3
October 26, 2007
"I got him…." Justin checked to see if Alex was coming down to head off to her group date with Riley and the other kids from school. Every week, it seemed their father was teaching them something that Alex was using against them, but this time, Justin was ahead of her on this one. Eager for revenge after she had busted them for the paintball fight, he had been inspired by the lesson on pocket elves to borrow a chocolate elf and stick it into Alex's purse as she was going to a restaurant known for it's chocolate desserts. Max held the purse, looked again for Alex getting dressed upstairs to come down and dropped the chocolate elf into his sister's purse.
"In you go, little buddy…." Justin emptied the three-inch tall elf into the purse.
"Oh, it's really nice in here…"
"Go ahead and make yourself real comfortable…" Justin was grinning. "You are so going to love my sister."
"Justin, one last time…" Eleven-year-old Max looked at his brother. "Why are we doing this?"
"Because Alex is evil and needs to be taught a lesson." Justin was grinning at himself. "She's going to a place full of chocolate with something that loves chocolate."
"I like chocolate." Max grinned.
"Yes, but you won't fit in the purse." Justin set his sister's purse where Alex had left it. "Now, Max, I've got to go establish my alibi in the shop. Your job is very important. Make sure you put a chocolate bar in the purse to give our little friend a head start."
"I know what I'm supposed to do." Max scoffed at being treated as if he was stupid. "You can count on me." He watched Justin heading downstairs. "I know what to do." He paused. "What am I doing?"
"I think you're supposed to put that chocolate bar in the purse." Fifteen-year-old Max came up behind eleven-year-old Max.
"Thanks, Max…" Young Max dropped the chocolate bar into the purse. "I'm glad you recalled that."
"Oh, yeah…" Max leaned his had back assuredly and chuckled as he recalled this incident. "The chocolate elf incident… I remember this day well. You see, the first time around, I forgot to put the chocolate bar in Alex's purse, and Justin and I had to go and deliver it in person, but now… I just saved us the trip, so… mission accomplished."
"This is going to drive Alex crazy!" Young Max shined like a juvenile delinquent.
"You know, " Older Max placed his arm on his younger self. "You are going to go far, my friend… Hey, wait…" He snapped to attention. "Where are mom and dad?"
"Down in the shop…" His past counterpart answered.
"Thanks a lot, mini-me…" Older Max grinned and spun around as Alex started coming down from her bedroom. She noticed her extra brother and her younger brother, took a few more steps then stopped and did a double-take. Did she just saw two copies of her brother? She shrugged it off, ignored it and took her purse from the sofa to leave for her date.
"Mom! Dad!" Downstairs, Max rushed into the shop after his father checking customers and his mother running the register. He hugged his mother and then his dad. "You're out of jail! I saved you!"
"Uh, yeah…" Jerry Russo reacted confused. "You sure did…" He looked at his wife confused. She had no idea what fantasy Max was living though either. Theresa and Jerry looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. Justin walked up from taking sandwich orders. There was something different about his brother. He was taller and somehow… older.
"And Justin thought I was going to screw it up after I changed history…" Max stood shaking his head. "He's so stupid, and by the way, that beard looked so fake."
"Beard?" Justin was just as confused as his parents. "Changed history? Max… Have you been… oh, um, time-traveling?"
"Hello…" Max knocked on his brother's head. "You sent me back after Alex and Harper got their brains mixed up." He looked back to his parents. "He doesn't remember…"
"Alex and Harper got their brains mixed up?" Jerry was slowly starting to wonder why his son looked older and taller. "Uh, Max, son, I've got something to tell you. Alex and Harper never got their brains mixed up."
"I know…" Max was so proud of himself. "I just changed history!"
"Mom, dad, let me…" Fifteen-year-old Justin stepped forward and took his future fifteen-year-old brother aside. "Max, you didn't travel back to your time. You traveled back even further and are telling us future things that haven't happened yet."
"I know that!" Max was speaking slowly. "I'm here to save your lives." He grinned happily to his brother.
"I've got a spell to send him home." Jerry pulled Max behind the counter to take him to the lair. Justin and his mother just shook their heads tiredly confused. They both knew Max thought differently, but apparently, he was going to keep getting more confused as he grew older. The current eleven-year-old Max Russo came down from the lair.
"Hey, mom…" He came over where his future self once stood. "Can other-Max stay for dinner?"
"Not tonight, Maxie, he gives me a headache…" She rubbed her head tiredly.
Five years later, Theresa was rubbing her head again tiredly and resting her feet. In this 2010, she was three-months pregnant with her fourth child, and Justin was glad he was heading off in the fall to attend Hogwarts for his college-level classes in magic and mysticism before the new screaming Russo infant arrived. That just left Max to deal with the new kid. Something had changed… something that was once keeping Justin home and was now encouraging his parents to have another child. In the shop, Harper was okay and living with the Russos in Alex's old room as fifteen-year-old Max unknowingly returned to yet another altered reality.
"Harper, I'm back!" Max came down from the lair and hugged her.
"From the basement?" She asked him confusingly and continued helping in the shop.
"Justin…" Max turned to his brother helping in the shop. "I did it."
"Cleaned the basement, I hope…" Justin delivered a sandwich to a customer, and Max returned to his father.
"Dad…" Max grinned to his father. "How was prison?"
"How was what?" Jerry Russo did not have those memories to that Jerry Russo. "Max, son, is there gas leaking down there?"
"No…" Max was grinning to be back in his own time. "I just glad all that stuff is over, and Alex and Harper are okay now."
"Alex and Harper…" Jerry looked to Harper as his foster daughter and suddenly recalled something else. "Oh! That reminds me!" He stopped chopping vegetables for the sandwich area and pulled out a partial chocolate bar in a plastic zip-lock bag. He took the bar from the bag, cut off a tiny splinter from it then placed the larger bar aside. Max watched the strange ritual as his father next pulled out a tiny dollhouse barely a foot high with glass windows and a painted door, opening the roof and dropping the chocolate sliver inside quickly.
"Here, you go princess…" Jerry fed something in the miniature house.
"Chocolate!!!" A tiny voice squeaked inside it! "Nummy-nummy-nummy-num-num!!!" Max leaned over and peeked inside it. Down inside the tiny room, he saw Alex all of three inches high and wearing a brown bustier with brown shoes and fairy wings. She grabbed the chocolate crumb from her father in both her tiny hands and began quickly devouring it as fast as she could get her tiny mouth around it. Jerry closed the box quickly as his fairy daughter started going crazy from the sugar rush.
"Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate! Chocolate!" She called out excitedly from the shaking box.
"That's Alex?" Max asked.
"Yes…" Jerry placed his daughter's home under the counter with him.
"What happened to her?"
"What do you mean what happened to her?" This Jerry Russo was a more aggravated, frustrated and annoyed person. "You know full well what happened to her." He kept his beloved daughter close to him all the time at the counter as he worked in the shop and talked to her when he could.
"Yeah, Max…" Justin wandered up nervously. "You remember, Alex took a chocolate elf from the lair and got herself bit by him… She then ate so much chocolate that she turned into a chocolate fairy." He was a brother with a horrible secret, a secret he had not told his father in over five years.
"But that's not what happened…" Max recalled the real history. "I thought we went to the restaurant and brought Alex home after she embarrassed herself."
"What?" Jerry looked over the sandwich counter at his boys. "What was that?"
"Yeah, dad…" Max was being way too helpful. "Remember…" He didn't notice Justin trying to get him to stop talking. "Alex ate about five hundred dollars worth of chocolate when you found her and brought her home after we put that chocolate elf in her… Oh, wait, Alex took the rap for that until we confessed." He turned back to Justin.
Justin slapped his head out of disgust. No one had confessed to anything in this timeline. Jerry had blamed Alex, and Justin and Max had covered it up successfully over all these years, nut now, the truth was out…
"What?!" Jerry finally got the truth, grabbed his sons and dragged them into the kitchen. "Harper, watch the shop!!" He grabbed Justin by the sleeve and Max by the collar and took them into the kitchen to discuss their wizardry in private.
"You idiot!!!" Justin was freaking. "We had a pact! Don't tell dad we put the elf in Alex's purse! Why couldn't you stop talking?!"
"Let me get this straight…" Jerry was so mad he could barely talk. "It was you two who put the elf in your sister's purse and left me blaming Alex for five years?!!! You two? You two?!! You idiots are the reason your sister is now a chocolate fairy?"
"Hey, dad…" Another dirty and dusty Max entered the kitchen. "I got the basement clean. Can I wash up and go see… Hey, it's Other-Max! Hey, Justin, he's the one who reminded me to put the chocolate bar in Alex's purse five years ago." He suddenly recalled the pact with his brother then turned to his father. "Not that we had anything to do with that."
"Okay," Jerry turned from furious to surprised. "Now, I'm confused." Justin was perplexed. There were two Maxes and one of them had been traveling in time?
"Let me get this straight…" He figured it out first. "If you hadn't traveled in time and reminded yourself to put the chocolate in Alex's purse, Alex would not have turned into a chocolate fairy and we could have been in a little trouble five years ago than a lot of trouble now!"
"Sounds about right." The first Max responded.
"Now I get it!!!" Jerry now understood the extra Max. "You two morons are in trouble…" He matched Justin with the Max from the basement. "And you're the one who has to be sent back in time to stop Alex from eating that chocolate so she doesn't become a chocolate fairy!"
"Again?" Max looked upset and frustrated. "Dad, I just saved you from jail. Isn't that worth anything?"
"Jail?" Justin recalled future Max in 2007 talking about jail. "Max, you prevented that future when Alex became the chocolate fairy."
"How much time-traveling have you been doing?" Jerry looked at his extra son.
"A lot!" Max shook his head tiredly. "I've seen myself twice, and Justin married to Juliet."
"Who's Juliet?" Justin asked.
"She's a vampire you're dating." Max reminded his brother. "Keep up, Justin. This isn't a Defense Against The Dark Arts class." He chuckled a bit at his brother for not being psychic enough to know what was happening.
"I'm dating a vampire?" Justin reacted over his alternate counterpart. "Is she hot?"
"Justin!!!" Jerry groaned a bit. "Look, somehow, I need to send you back in time to fix the past and still get you back so this Max can get home and yet not lose you when history is changed."
"Otherwise, I would meet his Justin and Juliet… okay…" Justin got it. "Would I still have to be punished when I get back? I mean… if Alex isn't a fairy when I get back, there won't be any reason for me to…"
"I'll cross that river when I get to it."
"What about me?" Native Max looked up.
"You're grounded for turning your sister into a fairy until she gets back to normal." Jerry pointed his finger at his real son instead of the time-lost duplicate.
"Great…." The boy looked at his counterpart. "I'm such a good looking guy…"
