When Sam leaped this time, he landed in a car, driving on an icy road. He flinched, the leap causing his new temporary body to move, hitting an icy skid on the road. He pulled over to the side, finally, safe, and tried to collect himself. A look around told him that he was in a mint-condition El Camino- that smelled like weed. The beads on the rearview mirror and the denim jacket he could see on his arms told him easily what decade he was in. A quick glance in the mirror showed a good looking guy of about 17 or 18, frizzy curls and sunshades.

"Definitely the seventies..." Sam said with a sigh. "Just wish I knew where this guy had been headed..."

Suddenly, his best- and only, really- friend, Al, popped in beside him in the form of a hologram.

"Hi, Sammy." he said, puffing on his ever-present cigar. "Man... this type of set up takes me back..." he said with a chuckle.

"Reminisce later, willya?" Sam groused. "Tell me who I am and why I'm here?"

"Right, right..." Al said, placing the cigar in his teeth and punching buttons on an odd little remote control.

He smacked at it until satisfied.

"Okay, you're in a kid named Steven Hyde- known mostly as Hyde to his circle of friends- and you're going to pick up your idiot friends at an ice-fishing shack, because, and I'm quoting the smartass in the waiting room, 'Kettle Head knocked his van in the ice'."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Right... Okay, you can point me in a direction, then."

Al nodded. "Yeah, sure. Get back on the road... that way."

Sam nodded, pulling extra carefully onto the icy road. "So, why am I here, Al?"

"To save Steven Hyde and Jackie Burkhardt from becoming Romeo and Juliet."

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Just looking at this kid, he hardly looks like a Romeo type..." Sam scoffed.

"Oh, well, yeah, that's the problem, Sammy," Al said. When his friend gave him a look of tried patience, Al continued. "See, about three weeks ago, this Jackie girl, who has been throwing herself at him, went on a date with him and jilted him."

"Okay..."

"Well, see, the only reason she did that is becauseshe'dbeen rejected so many times by him, that she wanted to be the one in control. Have the power for once. Cold feet, you know."

Sam nodded. "It makes sense."

"Yeah, to a woman it would, not to me..." Al muttered. "Ahem, anyway, they end up getting back together about a year and a half from now."

Sam frowned. "Then, why is itnowI'm here?"

"Because, see, by that time they're both so battered and damaged, they can never really admit their true feelings to each-other before it's too late, Sam." Al sighed. "They think they're just fooling around, then they admit they're in love, but won't go for the commitment... abandonment issues up the wazoo, just opposite ends of the spectrum, onbothsides."

Sam nodded. Nothing he hadn't seen before...

"See, in 1978, they break up- for good, because, he tells her he won't marry her. Ever."

"But, if he loves her, whynot?"

"Fear, Sammy. Trust me, I've been there. You're lookin' at a man with five ex-wives."

Sam nodded again, trying to concentrate on the road.

"So... what happens to them, then?"

"Well..." Al punched a few buttons, "she decides to move in with and have a love affair his best friend, New Year's Eve 1980. But, she's not with any other guys at all before that."

"Still pining for him?"

"Yeah, it'd be my guess. But, see, the next day, New Year's Day... they find him, dead in his bedroom at his foster parents' house."

Sam swallowed.

"He was 19. Jackie starts self-medicating... the very next New Year's Day, 1981, they find her dead in her apartment, a picture of the two of them together clutched so tight in her hand, they can't get it out."