“Get in there and stay quiet,” Mr. Drake ordered as the felons marched into the study hall room—an old, rundown place with decrepit desks that hadn’t been used as a proper classroom for at least a decade. “Remember, you’re being punished. I’ll be back when recess ends. You’ll stay in here for…” he glanced at his watch, “one hour. And you…” he looked at Jace, “you must be their new ringleader, is that it?”

“Huh?”

“Mr. Colton was always a borderline troublemaker, but you… You’ve always been a mystery, hard to read. Now you’ve got them all wearing buttons with your picture on it. I don’t know what’s going on inside that head of yours, but I have my eyes on you.”

The room already had two other kids that had been nabbed for being bad earlier: Millie and Hutch, the latter digging into his desk with a paper clip. Once Mr. Drake had shut and locked the door, the others shuffled over to their desks and plopped down.

“Millie?” Jace whispered to her. “Is this where you’ve been recently?”

She looked up from her composition book and replied, “During recess, yeah. I figured you might’ve missed this and, well, I got myself sent here just in case.”

“You didn’t have to do all that. I’m on top of things, usually.”

“I don’t care, really. It’s nice and quiet in here. Hutch has been kinda going berserk though. I don’t think he knows what to do with himself outside The Dump.”

“Thanks, everyone,” Gerald groaned at his desk, and looked quite agitated. “I’ve never been sent to detention before. Now I’m sure my permanent record is screwed up.”

“Ah, give it a break, Gerald,” Zach moaned, leaned back in his seat, and dropped his legs on his desk. “None of us would be here if you just got over it.”

“I recall giving you advice no less than six times already this year, Zach.”

“Yeah, so? You help people. That’s good. Doesn’t give you the right to tell us the things we like suck eggs. Speaking of…” Zach eyed Jace with a glint in his eye. “Way to lay it onto Mr. Drake, Dancin’ J. Gutsy move. Kids’ll be talking about that for a while.”

“Why’d you do that, anyway?” Wessy asked.

“Ah, you know…” Jace sat in a rickety chair and breathed out. “The rest of the gang was going, so I didn’t want to be left… out? And Mr. Drake had it coming.”

“I didn’t even do anything…” Colin sighed. “I was just… there.”

“Sorry, man,” Arthur replied. “Guilt by association. Adults are all about it.”

“Y-yeah, exactly!” Jace replied, drawing on some genuine experiences of his own. “Do you know how many times I’ve been in a class where everyone had to write ‘I will not talk’ or some crap just because a few kids were actually talking? It didn’t matter if I was being quiet, minding my own business… some teachers just want to punish everyone!”

“That was awesome,” Carson said, “but, not sure if it was worth all of us ending up here just because Gerald here can’t handle having his precious likes challenged.”

“Okay, okay,” Sadie grumbled. “Don’t make it even worse. Don’t you remember Gerald helping you last year, telling you how to sneak your headphones and CD player onto the playground? He has been nice to all of us, and reffed so many competitions and stopped so many other arguments from getting worse by using reason and stuff, so… let’s just remember that. Everyone can freak out eventually.”

“Yeah, but he just… And he was all like… He wouldn’t…” Carson sighed and finally chilled out. “Look, Gerald, I’m sorry, okay? I mean, I would never sit around and listen to, uh… show tunes, but smooth jazz—I kind of get that. I’ve dipped my toes.”

“Fine. Whatever,” Gerald replied. “I’m over it. Couldn’t get any worse than this.”

“Dude, relax,” Jared said, also leaning back in his chair. “Elementary school detention is nothin’. My older cousin gets detention all the time in high school, and he says it’s so much worse. We sit in here for an hour and move on with our lives.”

“This is just the start… I was perfect until now, and after this, I’m going to turn to a life of crime within a year…” Gerald bemoaned.

“You’re not perfect. No one is. Don’t think so highly of yourself.”

“We still have another ten minutes until recess is over and Mr. Drake comes in here and acts like a tyrant,” Arthur said. “Might as well talk about something.”

Jace stayed quiet, letting them initiate the conversation—and hoping that Park’s buttons, or himself now being seen as a “ringleader,” hadn’t changed anything. Carson began drumming on his desk with an old, chewed up pencil he found, while Gerald burrowed into his arms and shut himself away in a safe space. Jace was seeing the kid as possibly being the next he could help—helping the helper, as it were—but for now, he had to focus on the laser tag conversation that was supposed to be coming up.

After a few minutes of pointless chatter, it was Wessy who initiated things, when he suddenly asked the others, “Hey, I gotta know. Are we serious about laser tag?”

“You mean at King Arcade?” Zach replied. “Yeah, sure. Let’s do it.”

Arthur sighed and told everyone, “Guys, look—the reason I was unsure if I should bring it up, is because… I’ve seen the signup form already. It’s teams of five. I knew we all couldn’t go, so someone would feel left out.”

“Hm.” Wessy looked at the others. “Well, we could start by figuring out who actually wants to do it. No pressure or anything. Just be honest.”

Hands were raised, Jace’s included. He watched carefully to see who wanted to go. Everyone except Sadie and Colin raised their hand, though Arthur’s was halfway up.

“Sadie, Colin!” Wessy sounded disappointed.

“You said we didn’t have to!” Colin exclaimed.

“Y-yeah, but, I mean… Buddy… You and me, ride or die…?”

“Look, I, um… You know I’m not athletic. It’s one thing to play water guns, but this is a tournament and it’s serious-sounding. I’m just not sure if I could keep up…”

“What about you, Sadie? You’re really good at our water gun games.”

She shrugged. “I dunno. It just doesn’t sound that interesting.”

“But we could use all your sneaking around stuff! Just think it over, okay? Mm, well, I guess it could be me, Zach, Jared, and… Arthur? You good?”

“I… I dunno, man. Maybe. I know my way around the park, but if it’s some big competition, I feel like I might get really nervous…”

“But it’ll be us, man, your buds. And, Colin… please? I can’t do it without you.”

“Aw, sure you can,” he assured him. “I’m not even that good a shot, anyway.”

Remembering that Jared didn’t originally end up on the team, but Sadie did, Jace assumed Wessy would sort those positions out on his own. He also knew he couldn’t just suggest Celeste out of nowhere, but he saw a good chance to secure one team member early, and let the leader of the pack know that he was interested.

“I think you should keep Jared in, even if you shuffle the final team a bit,” Jace suggested. “He’s, um… trustworthy? And, like… the glue…?”

They all looked at him, with Wessy saying, “Uh, Jason, have you ever played a water or laser gun game? I mean, we’ve told you about our Bullet Water, but we haven’t played that since summer. We normally don’t get into it this time of year.”

“Yeah,” Jared replied. “How would you know how good I am?”

Now changing the past and the story of the group of friends for perhaps the first seriously real time and in uncharted territory, Jace kept cool as he answered, “Yeah, I’ve played. I can shoot and work on a team.” At least when it’s not one full of scrubs, he thought, flashing back to his Xbox days for a moment. “I can prove it with that game you got coming up with Gavin if you want. Um, what I’m saying is, I want in, too.”

“Well. All right. We’ll see what happens then, I guess. If either Sadie or Colin really don’t want in, we might need you, anyway. Do you still have a water gun?”

“S-sure. A really good one,” he replied, noticing Millie following along.

“What about you guys?” Wessy jokingly asked the others. “Wanna be on our team, running around an amusement park shooting lasers at each other?”

“N-no… I’m all about peace…” Gerald muttered. “But after today, I dunno.”

“I don’t do running around and getting sweaty,” Carson replied.

Millie didn’t dignify the offer with a response, and once Wessy looked back at Hutch in the back, he glared back and grunted, “You don’t want me on any team.”

“We wouldn’t’a been here talking about all this if there was just a way I could look up lyrics somewhere,” Jared said, leaning back into his hands. “Sadie, you should come to the K with us after school, a slushie will help you forget about this crap.”

“Hm, nah. You know I’m not the ‘hang around doing nothing’ type.”

Colin murmured, “Do you think if I just explain to Mr. Drake that…”

Zach stopped him, “Nope. He won’t listen or care.”

“Ugh, if my parents find out about this, they’ll think I’ve gone bad…”

“Colin, seriously, it’s not a big deal,” Jared promised him. “Getting sent to the principal? That’s when you messed up. Hey, Hutch! Did you see Bio-Dome?”

“Ah, geez, not this again,” Wessy grumbled.

“Heck yeah, man!” Hutch shouted. “Awesome movie!”

Hearing approaching footsteps, Jared got up and headed to the back, telling his friends, “Sorry, guys. I think I found my detention buddy for the day.”

Jared changed his seat just as Mr. Drake came in. He looked at his captives with a disappointed scowl, and without saying a word, went to the old desk, took out a book, and started reading. Then everyone stayed quiet, with the exception of some audible whispers from Hutch and Jared. This went on for forty minutes. And that was it.

• •

“And, um, yeah,” Jace concluded his report to Wes—and Millie, who had gotten off the bus with him for a quick after-school debrief with the travelers. “Detention wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. I’m usually pretty quiet in class already, anyway.”

“So… Jared has a better chance of staying in, and you shared your interest in joining. I guess that’s good enough, for now,” Wes said and thought things over. “Now we need to get you ready for this game coming up. You’ll have to impress them.”

“Y-yeah, about that… We’re hanging out at Circle K more and more, not just after school, and it’s a bit of a walk from most of their houses, and now the gang expects me to bike over to Wessy’s house for the game next weekend. So…”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“I, uh…” Jace didn’t want to admit this, especially not in front of Millie as well, but he had little choice. “I don’t know… how… to ride a bike.”

“Ah, Jace…son. I didn’t… I mean, I forgot about that.” Wes eyed Millie. “I kept meaning to teach you, but never got around to it. Welp. We’ll just have to power train you through it, 80s montage style. All of them know how to ride, so you should, too.”

“I’ll help,” Millie offered. “Since you had the guts to say it out loud, I’ll let it out that I didn’t learn until last year. But! My dad had a technique that made learning quick.”

“Come on, Dad, don’t make me spend even more time with her,” Jace groaned.

Millie looking a little insulted, Wes replied, “It’ll be worth it. Look, just imagine, next Saturday, you rolling up on a brand-new bike, with a brand-new Super Soaker strapped to your back… They’ll have to put you on their team, regardless of your aim! This is important. You still have to really get in with the gang, not just be in their orbit.”

“I thought I already was one of them! Agh, stuff just keeps getting complicated.”

“What else is coming up, Mr. Prophet?” Millie asked Wes.

He took out his iPad—which had impressed her even more than Jace’s phone the first time she saw it—and scrolled through his notes. “Oh. This. Uh, ‘Time Squad HQ’ has it written here that there’s some sort of showdown at the playground next week.”

“Is there really a ‘Time Squad’?” Millie questioned. “Either way… things have been getting kind of tense at school lately. I can see a ‘showdown’ happening.”

Jace wished it wasn’t so. Every playground day in his time was tense for him, while those from ’95 and ’96 were relatively fun, free of conflict. What had changed?