This is the only way you’ll find out the rest of the story.

I stared at Mr. Sam, stunned. “Wait. I have just a million questions right now.”

He adjusted his glasses. “I’m sure you do. I’d have been surprised if you didn’t.”

“And I think I need to sit down,” I said, listing slightly to the side.

“Oh, yes, of course,” Mr. Sam said, and pulled a chair over from one of the reading tables.

I dropped into it and took a deep breath, fighting for equilibrium. “Okay, let’s just accept this incredibly wild premise. To begin with, how did you even send me back here? I mean, I just walked out of here last night, and then woke up in my bed in the dorm room this morning. That was it. There was no Back to the Future car waiting outside the library for me to take me racing down the road.”

Mr. Sam frowned. “Back to the Future car?”

“Back to the Future is a movie!” I exclaimed. I covered my eyes with my hand. “Oh, God, it came out earlier this year, Mr. Sam. Don’t you ever pick up a newspaper or whatever? How do you not know about it?”

“Like I told you, Apple, I really don’t watch a lot of movies—”

“Oh, my God, none of that matters! You have to send me back!” I cut in. “Don’t you see! This isn’t my timeline!”

Mr. Sam gave me an even look. “But don’t you see, Apple? Now it is.”

“But…how? I live in 2023! I have stuff to do. Parties to avoid! Classes to fail! A roommate to hate! Friends to…well, okay, I don’t actually have any friends.” I felt a painful pang in my heart. “And I don’t have a family—not one that cares about me, anyway, or is likely to notice if I’ve disappeared into a wormhole to the past.”

A shadow seemed to pass across Mr. Sam’s green eyes. “Don’t you? Isn’t that interesting.”

“Interesting?” I repeated. “That’s not usually the word people use when I admit that to them.”

He gave me a small, sad smile. “I don’t mean to make light of anything, Apple. I just mean…I actually don’t have a family, either. It’s interesting that we share that.”

This brought me up short. I didn’t often meet other people like me. Not that I knew the details of Mr. Sam’s situation. I didn’t know if he, like me, had never known his dad, or if his mom had died from cancer two years before, leaving him basically all alone in the world except for a couple of aunts who showed up for the funeral, swore they’d be in touch, and never returned emails. He likely had a different story altogether, but there was a kinship in misery, and I could see that in his eyes.

He cleared his throat. “Do you want to go back?”

“Of course,” I said without thinking.

“Well, I don’t really know how to do that, but I suppose I could try to find out.” He looked around. “One of these books might have the answer.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry, what are you telling me? You don’t even know how the time travel works?”

“Well…no,” he admitted. “I mean, people just check the books out, they come and see me when they get confused, and I guide them through the story. When they stop coming to see me once they finish the story, I assume it’s because they’ve gone back to where they came from.”

“Wait—are you my Doc Brown?” I asked.

He looked confused. “I don’t know who that is. Is he another librarian at the school?”

I sighed. “No, he’s from Back to the Future, the movie I was just telling you about. He’s the guy who helps Marty. He’s the guide! He’s the scientist who makes the time machine and he’s the one who teaches the main guy how to live in the past and get back to his own time.”

Mr. Sam brightened. “Well, I can certainly do that. I’ve had a lot of experience with all different time periods.”

“What do you mean?” I asked warily.

“What with all the stories I’ve had to help with,” Mr. Sam said, gesturing around at the shelves.

I followed his hand, taking in the thousands of books. Some of them were leather- or cloth-bound and looked hundreds of years old.

I looked back at Mr. Sam. “So, you’ve done this before?”

“Of course.”

Well, that was something. “At least one of us has some experience,” I muttered. “Now we just need to figure this all out.”

Mr. Sam took the seat opposite mine at the reading table and folded his hands on the tabletop, looking ready to brainstorm.

“Okay,” I said, thinking aloud, “it doesn’t matter if I want to go back or not—I have to. No one is allowed to stay in the past in time travel stories. Well, I mean, Doc Brown did, but that wasn’t until Back to the Future III, and that movie shouldn’t even technically exist at all.”

I was mostly just speaking for my own benefit, but I was clearly confusing Mr. Sam, who shook his head.

“Honestly, you might as well be speaking another language,” he admitted.

“Just…try to keep up,” I said shortly. I rubbed my head. It was starting to hurt. I suspected my brain wasn’t used to considering concepts as large and complicated as the bending of space and time. And I always felt a little woozy when I thought about Back to the Future III.

“Okay, so I have to just play out the rest of the story of the book I checked out? I have to help write the ending?” I asked.

Mr. Sam nodded. “That’s the idea.”

“Okay, but how? I mean, where do I start? How do I even find the guy in the story?” I demanded.

“Do you have the book?” Mr. Sam asked.

I pulled my backpack around and dug through it, then produced the slim volume and pushed it across the table.

Mr. Sam flipped it open and scanned through the text. “We’re looking for Edgar.”

“Okay, but Edgar who?”

He kept reading, flipping a couple of pages. “Edgar Poe Price.”

“Oh, God,” I moaned, dropping my head into my hands.

“What?” Mr. Sam asked.

“Even the sound of his name is hot,” I breathed. “I love Edgar Allen Poe. That must be who he’s named for.” I shook my head, trying to focus. “Okay, so now I know his name. I’m figuring I can’t just find him on Snap. How do I track him down?”

Mr. Sam sighed and rolled his eyes. “The work of the librarian remains the same no matter what the time period: To provide answers that people are too lazy to find for themselves.”

“I thought you said you were supposed to be helping me, not giving me a lecture on research methods,” I said through gritted teeth.

Mr. Sam flipped to the beginning of the book and scanned the text for a moment. Then, he flipped it around and pointed to a paragraph. When I leaned forward, I saw that it was a block of description:

The day was balmy for November, and the leaves were still bright on the trees. I was sitting in the quad, strumming my guitar when she walked by. I held my breath, hoping—praying—she would stop. And then she did. Her long brown hair blew across her face as she turned to look at me, and our eyes locked. She had eyes like sunlight, and hair the color of the night sky before dawn. I couldn’t look away. When I finished the song, I got up to talk to her, but she had disappeared, gone so fast I wondered if I had just imagined her completely.

I frowned as I read the passage, then looked up at Mr. Sam.

“I don’t remember this part of the book.”

“That’s because it wasn’t in there when you read it last night,” he said patiently.

“What are you talking about?”

“Did you see someone playing their guitar on the quad today?”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

“Did you stop to listen?”

“Yes,” I said, starting to feel a little nervous.

“And did you lock eyes?”

I swallowed hard, then nodded.

He pointed to the passage. “That’s you, Apple. The man you saw was Edgar, and the girl he’s seeing here is you. You’ve inserted yourself into the story. You’re a character now. You’re part of Edgar’s life now.”

Mr. Sam’s words terrified me—and thrilled me. I felt both conflicting emotions simultaneously. Everything was happening very fast, but I had felt a connection to the guy in the quad, and I couldn’t help but feel flattered by the way he’d described me.

“Eyes like sunshine?” I said quietly, reading the passage again. I looked up at Mr. Sam. “I’m the night sky?”

He rolled his eyes and shut the book, pushing it toward me. “Okay, you’re in. Go be part of Edgar’s story, then.”