The Future of Us (8 page)

“You don’t even know him and you’re calling him an
asshole
?”

“Some things you can just tell,” Emma says.

I feel ridiculous for even entertaining the idea that this could be real, but there’s no way that wasn’t Sydney Mills and me in that photo. They were older versions of us, but the resemblance was unreal.

“Check this out!” Emma says.

I push myself out of her chair.

“These pictures were attached to my website,” Emma says, pointing to the screen. “It looks like each one leads to more photos, kind of like albums.”

I point at the screen. “‘High School Memories.’ Let’s see what you find so important fifteen years from now. I bet they’re all of me.”

Emma laughs. “Only because I don’t have any of Cody yet.”

She clicks that photo album and we stare at the screen as the photos materialize.

The first is a close-up of Emma holding her driver’s license. That’s currently on one of her corkboards. Someone could’ve stolen it for a day and scanned it in the tech lab at school. The next photo shows Tyson and me using our skateboards as battle swords. That one’s taped in her locker. Then there’s Tyson, Kellan, Emma, and me buried up to our necks in the rainbow ball pit at GoodTimez Pizza. That’s also on her corkboard. Whoever is pulling this prank could have borrowed Emma’s photos and put them back without her noticing.

Emma touches her finger to the last photo, a shot of her butt in a light tan bikini. “What’s this?”

She clicks on the image and a larger version begins to appear in the center of the screen.

“Is that Crown Lake in the background?” I manage to keep my voice innocent, but I know exactly where that photo was taken. I snapped it a few weeks ago when we all drove to the lake before it officially opened for the season. I thought it’d be funny to have her develop the film and wonder who took it.

The caption below the picture says, “The good ole days.”

“I just bought that bikini a month ago,” Emma says.

“You know,” I mumble, “I think I accidentally took that picture. I was trying to move your camera out of the sand and I may have hit the button.”

“Josh.” Emma looks me straight in the eye. “This Facebook thing is not a joke. There’s no way anyone could be pranking us.”

“Someone could’ve stolen your pictures. I wouldn’t say there’s
no
way.”

She reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out a yellow disposable camera. “I haven’t developed the lake photos yet.”

SO IT ALL comes down to a yellow disposable camera left over from my mom’s wedding. If the lake photos are still inside, undeveloped, then Josh will have to admit that this Facebook thing is real.

We stare at the image on the screen, at the bathing suit bottom I recently bought at the Lake Forest Mall. And then, at the same moment, we shift our attention to the camera on my desk.

“Do you think we should—?” Josh begins.

“What time does Photomat close?”

“Ten,” Josh says. “It’s in the SkateRats plaza.”

It’s 8:53pm. Photomat guarantees one-hour prints.

“Let’s take your car,” he says.

“Too risky,” I say, gesturing downstairs. If my mom heard us leave she’d tell us it’s too late for a school night.

“Blade and skate?” he asks.

I nod, reaching for my orange Cheetahs fleece on the back of my chair. I’m still wearing my track uniform because I haven’t had the energy to change.

“I have to grab my board from the garage,” Josh says. The screen is still open to “High School Memories.” “Should we close this?”

“Definitely,” Josh says.

The way he says it, so clear and direct, gives me the chills. Josh is starting to believe this is real.

WE MAKE IT TO PHOTOMAT at ten after nine. The guy behind the counter has thin hair and tired eyes. I fill out my name and a fake phone number, then slide the film into an envelope.

“Can you develop this before closing?” I ask, rolling my skates back and forth.

The guy glances wearily at me. “We’ll see.”

I clomp out to the sidewalk. “I don’t think he gets the urgency of this.”

“He said he’d try,” Josh says.

“No, he said ‘we’ll see.’ ‘We’ll see’ means he’s leaving it up to the universe. And it’s not up to the universe. It’s up to
him
!”

Josh pushes off on his board, and I blade after him across the parking lot. We settle on a raised patch of grass under the rotating time-and-temperature clock. It’s dark over here and fireflies are flickering around the lawn. I loosen my blades and lay back on the grass, looking up at the sky.

“Remember when we used to play T-ball over there?” Josh asks.

I lift up onto my elbows and look at the stretch of Wagner Park across the street from the plaza. One year, my dad coached our Little League team. My half-sister, Rachel, is only five weeks old, but I wonder if he’ll coach her when she gets old enough to play.

I gesture toward a trim white house in the middle of a row of single-story homes. “That’s where Cody lives,” I say.

“I know,” Josh says.

“You do?”

“David used to hang out with Cody’s older brother. We went over there for pool parties. His brother, oddly enough, isn’t such a prick.”

“Cody’s not a prick!” I say. “You just don’t know him.”

“And you do?”

I decide not to tell Josh that for several months leading up to the prom I had a fantasy that Cody would approach me in the hall and ask me to be his date. He went with Meredith Adams, who wore a teeny silver dress. They came late and left early. I went with Graham, even though I was pretty much over the relationship by that point. We sat with his group of friends, mostly people I didn’t know. Kellan, Tamika, Ruby, and some other girls went together, sharing a limo and dancing barefoot in a big group the whole time. I joined them for a few songs, until Graham sauntered over and pulled me into a slow dance. Josh and Tyson didn’t even go. They went to Tyson’s house and drooled over Tony Hawk skating videos all night.

After a few minutes of watching fireflies, Josh positions a blade of grass between his thumbs and leans in to blow.

“Don’t!” I shriek. “You know that freaks me out.” Josh drops the grass and turns toward me. “I’m sorry about before,” he says quietly. “What I said about Graham grabbing your . . . you know. I was being a dick.”

“It’s okay,” I say, spinning a wheel on my rollerblade.

I lean back in the grass and look up at the sky. Venus is out, and a sliver of moon. As I stare up at the stars, I wonder what becomes of Pluto. Does it get hit by a meteor?

“We should get going,” Josh says, pointing at the clock. “Photomat closes in five minutes.”

“NELSON?” I ASK, pushing through the door.

The guy thumbs through the
N
s and fishes out my envelope. When he hands us the packet, Josh’s earlobes turn pink. I give the guy a ten-dollar bill and he counts back my change.

We exit and move down a few shops until we’re directly beneath a street lamp. I tear open the packet. With my blades on, I’m almost as tall as Josh. For a second, his leg brushes against mine, but he quickly pulls it away.

The first few photos are of my mom and me in the kitchen. Josh touches the stack as if to say,
faster, faster
. But now I’m not sure I want to find out. If that really is my future, and I’m not happy, maybe it would be better not to know until I get there.

Josh grabs the photos from me. He flips to the next picture, and there we all are at the lake. Tyson throwing Kellan into the ice-cold water. A close-up of Josh crossing his eyes. Kellan and me with our arms flung around each other’s waists. And the bottom half of my new tan bikini with the lake stretched out in the distance.

I’M GOING TO MARRY SYDNEY MILLS.

I’m going to
marry
Sydney Mills.

Sydney Mills is going to be my wife.

I stand in the hot shower for ten minutes. When it becomes obvious I’m not going to figure anything out by staring at the drain, I turn off the water and grab my green towel.

The porcelain sink feels cool against my palms. In the steamed bathroom mirror, I can see my scattershot red hair, thin arms, and the towel around my waist. Somehow, in fifteen years, I morph from
this
into the guy who marries Sydney Mills.

I take a step back, flex my biceps, and suck air into my chest. The hazy reflection helps me imagine stacking on some muscle. And it looks good!

I wink at myself. “Yeah, baby!”

A few more pushups and sit-ups every night and maybe I can become that guy even faster. I turn sideways and flex into the mirror, but from this angle there’s no denying I’m still a skinny kid with two years of high school left to go.

I slide open the bathroom window to let out some steam. Across the lawn, the lights are off in Emma’s room. She must have gone to bed early.

IT’S GETTING CLOSE to midnight. I glance around my bedroom, but I can’t see my phone. I walk downstairs, turn on the small light in the hallway, and dial my brother. It’s three hours earlier in Seattle, so I’m not worried about waking him up.

On the second ring, David answers. In the background, there’s a TV audience laughing.

“Hey, it’s Josh,” I say. “Are you busy?”

“I’m in college,” he says. “I’m eating a bowl of Lucky Charms and watching the final episode of
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
.” I guarantee, if David calls home tomorrow, he’ll tell our parents he was studying in the library all night.

“Mom and Dad watched that tonight,” I say. “Doesn’t it scare you to know you have the same sense of humor as them?”

“A little,” he says. “But it’s Will Smith! Have I ever told you that every time he starts rapping the theme song, it reminds me of the time you tried rapping in the junior high—”

“I remember,” I say, cutting him off. “But that’s not why I called.”

“Of course not,” he says. “So what’s going on, RedSauce?”

“There’s this girl,” I say.

I hear the TV shutting off. “Is she cute?”

“She’s gorgeous. Any guy in school would
die
to go out with her.”

“And she’s interested in you?” David asks. “That’s my brother!”

“No, she’s not interested . . . yet.” I take a breath. “It’s hard to explain, but I think she
could
be interested in me . . . eventually.”

“How do you know her?”

“I don’t. Not really. We have Peer Issues together, but she’s a year ahead of me.”

“Have you ever talked to her?”

“No.”

“Never?” he asks.

“No.”

“So she’s more like your fantasy girl,” he says. “That’s okay. You just need to break the ice.”