TJ crossed his arms and leaned against his locker. "I'm not a wizard." He smiled. "I am, however, an amateur magician." He pulled a rose out of his back pocket. "A flower for the lovely lady?"
"Ugh." Alex took the rose and threw it in the trash. "Look, can we stop with the act? I'm stuck here and I need your help."
That made TJ perk up. "Stuck here?"
"Yes, I used a time machine, and I ended up getting stuck here, five years in the past."
TJ looked around him and then motioned Alex toward him. Alex leaned in. He put his mouth against her ear and whispered, "You're crazy."
Alex pushed him away. "You don't believe me? Well, fine!" She concentrated and made a locker further down the hall open and close. TJ laughed.
"Nice trick."
She then opened his locker and watched in satisfaction as he got smacked in the face. He rubbed his cheek ruefully. "Even nicer trick."
Alex did it again, and TJ moaned and held his head. "How many times do I have to do that before you believe me?"
"Fine, I believe that you're a wizard," TJ said, "but I don't believe you're a time traveler."
Alex sighed and grabbed TJ and pulled him toward the janitor's closet. When they got in, he gasped at the sight of Nellie's body.
"What did you do to her?"
"I just knocked her out," Alex said quickly. "Look, I need your help because I was just minding my business when this lady from the future showed up, and she was all, 'Hey, I need you to take something to the past for me,' and I thought, Sure, why not, it'll be fun and I'll be home for lunch, but it's turned into so much more than that because I went back ten years and got caught here, five years in the past, and the stupid machine won't go any further and all it does is move an hour at a time, and I'm really kind of desperate to get out of here."
TJ seemed to listen to Alex, but when she'd finished, all he said was, "I didn't have trouble believing that you were a wizard, just FYI."
"What do you mean?"
"I meant that I didn't believe you were a time traveler. Time travelers aren't allowed to do what you just did."
"What do you mean aren't 'allowed?'" Alex had always hated the word 'allowed;' as far as she was concerned, all it meant was that something was entirely doable and old people, usually with beards, disapproved. "I know that you're supposed to file paperwork or something, but I just used the time machine in our lair."
"You have a time machine in your lair? Like, an unsanctioned one? How does that even happen? Can I see it?" TJ was bouncing on the balls of his feet. Alex groaned.
"Look, guy, I just want to go home, and you're taking all this pretty well, so why don't you just tell me what you know about time machines and how to make the damn thing work?"
TJ looked thoughtfully at Alex. She ran her hand across her face, fearing that she might have started to change back, but she still felt unfamiliar features. "Are you and I friends?" TJ asked.
"Why does that matter?"
"Because you knew that I was a wizard, and you obviously came to Tribeca Prep for a reason." TJ narrowed his eyes. "Are you a student here?"
"Look, does it even matter? Really?" Alex said. "I've told you about my problem... and frankly, you're my only choice." Alex put on her most pleading look. "Can you help me?"
TJ hesitated just a moment before nodding. Alex breathed a sigh of relief.
"You said you can move forward an hour, so that tells me it's not busted. It's probably just the battery."
"The battery?" Alex asked.
"Yeah, the magic juice in it is probably low."
"Magic juice?"
"The juice in the battery. If you had the warranty you could probably send it in to be fixed, but given that you're messing around with an unsanctioned time machine, I don't think that's going to work out too well for you."
Alex crossed her arms. "Well, then, Mr. Smarty Pants, what do you suggest I do?"
"Bring me the battery here; let me look at it."
"How do I get the battery? Where's it at?"
"I don't know. Wherever there's space in the machine. What's it made out of?"
"An old recliner."
"A recliner...? Well, it's probably underneath it or something. I could come with you to look?"
Alex chuckled. "Nice try, Sparky, but I'm not letting you anywhere near my house."
Alex quickly made herself invisible and flashed into the lair. No one was around, so she got down on her hands and knees and stuck her arm into the back of the chair and felt around. Her palm met a flat surface and she pulled out a large, glowing blue rectangle. It had a plus sign on one side and a minus side on the other side. "Makes sense," Alex said.
She flashed back to closet and held the battery out to the TJ. He burst into giggles.
"Oh my god, what is this, from the eighties?"
"Probably. I think it's my dad's machine."
"Well, here, lemme see it." TJ took the battery from Alex and almost collapsed under its weight. "Heavy."
"Yeah... Not really," Alex said. "What do you think?"
TJ set the battery on the floor and inspected it. "It's an older model, definitely. Oh, and see here, the serial number's scratched off. Using old and illegal batteries for your time travel... Not the smartest thing you could do." TJ gave her a wry look. "You're not an honor student here, are you?"
Alex was not impressed with his desperation to fish out her identity. "Why does it even matter to you who I am?"
"It doesn't," TJ said simply. He turned back to the battery. "I don't know how to fix this. You could charge it up with your wand enough to get you back home, maybe. But you're probably better off having someone look at it. I could take it to my dad?"
"Please don't. I really don't want any more people involved in this."
"I wouldn't worry about it," TJ contended. "My dad does whatever I want him to."
Alex, of course, knew that. "I really just want to be done with this." She thought longingly of the nice, comfy sofa at Harper's that had her name on it. "You said I could use a wand?"
"Yeah, I think you can rig this with enough magic to this with a wand to get you home, but I wouldn't recommend using it again. And yeah, you're right, you should talk to as few people as possible."
"Well, I don't have a wand on me, and what do you mean I should not tell people?"
"You're time traveling wandless?" TJ sounded slightly awed. "That's pretty brave of you."
"Or maybe I'm just an idiot," Alex said with a sigh, and boy, was it true. She should've known that magic always makes things more complicated. "But no, really, dude, tell me about the other thing."
"Well..." TJ frowned. "You don't want to create a paradox."
"...I might've heard of that."
"That's why time travel's so weird," TJ said, "and why only novelty time travel devices are sold in the wizarding world. They have built-in time correction to make sure that nothing gets messed up. I've really never seen an unsanctioned machine before..."
"And you're not going to get to see it, okay? And I'm not going to mess anything up. Just fix this so I can go home!"
TJ smirked. "You haven't said the magic word."
Alex smiled sweetly. "I can do worse things to your head, you know."
"Hey," TJ said with a false enthusiasm, "look at this." He pulled his wand out of his back pocket and stuck it into the battery springs on the end. It glowed brighter. "I've done it!"
"Good, and don't even think about asking me who I am. Don't want a paradox, do we?" Alex still wasn't one hundred percent on the meaning of the word, but she'd watched enough television to be somewhat sure. "How long's this gonna take?"
"Probably a couple of hours." TJ frowned at the battery one last time. "We could go get a snack if you want?"
Alex didn't really want to go anywhere with TJ, but her stomach was growling, and he had helped her out. "Sure," she said, and then added, "and thanks. A lot. You're a good friend."
TJ gave a toothy grin, and then clapped his hands together. "Where do you want to eat? I've heard that Texas had good barbeque."
"I'm not really up to flashing long distances without my wand. Why don't we just walk somewhere?"
"Walk?" TJ said it like it was a dirty word. "If that's what you want..." He looked back at Nellie one final time before they left the closet. "You sure she'll be okay in here?"
"She'll be fine," Alex maintained. "Gordon only cleans on weekends, and even then he tends to use the storage closet upstairs because this one's usually locked." As they stepped out into the hall, she waved her hand and closed the door.
TJ nodded approvingly. "That's pretty good."
"Yeah, well, I spent more time here than I would've liked due to detention, and I got to know the building pretty well."
If TJ noticed the slip Alex gave about her identity, he didn't say anything about it. "Where do you want to go?" he asked.
Alex was about to answer when a voice cut her off. "Oh, how cute. Inter-nerd dating!"
Gigi – of all people – was walking down the hall and giving her stupid smile. It was a weird feeling for Alex, seeing her rival again after all this time while being back in the halls of Tribeca Prep. She remembered being so happy when she graduated, and this was like a helltastic version of déjà vu.
"Gigi," TJ said flatly. "Just my luck."
"You are lucky, TJ," Gigi said.
At least Gigi was alone, Alex thought. She was always less sure of herself when she wasn't around her goons.
"You're lucky that any girl would talk to you, even one as pathetic as little Nellie here. Hi, Nellie," Gigi said in that voice.
"Gigi," Alex said. "It's always such a pleasure. But, actually, TJ and I are just leaving, so you can go back to kicking puppies or whatever it is you do in your free time. Come on, Teej." And Alex grabbed TJ by the wrist and yanked him out of the school, leaving a stunned looking Gigi behind in the hallway.
"She really riles me up," TJ said as they walked toward the subway. "I'd like to hit her with a nasty wart curse, but I know that casting a spell on someone popular is just asking for trouble."
"What makes you say that?" Alex said, and then she saw a taco cart. "Oooh, tacos!"
While TJ and Alex sat on the curb and enjoyed their tacos, TJ led the conversation. Alex found out more about him than she had ever wanted to know, including the fact that his full powers didn't come in until he was fourteen.
"Gosh. No wonder you're so crazy with magic. I totally would've jumped in front of a cab if I couldn't do spells until then."
"It wasn't so bad." TJ spewed a bit of beef onto Alex's shirt, and she wiped it off with a disgusted grimace. "And I'm really not that bad with my powers. That's why I don't get wizard parents who are overly-cautious with magic. Like I said, as long as you don't cast a spell directly on someone, you're fine."
"What's that mean?" Alex reached for another taco from the stack of ten they had purchased.
"It means," TJ said slowly, like Alex was stupid or something, and she really hated that, "that mortals don't recognize magic if they're not directly exposed to it. You'd be surprised what their little brains overlook."
Alex instantly thought of Jenny, and if TJ truly held such contempt for mortals, it was no surprise he would treat an ex that way. "So what happens when mortals are directly exposed to magic?"
TJ shrugged. "They tend to notice things more."
Alex then thought of Harper and how many spells she'd cast on her friend over the years; she'd certainly taken the news that they were wizards pretty well, now that she thought about it. And Zeke, too.
"But they can't, like, figure out that you're a wizard unless you tell them, right?"
"Exactly! And the wizard counsel pretty much keeps that stuff on lock."
"I never realized that the wizard counsel was like the mafia."
"Dude, they're scarier than the mafia!" TJ insisted. "Haven't you seen their beards?"
"Yeah. Scary."
"Anyway," TJ said as he dropped the last taco wrapper to the ground, "we should probably get back. The battery's probably charged, and then you can go."
"Thank god," Alex said, but weirdly, she wasn't sure she meant it. Not that she could stay in the past, or that she even wanted to. But it just hit Alex that, the sooner she went back, the sooner the wizard competition was, and the sooner everything would change, finally and completely.
They hadn't gone very far from school, but the walk back felt much longer, given that TJ seemed to be uncharacteristically quiet.
The closet seemed undisturbed, and Nellie was still on the floor. The battery now glowed brightly even when TJ dislodged his wand from the coils. "You should be good to go," he said.
"Thank you so much, TJ. Really. I was in a total pickle without you."
"It's fine." He paused. "You still don't want to tell me who you are?"
But by the time Alex decided that she did, he had seemingly changed his mind. "It's really for the better if you don't. I guess I'll take Nellie and leave you to zap back to your machine."
With a grunt, TJ attempted to pick Nellie up, and it wasn't until Alex bent down and helped him that he was able to throw her around his shoulder.
"Are you sure you've got her?" Alex asked.
"Yeah," TJ said, "and it'll be fine. I'll take her to the gym and tell her she fainted during P.E."
"Nice cover story," Alex said appreciatively.
TJ smiled. "That's why I'm the best."
And with a flash, he was gone. Alex sighed and flashed herself back to normal. It felt weird being back in her own body. She idly wondered where her other self was right now, and if she was still adjusting from being Harper for the day.
"Time to go home," she said to the battery, and Alex should've known then that something was wrong, and not just because things always went wrong for her. It was that flash of blonde hair she saw out of the corner of her eye, and the way her mouth filled with grey when she picked the battery up.
All Alex could say was that one minute she was in the janitor's closet at Tribeca Prep, and then, the next minute, she was back in the lair, holding a magical battery and staring at the face of her high school nemesis.
Panic mode set in. Alex threw the battery onto the chair, and she rounded on Gigi. "What are you doing here?" she shrieked, and a younger Alex wouldn't have had any trouble at all blaming Gigi for this mess and asserting it was some evil scheme, but older Alex was older and Gigi wasn't even calling her a freak. She was just staring at her with big eyes, and a blanched face, and it was like she thought Alex was a ghost.
"What are you doing here?" she repeated. Gigi didn't say anything, or even move, and Alex groaned and sat down next to the battery. "Oh, this is bad," she moaned, and held her head in hands.
"What's going on in here?" Justin's voice asked, and it was just Alex's luck when his body followed suit and came into the lair. He did a double-take when he saw the high school girl, and Alex would've found it funny under funnier circumstances. "Gigi?" he asked. He quickly turned to his sister, and she could see just how panicked he was. "Alex?"
Alex gave a watery smile. "How was your test?"
"I don't have my exam until ten-thirty, Alex," Justin said in his let's-not-change-the-subject voice, "and it's barely nine."
"Oh, so the time machine worked!" Alex clapped her hands. "That's great! Well, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to Harper's..."
But Justin grabbed Alex's arm before she could go and forced her to look at him. "What time machine? What have you done?"
"Nothing."
"Really? Because your childhood rival is in our lair." He turned to Gigi and smiled, obviously trying to be comforting. "And by lair, I mean, our living area. Would you like a snack? Or perhaps a sandwich from downstairs?"
Gigi didn't respond, and just looked back and forth between Justin and Alex like they were speaking a different language and she was desperate for an interpreter.
Justin pulled Alex aside and hissed at her. "She is scared out of her wits."
"Well, she time-traveled, and that's kind of daunting."
"Where on earth did you manage to get a time machine that would let you bring someone from the past? You're not allowed to do that, you know!"
Alex sighed. "I've heard."
"How did this...? How did you...? I thought you weren't even doing magic anymore!"
"Justin, it's not like that," Alex started, but Justin cut her off.
"Why do you always do this? What, were you trying to have one last hurrah before the wizard competition? And let me guess, you somehow managed to bend the wizard counsel's Time Travel Restriction Decree 9845 to your very whim because you're Alex Russo, and you can do whatever the hell you want!"
Alex could barely believe it. "Why do I always do this? Why do you always jump down my throat about everything without even trying to hear me out? Really, it's so weird how, every time I think we've finally made peace with each other, you end up being your stupid, jerk self again and I realize I was totally wrong!"
Justin sighed and rubbed his temples. "Let's not fight and just try to fix this. Start with the time machine. Where is it?"
Alex bristled at the implication that she needed Justin to help her fix things, but she was tired of dealing with this whole mess and she just wanted it taken care of.
"It's Dad's chair."
"Right. ...Wait. Dad's chair?"
"Yep. His recliner."
Alex turned to show it to Justin, and that's when they realized that Gigi was gone.
