Before Dally and I went back inside the house, I made him promise not to mention this twist of fate to anyone else. I didn't want him to know in the first place, and I was certain not to ever let Johnny find out.

Dally agreed that Johnny shouldn't know. He's too sensitive as it is, and if he found out that he was inches from death he might never get over it. I'm sure this will forever be in the back of Dally's mind too, so hopefully he is a little more cautious with himself from now on. I don't think I can handle sending them back and not seeing them again. He has to stay alive until they can catch up to my time. They all have to.

Dally opened the front door for me and I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket when I was walking into the living room. I glanced at the caller ID and saw, Grandpa K.

Grandpa K is my maternal grandfather. He likes to call me often, either just to talk or to ask if I can get lunch with him. He's very sweet, very funny, and very caring. I try to visit him as much as possible, I have a lot of fond memories growing up with him. He's one of my favorite relatives.

"Why is the rectangle buzzing?" Darry asked with his eyes intent on my phone.

"It's vibrating, I'm getting a phone call," I answered.

"From who?" Johnny asked.

"It's my grandpa."

"Grandpa K?" Jenni asked.

"Yep." I pressed the green answer button and brought the phone up to my ear.

"I still don't understand how that rectangle works," Darry muttered.

"Hey, how's it going?" I asked. All the boys stared at me intently, no sound filled the house.

"Hey there, darlin', Donald threw up under these here cabinets and it's far too heavy for me to move all by my lonesome. I'm movin' about as slow as molasses these days. Do you wanna come over and help me move it?" He asked. He had a rough gravelly voice that made him sound tuff. He was a smoker for decades, so that was probably the cause.

"Um..." I looked over at the guys.

"I'll put you in my will," he quipped. He was a real jokester. He liked to say funny one-liners and do funny things to make us laugh as kids, such as blowing straw wrappers at us from across the table or tapping our shoulders and walking away while suspiciously whistling.

One year, at Thanksgiving, the table couldn't handle all the food on it so it collapsed. All the food slid to the floor. He grabbed the pie, and a spoon, took a seat and began eating. When we were all looking at him in confusion and a bit of disgust, he wisecracked, "it's not like any of y'all were going to eat it."

I laughed. "All right. How heavy is this cabinet?"

"Heavy enough to need at least two people. Maybe three," he answered.

"I have a few friends over, should I bring couple of them to help?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, when you want us?"

"Now. Football is on."

"Be there soon." I hung up. "Okay," I directed my attention towards the guys. "My grandpa needs a couple of us to help move his furniture. His cat threw up under it. Superman, and Two-Bit, let's go."

I'm not saying my grandfather is a hoarder, but if he's asking someone to move his furniture that is a cabinet full of stuff, I'm going to need the two strongest guys I know. That's why I picked Two and Darry. Darry has the biggest muscles and Two usually likes to throw things around anyway.

"What about me?" Steve asked. He jumped up and kissed his muscles that he calls his guns.

"Sorry, Steve, but I need real men for the job." I smirked to stop myself from snickering.

I ran out the door after laughing at his offended expression. Darry and Two followed, jumping into in my car. Darry took the passenger seat and Two took the back, and we made our way to my grandpa's house. It was on the other side of town, across the train tracks where it's not quite as nice. The city doesn't really care about it. I remember it was the Greaser side of town in the 60's. I guess I really was a Soc.

I have already described my grandfather before. He is a very funny man with a childlike sense of wonder. He now has thick grey hair, with wicked sideburns. His wife, my grandma, passed away a few years ago. Now as a widower, my family moved down here to be around him now that he was technically alone. It was also a great job opportunity for my dad, so, win-win.

We drove the fifteen minutes to get there and I knocked on the front door. He didn't answer right away so I opened it and walked right in.

"Grandpa? You in here?" I asked as I stepped into the old house. I felt like his cigarette smoke was soaked into the walls, because he hasn't smoked in years. Darry and Two followed behind me slowly.

He used to smoke a lot. My mom said that she used to try to get him to stop but he wouldn't listen. He used to say that he had done it too much and too long, and it hadn't killed him yet. It wasn't until he had grandkids he realized that if he wanted to be around to watch us grow up, he was going to have to stop, and he did. And I think he stopped drinking heavily after he had my mom.

"Right in here, darlin'!" He shouted from his kitchen. "Be out in a jiffy!"

I glanced around his house and noticed some things that I have never really perceived before. Well, I've seen them but have not registered them as anything of great importance. I saw his most prized possession in a frame on his wall. Even as a child, he made sure I knew how important this object was to him. I walked over to examine it. It was a squeaky clean switchblade.

"Two, do you still have your switchblade on you?" I asked, still looking at the one on the wall. I could not help but think it looked familiar. I remembered that Two was not present when I confiscated all the switchblades.

"You know it." He took it out and handed it to me. I looked at Two's blade, then the blade on the wall.

They looked exactly the same.

I felt my palms get a little clammy but I handed it back and kept investigating. There were lots of family pictures everywhere around his house. He clearly loves making memories, and he loves his family even more.

"Hey, look at that," Two-Bit said. He was near one of the shelves where my grandfather has kept a glass bowl of vintage matchbooks he has collected over the years, even though he stopped smoking years ago.

"What?" I asked. I already felt breathless.

Two-Bit snatched the matchbook right on top and showed it to me. It was a green matchbook that says The Lucky Match, with a four leaf clover underneath. My breath halted in my throat as Two said Just before he put it back, "we both have the same one. It really is lucky, huh?"

"Yeah... lucky." My voice trailed off.

I walked around and found a few pictures in frames that were tucked away in a corner of a cabinet he had. They were covered in dust. I grabbed them and blew the dust off. I could tell that it was eight blobs, but that was it. I rubbed the remaining dust off with my thumb to reveal the photo. It was eight kids, leaning against what looked like a worn down house. The girl, the one and only girl, was sitting on the railing in the middle.

I remembered that day.

There's even a group photo out there somewhere of all of us in the back of Darry's truck flipping off the camera. It broke down on the side of the road, and we were stranded for a few hours. We made a lot of great memories that day. I was always the one who wanted pictures, because I wanted to capture every moment I could with them. Dally isn't even looking at the camera, but my gaze was on Soda. The camera loves him.

"Hey, Two-Bit?" I asked quietly.

"Yeah, Bri?"

"What's your first name? Your actual first name?" My hand was shaking. It couldn't possibly be him. I felt sick.

"I don't wanna say. It's embarrassing."

I calmly put the picture down and walked over to Two. I felt a rage growing inside of me, and I was about to freak out.

"Two, I swear to god, I will—" I started in a harsh whisper.

"Hey there, darlin'! Nice to see ya." My grandpa came walking out to the living room, interrupting me. He walked with short strides. His pants were held up by suspenders and thick glasses balanced on the bridge of his nose. "These your friends?"

"Yeah, one second, Grandpa." I turned to Two-Bit, I grabbed the collar of his shirt and pulled him down so he was eye level to me. He gagged from the shirt pressing against his thick neck. "What is your name?"

"Keith," he whispered back and pulled on his shirt to loosen it around his throat. "Why are we whispering?"

"You need to get out, now." I frantically pushed him out of the house and shut the door. I mouthed wait in the car through the window. Two was confused, but he did what I said. I happened to look at another framed photo on the wall. It was a mug shot of my grandpa in the 60s. Two and Soda got arrested for doing flips and walking on their hands around downtown. They got arrested for disturbing the peace, so I had to go bail them out. I would recognize those sideburns, his big cheeks, and wide smile anywhere. That was the exact same photo.

"Bri? What was that about?" My Grandpa Keith asked.

I looked into my grandfather's dancing gray eyes and my breath quivered. I have no idea how I didn't connect it before. They both have the same wide grin and the same laugh. Knowing that I was face-to-face with old Two-Bit, I couldn't unsee it.

"Oh, nothing." I tried to brush it off. "Is that a new shirt?"

"Yes it is! Thank you for noticing." He smoothed out the wrinkles of the blue fabric. He gets distracted easily. He turned to Darry and was about to shake his hand. "You are?"

"I'm—"

"Garry. This is Garry." I cleared my throat. It was the best name I could come up with in the moment. I panicked.

"Yeah, I'm... Garry." Darry looked at me confused.

"Garry, this is my Grandpa. My Grandpa Keith," I said through my teeth, hoping that Darry would get the hint, but I was being too subtle about it.

"Nice to meet you, Garry." Grandpa glanced at the picture I was holding. "Lookie here." He picked it up and rubbed more dust off with his thumb. He readjusted his glasses and he smiled broadly. "I remember this day real well."

"What is it?" Darry asked. My grandpa showed him the picture. I saw Darry's face drop as he quickly realized why I threw Two-Bit out of the house.

"These were my closest friends. This troublemaker here is Dally, Superman here is Darry, this youngster is Ponyboy, the handsome devil you see here is me, and there's Sodapop... the little lady here is Bri. This tuff guy is Steve, and the little guy is Johnny. We took this back in 1965 or '66, I think." He pointed to me and Soda in the picture. "Look at Bri, sitting on the railing right next to Superman. Say, Garry, you look just like Darry. And your names are similar. Have family from around here? I might have known your grandfather."

"Uh... no, I don't," Darry said.

"You look just like him, son."

"Bri and Bri have the same name?" Darry looked at me with a crazed look on his face. He clenched his strong jaw and his eyes were so wide I thought they were going to pop out.

I gulped shakily. What do I do in this situation? It's not like I can avoid him like we did with Old Steve. This is my grandfather... I can't ignore him forever.

"Yeah. I helped her mama name her. I named her after this girl here, Brianna. It's funny that you turned out to look like her too."

"Yeah, that's crazy," I said. I steadied my breath.

"I never found out what happened to her. One day she was with us and the next... poof. She was gone," he sighed longingly. "I think about her all the time. She was a real good friend. Real fun, real sweet. When she went missin', it really took a toll on all of us. Soda the most." He pointed to him.

"Why?" I asked.

"They had a little thing together. A fling as you youngsters call it now-a-days," he chuckled heartily. "Damn, haven't talked about that Sodapop Curtis in a long while. Glory, I miss that old bastard."

I gave him a small smile as he reminisced about the good-old-days. I didn't think too hard about how he hasn't seen some of the guys in a while, it's honestly pretty unrealistic to think that they've all stayed close friends over the decades. Usually people don't stick with their friend groups they had when they were teenagers, they grow into their own lives and they drift apart. That's probably what happened with the gang. It's sad, but that's life.

"What about Darry?" Darry gulped.

"Oh, well—"

"Okay!" I interrupted. I knew that Darry could not know the answer to that. "Let's move that cabinet." I grabbed the picture from my grandpas hands and put it back down on the shelf.

"Oh goodness, you are right," Grandpa Keith said and started shuffling toward the cabinetry. "I nearly forgot."

Darry pulled me aside and asked why I steered my grandpa away from his question.

"We can't take any chances," I whispered back. "We need to move this cabinetry and get the hell out of here."

Darry nodded in agreement.

We helped my grandpa move the cabinetry and Darry even offered to clean up the cat puke. Grandpa really just stayed back and watched us move it for him and do all the work. Once you hit a certain age, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

We put the cabinetry back and Grandpa invited us to watch the football game with him. I wished we could, I used to love watching football games with him. He gave me the jersey of my favorite player from the Dallas Cowboys. But, I knew that he would eventually figure out that Darry was Darry, and not Garry. Plus, Two-Bit was probably waiting in the hot car without the windows rolled down. Obviously, he is not exactly the brightest.

"No, we gotta go." I walked over to him and gave him a big hug. "But I'll see you soon, okay?"

"Okay, doll," he said. He smelled like sweet chocolate cake. We pulled apart and he said, "bring back Superman. He reminds me of the good old days."

"Of course."

We said our goodbyes and darted out to the car. I promptly opened the door and Two-Bit nearly fell out.

"What the hell was that about?" He yelled, pissed that I kicked him out.

"No time. Get in the car," Darry said. Two-Bit groaned and crawled back into the car as I turned on the air conditioning, and Darry ran around and settled himself into the passenger seat.

"You can tell him," I said as I backed out of his short driveway.

Darry immediately began telling Two that my grandfather was him, from the future. Well, his future. He went into detail about the photographs we found, and I even told them about the stories I've heard from my grandpa growing up, just now realizing that I was actually apart of them.

"So... wait," Two said when Darry was done explaining. "Does that mean that Bri is my granddaughter?"

That phrase made me freeze. The only movement I had was the slow push on the break pedal to stop the car for a red light. This nineteen year old kid is my grandfather.

"Glory," Darry laughed like he thought it was the funniest thing in the entire world.

"Ew," I grumbled.

"Wow, I'm in charge of you." Two got a big head with this sudden burst of power that meant nothing to past Keith.

"You aren't. My grandpa is."

"I am your grandpa!"

"Not yet," I bantered.

"I will."

"Whatever." I gripped the steering wheel tighter and got the car moving again with the green light. "Good thing I didn't reveal too much, like, who my grandma is or something."

"I know that I am your moms dad. You said that your moms name is Mandie." He smirked.

"Yes, okay, yes, but she is your second daughter, all right? Do not name your first daughter Mandie."

"What's my first daughters name?" He asked.

"Minerva."

"Wow, you are spitting out information left and right!" Two giggled. "Who is my wife?"

"I cannot tell you her name," I said. Thinking about it, I don't think I ever met her in 1965. Her name is not mentioned in the movie, and I did not think that I met her in school. "I can tell you that I did not meet her in 1965."

"Okay, fine." He gave up.

I kept kicking myself, thinking about how I could have missed that Two-Bit was my grandpa. It made perfect sense too. They looked alike, they acted the exact same, and he kept the same haircut throughout the decades.

This is heavy...