"What do you want your legacy to be?" Cory reiterated for the fifth time that week, leading up to the girl's graduation from middle school.
Riley glared to Maya who was vacantly staring into the wall, mindlessly swirling her hair around her finger, her feet propped on the desk with no concern for the fact that Cory had been directing the question specifically towards her despite talking to the entire class.
"Maya?" Lucas peered over, breathing over her neck, and Maya snaps back, her eyes red as if she had been crying, and her face flushed as if she were sick.
"I'm fine Lucas." She quickly replies, unaware that he hadn't asked a question, and jumped right to the conclusion that he had been asking her that.
The bell rings, signifying the release from their class, leaving the one question Cory had wanted to stay with the children throughout their lives unanswered intentionally, wanting them to discover on their own what it would mean.
"Maya, what's happening?" Riley fast walks, catching up to the short-legged girl walking furiously through the crowd of students.
She turns around, her face hot and red, darting her eyes from her best friends as Riley takes Maya's hands in hers, squeezing her hands around Maya's in a fist.
"Riley, what legacy do I have left to leave? I've done nothing but set myself up for failure; My entire life I've been set up as such."
Riley was taken aback by her friend's negativity, Maya's usual attitude nothing new, but the fact that she was finally admitting this was how she felt was surprising. She hadn't expected that to be the thing truly bothering her about leaving middle school, both girls more focused on making sure they'd stay together in the years to come.
"Maya, how couldn't you tell me this is how you felt? My dad's been trying to teach us all year that we all have something to offer; We've had all year to prepare us."
"Riley, you can't decide what you're going to do with your life overnight. Think about it; If my dad hadn't left, if your dad or Sean wasn't my father figure, who would I be?"
"You're Maya and that's all you're supposed to be, a creation made from God's powerful mind! Your dad doesn't define you and has nothing to do with who you are. Or maybe he made you tougher: Which explains why you hide your feelings?" Riley realizes.
Maya walks towards her locker, spinning the dial with her numerical code, lifting the handle and thrusting it open, ignoring Riley as she buries her head in her locker, trying to appear as if she was searching for something in order to hide her fears.
"Riley, we can't redo our past and can't see into our future. I'm literally an empty tin can that's been crushed by the weight of the world." Maya somberly whispers.
"And do you know what happens to tin after it's crushed and recycled? It's made into something new and amazing, that can be used for all sorts of new purposes!"
"But I'm not glass or tin or recyclable material, i'm ceramic; Fragile yet hard to see through." Maya retorts.
Maya slams her locker, hearing Cory exclaim in surprise and frustration from the other side of the wall as Maya predicted that his chalkboard had just burst into a cloud of chalky white powder, coating an angry Cory from his room any second.
"We can't undo this year Riley; Let it go." She adds before storming off.
"Hey Cyd, if we could redo this entire year, what would you change?" Shelby looks over, watching as Cyd hung off the edge of her bed, her hair sweeping the floor.
"Naldo's underwear. He hasn't done that since Halloween when he had that accident at the haunted house." She laughs to Shelby's disapproval.
"Cyd i'm serious! This english paper is due friday and I have no idea where to start!"
Cyd jumps from the bed and slides over on Shelby's, looking at her like it was all too obvious.
"Shelbs, we're time travelers! We can go back and pick any moment to relive!"
"Are you sure we should mess with the past? Barry's warned us about the butterscotch effect and we don't want to relive Naldo and Barry's 'Rockstar days, do we?"
"So, we'll jump back and just relive it as it was, we don't have to change, just figure what we would if we could." Cyd insists, pulling at Shelby's arms with big eyes.
Shelby sighs, setting down her notebook and pencil and looking excitedly at Cyd, opening her arms and leaning in as the two hug, quickly disappearing into a yellow flash and within a blink of an eye, find themselves in the past, just not the one they had imagined.
Surrounding them is a street of busy cars, bright city lights illuminating the neighborhood they appeared in, and children with thick, long antennas on their phones playing with skip-its along the block outside the brown bricked, apartments lining the road.
"Cyd, this isn't our past." Shelby nervously exclaims, looking around.
"Then whose is it?" Her voice wavers, watching as a little girl pushes her way past her and begins to climb the fire escape towering the wall.