BG Sparrow

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲 || day 31 Pepsi Free (Free Day!)

After dinner, the boys continued to bicker their way into the living room about whether Marty was D. B. Cooper or not and, after Jules’s latest attack, if Marty would again take up the mantle with his feels so hurt.

“What if I’m D. B. Cooper?” Jules asked.

“Can’t be. I am,” said Marty.

“Prove it.”

“You prove it.”

“You can’t prove a negative!”

Doc smirked.

“They’re building a fort now. Don’t worry, they aren’t too near the fire.”

Clara smiled. She laid the dishes in the sink. 

“Just tell them not to use the good tablecloths and our bedclothes.”

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 31 Pepsi Free (Free Day!)

“You’re not D. B. Cooper!”

Marty put his fork down. He held Jules’s stink eye as he chewed his porkchop. He glanced around the dinner table; Doc and Clara hid their grins behind paper towels and Pepsi. 

“Jules, this aggression, this –” Marty released a dejected sigh. “When you invalidate who I am like this, it’s really hurtful.”

Jules stared at him.

“And you know what? I don’t have to prove it to you anymore,” Marty said. “I know my truth.”

“Well done, Jules,” Verne snipped. “You’ve offended him.”

“What?”

“Now he’ll never be D. B. Cooper again!” “He never was!”

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲 || day 30 Automobile Accident

“It’s just a fender bender, Mom,” Dave whined. “The car still runs just fine!”

“Your brother was in the car,” Lorraine said.

“He was wearing a seatbelt! He was fine! It wasn’t even my fault! The guy cut me off!”

Lorraine shook her head and swiped her vodka soda off the bar on her way to the patio.

“You’re grounded.”

“Mom!”

“You can catch the bus to work.”

“Oh, come on!” Dave shouted. “Biff’ll total it next week, and you won’t even sue him!”

“Not another word, David,” Lorraine warned.

“But Mom —”

The patio door slid shut.

“Damn it.”

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 30 Blindspot

A gentle knock came at Marty’s bedroom door.

“Sweetheart, wake up.”

Her voice was wrong.

Marty pushed himself up, seeing the emotion on his mother’s face he’d heard. His stomach sank when he saw the clock; he forgot to meet Doc last night.

Shit.

Lorraine sniffed. 

“Mom. What’s wrong?”

The police had no idea what to make of the scene. A pod of stolen plutonium was in the DeLorean, but when they went to Doc’s lab to find the case, the property was on fire. The Feds mysteriously showed up to seize the remaining assets.

“Can you take the dog?”

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲 || day 29 Something in the Mail

On Emmett’s eighteenth birthday, his father came home and proudly presented him with the mail.

“Happy birthday, son! There’s something special in there for you, I’d wager.”

“…Thank you.”

Emmett leafed through the envelopes until he found one addressed to him. 

From the courthouse. 

He set the other pieces of mail on the accent table and opened his letter under his father’s uncharacteristically wide grin.

“A-A jury summons,” Emmett read.

“Fantastic, isn’t it? Summoned on your first day eligible to serve! You’ll make a fine juror, son, a fine juror. Happy birthday.”

Emmett flashed a tight grin.

“Thank you, Father.”

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 29 24-Hour Scientific Services

As Marty prepared his cot for his first night in 1885, he moved a box of stuff Doc had taken out of the DeLorean before burying it. Sticking out was the newspaper Marty knew once featured Doc in a straitjacket.

“You won a civic award?”

“Is that so unbelievable?” Emmett chuckled.

“No offense, Doc, but you are kind of a recluse.” Civic awards were given to people who impacted the community, not hid from it.

“After Dean Wooster left, I did a weekly lecture on nuclear physics for the university’s night program,” Doc said. “My… background may have figured in.”

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲 || day 28 Boarding School

When Marty gets the Christmas gifts from his mom two weeks before the end of term, there’s a note telling him that, while he is so very missed, it’s best that he stays at the school over the holidays.

Marty feels guilty for being so relieved; he wanted to ask but didn’t know how.

He wanted to go back. Make sure she was okay.

But then he’d think about all the times she’d defended Biff and get mad.

The holidays weren’t bad in Switzerland. 

Lots of cocoa and gingerbread. 

A few others stayed, too, so he wasn’t alone. 

Just lonely.

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 28 On the Radio

“I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.”

Emmett slowly sat in the armchair opposite his mother as she shut off the radio.

We’re at war.

“Are you going to enlist?” his mother asked.

“Enlist? Mother, I had to register for a draft last fall. If the army wants me, they can pluck me up anytime, anywhere, including mid-lecture at Caltech next semester!”

Knowing his luck, he’d get his letter the day he started. 

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 27 Twin Pines Mall Santa

Lorraine grabbed Marty’s shoulder before he could run in line with the other kids, squinting at “Santa.”

“Is that Red Thomas?”

The drunken sway, the warbling accent; George would have been a fool to deny it.

“Uh, I… I can’t tell?”

“You can tell, George,” Lorraine whispered fretfully, “just as much as I can! What are they thinking?”

“Honey, he’s been out of work a long time,” George reasoned. “Maybe we can just give him a break, you know? It’s Christmas…”

“Santa” fell face-first off his throne.

“That’s it.” Lorraine turned Marty toward the exit. “We’re going to Pine City.” 

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲 || day 27 Lone Pine Mall Santa

In the Lone Pine Timeline, Red is paid some decent hush money to help clean up the mall parking lot. While there, he sees the BE OUR NEXT SANTA! flyer taped to the JC Penney doors and decides maybe he’s tired of sleeping on bus benches. It’s not like he can sleep with crazy youths today leaping over him at will.

He gets a tie and a haircut. Buys a few nights at the Y.

Sobers up.

“Yes,” he says at the interview, “that was me ten years ago, but I’m on a new path.”

And the kids love him.

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 26 Clara's Diphtheria

“Mr. and Mrs. Clayton,” Dr. Hawthorne said, “I do not wish to alarm you, but two more students in the schoolhouse have developed diphtheria.”

“Good gracious.”

“They sit on either side of Clara in the classroom.”

“Well, sh-she hasn’t presented with any symptoms, I don’t think –?”

Martha quickly shook her head. “No.”

“To err on the side of caution, the schoolhouse will close for the remainder of term. It is advised that asymptomatic children isolate for one month.”

A cough came from upstairs.

Daniel and Martha exchanged a startled look.

“With symptoms, three.”

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲 || day 26 "YOUTH JAILED"

“Oh, come on!”

Marty snickered as Verne planted his head on the edge of the table. The little red motels, green houses, and bowl of M&Ms rattled in protest while Marty gleefully plucked up Verne’s battleship and deposited it in JAIL.

“That is the fourth time!”

“You just can’t stay out of trouble, can you?” Jules mused, counting his colorful money.

“Give me $50! Bail me out!”

Jules laughed. “No.”

“Come on, Jules! I don’t even have a set yet! You have four!”

Jules glared at Park Place and Boardwalk in front of Marty.

“But not the one I want.”

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 25 The Honeymooners

George is still kind of shy around Lorraine’s family, but he musters the courage to be gracious when they invite him into their home time and again. 

By spring, George is a welcome presence in the Baines household, and given George’s household isn’t the right climate for such things, Mrs. Baines is thrilled to host George’s class president committee to paint posters and make buttons for the upcoming class elections.

And Mr. Baines is all too happy to roll the television into the dining room while they work so no one has to miss the latest episode of The Honeymooners.

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲 || day 25 Tennis Match

Marty was trying to figure out this tennis thing with his parents. It was driving him crazy.

“Why do they play tennis?”

Sure, his parents did very little together in the Twin Pines timeline, but how, in the Lone Pine timeline, had they become tennis people? Nothing in their personalities even suggested they were sports people, let alone tennis people.

“They helped me when I was in high school,” Dave said. “Remember? Then they just sort of picked it up for themselves.”

Marty made a face when his brother disappeared behind the newspaper again.

“You played tennis in high school?”

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲 || day 24 The Bottom of Clayton Ravine

Marty slid down the rest of the hillside on loose dirt, catching himself on a tree branch at the bottom.

Up the path, rowdy laughter and smashing glass beckoned.

Jennifer would kill him if she found out he’d come down here.

But Needles stole his wallet – and the money in it for the amp Marty had planned to buy after school.

The crowd of bleary-eyed teens quieted as Marty stepped into the firelight.

“You want a cold one, McFly? You funded this little party after all.”

Marty didn’t get his money back; he got a black eye.

Needles got two.

mcfly july 2024 || 🌲🌲 || day 24 Out in the Desert

Emmett wants to get better. 

Therapy helps. Medication helps more. But he’s not there yet.

He has no energy for sports. He refused insulin and electroshock.

But he’ll try the saxophone.

Trouble is, Emmett can barely hold a saxophone, let alone play one.

But he wants to get better.

He’s too embarrassed to play in his apartment; he left his window open the first night.

So, Emmett went out to the desert so no one could accuse him of strangling a dead goose.

“Hot Cross Buns?”

Emmett spins. “Dr. Oppenheimer.”

“You take requests?”

“If the request is ‘stop’, then yes.”