their ears. Wes stopped and turned to look at the house across the street. It was one of the few single-story residences in the area but was still relatively upscale. The local musician was evidently playing from within its double-length garage.

            “Someone you know in there, playing the drums?” Jace asked.

            “Hm? Not sure… That rhythm just… sparked a distant, foggy memory. Come on, let’s keep going. Lucy’s house isn’t much further. Don’t lose that shoe!”

            “What do you think it’s gonna do, fly out of my hand?”

            “This place…” Wes sighed, absorbing the suburban surroundings. “You’re lucky you grew up here—not specifically here, but in a classic American neighborhood. With trees, yards, and quiet streets. I wouldn’t have wanted to be a kid in some big city condo. There’s nothing like running around all the houses after you’re bored of TV and games.”

            “Um, okay. Sure.”

            “Memories are made in places like this. Warm, happy memories to recall on some cold, rainy night in a hotel when you’re far away, like on a business trip or something.”

            “Okay. I mean, I spend most of my time indoors now…”

            “Ah, buddy, you gotta get out more and explore! The world’s a big place, sure, but so is any neighborhood. You look at a map of this country, and you see all of these little dots that mark towns, and there are tens of thousands of them… And they all have people, and many of them grew up in neighborhoods of their own. So… you should take in the place where you spent your childhood, remember what’s special about it.”

            “But it’s just a bunch of wooden buildings.”

            “No, Jace! It’s much more! Try not to be so unfeeling. I know you haven’t really embedded too many precious memories in your head yet. You’re still a kid. But you will.

            “You come into this world tied to a box. That’s where you spend your time at first—a crib. Then you become aware of your nursery. Then all of a sudden you can walk, and the entire house becomes your playground. And unless you live in a nomadic family, your neighborhood’s the next level up, a mini-world that belongs to you in a way no other place will. Yeah, there’s a city, but it’s just an extension, gives you destinations.

            “And then there are the far reaches of your neighborhood, like right here… It’s unfamiliar to you, yet still connected. Kind of mysterious. Only place I ever visited in this corner was Lucy’s house. But on this one Halloween—this one, epic night of trick-or-treating, me and my crew walked all the way here. We saw really cool decorations and got our pillowcases stuffed with candy. We weren’t supposed to walk this far, but we did anyway, and that’s when I learned that taking risks can net big rewards. I think… Yeah, I think that happened this year, too. I did three or four more runs afterwards, none as epic, and never again with… with my whole gang. Well, that’s the past for you.”

            Jace watched as his uncle almost collapsed as he sat on a yard’s stone retainer, and for some reason, took on the most desolate expression he had ever seen him wear.

            “Jace…” Wes sighed and slumped over. “Do me a favor and try to get back to enjoying your childhood, while you have one. It doesn’t last long, and you don’t want it to be full of regrets. It’s painful enough looking back even when you had a good one.”

            “Eh… Um, Uncle Wesley, are you okay? Are you, like, having a breakdown?”

            “It’s nothing that bad, I just… Sometimes I have these nostalgia attacks. It’s like some almost forgotten sight, or sound, or smell triggers… a small memory I had almost lost to explode, you know? Doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad. I get this sudden longing to go back. This really strong, I’d say paralyzing longing. Nostalgia can be bitter.”

            “But we are back, so why are you being crazy?”

            “No, being back isn’t the same as going back. It’s great getting a chance to time travel and everything, but I’m still stuck being in this old, ugly, adult body. Oh… God, Jace, being an adult really sucks!” Wes said and dropped his face into his hands.

            After looking around to make sure no one was around, Jace grimaced and asked Wes, “Are you for real? You’re not just joking around with this freak out, right?”

            He breathed deeply a few times, calmed himself, and showed his face again. He hadn’t completely embarrassed himself—he hadn’t shed a tear—but his expression was one of desolation, and his eyes had turned into a void of hopelessness.

            “Buddy… Buddy, listen to me. You have to relish your youth. It’s the best part of life. Do you even know what I do for a living? I work in IT. I spend all day in an office, fixing people’s computer problems. It’s mind numbing. Everything I accomplished as a kid has no value in the world of opening and closing tickets. And I can’t even count how many times I’ve asked someone if they’ve tried restarting their computer yet.”

            “Maybe you’re just doing a bad job at being an adult,” Jace said with a shrug. “It’s nothing to go crazy over. Learn how to do fun adult stuff. At least you can do whatever you want, and no one tells you what to do, right?”

            “Uh, no. You still got bosses and the police. And taxes, politics, and car care… Ah, hell. I don’t want you seeing me like this. Let’s forget this happened.”

            Wes recomposed himself as much as possible, got up, and began walking quickly, with Jace following behind a little cautiously—in case the guy was about to snap. Never before had he seen him get so emotional about the past. Then again, this was already by far the longest he had been with Wes, so the depths of his sanity or lack thereof was still unknown to him. At least the current adventure looked like it was almost over.

            “There it is.” Wes stopped and pointed out the house across the street, which had a screened patio and a second floor with a large central arched window. “Lucy’s probably inside right now, wondering in disappointment where her shoe is.”

            “Should I put the shoe down at the door, knock, and run away?” Jace asked.

            Wes, who was staring at the house with a hint of contempt, said nothing. The big SUV that Lucy’s mom had driven home was resting on the dual-entry driveway, the last of its cooling engine crackles permeating the otherwise silent and warm air.

            Wes eventually muttered, “Dad retired, and they moved to Hawaii a few years after Lucy graduated college. She got a job and an apartment and stayed here… I haven’t seen him in person in over ten years now. He’s probably too busy golfing on a volcano.”

            “I dunno if you have dad issues, but I think you have… want-to-be-a-kid-again ones. And, uh, now I’m kind of scared about being an adult… Thanks for that.”

            “Ah. Don’t listen to me too much. I’m sure you’ll do fine when you’re my age.”

            Wes suddenly grabbed the shoe out of Jace’s hands, and then threw it at the screen door as hard as he could from the other side of the street. It hit the metal frame of the door hard, and the crashing sound reverberated through the area.

            “Come on…” Wes grumbled. “Let’s get out of here.”

            Jace tagged along a few yards behind his uncle, who still seemed distant. Before they had left the block, they both heard the screen door open, and turned to see Lucy’s mom look around for a moment before noticing the shoe on the ground.

            “Luce!” she called. “I found it, hon! You dropped it when you were coming in.”

            She picked it up, went back inside, and the day was saved.

            After noticing that Wes was staring at him, Jace exclaimed, “What?”

            “You’re still here. That’s a good sign.”

            “Yeeeah… We’re not going to mess with the past anymore, right?”

            “We’re done here,” Wes said and began walking again.

            “You have to promise that we won’t change anything else. I like to exist. I like that the universe exists. That’s why we’re going to the park tomorrow and going home.”

            “I just want to have a nice weekend with you, you know. That’s all.”

            Jace, now trailing Wes as he had picked up his walking pace, heard the rustling of leaves from somewhere behind him. He flipped around but saw nothing. The suburban corner was still quite empty. Then he thought he saw movement above, in the trees. He focused his eyes into the canopy, but still didn’t find anything. He figured that it had just been a bird, and yet he couldn’t help but feel that he was being watched.

            “You two have a nice day now,” the mechanic said, wiping his hands with his dirty cloth after Wes successfully started the car on the lot. “You get anymore problems, you come see us. Not that I’m wishin’ problems on ya, heh.”

            “Yeah, thanks,” Wes said and rolled up his window before the guy could say anything else. “Looks like the car’s okay. Not that I had planned to spend the money.”

            “Are we even going to have enough to go to the park tomorrow?” Jace asked.

            “Of course. I still have plenty of cash left. I’m just burning through it a bit faster than I expected… So!” Wes hit the steering wheel. “Let’s rent some video games!”

            “Huh? Didn’t you just say… Uh, where do we rent video games?”

            “At Video Klub. With a K. It’s a locally owned, hip little store. Me and Mom usually rented there, and only went to Blockbuster when we wanted something the Klub didn’t have. Blockbuster was barely around when you were born—now it’s an example of a fall of an empire. What I remember most are their TVs hanging from the ceiling with promos for new rentals, the expensive late fees, and the places smelling like Crunch chocolate bars. Maybe that’s just association; I always got a king size when I went.”

            “You know…” Jace breathed out. “My teacher taught me the value of getting to the point when you’re trying to… make a point. I think he called it brevity?”

            “Aw, but when you’re with friends and family and there’s no sense of urgency, it’s great to include some trivia. Life’s not just bullet points, Jace.”

            “Okay, fine, but don’t we need consoles to play video games?”

            “Oh. Right…” Wes squeezed the steering wheel and turned back onto Kettle once the light turned green. “Lucky for us, we can rent those, too.”

            “So… we’re not going to talk about what happened back there, are we?”

            “Nope. Because I still don’t need advice from an eleven-year-old.”

            “I just don’t want you spazzing out on me again while we’re here.”

            “I won’t. Jace, I run on a high-octane, low-sleep train of thought. It’s how I keep my, um, troubles at bay. If a moment comes when I stop, and I have nothing to talk or think about, a lot of… crap catches up with me. Don’t pretend you’re not kind of the same way. You definitely also have issues. And it’s not something I like bringing up.”

            Jace went back to looking out the window. “We’ve talked enough about me.”

            “Yeah. I’m getting tired of it, too.”

            Wes soon turned into the largest shopping plaza in the city, a brown brick behemoth that had round corners, was surrounded by a parking lot, and hosted about two dozen stores, a few of them large retail chains. In the present, it always seemed to draw more people than the mall, which could be nearly empty some days.

            Tucked away on the smallest side of the oblong building was a video store that was dressed up like a nerd’s paradise. Posters and cardboard characters from franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Terminator, Aliens, Robocop and Nightmare on Elm Street filled up the windows, partially hiding the surprisingly large number of people inside.

            “I didn’t start coming here until I was thirteen actually, so we’re safe from my kid self,” Wes explained and opened the glass door. “Hope you like the hemp smell.”

            Once inside, Jace looked around at the place, with thin aisles and shelves and walls filled to the brim with videotapes, VCRs, and their cleaner products. Far past the security gate, in the back right corner, was a large section dedicated to video games. In the left corner was a closed off “room” with walls made of shelving and a “door” made out of hanging beads. He watched as a guy looked around suspiciously before going in.

            “What’s back there?” Jace asked, pointing in the room’s general direction.

            “Oh. Uh, that’s where the really boring adult movies are. Like, you know, uh… documentaries about chess players and C-SPAN recordings.”

            “Geez. You’re a lot of things, but at least you’re not boring like that stuff.”

            Wes rubbed his neck. “Anyway, this place is like a record or comic book store; I always got that vibe. I have to register a card, so go explore. Don’t talk to any hipsters.”

            There were at least fifty people inside, many of them college-aged. But the one who stood out the most was the lone employee behind the counter, currently debating with a pair of movie nerds on how some version of some movie on some videotape compared to its theatrical release. He had long, surfer dude hair and was puffing a cigarette between sentences—Jace had never seen someone smoking on the job before.

            “Really is a wonder how this place was never shut down by the health or fire department…” Wes murmured and went up to get the guy’s attention.

            When he started looking around, Jace noticed that every tape had been moved into a plastic case, with the cover and back from the original box cut off and inserted into the clear sleeves. Spines only had the title, typed along with a Video Klub logo.

            He went past the small section of early dubbed anime releases, currently called “Japanimation”, and entered an aisle’s large selection of family and kid movies. Aside from the swathes of Disney films and “best of” episodes of 80s cartoons like Care Bears and Transformers, there were more obscure releases like the overly cute Scamper the Penguin, samples from the single season of the animated James Bond Jr., and the For Better or For Worse and Monster in my Pocket specials. There were even duplicates of some cassettes.

            But the few other kids in the store, all of them with their parents and a little younger than Jace, were only really enamored by the colorful cover art of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Sega games. Jace investigated the corner, hoping a little to maybe get a jump on his uncle and choose some games that he thought looked interesting. He also quickly found a very small collection of cartridges labeled with the brand “Atari”, which he had never heard of before, as Wes had never mentioned such a system.

            The consoles were on the top shelf, out of the reach of the young ones, and Jace still hardly believed that they could be rented out. It was a bizarre idea. Did kids actually borrow systems instead of owning them? What did they do, take them out on weekends? At what point were they wasting money by renting them instead of begging their parents for that next big birthday present? After he unwrapped his Xbox and Nintendo Switch, they had never left his house—despite the latter having been designed as a portable hybrid. He saw them as precious gateways, like how Wes viewed his own collection of old systems, some of which were now current and rentable from this very store.

            Jace gave up on life’s bigger questions and meandered over to the action section, currently empty but packed with deliciously cheesy B-flicks. Jean-Claude Van Damme’s name must’ve been printed on half the boxes. And one of his movies’ titles jumped out. Timecop, from 1994. He picked it up and read the back cover’s summary, and the idea of a time traveling muscular police officer protecting the continuum got him thinking. He looked over at his uncle, still filling out paper work at the counter, and considered if it was worth bringing up. When he looked back down, the tape had returned to its spot.

            “Really…” he muttered. “Great. I’ll have to make gloves out of my underwear.”

            Realizing that he was talking to himself, he looked around to make sure no one was nearby, and then moved onto the horror aisle. He wasn’t big on the genre and had seen very few, but for some reason, he had a macabre interest in their cover art.

            “You done, dude?” the chilled employee asked Wes, who was eyeing his nephew for a moment as he investigated some slasher films. “With your, uh, paperwork?”

            “Y-yeah. Uh, Scott,” he replied, reading off his nametag as Beastie Boys music played behind him on his stereo. “So… how long have you worked here?”

            “You know. A few years. Beats my old job.”

            “You got some big life plans? I just get the feeling that you… won’t be here for much longer. Like, in a good way. Because you moved onto bigger things.”

            “I dunno,” Scott said with a laugh. “I don’t plan that far ahead.”

            “Anyway, I was hoping to rent a couple consoles and maybe, three or four games for each of them. You got a Super Nintendo and Genesis in stock, I’m hoping.”

            “Uhh… well…” Scott took a long puff of his cigarette, which Wes was pretty sure he shouldn’t be smoking. “Like, my boss kind of has this waiting period on consoles, because people kept, like… not bringing them back.”

            “That’s called stealing. Scott.”

            “Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I can let you rent some video games, but, like… you have to wait six months before you can take the consoles.”

            Wes breathed in and out and tried to reason, “How am I supposed to play any video games without a console? Scott?”

            “Like… I mean, you could, uh, go buy them. They have them at… stores?”

            “Scott, look over there.” Wes pointed at Jace. “See that kid? He’s my nephew. I get to see him once a year—he’s not from around here. Kid loves video games. Plays them at home all the time, and he has so many he wants to show me. But he can’t bring his collection when he visits. All he wants is to share some two-player time with me. He doesn’t get that chance at home, because… His dad hates video games, and he has no friends. And we’re just looking to spend a nice weekend together with some vidja.”

            “Oh. That’s too bad, man. Wish I could help.”

            Wes glared at him, took out his wallet, pulled out a twenty, and placed it on the counter. “I can’t have you ruining my weekend plans. Scott. Take the money and don’t.”

            Scott looked around to see if anyone was looking, as if this little bribe was a criminal act, and slid the bill into his pocket.

            “I’ll need them back by Monday,” he whispered, and then took another puff.

            Wes closed the car door a little harshly, just under a slam, as Jace buckled in. His nephew waited for him to turn the key, two stacks of three video games each on his lap and a pair of consoles at his feet. He waited for Wes to start the car, or at least turn on the air conditioning, but currently he was only gripping the wheel and grumbling.

            “So… are we going to go?” Jace asked after an uncomfortable silence.

            “Yeah, yeah…” Wes turned on the engine to get some air flowing. “I don’t like it when people try to interfere with my put-together plans. That’s all. Just a little ticked.”

            “What are you talking about?”

            “That guy at the counter. Scott. I don’t remember Scott. By the time I started coming to Video Klub, I guess he was long gone, never spoken of by the employees I remember. Probably because he was a jerk, I’m guessing. Trying to ruin everything.”

            “But now we can go home and you can talk about 16-bits games all night, and how it’s ‘beautiful’ that people worked together to make them so great or whatever.”

            Wes gave Jace a small chuckle. “You’re becoming more like me every day. Video Klub…” he sighed and looked at the storefront. “It rented out DVDs when they came along, but streaming killed it just like they did to Blockbuster. Still had the last laugh, though—I think it closed a year after the big blue ticket did.”

            “Did… people try to ‘ruin’ stuff for you during your first visit?”

            “Huh? Oh, hm, not really. But I didn’t really have ‘plans’ because I don’t really make them for myself, usually. I just want to show you some neat things.”

            “Yeah, but do you think that there’s, like… time cops or something?”

            “What? Time cops?” Wes laughed. “W-where’d you get an idea like that?”

            “A movie,” Jace said with a shrug.

            “One you saw inside? Oh, that Timecop movie, yeah… Don’t worry about that.”

            “Why not? If we could time travel so easily, why couldn’t there be some group of time protector… people who might come after us because we keep messing with junk?”

            “Not a chance. Even if there were people like that, or robots or something, time is so vast. How would they pin us down, or the minuscule changes we must be making?”

            “I guess you’re right… I hope you’re right. Hey… in order to rent all this stuff, didn’t you like, have to give them an address? We don’t actually live anywhere.”

            “You actively find something to freak out about, huh? It’s all taken care of!”

            “But…”

            “Taken care of, Jace! Let’s just have a nice night of video games and get ready to be at King Arcade all day tomorrow, while it has that new amusement park smell.”

            “Well… I guess a video game marathon isn’t that bad of an idea.”

            “Open the cases, take a look at my picks.”

            Jace did so as his uncle drove, who as an admittedly safe driver, only looked over when traffic was barely moving or he was waiting at a light. The first game from the Sega stack was Mortal Kombat II, a series that was still going in his time but one that his mom would never let him play due to its ultra-violent “fatality” finishing moves.

            “That’s the best of the first three. I didn’t get that one on Nintendo. I forget if that version of the second one was censored like the first one, didn’t want to risk it.”

            “What, risk me not seeing a bunch of blood and gore?”

            “It’s not as graphic as the later games. Also, I always sucked at it. The button-masher that you are, you’ll probably beat me.” Wes then described the next two games as Jace looked at their colorful illustrated artwork. “There’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the first in the series to allow two players—and they’re on the screen at the same time. Try to forget that Sonic’s something of a joke in the present, okay? He used to be cool, in a good way. And that one is Gunstar Heroes. A sci-fi platformer shoot-em-up. Lots of fun, awesome weapons, fast. It’ll test your reflexes for tomorrow’s arcade adventure.”

            Jace moved onto the Super Nintendo stack, and pulled out the one at the top from the plastic clips inside the case. Its instruction manual was particularly beat-up.

            “Super Mario World. A requirement,” Wes continued. “Gotta take turns, but it’s still a great two-player game. Mario’s transition to 16-bits was perfect, and defined the appearance of the characters and enemies for all time. Oh… and that one is a flagship Zelda title, Link to the Past. It’s the only game I got that’s single player, but that’s okay. It will give you something to do when I’m out. It has one of the best ever, most explorable overworlds. And… Super Mario Kart, first in the series. Just so we have a racing game. I hope the Mode 7 psuedo-3-D graphics don’t make you sick. They take getting used to.”

            “I’ll try not to make fun of any of these game graphics too much.”

            “Don’t see why you would. A lot of new games still use the style, since 16 and 32-bit is the pinnacle of pixel gaming and can produce some real works of art.”

            “Small mobile games maybe… But a lot of those look hand-drawn, too.”

            “Sure, but I’m talking actual pixels, a limited palette that forces color creativity, and transparency and parallax effects. I see the games as having this happy medium that allowed developers to put in just enough detail, leaving some things to the imagination of the player. Like, usually your character is small, and in RPGs especially, that have a lot of text and dialogue, you ‘own’ the guys you control. Every bit of their look and personality isn’t shoved in your face. I dunno, this era of games always felt like they had the perfect balance to me. Even as I moved on when 3-D games took over and it was all about who had the best graphics, I always went back to my ‘comfort games’ from the old days.”

            “And what about your Game Boy? The graphics on that thing are so primitive.”

            “Still playing the one I got you? You’re not relying on your phone games, right?”

            Jace shrugged. “I got kind of bored of Tetris.”

            “Mm. I’ll get you a few more games when I get a chance. Yeah, I loved my Game Boy. Back then we didn’t expect to be carrying around a powerhouse in our pocket. We took what we got if it meant playing something on the bus ride home. And if we were lucky enough to have a link cable and a friend with one of our games, sometimes we could even do multiplayer. With our own screens! That felt like something special back then. Of course, teachers took them away from us more than once.”

            “I dunno if I can adjust to all these old titles.”

            “Come on, Jace! Haven’t you played any of those hundreds of new ‘retro’ games, or compilations of actual ones? Not everything has to be full of a million polygons, HDR, bloom, lip-syncing, and orchestrated soundtracks. Lower your expectations and you’ll be surprised what game companies can pull off in 1995.”

            “What about computer games? Do they look better?”

            “Well… They’re starting to use CDs now, mostly for high-quality audio and crappy compressed video, so they have that going for them. But that’s a whole other kettle of fish. And we already got console stuff tonight and arcade stuff tomorrow.”

            “I… I like video games…”

            “Uh, that’s good, Jace. At least you like something.”

            “I mean, they get me through tough times, make me feel better about things.”

            Since Jace was now in one of his brooding, thoughtful moods, Wes cut the snark.

            “Okay, you got like two seconds to put it in!” Wes said as Jace’s fighter kicked away the last of his guy’s health. "Down-down, forward-forward, low punch! Easy!”

            Surprising himself, Jace executed the combination flawlessly, and watched as his movie star combatant, Johnny Cage, ripped the enemy ninja, Scorpion, in half at the torso, pulling him away from his legs without effort as blood spurted everywhere.

            “First fatality of the night, bud!” Wes congratulated him. “Man, I forgot how hard they were to pull off in these early MKs. So… should we move on?”

            “Can we do something a little slower-paced for a bit…?” Jace huffed. “I think it’s been about three hours of this and Gunstar and Mario Kart. Time to take it easy.”

            “Easiest thing I got is Super Mario World. Since we take turns in that.”

            Wes got up and reached around the back of the hotel’s big TV set to once again switch around the red, yellow, and white cables from one system to the other. Jace took a look at the clock radio to see that it was past nine, and he was starting to feel tired.

            “What time does the park open tomorrow again?” he asked.

            “Nine in the morning. But we want to be there by seven so we’re not too far back in line. Maybe we’ll grab some breakfast on the way. You pumped?”

            “I don’t get ‘pumped’ about anything. But… I guess it’s a little exciting.”

            “Yeah, boy! You get a chance to be among the first kids let in the park!”

            “Too bad I can’t really tell anyone that I got to do it.”

            “If you go to the same middle school I did, you might get a class trip to the park just before you graduate,” Wes said and finished plugging in the Super Nintendo. He stuck in its first Mario game, powered it up, and added, “Of course, most of us had been there a hundred times by then. A city this size is lucky to have an amusement park.”

            “Uncle Wes…” Jace murmured as he was a handed a controller. “I guess… I think this has been kind of fun, even though I complained a lot.”

            “Hm? What, the game night, or the entire trip so far? By the way, there are two types of jumps in this game. You gotta spin jump to break the yellow blocks.” Wes started his run as Mario by going left on the world map. “I always go straight to the switch palace. It makes a bunch of blocks appear in the levels that help you out.”

            “I mean time traveling. I still wanna go home, but it’s been, uh, cool seeing the kid version of you and Mom, and how the city was different when you were growing up.”

            “I’m glad you ended up liking it,” Wes said, his eyes glued on the screen while he stomped on enemies. “And hey, if you ever write a paper in college about the decade or something like that, you’ll have some good research material.”

            “Can I… tell you something? And you won’t make fun of me?”

            “I’ll try not to.”

            “Mom… just signed me up for therapy. It was supposed to start on Monday…”

            Wes paused the game and looked down at Jace just to see how serious his face appeared. He looked up at his uncle, visibly worried that he was about to burst out laughing. But Wes then simply unpaused and returned to the game.

            “Oh. Yeah, I guess that’s becoming more of a thing, for kids, I mean.”

            “You’re… not going to crack a joke about it?”

            “What? Nah. I don’t joke about stuff like that. Well, maybe only if the person telling me stuff like that clearly finds it ironic or funny, too. I don’t like having a laugh at someone’s expense, Jace. So… therapy, huh? Do you know what that is, exactly?”

            He shrugged. “Do you?”

            “Never had any myself.” Wes took a sip from his can of Sprite—which, to his credit, was his first and only soda of the day. “Of course, times change. I don’t think many parents came close to giving a passing thought to putting their kids in therapy here. Heck, when they were growing up, people were still being tossed into asylums and sometimes lobotomized. Not, uh… not that you need to know anything about that.”

            “Isn’t that, like, when they take your brain out or something?”

            Wes nearly choked on his drink as he suppressed a laugh. “The way I understand it, a therapist teaches you how to emotionally deal with problems. Maybe some psycho-analyzing too, but not, like, sitting on a couch spilling everything under hypnosis stuff.”

            “Oh. I don’t know how much they can help. I’m probably a one of a kind freak.”

            “I’m betting that’s not even close to true. I’m sure they’ve dealt with plenty of angry and lonely kids, who hide in their rooms yelling at their teammates all day in online video games. Am I warm? Was my diagnosis close-iss?”

            Jace looked up and sighed. “Maybe. I guess so.”

            “Well. Don’t be embarrassed about it,” Wes said as Jace began to take his turn as Mario’s brother Luigi. “It’ll probably help you in the end, if you give it a chance.”

            “Guess we’ve never really… uh, bonded like this, huh?”

            “You just trusted me with a personal secret, so that must mean something,” Wes said with a yawn. “You starting to trust me, bud? You spend more than a few hours with me, and ya realize that maybe I’m more than just some annoying nostalgic uncle?”

            “I never knew that much about you before. I mean, you always talked about old stuff and gave me dumb trivia, but you never told me that much about your life.”

            “Because I never thought my personal stories would interest you. So, I kept those at a minimum. But maybe seeing me as a kid and realizing I had kid friends made you, ya know, see the ways we’re similar. Anyway, it’s great that I got through to you some, maybe taught you some life lessons. And now look at us, a pair of fun-seeking time travelers!” Wes smacked Jace’s back, which almost made Luigi fall off a cliff.

            “You mean like… Doctor Brown and Marty? You think we’re like them?”

            “Sure, kind of. Or maybe I’m like a Scrooge McDuck and you’re one of his nephews—or, like, a combination of all three of them. Whatever fits the bill of the ‘old cool guy teaches a kid he’s related to about the world’ genre of storytelling. No, wait—you know what we are? We’re a regular old Rick and Morty. Only I’m not a total jerk.”

            “Y-yeah…” Jace said with a tired laugh. “So, you do watch some modern shows.”

            Wes looked at him with a flat expression and waited for Jace to pause the game and stare back. “Jace. That’s an adult show. It’s MA for a reason. Does your mom know you stay up late and watch that? You’re so busted. I’m going to tell her.”

            “You’re not really going to, right? C-come on, everyone in class was watching it…”

            “Relax, pal! I’m kidding. I’m not going to snitch on you. It was entrapment on my part, anyway. Ah…” Wes yawned again. “Man, it’s getting late. Let’s wrap this up.”

            Charging ahead into the first boss’s castle, Wes had planned on getting to the first of the Koopa kids and defeating him soundly, but in a surprise both to himself and Jace, he instead managed to get crushed by a masher in the dungeon’s final room.

            Once Jace took his turn, despite never having played the game before, he both managed to get to the end of the level—and send Iggy tumbling into the lava, all on his first try. Wes, trying to be the good uncle, rooted him on all the way.

            After declaring his nephew ready to conquer many arcade games tomorrow, the long day ended after a gaming marathon in the best way possible: with good, quiet sleep.

            Between yawns and bites of his McMuffin breakfast, Jace watched as the steel, swerving mass of The Red Demon rollercoaster came into view. It was one of the tallest coasters on the west coast, and its peak towered above the park’s techno-industrial front gate—where hundreds of kids and their families were already waiting in four lines.

            “We could’ve gotten here earlier,” Wes said after parking towards the back of the packed lot. “But I didn’t want to get ahead of my younger self and potentially mess with his route and the order he goes on rides and all that stuff.”

            “What time did you get here back then?” Jace asked as the two stepped out into the soon-to-be-hot desert air.

            “Begged Mom to get us here by six,” he answered. Once he saw Jace’s curious expression to his devotion, he added, “But she was cool with it! She really likes theme parks, too. Hell, she was at Disney World all the way in Florida when it opened in ’71.”

            By the time they had traversed the sea of parked minivans, got their tickets, and made it to the end of one of the long lines of people waiting for the gates to open for the first time, the two only had another thirty minutes to kill.

            Jace looked at the entrance marquee and past it, to see how clean and new it all looked, especially when compared to its somewhat worn, pre-loved modern state.

            On the sign, the mascot’s colors were livelier than the faded contemporary counterpart, which like the rides, was in need of a fresh layer of paint. He was a beloved local cultural icon: a precocious urban prince, a royal robe over his jeans and baggy shirt. Above his big eyes was a tilted crown, and one hand gripped a gold scepter with a miniature arcade cabinet attached to the top. After having seen many other 90s kids and their attire, Jace now realized how well the “arcade prince” emulated them.

            His eyes wandered down to one of the park’s generic, infringement-free video game heroes, Niegh the Knight. The armored mascot revving up kids for the opening, and it just so happened that he walked by an antsy Wessy near the front, with his mom.

            Then he spotted someone else nearby in another line, with her own mom.

            “Hey, look,” he said and tugged at his uncle’s sleeve. “Mom’s here.”

            At this, he saw Lucy, his eyes widened, he noticed that she was wearing her new pair of black shoes, and he simply stated, “Uh-oh. She, uh… isn’t supposed to be here.”

            Jace and Wes then spent the next five seconds staring at one another. Oops.