Sanja hadn’t really expected it to work.

It was the sort of thing you bought out of the back of a magazine, in this case a scrap-booking magazine, and it hadn’t even been one she bought first-hand; she’d picked it up while browsing a library sale and the ad had jumped out at her.

It had only been nineteen ninety-nine; she expected, at best, some sort of nostalgia kit.  Re-live your teens!  Get a fresh start on life!

Maybe a new job somewhere else with a good health plan?

Maybe just nothing and a waste of twenty bucks?

Just to balance things out, she’d spent her other 20 of spending cash on lotto tickets, gone to bed early on the new year,

and woken up in a bed that reminded her of nothing as much as it did her old high school bed.

This is a dream, she told herself, although the details were far too good for that.  This is just some sort of… oh, maybe they figured out that dream-programming tech.  That’s kind of weird.  How did they get in-

The thoughts looped as she went through a day at school, a day that seemed surprisingly easy, awkward 14-year-old body or not, once she remembered how to just fake being self-confident.  This wasn’t that hard.  This wasn’t even weird.

Then she looked up during PE and noticed Tarik Anton looking at her.  Not just looking, staring.  And something about the way he was moving, something about the way he was taking, it sounded – well, it didn’t sound like the jerk she remembered.

Just the opposite of rose-colored glasses, she told herself.  He called you Stupid Slutja one time too many and you decided he was just all asshole, that’s all.

Nothing at all, except Avery Lindsey was looking at her the same way in Physics.  And then Aston Terrene.  And another, and another.  Sanja counted fifteen in total who looked and seemed like they were replaying life.

And then Tarik pushed her into one of those stupid bully alcoves the school’s sadist architects had put in for no good reason at all.  “Have you had history class yet?”

“What?  No, I’m in AP History, last period.”  That had always been her favorite class, in part because people like Tarik weren’t in the class.  “What are you-”

“Look, if you’re in AP, pay attention.  And then uh, Avery and Tony and me, we’re meeting up at – you know the Pizza House down by two fifty-nine?  We’re meeting there after school with Aston.  Just go home with Aston; nobody checks on that bus route and that’ll get you in the right direction. Just -”

The bell rang, cutting him off.  “Damnit.  Look, if they told you it was your teens you were re-living… I don’t think they were telling the truth.  None of us do.  So pay attention. You were always the smartest of us,” he added as he left, leaving Sanja leaning against the wall, baffled.

🎆

Written to Lilfluff’s prompt:

Using some means to Peggy Sue back to your past for a fresh start and discovering you aren’t the only one to do so.

Crosspost: https://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/1424280.html