Hip-Hop Time Machine

10

"Jaz!" Eric yelled. "Jasmine! You're hit!"

I slumped over onto my butt and propped myself up with my right elbow, my left hand covering the wound. "I know," I exhaled. "The shit hurts like absolute hell."

"Move your hand," he said softly. " I wanna see how bad it is."

I winced as he slowly lifted my hand off the hole in my side. "How bad?" I asked, eyes closed.

"You're gonna live. But we need to get you to a hospital-"

"No!" I said sternly. "No hospitals. Take me back to the car."

"The car?" he asked. I nodded.

"The car will heal me. If I go back in time I'll heal and then I can come back." I don't want to confuse him anymore than I already have.

"Ok, ok, we're going back to the car. Can you walk? It's only a few houses down."

"I'll be fine," I told him. He helped me back onto my feet and we walked through everyone's backyards on the way back. My legs still worked fine but every time I moved to take a step with my left foot, a sharp pain radiated up so far it almost made me throw up. It was throbbing so hard.

We made it back to the car and he took my keys out of my hoodie pocket, unlocking the door. He opened it with one hand and helped me in with the other. I plopped down and started the ignition. He got in the passenger seat and then watched me frantically. I placed my hands on the wheel and closed my eyes while he sat next to me silently. 

Come on. I kept thinking about going back, but nothing was happening. I opened my eyes and looked over at him. "Did you go back?" he asked. I shook my head.

"No," I said, frowning. "Wait." I picked my head up. "Maybe because you're sitting in the car and you can't come to the future with me."

"Yeah? I'll hop out." He hurriedly opened the door and stood outside, peeking in the window after he closed it back up.

I closed my eyes again and squeezed them shut, gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white. Before I knew it, I opened my eyes and Brandon was to my left, leaning on the car door with his arms crossed. "So?" he asked.

"I did it," I told him with a smile. His face lit up. I looked down at my shirt. It wasn't bloody or ripped so I lifted it up to inspect my skin.

There was a little scar right where I had gotten shot. A scar that I hadn't had earlier that day.

"What happened?" he asked, noticing the scar.

I looked up at him and grinned. "Drive-by shooting," almost laughing. "He didn't get shot, but I did. I told him to help me back to the car so I could heal."

His face dropped. "He knows?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, I had to tell him. We got into a small fight because we went to walk the pier and saw Suge there so we had to go, but I went about it the wrong way so I had to tell him the truth. I'm really getting through to him. Like I think we're really forming a friendship."

"I haven't gotten this far before," he admitted. "But I think shit's gonna get real, real soon. He already bypassed the time where he was supposed to start his decline, so fate is still trying to take him, you know?"

"That makes a lot of sense." Thinking about it, it didn't happen long after he would have gotten injected. But at the same time, anyone could have wanted to kill him. Bloods, Suge, Dre, and it was South Central.. Dangerous enough as it is. "Maybe?"

"Do you think you can keep him and yourself safe?" Brandon asked.

"I think so. I can try. But also, he asked me to stay in his time. He asked me a few questions that I didn't really know how to answer, but I thought you might."

"Yeah? Seems like you too are getting close," he winked. "What did he ask?"

"If I stay in his timeline, and age, will you notice when I come back? Or am I young again? Will anyone notice if I do age instantly? If I get a tattoo, will I come back and still have it? Or does it only exist in that timeline?"

"Those are good questions, to be honest. I never spent enough time in that timeline to be able to answer that, nor have I gotten a tattoo, so I don't even know. You can see, though. I'd start by getting the tattoo. Come back here and see if it's still there. Obviously we know that if you get injured and come back, you have a scar from where you were hurt."

"Also, he can't be in the car while going back and forth, it won't work. Earlier when I was hurt and trying to get back, he was sitting in the passenger seat, and I couldn't travel until he stepped out of the car."

"That I didn't know either," he told me. "I never tried to travel back while he was in the car."

"I'm slowly becoming really confident about this. He's a completely different person than the media makes him out to be. I really like him."

"Maybe it's because you're a female?"

"I don't know, maybe." I didn't think of that before. "It might just be easier to get close to him as a girl. I don't think he met Tomica yet."

"I'm not sure, but if you guys do become a thing, I'd stay in his timeline. It might be hard but you could try to explain it to your sister and just come back to visit and test the aging theory. See if you're young again or if you're still older when you come back. If you don't age, then you could almost one-hundred-percent get away with going back and forth with no issue whatsoever. Or, just continue living a double life. He already knows, so you may not have to explain to your sister what's going on."

"She'll for sure think I'm crazy."

"Maybe, but it wouldn't hurt to try."

"You might be right." I could only imagine if my sister came to me telling me she was a time traveler. I'd laugh in her face. It's not every day that you come into contact with a so-called time traveler, ya know? "I'll test the waters, and let you know. For now, I might spend a while back in '94. I needed to heal, so that's why I came back."

"You're good. It's not like time is gonna pass here, so I won't have to wait long at all," he laughed. "Or at all, period."

I chuckled, and placed my hands back on the wheel, envisioning where I last was, back in 1994..