Ted got me lunch, which was nice of him. I mean, it made sense since I was in the past and had no money, but Ted was going out of his way to take care of me.
It wasn't all altruistic.
The cafeteria was loud and chaotic. The tables were a pale blue plastic with long benches, and most of them were cracked or damaged. One in particular looked like it was being held together with duct tape. I marveled at this century's ability to use duct tape in a way to solve any problem they seemed to have.
Ted sat us down in a corner and used the silence to talk to me about what he really cared about: the future.
"Listen, Booster, in the future, do you have flying cars?"
I chewed my slice of pizza carefully before answering. "We... have things like flying cars. I guess."
Ted leaned forward, with a sly grin. "Listen – how much can you tell me about what happens between then and now? I mean, without messing up the time stream and stuff."
I snorted. "Probably everything I know since I'm terrible at history."
Ted raised his eyebrow. "Who's the worst president in history?"
I thought about it. "Probably Lex Luthor."
Ted spat out his coke, hurriedly grasping napkins from a nearby dispenser to wipe of the mess almost immediately afterwards.
"What."
"What?"
Ted stood up and grabbed my collar. Before I could grab my food, he had dragged me halfway down the cafeteria. At the only good table in the entire cafeteria was a group of people. Sitting in the centre was a bald kid with a lunchbox. Not just any lunch box – I could have sworn it had sashimi, a salad with a vinaigrette and a mouse cake with a delicate chocolate design on top.
The bald kid looked up. "Theodore. I think my father is planning a takeover of your father's company. I'm afraid that I can't prevent it even if you beg, so don't bother."
Ted remained cheerful. "Hey Lex, this is Booster, the Canadian exchange student. I'm introducing him to you so he'll know who to avoid. Booster, this is Lex Luthor."
"Oh do avoid me please, Buster, I'd really rather not talk to you."
I was too busy staring at him to correct him. I didn't even notice the people he was with, which was probably a bad idea in retrospect. You should get to know your enemies and all that.
Lex had relinquished any sort of attention towards us, so Ted dragged me away. I swear my jaw was dangling around my ankles.
Finally, as we sat down back at our table (our food, miraculously, untouched), I spoke. "That was Lex Luthor? The Lex Luthor?"
Ted nodded grimly. "That would be Lex. Are you serious when you say he was president?"
"Yeah," I said, still reeling.
"What happened?"
I paused. For the first time, I could forsee consequences to what seemed like a fun trip to the past, other than to myself, of course. I wasn't the best history student, but there are some things you remember. Like when the President of the United States of America is a bona fide supervillain who goes crazy, tries to take over the world, gets impeached, takes the White House as a hostage and threatens to blow up Canada because they never appreciated his gracious offer to let them join the States. Canada still hadn't officially removed the line they added to their anthem, despite the fact they couldn't teach it to school children.
I didn't want to tell him the whole story, in case he changed the future. My future. I pictured myself slowly disappearing from a photograph, or worse.
"It didn't turn out very well," I said, fully aware I was making the understatement of the century.
The classes and new faces blurred together. Before I knew it, school was out. I waited by the entrance for Ted. Lex Luthor passed, completely ignoring me, before climbing into a very clean white limousine.
Barbara Gordon wheeled out and stopped to say hello. "How was your first day, Booster?"
I thought about it. "Good, I guess."
"Waiting for Ted?"
I was surprised. "Yeah, how'd you guess?"
She just smiled.
I tried to continue the conversation. "You going home?"
She sighed. "Yeah. Normally I'd spend some time in the library, but it's closed indefinitely."
I winced. "That sucks."
"See you tomorrow," she said, heading off.
I waved her goodbye.
"Barbara's nice."
I turned around. Max was there, smiling. I smiled back at him.
"Yeah."
"Are you planning to join any clubs or teams while you're here?"
I blinked. "I don't know. At my school I wa- er, I'm on the football team, but I don't think I'll be here long enough to join anything."
"That's too bad," Max said, "I've been trying to start this club, and I almost have enough members -"
"Booster!"
Ted had arrived. "And Max."
Max turned that smile of his on Ted. "Hello Ted, how was your day?"
"Excellent, Max, absolutely fantastic. Booster, we should get going."
"Oh, okay," I said, "See you around, Max."
I couldn't help but notice that Max's smile had slid off his face and was put back on rather quickly. On one hand, I felt really guilty for letting Ted drag me away, on the other hand, I was briefly and slightly creeped out by Max. There was something sales-man-ish about him.
"Listen," said Ted the minute we were out of earshot, "Sorry for being late. I was held up – I found one of the pigs hiding beside my locker."
"Does that happen a lot?"
"What?"
"Pigs."
Ted blinked at me. "Things like that happen all the time."
The explanation of why the damage to the school library had gone virtually unnoticed was suddenly explained. Ted described to me some of the things that had happened - "but the lab was not my fault, I so didn't blow it up", "...and when they finally found Mr. Grant's motorcycle, it had been taken for somebody's 'art project'", "It took them forever to paint over all the polka dots".
It was then that I realized that I was but one cog in the great chaos-causing machine.
I wanted to get off.
