“What’s tonight?”

  “Aw, man—how hard did that guy hit you? The science fair, Mason. Tonight we present our project!”

  “Our project?” I echo.

  “What’s with you, dude?” He’s annoyed. “We’ve only been doing science fairs together since second grade.”

  “Yeah, bu—” How can I ever explain it?

  “Our time-travel project!” His voice is getting louder. “I know we’ve tried the topic before, but this time I think we nailed it!”

  One project—my mind is in overdrive trying to sort everything out. So there was no war on the stairs, which explains why I’m not expelled. And since the car accident came while I was driving home from my meeting with Dr. Lalonde, maybe that didn’t happen either.

  I find Coach Kovacs again. “Listen, Coach, since I’m out of the game anyway, is it okay if I head over to the science fair? Ty and I are presenting tonight.”

  He barely notices me. “Yeah, sure, kid.” He’s busy yelling instructions to our quarterback, who turns out to be Austin. The sight of him makes me think of my wild ride bouncing around the back of his brother’s van, five years—or just a few hours—ago.

  A few teammates high-five me as I exit the sidelines, including Miggy and, amazingly, Dominic.

  “Go kick some science-fair butt, Spaceman!” he wishes me.

  I’m so surprised to hear a civil word from the Dominator of all people that I blurt, “Sorry for breaking your phone.”

  He looks shocked. “You broke my phone?”

  “You know—when we were twelve,” I stammer, embarrassed.

  “Oh, that.” He grins—maybe the first time I’ve ever seen him crack a smile that wasn’t half sneer. “Your folks made you buy me a new one, remember? I got a nice upgrade out of it.”

  Wow, if a new phone was all it cost to keep that picture off the seventh-grade chat, then it was the best money I ever spent.

  I grab a quick shower and know a brief moment of fear as I’m toweling off. What locker did I use? What if I don’t know the combination?

  The changing room is open, but it won’t look good if I get caught going from locker to locker, rifling through everybody’s belongings. I get lucky on the fourth try—I find my Neil deGrasse Tyson T-shirt. I don’t recognize the other stuff, but the shirt is definitely mine. Who else on the team would own such a thing? There’s a varsity jacket that says PANTHERS FOOTBALL, with ROLLE stitched under the crest. Definitely me.

  Ty is waiting for me, and we make the short walk to the school. Instantly, my eyes are drawn to the parking lot. There it is, in the first row of cars: my Volkswagen Beetle, all in one piece—or at least as much in one piece as it was when I inherited it from Mom. I have to hold myself back from running over there just to touch it, and to run my hands over its beloved rust spots. How would I ever explain that to Ty?

  The evidence is mounting: no car accident, no expulsion, varsity athlete, friends with Ty. What else is different about my seventeen-year-old life?

  We enter the school and head straight for the double gym, where the science fair is housed. I take in row after row of colorful display boards, dioramas, experiments, and working models. This feels more like home than any gridiron, but I remind myself that this version of Mason has been playing football since seventh grade and made the varsity team. It’s not just the world around me. I’m different too.

  “I always love my first view of the science fair,” I tell Ty.

  He shoots me a strange look. “We were both here yesterday to set it up.”

  “You know, the whole gym, all filled up,” I put in quickly. “Yesterday, there were still a lot of empty tables.” It’s a guess, but Ty doesn’t call me out on it.

  I follow him to a large display in the third row. I’ve never laid eyes on it before, but I’d know it anywhere. It’s a perfect combination of the two projects that warred against each other on the stairs in that other life. Mine was Possibilities of Time Travel. His was Time Travel: The Possibilities. This one is titled Time Travel: Infinite Possibilities, and it’s a thing of beauty.

  I spot elements from both our entries: my International Space Station model, his collectible Buck Rogers action figure. We even decorated part of the background with the spinning-clock wallpaper Ava picked out for the project she did with Ty back in seventh grade.

  There’s a ton of research. Our booklet is more than three inches thick, and when I leaf through to the end, I wind up at here. Single-spaced. I guess that’s what you get in a world where Ty and I never become enemies and slice and dice our favorite topic for five extra years.

  I can’t help noticing a diagram similar to the one from the old Ty-and-Ava project—the one depicting a time traveler, choosing between two paths, A and B. Only in this drawing, every choice leads to other choices, splitting off and branching out until the figure faces an infinite number of futures.

  Time Travel: Infinite Possibilities.

  “You’re right, dude,” I breathe. “We finally nailed it.”

  “I see that your one-track minds are still on the same one track,” comes a voice from behind us.

  Ms. Alexander steps into our aisle. Wait—she should be Mrs. Nekomis by now. Or did I botch the future so completely that she could be almost anybody?

  Ty bails me out. “Hey, Mrs. Nekomis, what do you think?” he asks proudly.

  “Excellent work,” she approves. “It’s a fitting project for a couple of really bright seniors like you two.”

  I notice that she’s missing the bandage across her cheek and the ever-so-slight shiner under her left eye. The rush of relief almost knocks me just as flat as the tackle from the football game. I didn’t hurt my favorite teacher. It never happened. No fight on the stairs. No expulsion. It’s all coming together.

  The main event starts right on time at six. We all get boxed dinners, which we eat in front of our projects. We have to stay put in case the judges have any questions about our work. That’s another advantage of time travel as a topic—you don’t have to eat a bologna sandwich in front of a white rat who’s begrudging you every bite, or a beaker of bubbling chemicals that smell like sewer gas and would send you to the hospital if a tiny splash found its way into your potato chips.

  We can tell that the judges are really impressed by our project, because they spend a lot of time asking us questions about our research. Even I manage to sound like I know what I’m talking about—and in a way, I do. Okay, I had nothing to do with this particular project. But I’m the one who’s actually traveled through time. Most recently, just a couple of hours ago.

  We spend quite a while congratulating ourselves after the judges move on. I’m happy to report that I get our secret handshake exactly right without messing it up, like I did that time in my room.

  We’re pretty excited, almost celebrating, when a peculiar look finds its way onto Ty’s face. “Remember that time, back in seventh grade, when you told me you were from the future? What was the deal with that?”

  Maybe I owe him the truth, but I just know that if I try to give it to him, it’ll only mess us up again. He’ll never accept it. I’m not really sure I accept it myself.

  So I reply, “All I remember is we weren’t getting along. And I thought, what’s the topic that always brings us together? Time travel. It was a mistake. I never should have said it.”

  He nods slowly, taking it in. “You were right, though. Here we are, all these years later, and good old time travel is about to win us another science fair.”

  The judging takes forever. Eventually, the officials hunker down at the tabulating desk to finalize their results. An excited murmur buzzes around the gym. All eyes are focused on the big screen, where the winning projects will be posted.

  We stare. Time Travel: Infinite Possibilities comes in second place.

  “Second?” I complain in amazement. “What’s the matter with these judges? Like there’s anything better in this gym than our entry! What’s”—I squint at the big board—“‘the Abiotic Synthesis of Organic Compounds’?”

  “Dude!” Ty exclaims through lips that can’t seem to decide whether to turn down in a scowl or up in a grin. “We just lost to our own girlfriends!”

  “Wait—” Suddenly, the results of a science fair mean less than nothing compared with the words that have just come from my best friend’s mouth. “We have girlfriends?”

  31

  Seventeen Years Old

  A moment later, the answer comes. Ty’s girlfriend bursts out of the middle of the crowd and throws her arms around him. They fall into a celebratory embrace, congratulating each other on their one-two finish in the judging.

  I blink. I know her. That’s not exactly right. I recognize her. But the Clarisse Ostrov I remember from my other life at seventeen is very different from the smiling girl hugging my best friend. The Coke-bottle glasses have been replaced with sleek, stylish frames. And her gangly, stilt-walker posture has morphed into liquid athletic grace.

  I’m blown away. In middle school, Ty didn’t even like her. My ears are practically still ringing from his marathon gripe session when she joined our astronomy club five years ago. But now that I think about it, there was always a connection between those two. Ty’s constant complaining about her meant she was getting under his skin. And as middle school turned to high school, and high school progressed to senior year, that must have blossomed into something more.

  “Hey, second place,” she greets me playfully. I guess I’m still staring, so she adds, “You’re okay with this, right?”

  “Of course he is,” comes a voice from behind me.

  A hand on my shoulder spins me around to face my girlfriend.

  My heart skips a beat, maybe two. Maybe more. All the accumulated skipped beats of five lost years.

  It took half a decade and two different futures, but Ty and I finally know which of us ends up with Ava.

  I do.

  It sounds impossible, after the effort I put into staying away from her, being mean to her, moving heaven and earth to avoid ending up at Harvest Festival under the Tilt-A-Whirl. But as Ava and I slip into a comfortable embrace, I realize I should have known all along. No matter how hard I tried to keep my distance, fate kept throwing us together. She chose me—in two different timelines. She paid five bucks for me when no one else would bid a thin dime. My day as her butler is the best memory of my seventh-grade flashback. When Rufus disappeared, it was Ava who helped me find him. Even the clogged toilet at Victory Lanes was part of the cosmic conspiracy to send me back to Harvest Festival and Ava. What chance did any treaty ever have against that kind of destiny?

  “You bet!” I exclaim. “How could Time Travel beat the Abiotic Whatever? Congratulations! You too, Clarisse.”

  “We always knew we’d edge you guys out one of these years,” Ava puts in, exchanging a fist bump with her partner.

  “And we had total confidence in you,” Ty acknowledges. “In every way except for the part where it actually—you know—happens.”

  Clarisse fake-punches him in the jaw.

  “This is a double celebration for Clarisse,” Ty goes on proudly. “Did you guys hear about the track meet? Her time in the four hundred broke the old county record.”

  “She’s a cheetah,” Ava brags. “And a tyrant when it comes to science projects.”

  I remember that—even if I got parachuted out of the past before finding out how the judges graded our infinity mirror.

  Now that the judging is over, the gym doors are opened and family and friends troop into the science fair. The four of us split up to go find our folks.

  Mom, Dad, and Serena are among the early arrivals. The biggest change is in my kid sister. I left her as a nine-year-old fourth grader, and now she’s back to the high school freshman I remember. Slowly but surely I’m getting used to the idea that I’m home—not where I belong, but when. I’m back to my own time.

  Mom and Dad look a little older, too, but in their case the change isn’t as dramatic. I’m thrilled to see them together, until I get close enough to notice that the wedding rings are missing from their left hands. My father is carrying the keys to the Mustang he bought after he and Mom split up. A lot of things are different in this new timeline, most of them for the better. But all my wheeling and dealing didn’t stop the divorce.

  I’m disappointed, but in the long run, it’s probably better this way. It shouldn’t be up to me to fiddle with the direction two adults choose for their lives. I guess not every path leads to either A or B. Some of them just go to A.

  Dad pumps my hand. “Congratulations, kid!”

  I shrug. “We didn’t win, Dad.”

  He snorts. “Says who? Some dopey judges? What do they know about time travel?”

  “Nothing,” I agree. I’m the only one with firsthand experience, but good luck explaining that to the science-fair committee.

  “Second place is a lot to be proud of,” Mom interjects. “Besides, the girls took the top prize. They must be thrilled!”

  We tour the exhibits for a while until the crowd begins to thin. Dad leaves first, and a few minutes later, I head out with my mother and Serena.

  No sooner has the toe of my right sneaker hit the pavement of the parking lot than I hear a very familiar bark. From the partly open front window of the van Mom got when I inherited the Volkswagen, a huge fluffy head appears.

  “Rufus!” I breathe, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “Well, I had to bring him,” Mom explains reasonably. “You know what he does to the living room if you leave him alone too long.”

  I’m practically vibrating in my shoes. It’s more than a year after the date of the accident with the Roto-Rooter truck, and there’s Rufus, alive and well and squeezing himself through the gap in the window. He looks like a giant fluff amoeba, oozing out of the van in slow motion, braying in grievance all the way.

  Until this very second, I had no idea which path had been chosen for my dog—life or death. But as he explodes out of the van, drops to the ground, and hurls himself at me, whining and licking, I know that all my Roto-Rooter training paid off. I couldn’t do anything about Mom and Dad’s divorce. But a lot of other things went my way. And this—Rufus—is the ultimate bonus.

  “Your dog isn’t too bright,” Serena comments as Rufus continues to maul me. “You just left home a few hours ago, and he’s acting like he hasn’t seen you in, like, five years.”

  It brings me up short. Just for an instant, I toy with the idea that Rufus might have some kind of insight into the strange journey we’ve both been on. Oh sure, Rufus hasn’t got the brains to figure out what sit means. But it’s enough to make you wonder how much an English sheepdog can know about time travel.

  It takes some doing, but I help Mom and Serena stuff Rufus back into the van. “I’ll be right behind you,” I promise, and head for the VW on the other side of the parking lot.

  It feels funny to get behind the wheel. I’ve been twelve for a while, so my driving career has been interrupted by my detour through the past.

  I inch out onto the street, barely topping ten miles an hour. The last time I piloted this car, I crashed into a furniture van and woke up at a seventh-grade sleepover. That never happened in this timeline—and I want to keep it that way.

  I’m stopped at a light when a bright red Ferrari convertible pulls up beside me and guns the engine. I look over to check out who’s got a ride like that in a dinky town like Pasco.

  My breath catches in my throat. I goggle.

  It’s none other than Zelda Rappaport—Madame Zeynab. But instead of looking five years older, she seems younger, almost glamorous. She glances at me and winks. Then the light changes, and she disappears with a roar.

  About the Author

  GORDON KORMAN published his first book at age fourteen and since then has written more than ninety middle grade and teen novels. Favorites include the New York Times bestselling Ungifted, Supergifted, The Unteachables, Pop, Notorious, Unplugged, and the Masterminds series. Gordon lives with his family on Long Island, New York. You can visit him online at www.gordonkorman.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Books by Gordon Korman

  Pop

  Ungifted

  Masterminds

  Masterminds: Criminal Destiny

  Masterminds: Payback

  Supergifted

  The Unteachables

  Notorious

  Unplugged

  Copyright

  Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

  OPERATION DO-OVER. Copyright © 2022 by Gordon Korman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harpercollinschildrens.com

  Cover art © 2022 by David Miles

  Cover design by David DeWitt

  * * *

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021941315

  Digital Edition JANUARY 2022 ISBN: 978-0-06-289161-7

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-303274-3

  * * *

  2122232425PC/LSCH10987654321

  FIRST EDITION

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