After tai chi practice with his grandfather, Will had breakfast at home before heading out for his first day back at school in 15 years. Will pulled into the school's parking and found a parking space close to the walkway. As he was getting out of his car, he was greeted by a young Asian man with bleach blond hair getting out of a Mustang in the adjacent parking space.

"Ay! Look who's finally got a car! Sup, leng jai." He came in with his hand raise for a dap. A confused Will reciprocated the dap which turned into a bro hug. Will felt that this person looked very familiar but he just couldn't recall.

"How's it going?" Will could only go along with it until his memory was jogged.

"But why a pickup truck?" The young man asked.

"I need the large cargo space."

"This is an F-150, right? V6?"

Will nodded. "V8, actually."

"My dads got a 2025 model for work. How much you get it for?"

"About sixteen hundred."

"That's a pretty sweet deal." He whistled.

"It's got 350k km on it though."

"There's always a catch."

"Since when did you get into cars, Will?" A voice came from behind the two. Will turned around to see a Caucasian young man. Another face that was just on the tip of his brain.

"Ay, Calvin, sup man." The first young man greeted the second, exchanging another dap into bro hug.

"Mikey! Sup sup." Will finally had a eureka moment when he finally heard their names. These were old friends of his back in high school. The newcomer suddenly turned to Will and looked him up and down. "Will, what's up with that look you got going on."

"WTF are you wearing!" Someone suddenly shouted from across the parking lot. Will glanced over and saw another Caucasian young man running over, his backpack swaying up and down as he ran. He had his hair done up as a pompadour fade, similar to the one Will had a few days before, and like the other two, he also wore gaudy designer clothes. The young man ran up and pointed at Will's crewcut. "What happened up there!?"

Will knew exactly who it was this time. He felt a wave of emotion seeing him again. This had been the very person Will had come to school to meet.

"We were just asking Will about it." Calvin said.

"It's good to see you, brother." Will said merrily, advancing towards and drawing his best friend into a bear hug.

"Yo Fatty Lee! What's with you?" Donny asked in confusion.

Donny had been Will's next-door neighbour in their childhood days, but Will's family had to move away. The two had been reunited once they entered high school. Because their families had interacted together, Donny had also picked up the nickname Edison used for Will.

The group grilled Will on his 'changes' and Will just waved it off, saying he was going for a new look. They were soon joined by another young man that Will remembered once he heard the others call him Aaron. The bell rang shortly after, Will didn't know his locker combination, so he just took his bag with him, letting Donny lead the way to class.

On the way to class, Will observed the teacher's offices as they walked by—taking mental notes of who was inside, the layout, and especially where the computers were located in the room.

"You haven't been texting me back, I thought you were dead." Donny said once they took their seats in the first class of the day.

Will had seen the texts but he just didn't know how to answer over the phone to someone he hadn't seen for 9 years.

"I've been busy."

"Oooooooo, your date with that chick from work must have went well." Donny teased.

"No, that didn't work out."

"That's why...shietttt yo, it's cool bro. Just gotta keep your head up, there's plenty of girls out there." Donny consoled Will, completely misunderstanding the situation.

"Awwwww, what's the matter? Poor Big Willy couldn't get his little willy any action?" A mocking voice suddenly came from behind.

Will turned around to see a trio of young men laughing at him.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"I'll show you so action, you little bitch!" Donny immediately shot out of his seat. Although it was for a juvenile reason, Will couldn't help but smile seeing his friend come to his aid without a thought. It reminded him of the past.

"Do it." The one of them taunted as trio also stood up. "The two of you ain't shit!"

"How about I call my boys here and we'll see whose talking then." Donny brought out his phone.

"Your boys ain't shit either. I'll call my boys and we'll see what's really good." He also brought out his phone.

Will watched from the side as there was a stare down between both sides. When he was younger, this would have been an extremely serious and intense showdown between two school cliques. Now it looked childish to him, almost comical even.

The scene was soon interrupted.

"What's going on here!?" A middle-aged woman demanded at the entrance of the classroom.

The stare down between the two lasted another two seconds before Donny broke it off.

"Nothing, we're just playing around, Mrs. Campbell." One of the trio said.

"I've been a teacher for 18 years, don't give me that BS. It certainly doesn't look like nothing." Mrs. Campbell was unamused as she crossed her arms waiting for an answer. "Fine, seeing as no one wants to take responsibility..." She pointed at Donny and the young man he had been facing off. "Mister Reid, Mister Mitchel, I'm confiscating both of your cellphones. You can pick them up at the end of the day."

"What?!" "What!?" The two immediately protested.

"You can't do that."

"Kevin was the one that started it." Donny complained.

"I didn't do shit."

"Language, Mister Mitchel!" Mrs. Campbell admonished. "Now I'm being lenient with the two of you but if you don't see it that way and keep making a fuss, you can stay behind after school and accompany me in detention."

The complaints from both sides silenced.

"That's what I thought. Now, phones. Come on, fork 'em over." After the phones were taken from two young men, who looked like the world was ending, class began.

As the lessons and the day proceeded, Will couldn't help but feel that he was wasting time, rather than doing something constructive.

After a long three periods had passed by Will felt that he had enough. He had come to see Donny, and he only needed to come back after school to achieve his other objective. He didn't want to deal with lessons and teenage drama. Therefore, while everyone was moving on to the next class, Will ducked out to his car and exchanged his school bag for his gym bag.

He went next door to the community center's gym and got his daily workout in.

Near the end of his workout, while Will was running on the treadmill machine, Donny approached outside the window in front of him. Will paused the machine and took a drink before going outside.

"How'd you find me?"

"Jenny said she saw you heading over here from the window." Donny said, looking Will up and down. "What's up with you man? If you're skipping class, you should've invited me. And you're skipping physical education to workout at the gym? What's been going on with you lately? It's like you're a different person. Are you really that heartbroken?"

After mulling over it for a moment, Will decided to tell his best friend the truth. He didn't want to go through with Donny's funeral again. He wanted to change Donny's future and he knew he could trust his life with this person after seeing that even though he was younger, his first instinct when there was trouble was to back Will up. And most important, he owed his life to him.

"There's something I have to tell you." Will said solemnly.

"Hmm?"

"I'm from 15 years in the future."

"Say what now?" Donny raised his brow.

"Listen, the world is about to experience another pandemic very soon, and it's going to be a thousand times worse than the coronavirus ever was."

"Okay, either you need to share whatever you're smoking with me—because it sounds like some good stuff, or this is some kind of an excuse dodge explaining what happened with on your date."

"I'm dead serious." Will looked Donny in the eyes. Donny wavered from how intense the stare was.

"This is too much for me to right now." Donny shook his head while he patted his pockets, eventually finding his hippo lighter. "I don't know whether you're messing with me or you just went crazy over spring break." He took out a joint, lit it up, and took a long puff before holding it out to Will.

Will shook his head to decline. "I quit."

"Come on bro, you're messing with me." He said before taking enough puff.

"Really, I quit."

Stunned, Donny stared incredulously at Will for a long couple seconds, as if he was searching for an answer on Will's face. He must have found something because the joint in his mouth dropped to the floor.

"You're actually serious."

"I already told you, I quit."

"No, I mean about everything."

"This is what it took for you to believe me?" Now it was Will's turn to be stunned.

"Now it makes sense...cause I know how much you hate being called Willy but you had no reaction when Kevin was dissing you. Of course, it's because you time traveled. It all makes sense now!" Donny spoke sincerely at first before changing his tone to sarcastic halfway through.

Looks like I have to try harder to convince him. Will deliberated before speaking up.

"One of our teachers—I can't remember which one, suffered from a stroke during the break and won't be able to return until our graduation. I remember they made a big deal out of it and everyone had to make individual get well cards for him."

"You probably checked their social media accounts or someone could have told you. And I won't find out about those cards until graduation. How convenient." Donny said, still doubtful.

"You come from a long line of smokers and I think it was your grandfather, his father, and your grandfather's grandfather—three generations, who died from lung cancer. You blame your smoking habit on this."

"Didn't I tell you this already? I'm pretty sure I told you this before."

"You really want that YouHub thing to work out, and you plan to take a gap year to work on making videos."

"That's easy stuff, bro. I've also been talking about it forever, and it's not hard to guess the gap year thing."

"But your parents are completely against it and they want you to go to a post-secondary school like everyone else." Donny was about to retort to that but Will continued on. "They even had your grandma give you a 'talk' about it."

"..." This time Donny was completely speechless as he took the time to think things through. He glanced at Will and saw the severity on his face that hadn't changed once since the conversation had started.

"You're for real, aren't you?"

Will gave a single nod in reply. He could see that he was starting to convince his best friend.

"Okay then..."

Donny took a breath to prepare himself for the words that he couldn't believe were actually going to come out of his mouth next.

"What was this thing you said was worse than covid?"