By the time Derek and I emerged from the makeshift studio, the morning had aged into early afternoon, time slipping away like vinyl through fingers. Three missed calls from my mother pulsed on my phone's dim display, each one a heartbeat of anxiety. In my previous life, I'd merely failed a test today. Now I'd missed it entirely—my first deliberate deviation from the timeline I knew, spreading ripples I couldn't begin to calculate.
The bodega's bell chimed our exit with casual betrayal. Rico stood at the counter, dark eyes taking in our disheveled appearance with that particular mix of amusement and calculation I'd come to know so well over the years. Twenty years younger than my last memory of him, he still carried himself with that same coiled energy, like a chess master perpetually three moves ahead.
"Education taking a holiday, hermano?" His voice held no judgment, just curiosity. The Rico I remembered had always seen potential where others saw problems. It's what had made him the greatest manager in the business—would make him, could make him, if I played this right.
"Sometimes you got to follow the music," I said, watching his reaction carefully. In my original timeline, it would be another three months before Rico took interest in my work. Three months I couldn't afford to waste this time around.
"That what you were doing up there? Making music?" He leaned forward slightly, interest sparking. "Or just making noise?"
Derek started to bristle at the implied criticism, but I caught his arm. "Why don't you play it for him?" The words fell into place like perfectly timed beats. "Show him what you did with those string samples."
Rico's eyebrows lifted a fraction. Most kids would have tried to play their own track first, promote themselves. By highlighting Derek's work instead, I'd already changed the script from our first meeting. The ripples spread wider.
"You got fifteen minutes?" I asked Rico, letting just enough hunger show in my voice. "Promise it's worth your time."
He studied us for a long moment, then reached beneath the counter for the store keys. "Fifteen minutes. Then you both better have passes for being late, or I don't know nothing about where you were."
The studio felt different with Rico there, its limitations more glaring under his professional gaze. But when Derek started the track, now layered with our morning's additions, the room's shortcomings fell away. I watched Rico's face as the music played, catching the subtle nod of his head, the slight widening of his eyes at the bridge section. He'd heard something—the same something he'd heard three months later in my original timeline.
"You produced this?" he asked Derek when the track faded.
"We both did," Derek said, gesturing to include me. "Marcus fixed the drum patterns, added that counter-melody in the hook."
Rico's attention shifted to me, more focused now. "You got more?"
The question hung in the air like suspended notes. In my pocket, my phone buzzed again—my mother, certainly furious by now. The responsible answer would be to wait, to let things unfold as they had before. Safer. More predictable.
But I hadn't come back just to trace the same patterns.
"Give me two days," I said, thinking of the folders of unfinished ideas that had died in my old timeline, casualties of too little time and too much self-doubt. "We'll have something that'll change everything."
"Two days?" Derek looked at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I had. But I'd spent twenty years learning what worked, what moved people, what lasted. Even with primitive equipment, I could translate that knowledge into something unprecedented for 2004.
Rico nodded slowly, that chess-master mind already moving pieces we couldn't see. "Two days. And if it's as good as you think..."
He left the possibility hanging, but I could fill in the blanks. Management. Connections. The start of everything, accelerated by three months and approached from a completely different angle. The timeline shuddered and shifted around us like a remixed track.
My phone buzzed one final time before going still. Outside, the afternoon sun painted long shadows across the Bronx streets, marking time's passage with the same indifference it had shown the first time I lived this day. But as Derek and I finally headed toward school, I felt the weight of the future settling differently on my shoulders.
Some missed tests could be made up. Some missed chances never came again. The trick was knowing the difference—and being brave enough to choose when the moment came.
"You really think we can put something together in two days?" Derek asked as we walked.
I smiled, hearing twenty years of music in my head, possibilities arranging themselves into new patterns. "Trust me," I said. "This is just the beginning."
And somewhere in the distance, a car stereo played a Beyoncé track, her voice carrying across time like a promise of things to come.