Happily routine was the best way to describe the rest of April, and the start of May. There were no surprises, no Time Daemon tentacle appearances, and no sign of Warren. The movies, game releases, and TV episodes were all a retread for Wes and Jace, but everything else diverged from their prior experience in that time, in a good way. With no need for plots and nothing to fix, they used the days to recuperate from their saga of correcting the timeline and the resulting emotional fallout.

           The most eventful thing to happen in a month occurred on Friday, May 10th, a day before Colin’s birthday. With a few weeks to go until summer break, the yearbooks had arrived at the school, and were all the buzz by the time lunch rolled around. Many kids had a version with a fancy purple hardcover, the name of the school in gold leafing.

           “Celeste is going to be jealous of these fifth-grade only premium books,” Sadie said, being careful not to drip any of the chili on her spoon onto the pages as she flipped through them. “Miller got their books yesterday. They’re all the same, no hardcovers.”

           “Yeah, but all their kids got it for free,” Jared replied. “I had to pony up twenty bucks for this thing. So there better not be any bad pictures of me in the group shots.”

           “Sadie, look!” Ash exclaimed, pretending to be shocked. “You can see your nice, pretty dress in your photo. The photographer made you look sooo cute, too.”

           “Nice try, Ash,” Sadie sighed and shook her head. “First thing I did was check. You really can’t tell I’m wearing one. But you can see the ribbon I stuck in Wes’ hair.”

           “W-what?” Wessy flipped a few pages to find his picture before his brain clicked. He glared at Sadie, who snickered. “Ha… ha. At least I’m not wearing blush like Colin.”

           Colin flatly replied, “Don’t kill the joke, Wes.”

           Marianne passed by with a blue pen in hand, offering a service. “Who wants my signature? I’m trying to sign everyone’s book. I have a really nice signature.”

           “Uh, later,” Zach said and shooed her off. “We’re too busy looking through them.” Once she left in a huff, Zach settled on his pic and grumbled. “Man, sometimes I can’t even recognize myself without my shades. Anyone got a really bad photo?”

           “Yeah, maybe. There’s something weird about Jason’s,” Arthur noted.

           Naturally, everyone went through their books until they found it, including Jace himself, who had held off on checking how bad—or good Wes’ handiwork had been.

           “The heck?” Wessy burst out a snort and a laugh. “Jason, dude! This kid looks… almost nothing like you! Aw, man, someone messed up big time.”

           “Yeah, this is weird…” Colin added as he also stared at the small black and white portrait. “I wanna say they put the wrong kid’s picture above your name, but it’s strange. It looks like… some sort of bizarro-world version of you.”

           “Heh, oh well, nothing that can be done now,” Jace chuckled back as he looked at what could’ve been himself from another alternate universe. “It’s still sorta me…”

           Further analysis of the altered photo was put on pause when Willa came by, her composition book on hand again. She stated the obvious, “Hi, guys! New question…”

           “Aw, Willa, c’mon. More?” Millie moaned. “What is this, number sixteen? I didn’t even list so many tastes on my student bio pages! Why do you need all this info?”

           “You’ll see! Promise. It’s real simple this time. I need your favorite colors.”

           “Childish,” Jared mumbled. “Do fifth-graders still have favorite colors? … Red.”

           “Uh, orange, I think,” Wessy replied. “Green is cool, but orange is funky.”

           “Dark blue,” Jace contributed, but only because his jacket was on his mind.

           “Not technically a color, but I like grays,” Millie answered.

           Sadie said, “Bright pink, the hotter the better… It’s a joke, stop writing! Also red.”

           “Yellow,” Ash responded. “And Arty’s the same.”

           “Um, not anymore, remember?” Arthur corrected. “It’s sky blue, or cerulean.”

           “Indigo, where sunset purples and blues meet,” Zach said smoothly.

           Finishing up the interrogation, Colin replied, “Reddish brown, like burnt sienna.”

           “Fascinating!” Willa exclaimed with a grin, and bounced off to the next table.

           “… So, which of us is going to get picked to be her new bestie?” Sadie pondered.

           On Saturday, the gang converged at the Royal Mega 18 theater in the afternoon for a showing of Twister, the seminal tornado-hunting movie with Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, Pepsi-propeller data-bots, small town destruction, and a few flying cows. Colin’s parents were there, of course, but this time it was Wessy’s mom that was the secondary guardian and child-picker-upper. And Jace’s young uncle looked embarrassed about it.

           The three parents stuck by the many kids in the long concession line—Millie still a no-show—and chatted among themselves as they waited to make a huge snack order.

           “Oh, no, no—I didn’t want to see this because of Bill Paxton, handsome as he is. I was just always interested in tornadoes,” Wes’ Mom told Colin’s parents. “I grew up in the Midwest, and we had some bad storms, but I never got to see even a funnel cloud.”

           “But aren’t they really terrifying, and sound like a freight train just before they hit your house?” Colin’s mom replied. “I’m glad they’re so rare out here.”

           “Yes, yes…” Colin’s dad added. “We already have enough to deal with. Forest fires, earthquakes, mudslides, droughts, and heatwaves.”

           “What about you, Wes?” his mom turned and asked him. “Are you ready to see some big, scary twisters leave trails of destruction that look like your room?”

           “Moooom…” he groaned as a few of his friends chortled.

           “You sure you’re up for this, Colin?” Zach asked him. “You usually don’t want to see movies on the scarier side. Especially not on your birthday.”

           Colin shrugged with his hands in his pockets. “What else were we gonna see? It’s mostly R-rated stuff right now. It was this, or that weird witch movie.”

           “Hey, I would’a gone to The Craft with you,” Sadie remarked.

           “Bet you Felicity’s seen it,” Jared said. “She’d torture us with magic if she could.”

           “It feels like Willa’s the one torturing us right now,” Arthur mentioned. “I keep thinking she’ll suddenly pop up outside school to keep asking us her questions.”

           Ash crossed her arms and muttered, “Did she really need to ask what brand of toilet paper our parents buy? Jason, you should talk to her. Help her, fix her, whatever.”

           “I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it,” he replied. “I mean, it’s just an annoyance. If I tried to use my ‘magic helping powers’ on every little thing, I’d run out.”

           Like she often did, partly because they had a similar sense of humor, Ash laughed at Jace’s joke. She also asked, as he hoped she would, “We sharin’ Lemonheads again?”

           The three parents sitting a little farther away like they promised, the gang shared candy and two buckets of popcorn—though Jared had his usual kiddy pack instead. On the screen, the previews for the upcoming summer blockbusters ended with one for Independence Day, arriving July 3rd. It was a reminder to Jace that his time in the past was coming to an end. And getting a taste of the alien dogfights and city destruction to soon arrive on the big screen had clearly piqued his uncle’s interest early on.

           “Now that looks cool,” Wessy said. “We gotta see that one.”

           “That’s pretty close to your birthday, dude,” Zach replied. “I’m sure we will.”

           “Earth doesn’t stand a chance against those giant spaceships,” Celeste remarked.

           “Nah, the Fresh Prince and Dr. Malcolm are gonna blow them all up, you’ll see,” Arthur promised her with a laugh as the lights dimmed for the main feature.

           Poor Colin struggled to keep his eyes open for even just the introduction tornado that hits Helen Hunt’s character’s family home when she’s a child, but as this was his b-day movie, he tried to be brave and watch everything. It was the monsters in movies that frightened him, and in this case, they were angry, dirty swirling vortexes of air. Jace often found himself wondering when he’d eventually outgrow his childhood fears.

           Not long into the film, while the Fujita scale was getting discussed over breakfast, Jace took a toilet break out in the hallway bathroom, and then rushed back in before he missed any action. Like at Colin’s baseball game before, his bodily needs put him in a place at the right time to overhear something. The three parents, sitting on the edge of a row and close to the stairs, were talking quietly as another slower scene played out.

           “… Anyway, we’re proud of Colin’s decision,” his mom told Wessy’s.

           “I’m just a little surprised he made it,” she replied. “I wonder what Wes and the others will think. You’ll have to tell me about the Everette tour later…”

           Their voices faded as Jace passed by, walking up to the higher row where the group was eagerly anticipating another loud scene with angry “fingers of God.”

           Jace sat and was given the rest of the Lemonheads by Ash. He rattled the box, heard a bunch rattle about, and looked over at Colin, hoping his school choice hadn’t been altered by any interference. He and Wessy were joking around about the movie right now, but if one of them went to a fancy school without an earthquake excuse, would their friendship survive? A storm could still come and rip apart the timeline.

           Twister would go on to gross over $400 million dollars, making it the second-highest moneymaker of the year, just behind the mean alien blockbuster to come, and the biggest movie the friends had yet seen together. Talk amongst the kids continued through the two-car drive to Pizza Hut and the dinner that followed, with the group sitting at one of the big corner booths in the restaurant as pizzas were delivered and the buffet kept Wessy’s mom, currently on a diet, fed with salad… and a few breadsticks.

           “Thank you,” Colin politely said to their waitress as she placed down the table’s two pies—and gave him another sticker on his Book-It button, part of a program that netted him free personal pizzas just for reading. “Mm, yeah, that smells good.”

           “You’re like Sadie, huh?” Celeste asked. “You wanna open gifts later. But there’s something about getting to show off your haul in a public place, ya know?”

           “Ah, well, I’ve always just done it at home,” Colin replied, cleaning his glasses.

           “Hey, big career choice right here.” Celeste pointed at herself with both thumbs and grinned. “Storm chaser. Definitely. I’m hunting down flying cows when I’m older.”

           “Yeah, right, Celly,” Sadie said with a laugh. “What happened to pro-boxer and mountain climber? C’mon, we all know you’ll just end up as a truck-driver.”

           “The heck gave you that idea?”

           Biting into a slice, Ash asked, “Hey, Cel. Wes. What’s this stuff I hear about you two hanging out together at each other’s houses recently? Literally just you two.”

           Zach shuffled in his seat and looked at the accused. “Ooooh, couple o’ lovebirds?”

           “Come on…” Wessy huffed and looked red in the face for a second. “We’re just working on our book report shoebox dioramas together. We both wanted to use Lego figures, and Celeste has the second biggest collection next to mine. We’re sharing pieces.”

           “Hm. Okay. Miller’s making you do that, too? Heh, guess you won’t get caught copying. Man, I haven’t even read my book yet. I bet Colin is all done already.”

           Colin shrugged. “Well, yeah, but I could still fix it up before it’s due. It’s gonna be our very last elementary school project, Zach. We should make it special.”

           “I can’t believe how fast this school year went by,” Arthur sighed. “I’m pretty sure time used to move slower. Feels like a few weeks ago that Jason was dancing.”

           “You mean kicking Jared’s butt on the basketball court,” Wessy corrected.

           “Yeah, yeah,” Jared grumbled. “Let’s see you try to dance, Wes.”

           Arthur continued, “Point is, I gotta get a few more photos at school before it all ends—so help me remember, guys. The yearbook doesn’t cover everything.”

           “We need one of The Dump…” Zach said a little plaintively.

           “Exactly. I never want to forget that we had a secret recess club. Who’d believe that years from now, right? It sounds like something out of a cartoon.”

           “That reminds me…” Wessy got up, went over to the parents’ table, and got a tan photo album from his mom, which was adorned with a red bow. He returned and handed it to Colin, telling him, “You knew it was coming, so I didn’t wrap it.”

           “Aw, thanks, Wes,” Colin said and flipped through a few pages. “You’re trying to give us all unique colors, huh? I bet you’ll have to find a different style book next time.”

           “Heh, yeah, between Sadie, yours, and Zach’s copy, I used up all the colors for that book. It isn’t cheap getting that many photos printed, either! But, um… Enjoy.”

           “You guys…” Colin nudged his glasses and stuck the book between himself and the wood paneling of the wall. “I wanted to tell you, I made a decision about Everette.”

           Everyone went quiet, though Wessy quickly looked a little nervous. Jace barely moved, worried all over again about Colin’s choice. Colin then inhaled deeply.

           “I… I can’t go,” he breathed out. “I checked out the school, and it looks really nice and there are only, like, a few desks per classroom, but I… I dunno, it just looked like too much for me. The other kids—I’m not sure if I could make friends with them.”

           “Colin…” Wessy murmured. “You… don’t have to do that just for us…”

           “I want to,” he assured everyone. “I thought a lot about it. I never seriously expected to get into Everette, and it was hard to see myself in its halls in some fancy uniform. Don’t feel guilty! I have… other personal reasons, too.”

           Smiling, Sadie replied, “It’ll be good having you stick around next year, C-Dog.”

           “Good…” Jace sighed out in relief. “I mean, good for you, Colin. I bet that was a tough call. I know that you and December were getting pretty friendly, too…”

           “Yeah, but she’ll be fine. She’s got that… can-do attitude I don’t quite have.”

           With everyone talking about Colin’s decision, Jace snuck away to the bathroom.