Six year old Maya Hart follows her ears, a little girl who tended to listen and think with her heart more than her head, and appears on the upper floor of the fire escape, the sound getting more distinct and louder until she follows it to a large window, looking inside the opened frame and finding a skinny and long brown haired girl swaying as she sung to herself in the window, seemingly alone.

"Hey- you're the sound i've been following." Maya exclaims, folding her body so that she could climb through the opened window.

"Are you a stranger?" A startled Riley implies, keeping her calm as the strange blonde inches closer.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Are you a stranger coming through my window?" Riley asks again.

"Yeah, I guess I am." She responds amused, and with a tumultuous thud, she kicks her small heels of her shoes obnoxiously against the wooden bench of the window.

Riley surveys the blonde, looking her up and down with an amused yet fluctuant stare, not sure what to make of her, if she should scream or if she was just an innocent wander, the typical kid who would willingly make friends with anyone who had a heartbeat.

"Ahhhh!" Riley cautiously begins to scream before she feels Maya's cold hand clap over her mouth.

Cyd grins, quietly motioning Shelby up the ladder where just moments before they had been following the little girl out of curiousity up the stairs despite Shelby insisting that they had to jump back before destroying someone else's past and then future. But Cyd, drawn to the blonde's spunky attitude that reminded her of herself in kindergarten dragged Shelby up the escape where they were now watching the girls exchange awkward yet seemingly natural dialog between them.

"Shelby, this is- or at least was us." Cyd quietly yet excitedly infers.

"Shhh!" Shelby snaps, suddenly fascinated with the girls who had literally just met but under a random bystanders assumption, would be marked as life long friends.

"Please don't! The singing is so nice compared to the yelling between my mommy and dad at home. The singing brings back happy memories of when mommy used to sing to me." Maya sighs, looking down as Riley reached for her hands, consoling the child she barely knew.

Cyd and Shelby looked lovingly in awe at the two young girls, marveling at how easily two little kids could get together, forming a quick friendship just as they had bonded over a sandwich in kindergarten. Suddenly a male voice echos through a baby monitor on the table and the girls jump.

"Riley? What's going on honey?" Cory calls through the monitor.

As Riley begins to answer, Maya jumps in. "Just talking to myself….Lalalalala!" Maya repeats in a singsong voice, unconvincing to Riley but decent enough for Cory to let it fly.

"I feel guilty." Riley exclaims as she begins to get up.

"Boy, am I ever gonna be good for you; I'm Maya Penelope Hart." Maya smirks, proudly introducing herself.

As the moment dissipates from their eyes, Cyd and Shelby look sadly at each other, realizing what they must do, the reason they were thrown back from their time to help someone from another.

"Shelbs," Cyd begins sympathetically.

"Cyd, I know she's not the happiest little girl, but at least she has a friend that's there to support her. She's gonna be fine, and messing with her parents is only going to risk messing up her future further." Shelby warns.

"Why don't we see what she's like now?" Cyd infers, nagging Shelby by pulling at her arm, trying to secretly jump jack her while she least expected it, but Shelby refused to nudge, standing her ground as she waited for the memory to complete vanish.

XXX

"Cyd, we're back at the haunted house, but why?" Shelby observes upon flashing into the past.

Riley and Maya sat against the base of an old, saggy oak tree off the side of the house, oblivious to the fact that Shelby and Cyd were intently watching them with curiosity to why they were thrown back to this timeline despite wanting to head to the future. They knew that this was the future from the point they were in before, but how did it connect to the little girl's timeline they were in before?

"Shelbs, that's Riley! We've met her before in a previous timeline! Do you think this was her timeline we've jumped into?" Cyd exclaims.

"But the blonde...what's she got to do with it? Besides, we're not technically a part of her timeline, so how'd we get here in the first place?" Shelby notes.

"We're a small part of her history because we were here. And maybe we're trying to fix something about Riley's past and not our own! We're here to help her and the blonde somehow." Cyd infers.

"Time travel's so complicated." Shelby groans as Cyd takes her by the arm and begins to dart towards the girls.

"Cyd wait! We risk changing our own future if we meet her this way! We have to make sure we're stuck in the haunted house again with her and that other guy, Lucas?"

As Cyd slows her steps, she watches Riley lift her head and smile enthusiastically towards the girls, pointing the blonde in their direction and explaining what this was about. Her eyes were somber, blue and sad, watering like an ocean but as distant as the blue sky.

"Hey Shelby, hey Cyd!" Riley greets them as if they were old buddies, taking the girls by surprise.

"You remember us?" Cyd mumbles in surprise as Shelby nudges her with her elbow.

"Of course we do Cyd, we're the ones who were trapped together in the haunted house uh… just minutes ago, right?"

After mumbling a small "Of course," Cyd turns towards the haunted house, sticking her hands in the back of her jeans and awkwardly rocking on her heels, drawing a deep breath in as she ponders her mind for small talk in order to pass the moment.

"Where's Lucas?" Shelby asks, Cyd take back by how chipper and chatty Shelby was before realizing that she too was just nervous. One wrong move and their future was changed.

"That's what Maya wants to know." Riley turns around and smirks at Maya, gently teasing her.

They all glance to Maya, sitting under the tree, nervously picking at her split ends with angst in her eyes, obviously hiding something but her personality too stubborn and big for her to admit it. They slowly approach her, Shelby on her left and Riley on her right, Cyd sitting cross-legged in front of her to make room for herself.

"Maya, these are my friends, Cyd and Shelby." Riley introduces them as they wave according to their names'.

Maya offers a small yet sorrowful wave back, years of hurt and secrets behind them but Shelby only smiles then turns to Cyd, nudging for her to make the next move.

"Maya, how come you didn't come with us? Were you too afraid?" Cyd teases lightheartedly, and Riley shakes her head.

"We're in the middle of a 'Love Triangle' right now, and she's trying to act like she's not bitter about the whole haunted house experience."

"I'm not upset about that." Maya quickly snaps in defense, obviously trying to hide a lot more than she could.

"Then what are you upset about, Peaches?" Riley infers, going back to her old ways of always having to make things right.

Maya smiles at Riley, locking together their hands' and then turns her body, facing towards the girls, nervously watching the two exchange looks before deciding to search for the 'bigger' answers. Cyd and Shelby knew they had to ask the right questions, not only their future at stake but Riley and Maya's as well, but how could they sort things out if they didn't even know why or how they jumped to this past anyways.

"You know Maya," Shelby begins, trying to coax her towards her with an arm, "Sometimes in life you regret the things you chose not to do, and I'm thinking you wish you were in that haunted house with Lucas's arm around your shoulder." She winks before Maya begins to hesitantly pull away.

"Maya, this is just the beginning. If you spend all your time being bitter about something you could've done, you'll have no room to make for all the fun things you're going to do." Riley jumps in, smiling at Maya and pulling her away from Shelby's hold.

"Yeah, it's not like time travel's been invented yet, or something." Cyd infers, hinting to Shelby by nudging her in the ribs and Shelby frowns, burning her look that quieted her instantly, realizing the mistake she had made.

"This isn't about the haunted house! It's the fact that my whole life has been like this. It's like, you get attached to someone and then they just leave, or they find someone and you become the third wheel, and I can't put our friendship at stake, no matter how bad I want Lucas to make up his mind."

"The future's always gonna be unknown Maya, and some people find that to be scary, but God's got a plan for your life already, and he know's what a strong girl you are. Nothing's worth going back to change when it's done. And looking around, I don't see how you'd want to because if your mom and dad hadn't been fighting, I don't know that you would have ever climbed through my window for shelter."

Maya sighs, stands and stretches then slides back down the base of the tree, bringing her knees to her chest, the hot tears that were streaming down her cheeks pressed against her jeans becoming damp and she feels a hand on her back, and the eyes of three watching her. Her cheeks become flushed, slightly embarrassed at her explosion of emotions.

It was then that Cyd and Shelby felt something click, realizing that they solution to her problems were in their fingertips, the power of time travel feeling more useful, almost feeling as if it had become a superpower.

Maya was that girl they saw in the window, and this was Maya's past, not their own. They together had to figure out how to become apart of this timeline and jump throughout Maya's life and show her what effects time travel and the 'Butterfly effect' could have on things.

"Shelbs," Cyd exclaims as she pulls her to the side. "We need to show her that changing your past doesn't always guarantee a better future."

"But Cyd, she can't time travel."

"It doesn't mean that there isn't a way. We need to jump to our present day and take Janet Smythe's tachyometer to give the girls the ability to remember everything so she realizes what's been changed isn't always what you hope for." Cyd replies boldly, proud that for once she could feel like the genius of the two.

They girls look to Riley and Maya who were absorbed in their own conversation, clearly to oblivious to the other girls and Cyd and Shelby exchange smiles, slapping their hands together as they feel a soft and yellow glow surrounding them.