Fifteen minutes into the taxi ride, I realized I'd forgotten to lock my door. I also left my phone on the table, thinking I didn't need it to help the crazy old cat lady. "Take me back," I said to the faceless driver. "I left my door unlocked and I need my phone."

"It's too late to turn back now. Besides, where you're going you won't need a cell phone."

"Where the hell are you taking me?" I asked. "I was joking about Paris. I don't even have my passport with me. Anyway, where's the flux capacitor and the Delorean?"

"This isn't a movie, Eric."

"Who are you? What's going on?"

"Sit back and enjoy the ride. Close your eyes and go to sleep. It's gonna be a long ride."

My heart raced as I frantically yanked at the door handle, trying to open it. I unlocked the door, but it still wouldn't open. Even if I could open it, I'd die if I jumped out at the speed we were going. I wasn't suicidal.

"Pull over," I said. "I wanna get out. I changed my mind."

"Relax, Eric. Nothing bad's going to happen to you. Sometimes you have to trust people's word."

"I don't have a problem trusting people."

"That's not what I hear. Do me a favor and take a nap. I gotta focus on the road. It's a bumpy road ahead."

I ignored the driver's request. Instead, I stared out the window, squinting, attempting to see something in the dark. It was impossible. The wind howled as we sped down an unknown highway.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't keep my eyes open, so I drifted off.

The taxi screeched, coming to an abrupt halt. I slowly opened my eyes, not sure how much time had passed. Judging by the bright sky, I'd say it was morning. Snow fell in big snowflakes. It was February when I left, and it looked like it was February where I landed. "Where are we?" I asked.

"Lowell," he replied, tossing a suitcase at me, followed by a fedora hat. He didn't turn around, so I still couldn't see his face.

"No, no, no. I live in Lowell. I've lived there my entire life, and this place is not Lowell."

"Look around. Within a few minutes, you'll realize you're in your hometown. Now hurry up and get dressed. Everything you need is in the suitcase."

"But I'm already wearing clothes."

"You have five minutes to put on a suit. Open the suitcase and put it on. You'll find shoes in there, too."

Annoyed, frustrated, and confused, I flung open the suitcase. "Where the fuck am I? I told you to take me to 1920s Paris. This isn't Paris. It's gotta be a dream... or a nightmare. Either way, I'm checking myself into the hospital as soon as I wake up. Damn... I don't think I've ever worn a three-piece suit. Why do I need to wear this, anyway? Where am I going?"

"Stop wasting time, Eric."

"I'm getting dressed, okay?" I snapped. "It's not easy changing in the back of a taxi. This place looks miserable and dreary. I hate snow."

"Here's your coat and gloves," he said, flinging a long coat and black gloves at me.

In the middle of tying the tie, the door sprung open. As I peered outside, I saw a man sprinting in my direction. He almost fell, skidding on the snow on his way to me. With his winter herringbone tweed flat cap, he looked like someone who'd just stepped off the set of Peaky Blinders.

"There you are!" the young man exclaimed. "You're late! I almost thought you weren't coming!" The young man stood in front of me, overly excited to see me, this complete stranger. If I had to guess, I'd say he was eighteen or nineteen.

As I scanned the area, I thought I'd just stepped into an abandoned city ravaged by war. Just like the driver said, I recognized the city within minutes. I was in my hometown, but it wasn't 2023. Prior to the 1920s, Lowell had been a thriving industrial city, known for its textile mills and Irish and French-Canadian immigrants, but the city started to decline in 1914 when mills either shut down or moved out of state. My grandmother, a French-Canadian, worked in one of those mills as a young woman. I recognized the nearby abandoned mill building as the Massachusetts Mills, which has since been converted into an apartment building. The Boot Mills was the last mill to close. That building was also converted into apartments.

As I lugged my suitcase out of the taxi, the door closed. "See ya in thirty days, kid!" the driver said, speeding off.

"School starts in twenty minutes," the young man said. "We better get a move on."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I'm Jimmy McDonough. It's nice of you to fill in for Ms. Tremblay while she recovers from the flu. It hit her pretty hard. A hundred teachers are waiting for her to die. She has enough to worry about without worrying about whether or not she'll have a job when she's better."

"Are you telling me I'll be teaching?"

"Yeah, of course... at Lowell High. Not everyone's lucky enough to stay in school, like my brother George... he quit in the eighth grade. I made it to eleventh. Teddy's the lucky one. He graduated and writes for the Lowell Sun. Well, he writes when the paper needs him. Work's not as steady as it used to be."

"What am I teaching?" I asked, walking briskly with the overly energetic Jimmy.

"History and English."

"I'm not an English teacher."

"If you can teach history, you can teach English."

"Who says? They're two different subjects. I have no lesson plans prepared. I don't even know what they're studying."

"I bet you'll find notes in the classroom. I hear you're a great teacher."

"Why does everyone keep telling me that? Whatever. It's just a dream, anyway. Let's get this over with."

Jimmy walked me to Lowell High School, which didn't look all that different from the modern Lowell High School. In fact, I believed it was the same building.

Jimmy accompanied me into the school, leading me down the vaguely familiar hallways. Fewer students loitered the halls, and they looked very different from modern teenagers. For one, these girls wore long skirts and blouses, and their hair was done in the style of the 1930s or 1940s. The students were also all white, a stark contrast to the students at Lowell High in 2023. My classroom was primarily a mixture of teenagers of Cambodian and Puerto Rican descent.

"I know this classroom," I said, standing in the doorway. The location and room number were strangely familiar.

"Why? Does it look like yours back home?"

"It is my classroom," I said, entering the room. Unlike my own classroom, desks were arranged in rows. I arranged mine in a circle. Before the students arrived, I thought about re-arranging the desks, but I figured I needed that time to review the lesson plans.

"Good luck today," Jimmy said. "I'll pick you up at three. You'll be staying with us for the month. It's already crowded, but one more won't make much of a difference."

"What if Ms. Tremblay is better by next week?" I asked, approaching the desk. "What happens then? Will I be able to go home?"

"I dunno. It's not up to me."

As the bell rang, students trickled into the classroom, which didn't give me much time to search for the lesson plans. I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to wing it. I wasn't a wing-it kind of man, so I was way out of my comfort zone. The students didn't know me and I didn't know them, so I could do some ice-breaker activities.

A calendar hung from the bulletin board, confirming it was February. However, the year was 1935.

Here I was, in this nightmare, facing a class of students in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1935. Back in 2023, I'd just finished teaching a unit on Roosevelt's New Deal and the Great Depression. If I were to properly teach this class, I'd have to remember to teach topics prior to Roosevelt. It would have been helpful to know what teachers taught kids in the thirties. School curriculums had changed over the years.

And what would happen if I went on a tangent about Hitler and the pending war? Could I change the timeline like Marty McFly did in Back to the Future?

This isn't real, I kept telling myself, expecting to wake up any minute. For the first few minutes, students stared blankly at me in silence, waiting for me to say something. Where do I begin? When I didn't speak, they started talking to each other. Before long, the classroom was loud with various conversations taking place. The classroom sounded out of control.

Should I dare do the nails on the chalkboard trick?

I decided to use my voice first. I could be loud when I felt like it. "Hello?" I shouted, but their volume was louder than my voice. When they didn't respond to the second hello, I resorted to the nails on the chalkboard. After their exaggerated groaning, I had their attention. "Good morning, everyone. My name is Mr. Gagnon. I'll be your teacher for the next month while Ms. Tremblay is out. Now, if you don't want to hear my nails on the chalkboard again, then I suggest you shut the hell up."

To get to know them better, I asked each student to share their name and a fun fact about themselves. After everyone shared, I had to ask a serious—yet stupid—question.

"Is this history or English class?"

Edie, the girl in the front row, was quick to answer. "History."

"And what grade?"

"Tenth," she said.

Now, another important question. "What are you currently learning about?"

"The American Civil War," Edie spoke again. "Battle of Gettysburg."

Okay... I can do this.

I wondered what 1935 teenagers thought about this outsider who spoke like someone from another land. My accent indicated I was from Massachusetts, but the slang and language I used was obviously not from their world. My contemporary students loved it when I cursed, but the shocked expressions on these students's faces told me they found my use of the words suck, hell, and shit offensive. I didn't dare drop the f-bomb, which was near impossible for me to do. The f-word was one of my favorite words.

At the start of the fourth class, I sat at the desk, thoroughly drained. If I wanted to, I could just sit there and do nothing, watching the students joke and laugh, as if I wasn't even there. Why should I put myself through this?

I put myself through 'this' because I loved teaching. The thought of helping students learn and grow kept me motivated to get up every morning. Without them, I felt the emptiness inside me, aching for something to fill it.

Perhaps I was here to remind myself of my gifts. Everybody was good at something. I took pride in my ability to connect to adolescents from all backgrounds, instilling in them a love of history and learning.

In this dream, I encountered a new challenge—teaching a subject I had no idea how to teach. However, I loved literature almost as much as history. Was this dream meant to inspire me to incorporate literature into my history classes?

This dream could be a new, exciting adventure, something that had been missing in my life. It was a welcome distraction from my anger and grief. For the first time since Erin's death, I eagerly anticipated what lay ahead. I wondered if I would have felt the same way in reality.

Words: 1993
Total words: 3883