The Year of the Fiery Horse — William F. Wu

DESCRIPTION: Ted Chang was simply a middle-aged grouch who couldn't find any good in anything. After all, he lived alone, dated no one, and never did anything to change the situation. He just couldn't. Lonely, and embittered by the holiday cheer in a Chinese restaurant celebrating Chinese New Year, he can't even respond to a woman who makes a casual, friendly comment. When a live, prancing horse blazing with heatless flame appears, Ted does something crazy for the first time in his life. He manages to get on its back and hold on for ride back to a night when he was on a date as a teenager, in the Year of the Fiery Horse. Ted's magical trip takes him back emotionally as well as in time, and his real discovery about himself comes when he meets his date at her contemporary age, also on a mystical visit back to this night. His discovery gives him the chance to better his life, if he can take it. EXCERPT: No matter what happened tonight, he still wanted to go home-and to have 1990 the way he knew it already. If he wasn't going to change anything, though, what was he doing here? * * *"I want to be a scientist." Barb's eyes were fixed on his face in the shadows of the front seat, as if daring him somehow."Yeah?" He thought of her in Biology. They were in the honors class. "That makes sense. You get all A's in Biology, right?"Not quite." She smiled self-consciously. "But almost. I want to go into cancer research."He nodded. To stall for a moment, he shut off the engine. He was getting hot. She cranked her window down slightly. He looked at her, wondering what to say. Most of all, he wished he had a comeback of his own - that he wanted to be a lawyer, a doctor, a race car driver, an astronaut. Even a hippie. But he didn't have an answer. He had no idea what he wanted to do. To stop her from asking him any more questions, he asked her one. "How, uh, did you pick that?"She sat up eagerly in the car seat. "Because it's interesting. And important. I love biology and I could help pe