Forty-year-old Traci Woods believes her life has finally reached perfection. She and her wife, Monique, have just moved into their dream home. Before they can even get settled in, they meet their eccentric neighbor Frank, who claims to be an inventor. He is working on a time machine to transport himself directly into his body of twenty years ago so he can change his life.
Due to an unexpected glitch when Frank tests his machine, Traci ends up being thrown back into her twenty-year-old body in the year 2003. Can she persuade the younger version of Frank to build a new time machine to take her back to her real life? Should she contact twenty-one-year-old Monique and convince her they know each other in the future? Or will Traci completely regress into her young partying life?
I woke up and at first kept my eyes closed. I was on a bed and the room was dark. Maybe Frank got out of the machine and laid me somewhere because I hit my head.
But then I realized my head felt fine.
I slowly opened my eyes.
The room looked familiar.
Too familiar.
I sat up and my eyes got wider and wider.
There was my dresser that I’d had since I was seven years old. The little stereo I bought through a rent to own company. My old clothes were strewn across the floor.
In fact ... this room looked exactly like the room I had when I was twenty years old, when I lived with a roommate and worked as a hostess at Bob Evans.
I took off my blanket and stood, my eyes adjusting to the dark.
“This can’t be,” I whispered. I looked, and there was the light switch, exactly where I remembered it. I turned the light on and looked around the room in disbelief. All my old stuff from twenty years ago was there.
Instinctively, I looked down at my body. I was thinner, but still muscular, wearing my SpongeBob Pajamas that I had thrown out years before. I ran my fingers through my dark hair, which had been down to my shoulders, but was now extremely short.
“No ...” I groaned. I walked to the closet where a full-length mirror was attached to the door and my mouth dropped open.
It was like looking at a photograph from the past, but the eyes blinked when I blinked, the mouth contorted, and I held back a scream.
“I’m twenty again!”
As I looked in the mirror and fought to keep my breathing normal, something distracted me. I could hear the sounds of Three Days Grace blaring from another room.
Which meant my roommate, a year older than me, who had been my best friend at the time, was home. She worked at Bob Evans too as a cook. We had lived together until she got a boyfriend and moved in with him, and then we slowly and inevitably lost touch and she moved to another city. I hadn’t seen her in person in years.
Excitement flooded my body, and I ran out the door to the living room.
“Allison!” I yelled.
There she was, sitting at my desktop computer, the music blaring and a beer in her hand. Her tall, lanky body was leaning back in the chair, and her dark brown hair was in a messy ponytail.
“There you are,” she said. “I came home from work and you were already passed out.”
“Oh my God it’s so good to see you!” I ran up and gave Allison a big hug, sloshing beer everywhere.
“I just saw you this morning,” she said with a laugh. “Is something wrong?”
I took a step back and put a hand to my head. “Um. I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you. Let’s just say I’ve had a very weird day and it’s good to see my best friend.”
Allison was obviously listening to Limewire because Three Days Grace changed to Evanescence.
“Grab a beer,” Allison said. “We don’t have to work til four tomorrow. Want an Adderall? I’m ready to stay up all night.”
“Um. Wait. Wait. Let me think a second.”
“What’s there to think about?”
I ran to my room and shut the door. Frank obviously went back in time, too. And he would be living in the same house. I had to get back to my wife. I must have disappeared, and she was probably worried sick about me. I was currently an hour away from the neighborhood I had just moved to. If I left right now, I could go to Frank’s and demand he send me back to my future self. That’s what I needed to do. I had my Cavalier, The White Rabbit. I could drive there right now. I grabbed my wallet from my dresser.
I had two dollars.
But maybe I still had enough gas to make it there.
I threw on some of the clothes from the floor, put on my shoes, and grabbed my keys, then I ran out to the living room with Allison.
“Will you come with me somewhere?” I asked her. “I’ll explain everything on the way there. Bring your beer.”
“I’m down,” she said, and turned off the music.
We ran down the stairs of our apartment and out the door.
“My car!” I exclaimed.
“You’re acting weird,” Allison observed.
“There’s so much going on right now,” I explained as we got in the car. I picked up the CD case that lay in between the seats lovingly and smiled. “We have to go, though.”
