David Hasselhoff smiled and took my small hands in his bear-like paws. His huge head moved closer and closer as he puckered his lips. I closed my eyes and waited.
"I hate everything about you - why do I love you?" Puddle of Mudd sang in my ear. My eyes opened and I growled as I rolled over and picked up my cell phone. "What?" I snarled.
"Jessie, it's me. You have to come over right now!"
"Scott, you really have to stop calling in the middle of the night," I mumbled as I rolled onto my back.
"I have to show you something. It's important."
"Is it another antique typewriter?" I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. Scott's a Steampunk and he constantly calls in the middle of the night with some fantabulous new find or invention to tell me about.
"No, this is way cooler than a typewriter. It's a ... well, I don't want to tell you. It's something you have to see and experience for yourself."
"Can I just go back to sleep and experience it tomorrow? Oh, and thanks for saving me from nasty, old Hasselhoff lips."
"What?"
"Ugh. Never mind. I'll be there in a minute."
Scott didn't even wait for my knock. He threw open the door and drug me inside, down the steps to the basement. When he reached his workbench he stopped and pointed.
"A record player? Seriously?" I turned and headed back up the stairs.
"No, wait. Look!" He walked over to his wall of music, the row of shelves where he kept every album he had collected over the years. He pulled a record out of a sleeve and put it on the player. As Bing Crosby sang about a white Christmas a random string of numbers and letters projected onto the green, block walls of the basement.
He turned and stared into my eyes. "If you could go back in time and change one event in your life what would you change?"
"What does that have to do with an ancient projection machine record player thing?" I asked.
He grabbed me by both shoulders and shook me. "Jessie. What would you change?"
Still half asleep I mumbled, "Well, I guess I would have never watched a single episode of Baywatch. Or America's Got Talent, for that matter."
He sighed. "Seriously. Come on. One more try and you're gone."
I didn't think to wonder what he meant by "gone". Instead, I looked around the table, searching for inspiration. My eyes fell on an old, handmade picture frame covered in dried daisies. The picture was of Scott and me in fifth grade. We had our arms slung over each other's shoulders and goofy grins on our faces. The picture was taken about a week after I broke my nose so I looked like Marcia Brady in that episode where she got hit by the football. "Ow, my nose!" I said aloud.
"Hey, I think you might be onto something," Scott said.
I tried to put on a serious face, but laughed and said, "I would go back and change that time when Casey Allen broke my nose with her fist."
Scott pushed a series of buttons. Beep-beep. Bloop. Beeeep. Next thing I knew I was bent over, throwing up in the grass. As my vision cleared and my head stopped pounding, I began to hear playground noises. Hundred of childlike voices chanted, "Fight, fight, fight."
I followed the noise to a crowd of elementary kids in a circle around two girls. One girl had short, spiky hair. The other, the one in the handmade yellow dress, was me. Screaming and waving my hands, I yelled, "Jessie! Wait!" I grabbed the younger version of myself by the shoulders before she could throw her first punch. "You're going to lose and she's going to break your nose," I panted as I pointed at my own crooked, witch-like nose.
Jessie, the young me, screamed and threw a punch. At first I was shocked at the brute strength of my ten year old self. Then the sound of breaking bones registered in my ears as warm blood dripped into my mouth. I put my hands to my face and fell to the ground.
I woke up in Scott's arms. "We have to get you to the hospital," he said.
"Bait! Bhere's dat bicture?"
He set me down and came back a minute later with the picture. "Holy ..." His voice trailed off as he handed me the frame. "Well, looks like you stopped Casey from breaking your nose."