Prologue
    Sam had his eyes closed, but knew he was lying down in the back seat of a 
car. He felt something heavy on his body. He slowly opened his eyes, and was 
shocked that a sexy teenage girl was on top of him. He noticed that he had 
his white shirt already off.
    "Oh, Albert!" the teenager said. She sat up, and started to undo the 
buttons on her blue blouse.
    "Oh, boy!"



Chapter One
    
    As if God or Fate or whoever was leaping Sam around in time wanted to 
save him from teenage hormones. There was a knock on the window. "Hey, Al! 
You must be in there!" another teenager yelled who was standing near car 
door. "The windows are all steamed up again." The other teenage male checked 
his pockets. "Come on, Al! I know that if the car is a-rocking, don't come 
a-knocking, but the doors are locked and its below freezing again."
    Sam pushed the girl off him, which was difficult to do. He put on the 
shirt and beat-up brown jacket that was underneath him. The girl finished 
buttoning up her top, and smoothed out her pulled up skirt. Then, Sam pulled 
leaned over the front seat and pulled up the button to unlock the front door.
    "David?" Sam questioned as to whom the teenager was. David did not look 
any different than from Sam's last leap, when he leaped into Mrs. Viaggio.
    "Yah," the sixteen-year-old stated. "Sorry to interrupt your seven 
minutes in heaven with Mara Boychick, but it's snowing outside."
    Sam looked up at the rearview mirror as David's car started speeding down 
the crowded street. He had to turn his head several times to get a complete 
look as to who the leapee was. 
    The teenager he leaped into had black hair and dark eyes. It was not some 
stranger either. For the past few leaps, he was surrounded by people from his 
and Al's past life. Again, he had leaped into his present best friend. This 
time Al was in his mid-teens.
    David handed his "best friend" a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes as the 
two girls got out of the car. "Smoke up, bud," David told him as the car door 
slammed closed. 
    Sam looked out the window. Old tenements were rising high amongst litter 
run street. An old stripped car was in front of them near the sidewalk. He 
guessed that he was presently in one of the worst areas of the Bronx. 
Sam guessed the orphanage Al lived in, as a young person was around here 
someplace. Then he spotted it, a run down slum building with the sign Saint 
John's Home for Boys. He started to open the door, since he guessed David was 
dropping his friend "home."
    "You're coming to spend Christmas with us, aren't you?" David asked 
inquisitively.
     "Yes, I guess so." Sam figured that he would feel safer in a working 
class neighborhood rather than Al's old ghetto. He shut the door, and David 
preceded to drive to Author Avenue.
    "So, Al, what happened?"
    "Huh?" Sam asked David. David's question caught him by surprise.
    "So, did you see flashing lights?"
    "Yah," Sam answered, not knowing what he was talking about.
    "Cool," David said, grinning devilishly. "Smoke up, pal."
    Sam took out a cigarette, and inhaled. He coughed. "Maybe, I should quit. 
It's bad for my lungs." 
    "Not smoking is for losers, Al." Stopped at a 1950's style stoplight, 
David took one of his out of his shirt pocket and lit up.
     Sam watched the two cigarettes dwindle down to the filter-less bottom 
until the car pulled up to a large brick apartment building. The two 
"teenagers" got out of the car.
    "David and Albert, come upstairs right now," Mrs. Maria Viaggio yelled 
out of the window toward the street. She was waiting for the two boys to 
return home for almost an hour, and again they were late.
    David entered the building and walked up the five-story walkup. 
    Behind Sam, the Imagining Chamber door opened and closed. "The Love 
Mobile," he heard a grown up Al voice says. He took a long drag of his cigar, 
examining the Blue Chevy. "Boy! If this car could talk, the stories it would 
tell. There was this one girl -"
    "Al!" Sam said disgusted with his best friend's reminiscing.
    "Well, frankly, it's none of your business."
    "Actually, when I leaped in, one of your old girlfriends was attacking 
me."
    "Crikie! Mighty not alright, mate," Al said imitating the Crocodile 
Hunter. "Was it Mara?"
    "I don't know who the heck it was, but she lived in your old 
neighborhood."
    Ziggy was chirping angrily at Al for about a minute with Al hitting it 
once or twice.
    "Is there a problem?"
    "No, it's this damn mechanism Tina built into this hunk of junk last 
night," Al commented annoyed. "There were so many leaps into my past that my 
wife and daughter-in-law conspired to keep a track on me thinking about my 
wild past."
    Sam almost forgot that Al was now married for over 40 years with 12 kids 
and was completely faithful to his wonderful wife, Kelly.
    "So, do you know what I'm here to do?" 
    "You're here to . . ." he started. "To stop rob."
    "Who's Rob?"
    "I don't know." He gripped his cigar with his teeth to use both hands on 
the link. "No, to stop a robbery at Luigi's Five and Ten. I used to have a 
part time job there."
    "Oh, I didn't know you had a job as a teenager."
    "How else would I get money to go on dates with chicks?" Ziggy beeped. 
"With Boychick and the many other girls I dated."
    "I guess so," Sam said. Al did not have parents who he could hit up for 
cash.
    "By the way Sam, do you mind if my son, Joey, joins you? I promised that 
he would be able to leap when you were on your last mission. Frankly, I hoped 
he would leap into your life, since the younger you and him are already good 
friends and, well, you're a good influence on him. Maybe, I thought, he could 
help birth a cow or save Timmy from the well."
    "Timmy?"
    "You know like on Lassie."
    "Oh! Too bad!"  Sam paused for a second. "Al, do you know what date today 
is?"
    "It's Christmas Eve, 1950."
    Sam was shocked. He already guessed that it was forties, but hoped it was 
sometime after 1952 instead. "How can this happen? I mean if I wasn't born 
yet, then how can I go back this far?"
    "I'm really not too sure, but I was in the Accelerator Chamber when you 
leaped, so maybe that had something to do with it," Al said. "About my son, I 
think that maybe me and him have almost the same brain waves."
Sam had no idea on how Joey would take to entering his father's life when Al 
was Joey's age.


diana beckett