EIGHTEEN
S o ... are you, uh, gonna climb up?” Renner’s baritone voice echoes around the gym.
We got here bright and early before any of the prom decorators arrived to do finishing touches, thanking our lucky stars the doors were unlocked.
“When I get to the top, I just ... jump off?” I ask, white-knuckling the ladder, hands shaking.
“Yeah, exactly like last time. No big deal.” He’s trying his best to sound casual, like hurling one’s self from the top of a ladder is a perfectly normal thing to do. But by the tightness of his jaw, I can tell he’s nervous too.
We’ve propped the ladder against the same wall, in the same position, slightly to the right of the basketball net. Though it somehow looks higher than before. But I suppose from the view of someone who may be about to plunge to their death, the perspective changes.
Renner gestures to the ladder, stepping forward to stabilize it. I’m hesitant until his chest inadvertently grazes my back, which sets me off like a “Go” button.
When I reach the top, my stomach lurches. I train my eyes to the mats we set up around the ladder, just in case. Not that they’ll do much to break my fall if this doesn’t work.
If this doesn’t work. I wince. The possibility is too depressing to comprehend. Mind you, we probably should have more than one viable plan for Operation Back to Seventeen. At least a measly backup plan. But we haven’t quite gotten there yet.
Just as I psych myself up for the fall, Renner calls up, “You better hurry. Students are gonna start coming in soon.”
“Please don’t rush me,” I snap, my full body shaking. “I’d like to see you voluntarily hurl yourself off the top of this ladder.”
“Oh, I’m sure you would love to see that.” He pauses, bottling his attitude. “And don’t hurl yourself off. Just kind of, let yourself glide down gently.”
“I don’t know what you’ve been doing during science class, but gravity does not work that way.”
He pokes me in the calf. “Hey, we agreed we aren’t arguing anymore, remember? We need to work together to get out of this. Bickering isn’t gonna help.”
I hesitate. Bickering is simply our natural state. But he’s right. We have no hope in hell of getting out of here if we spend the entire time fighting. “True.” I hold my breath and stare down at him. It’s now or never. The sooner I jump, the sooner I’ll be back in my regular life, seventeen again, and not engaged to Renner.
One ...
Two ...
Three ...
When I force my eyes open, I’m straddling Renner, legs splayed like a frog on either side of his body.
I blink a couple times, slowly taking in the surroundings. We’re in the gym, on the dusty, narrow plank wood floor. Good news, we didn’t hurtle ourselves into some other alternate dimension.
Bad news, when the wiry hair of Renner’s beard tickles my forehead, I know I’m still thirty, C cups and all. Ugh.
At least I’m not in as much pain as I was when I woke up yesterday morning.
Apparently, I’ve uttered that thought out loud, because Renner lets out a derisive snort. “Yeah, I broke your fall with my body.”
This alerts me to the fact that I’m on top of Renner, pressed into him like a panini. He grips both sides of my waist, gentler than I thought him capable. Our eyes snag for a second before he lets out a deep groan that jolts me with a fleeting spark of electricity. In my defense, this is just a normal biological reaction to having your entire body pressed into someone else’s. These feelings are perfectly normal, right?
“You’re still crushing me,” he says with another low groan.
Our lingering eye contact is replaced with mutual ick before I roll off him. I make quick work to get back on my feet. “Let’s try again.”
Five ladder falls later, we’re no closer to going back in time.
Laden with disappointment, and bruises, we find our way into the student council room down the hall. It feels more familiar than going to our offices. We’ve spent countless hours parked at the table, poring over lists, invoices, and logistics. It also happens to be where Renner and I have had some of our most dramatic arguments, like the homecoming-float debacle.
Renner flings himself onto the worn couch (the same lumpy orange couch we had in 2024), long legs dangling over the end. “Now what?”
“We brainstorm how to get out of here,” I say, whipping out a spare notepad from the bookshelf, which contains MHS yearbooks dating back to the 1960s. “Let’s separately brainstorm a list of ideas. Then we’ll evaluate options and choose the best course of action.”
He smirks. “How did I know you were gonna suggest a list?”
I rip off a piece of lined paper from the pad and toss it into his lap. “When in doubt, make a list.”
“Do you keep lists for everything?”
“Absolutely everything. Including your hostile acts of aggression toward me.”
His laughter echoes throughout the room. “Care to share what’s on this list?”
“Stealing the presidency from me, for one.”
“Okay, Donald Trump.”
I clasp my chest. “Wow. I pride myself on my golden, non-orange skin tone, thank you very much.”
He lets out another laugh. “Sorry. That was a terrible joke.”
“Anyways, you did steal the presidency from me. You knew it was my dream. Everyone did. I’d been working for it every year leading up to twelfth grade. And you just swooped in without a platform and snatched it.”
“Not everything is about you, Char.” His mouth tugs up on one side.
“But I needed it. For college.”
“I wanted it too. For scholarships.”
My stomach dips. Mostly because I’d assumed he did it purely in jest. “Really? You’re going to college on scholarship?”
“Yup.” He nods. “My mom hasn’t worked in years. My parents aren’t the best at saving money. They didn’t tell me I’d need to fund my own way until eleventh grade. And by September, it was too late to join any of the “smart” clubs, and I knew student council would be a shoo-in.”
I lower my chin. Had I known Renner needed it on his résumé for college too, would I have taken the loss so badly? It’s hard to say. But it does lessen my grudge, if only slightly. “Well, for the record, you were right. You were a shoo-in. Everyone loves you and you don’t even have to try. You could walk up to someone and punch them in the gut and they’d still adore you. Do you know how annoying that is?”
“So you’ve told me.” We have a weird moment of silence before he interrupts with a loud yawn and stretch. “All right. Let’s make a list.”
Brainstorming is one of my talents. It’s where I excel in group projects. And yet, as I stare at the blank page, I can’t help but watch Renner. He’s slouched over, writing furiously in his chicken scratch, crossing things out, strumming his bearded chin. Meanwhile, I’m seemingly incapable of thinking about anything other than how his lips felt against mine yesterday.
I remember the way my breath caught against his mouth. The strum of his heartbeat against my chest. The way his low hum sizzled through me like a jolt of electricity.
Focus, Charlotte.
I can’t let my mind go there. Of all the moving parts in my life with my parents, Mom’s general chaos, the stress of senior year, having Renner as my rival has been my one constant. But this truth has suddenly flipped everything on its head.
Fifteen agonizing minutes tick by, and I have a total of three crappy bullet points to show for it. Renner, seeming to notice my lack of ideas, slides his two completely filled pages across the table for my viewing pleasure.
I pull the papers toward me. “Renner, you just listed a bunch of time-travel movies,” I say, tone cut with disappointment. Tomorrow War. Avengers: Endgame. The Adam Project. That movie with the ginger guy.
He remains unruffled. “Hear me out. Maybe we should watch these movies for inspiration. Like, look at this one.” He points to Outlander . “This is a TV show about a woman who accidentally goes back in time after touching some ancient magical stone in Scotland. My mom is obsessed with it. Even went on an Outlander tour in Scotland with my aunt a couple years ago. And guess what? Those stones exist. She took pictures with them.”
“Magical stones? Really, Renner?” I flop myself back into the chair, aggrieved. “What are we supposed to do? Fly to Scotland in search of this magic stone?”
“Hey, this is called brainstorming . I brainstormed. More than you from the looks of it.” He lifts his chin in the direction of my paper.
“Point taken. But the time travel in most of these movies is possible because of futuristic technology. We don’t have a time machine. Or a magical stone.”
He runs his finger along the arm of the couch. “Well, let’s think about it. We got here by falling off a ladder. Obviously, falling off the ladder isn’t working. But maybe it’s something super simple like that.”
“I don’t know. Yesterday I tried falling off my bike, slapping myself. Everything short of hurling myself into oncoming traffic. Nothing worked.”
He squints, resting his chin on his fist. “There has to be something. I listed some other ideas on the back.” When he reaches to flip the page, our fingers brush ever so slightly, eliciting that tingling sensation again.
Am I really that desperate for affection? I stomp down the fireflies in my belly and continue looking at Renner’s list.
“Bermuda Triangle?” I read aloud, barely holding back a whimper.
“Well, what are your ideas, then?” He reaches for my list. “Time machine, magical wardrobe, and police,” he rattles off. “Really, Char?” When he says them out loud, they do seem pretty bad. Though the prospect of curling into a ball and remaining motionless in a dark wardrobe would be preferable to our strange reality.
I hang my head in my hands. “We need help. Outside help from an actual adult.”
“We are adults.”
“An adultier adult.”
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “We just ran from the cops last night, in case you forgot. You really want to walk into the police station and tell them we’ve come from the past?”
“Okay, when you say it like that, it sounds ridiculous.”
“That’s because it is. To the average person. Especially the police. We don’t want to wind up committed in a hospital or something. We can’t tell anyone, Char.”
“There has to be someone out there who believes in time travel. A psychic maybe?”
His eyes light up. “Wait. I might know someone. My uncle Larry.”
“He’s a psychic?” I try picturing him flipping tarot cards in front of a beaded curtain.
“No. Remember I told you he used to be a physics professor? He studied wormholes. Time travel.”
I bolt up. “We have to go see him right now.”
Renner seems to like this plan, following me out. “All right. Let’s go see Uncle Larry.”