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was oatmeal. Grandpa was nowhere to be seen. I glanced at the clock. 6:20 a.m. I grimaced. It felt like I had been up for hours.
    I scanned the group for the boy, Dean, who was supposed to be my father. His gangly skinny body sat with folded hands, a thatch of brown hair covering his forehead and freckles dotting his cheeks. A scene flashed through my mind of a recent fight we’d had before the trip to Minnesota. I would take it all back now, if it meant leaving this hellish sentence I served, being stuck in the past. It was ironic, me playing the part of my Aunt Sarah. My entire life I had hated being compared to her, and now I was her. It was enough to make me want to throw up again.
    I took the last available seat at the table, trying to figure out the “who’s who” of my temporary siblings. Rodney and Bobby were easy, as were the twins Laura and Linda in their highchairs. After running through the names and picturing their portraits from the stairway, I figured out Louise, Matthew, Patrick, Joyce, and Janice based on their size and recognizable features. It was funny how it all seemed so obvious now, what I had missed before. My father’s family wasn’t something you could quite ignore or forget.
    I spooned several scoops of sugar onto my oatmeal, trying to make it edible while listening in on the conversations at the table.
    Before I knew it, everyone had finished and disappeared through the door, leaving a stack of dirty dishes and two fussy toddlers. I felt sorry for whoever had to do the nasty, crusted pile of dishes. Offering the twins a spoon coated in sugar, I sat back to contemplate my next move.
    Gran appeared from the pantry and took the twins from the room, hefting their chubby bodies, one in each arm, with little effort.
    I sat at the table in a numb state. What was I supposed to do now? It’s not like there’s a list or anything. Maybe I could sneak upstairs for a nap.
    As if reading my mind, Louise stumbled through the door hauling a five-gallon bucket of water. Some of the water sloshed to the floor, but she didn’t seem to notice.
    “Here,” she said, “I’ll go get the rinse water.”
    “Oh,” was all I managed to say, realizing the nasty crusted pile of dishes had been left for me. I eyed the bucket with curiosity. Now what? If I couldn’t do the simplest of chores, what would the family think then? There was no way I could pretend to be Sarah, but until I could figure out why I was there, I would have to muddle my way through.
    If I served my sentence, then maybe the god of time travel would let me go home .
    I could only hope.
    I plugged the sink with a rag and poured some of the cool well water into the reservoir on the wood stove. Waiting for the water to come to a boil, the little bubbles slowly forging their way to the surface, I let my mind wander, thinking about all the things I had heard about Sarah. Of course, I already knew I looked like her. But what about her personality? What about the details of her mysterious death?
    Her death. The bare facts I learned as a child came to me all at once, weakening my knees. I grabbed the edge of the sink, the same nauseous, dizzy feeling from before overwhelming my senses.
    If everything were true – if I had come back to the year 1960 and I really had taken the place of Sarah, and the family had just celebrated her fifteenth birthday last night… with all these things in place there was one thing I could know for sure. If I happened to be around in August, two months from now…. then I was supposed to die.
     

Chapter Four
    The Bright Side?
     
    The screen door to the porch screeched and slammed shut, startling me out of a dazed stupor. I turned from the sink and suppressed a gasp. The most beautiful boy I had ever seen was walking across the kitchen in my direction.
    His ice blue eyes pierced me to my soul. I found myself entranced, as if everything around me had turned slow motion. It wasn’t possible, but I couldn’t help but feel