The frisbee whizzes past you, almost clipping your ear.
You spin in the direction it came from to find your friends Jim and Kathy standing at the other two points of a triangle.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Jim asks.
"What?"
"Go get our frisbee back, you lazy-ass," Kathy snarls. But you know Kathy well enough to understand that the comment is her idea of a joke.
So you turn and peer out across the quads. You remember this about spring semester every year: the first truly warm day and the whole school would cut class, turning the quadrangle into one giant communal picnic. There are people everywhere: sunbathing, running and jumping, playing cards, smoking joints, tackling one another in a rumpus approximation of football....
You start to pick your way through the crowd. From the brief glimpse you got of the frisbee as it sailed past you, you remember it being red. It doesn't take you long to spot it.
The woman holding it, standing in the flow of traffic in the middle of one of the quad walkways, turns around and starts searching in your direction.
It's Inez.
And then you remember: Father told you that, according to your great great great grandfather Horace, the rabbit's foot tracks the currents and eddies of your history and takes you key junction points where you're most likely to change things.
This must be it, you realize. This must be how Inez and I first met.
"Hi," you say, stepping up to her.
"This is yours?"
"Yeah. Nice catch."
"Nice catch on the back of my skull," she tells you, but she's grinning.
"That sounds like a neat trick. Could you teach me?"
She hands you back the frisbee. "Too advanced for the likes of you."
"Are you any good at playing the old fashioned way?"
"I suppose I could stoop to your meager level."
"Some friends of mine and I are just goofing around." You jerk your head in Jim and Kathy's general direction. "Want to join us?"
She turns her hand palm-up; she wears her wristwatch with the face on the inside. "Half an hour 'til class," she say. "Sure."
"Even longer if you skip class," you note, walking backwards to make sure she's following.
"That," she says, "depends on how many times you hit me in the back of the head."
"I'm bad, but I'm not –" and your foot backs into the thigh of a sunbather and you fall flat on your ass, sprawled across the woman's legs.
Inez just stands there laughing.
And you feel yourself getting tugged away again: not up or backwards or sideways, but just out. The world fades around you.
Pick a number:
Or you can