Snow fell lazily outside of the Olympia diner where Joe, his friends, and Anna gathered to eat greasy fried food and work on homework. Snowflakes hit the window and melted into droplets upon contact, streaming down the glass pane. Outside, everything was washed out like winter itself was sucking the color out of everything with its last breath. The streets of Brooklyn were dead, as if the frigid weather itself was slowing down time, bringing it to a freezing halt.

Joe turned his attention to the blank paper in front of him, chewing on his eraser in thought. "How about," he cleared his throat then said with extra bravado, "Ladies and Gentlemen of the audience! We are proud to present to you for the first time today the marvelous, mind-blowing, mesmerizing,—"

"Maddeningly mind-numbing…" Anna muttered, her eyes not leaving her book.

Joe was about to say something slick, when Sam cut in, "Hey, I got an idea for you! Now hear me out, why don't you try working on your homework for a minute?"

"C'mon Sam," Joe complained. "This is important. The talent show's a few weeks away."

"Yeah, and the homework's due on Friday."

Joe motioned to Fred, whose eyes were glued his phone screen, his earbuds plugged in his head. "How come you never say anything about him slacking off?"

Sam glanced at Fred and shook his head. "He always slacks off. At this point, I'm learning to accept it."

"Hey!" Fred protested, pulling the earbud out. Joe was shocked that he could even hear them with his music blasting. "I'm doing my work."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Izzy looking up the answers for you doesn't count."

Izzy glanced up from the history textbook and smiled innocently. "It's okay. I don't mind helping him."

"See Sam?" Fred smirked. "She doesn't mind helping me."

That did it. They went back and forth; Sam yelled at Fred to do his own research, Fred insisted that he learns better this way and bonked Sam on the forehead with an onion ring, blah blah blah. Joe tuned them out and tapped his temple with his eraser.

The talent show was coming up soon. He and Izzy got the trick down so now the only thing left for them to do was to tighten up their act, pick out their costumes, paint their trick box, finish his script… Okay, so there was a lot left to do, but the talent show was a few weeks away and they were making good progress.

"How about, 'Prepare to feast your eyes on the—'"

"Is this whole act gonna be you shouting for six minutes," Anna asked, "or will Izzy get the chance talk, too?"

Hearing her name, Izzy stopped apologizing to Sam and Fred to join their conversation. She smiled shyly and scratched the back of her head. "I don't think I need to. It's not that I'm shy—"

She's so shy, Joe thought.

"—but speaking in front of a crowd is super nerve-wracking. I don't know how Joe can do it."

"His big mouth helps."

Joe stuck his tongue out at Anna, but they both laughed.

"Are you gonna be okay on stage?" Fred asked, ditching his argument with Sam. "The talent show is gonna be more than the three of us… mostly because it's mandatory."

"Iz is gonna do great," Joe said. "Anyway, are there any more comments from the peanut gallery, or can I get some actual input on my script?"

"Script?" Anna snorted. "You got, like, two lines."

Joe huffed and ignored her. Looks like he'd have to come up with more "m" words by himself.

He considered what Anna asked him. Joe looked at Izzy comparing answers with Sam… then he realized he was staring at her and shot his eyes back down at his paper. Should he give Izzy some lines? Knowing her, she'd agree to it but he didn't want to make her uncomfortable.

He, Sam, and Fred spent the past few days trying to do the opposite. They've studied together after school every day to keep her company and planned to see a movie this weekend (even though there was nothing good out in theaters) in an attempt to distract her from what went down on Monday.

Joe glanced back at Izzy laughing at something Anna said and smiled. At least she wasn't thinking about what happened on Monday constantly.

Monday's events were constantly on Izzy's mind. Of course she thought about other things, but everything that happened was always spinning around in the back of her mind, never still enough for her to fully processed them.

Even after sharing what happened with her friends it still felt too surreal. She sat at the breakfast bar and fidgeted with her napkin, swinging her legs and avoiding eye contact.

Fred was the first to break the silence. "That's crazy, man. How does your mom know Mad Jack?"

An excellent question. Izzy would like to know the answer, too. And what about her dad? Did he know? It wouldn't surprise her.

Sam frowned and rubbed his chin in thought. "I wonder why The Book decided to warp you to that event in your life."

"Who knows," Fred said. "The dumb thing does what it wants half the time. Remember where we ended up when I wished we could go on summer vacation a week earlier back in eighth grade?"

Joe shuddered. "I thought we agreed to never talk about that?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "What I meant was why did it warp her to that moment specifically?"

"You have a point." Joe turned to Izzy. "You said you wished you knew what was going on, remember? You think that's related to your dad disappearing?"

Izzy shrugged. If so, she couldn't make sense of it. Did Mad Jack have anything to do with her dad leaving? Even if he did, she was at another dead end. Mad Jack was an evil psycho doing evil psycho things, so her dad went to stop him from eviling psychotically… why? Why did he have to be the one to do it? Her dad wasn't some kind of time cop.

Reality stung at her. There were a lot of things she didn't know about her parents. If her mom was a time adventurer, what's stopping her dad from being a time cop or whatever? If that was the case and was the reason he left, what could Izzy even do? How could she even help? There was one thing she did know, though; it wasn't enough for her dad to disappear without a trace…

"He doesn't want me near him," Izzy said.

"Your dad?" Joe said. "Yeah, his letter said—"

"No, it's more than that. I think… I think my dad did something, some kind of a spell. When I warped back, I don't think it was with The Book. It felt like an outside force. And remember how we bounced back mid-warp? I think my dad put a blocking spell on himself so I can't get to him at all, in any timeline."

"So it's magic?" Fred said. "That good right? Can't you make a counter-spell or something? Undo what he did?"

"I-I don't know magic that powerful."

Izzy felt like the world's lamest witch. She thought she was pretty good with the magic she knew, but levitating balls and phasing through objects wouldn't be enough to break a spell that strong. This magic was way beyond her abilities. Sure she was able to place that protection spell on Anna and Joe and blast Mad Jack back in Egypt, but those were random magical outburst. Without a teacher, she wouldn't know how to recreate those spells. Izzy never felt so powerless.

Her parents would tell her there's no such thing as powerlessness. There was always something you could do within your power. But with all the things they never told her, she didn't think she could put much stock in their words.

"You think your uncle could break it?" Sam asked Joe, tearing Izzy from her thoughts.

"Maybe," Joe said. An annoyed edge crept in his voice. "The only problem is he's impossible to reach."

Silence washed over them again. Izzy watched her friends try and come up with something to cheer her up, but she was too wrapped up in her thoughts to hear them. They were worried about her and her dad, whom they never even met. Her heart warmed to see how they cared about her and worried with her. She felt touched… and guilty.

She pulled her friends into her situation with her and burdened them with her unsolvable problem. A part of her realized she was being silly. These were her friends, and if any one of them were in her place she'd be doing exactly what they were now. Still… she couldn't help be feel like a problem. The guilt made her chest tighten.

Izzy sighed heavily, catching their attention. "Right now, there's not much we can do."

Her friends looked at her quizzically. She forced a smile. "We tried everything we could, right? There's nothing else left to do. Thanks again for trying to use The Book to help me, Joe." She placed a hand on his arm. "I really appreciate it."

Joe frowned at her but nodded. "Yeah. No problem."

Since then, the boys hung out with her after school everyday to keep her distracted. It was all so sweet. Even listening to the album Anna lent her helped keep her mind off things… things like the secrets her parents kept from her for fifteen years.

She couldn't help but wonder what her dad was doing— wherever he was— and if it really had something do with Mad Jack. And she thought about her mom. If everything Mad Jack said was true, then Izzy didn't know who her mom really was. She was an adventurer; Dulari the Daring. How could some random car accident take out someone so strong and powerful?

Izzy couldn't get to her dad, but with The Book, she could go back in time and save her mom. She could talk to her, really get to know her, and—

No. No, no, no. Bad thoughts. Stop, stop. Izzy smacked her cheeks to snap her back to the present where she worked on Spanish homework in the noisy cafeteria. It wasn't the best place for a dyslexic to learn a foreign—and equally difficult—language, but she'd rather get a headache conjugating Spanish verbs than a heartache thinking about her mom. Soy confundido, tú estás confundido, él ella estamos confundidos—

"Heeeeey, Isabella."

The sweet, sing-song voice broke Izzy out of her concentración. Three girls without lunch trays slid into the seats around her and regarded her with interesar— interest.

Izzy shifted in her seat, trying to place their familiar faces. "Oh, hi. It's Isadora, or Izzy for short."

A giggle from the girl across to her. Izzy frowned. What was so funny?

The girl closest to her smirked and perched her chin on laced fingers. "I love the name 'Izzy'. It's so… cute."

"Oh, uh, thanks. Thank you."

"You liking this school so far?"

"Yeah, it's nicer than my last school. It used to be a women's prison in the thirties and forties and—"

"We've noticed you've been hanging out with those three guys, like, all the time," the lead girl interrupted. "What were their names again?"

Izzy perked up. "Joe, Sam, and Fred! They're the best."

"At what?" the giggling girl said. The third girl smacked her on the arm to shush her, but she was repressing a smirk of her own.

"Isadora…" The girl next to Izzy put a hand on her shoulder and looked at her like she'd just learned Izzy contracted a rare disease. "You do know what that looks like to other people, right?"

"What what looks like?"

"You know… One girl hanging out with three boys. It's not a good look for you, especially being new and all."

Izzy frowned. "I don't understand."

"People think you're, y'know, easy."

"Easy?"

This time the other girls both laughed freely, and it dawned on Izzy what they meant. Their laughter felt like sandbags on her shoulders. She wanted to say the boys were just her friends, but the words lodged in her throat. She stared down at her half-eaten sandwich, her face so hot she was sure it was scarlet.

A backpack slammed on the table and everyone jumped two feet in the air. Izzy looked up at the owner of the backpack and gasped.

"Hey girls," Rin said. "You giving my friend any trouble?"

Friend? Izzy was sure she didn't mean her, but Rin's usual sneer wasn't directed at her this time, but at the other girls at the table. Rin was defending her?

The girl beside Izzy shrunk back. "W-we're just talking to her."

"More like you were trying to embarrass her."

The girl who smacked her friend spoke up. "Relax, Patinkin. We're trying to help her. People talk about her behind her back."

"They can screw off. Who cares whose she's friends with? Why don't you mind your own business and stop fishing for gossip. Now run along and get a life."

Rin fixed them with a hard look. Not a moment later the girls stood and fled from the table like ants running from water.

Izzy let out a relieved sigh she didn't know she was holding. "Thank you."

Rin shrugged her backpack back on. "Whatever. Those girls are piranhas. They'll chew up every bit of drama you can give them and leave you a pile of bones and a bad reputation."

"Oh, they weren't that mean..."

Rin gave her a look that told Izzy she didn't buy it. "Y'know, you're too nice, dude."

"Oh, thank y—"

"It's not a compliment."

Izzy deflated. "Oh."

Rin lean on the table. "Being too nice gives people free rein to walk all over you. You need to tell people messing with you to stop and piss off."

Izzy blanched. "I-I don't think I physically can."

"Work on it."

"Okay."

Rin shook her head. Wrong answer. "That's what I'm talking about. Don't let people push you around and tell you what to do."

"Not even you?" Izzy asked. She meant it innocently enough, but realized too late Rin might interpret her question as sass and get annoyed.

But instead of getting mad, she let out a short laugh. "Sure, not even me."

Izzy laughed awkwardly and extended a hand to her. "I'm Izzy. Thank you."

To Izzy's surprise, she took her hand and shook it. "Rin. No problem"

Izzy couldn't believe how nice she was being, especially after their first encounter. If this was Rin's way of apologizing for their first meeting, then Izzy was relieved she decided to be nice to her now.

She was about to invite Rin to sit down when Joe and Fred returned to the table. Joe slid into the seat next to Izzy. "Hey, Iz. I snagged you a cook—" He noticed Rin and he flinched, but otherwise kept his composure. "Hey! It's… you."

Rin looked at him, unfazed. "Me."

Fred eyed her suspiciously then looked at Izzy. "She giving you trouble?"

"Does she look like she's in trouble?" Rin snapped.

"She wasn't!" Izzy said. "She was—"

Sam slammed his tray on the table drowning out Izzy's next words. He huffed and dropped to his seat. "You guys will not believe what I went through in that line. First, this kid tried to trip me! I almost— ah!"

When he saw Rin, he jumped and squeezed his bag of juice so tight it exploded all over his pants.

"Ah, come on!"

Fred laughed and pounded the table. Joe went to hand him some napkins, but Rin beat him to it. She grabbed the napkins from Fred's tray and handed them to Sam. He yelped.

Rin frowned at him. "You okay there?"

"I'm okay, perfectly okay, why wouldn't I be okay?!"

Fred wiped a tear from his eye. "Good job, dude. Real convincing."

Sam laughed nervously and took the napkins from her. "T-thanks, Rin"

Rin looked away and scratched her cheek. "Whatever."

She turned and Izzy realized she was about to leave.

"Wait!" Izzy called, jumping from her seat.

This time, it was Rin's turn to jump.

"Uh, sorry, but we're seeing a movie tomorrow. You can join us if you want. I'll buy your snacks."

Rin thought about it for a moment and smirked small. "Sure, if you're paying."

The boys stared at them as they exchanged numbers. Their jaws dropped so hard they fell off and skidded halfway across the cafeteria floor.

And with that, Rin snuck past a patrolling teacher and left the lunchroom.

"Uh…" Joe looked at Izzy in disbelief. "What was that all about?"

Izzy sat back down and twisted one of her earrings. "I wanted to thank her for saving me."

"Wait,"Sam said. "She saved you? From what?"

Izzy explained to them what happened with the girls before they arrived.

"I guess we had her pegged wrong," Joe admitted.

"Anyone who can get rid of those girls can't be all bad," Fred said. "They're always like that, like someone injected Jodie with the essence of pure b—"

"Hey!" Joe shot Fred a look that shut him up.

There was the name Jodie again, the same one Anna mentioned at the museum. She was about to ask who Jodie was when Sam said, "So we're gonna let her come with us?" He dabbed his juiced pants with the wad of napkins.

Fred mixed his ketchup and ranch with a french fry. "If she gonna be cool from now on, I'm cool." He wiggled his eyebrows at Izzy. "So was that your way of asking Rin out on a 'Thank You' date?"

Izzy's face warmed. "Date?! No! I didn't mean it as a date. I don't even think Rin's my type."

Joe raised an eyebrow at her, but didn't say anything as he drank from his bag of juice. For some reason this made Izzy's cheeks grow hotter.

"So what is your type?" Fred asked.

Izzy thought about it for a second. To be honest, she never given it much thought before. "They have to be, like, y'know, and have like, some, uh, things and be a little… you know what I mean?"

Fred nodded and gestured "okay" with his hand. "Totally. Super vivid description. Very nice. Joe, I think she just described you."

Sam chuckled. "Or you, the lunch lady, principal Robinson, John Cusack..."

"Looks like you got some stiff competition, dude."

The two laughed. Izzy put her hands on her face and shook her head. "Guuuuys, you're such dorks…"

Joe and Sam were the first ones to the movie theater. They waited inside by the ticket booth, discussing which movie they were going to subject themselves to. Their group had a rule that whenever they didn't know which movie they wanted to see, the first ones there got to choose. Joe made it a point to arrive ten minutes early.

The theater they frequented, The Loop, was a combination movie theater and arcade. Everything from the eighties décor to the retro games to the ancient marquee with flashing lights pointed to this place being stuck in the past, but that's exactly what Joe liked about it.

The crowd was sparse, even more so than normal during the Dump Months. A few clusters of teens bought food at the concession or hung out at the arcade. Two or three younger kids dragged their parents into the theater of some animated movie.

Joe yawned and stretched. He was still a bit tuckered out from how much he and Izzy practiced their routine a bunch the day before. They ran through it about a dozen times trying to get faster at it before Izzy convinced him to take a break before they burnt out.

"So we whittled it down to three movies," Sam said. "The bad pop star bio-documentary, the bad action comedy, or the bad animated movie based on classic literature."

"Our cup runneth over with options," Joe said dryly.

"My vote is for the bad pop star movie."

Joe and Sam turned to see Rin walk up to them, hands shoved in the pockets of her jacket.

"Huh, didn't peg you as a fan," Joe said.

"Oh, God, no!" she said more forcefully than Joe thought was necessary. "I just think it'd be fun to make fun of."

Joe laughed. He was always down for enjoying a terrible movie, either genuinely or ironically.

Sam argued, but since it was two against one, he gave up and they bought their tickets. Joe filled in the silence with small talk. He wasn't as nervous around Rin as Sam, and he was still a bit wary of her with her attitude. But she stood up for Izzy when she didn't have to, so Joe was willing to give her a chance.

"Even my sister doesn't like this guy," Joe said, waving his ticket. "Though I guess it's not surprising if you knew my sister. She likes weird experimental foreign music with a lot of screaming. I think she started listening to it ironically to annoy me but —"

"Okay," Rin cut him off with a sigh. "I get what you're doing."

"Uh, talking?" Joe asked.

"Trying to make things less awkward, since he," she pointed her chin at Sam, "wets himself when I'm around."

"Hey!" Sam protested.

"Look, if you want to say something to me, say it. Get it off your chest so we can move on."

"P-promise you won't be mad?" Sam asked.

"No," she said, "but it's not like I'm gonna hurt you, dude."

"Pretty sure that's what scares him," Joe muttered.

Rin raised an eyebrow at them, her expression unreadable. Sam shot Joe a ticked off glare before saying, "I am not scared of you. It's that you're being… nice."

"What?" Rin asked. "I'm nice. I'm always nice."

Joe very convincingly covered his laugh with a cough.

Sam was about to explain himself further when Fred sauntered over to them with Izzy in tow waving excitedly at them.

"Ah, man!" Fred complained. "You guys are early. Please tell me we're not watching a chick flick?"

Joe told them their pick, and the look on their faces was gold. Izzy was more upset than Fred. You couldn't tell by looking at her, with her pigtails and flowy pink skirt, but she was into more hardcore music than pop. Nothing that would make a conservative parent faint and clench their pearls, but there were a lot more screaming and guitar solos than you'd expect on her MP3 player (yeah, she seriously still had a MP3 player).

Rin made a good choice. The theater was surprisingly empty so the entire time the five of them sat in the back and mocked the film. Sam pointed out editing flaws when he wasn't busy falling asleep from boredom. Fred made up crude parody lyrics to the songs and quipped about the cute, hyperactive fangirls in the film. Rin noticed Izzy would cringe in her seat every time a new song would start and would lean in her ear to whisper something that made her cringe harder. As for Joe, he couldn't help but snicker and roll his eyes every time the music swelled during an oh-so emotional interview in a half-baked attempt to wring any tears from the audience.

After the film, the four of them hung out in the vacant arcade, goofing around and playing games. The machines were ancient and a couple were perpetually out-of-order, but they were always able to make things entertaining.

Hanging out with Rin was a lot of fun; even Sam started to relax around her. She could be intense and aggressive when they played competitive games, but she could go toe to toe with Joe and even Fred when it came to shooting hoops.

Fred used the tickets he won to claim the greatest prize imaginable: a bedazzled tinfoil crown straight from a D-list fast food restaurant.

Fred grinned. "How do I look?"

"Like the crowned Duke of Dorks," Rin said, sipping from her soda. Izzy giggled and covered her mouth.

"Duke?" Fred asked incredulously. "I don't even get to be a king?"

"He's the king." She motioned to Sam and plopped in a chair of the broken Rapid Rage game.

Sam flushed and glared at her. "Hey!"

Joe laughed and claimed the seat beside her. "Right, they're the dorks. Whose idea was it, again, to watch a teeny-bopper documentary?"

Rin rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I suggested it. To mock it."

Izzy frown at her. "I thought you liked the movie."

Was it Joe's imagination or did Rin's cheeks turn pink?

"Pffft, what made you think that?"

"During the movie you were telling me all this trivia about—"

"Hey!" Rin shot up from her seat. "I'm gonna go grab another refill."

"Cool," Fred said. "Can you grab me a—"

She was already gone, fleeing to the concession stand.

Fred's face fell. "Never mind."

"She forgot her cup," Sam said

Joe waited for Rin to vanish behind a claw crane machine before he asked Izzy, "What did she tell you?"

"Just stuff like who wrote his songs," she explained, spinning her earrings. "Can you believe the lead singer of Strawberry Tragedy wrote the song 'Sweet Love'?" She crinkled her nose in disgust.

"Totally cannot imagine that," Fred muttered.

Did Rin actually like that music? Joe couldn't see it. She had the attitude and wardrobe of someone who'd mosh at concerts and wasn't afraid to stomp on you. Nothing about her screamed "bubblegum teen pop."

Joe was about to suggest that go find Rin and give her her cup when Sam shrieked. Joe froze as a familiar sensation crept around him. Even before he looked down, he knew that a green fog was coiling around him them vines.

"Joe!" Sam cried. "What's happening?!"

"I don't know!" Joe said.

"Do something!"

"Like what?! I didn't even bring The Book with me."

Izzy squeaked and glomped onto the closest arm (this time Sam) and nearly knocked them both over.

Fred tried to swat the fog away. "Maybe we can—"

It was too late for whatever Fred tried to suggest before the four of them were unwillingly dragged through time and hurled towards their next adventure.