Jace awoke to his phone alarm at a more reasonable time. With an hour to get to Arthur’s house, he changed and made an early lunch upon seeing that Wes hadn’t prepared one for him. He took a bologna sandwich to the couch, watched a few minutes of MTV music videos, and after inhaling his food, went to Wes’ door and knocked.

“Hey, Unk. I’m going to Arthur’s now.” He waited. “Hey, you awake? Helloooo? All right. Whatever. Guess you’re still catching up on sleep. So, bye.”

Outside, it was just as hot as it had been pretty much every day recently, but Jace didn’t mind so much, and was happy to take his first real bike ride in his neighborhood. With some time to spare, he even made a detour to his future house to check up on it.

It had a “for sale” sign out front. Worried that his tampering was somehow causing Felicity’s family to leave town, he weighed if it was worth investigating. Luckily for him, she was already waiting on the porch steps, looking bored in her Sunday best.

Trying not to second guess himself, Jace walked his bike into their shared yard and waved at her with a tepid smile. She sort-of waved back, so he drew closer.

“Hey, Felicity… Um, you look… nice?” he awkwardly complemented.

“What, this stupid dress? Ugh. Mom wanted to take us to church today. And she’s still in there, putting her face on. Like God cares about makeup. I don’t actually care about all this religious stuff, by the way… Did Millie tell you where I lived, or…?”

“Oh, I was just passing by and saw you… Are you really selling your house?”

“Yeah. And it sucks. I like the place. But Mom’s been making so much money since winning that stupid election, that she wants to move a few blocks away to the nicer homes. It’s so dumb. But she and my sister are all like, ‘it’ll be great, you’ll love it!’ Like… no? Those places aren’t like this good old house. They have no… no…”

Remembering what Wes once told him about his dad’s house, Jace found the word she was likely looking for and finished her thought, “Personality?”

“Yeah, exactly! And ever since I ‘changed’ for them, they think we’re this big perfect American family now. I don’t know how long I can keep this up.”

“Oh. Sorry about that… It’s hard not being able to be yourself.”

She gave him an assuring grin. “I just have to hold out until I’m a teenager. Then I think I’ll be able to get away with anything. Anyway, see you later.” She got up to head back inside. “I have to force them out of there so we can get this over with.”

“Hey! Jace, right?” Arthur’s dad greeted him at the door to their family’s house, one of the bigger residences on the kid’s block. “Come in! Your buddies are waiting.”

Jace had stopped by the place a few times and knew his way around, despite not yet having a sleepover there. The twins’ mom wasn’t around at the moment, but their dad seemed busy and went off into the attached garage. Jace caught a peek inside as he walked by its open door, at the workbench covered in electronic parts. Their handy pop was already getting back to work on soldering a gizmo of some sort.

Going down the hall, Jace next arrived at Ash’s bedroom door. He looked in to see her reading a book on her bed, with a shelf full of them nearby. The room was otherwise pretty empty and still smelled like her mom’s exercise equipment.

Upon spotting Jace, she looked up from her book and gave him a little wave. “The dorks are all dorking out in Arty’s room. I don’t think I’m gonna be on the team.”

“But… you didn’t want to be, right? Um… you haven’t really made much progress with your new room since I was here last time.”

She shrugged and went back to her book. “Still beats sharing. Mom keeps promising we’ll do some shopping soon. Then the room will be mi-i-ine,” she sang the last word. “Gonna look dope. Arty can keep all that old kids’ stuff in his stinky room.”

Jace smiled and shook his head without her seeing. She’s too cute, seriously.

The brief chat with Felicity had cost him a little extra time, so he was the last to arrive for the meetup, though he was still right on schedule. In Arthur’s room, games, their consoles, their posters, and assorted other merchandise filled up whatever space wasn’t already occupied by early 90s kids’ furniture, in all the bright primary colors.

“Jason, there you are!” Arthur welcomed him. “Get in here, close the door.”

The whole crew was in attendance, with Celeste off to the side, chewing gum and looking at the ceiling from the spot on the carpet where Ash’s bed still had an imprint. Colin was still a bit subdued, but Zach was looking as cool as always, and Wessy…

Actually, Wessy was acting peculiar. He looked nervous standing between Sadie and Jared, shaking a bit like a chihuahua that still had the spirit of a wolf trapped inside its tiny body. His eyes darted about, he bit his lower lip every few seconds, and he fiddled with his hands. The others seemed to have at least noticed it, but none of them appeared to be concerned, perhaps brushing it off as another of his sugar rushes.

“Okay, we’re here to put together a final team for the laser tag tourney,” Arthur began the proceedings. “And, I just wanna let you know, even if those of us that don’t get picked—or… didn’t really want to go anyway, you’re still part of a team. We can help make strategies and stuff, right? And celebrate together when we totally win.”

“Are we gonna have a vote or something?” Jared asked. “How’s this work?”

“Maybe, sorta. We’ll figure that out. I think we can start with Celeste, since after the Bullet Water game, I kinda know how it’ll go. Raise your hand if she’s in.”

To no surprise, everyone did so—Jared, of course, a little more hesitantly than the rest. Wessy, however, rocketed his arm into the air as soon as he could.

“Yeah, about what I figured,” Celeste said and got to her feet. “But, hey, we don’t have to vote. Let’s just talk and debate. It shouldn’t be a popularity contest.”

“What do you think, Wes?” Arthur asked him. “Who else do we want?”

Jared looked sullen again and avoided eye contact with Wessy and Jace, knowing neither one would want him in after he so horribly violated their trust.

“Well, I definitely want Jared on the team,” Wessy replied, to both his and Jace’s surprise. “Yeah. Now and forever. No matter what I say in the future, I absolutely want him on the team. Yes. If I say otherwise sometime later, I’m just joking. We need Jared.”

“O… kay…” Arthur stared at him, as did the others. “I mean, I’m giving my dad the entry form in a few hours, so it’s set in stone anyway at that point…”

“You feeling, like, normal, Wes?” Zach wondered. “You’re pretty antsy today. Did you pour Coke on your Froot Loops again?”

“No, I’m fine!” he replied and made a strange grin. “Just excited about the game. So, Colin, you totally didn’t want to be in, right? That’s okay. You don’t have to be.”

His best friend looked at him and muttered, “Well, I…”

“And Arthur! Uh, Arty! You said you’d freak out, right? You’re more interested in lookin’ at maps of the park and coming up with a strategy and sh… tuff, right?”

“Uh…” Arthur didn’t know how to react. “I didn’t say I’d freak out…”

“Hey,” Zach spoke up. “If we’re in ‘no hard feelings mode’ here, I gotta agree. You guys can cheer us on from the sidelines and then we’ll all have celebration pizza again. The quicker we finish making a team, the more time we get to plan, right?”

“So… what about me?” Sadie asked Wessy. “I’ve gotten a little excited about it.”

“Y-yes!” Wessy exclaimed. “Sadie, you are so important to the team!”

“And I am, too,” Zach said. “Right? Hey, Wes. Right?”

Wessy glanced at him, then to Jace, then back, and replied, “Actually, Zach, uh… Look, I totally think you can get us pumped before the match, but I wanna give Jace… Jason a shot. What with all his recent training and the recent Bullet Water game, you can tell that he really has his heart in this. Also, I don’t want you running off on your own.”

The others stared at him again, rather dumbfounded by Wessy’s sudden change in his inflections and his newfound adult-like reasoning.

“I mean…” Wessy thought of a better, more kid-like way of saying it. “I think he’ll live longer. It isn’t freeze tag, Zach! We can’t revive you after your suicide runs!”

Zach groaned. “Then just say that instead. I liked the voting idea better. At least let me talk about it with the others. You owe me that much, right, Wes?”

“Fine, you all have that chat. I gotta… Jason! Can we talk privately for a sec?”

Jace shrugged and, feeling weirded out by Wes’ behavior, simply replied, “Okay.”

Wessy pulled Jace away into the hallway, and then into the office room at the end of it, where Arthur’s dad kept three computers of varying ages and models.

“Okay, so, what’s up?” Jace asked. “You’re kinda making the others wonder.”

Wessy looked around the room, slowly spun around in a full circle, brushed the hair under his cap with his hand, and generally looked out of sorts some more before he finally answered, “Jace. Buddy. Keep with me on this. I’m Wes. Your Wes. It’s me, man.”

“Wait, w-what?”

“It’s me, we went through my pantry door together! I wanted a nice weekend?”

After needing a moment to get over the bizarre fact that such things were coming from a kid’s mouth, Jace exclaimed, “But, how? How did you… become a kid again? And, hold on, where’s the real Wessy? Did you do something to him?”

“Dude!” Wes-Wessy nearly shouted as he shook Jace’s shoulders. “This is Wessy. Just, with the adult version’s mind inside. I’ve been stuck like this since this morning!”

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me. That’s insane! … How’d it happen?”

He tried to calm down and remember things. “Ninja kid gave me a time quartz—I guess it’s still at our place. I poked and prodded at it, because, you know… it’s me.”

“Did he tell you not to do that?”

“What do you think? And then the thing starts vibrating and glowing, and before I know it, I wake up in my childhood bedroom, feeling strange. I have small hands, small feet, small… The point is, this feels so wrong. It took me a half-hour just to learn how to walk again! I kept bumping into things and bumbling around, and then Mom… Then my mom comes up and asks me if I’m okay. Freakin’ hell, I’m so twitchy, too.”

“Okay, so, now I know, but how are we supposed to fix this?”

“I… I dunno. I don’t want to be stuck like this,” Wes said as he looked at his reflection in a computer monitor. “Guess there’s no choice. We’ll just have to wait for Warren to show up again. Worst case, I can use the quartz to go to the fail-safe time he set up, but I’m worried about using it while like this. Might just screw things up more.”

“That’s messed up. But at least you took care of our keep-Jared-on-the-team problem. Um, wait… Mom still thinks I’m too young to spend the night home alone.”

“I don’t want to be alone like this, either.” Wes gestured to all of himself in its smaller form. “Maybe Mom will let you sleep over. That’s weird for Sundays, but not unheard of… Aw, shit. If I am stuck like this for a full day, and I have to go to school…”

“Wes, Jason!” Arthur called out. “Where are you? Get back in here!”

Jace and his mini-uncle rejoined the others, where Zach was looking a little sulky.

“They voted you in, dude,” he said with a sigh and looked at Jace. “Maybe democracy isn’t always on my side. Try to win it for us, okay?”

“We said you could be on the team next year,” Sadie replied. “That’s fair, right?”

The news came as a relief to both Wes and Jace, as now the two didn’t have to worry as much about the game. The real Wessy would just really need to be back by then.

Ash, who had appeared in the doorway with her dad, got in a scoffing remark, “Hope you have fun shooting invisible lights at each other.”

“Sheesh, Ash, Dad’s helping set the whole thing up, you know,” Arthur moaned.

“Oh, that’s okay,” he replied with a laugh. “I get paid no matter how silly the tournament is. Anyway, Arty, Mom called to say you both need new clothes, so unless your friends want to share a boring day with us, they’ll probably want to go home.”

“Oh, fun…” the boy twin murmured. “We’re done here, anyway.”

As they said their farewells and headed out, Jace saw Wes check his pockets for something—not that it was worth questioning, or stood out among his recent behavior.

• •

“Thanks for the meal,” Jace said to Wes’ mom later that evening, where he had sat and ate at the small dining table. “Spaghetti is always a classic, I guess.”

“Yes,” she said with a familiar chuckle. “Wes insists we have it on Sundays. I don’t always oblige, but I think a Sunday sleepover is special enough to call for it.”

“Mom…” Wes-Wessy whined, almost sounding like he would as a normal child.

“Oh, you know it’s impossible for parents to not embarrass their kids. It’s just nice having a meal together with only one of your friends. Usually there are at least three or four of them over at once, and at that point, it’s either pizza or Taco Bell.”

Jace brought his plate to the sink before Wes did and scored another compliment from his mom. She almost sounded surprised that he’d show some basic manners. Jace realized his own mom must’ve passed them down, who likely got them from her dad.

“Oh, Jason, would you like to watch The Simpsons with us?” Great-Aunty asked him. “It’s kind of our Sunday show. If you think that’s okay with your dad—every now and then it does have some adult humor. But we’ve seen every episode.”

He looked at Wes, now waiting for his turn to use the sink, and replied, “Um, yeah, my dad’s cool with it. He kinda lets me watch pretty much anything, actually.”

“Come on…” Wes said under his breath. “Not everything. I’m semi-responsible.”