Merton and Lori exchanged a glance then looked back at Tommy, "What do you mean 'who are we'?" Merton asked, "Tommy, we're your best friends. Merton and Lori?" He was met by a blank look. "We help you fight evil? I find out what it is, you any Lori kick it back to Hades?"
"Whatever you say," said Tommy, getting up and heading towards the door.
"Lori, do something!" pleaded Merton
Lori held out an arm in front of Tommy, baring his way. "Wait Tommy, there's something wrong with your memory, you can't just wander off."
"My memory's fine!" Tommy was getting irritated, "I haven't forgotten you, I just never knew you in the first place."
"So you haven't forgotten everything, just us? That's a little insulting." Merton walked over to the door and stood in front of it. Tommy would have to shove him out of the way if he wanted to leave. Even if he had forgotten him, Merton couldn't believe that Tommy would ever do that. "Do you know your name? Your address? The date?"
Tommy answered all three questions without hesitation, getting two of them right but insisting that the date was almost a year earlier.
"That would explain why he doesn't know who we are," said Merton, "he didn't know either of us this time last year."
"So he's forgotten a whole year of his life? That's crazy! What can we do to get it back?" Lori had by now moved to the side of Merton, making it doubly difficult for Tommy to escape.
Tommy had by now taken a step backwards and was looking at his future friends with a mixture of confusion and panic, unsure whether to believe them or not. If they were lying they were good actors, but he definitely wouldn't put it past some of the guys on the football team to be playing a trick on him. He wasn't sure whether any of them were smart enough to come up with one like this though, or why they would want to.
"Tommy, think hard. What's the last thing you remember?" Merton was speaking slowly and clearly, punctuating his words with hand movements to make sure he was understood.
"I was at football practice, I think I got hit in the head. I'm not sure of anything after that."
"I've got a more important question." Said Lori. Tommy and Merton looked at her inquiringly, "Do you remember who the Pleasentville werewolf is?"
"No, what is it? Some kind of mascot?"
"I think you need to be sitting down for this." Merton placed a hand on each of Tommy's shoulders and pushed him backwards away from the door then down into a chair. Tommy gave a look of surprise but didn't bother to fight, deciding it would be better to find out what was happening before he decided whether these people were insane or he was.
"Okay," said Merton, "Over the past year a lot has changed, we're seniors now, you're the captain of the football team, Lori moved to Pleasentville High from Pleasentville Catholic, and you were bitten by a werewolf."
"What!?" Tommy shook his head and made to get up again, he didn't need to listen to any of this.
"Not so fast, Tommy." Merton was holding him down by the shoulders and shaking his head, "You need to know this."
"This is insane," growled Tommy as Merton and Lori realised his eyes were beginning to glow, "I do recognise you," he pointed an accusing finger at Merton, "you're that weird kid from school with the coffin backpack and no friends. There's no wonder, if this is what you do with your free time. I'm going." He pulled Merton's hands off his shoulders and headed for the door.
Merton and Lori exchanged a frantic look, knowing Tommy was close to wolfing out. Lori dived in front of the door again, taking a chance that Tommy wouldn't want to hurt a girl, and Merton grabbed a mirror and held it in front of his friend's face as Lori kicked Tommy in the shin as hard as she could.
A howl of pain and confusion gave way to a cry of pure terror as Tommy saw his reflection in the mirror change from the one he recognised to the face of the Pleasentville werewolf. "What have you done to me?" he asked, his voice became little more than a whisper and he took an unsteady step backwards and sat back down, his legs unable to support his weight.
"We didn't do anything, you're a werewolf. You have been since the beginning of the year when you were bitten when you went camping." Tommy was shaking his head.
"It's all right," Lori promised, "You're a good werewolf, it's just the rest of the town don't know that. That's why we couldn't let you go before you knew."
Tommy's head was still shaking from side to side as he tried to convince himself he hadn't just seen what he knew he had, "So its all true? Everything you said? This is a year in the future?"
"Not exactly," Merton explained, "I think you've somehow lost your memory of the last year, so to you it's the future, while to the rest of the world you're just suffering from amnesia. I'm going to look into it but don't worry, I'm fairly sure your memory will come back, amnesia is rarely permanent unless it's caused by some sort of brain damage."
"Brain damage?!" Lori almost yelled
"Which I'm sure it isn't." Merton promised. "He'll be fine. I guess you can go home now if you want, Tommy. As soon as you de-wolf anyway."
"I'm not sure I do want anymore, do my family know about any of this?"
"No and you can't tell them."
Tommy nodded, "Right, that makes sense, it'd probably be all over the news the next day." He picked up the mirror that Merton had put down on his desk and stared at it in disbelief. "How do I change back to normal?" he asked.
After Merton and Lori managed to help Tommy de-wolf, he went home, eager to see something familiar. Part of him had been tempted to stay where he was and hide from the world, but he didn't want to hide. The captain of the football team couldn't spend his time hanging out in some Goth kid's basement because he was embarrassed to be seen. Plus Merton seemed to think that going home might help his memory return. Tommy didn't think so, as far as he knew there was no memory to recover, he had been playing football and been hit on the head. There were no evil monsters or bolts of energy involved, it was almost as if he had been pushed forwards into the body of his future self, a bit like a reverse version of Quantum Leap, or maybe into another dimension like in Sliders. He shook his head, he had been spending way too much time talking to Dean, but whatever it was, it wasn't amnesia, he was sure of that.
Tommy half smiled to himself as he opened his bedroom door and saw that his room was exactly as he remembered it. Not bothering to get changed or pull back the covers, he lay fully clothed on top of his bed, scowled at a photograph sitting on his desk showing him with Merton and Lori, then fell almost instantly asleep, hoping that the world would make sense again in the morning.