"Time Travel Tragedy" by Bhairav Dhar: Feb. 2024 Runner Up

Today’s Valentine's day, so Mrs. Sheldon was passing out anonymous valentines. My envelope was a package. When I checked what was inside, I found a letter in my handwriting and a cool watch. The letter said, to my past self, something will be happening soon. A bear will be coming in 30 minutes, and your mission is: to get the bear off the school property. The watch is in case you fail, so you can go back in time. I thought I would ignore it.

But, I felt the watch looked cool so I kept it. After a few minutes, the principal shouted: “There is a bear on campus! LOCKDOWN! LOCKDOWN! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”. I stopped time, opened the door and I saw the bear rifling through the trash. Then, I stole a dump truck and used a forklift I found to put the bear in. I thought it should be easy to drive because nobody’s moving, right? Wrong. There were a bunch of cars in the road and there were so many traffic jams in the area so I had to drive through a forest.

Once I got to the national reserve, I unfroze time, dropped the bear off, froze time, and went back to school. I went straight to the office and told the principal that the bear was gone. When she heard, she didn’t believe me. I told her to search the school. No bear anywhere. I sat back for the rest of the day.