“… Are you done?” Wes asked as Jace took a hyperventilation break.

“N-no!” he huffed and took another bite of his strawberry tape—only to realize that he had eaten it all and was now biting into paper. “I mean… Yeah. That’s about it.”

“Okay. Can you repeat all of that? I stopped listening. Because I stopped caring.”

“W-what? You stopped listening?! I’ve never told anyone all this stuff before!”

“Buddy! Chill. I’m kidding. But most people really would have stopped, because you’re whining. Like, a lot. No one wants to help a kid who whines about everything.”

“But—”

“Shh. My turn now. To start… Aw, man…” Wes rubbed his forehead. “All right, you’re not gonna like what I’m about to say. But I want you to listen. Your mom is a good parent overall, but you’re lucky you have me, because she would just coddle you if you told her all this, just before going down the route of really bad advice.

“From the sound of it, you’re the one at fault here. Yeah, this is mostly on you.”

“No! No it’s not! They were the ones being total a-holes!”

“I’ll preface this by saying that kids your age shouldn’t be on social media at all. You still need to graduate past in-person communication. But, not much we can do about that. Your problem… is that you took all of this way too personally. And I’m guessing this didn’t start with some argument about a digital mage character.”

“Cyber-Mage! His official bio says that he flies around on a starship called Gallant and joins the Galactic Council of Heroes to avenge his people back on Brendal IV.”

“It’s great that you have an endless library of trivia in your head, and I do too, but you gotta learn when to read those books out loud. Kids don’t not like you because you’re smart, Jace. Hell, you probably got the friends you had because you’re smart. Every circle of buddies wants a guy like that, the thinker, the one with the juicy info. And it’s okay if you’re shy—I knew a lot of shy kids—but there’s a big difference between being soft-spoken, and being a kid who thinks highly of himself and limits his communication down to nothing but smart-ass remarks. News flash: your friends weren’t trying to make fun of you. They were trying to make light of the situation. Slap your back, laugh it off?”

“No, they weren’t! They just wanted to keep the argument going!”

“That’s only what you think. Sure, things escalated a little, but I promise you that by the time school started again, your friends were already way past some stupid tizzy. They were looking to have a sense of camaraderie with you again. It’s what friends do.”

“Camrad… What? They wanted to be friends by teasing me and being bullies?”

“Yes! I mean, no. That’s only how you saw it. Tell me, Jace, did you ever tell them to stop? Did they know you thought they were being ‘a-holes’ to you? Or did you react only by ignoring them, and then take that up a notch when you started insulting them?”

“I… I, uh…”

“You acquired a victim complex somewhere along the line. That’s all. You took something too personally, thought it meant something a lot more than what it actually did, and you started this loop in your head that you never took a step back from and took a different look at. Okay, so tell me, why do you think some kids bully others?”

“Because they’re stupid.”

“Good. I can see we’re making real progress,” Wes sighed. “No, wrong. Granted, there have probably been a few real sociopaths in the public school system—I had my days with one or two—but for the most part, your peers only want to feel some sort of connection to you, whether they like you or not. They want to be able to see what you’re thinking, and that doesn’t even always have to be through verbal means. When you turn away from your own need for social connection and try to make yourself feel nothing inside or just become super-defensive, then, yeah, this is what happens.”

Wes paused for a moment as Jace looked at him, and finally gave what his uncle was saying some thought. Wes stood up, went over to the window, and stared out.

“Look… I don’t have any degrees in any of this stuff. I never really needed any. I managed to figure out how people work all on my own. It was my gift, even as a child. You don’t need to get into the complexities of it. You just need to know the basics.

“Trust me when I say it will only get worse. Especially if you end up in a class full of strangers, whose first impression of you will be, well, who you are now. You aren’t ‘cool’ or ‘mysterious’ by hiding up in a tower. You gotta come down. Have fun. Laugh at the good, bad, and stupid times. You’ll have lots of each. Sheesh… Before we all had cellphones, honesty was everything between kids. We were experts on reading a face.”

“You say all that… But you can be a real jerk sometimes, Uncle Wes…”

He turned around and shook his head. “Haven’t you been listening to anything? I don’t see myself as being a ‘jerk’ to you! I’m your cool uncle who wants to help you!”

Jace sulked and looked at the floor.

“Take some time to think about these revelations and realize that, probably, most of what I said is good advice. Probably. I’ll leave you alone for a few hours. Relax, watch TV. Remember, we’re here to have fun, but practice your social skills on some local kids when you can. Try to make a few friends. Then when you get back, you’ll be better off.”

“Make friends? Why? I’m just going to leave soon and never see them again.”

“Don’t think about that. Just try to be open to any you come across while you are here,” Wes said as he headed to the door. “Don’t answer the phone or let anyone in. Ya know, all the stuff I’m sure your mom has told you not to do since you were born.”

“Uncle Wes…” Jace spoke up before he left. “If you’re good at talking to people, why do you hate work so much, and your boss, and have, like… no adult friends?”

Wes tried to give a reasonable, thought out and logical response, but could only muster, “Because things change,” before he closed and locked the door.

Jace stayed sprawled out on the empty bed in the quiet hotel room for a few minutes, looking up at the ceiling while the large and loud air conditioner whirred away under the window. Maybe his uncle was smarter than he thought, and actually made a good point. But he wasn’t an eleven-year-old who easily admitted his own faults.

“What does he know…” he mumbled. “He didn’t see how mean they all got…”

He eyed the Dunkaroos pack, and finally relented to his Uncle’s insistence to try and take it easy while on this trip, the strangest of all vacations. He flipped over, tore off the plastic top, and grabbed a room temperature Capri Sun from the minifridge.

After sinking into a hill of hotel pillows, he grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. After the loud thlump sound of the electron gun fired, Jerry Springer blasted into the room, and he scrambled to turn down the volume and change the channel. He went through the twenty available twice, stopping on HBO to watch a bit of Highlander.

Right as Sean Connery’s sword fight began, the TV shut off—because according to the universe, it had never been on, since Jace had never picked up the remote; it was back on the nightstand between the beds. He angrily grabbed it and turned the old clunker back on, and again, two women fighting over a man blared into the room.

After he fixed the channel and volume but before he could take another bite of frosted kangaroo cookie, things reversed again. Frustrated, he wondered if everything he had eaten would leave his stomach and return to their packaging. What if he starved?

He got up, reached to turn on the TV with the button at its bottom, and was greeted by shouts of “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!” He fumbled with the cheap plastic tabs until he changed the channel, and kept pressing to surf through them. Moments after he thought he “had it” and leaned back a bit, time burped and the TV switched off for a third time.

Once he had re-retrieved the remote, he thought about throwing it at the screen and seeing if that would be permanent. Instead, he performed the breathing exercises his mom had taught him to use whenever he got frustrated, and then threw in some words.

“I’m real…” he murmured in a meditative state. “I’m really here… I’m in 1995, not 2020… I’m really… really, really really here. So… let me do things.”

He opened his eyes, calmly turned on the TV, and steadily went to Nickelodeon, currently playing an early Rugrats episode. He took in the feeling of being in the past, in a hotel, and tried to enjoy doing nothing more than relaxing in a nice, cold room as talking babies went on an adventure. All was right with the world. There was no way the—

No, it happened again. Right now, he simply had no ability to watch TV on his own. Maybe he couldn’t operate any machinery at all. And yet, he realized that anything his uncle had given him so far hadn’t suffered the temporal glitch. His shopping cart, the toys, the remote—those were all things that Jace alone had interacted with.

Whatever the reason for that, he was now tired of trying to watch some retro shows, and had to find something else to do. He played Tetris for a few minutes, but soon only wanted a new game for his handheld. Maybe Wes had picked one up?

With a new goal in mind, Jace dropped to the carpeted floor and scooted over to the remaining Target bags, spilling out of the open closet. He peeked at them, and then dug into each bundle a little. But they turned out to be nothing but adult clothes.

Bored, he sprawled onto the floor and stared at the ceiling. Then he went to see if anyone was swimming in the pool. Finally, he returned to the bed, finished his snack, and played mobile games on his phone, which probably had the same power as a million Game Boys. Wes had yet to provide him with a fresh charge, so he watched his battery.

Unsure if his uncle would even allow a recharge, he stopped playing his games after several minutes, and with options exhausted, closed his eyes and let himself fall asleep among the empty packaging and wrappers of kid snacks on the bed.  

Wes’ voice woke him up some time later, “Yo, Jace, I’m back.”

Jace groggily felt the sun on his eyes and saw that it was setting. He looked at Wes, carrying a bag from a place called Radio Shack, and another from an outdoor store.

“Got sick of TV? Did you learn anything?”

“Not much… I couldn’t keep it on.” He yawned. “Only thing I really noticed is that car commercials don’t have that ‘do not attempt’ text on the bottom.”

“Haha, yeah, good observation. Half the time all someone’s doing is driving all normal like on some road. ‘Do not attempt’ to use your vehicular product, right? So, you couldn’t keep the television going… Sorry, maybe I should’a turned it on for you.”

“I dunno. That might’ve been even worse. It would’ve probably kept going back to that Jerry Springer show. I think if you hand me things, maybe it won’t happen.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Not like I had a partner last time to try that with. Here.”

Wes tossed him a bag. Jace took out a box with a picture of a primitive, clunky cell phone. He looked surprised as he removed the Motorola from the box.

“What? Didn’t think they existed? These don’t have texting yet, but hey, at least we can talk to each other. It ain’t cheap, though. Emergencies only. And in the other bag…” He took out a pair of binoculars and asked, “Ready to spy on some kids?”

Jace rubbed his eyes. “I think I had a teacher who got arrested for doing that.”