The Dead End... OR IS IT?! (Dun Dun Duuuuun)

Memory number sixty-three...

Welp, here it was.

The end of the line.

You sighed as you watched over the scene of Tiffany and Zeke making out with each other in the hallway, right in front of a heartbroken Past John witnessing all of this from a few feet away.

Past John didn't show any expressions that hinted he was in any pain or anguish. To the normal bystander, it just seemed like he was watching the scene with a completely calm and neutral expression.

But you knew better than that, since you were once him a long time ago.

Tiffany and Zeke finally broke off from their kiss, as Tiffany giggled, "Wow... You're a really good kisser..."

"I know, babe." Zeke told her confidently, "One of these days, you'll find out that I'm good in a lot of areas where it matters the most."

Tiffany blushed and giggled again as she lightly slapped Zeke in the chest, "Oh god, shut up! We're in public, what if someone nearby heard you say that?"

"They'd be totally jealous, I think." Zeke chuckled, before leaning in closer to her and cupping her chin, "Besides... Isn't it better if people watched and listened in on us?"

"Oh, Zeke..." Tiffany completely melted against his touch as they both began making out all over again.

Past John calmly closed his locker and made his way to his next class, ignoring the two lovebirds. Tiffany never looked or noticed his presence, completely engrossed with the dashing bad boy in her mouth.

You awkwardly stepped out of the way as Past John walked by, scratching your neck at the scene.

"Yikes. It's just as painful the second time around." You muttered, cringing at the memory.

You knew this memory well like it was painted on the back of your hand. From time to time, you would remember and think back on this moment every time you saw Tiffany and Zeke going at it in high school. After this moment, you would eventually go to the nurse's office on the basis that you weren't feeling well, before Mom would come and grab you to go back home. For the next week after, you would then suffer through the worst depression period in your entire life, literally bedridden from a broken heart. Despite going about it in the worst cringe-inducing way, Tiffany was still the first girl you've ever been serious about. For that brief moment in time, you genuinely thought that nothing in the world mattered anymore if you didn't have Tiffany in your life.

It didn't take until Shelly decided enough was enough and bullied you out of bed before she took you out on a joyride in a car she just bought to get you out of your funk. She took you all across the town, forcing you to look and observe the daily goings of all the passersby going about their day.

"Every single one of these people, the men, the women, they all went through what you went through. Hell, even I went through it a few times myself. It's not unique, it's not special, it's not the end of the world." She had told you, opening your eyes with a newfound perspective on life. "Tiffany was just one girl, and there are billions of them all over the world. She wasn't the one for you, that's all. So get over it."

It was the blunt harsh truth. In your opinion, she could have told you about it in a more polite roundabout way...

But if it wasn't for her, you'd probably have spent the next years in both middle and high school as some wannabe-edgelord, talking about how life is meaningless and that **** is the true escape from prison or whatever.

Eugh, now that you think about it, that would have been a horrible way to live life. You shuddered at the thought of such a potential future. Thank god for Shelly's tough love approach.

Still, even after moving on all these years ago, seeing this scene play out all over again was a downer to experience.

Following Past John as he emotionlessly stepped into his classroom, you offered him a consolidated, "Hey man, don't sweat about it. In the future, these two break up, and you end up falling in love with a hot highschool history teacher instead. It'll all work out later."

Past John didn't react, obviously not hearing you or even knowing you existed in the first place.

You still can't seem to break the habit of talking to yourself for some reason. Hm... This must be the other John's fault.

---

"ACHOO!" John sneezed loudly, before sniffling to himself.

"Gesundheit." One of his friends sitting next to him offered, conjuring up a box of tissues for him.

"Ugh, sorry." John apologized, taking a tissue and blowing on it. "My other self must be talking shit about me, I think."

"You said he was messing around with his memories, right? You sure he's gonna be safe doing that all alone?"

"Bah, he'll be fine." John waved away dismissively, before rolling a pair of dice, "C'MON TOP HAT, DON'T LAND ON BOARDWALK!"

The dice landed on a 4, making a guy dressed in a giant Top Hat costume move a few spaces before he landed on Boardwalk.

"GAAAAAAAH, GODDAMMIT!" John shouted frustratingly, throwing his monopoly money on the floor in a tantrum fit.

A few seats to the left of him, he could hear a cackling dolphin having the time of its life as all the money John threw on the floor magically flew over to its side.

"FUCK YOU JERIMIAH FROM SEA WORLD!" John declared loudly, much to the smug amusement of the cackling dolphin.

---

Speaking of, you wondered what he was up to all by himself? Maybe he was still waiting around for you to be done here, back in the Labyrinth hallways.

Back on topic...

Now that you've reached the endpoint of your memories involving Tiffany, you seriously had to wonder if you missed anything the first time around.

Throughout your whole entire session traveling through your memories, not once did you ever find the memory of you and Tiffany becoming friends with each other. It was honestly ticking you off at how stupid the whole thing was.

What exactly were you doing wrong? Was this even your fault to begin with?

Were you looking in the wrong areas? A few memories right before this one, where Tiffany bumped into you and made you drop your stuff, she had already known your name at that point despite having no previous interactions with you before. That should be a hint that you've overlooked something without realizing it.

At that point in the memory, it almost seemed to suggest that you and Tiffany became friends already, which was how she even knew your name. But based on how Past John reacted, it seemed clear that even he didn't recognize it and was just as surprised as you were.

Was it possible, somehow, that this went back even farther than you thought?

Pulling out the note you made to yourself from your pocket, you looked over it in curiosity.

There was also the way your old friend Conner regarded Tiffany as someone he didn't really like anymore. For all your time together, you never even knew that Conner and Tiffany had ever even met each other face to face before. Maybe they never did, but the way he talked seemed to suggest that he at least knew her at some point to make him originally like her.

Is it possible that this was the link that was missing from your mind?

...

"Welp, not like I have any other leads." You shrugged.

Pulling out your remote control again, this time you expanded the boundary of requirements your memory needs by making sure that all memories you wanted to see was somehow directly related to either Tiffany and Conner, or even both at the same time. The starting point and endpoint should still be the same, so you're only going to revisit the memories you had right after you started having a crush on Tiffany.

With this now in mind, you wondered to yourself how much could Conner play a role in helping you find out more about the relationship you and Tiffany had. Some part of you was optimistic that following him will lead you to reveal everything you needed to figure out about Tiffany.

A large part of you really doubted it would lead to anything major though...

---

Memory number six-

"Can't believe she sits over at the popular table now." Conner grumbled as he munched away on a french fry, "She's different than how I remembered her."

Welp, never fucking mind then! APPARENTLY IT WAS JUST A HOP, SKIP, AND JUMP AWAY-

"Are you fucking kidding me?! You couldn't have shown up in one of the other memories to say that?!" You shouted frustratingly in Conner's face.

Past John didn't seem to register what Conner said though since he was already in the middle of search mode to see where Tiffany was today. Today was one of the rare days where Tiffany doesn't show up to school for some reason.

With a sigh, Past John turned back and grumbled, "She's not here today..."

"After all these years, I couldn't believe that she would just up and abandon her old friends just to go and hang out with the people who used to bully her relentlessly." Conner shook his head disappointedly, "I never figured her to be the hypocrite."

So this proves it then. Apparently, Conner has known Tiffany much longer than you ever did. What kind of relationship they had, you had no idea, but you were very eager to find out more.

You sat by and watched silently as the two kids went about their day with the conversation.

"Who are you talking about?" Past John raised an eyebrow.

"Who do you think I'm talking about?" Conner grunted, "Back in the old days, she used to be picked on by those people all the time for over the tiniest reasons. They would call her fat, or ugly, or four-eyes, and whatever. Now she comes back, and all of a sudden the same people are all smiles and rainbows with her as if the past never happens, and she just eats it all up on a silver platter. She should know better by now..."

"..." Past John furrowed an eyebrow, before asking, "Are we talking about Tiffany Brian?"

"OBVIOUSLY!" Conner gave an incredulous look over at Past John, as if it should have been clear to him from the beginning. "Come on, man! Get with the program!"

"Wait, what's the problem with Tiffany Brian again? You seem pretty upset about her for some reason." Past John obliviously asked.

"Everything about her! She comes back to school like an entirely different girl and instead of going back to her original friends who's been with her from the start, she's ditching that to go hang out with her cool new friends who originally bullied her for all she's worth!" Conner ranted, "I mean, doesn't that just piss you off too?!"

Past John cluelessly shrugged, "I dunno. I mean, it's not like I knew her before or anything."

For some reason, this seemed to sadden Conner as he calmed down and gave a melancholy sigh, "That... is a good point... I never really got to know her better either. For all our time hanging out, I never did take the opportunity. She was always so shy and quiet, it sometimes made you forget she was ever in the room with you in the first place." With another sigh, he gave a facepalm, "Teasing her probably didn't help much. Maybe she just didn't want to come back to that now that she's different."

What in God's name is he talking about right now?

"I can't believe she would willingly choose to hang out with her bullies over us though. That's the part I can't forgive." Conner muttered bitterly, before dismissing it, "Whatever. No point dwelling on it now. She can do whatever the hell she wants, not like I care anymore."

Past John raised an eyebrow, but didn't bother questioning further as he went to eat his lunch in comfortable silence.

Conner did the same, chowing down on fries and cheese.

...

"Wait, that's it?" You sputtered, looking between the two in shock, "That's the whole conversation?! The fuck? NO!"

Slamming your hand down on the table, you leaned in closer to Conner's face and shouted, "COME ON! KEEP GOING! Tell me more about who Tiffany was like in the past! What was your relationship together?!"

Turning to Past John, you angrily got up to his face and shouted, "John, you piece of human garbage! Why are you not asking for more information?! Why won't you ask him to elaborate?! ASK HIM HOW HE KNEW TIFFANY IN THE FIRST PLACE!"

Expectedly, neither of the two responded to your outburst.

Unable to quell your incoming rage, you proceeded to throw a massive tantrum in the middle of the cafeteria, screaming like a crazy banshee all over the place as you pulled on your hair in frustration.

"WHY IS EVERYTHING ABOUT TIFFANY BRIAN SO VAGUE AND CRYPTIC?! I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHO SHE IIIISSSS!"

How does Conner know about Tiffany beforehand? How did they meet each other? Were you a part of that or was that a separate event? Where did Tiffany and Conner first meet before Tiffany transferred to this middle school? What did he mean when he said that he used to tease Tiffany back then? How different was she before she transferred schools? Why was Tiffany so utterly convinced you and her were friends in middle school when you can barely even remember a single thing about her?!

Using up all your energy to let your rage out, you eventually wear yourself out as you tiredly walk back to the lunch table where Past John sat.

Sitting across from them, you crashed your face flat on the table and groaned depressingly, "I'm so fucking tired of all this shit."

What were you supposed to do now? Should you keep going down these memories to see if Conner will ever mention Tiffany again? It seemed so unlikely for that to be the case, seeing how dismissive he was about the topic and didn't want to talk anymore about it.

Add in the fact that it's unlikely for your past self to even have the brains to even THINK about talking to him about Tiffany, it just seemed even more impossible for that to be the case.

God, what were you doing wrong here? Why do you keep going into dead ends?

How the hell are you going to help Tiffany now if you can't even figure out who she was to you in the first place?

Gaaaaaaah...

"Somebody tap me out, please. I can't handle the stress anymore..." You groaned.

Just a hint. Just a small tiny nudge to the right direction. Literally anything at this point, please oh please, just give some kind of sign so that you knew where to go now and what to do next.

Right then, Conner gave a sigh as he mentioned, "You remember back when we used to be part of a group during lunch?"

"A group?" Past John asked, "You mean like back with Tabitha, Traci, and Shelly?"

Conner wistfully looked back at the old times, "Yeah... We weren't exactly the tightest group in the world, but we were at least able to talk to each other about stuff, you know?"

At his reminder, you thought back to the old days when you used to be part of a large group of friends in middle school. It was the year before Tiffany transferred to your school, you think...

There used to be five of you that always hung around during lunch since it was the only time you were all able to hang out with each other.

There was Conner, the only other guy in the group besides you. Out of all of them, he was the smartest since he usually took special classes that were high above anyone's grade at the time. He was supposed to be on his way to skipping a few grades to go to high school early, but insisted he would stick around since he wanted to live out his childhood youth with you.

There was Shelly, your sister. Very rarely would she actually come to hang out with you and your group of friends ever since she hit puberty, but on the off days when she decided to stop being a bitchy older sister, she would sit at your lunch table to talk about things with the others. She wasn't able to stick around long, since the very next year, she would already graduate to high school.

Tabitha was the second girl in your group. You remembered that you all usually called her Tubs for short. It was an affectionate nickname made in good spirit, although you'll admit that she probably didn't appreciate it very much. Always the silent type, never one to speak up first unless called upon.

Traci was the last girl in your group, about as old as your sister. She, too, had to leave the very next year since she was also graduating to go to high school. She was also Tabitha's older sister, if you remembered correctly. Much more outgoing and girly compared to Tabitha, that's for sure. She was always pretty cute, but a bit too girly sometimes, much to your annoyance.

Still, you had a pretty good friendship going on with all of them. Even though the group only lasted for a single year, the memories you had with them weren't entirely unpleasant. By your standards, that meant a lot to you.

Those were fun days.

"It was good while it lasted... It just sucks that we couldn't be together just a little bit longer." Conner lamented.

"Yeah... it really does kinda suck, doesn't it?" You muttered in agreement, even though you knew that he couldn't hear you.

Past John didn't seem to care, as he gave an indifferent shrug and kept eating.

Leaning against the palm of his hand, Conner wondered out loud, "I wonder if she still remembers those days too."

"I'm sure she does." Past John responded half-heartedly.

...

...

...

WAIT, WHAT?!

"Pause! PAUSE THE MEMORY FOR GOD SAKES!" You shouted in a panic.

At your command, the entire world paused in place.

Scrambling from your seat, you went over to sit right next to Conner and observed his face as you demanded, "Replay the last thing he said!"

Time rewinded for just a bit, before resuming for Conner as he repeated, "I wonder if she still remembers those days too."

She? Who is she? Which she was he talking about?

Tabitha? Traci? Shelly?

Why so vague? Why refer to the girl in a singular fashion? Why wasn't it 'I wonder if they still remember those days too?' Why ask that in such a deliberate way as if to suggest that he was referring to someone they were only recently just finished talking about?

Does Past John even know which she Conner was referring to when he responded back?

Was it possible... could it be?

Was... was there a chance that Tiffany Brian might have been a part of your group of friends a year before you ever even met her, somehow?!

WHAT KIND OF TIME PARADOX IS THIS SHIT?!

HOW IS THAT EVEN PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE?!

Unless... You were wrong? Wrong about everything entirely?

Could it be that your first time meeting Tiffany wasn't back when she transferred schools, but somehow long before it?

Did she ever even transfer schools in the first place?

...

Why were you so convinced and insistent that she had transferred here from a different school? Where did you learn that in the first place? You had always assumed that she came from a different school, but did she ever confirm that with you? Was that ever an established fact, or was it something you just thought was true without fact-checking?

If what you assumed was wrong this entire time... Could it be that Tiffany had always gone to this school from the beginning?

In that case, why didn't you notice her before then? Why did she only just now popped up on your radar during the middle of your middle school years?

Nothing about this makes any sense whatsoever...

...

"Rewind the memory just a bit further. Back when Conner was talking about how he used to tease Tiffany." You commanded with a hand wave.

The memory rewinded back again to a few minutes earlier, making Conner repeat, "That... is a good point... I never really got to know her better either. For all our time hanging out, I never did take the opportunity. She was always so shy and quiet, it sometimes made you forget she was ever in the room with you in the first place." With another sigh, he gave a facepalm, "Teasing her probably didn't help much. Maybe she just didn't want to come back to that now that she's different."

...

Shy and quiet, to the point where you sometimes forget she was ever in the room in the first place. That was how he described her...

There was a chance that you were crazy. No, in fact, you're about fifty percent sure that you're already losing it because of all these newfound dream manipulating powers.

But you had a small theory working around in your head...

Is it possible... that Tiffany Brian used to be a part of your friend group...

And you just never noticed her? Or even remembered that she existed?

If this is true... If there was a chance that this was even remotely possible for you...

You must be the most inconsiderate douchenozzle in the entirety of existence itself.

You didn't really want to entertain the idea that this might be true. But after everything that happened, you wouldn't be surprised if you suddenly forgot a close friend simply because you never even considered her to be one in the first place.

It was a depressing thought that made you realize how potentially selfish and ignorant you were back in middle school.

But you didn't have any other leads besides this one.

On the off chance that she was seriously a part of your large group of friends, then that meant that she had to have shown up at least some point in your memories.

It would make sense how she seemed so convinced that you two were both friends back in middle school.

It would make sense how she though thought you decided to avoid her once she started dating Zeke.

It just wouldn't make sense how you could easily forget her or why you didn't get a crush on her in the first place.

Still... Since this was your only lead, you had **** but to follow it to see where it lead.

If this ends up being true, you might be able to learn more about Tiffany to find out how she changed so drastically and how she got her Inner Demons.

With a long and huge sigh, you stood up and pulled out your remote control again. "Take me back a year earlier. Take me to a memory where I was hanging out with all my friends as a group."

At your command, you watched as an entire year of your life went by in reverse in silence.

"I seriously hope this will be over soon. I'm so tired..."