It’s funny how ideas evolve. When I first had the idea that this is based on, the twist wasn’t even a twist. It only occurred to me a good twenty years after I first had the idea that Gabe wouldn’t explain his true nature to Dorothy from the outset. Now, I think it’s a fun reveal, though I’m not sure if it will really play out well as a full story – there’s obviously a big change in what kind of story you’re telling if you spend an extended amount of time believing it’s one kind of story and then it turns out to be a different kind. But me, I like things that transform into other things; I was brought up on a diet of kids shows about dudes who used magic swords to turn into Conan knock-offs and trucks that turned into robots. So, let’s see how it goes.
“Sorry, what?” Gabe asked. He glanced at the clock.
“Edgy. Distracted. I said you were edgy and distracted. Like the way you got distracted just now, ten seconds ago,” Dorothy said. “If you don’t want to help me study, you can just… I take that back. I need you to help me study.”
“Yes. Right. Sorry. Trigonometry. The cosine of the arcsine of x is the square root of one minus x squared,” He said. He looked at the clock again.
“Yes,” Dorothy said, “Except that it’s history. Are you okay?”
“Sorry,” Gabe said again. “Sorry. I… Can’t really explain.”
“Complicated?” she asked.
He didn’t answer, instead engaging in some kind of staring contest with the clock. “It’s okay,” Dorothy finally said. “Believe it or not I’m getting used to you. I know you’ll keep me out of trouble. Stay on the straight and narrow. Don’t break the rules. Don’t mess up the universe.”
Gabe looked down at her with a start, as though seeing her for the first time. “Don’t break…” he started. His face fell. With a faraway look, he quietly said, “There is no who we are but what we do. There is no us but what we choose.”
Dorothy dropped her pencil. “What was that? Where did you- That was me.”
Ignoring the question, he said, “I’ve been teaching you the wrong thing.”
She stood up, confrontational. “I wrote that. Part of it. Only it’s not done yet. How did you know that?”
“I’ve been keeping you out of trouble,” Gabe said. “I should’ve been helping you choose what trouble to get in. I need to get into some trouble right now.” He snapped back into focus. “You need to call emergency services. Right now.”
“What?”
“There’s been a car crash on route 170, near mile marker 24.”
“How did you- When?”
He looked at the clock. “About four minutes from now. You don’t have to tell them that part.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small gray square. Dorothy had seen it before, but only in brief glances; he’d always made a point not to call attention to it.
“How do you know? She braced for his usual “It’s complicated.”
She didn’t get it. “The same way I know about your poem,” he said. “I’ve read it.” He opened up the square like a compact and poked at it intensely.
Dorothy didn’t understand. “They have poems that haven’t been written yet in heaven?”
He looked up from the object in his hand, surprised. “Heaven? Oh. Oh! No. Look, when I told you I was your guardian angel, I didn’t mean it literally.”
He looked back at the clock. Not a lot of time, but he gave her a second anyway. “I’m from the future. About a hundred years. I am going to get in a lot of trouble for telling you this. Might not get see you again. But this rule is worth breaking. You need to make that call, and you need to make it right now.”
“But-” Dorothy tried.
Gabe tapped on the device in his hand, and then, quite unexpectedly, he put his hands on her shoulders. She looked at his hands in disbelief, then poked him with one finger, verifying that he was tangible. “Where I come from, you finished that poem. You finished it, and you called it Mile Marker 24. After the place where your stepsister died in a car accident. Make the call.”
He picked up her phone and put it in her hand. Reflexively, she took it and fumbled, trying to dial. “You can-” she tried
“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Not supposed to, but I can. I have to go. I don’t know if I can help, but I’ve got to try. If I…” He didn’t know how to finish.
Dorothy had glanced down at her phone as the call connected. Her eyes flicked back up just in time to catch the edge of a flash as Gabe vanished.