I Represent Sean Rosen by Jeff Baron

behind the counter. He works there. He’s seventeen, and he doesn’t look like a TV star, but he’s a cool-looking kid. He’s busy with other customers.
    Chloe smells something. She looks over at a bunch of hot dogs rolling around on one of those old hot-dog cookers. Grandpa comes over. Chloe orders a hot dog and a Coke. Grandpa is really nice to her, but not in a flirting kind of way. She’s still only twelve.
    You can tell she thinks he’s a super nice guy and cute, too. He explains the chemistry of how the soda fountain makes her Coke. Chloe isn’t usually interested in science, but she listens really hard because she likes him and he knows how to explain things.
    Grandma and Chris and Grandpa are in the basement watching Chloe in the machine. From the outside you can’t tell what’s going on. After a little while, Grandma hits the big red button that stops the machine. Then she pushes TALK. “Chloe . . . are you okay?” Then she pushes LISTEN.
    â€œWhy did you stop it? I wanna go back!”
    Grandpa looks at Grandma, who shakes her head. Grandpa helps Chloe out of the machine.
    â€œOh my God. Grandpa. Oh my God.”
    Grandma says to Grandpa, “See? We shouldn’t have.”
    â€œYes, you should. It was amazing. Grandpa, I love that candy store. Chris, you should have seen Grandpa. He was so cool. Not that you’re not cool now, but . . . Oh my God!”
    Grandma says, “Chloe . . . I just want to be sure you understand. Nothing happened. That was only what Grandpa would have said and would have done if you met him more than sixty years ago. But you didn’t.”
    â€œYes, I did.”
    Grandpa finally says something. To Grandma. “It is only virtual reality, but I wouldn’t say it’s ‘nothing.’”
    Chris is dying to try it, and like most grandparents, they want to be fair, so this time Grandma spits on the glass slide and Chris climbs into the machine. He wants to meet Grandma when she was his age, fifteen. He picks November 13, 1951.
    We see Chris’s virtual reality experience. He’s in an old-fashioned high school where the guys are wearing ties and the girls are wearing dresses. Chris walks down the hall checking out how strange it all looks. He comes to a girl sitting at a table with a big sign. It says T HANKSGIVING F UND . Everyone just walks past the girl at the table and Chris is about to also, when the girl says, “Get over here.”
    Chris looks around to see who she’s talking to.
    â€œYou. Get over here.”
    He realizes the girl is Grandma. He nervously walks over to her.
    â€œWhat are you having for Thanksgiving this year?”
    Chris says, “What do you mean?”
    â€œFor dinner. For Thanksgiving dinner. What does your family eat?”
    â€œOh . . . turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce . . . you know, the usual.”
    â€œUsual for you, but there are families right here in this town that can’t afford those things. Do you know how lucky you are?”
    â€œI guess.”
    â€œYou guess ? Don’t you think everyone should be able to have a nice Thanksgiving with their family?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWell, what are you waiting for?”
    This girl doesn’t look or act like the other girls Chris sees in the school. Or like any girl Chris knows in real life. He ends up giving her all the money he has.
    Suddenly, it’s over. Grandma pushed the red button. Grandpa gets Chris out of the machine. He can’t really talk. He just keeps staring at Grandma. Chloe wants to know what happened, but the only thing he’ll say is it was something about high school.
    Chris is freaked out. He has a big crush on his grandmother. He doesn’t know what to do. She doesn’t look like that fifteen-year-old girl now, but he can see that she’s the same person. He always thought she was kind of bossy and annoying as a