Chapter 4 - Class Is Almost Finally Over
It took me a while to realize the other minor things about being sent to the past.
The version of time travel that I’m experiencing is one where only my memories are sent to the past. Sometimes known as a time leap or even precognition from a certain point of view. While I am mentally nineteen years old, physically I’m still fourteen.
This meant that I’ve lost five years of physical growth, meaning I’m a lot weaker than I was before.
“Hah... hah…”
Panting while just barely making it on time to class, I entered through the door while slightly sweating. I probably should’ve checked how far my class was before getting lost in my thoughts during lunch.
*growwwl*
And I didn’t even get to each lunch. Seeing that the class was almost about to start, I quickly found an empty spot to sit down in.
“Oh, you’re…”
Hearing a voice in front of me, I looked up and was surprised to see who it was.
“Maria?”
That’s right, she was in this class, wasn’t she. Since this was only an elective class, my memories of this place weren’t that great since I mostly used this class for naptime.
“Wow, it is you.” She gave a bright smile. “I should say thanks. If you hadn’t warned me this morning, I might’ve been late to my first class.”
And here’s another butterfly making changes in the timeline…
“Well, you’re welcome I guess.”
She hummed at that. “Speaking of which, you know my name already. But I don’t think you’ve ever introduced yourself.”
Come to think of it, I haven’t.
“My name’s Wren, with a ‘w’ in front.”
“Like the bird?”
“Yup. Not sure why my parents picket that name, since my brother’s named Clovis.”
She laughed. “Well, I’m not sure about your parents. But I was named after one of my grandmothers, so maybe it’s something similar for you.”
“Maybe. I’ll ask them later.”
The teacher up front cleared their throat, and Maria smiled apologetically before facing the front. I shrugged my shoulders and began to listen to the teacher talk.
But huh, this was another change I wasn’t expecting. Because I was late, that caused me to change seats to sit right behind Maria. And because of our interaction from this morning, we somehow were already acquainted somewhat.
I never really knew Maria other than her being a classmate in some of my classes from my later school years. I vaguely recalled that she someone who usually hung out with the more popular kids in school.
Either way, I didn’t really know her and my memories involving her were limited to her being associated with a lot of school events. She was the type who helped the student council or staff with various things.
Unlike me, who mostly waded through my high school life as quietly as I could.
But that was simply how we lived our lives. In the end, we both managed to graduate this school and went in different directions.
High school was supposed to be the big period in our lives that helped shape what our future looked like. But everyone I knew always somehow made things work and figure out what they were going to do with their lives.
The stress of worrying about the future wouldn’t hit most people until their later years in high school. But I already knew what life had in store for me, so I wouldn’t stress over the same things as others my age.
Instead, I had to worry about what my presence in the past would do to the world around me.
---
The last class for the day was PE.
Now, here’s a bit of background information about my school. Compared to my previous middle school, the physical department in this school was a bit weird.
Students were only expected to fulfill two years of physical education. Classes weren’t that rough, with each semester teaching three different sports that you were allowed to pick. Compared to the harsh exercises and mile runs we had to go through in middle school, it was like comparing heaven to hell.
But for those who excelled in the physical department, students would enter clubs dedicated to a specific sport. Strangely enough, most of the clubs and teams in our school were pretty good in our area. Some of our graduates even got scholarships due to our club achievements.
Or so I’ve heard. I’m not a sports guy, where the extent of my interest was limited to running to keep myself in shape. I never really paid much attention to the sports teams in my school, only hearing about the various rumors through osmosis.
That was actually how I heard about the multiple fights between several members of the sports teams. School fights were always a good source for the rumor mill.
One of the events on my list of future events included a fight breaking out between the senior members of the football team with another group of boys. From what I was able to gather, the two groups fought over a girl for reasons that I was never able to figure out.
I managed to remember only that much because lunch was canceled early when the teachers tried to break up the fight and have everyone go to their next class.
While I’m still unsure about what my plan was regarding changing the timeline, I wanted to at least gather some information on the context behind the event.
And here was my chance to do so.
“Alright, everyone. Today, we’ll be assigning you your lockers and uniforms. Line up and we’ll give you a piece of paper telling you which is your locker.”
The males in the class were all in the boy’s locker room while the girls were in their own. I moved to the back of the line and took a glance at the student aid helping the teacher.
Carlos was a guy a few years older than me. He was one of the players on the school football team, and I figured that he was probably part of the school fight. Right now, he was taking this class as a student helper to the PE teacher and would act in some sort of administrative role for the rest of the year.
So how was I going to do this?
Right now, my goal was gathering information. I wanted to understand what the fight was about, simply because I was curious. I didn’t know what I was going to do with that information, but at least half of the school fights during the next few years were caused by those from the football team.
Just understanding what they were like could help me plan things in the future.
The line moved pretty quickly, and soon it was my turn to receive my things. Carlos smiled as he handed me a lock and a slip of paper.
“Remember, you’ll have to pick up your uniforms by the end of the week. Tell us your sizes and have your money ready so we can order enough for everyone.”
“Thanks,” I told him. I quickly walked away afterward.
What? How come I didn’t do anything? Well then, what was I supposed to do? The guy was just doing his job, and I had no idea what I even wanted from him yet.
Now that I’m actually trying to do something, I’m realizing that this would be a lot harder than I thought. I wanted to discover why I was in the past, and I wanted to know about the context of major events that happened in my first timeline.
But the reason I lacked context in the first place was that I was never connected to the people involved in those events. I never went to any football games and I didn’t know any of the players.
So how was I supposed to suddenly get close to a guy I never got close to before in my previous life? At my core, I’m still the same person as I was five years ago.
I’m not exactly as much of an introvert as my previous self was, but I wasn’t a social butterfly either.
Maybe I was approaching this wrong. All I wanted was to gather information on what the football team was like. I’ll try and ask my friends instead and see if they know anything.
Then again, my friends are mostly the people in the group I hang out with. Who are all composed of freshman students and wouldn’t know much about high school teams.
Ugh, this was a lot harder than I thought it was.
---
The bell finally ended, and everyone cheered as they left school. I walked to the back of the school to wait to get picked up by my mother.
My parents split their duty of picking up their children amongst themselves. My dad would drop us off at school while my mom would pick us both up after classes ended. Which was definitely a tiresome thing for them, since both of my parents worked full-time jobs with a minimum of eight hours each.
That meant that my mom worked early shifts so that she would have time to pick us up after school. It wouldn’t be for another three years before my mother decided to retire early to become a full-time housewife.
Maybe I can figure out a way to lessen the burden on my parents. I can probably start taking the bus home instead, and I’m pretty sure Clovis always wanted to walk home from school. After all, his school was only a ten-minute walk away from our house.
A familiar-looking silver sports car suddenly drove around the corner, and I groaned in pure embarrassment as I recalled a particular memory.
When I was about seventeen years old, my mother offered me to drive her car so that I could familiarize myself with learning how to drive. I was getting my driver’s license around the time, so I had a little bit of experience with driving by that point.
Neither of us expected that we would get into our first car accident while I was driving. A car suddenly crashed into our left, causing the metal near the front tire to deform and press against the rubber and forcing us to stop by the side of the road. Luckily, nobody was hurt and all we had was some damage on the front half of our vehicle.
The thing was, the asshole who rammed into us drove off without stopping. And since I technically wasn’t supposed to drive at the time, my mom pretended that she was the driver instead so that the insurance would pay the damages.
I later learned that we had to scrap the car because the damage was pretty major. Even though it wasn’t my fault since it was a clear case of hit-and-run, I always felt guilty over the event.
So seeing that same car drive up to me caused me to have a lot of mixed feelings in my chest.
The window rolled down and I saw my mom smile at me from the driver’s seat.
“Hey, how was school?”
Her cheerful greeting brought a smile to my face. “Absolutely horrible. Let me go home so that I can collapse onto my bed until dinner.”
She laughed at that and drove off once I sat in the seat next to her.
“But for real, did you have a fun time at school?”
I thought about the question seriously this time. Despite the hang-ups with what I knew about the future, and the questions I had over who and why I was sent here to the past, I realized… yeah. I did enjoy it so far.
“Yeah, I did.” I gave her my honest opinion. “I’m excited for the rest of the school year.”
Even though I didn’t want this high school repeat, so far I was enjoying it. Maybe that opinion would change later, no doubt once the more exciting events from my memories start to occur.
But right now, I was content.
