Back To The Future

“Because you’re a kid. Kids go to school. Your parents are kids. They go to school. You interfered in your parents’ relationship. Therefore, you have to go to school to fix the damage you did.”

“Can’t I just hang round before and after classes? I mean, school was boring in 1985. When I think how dull 1955 will be, it blows my mind.”

Doc Brown shook his head. “You can’t afford to fool around now. There’s less than a week we have to work with, right?”

Marty nodded.

“So you have to use every available minute to get them together. Otherwise, you won’t exist in the future. It’s as simple as that.”

He stepped back to look at Marty’s new outfit. “Not bad,” he said. Reaching into the shopping bag, he pulled out a final purchase—a bottle of Vaseline hair tonic. As soon as he unscrewed the top, Marty curled his lip.

“Look, Doc,” he murmured. “I’ll admit that these threads are pretty cool. But you’re not putting that greasy shit in my hair.”

“Why not? A lot of the kids wear it.”

“It looks terrible. And who knows what it contains? I mean, it might give me cancer.”

“You need it for your disguise,” Brown said. With that, he started combing some of it into Marty’s hair. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “This is supposed to very fashionable, for both kids and grown-ups.”

“Well, then how come you don’t use it?” Marty challenged.

“It’s also very flammable,” Doc replied.

“Great.”

Doc Brown stopped combing Marty’s hair, but seemed as if he wasn’t quite finished. He looked sideways at the effect, not sure it was right.

“Allow me,” Marty said, taking the comb.

Going to the mirror, he started combing the hair back along the sides and forced an errant curl to fall down across his forehead.

“If I’m gonna go through with this,” he explained, “at least I’m gonna look like Elvis.”

“Elvis? What’s Elvis?” Doc Brown asked.

“You’ll find out.”

Having been built during the later years of the Great Depression, Hill Valley High wasn’t new in 1955. Its worst days—the spray-can graffiti era of the late ’60s and ’70s—were still ahead, however, and it seemed clean and shiny to Marty as he drove up with Doc Brown on Monday morning. Dressed in his new outfit and with his hair slicked back, he barely resembled the young man from 1985, whom Stella Baines thought worked for the circus.

“Wow, they’ve really cleaned this place up,” Marty said, whistling softly. “It looks brand-new.”

“Maybe your generation didn’t take very good care of it,” Doc Brown remarked acidly.

Marty shrugged, recalling the times he had written on walls and desks.

“Remember now,” Brown said as they walked toward the main entrance. “According to my theory, all you have to do is introduce them to each other and nature will take its course…I hope.”

“I don’t think that’s gonna be enough now,” Marty replied. “Lorraine’s father’s hitting him with the car gave them a special relationship. She felt sorry for him, brought him into the house.”

“You’re probably right. Maybe you’d better push, make it seem like you think he’s a great guy.”

“That might not be so easy,” Marty sighed. “He’s a real prototype nerd.”

“Don’t do it for him. Do it for yourself.”

“Yeah…”

They entered the school that was familiar and yet so different in Marty’s eyes. The halls and classrooms looked basically the same but the atmosphere was totally different—it resembled something from an old movie, except that it was in color. As they walked, they spotted Lorraine rushing into a classroom. Marty started to move after her but Doc Brown grabbed his arm.