Chapter 3

[Previously] "We will," Cyd answered. Another minute later, Cyd and Shelby high fived to jump back to their present with the article in hand. They were going to stop the accident from ever happening no matter what, and they were going to make sure no one else became the victim as well.

"I can't believe that's supposed to happen in exactly 5 years from today," Shelby said when she and Cyd reappeared in their room in 2019.

"And we just happened to decide to jump on the day 5 years before the accident was supposed to happen," Cyd added.

"Yeah," Shelby agreed. "But we need to figure out something to do with this newspaper article and keep it safe where no one will be able to find it and figure out what it is or when it's from."

"What about like a small safe maybe a fireproof one or something," Cyd suggested. "That way, even if something really bad happened, we wouldn't lose it."

"Yeah, that would be perfect," Shelby agreed. "But I need to finish something for my homework a minute before we can head out. Especially in case my mom asks us about it."

"True," Cyd spoke. "I'll get all my stuff together and go let your mom know we need to go out and get something once you finish up what you're working on." Cyd headed downstairs where Shelby's mom was to let her know the girls would be heading out soon. Norm had to work late so Astrid was the only one in the living room when Cyd went downstairs. She just reminded Cyd that she and Shelby needed to be home before 11 and asked them to drive safe. Cyd reported what Astrid had said to Shelby, and a couple minutes later she was ready to leave.

"Before we go, we need to make sure the article will be safe while we're gone. I don't think we should leave it here because I don't want my family to come up and end up fining it."

"What if you kept it with you in your bag?" Cyd suggested.

"Good idea," Shelby agreed. She carefully folded the article and made sure she didn't fold it over any of the words they needed for future reference. Once that was taken care of, the girls headed out to the store. When they got there, they explained that they were going to college next year and since they were going to be roommates, they wanted something to keep important documents in where they would be safe. The story was true enough, and the woman was able to direct them to a few fire-safes. They left soon after and returned home well before curfew.

When they got back, they copied the things they would need to know from the article down on another piece of paper with dark ink in case the words on the newspaper faded. They put the article and the copies they had made of the date and the address of the bar were in the safe and brought it with them when they moved to college later that fall.

After finding that Daisy was always supposed to be in the 21st century and bringing her back, she was adopted by Naldo's parents since she had lived with them while she was in the 21st century the first time around. She had finished and graduated high school with Cyd, Shelby, Barry, and Naldo and decided she wanted to go to college as well. The group also all ended up wanting to go to the same university. Barry and Naldo decided to be roommates as did the girls since there were housing options for single, double, triple, and quadruple dorms.

Throughout college, Cyd and Shelby kept the secret about the accident that was meant to happen about a year after they all graduated. Their friends became curious about what was in the fire-safe Cyd and Shelby always had with them in the dorm, but the two were unwilling to share what it was for or what they had in it, so they stopped asking after a couple months.

Even as they all graduated and the girls all got an apartment together, even though they were all engaged by that time, Cyd and Shelby continued to keep quiet about it. Cyd and Daisy's engagements to Naldo and Barry respectively had been fairly obvious from when Cyd and Shelby had jumped to the future, Shelby's engagement was less obvious. James and Shelby had met during their sophomore year of college. He was someone Shelby and everyone else had been able to trust with the time travel secret. He fit into their already existing group well and got along with Barry and Naldo since he was also a science guy.

It wasn't until the last weekend in March of 2024 that Cyd and Shelby dared share about the accident in original time with their friends. On Friday the 29th in March that year, Barry, Naldo, and James were over at the girls' apartment for the group to hang out and play board games or some of the video games they had.

"Guys, can we talk about what we have in the fire-safe?" Shelby asked after the group had eaten their dinner of a couple pizzas they had ordered from a place down the street.

"Wait, you're finally going to tell us what's in it?" Daisy asked.

"Yeah," Cyd spoke. "It's time."

Shelby nodded and left to go to her room. When she returned, she had the fire-safe and the key to it. As everyone moved to sit down in the living room, Shelby set the fire-safe down on the coffee table in the middle of the room. "You're going to want to read the article we have," Shelby explained after she took the article out and handed it first to Daisy.

"This is a paper dated four weeks from now," Daisy said.

"Keen observation," James joked, looking over Daisy's shoulder.

"You should, um, just read it," Cyd encouraged. "We can tell you more about it once you've all read it."

The group fell silent. They shifted the way they were sitting so they were all able to read the article at the same time. "When is this really from?" Barry asked once he and the others had finished reading.

"A different timeline," Shelby explained. "Or at least, that's the hope."

"So you mean to tell us that in a different timeline, you were killed in an accident by a drunk driver?" James asked.

"Yeah," Shelby answered.

"When we were still in high school, we jumped 20 years into the future because we were curious about where we'd be in life," Cyd began. "When we got there, Shelby looked exactly the same as she did in the present. Future Naldo called me because it was the anniversary of the accident to make sure I was okay while we were there together. When he heard Shelby on the phone, he knew something was wrong. He gave us the article and explained everything to us."

"What are we going to do to make sure it doesn't happen this time around?" Naldo asked.

"Yeah. Are you just not going to be out that night?" James asked.

"Actually," Shelby began.

"We want to make sure no one else ends up being the victim because of that Ralph guy," Cyd explained. "So, we're going to go to the bar he leaves from and make sure he can't start his car and drive like he did."

"How can we help?" Daisy asked.

"Um, we hadn't actually thought of that," Shelby said.

"We just figured the two of us would go and disconnect some wires or take his keys for the night if we needed to."

"Well, now that we know about it," Barry started. "We can help."

"Right now, we might just stick to the plan we have right now, but if we need any help with it, we can jump back and have you help us with it," Shelby said.

"All right," the group agreed. After talking about all the details of the accident and going over the other stuff they needed to for the time being. The night carried on as the usual game nights did. Some of the games were the couples against each other while other times it was guys versus girls or everyone on their own.

They didn't talk a whole lot about the accident that was meant to happen a couple weeks from then because those who had just found out about it knew how much holding it in the last 5 years had troubled Cyd and Shelby. In mid-April, Shelby's parents asked her over for dinner the 26th but she declined claiming that she, Cyd, and Daisy were doing something that night and that the 27th would work better. There was no reason for Shelby's parents to expect that what Shelby told them was untrue and were more than willing to let her join them one night later than they had suggested.

Everything was set. Cyd and Shelby knew the address of the bar where Ralph Carter was meant to be before he decided to drive after having too much to drink at the bar. The girls would go there, as it wasn't a shady or dangerous bar, and would wait to stop him from driving. On top of that, if the girls ran into any problems and needed more help from the others they would be able to get it because Barry, Daisy, Naldo, and James had made it obvious they were willing to help if the need arose and had cleared their schedules for that night.

Now all the group needed to do was wait until the 26th when the planning Cyd and Shelby had done over the last 5 years would be put into action.

A/N: In the last chapter I didn't specifically address the review that asked a question because the question that was asked was answered in the chapter. The same is true for the question posed by 456 from the last chapter. The character Shelby ends up with, James, is an OC though I haven't really dug into his actual character at all here.

Anyway, thanks for reading, reviewing, following, and favoriting. I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter and I'd love to know what you thought of it. Thanks for reading,

-CrazyHayniac