Time Drift: Past Tense (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798247319412)

Eli Navarro has a talent for fixing things that break, which is how a normal school day in 2026 turns into an after-hours routine at the Edison Science Annex. Start the coffee. Keep your head down. And follow Dr. Hale's one rule: don't touch the rig.

The rig doesn't look like a hobby project. It sits on the main bench in a taped-off work zone, humming under fluorescent lights like the room is holding its breath. Eli doesn't understand it, not really, but he understands danger, and he understands that Dr. Hale is the kind of adult who never wastes a warning.

When Hale finally shows him proof, it is small and simple and impossible all at once. And then, before Eli can decide what it means for his life, a police-chase crash rips through the annex wall and turns the lab into falling brick and screaming alarms. The field tears open. The rig breaks. Eli makes one instinctive grab to keep it from shattering.

He wakes up in 1991.

Summer air. Boxy cars. Pay phones. A world that is close enough to recognize and wrong enough to swallow him whole. The machine is damaged, the built-in voice that once guided it is silent, and Eli has no idea if Dr. Hale survived. The only way home is the thing that stranded him, and the only parts he can get are the ones the era can provide: VCR timing guts, CRT glow, a clunky old computer, and whatever he can buy or borrow without getting noticed.

As the clock ticks toward the next window, Eli finds a younger Gordon Hale, who becomes Gordo, and the two of them start rebuilding the impossible with stubborn hands and shaky trust. But time travel is not a clean escape. Every choice has weight, and there is no reset button waiting at the end of the day.

Time Drift: Book One is the start of a high-speed YA time travel series with heart, humor, and cliffhanger momentum. If you love coming-of-age stories where courage is built one decision at a time, step into the annex. Just don't touch the rig.