90s Girl

by Mia Archer

  The world continued swirling, and then went black around me.

  34

  After

  “Y’know I’m really kind of jealous,” I said. “I’m waking up right now and seeing you smiling at me with my mom right there.”

  Jenny put her hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. It was a reassuring gesture. Something she’d done plenty of times over the years as what we had went from puppy love to something so much more.

  “She’s going to be okay, and your mom is going to be more than okay because you’re there with her. You know that, right?”

  I sighed. Thought back to those memories. It’d been difficult going through that a second time. It’d been a special level of hell watching younger me going through that for the first time while I was trying to deal with it for the second time.

  Still. I’d gotten nearly an extra decade and a half with my mom before she died, and that was a hell of a lot more than anyone else who lost a parent. I didn’t know how it’d happened, but I wasn’t going to knock it even if it had hurt like hell reliving certain bits of the past couple of decades.

  I turned to Felicity and Candace. They were still staring at the dance studio like they were expecting me to step out of the thing. Felicity looked like she was starting to suspect that something more was going on here, but poor Candace had that same resting bitch face that I’d known and loved when I was younger.

  Though I was also starting to realize that maybe some of that had been rose-tinted glasses. I was probably the first person in the history of time, at least that I knew of, who had the ability to actually go back to her past. Even if my past was in the future.

  I was starting to remember just how frustrating it was to deal with Candace in the present even though it’d been something I’d missed and looked back on, or forward on, fondly over the years when the frustration of actually dealing with her hadn’t been there.

  “Right, so I promised the two of you there’d be some explanations,” I said, clapping my hands together to get their attention.

  “What the fuck just happened?” Felicity asked.

  She was staring at the dance studio. As well she should considering what’d just happened there. It wasn’t every day that you saw a friend you’d known your whole life getting sucked through a time portal to the past, though of course she had no way of knowing that’s what had happened.

  “Believe me,” I said. “I can explain the light show to you, but you’re going to have to be patient.”

  “You blew her up!” Candace said, finally coming out of the funk that’d been caused by watching me step into the time portal. Seeing those swirling lights from the outside had been trippy. “You blew her up and now you’re going to blow us up!”

  I sighed. Yeah, I really hadn’t given the memory of dealing with Candace justice. If she was going to be like this then I was going to have to slap her around a couple of times before…

  Thankfully there was a loud smack and it looked like Felicity was more than happy to do that work for me. Candace stared at her, her hand touching a bright red spot that was spreading on her face, and looked like she was trying to decide whether or not she needed to have a go at Felicity now.

  “What the fuck?” she finally asked.

  “Liv said she’d explain everything,” Felicity said, turning and winking at me.

  “Liv?” Candace asked. “That’s Liv’s aunt! What are you…”

  “I didn’t blow anyone up,” I said. “I promise you that. I can also promise you there’s a good explanation. Why don’t we go over to the concession stand and we can talk?”

  Honestly I didn’t want to be any closer to the dance studio than I absolutely had to be. I was pretty sure that time portal wasn’t going to work again in the future since it hadn’t worked again in the past, San Dimas time and all that, but that didn’t mean I wanted to be any closer to it than I had to be when it’d so recently been in operation.

  I’d already relived the past twenty odd years or so, thank you very much, and I wasn’t in the mood to do it again. Not when Jenny, my Jenny, was here in the present. Plus I really didn’t want to grow old with nineties medicine.

  A few minutes later we were seated in the concession area eating cheap breadsticks as I tried to get Candace and Felicity to wrap their heads around everything.

  “So you’re saying that you’re Liv?” Candace said. “Like you seriously expect us to believe that?”

  “I don’t know if I expect you to believe it at all,” I said. “It’s the truth, but you don’t have to believe it if you don’t want to.”

  “I mean it’s a little weird and all,” Felicity said, for all that she’d already seemed to pick up on what was going on. “You’re Liv? This whole time you’ve been Liv keeping an eye on your past self?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “It was a little easier while my mom was still alive and doing all the raising, but I knew I was going to have to take over the whole parental role eventually. I’ve already lived it from one side, after all.”

  “What about you?” Felicity said, spiking a breadstick at Jenny.

  Jenny blinked. “What about me?”

  “How do you come into all of this? I saw the way you were looking at Liv a few nights ago when we showed up for the first time. You’re telling me there wasn’t anything weird going on there?”

  Jenny hit me with a look I’d gotten used to over the past couple of weeks as I worked to make sure everything was exactly like I remembered it.

  “Yeah, well someone remembered me being there the first night you all came to the skating rink, so that meant I had to be there that first night you were all here at the skating rink. If that makes sense.”

  “Sort of,” Felicity said, turning back to me. “You were trying to make everything like you remembered it in the past or something?”

  “Or something,” I said. “Basically I wanted everything to be like I remembered it. I guess everything would be like I remembered it no matter what happened, but you get the point. Time travel is a little confusing.”

  “You’re telling me,” Felicity said.

  “So what about that disk you gave yourself?” Candace asked. “The one that looks like the save icon? What was up with that? Does that mean you’re, like, rich or something?”

  I giggled. That was so much like the Candace I remembered that I couldn’t help but giggle.

  “To the point as always,” I said with a grin.

  “Well duh,” she said. “I mean how much are we talking about here?”

  “I haven’t looked at any of my investment accounts lately,” I said. “I’ve also gone to great lengths to make sure that nothing that I did caught too much attention. Someone who wins too much tends to get the wrong sort of attention.”

  “Oh,” Candace said, her face sinking. “So you’re not even, like, a millionaire or something?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Afraid not.”

  “Damn,” Candace said.

  “More like a billionaire,” I said with a grin.

  “Holy fucking shit,” Felicity said.

  “Holy shit is sort of how I felt when I passed the first million,” I said. “Then the first ten million. The first hundred million. Pretty much every major milestone you might think about where zeroes are added to my portfolio I was there chanting holy shit the entire way.”

  “And I was right beside her chanting holy shit every step of the way too,” Jenny said with a wink.

  “Wait, so if you’re that rich then what the hell are you doing still living in this town?” Candace asked.

  “More to the point, if you’re still living in this town then why the hell does this place look like such shit?” Felicity asked.

  I grinned. Leave it to Candace to focus on the money while Felicity focused on what I could potentially do with the money. It’d been way too long since I’d been able to interact with them like this, and I really had missed it for all that my friends could be just a tad frustrating at times.


  “Well actually a lot of effort went into making this place look like total shit over the past week or so,” I said.

  “Yeah, it was annoying making this place look run down and empty, but that’s what the ringmistress here remembered from when she was coming through here the first time around, and she was a stickler for everything being just like she remembered it even if we’re nothing like that these days,” Jenny said.

  Felicity looked around the place with some serious doubt. Though even as she turned to look a false wall that’d been put up along one end of the place came down as some workers did their thing, revealing a miniature golf course and beyond that one of those jungle gym things that kids could play in with tunnels that ran all over the place. The thing was a total nightmare for the cleaning crew to take care of, but it was also fucking awesome so it stayed.

  Besides, we could afford to pay the cleaning crew very well.

  “Damn,” Felicity said. “I guess I never bothered to look at the place on the outside and wonder why it wasn’t bigger on the inside.”

  “If you’re quoting that geeky British show you’re always going on about you can spare me,” Candace said.

  “The line is actually that it’s bigger on the inside,” I said with a smile. “And I have to agree with you Felicity. Now that I got a chance to see the Paul McGann movie the first time around I have to say they didn’t give him a fair shake, but what can you expect from a bunch of Yanks trying to do the Doctor right?”

  “I know, right?” Felicity said.

  “So this is all real,” Candace said, looking at the arcade where Jenny’s mom and her younger sister, that’d been a late in life surprise, were moving around plugging in all the old arcade machines that’d been done up to look like they weren’t in working order when the old me came through.

  The old me being the young me, of course, which was yet another bit of confusion that I’d never gotten used to even with years to adjust to it, but whatever.

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” I said, reaching into a pocket at my side and pulling out two envelopes.

  “What’s this?” Candace asked.

  “Just have a look and see what there is to see,” I said. “I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised by this one.”

  They pulled the slips of paper out of the envelope. Felicity had always been the faster reader, so she was the first to realize exactly what was going on with that little slip of paper. Her eyes went wide, and I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Holy shit,” she said. “Are you fucking serious?”

  “Totally serious,” I said. “Full ride to wherever the hell you want to go. As long as it’s not one of those fly-by-night for-profit operations that advertises on daytime TV. The point is you’re going to college and you get a blank check for tuition, room, and board for however long you want to go.”

  “Damn,” Candace said, looking up at me and grinning for the first time since this all started. “I always knew there was a good reason why we kept you around!”

  I rolled my eyes. “Thanks so much. I’m so glad my money is the one thing that gets your attention.”

  “What Candace means to say is she’s eternally grateful for everything you’ve done for us,” Felicity said. “And she’s going to continue to be eternally grateful for everything you’ve done for us, isn’t that right Candace?”

  “Uh, yeah,” she said. “Totally!”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s been long enough since I dealt with Candace like this that I was forgetting what it was like, but it’s all starting to come back.”

  “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Candace asked.

  “I’ll leave that to you to figure out,” I said with a wink. “Now come on. They’re going to be letting people in here soon, and I want to show off some of the cool new stuff they’ve done with the place over the years! It turns out having a lot of money kicking around can make for one kickass retro hangout when you don’t have to worry about the place turning a profit!”

  35

  Winding Down

  Later that night Jenny leaned her head against my shoulder and let out a sigh. I held one of the pictures of us from back in the day. One of the first pictures where “Aunt Olivia” had shown up, though of course now I remembered the day that picture was taken since I’d been right there next to Jenny and my mom the entire time.

  “It doesn’t seem like all that long ago when you think about it,” I said. “Like I can close my eyes and remember everything like it just happened.”

  I did just that. Closed my eyes and remembered stumbling and then rolling on the ground after falling through the portal. Hearing Jenny and my mom rushing in all worried that something terrible had happened, and then the relief when they realized I was okay followed by the joy of knowing I was there to stay.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty wild,” Jenny said. “It feels kind of weird to know we’re finally on the other side of that closed time loop. There’s no way of knowing what happens after this.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, that does feel weird. I guess I never really stopped to appreciate how nice it was to know everything that was going to happen in the broad strokes.”

  “Still a damn shame the government never listened to any of those anonymous tips,” she said. “Could’ve saved a lot of heartache.”

  “Yeah, that’s the bitch about a closed time loop. You always know what’s going to happen is going to happen, and anything that you do to try and stop something from happening just contributes to making it happen,” I said. “The best you can do is live your life and try to make the best of what you can.”

  “I mean closed time loops can change if Arnold keeps agreeing to come back for more sequels,” Jenny said. “And sometimes even when he doesn’t agree to come back for a sequel but he’s willing to lend his old body molds.”

  “Well that goes without saying,” I said. “But thankfully we don’t have to worry about that too much considering we’ve never had any Austrian bodybuilders showing up trying to kill our asses.”

  “A good thing, too,” I said. “Though I wouldn’t mind having that lady from the third movie come at me.”

  That earned me a playful slap. Worth it.

  I sighed and melted into Jenny. We sat in front of the mini golf course we’d rebuilt with all the neon signs still on and lighting the place in an eerie glow. It was one of my favorite things in the world, and I was glad we’d used a little bit of the annual payout from my investments to make this place the best fucking destination in the city.

  The only thing that surprised me was that it took so long for me and my friends to find our way here, though it was really more of a hangout for the kids who went to the high school on this side of town which might account for the delay.

  Either way I figured I never needed to worry about younger me showing up here too soon since I knew I would only show up exactly when it was necessary for me to show up. Though maybe I had pushed younger me just a little that first night when things started feeling eerily familiar and I realized what was going down.

  “Y’know there’s one thing that still bugs me after all this,” Jenny said, tracing a hand up and down my thigh that sent a shiver running through me as I thought about some of the fun times we’d had here after hours over the years.

  “There’s only the one thing bothering you?” I asked. “Out of all the possible things that could possibly be bugging you about our little adventure through time and space it’s just one?”

  “Well maybe there’s more than one thing bothering me,” she said, slapping my thigh. “But the main thing that’s bothering me right now is wondering how the hell any of this ever happened in the first place.”

  “You mean the whole time travel thing?” I asked, looking over to the dance studio and wondering the same thing myself. “I’m starting to think the world may never know, honestly.”

  “Maybe not,” she said. “I mean stranger things happen all the time in places like Starligh
t City, so I guess it’s not all that odd to think that time travel could happen somewhere in the world.”

  “Totally,” I said. “I say we should remember it’s just our lives. We should really just relax.”

  “Did you really just quote the MST3K mantra at me to explain away the great romance of our lives?”

  “Maybe I did,” I said. “Why, you got a problem with that?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “Not at all.”

  She moved the hand she’d been tracing along my thigh up, and then she was tracing it along far more sensitive bits of my anatomy.

  I looked out at the skating rink and thought about everything that’d happened. It was crazy. It made no sense. There was no reason for me in particular to start getting thrown through time, but I also wasn’t going to knock it if it gave me an extra decade and a half with my mom and allowed me to experience the greatest love of all.

  Not to mention making a shitload of money and turning that cash into a force for good behind the scenes rather than parlaying it into a cheesy casino empire and a date with Lea Thompson.

  I closed my eyes as Jenny moved in closer and her lips were starting to do some of the talking rather than just her hands.

  Yeah, this was all crazy, but it’d all worked out in the end. So I wasn’t going to complain. And right now I was going to get frisky with my ‘90s girl in the skating rink, which was one of the privileges of being a partial owner of the place.

  THE END

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