Back in Time

If you're an 80s kid, like me, just reading the title of this week's prompt will start a soundtrack playing in your mind.  (Thank you, Huey Lewis and Michael J. Fox!)

The prompt for this week: Assume you've gone back in time to save the world, and along the way, you run into yourself.  Go! 

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My response:

I check my watch.  Two fifteen on a Thursday, November 1997.  My old self has got to be in the dance room in the gym.  If I can just find the Doctor without going in there, I should be fine.  Not that I know it will ruin my timeline if I run into myself.  I just don't want to risk it. 

I sneak around the corner of the hallway, watching for the tell-tale cloak of the Doctor.  For a split second, I think I've spotted it, but it turns out to be a long, dark trench coat that the guys thought were so cool back then.  I hear the squeak of shoes on the tile behind me and spin around.  There he is.  The Doctor.  And the look on his face takes my breath away; he's smirking like he knows something I don't.

"You're not going to find it in time, my Friend."  He takes out a handkerchief and pats his greasy forehead.  "No, I'm afraid I've outwitted you this time.  A shame, I may come to miss our little games."

I whip out my sensor and aim it at him.  It would have been better to keep this new technology secret, but I'm running out of time.  Unfortunately, he's not lying.  He's not carrying the crystal.  Who knows where he's hidden it, and the range on my sensor is only about ten feet - not nearly large enough to scan the whole school.

"Goodbye now!"  The Doctor turns and dashes out towards the parking lot.

"This isn't over!" I call after him, clenching my fists.  At least he gave me one clue.  He thinks he's hidden it where I will never find it.  Where would be the last place I would look?  Then it hits me.  I know exactly where the crystal is.

I flash my badge at the dance teacher, invent some line about homeland security, try not to stare across the room at myself, and then go out to the foyer to wait.  It doesn't take long, and there I am.  Well, not me, but me, my younger self.  I pause.  I haven't disappeared, yet, so I figure I may be okay.

Younger me looks up, squinting at me.  I wonder what she sees.  I've lost forty pounds.  I curl my hair now, so that's different, but since the 80s have come back in the future, my make-up routine is nearly the same.  I'm twenty years older.  A shiver of pride runs down my back.  The teenager I'm staring at has no idea she's going to become a top-secret, time traveling spy. 

"Mrs. Bixbee said you needed to talk to me?"  She pins me with a suspicious glare.  I never was stupid.  "Something about homeland security?"

Now it gets tricky.  If this is the younger me, and the Doctor really gave her the crystal, shouldn't I be able to remember it?  Shouldn't I know what I did with it?

Like dews distilling from heaven, the answers to my questions appear in my mind.  Ha!  He thought he'd outsmarted me, but in the end, he outsmarted himself. 

"I'm afraid there was a misunderstanding.  No.  No, I don't need to talk to you."  I smile nicely and point back towards the gym.  "Go on back to class."

Young me shrugs and rolls her eyes at me, but turns and walks away.  I dart into the locker room.  Good thing I always had a head for numbers.  I find my old locker, pop open the combination lock, and reach to the back of the top section, behind my purse.  My fingers close around a heavy chain and a cold, hard rock.  I found it.

And I seem to have managed it without tearing the time continuum to shreds, too!