The fun fair began to numb the impending doom. I was in heaven. Not only because I was able to enjoy 1958 for basically the first time since I had been there, but being with John was all laughs and smiles. He made everything adventurous and new. And he made me laugh a lot. More than any guy from 2109.

Really. This was so much better than the dates I had back home. Meeting someone in a virtual cafe only to realize that they’re an unconvincing AI marketing bot, suggesting weirdly specific products to you. Sometimes I’d figure it out within the first few minutes and still finish out the date, because that’s how much of a lonely loser I was.

The smell of popcorn lingered everywhere we went. I went on a few archaic death trap rides with John and clung onto his arm for dear life. After he nailed a few milk bottles with a baseball, we passed a roped off cage that had attracted a small crowd of families.

“What’s over there?” I asked tugging on John’s hand.

“Oh, that’s the circus tiger on display.”

I stopped right in the middle of the walkway, nearly pulling John off his feet. “Like an actual, live, living tiger?”

“Yes, living.” John laughed. “Be a bit depressing if they put the dead ones out for all the kiddies to see.”

My eyes were as wide as they could go. “Can I please, please see it?”

“Certainly.” John gestured to the cage, obviously amused by my unsuppressed excitement.

I skipped to the cage, bowling over the kids to get as close to the mysterious cat as possible. There it was. An actual non-extinct beautiful tiger napping on his side. Sleek orange and black stripes. His huge white paws twitching as he dreamed. I teared up and tried to choke back my emotion. This was the kind of thing I had yearned of when I became an apprentice for the department of time travel.

After a good solid gawk, I noticed John hunched over a thick wooden post, scribbling on the back of the fun fair flier.

“What are you drawing?” I asked leaning to see around his arm.

“Oh no you don’t!” He dodged me and folded the flier into quarters

“Come on! Let me see it,” I said, trying to grab it from him as he held it out of my grasp.

 “No, no. You’re having far too much fun. This is a secret note. For bad days only.” He pulled on the pocket of my jacket and tucked the flier deep inside. “Next time you find yourself having a rotten day, you’ll remember, ‘Ah, yes! John’s given me a goodie! And now I can’t feel sad today because I can finally read my secret message, you see’.”

He leaned his elbows on the wooden railing, a finger pressed against his mischievous smirk and his eyes gleaming as they peered into mine.

I traced the outline of the folded pamphlet through my pocket. “I can’t—” I laughed. “I’m dying to know what this says now.”

“Patience is a virtue. As they say.”

I shot him a look, but he kept his closed grin. “Well, you should know. I’ve been having a terrible day today,” I said.

“A likely story.”

“It’s been the most awful, no-good, horrible day ever.”

“I’m sure.”

I went to poke him in the side, but he wrapped his arms around my waist and gave me such a tight squeeze that it lifted me off my feet. Where is that portal malfunction? Please let me get stuck in a time loop! Please let this day never end! How could I ever bring up Paul? How could I even mention another boy on a day like this?

Up behind the fair were hills and hills of sand dunes that stretched for miles. Once we had run around a significant amount at the fair, taking carnies for what they had, we climbed up to explore the secluded dunes. John flopped on his belly and pretended to swim through the sand, all while barking ferociously like a seal. I started an unintentional sand fight, before he knelt and suggested that we build our own Buckingham Palace.

For the first time that day things were calm and peaceful. We happily worked away, patting the dry sand into shape.

“I’m glad you came with me,” he said. “I know I’m not Stu, but I think we have a lot of fun, you know?”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean you’re not Stu? Who said anything about Stu?”

John put his fist to his cheek. “I mean, it’s Stu. Mr. Talent. Mr. Everything. And me, Mr. Nothing. Mr. Nowhere. Going nowhere. Doing nothing.”

I was stunned. If only he knew the future like I did. If only he knew he would change the world in another reality. And if only he knew that poor Stu would have a deadly aneurism by age twenty-one. Crazy what we worry about in the moment, and how those things can drastically flip.

“I’m glad you’re not Stu,” I said, letting a handful of sand rain down on our palace.

“Are you really though?” he asked, biting his lip. “I mean, truthfully. Are you glad?”

“Yes. Stu is Stu. But he’s not a John Lennon. He doesn’t make me laugh. He’s not you.” I rested a fist on my chin. “And besides, what about this Cynthia girl? Are you glad I’m not her?”

“Tremendously,” he said. “Miss Prim and Proper, wanna be a nun. She would never do this kind of thing with me.”

“No, I think she would,” I said under my breath.

“Hey.” Suddenly John leaned across the palace and kissed me gently on the mouth. My whole chest lifted at his touch. I had almost forgotten how great of a kisser he was.

“What was that for?” I asked softly.

“A warning, Em. But if you do it again there’ll be bigger consequences next time.” He stuck a small stick upright into the top of our palace as if it were a flag.

“Stop that,” I said.

“Stop what?”

“That face you make,” I said, trying to imitate it myself. “With the eyebrows and the half-closed eyes and the smile. Just knock it off. It’s way too handsome.”

He laughed. “I can’t help it! It’s the face I was born with, I haven’t got another one!”

John beamed. And it twisted into my heart like a corkscrew. I knew I wasn’t supposed to be convincing him he was the only one in my life. I was supposed to be telling him that I was now falling for Paul and whatever else.

I swallowed a mouthful of guilt. It felt like a spoonful of hot ash squeezing down my throat. But I knew that Thorne was watching and waiting. Waiting for me to bring up Paul and break John’s heart into a million tiny little pieces. But if I didn’t do it, he would die. So, I absolutely did not have a choice.

“John,” I said solemnly. “I have to admit something to you.”

“Hold on,” he said, scooting closer. “I think I know what you’re going to say, but I’m going to go first…”

“Okay,” I said, eager to put off telling him.

“Em, I love you,” he said. “I love, love, love you.”

I felt a yelp rise into my mouth and get stuck at the top of my head. Oh no, no, no. What? Love? Actual love? I couldn’t believe it. I had done it. I had gotten John to love me.

“Yeah, see? Nyah!” He stuck out his tongue. “I beat you to it, didn’t I?”

I stumbled around for the words. “You love me? Like actual love? Or is it just that you really like me a lot. Like a precursor for love or something.”

“I think about you every moment I’m awake. And when I’m not awake, you’re in every dream I have so I don’t even get a break then,” he said.

“Sounds like love,” I said, my face stoned over in shock.

“I knew I was going to fall in love with you from the moment we went to Strawberry Field together. That’s when I knew I had really flipped for you,” he said. “And the pirate pig song, of course, was icing on the cake. I don’t know. There’s just something about it. About you. I feel like I was supposed to fall in love with you. Like it was my destiny or something.”

I was horribly stupefied, and I didn’t know where to begin. I knew I didn’t want to begin at ‘Hey, never mind about you, I like Paul now.’ I felt a little sick to my stomach, but there were other layers of emotions. Relief for one. I had successfully done what I came here to do. But also, relief in a different way. I didn’t know quite what it was, but there was this tension ease listening to him talk. Not the tension of the mission, but a tension I held long before that. I was loved. I was loveable. I wasn’t sure if that were ever going to be possible again. Or was in the first place. But here we are, John Lennon fell for me. I was fallable.

Tears were welling in my eyes. I covered my IND camera with my hand and silently mouthed to him, “I love you, too.”

He gave me a curious tilt of the head, but his eyes brightened at my reciprocation.

 “I’m dead terrified!” he said. “I don’t know what your family is going to think of that. Of me and everything else.”

My family? Well, yeah, my mom didn’t approve of the match but not why John probably thought. “Why are you worried about that?” I asked. “My family would love you.”

“Families don’t really love me. Parents don’t really love me,” he said with a small laugh.

“Everyone loves you,” I said returning the laugh. “What are you talking about?”

He pinched one of his eyes shut. “I don’t know who you think you’re talking about, Em, but this is me. John Winston Lennon, remember? Not even my own family likes me. No one likes me! I’m a completely unlovable loser, so you’ll just have to admit to that one.”

I scoffed so loudly it probably could be heard from the Fun Fair below. “Are you actually kidding me? John. No. You are so loved. You don’t even know how many people are obsessed with you.”

As in, no you literally don’t know. Millions and millions of people who know everything about you and all your songs. You are one of the most adored people in history.

He shook his head. “Come off it.”

“It’s true,” I said. “I have this theory that you are cursed.”

“Cursed?”

“Charmed,” I said.

“Oh, charmed,” he laughed. “Well that’s alright then.”

“I’m serious,” I said, nudging him with my elbow. “I really think you were charmed as a baby or something, that no matter what you did or how much of a cheeky buggar you were, everyone around you would just fawn over you. Love you to death.”

Literally.

“That is so far off from the truth,” he said. “You must have fallen from your pram a few dozen times.”

He drew his fingers over my knee and my heart did a full barrel roll. The sounds from the fair faded away, even the soft sand lost its warmth as my nerves concentrated under John’s fingers.

“What was it that you were going to tell me earlier?” he asked.

I leaned forward and gave him a weak kiss, trashing everything that Thorne had wanted me to do and ruin.

“My shoes are full of sand,” I said. “Should we head back to the ferry?”

---

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The next morning, I awoke full of energy despite having only slept three or four hours total. Every time I woke up, I remembered John’s kiss and then had to relive it a couple of times before falling back asleep. Finally, my jittery stomach demanded breakfast. I skipped down the stairs and stopped before entering the dining room.

I took a deep breath, trying to get a hold of myself. Now, now, Emmeline. Mission first. I have to put John behind glass or else I’ll be toast!

I rubbed my brow and entered the room. Sure enough, there he was. Sitting at the table, with an empty plate full of crumbs at his place. Calmly sitting. Waiting.

When we saw each other, I felt a bolt of electricity in my toes. He was so attractive, but it wasn’t just physical. I still don’t know what it is. Something about him, his energy or his aura or something. It was pulling me in, away from the glass wall and convincing every part of me that he was as real as could be.

I sat across from him. Mimi had her eye on me too, but not with the same smile as John.

He bit the tip of his thumb. “Hello.”

A big heave of infatuation rolled over me. “Hi,” I said, grinning and blushing.

I heard Mimi sigh heavily through her nose. “The rent’s gone up,” she announced suddenly. “Now 105. Summer rate.”

I glanced back at John, who sensing Mimi’s harshness had now dropped his adoring eye into his lap. I forced a smile at her. “That’s fine. I’ll be glad to pay it,” I said.

“Oh.” I didn’t know if she sounded genuinely surprised or disappointed. “Well, wonderful. That’s alright then.”

I was aware of John watching me and I tried to do everything in slow motion and pretty. As I stirred my tea with my spoon, I did it slowly. Finally, my eyes met with his. He had his hand on his cheek as he watched me.

“Sugar?” he asked.

“Please.”

As he passed me the small bowl of sugar, our fingers touched. We both relished in the moment, holding a bowl of sugar in between us so we could touch fingers.

“When are you leaving to go back to the United States?” Mimi asked abruptly.

I cleared my throat and brought the sugar down on the table. “I’m not sure yet.”

“You’re not sure?” Mimi asked. “This work placement didn’t give you an ending date? That seems very funny to me.”

Again, I glanced at John who was now eyeing me anxiously.

“Well, I’m supposed to be finished by August 28^th,” I said, setting a biscuit on my plate. “But due to some recent changes, I might be seeking an extension.”

“Really? You are?” John asked not even trying to conceal his excitement.

“We’ll see,” I said. “There’s some… business here that I’m hoping will keep me indefinitely.”

John’s grin extended all the way across his face. Aunt Mimi looked at the ceiling as if she were praying for strength.

The next hour was painfully awkward. Suspicious Mimi didn’t want to leave us in the same room together, so we all sat in the living room in perfectly awkward silence. Mimi ran around shaking curtains and dusting the same knickknacks several times refusing to leave us alone. One of the cats had curled on my lap and I stroked his soft smooth fur. John sat sideways in a chair, his knees pulled to his chest and his feet resting on the arm. He had a little hole in his sock and his pinky toe stuck out of it. The stupid trivial things you notice about someone you kissed the night before.

On the small black and white television set, King Leer drolled on from the BBC broadcast. Neither of us were really watching since we kept glancing at the other person. Finally, after about the fifth time of locking stares, John grabbed the bottom neck of his sweater and pulled it over his mouth, crossing his eyes all the way to the bridge of his nose. I couldn’t help my breathy snicker, which made Mimi turn around and narrow her eyes at us.

Suddenly the phone rang shrilly from the hall. We both turned to Aunt Mimi as she stared back at us, like a Mexican standoff. The shrill bell of the phone went off a second time.

“Telephone,” Lennon said in a perfectly innocent voice.

Mimi put her hands on the top of her hips. “Don’t move,” she warned him.

Her dainty little steps crossed behind us and pattered into the hall. The bell cut off mid-ring.

“Yes, hello,” Mimi answered less than cordial. “What? Now? … No, it’s just that I can’t leave now…”

John and I both curled devilish smiles at each other.

“Yes, yes… alright, keep your shirt on, I’ll be right there.”

The receiver slammed onto the hook, and the pattering double timed back into the living room. I quickly turned my attention to the cat and John slumped further into his chair with his head on his fist.

“I’m going out,” she said, her hands still in the disapproving position on her hips. “I hope I can count on you to have some common decency in this house.”

John fluttered his long eyelashes at her with a cheeky smirk. “Mimi, you know me,” he said.

“That’s why I’m worried.” She took a pillbox hat off the coat rack. “You won’t touch each other.”

“Mimi!”

 “You won’t. Promise me.”

 I could feel my face burning red as I kept to the cat on my lap.

“You have my honor madam,” he said putting his hand on his heart.

Mimi’s mouth flattened so tight that her lips disappeared into a disapproving line. She plopped the pillbox hat on her head. “I’ll be back before you can unbuckle your trousers.”

I shrank into my seat, wanting to die of embarrassment. A weight lifted off my chest when she breezed out of the house and the kitchen door slammed behind her. We looked at each other again, this time we both couldn’t help but laugh.

John had a mischievous, wild glint in his eye as he stood. The cat on my lap seemed to get the hint and sprang off to leave us alone.

“You promised you wouldn’t touch me,” I teased.

 “I won’t,” he said with a smile.

John brought his fingers so close to my hand, it was hovering about a half an inch over my skin. He slowly moved up my arm, I could feel all my little hairs raise in his path. He bent down, his lips the same half an inch away from mine. My heart was stomping in my chest.

There was a knock on the front door. I jerked away so hard, I smacked my head against the chair.

John shushed me. “Not a sound now.”

He leaned in to kiss me, but I pulled away again. “What if it’s Mimi?” I asked.

Suddenly, the front door opened, and a charming and recognizable voice called from the box porch. “John?”

“Nobody’s home!” John called back.

“The Nobodies? I must be in the wrong house.”

I sniggered at Lennon’s exaggerated annoyed face as Paul McCartney walked into the parlor room. His hands in his pockets. A leather shoulder bag draped over a shoulder.

“What do you want?” John asked. “Em and I were… in the middle of something.”

“Oh.” Paul furled his brow and looked between the two of us. “Oh!”

I had to press my finger to my lips to keep from laughing anymore.

“I was just coming round for—” Paul stopped mid-sentence when John’s frown tightened. “Right. Sorry. Never mind then. On my way.”

He swept toward the exit before John booted him out.

“Oh, uh, Em?”

When Paul turned back around to us, John grunted and stomped his foot.

“Sorry, it’s just that— I wanted to tell you, I really loved that song you wrote. Strawberry Fields? That’s a fantastic song!”

“Oh, it’s not really my—” I exchanged a knowing look with John. “Uh, yeah. Thanks.”

“I’m a bit of a songwriter too. I’m not quite as good. But, well, I was wonderin’ if I could get your opinion on some of these.” Paul reached into his saddlebag and retrieved a thick and wrinkled notebook. John cleared his throat and coughed an obvious ‘goodbye’. Paul hunkered down and handed me the notebook. “When you have time. I’ll leave this with you.”

John took Paul by the collar and walked him out. “Right, thanks for comin’. Cheerio. All the best. Adieu. Auf Wiedersehen, zeit zu gehe!”

I heard the two chatting under breath at the front door. I ran my fingers over the weathered notebook in my lap.

“Wow, this is kind of fat,” I said to myself.

I lifted the cover, the first song was, as I expected, I Lost My Little Girl. I chuckled to myself. Little Paulie. So cute. I flipped another page.

When I’m Sixty-Four

Hmm. My mouth twisted to the side. Okay, welp. Didn’t know that one existed just yet, but okay. I flipped another page.

A poem about a blackbird.

I took a sharp breath. Okay. Probably just a coincidence. Another page.

The Long and Winding Road

“What?!” I hissed to myself. I flipped each page rapidly. Key Beatles lyrics on every sheet of paper.

I saw her standing there. Can’t buy me love. Don’t be afraid, take a sad song and make it better.

Then I got to the last page. A hastily scribbled title Scrambled Eggs?? Underneath it, one single line, “All my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they’re here to stay.”
“Alone at last!” John entered the room, took a flower from Mimi’s vase, and presented it to me on one knee.

“Uh…”

I slammed the notebook shut in my lap, but it was too late. My IND gave a distinct buzz inside of me.

“I’m so sorry. Something came up. I have to leave.”

“Something came up?” John doubled back. “Air raid sirens go off? C’mon. What could have come up?”

“It’s an emergency,” I said, tucking the notebook under my arm. “My work study… I’ll explain everything later.”

“Explain it to me now,” John said with a laugh. That darn IND buzzed again.

“No, I’m so sorry, I have to go. I have to—” I grabbed Lennon by the neck and gave him the hardest smooch of my life, then I quite literally ran out the front door.

I clutched Paul’s notebook to my stomach as I walked. My little kitten heels clicked rhythmically on the sidewalk. Pat pat pat pat! A chill spilled down my spine followed by another buzz in my chest.

“I’ll come to you,” I said to my camera.

I sped walked all the way to Thorne’s hotel, blew past the front desk, up the two narrow flights of stairs and right to his door. My knuckles had barely touched Thorne’s door before he opened. “You chose the wrong subject,” he said.