Not me.

Alas, I did not win NPR’s Three-Minute Fiction contest. But having read all of the featured stories and the winning one, I can say honestly that my story was nowhere near good enough to win. Many of the stories would have beat mine to a pulp in a head-to-head match.

While I’m sad that my story was not picked, at least I can share it with you now that the contest is over. Here it is in all its unedited glory.

Same As It Ever Was

She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door.

It was as disorienting as they had said it would be. “You’ll be dizzy,” the attendant had cautioned. “Close your eyes. Wait at least ten seconds, but no more. You can’t afford more than that.”

She closed her eyes and counted. An eternity of thudding heartbeats passed. She opened her eyes, hungry for the scene she had waited sixty years to see.

He sat in his rust-bucket of a Camaro outside the 7-Eleven, blasting the radio. How she had hated that car, the way he fussed over it, and the way it refused to start every time it rained. Back then she had worried that it was the only thing he cared about. It looked wonderful to her now, and so did he, exactly like his yearbook picture.

“You won’t be magically young,” they had warned. She had known it, but knowing and accepting are two different things. Only the urgency of her mission gave her the strength to limp on her old-lady legs toward the young god in the car.

She stopped before the driver’s side window. The heavy metal strains vibrated against her face, threatening to choke her if she opened her mouth. What if it were impossible to change anything? “The past takes care of itself,” they had said. Still she had to try.

She spoke his name. He could not hear her over the music. She reached for his shoulder through the open window.

“Hey, what’s your problem?” he said, jerking away in annoyance. Her veined hand drifted away in remorse, like a ghost.

She had less than a minute now.

“Tim,” she said. “I am Amy’s aunt.” It was only a small lie.

“So? What do you want with me? Is she sick or something? I’ve been waiting for her for over an hour.” He had never been so rude to young and beautiful girls.

“She’s not sick, Tim. She’s pregnant. Tonight her parents will pack her up and move her to a town called Wheeler, Oregon and you will never see her again. You must stop them. Tonight, Tim. You must help her.”

She never heard his reply. She felt an intense pain, as if a giant hand had grabbed her from behind and squeezed her. The parking lot, the Camaro, and the boy all faded to black.

She awoke in the same sterile room she had left just minutes before. She was lying on a cot. The attendant handed her a folder. “Is this you?” he asked.

She read through the dossier. Nothing in her life had changed. She closed the folder with a sigh.

The attendant tried to cheer her up. “Don’t feel badly,” he said. “The past never changes. No one would be allowed to go back if it did, you know.”

She understood, but she asked the attendant to look up Tim’s past anyway.

The attendant’s computer quickly churned out the information. “It says he died in a car crash in 1982 in Oregon.” At her look of surprise, he said, “Isn’t that what happened before?”

“Yes,” she said. “He died that year, but in Pennsylvania. He was on his way to a party.”

“Well,” said the attendant. “Maybe you’re misremembering. The past doesn’t change. Anyway, what difference would the place make?”

“None at all,” she replied, but she knew otherwise. It made all the difference in the world.