Excerpt: The Day The Universe Changed

It was the first time Darcy Lewis had been here alone. She'd walked along the familiar rusty fence, looking over the elementary school children play maybe a hundred times now. Every time she looked at the same scene from a slightly different spot. Every time the device did some fancy technological thing that made it so she didn't meet herself. This was good. If it wasn't for this device defined by techno babble way over her head, there would be fifty copies of her standing in a row. While it might not interrupt any space time continuum, it probably would freak out the lady standing next to her. Darcy scanned the playground, looking for the little girl. She found her in the same spot she always did, reading a book by the big tree behind the slides.
“Excuse me,” said the lady who had been staring at Darcy for quite a few minutes now, “are you related to someone here or something?” Darcy smiled. She loved this woman's worry, her fear that Darcy was here for nefarious reasons. It was for this reason that she loved this time period more than anything else. Still, Darcy knew that even the deepest worries could be explained away easily. People didn't want to worry and would usually stop if given a good reason to.
“Oh, my little sister is over there,” Darcy answered, nodding to a large clump of girls playing with each others hair, “we had a long weekend, so I wanted to make sure she was okay.”
“Oh, that's very good of you to be so concerned,” the woman said with a reassured smile. The lady went back to doing whatever she'd been doing before. Darcy didn't really notice as it didn't matter to her. She was sure it mattered to someone, just not to her at this moment in time. Right now, after everything that had happened, the only thing that mattered was this little girl. Darcy looked at her watch, her stomach churning with the anticipation that never seemed to go away. It was something about this moment that made her feel so much. She watched as a familiar boy walked over to the little girl who was still reading her book. The boy kicked dirt into her lap. The girl dusted herself off, but kept on reading. The boy was mad. He yelled at her. Darcy always assumed that he called her names, but she'd never tried to walk close enough to find out what happened. The little girl stayed calm through this just as she always had, until he stole her book. At this she screamed, lunging for the precious object. Her fingers barely brushed up against the cover as jumped for the book the boy held high above his head. He shoved the girl into the tree, laughed, then through the book back to the girl. He walked away.
This was the moment the universe changed.