The Future of Us (15 page)

Emma leans over my shoulder and signs back on to AOL.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I wasn’t expecting her to call me right away.”

Before I came over, I carried my phone into the bathroom and plugged it into the jack near the medicine cabinet. I opened the bathroom window and set the phone on the sill. If it rings, I should be able to hear it from Emma’s bedroom. Then I took the cordless phone from my parents’ room and placed it by the front door. That way I can leave Emma’s house, sprint across our yards, and answer the cordless before Sydney hangs up.

“You’re right,” Emma says. “She wouldn’t call you right away. She’s going to play hard to get.”

“Do you think so?” I ask.

“Those are the rules,” Emma says.

Emma and Kellan spend hours talking about relationships and taking quizzes in magazines. Whenever I contribute my two cents, they just laugh and call me clueless.

Emma scrolls through some comments on her Facebook page, reading each one carefully.

“It’s hard to tell,” she says, “but I think Kevin Storm may be a firefighter. Or a doctor.”

Even if Sydney plays hard to get, she’ll call me eventually. Otherwise, why would she ask for my number? I hate that Emma’s trying to put doubts in my mind.

“Good for you,” I say. “So he’s better than Jordan Jones. Did you find anything else on there?”

Emma stares at the screen. I shouldn’t have asked that question when I wouldn’t answer it honestly myself. I told her I didn’t find anything interesting, but my brother ends up in a relationship with someone named Phillip!

“Nothing new,” Emma says. “But I have been thinking about your list, the one with people you want to look up. I’m not sure if—”

I remove the folded-up piece of paper from my backpack. Emma grabs it and turns it around, then starts reading through the names. I want to say we should crumple up the list and not check on anyone after all. If what I saw about David is true, then what else will we find that people may not want us to know?

“
Eww
!” Emma shoves the paper back at me. “Why did you put Kyle Simpson on there?”

I laugh. “What are you talking about?
You
dated the guy.”

“Barely! And I have no desire to find out what’s going on in his future.”

“He’s probably a Chippendale dancer,” I say. “Or he runs a nudist colony, or—”

“Stop!” Emma tosses me a pen and says, “If you insist on looking people up, cross him off.”

I cross him off, knowing we should eventually cross off every name. But if I say that to Emma, she’ll know I’m hiding something from her.

“I never understood how someone can go from dateable to
eww
,” I say. “I hope no one I’ve gone out with thinks of me that way.”

“I’m sure they don’t,” Emma says. “But I never really
liked
Kyle before he asked me out. He was just there. Like that girl in Seattle for you.”

After I got back from spring break, I talked about the Seattle girl a lot during lunch. I showed off a school picture she gave me where she wrote her phone number on the back in purple ink. I passed around the picture because she was pretty, but I also wanted to make Emma jealous.

“That was different,” I say. “A long-distance relationship is one thing. But hanging out every day when you don’t really like someone, isn’t that hard? I’d rather already like someone at the beginning, and then fall madly in love with them over time.”

“So you like Sydney?” Emma asks.

I look out toward my house. The telephone is sitting silently on my bathroom windowsill. I want to say,
Yes, of course I like Sydney
. She’s beautiful, and whenever I’ve seen her talking to people she always seems nice. But can I see myself falling madly in love with her? That must happen, right?

“You and I are different that way,” Emma says. “You’re always looking for something long-term, and you’ll stay with that person until you know for sure it’s not right. That’s why I know you weren’t being honest when you said
you
broke up with the girl from Seattle. You only said positive things about her, so you never would have broken up with her.”

Emma’s looking at me with a gentle smile, no judgment.

“That’s not what you’re looking for?” I ask.

“It’s what makes you great boyfriend material, but it also means you’re going to get your heart broken a lot.” Emma nods toward the list in my hand. “I don’t think we should look up any of these people.”

I tear a clean line down the middle of the paper. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“Great,” Emma says. “We won’t look up Kellan or . . . or Tyson . . . or anyone.”

“My brother, my parents, none of them,” I add. “Because what if something bad happens between now and the future? If we can’t find out exactly what happens, it would drive us crazy trying to figure it out.”

“And some people,” Emma says, “don’t seem to have a page. Like Kevin Storm. So we might try to look someone up and think they died if we can’t find them.”

“New rule,” I say. “If someone pops up on our webpage, that’s cool. But no digging.”

Emma smiles. “No digging.”

At that moment, I hear a faint sound coming through the window. Is that . . . ?

Emma points toward the door. “Just go, Romeo. But we should leave soon or we’ll be late for school.”

I bolt.

ON THE DRIVE TO SCHOOL, Josh and I barely speak. He’s looking out his window and jiggling his knee up and down. I bet he’s thinking about Sydney. He hasn’t said anything, but I’m guessing it was her who called.

“Do we have time to swing by Sunshine Donuts?” Josh asks.

I glance at the clock on my dashboard. “I don’t think so. We’re already late.”

Josh leans his head against the window and closes his eyes. Maybe it wasn’t Sydney who called, after all. Or maybe Josh didn’t make it to the phone in time. Either way, he’s on edge.

There are so many unknowns for both of us. I want to figure out what Kevin Storm does for a living. Saving a life could mean so many things. I’m hoping it means he has a take-charge personality, which is one thing that’s always attracted me to Cody. When Ruby sprained her ankle at a meet last month, Cody swooped in with an ice pack. I joked with Ruby that it made me want to get a sports injury, too.

But then I think about Kellan, and
I’m
the one on edge. Kellan—who bought my first box of tampons because I couldn’t stop laughing in the aisle of the drugstore—may be pregnant
right now
. She didn’t even tell me she was having sex, and that pisses me off. We tell each other everything.

Or maybe Kellan
hasn’t
had sex yet. If that’s the case, it’ll be happening soon. But how can I sit by and watch Kellan become a teen mom? She wants to go to Penn State, and dreams of becoming a doctor or a scientist. Can she do all that with a baby screaming in the background? She might not even be able to finish high school.

The school parking lot is crowded, and the only remaining spots are way over by the field house. I pull into one and glance at Josh. He hasn’t said a word since he asked about donuts.

WHEN I SLIP INTO BAND, Mr. Markowitz doesn’t notice I’m late. He’s busy going over the lineup for this weekend’s Memorial Day parade with the girls from color guard.

I have a feeling Josh won’t be so lucky with his homeroom teacher, and that’s slightly satisfying. The way he went scrambling for his phone this morning was annoying. And I don’t understand why he didn’t just tell me if Sydney called. When I called my first husband, at least I had the guts to tell Josh about it.

Whatever
.
Josh can talk to whoever he wants. I have Kevin Storm waiting for me. But the problem is, that’s fifteen years from now. Today, while Josh is getting serious with Sydney Mills, I still have to deal with—

“Emma.”

Graham.

He taps his drumsticks against my thigh. “How’s it going?” he asks, sliding into the empty seat next to me. “I thought you’d be interested to know that my parents are going away this weekend. That means I’ll have a free house.”

“I assumed that’s what you meant.”

“So you can come over and we won’t have any interruptions.”

I stare at my sheet music. Last night, when I was thinking about life with Kevin Storm, I vowed to end things with Graham.

“Do you want to go to that bonfire on Friday night?” he asks. “We could stop by my place afterward.”

I think about what Josh said this morning.
Hanging out every day when you don’t really like someone, isn’t that hard?

“I can’t do this,” I say.

Graham spins a drumstick between his fingers. “Can’t do what?”

“You and me. Not anymore.”

“Is this because Josh saw us the other day? If you want, I can talk to him.”

“No.” I take a deep breath. “This has nothing to with Josh. I just need to be on my own for a while. It’s nothing you did, but I—”

“Okay.” Graham runs his hands over his prickly scalp. “I’m not going to try to change your mind. We always said we were going to keep things low-key.”

Graham smiles sadly, and then holds out his arms like he’s waiting for a hug. As I lean in toward him, I notice how similar this feels to my breakup with Dylan, and even with Kyle. Unlike other people’s breakups, I never have too much drama. When Josh and Rebecca Alvarez broke up, he moped around in his room for weeks. When my mom and Erik divorced, she must have cried for a month. And when Tyson dumped Kellan—

I need to tell Josh about her pregnancy as soon as possible. I should have told him this morning. This isn’t something I want to handle on my own.

I SPOT JOSH in a crowded hall between third and fourth periods. I call his name, but he doesn’t respond. He’s standing with a sophomore girl and they’re both laughing. They turn and begin walking down the hall.

“Josh?” I shout again, but he still doesn’t respond. Or maybe he’s ignoring me? One call from Sydney and this is what happens!

I stand on my toes and watch them walk away. A few steps later, he reaches over and touches her back. That is
so
not something Josh would usually do.

“Emma?” a voice says.

I know that voice.

Slowly, I turn around. Cody Grainger is walking toward me.

SOMETIMES I’LL HEAR a song on the radio that launches my mood into a higher orbit. Even though I’d happily erase the moment Emma burst in on me in my underwear, “Walking on Sunshine” has been looping through my head all morning. It plays when I walk down the halls, sit in class, and say hi to people at their lockers.

When I answered the cordless phone this morning, no one responded. But then I heard Sydney’s distant voice say, “He must be on his way here” before hanging up.

She called me from her cell phone! I haven’t seen her yet, but that call has lit my path with sunshine all morning. I absorb it through the soles of my feet and it tingles up my legs, across my chest, shoots down my fingers . . .
and don’t it feel GOOD!

The sunshine is magnetic, too. All morning, guys who’ve never said more than
What’s up?
have stopped to talk to me. And the girls! Between my morning classes, three girls have walked with me, keeping my pace . . . and I have long legs.

Like Anna Bloom right now. After history, she caught up with me as I headed for the door. I ended up walking to her third-period class even though I have gym on the opposite side of school.

“If you ever want to work on history together,” she says, “feel free to give me a call.” She writes her number on the corner of my folder.

Anna smiles up at me and then heads into her classroom. I try not to be obvious, but I can’t help checking her out as she walks away. She’s cute! Then I turn and look down the hall. I swear someone had been calling my name while I was talking to Anna. It was distant, but it may have been Emma.