By the time first grade started, Jordan Downing was still the loudest kid in the room. First to interrupt the teacher. First to laugh when someone stumbled over a word during reading time. First to challenge other boys to see who could spit the farthest on the playground.
But now… I saw something else in him. Something I had missed the first time around: a flicker of uncertainty behind the bravado. A kid trying to figure out who he had to be to survive a world that wasn’t always kind. This time, I was watching.
I wasn’t trying to retaliate—not waiting for the next cruel prank. I just wanted to steer him. Gently. Like redirecting a paper boat in a shallow stream.
–
It started with math. We were paired together for a worksheet on counting by twos and fives. Jordan groaned and started tapping his pencil like a drumstick.
“I hate this stuff,” he whispered.
I leaned in. “You know it’s kind of like video game levels, right? Each number’s just another step up. You hit a pattern, and you coast.”
He blinked. “Like cheat codes?”
I nodded. “Exactly. Multiples are cheat codes.”
He looked at the worksheet again, then slowly grinned. “Ohhh… so two, four, six is like a power-up chain.”
From that point on, he didn’t complain as much.
–
Recess came next, a smaller kid—Caleb, with short blond hair—tried to climb the jungle gym and slipped. Jordan laughed. I felt my stomach twist.
Old Jordan would’ve laughed harder. Might’ve pointed. Might’ve turned it into a thing that haunted Caleb for months.
I stepped in. “He didn’t fall,” I said quickly. “He just jumped down like a superhero.”
Caleb blinked at me. Jordan looked confused. “He did?”
“Yeah,” I said, helping Caleb up. “Total hero landing. You saw it, right?”
Jordan stared for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. For sure. Superhero landing.”
Caleb beamed and ran off. Jordan looked at me. “You do that on purpose?”
I shrugged. “What?”
“You made it not suck for him.”
–
By October, we were hanging out more. Building Lego ships during free time. Swapping pudding cups at lunch. He still had rough edges, but I noticed something new—he listened. When I explained things, even small things, he listened. And he even started sticking up for other kids.
Once, when another boy mocked someone for crying after a scraped knee, Jordan snapped.
“Leave him alone,” he said. “It’s not weak. It just hurts.”
I watched in silence, stunned. That moment hadn’t existed in my first life. That version of Jordan would’ve been the one laughing.
One afternoon, we sat together in the sandbox, legs crisscrossed, trading fruit snacks and talking about how weird it was that grown-ups never let you pick your own bedtime.
He was quiet for a bit, then said, “Hey, you’re kinda smart.”
I froze.
“Not in a nerd way,” he added. “Just… like you see stuff other people don’t.”
I didn’t answer right away. I just shrugged. “I just pay attention.”
Jordan nodded and kicked some sand toward his sneaker.
“You think I’m gonna be bad when I grow up? My family says I’m going to be bad.” That hit me like a punch to the chest.
I turned to him. “No. I think you’re gonna be a really good person. You just gotta make the right choices.”
He blinked, eyes wide and serious. “Like what?”
I smiled and handed him the last red fruit snack. “Start with this: don’t be the kid who eats all the good ones without sharing.”
He laughed and popped it into his mouth. “Deal.”
*
That night, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling—the same ceiling I’d grown up under before… but now, it felt different. The room was the same, but something had shifted.
Because now I knew: change wasn’t about rewriting the past. It was about reshaping the future. If I could help Jordan become someone better—maybe I could help others too. One small, sticky graham cracker moment at a time.
–
At recess, Jordan still ran full-speed into everything—kickball, friendships, mud puddles. He didn’t think before he acted, which probably explained the permanent scab on his knee and the dirt under his fingernails.
But he’d started sitting with me more. Not in the awkward “I guess we’re both alone” way, but like he actually wanted to be there.
“Wanna build a fort?” he asked one day, holding a handful of twigs like they were rare currency.
“Sure,” I said, and we got to work under the big pine tree at the edge of the playground.
He talked the whole time—about cartoons, his dad’s weird collection of bobbleheads, the time he stuck gum in his cousin’s hair and blamed it on a ghost. I mostly listened, nudging him now and then. Made suggestions.
“Maybe don’t lie to your cousin next time. That was probably really scary for her,” I said lightly.
He paused. “Yeah… she cried a lot. I felt kinda bad.” Progress.
–
At lunch, I dropped stories like breadcrumbs.
“Yeah, my brother Patrick helped an injured dog once,” I told him. “He didn’t just walk past. He stayed with it. Got help.”
Jordan chewed his sandwich slower. “That’s cool.”
It wasn’t true—not exactly. Patrick wasn’t the stay-and-help type. Not then, anyway. Mostly, he was gone.
Always gone. He was older than me by a three years, but it felt like decades. In this life, just like the last, he was rarely home. He stayed with cousins, friends, our uncle out in Newport—anywhere but with us.
When he did show up, it was like a storm—loud, chaotic, and gone before you could get your bearings.
But I remembered the kid he used to be. The late-night snack raids. The games. The night he held me after Mom lost it again. I missed that version of him.
Now, he barely looked at me. I wasn’t sure if it was because I seemed different, or because he was just… tired of being in a house that never felt like home. But I was keeping notes. Trying to find a way to reach him too. Jordan, though? Jordan was still in front of me. Still moldable. Still mine to save.
_
One day, a kid named Alex tripped on his shoelaces and dropped his lunch. Jordan laughed. The old Jordan—the one from my first life—would’ve pointed, stepped on his lunch Mocked him and gotten everyone in on the joke. This Jordan stepped forward, knelt down, and helped pick up the sandwich.
“You okay?” he asked.
Alex nodded.
I watched from seat, heart beating harder than it should. A small moment. But seismic to me.
Later, while we stacked building blocks in the corner of the classroom, I leaned over and said, “That was really cool what you did for Alex.”
He smiled. “I dunno. I just didn’t feel like being mean.”
“Keep not feeling like it,” I said.
He nodded, like it actually made sense.
–
That night, Patrick came home. I heard the door slam. The muttered curse. The shuffle of shoes being kicked off.
He didn’t say hi. Didn’t even look at me. But I still left a soda and a sleeve of Oreos outside the bedroom door.
In my previous life, I would’ve barged in. Told him it was my room too. Gone out of my way to annoy him while he played Nintendo. But this time, I was older. Wiser. And not really a kid.
I had work to do. Plans to make. People to help. Small moves. One brother out of reach. One friend within it. I couldn’t change the whole world in first grade. But maybe—just maybe—I could change one kid at a time.
Later That Night
The house was quiet in that weird, uneven way it always was when Patrick came home. Not angry. Not loud. Just… heavy. Like the walls were holding their breath.
I heard him open the fridge, the crinkle of the Oreo wrapper I’d left by his door, the soft hiss of a soda tab popping open. No thank you. No footsteps toward me. Just the door to the our bedroom clicking shut again.
I stayed sitting on the floor in the hallway, knees pulled up to my chest, my favorite blanket wrapped around me like armor. I hadn’t meant to stay there long—I just wanted to see if he’d say anything. But now I was stuck in my own silence, listening to the buzz of the ceiling light above me and the clock ticking in the kitchen.
Eventually, the door cracked open. I looked up. Patrick leaned against the frame, can in hand, his eyes tired in a way that didn’t belong on a teenager. But he already wore the world like it owed him something and never paid up.
“You still do that weird waiting thing,” he muttered.
I blinked. “What?”
“You sit in the hallway. Like a puppy. You did that when you were little. Like you were just… waiting for someone to give a damn.”
The words hit harder than they should have. Not because they were cruel—but because they were true. I had waited. In both lives.
“Did I?” I asked softly, pretending not to already know the answer.
He nodded, then looked down the hall, like the weight of being here again was settling over him.
“Why’d you leave this time?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Mom’s on a warpath. And I hate the way Dad pretends not to notice. It’s like… nobody lives here. Not really.”
I swallowed the lump rising in my throat. “It’s not just you. I feel that too.”
He didn’t say anything. But he didn’t leave either. That was something. After a moment, I stood and padded over to him in socked feet. I reached out and gently tugged on the sleeve of his shirt.
“You could stay,” I said. “Just for a little while.”
Patrick looked down at me like I was a stranger. But maybe not a bad one. Maybe just… a confusing one. Then he let out a tired breath and reached out, mussing up my hair in the way big brothers do when they don’t know how to say they care.
“I might,” he said. “No promises.”
He turned to head back into the room, then paused. “You’re different.”
I froze.
“Smarter,” he added. “Less annoying. Still weird, though.”
He shut the door. But it didn’t feel like a goodbye. It felt like a maybe. And for now, maybe was enough.
He was right about our parents. They’d been fighting more and more lately, even though they were still trying—and failing—to keep it from spilling into the rest of the house.
In my previous life, Patrick had once told me he hated being at home, called it boring. But this time? It felt like he actually gave me a piece of the truth. It would be another year before Mom cheated on Dad, before the divorce reshaped everything. I’d wrestled with the idea of warning my dad, of preparing him somehow. But I was still just a kid. Grandma knew a little, but not all the details. I had explained as much as it hurts, we have to let it happen.
And honestly, there was comfort in knowing what was coming. In not changing too much, too fast. I had Jordan to keep an eye on. A brother who needed me—even if he didn’t know it yet.
J Cooper 