That night’s episode of The Simpsons wasn’t exactly the boys’ cup of soda, as it focused on Marge becoming a socialite, but Jace rather enjoyed the quiet evening of TV in a truly lived-in house; it felt like he was home again with his mom.

“You’re giving Tiger a lot of love tonight, Wes,” Great-Aunty said during a commercial break. “It’s like you haven’t seen him for a few days or something.”

He had spent the night on the carpeted living room floor in front of the TV, petting his childhood pet that mostly just wanted to sleep.

“He’s a good dog,” he replied. “He deserves it. I don’t want to forget him…”

“Aw. But he’s not going anywhere. I think he’s built like a tank. All the things he’s eaten that should’ve killed him… So, do you have any pets, Jason?”

He shook his head and replied, “If I did, hm, I think I’d be a cat person.”

“I grew up with cats, actually. Tiger was my first dog, too. The old mutt.”

Wes once more dug into Tiger’s coat, like he wanted to feel every individual hair.

• •

“Things don’t feel as messed up as this morning,” Wes said from his bed, where he was sitting up and looking at everything in his room. “I mean, short of breaking in, I was never going to see this place again… unless something crazy like this happened.”

Jace replied from his sleeping bag, where he was playing some Wario Land on his Game Boy Pocket, “When was the last time you were in this room?”

“I mean, it looked nothing like this by the end of middle school, and then it went into post high school-stasis when I went to college… Mom sold the place when I was thirty and left town. I kinda meditated on everything in here as my way of saying goodbye, then moved what was left that still mattered to my apartment.”

“Wow. So… not that long ago.”

“No. And I think leaving home for the last time triggered, you know, my long-running melan… cholic nostalgia phase. Gah, it’s hard to speak with this tongue.”

“Wes, I should’ve told you a while ago, but your story about finding the time gate was really freaking depressing. I didn’t know you were that… sad.”

It took Wes a few seconds to reply, “… Well, that was a long time ago for me now. Stuff like that gets easier to talk about, the further it is in the past.”

“But you still don’t feel… You’re not still that bad, right?”

Before little Wes could answer, if he could at all, his mom came in and flicked the light switch to bring a subdued sleepover to its final, titular event.

“Lights out, guys,” she said in her warm, caring way. “And Wes, don’t let me catch you reading comics or game magazines in bed again. You. Need. Sleep.”

With that, she closed the door. Wes was of course restless, and when Jace checked on him after a few minutes, he saw that he was still staring at his room, even in the darkness. It was like he was trying to burn a fresh image into his mind.

“Hey,” Jace spoke up, with an important question. “Where do you think Wessy is right now? Should we be worried about that? What if… he’s in your body?”

“Would be kind of funny if he pulled a Big on us, huh? He’d probably already be at a bar, trying out beer after crashing the car into something. But, seriously, I think he’s just asleep, hopefully not experiencing any of this. Warren needs to hurry and show up.”

“Yeah… But you’re probably going to have to go to school tomorrow.”

“Just great. And right after I finally stopped having dreams about it.”

• •

Mondays at school were bad enough, but Wes also had no knowledge of current subjects, and Jace trying to fill him in that morning hadn’t helped much. It wasn’t a big problem for the day’s first two classes, as he simply kept quiet and was fortunately never called on. But when math rolled around so did a test, and it was messing with him.

“Psst. Jace, you’re good at math, right?” he whispered over to him. “Do you have the answers to… questions one through twenty? I’m freaking out with this stuff…”

Jace replied, “Can we not get caught cheating? How do you not know any of it?”

“Dude, I don’t remember what long division even is.” Wes looked around, caught a glimpse of Millie staring at the two of them instead of her test, then returned to Jace and added, “I feel bad. I bet Wessy studied, and now I’m going to bomb it.”

“I’ve seen him react to his math test results. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Giving up on his chance to get his young self a decent grade, Wes huffed and leaned back in his chair. He then watched Ms. Porter, at her own desk, trying to reach some papers she had accidentally pushed off, without getting up. She was making a valiant effort at reaching, and in the process, she knocked her glasses off.

Seeing one of his uncle’s nostalgic smiles form on his face, Jace followed his eyes towards Ms. Porter, now squinting as she felt around for her glasses.

He suddenly felt a little gross about it, so he decided to focus only on his test.

• •

“Wes, you’re, um… Hungry today,” Arthur observed at the lunch table.

The kid had plopped himself down among his friends with a full tray of food, paying extra for the entire banquet that included the Monday pizza, milk, a cookie, a cup of peaches, a vegetable medley, and French fries. Students springing for every option was nearly unheard of, so he got a few curious glances as he “enjoyed” each item.

Jace leaned in and cautioned him, “You’re drawing attention to yourself.”

He swallowed a bunch of food and replied, “What? I’m hungry. Besides, I haven’t had this stuff in decades. You know I’m gonna take the chance to try it again.”

Noticing that Millie was looking at Wes again from another table, Jace added, “I don’t know why you’d want to do that, but can you, like, be normal at recess?”

“Recess!” he exclaimed, nearly spitting out food. “Oh, can’t wait to see that.”

“Oh, good…” Jace moaned. “Soon you’re going to want to stay this way.”

• •

Wes went running out of the big double doors for recess, despite the heat that had either incapacitated the other kids or driven them to the brink of sanity. By this point, most everyone was using the weather as an excuse to play out their little feuds with both former friends and eternal rivals, meaning there was absolutely no chill left on the grounds, and squabbles were breaking out across it every minute.

Mr. Drake “monitored” recess like a captive audience of one, breaking up only the biggest of fights but enjoying the rest with a sick sense of humor. Wes, however, barely noticed. Unaware of the last few weeks that had afflicted the student body, he ran off to The Dump after briefly soaking in the sight of his childhood playground.

“It’s just like how I remember it,” he exclaimed as Jace tried to keep up with him. “Ah, man… It’s one thing seeing all these kids again—some of them I haven’t seen in like, twenty years—but then just to be in this whole place again… Dares, stories, myths, video game secrets, Park selling his crap. It’s all coming back! And The Dump…” He came to a stop at its entrance and smiled towards Delilah. “Hey, D! What’s up?”

Her arms crossed like usual, she just grunted, “Tch. Whatever. I don’t know.”

“Um, Wes…” Jace murmured. “This heat has kind of…”

Looking past the bouncer, Wes saw only three other kids in the club, none of them from his class, and none of them really doing anything but sitting in the shade.

“Well. That’s disappointing,” Wes said with a sigh. “What’s going on out here?”

“I’m trying to tell you, this heat wave has lasted for so long, and now everyone’s pissed off. Friendships are being ruined. Even Tam and Trude couldn’t keep it going.”

Wes thought for a moment. “This is… familiar. I remember this Monday…”

“Why don’t we just go hang out with the others at the fort? It’s cooler there.”

Wes shrugged and let his nephew lead the way. As they walked the grounds and baked in the heat, he made sure to observe the civil war that was brewing. The kids that weren’t simply trying to get some respite in shade were unloading their problems onto others, who then whined or complained back at them. Barbs turned into insults, and perceived slights that might have happened months ago were brought up as a reason to return to a fight or instigate a new one. The fifth-graders had turned each other into punching bags; their only outlet for the near month-long misery they had endured.

“Recess is collapsing,” Jace told him. “I try my best to stay out of it, but…”

Near the fort, they met up with Millie, watching an all-out brawl between Tam and Trudy. They were wrestling on the dirt, screaming so shrilly about obscure personal things between them that no one would ever know what they were fighting about. And the worst of it was, the tussle wasn’t even in the playground’s current top three fights.

“Wow…” Wes muttered. “Those two are supposed to be like inseparable twins.”

“This all fixes itself, right?” Jace wondered. “It can’t last forever.”

“What, all this chaos?” Millie asked, overhearing them. “Why would Wes know?”

“Oh, hey, Millie,” Wes replied without thinking, causing her mouth to drop open just a bit in surprise. “Man, things are really falling into anarchy around here.” He then leaned in and spoke to just Jace again, “My memory’s screwed up again, but I can’t stop thinking about a ‘speech.’ Maybe I gave one? But I can’t like this. It might fall to you.”

“Wait, seriously? I can’t give a speech! What would that even do?”

“One might’ve originally helped with all this. Look, I can’t do it—I’m just going to sound like an adult; I couldn’t connect with all these kids. Or even know what they’re all going through right now. But you do, and they like you. You gotta go for it! In case I get back in my real body tonight, I don’t want this ugliness to be my last memory of recess.”

Jace groaned and looked around at all the fighting, arguing kids—Carson and Gerald still among them, their ongoing quarrel perhaps the most passionate, and the one that seemed to kick off all the others that followed. He’d need the high ground if he was going to do something stupid like give a rousing monologue. The playground bridge looked like a good spot, but Sadie was currently engaged in a rap battle with a rival girl from another class, who had sweat dripping from beneath her backwards cap.

“Millie,” Jace said, turning to her. “I need to know about some shared interests.”

“Huh? Oh… Give me a second to go through my mental library.”

After receiving a bit of student peer trivia from her, Jace worked his way up to the fort, past other bickering kids. He noticed that Park was under its canopy, hawking a service—this time offering a handheld, battery powered fan to desperate renters.

“Hey, it’s a dime a minute,” he told a boy from another class who was blasting himself in the face with moving air. “I’m not running a charity here. Your time’s up.”

Once he took back his product, Jace, seeking some help, asked, “Hey, Park?”

“What’s up? Giving my class a discount on the fan. For you, a nickel a minute.”

“Actually… Do you think you could gather up as many kids as you can? I, uh… This is embarrassing, but I’m going to try to get through to them. With a … speech.”

Park processed this idea and snickered. “Oh, this’ll be worth a laugh. I mean, no offense to you for trying. I just wonder how they’ll react. Okay, give me a minute.”

He jumped off and began passing around the news. Within seconds, classmates were taking a pause in their squabbles and turning towards the fort. Knowing he was now committed, Jace let out a big sigh and went over to the bridge, hoping to borrow it.

He tapped on Sadie’s shoulder, but she was too engaged in her rap battle. Fired up for her next chance to take down her mean-looking street girl opponent, she got right into it, speaking into her threatening closed fist like it was a microphone.

“A’ight, check this. Yo. Mmhm. I’m sick of the heat, but I won’t be beat, not when I’m lookin’ at undercooked meat, smellin’ like feet. Your rhymes are lame if your words are tame. You’ll need a thesaurus before you go pro, ‘cuz all you do is bore us while you go slow-mo—tryin’ to think up the next line but you’re outta time and you’re so bad it’s a crime, this round’s mine. But I’m not gonna prattle when you already lost. This. Battle.”

She finished by crossing her arms to assert dominance. Those watching from the fort and down below did their “oooh”s and Sadie’s foe looked knocked off-kilter.

“Well, I…” She didn’t know how to counter the ten-year-old rap god. “You don’t… You can’t even… Oh, forget it, Sadie. You’re taking this way too seriously.”

“That’s what I thought. Now jump off my bridge and fall in the lava.”

“There isn’t lava. Peh. Whatever,” she grumbled and leapt down to the ground.

“Pretty good, Sadie,” Jace told her. “But do you mind if I have the bridge?”

She turned around with a wide grin and wiped the sweat off her brow. “Sure. But you have to beat me in a rap battle first. Let’s do it! I’m on fire, like the air.”

“Sadie… I know you need this right now, but I gotta try and fix recess.”

“Wait, wait. Are you… going to give a speech? Oh, man! You really are, huh?”

“I’m just tired of seeing everyone like this,” he replied, and looked down at the gathering kids—trying not to dwell on the coming task too much. “Aren’t you?”

“What? I love angst and aggression! But, I wanna see this, so the bridge is yours.”

Sadie jumped down and joined the others as a lull fell upon the fifty or so kids that had gathered. Wes gave him a thumbs up as Park returned with Delilah in tow.