Future of Us

by Jay Asher

  41://Josh

  THERE’S A BREEZE blowing through the trees over in the park, and the air is getting cooler. I fit a blade of grass between my thumbs and blow. Sitting still and whistling through grass has always soothed me, but it drives Emma crazy. Sometimes I do it just to irritate her.

  Recently, it’s been way too easy to irritate Emma.

  When she pulled up to her house a few minutes ago, she ignored Sydney and me. Not that I expected her to run over, but a wave in our direction would’ve felt less intentionally rude. To give her the benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume she didn’t want to interrupt my time with Sydney.

  “JOSH!”

  Emma is stomping across her front lawn, her arms folded against her chest. She seems pissed, which looks silly since she’s barefoot and wearing a fluffy white bathrobe.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey?” Emma stares down at me. “I assumed you would come up to my room the moment you got home. See, we have this thing called Face—”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know you were up there waiting.” I hold the blade of grass to my lips and blow.

  “Stop that!”

  I bite the inside of my cheeks to keep from smiling. “Did you see who dropped me off?”

  Emma stuffs her hands into the floppy pockets of her robe. “A lot has happened today . . . for both of us. I think we need to make sure everything’s still okay.”

  That’s definitely true. Emma dumped Graham and then hung out with Cody in the hallway. Anna Bloom wrote her number on my folder. Sydney Mills gave me a ride home. While I’m curious to find out how everything affected Emma’s future, I’m actually nervous about my own.

  I grab my backpack and kick my skateboard into my hand. “I’m willing to check out your future,” I say, following Emma, “but I want to skip mine.”

  “Skip yours?” Emma glances back at me. “You don’t want to know what that little road trip did to your future?”

  The wind chimes hanging on her porch are clinking loudly.

  “Sydney driving me home didn’t change anything,” I say, leaning my skateboard against the railing.

  Emma tips her head and looks me in the eyes. Without a word, her message is clear: We’ll see about that.

  WHEN WE GET TO HER ROOM, Emma grabs a change of clothes and disappears down the hall. She returns a minute later wearing small white shorts and a red V-neck shirt. Loose curls spill around her face and neck, but her shoulders are stiff with tension.

  I set my backpack on the floor at the foot of her bed.

  “Why were you wearing a robe before?” I ask.

  Emma sits at her computer with her back to me. “I was about to take a shower because Kellan and I were at the lake. She needed to talk. So, like the good friend that I am, I went with her.”

  Is she insinuating that I’m not a good friend?

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t remember you saying you needed to talk.”

  “I was trying to talk to you all day!” Emma says. “But you were either flirting with random girls or arguing with me at lunch.”

  The last person who should be lecturing me about flirting is Emma. But she’s right. I never asked her how she was doing today. Both of us are trying to figure out so much, yet I was only concerned with my own life.

  I stand beside Emma as she clicks the word “Friends.” She scrolls past several rows of photos, and then slows down when she reaches the C names. She sighs heavily when Cindy Freeburg is followed by Corbin Holbrook, whoever those people are. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who she was hoping to find.

  I tell Emma I’m going to the bathroom. I’ve got a few root beers talking to me, and I’m also not in the mood to hear her moan about a future without Cody Grainger.

  Since the downstairs bathroom is getting renovated, I walk through her mom and Martin’s room. The last time I was in here must have been back in elementary school. I probably got a splinter or cut myself climbing a chain-link fence. Her parents kept the Neosporin and Band-Aids in this bathroom.

  Outside the bathroom door there’s a large square frame displaying a dozen photos. I’m in a few of them, but it doesn’t look like any pictures have been added since Emma started high school. In the bottom left corner is a picture of Tyson, Kellan, Emma, and me squished into the back of a minivan on the way to a middle school dance. Tyson and I are wearing cheap clip-on ties, and Emma and Kellan have their bangs curling up like waves. And we all look so small!

  I remember how Emma and Kellan danced with a large group of girls. Tyson and I mostly hung out under the basketball hoop unless a girl yanked one of us onto the dance floor. The last song of the night was “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men, and I decided to ask Emma to dance with me. With my hands barely touching her hips, and her hands on my shoulders, we spent the first half of the song staring down at our feet. I pulled her a little closer, sliding my hands onto her back, and soon Emma rested her chin beside my neck. As that final song began to fade, I closed my eyes and leaned my head until our cheeks touched.

  That’s when I first felt a crush forming on my best friend.

  WHEN I RETURN to Emma’s room, I’m ready to talk about our futures. Even though we haven’t been able to speak without snapping at each other today, we need to. And I have a plan to make that happen.

  “Let’s play Truth,” I say. “You can ask me anything, and I get to ask you anything.”

  Emma shakes her head. “There’s nothing I want to know.”

  “Nothing?”

  “I have a better game,” she says. “No one’s ever played it before. It’s called Refresh.”

  I remove my backpack from the bed and sit down on Emma’s comforter.

  “While you were gone,” Emma says, “I got to thinking about the Refresh icon on the computer. This is going to blow your mind.”

  It’s nice to see Emma smiling, so I sit up and listen.

  “Ever since we discovered Facebook,” she says, “we noticed there were changes between when we logged off and when we logged on again. Those changes could’ve been made by a thousand different ripples throughout the day. But think of how cool it would be to see the effects of one tiny little ripple.”

  “I’m not really sure what you’re suggesting,” I say, “but I’m not causing any ripples just for fun.”

  Emma points at the monitor. “Check out what my update says.”

  Emma Nelson Storm

  Forget it. I’m making Kev take me out to dinner. I

  can only stay cooped inside for so long.

  1 hour ago · Like · Comment

  “That doesn’t sound bad,” I say. “You’re going out to dinner.”

  Emma slowly nods her head. “So you get to live in a huge house on the lake, and I have to stay cooped inside. That sounds fair.”

  Since when did this become a contest where we compare our lives?

  Emma glances at her closet, then her dresser. “Now, we have to do something. It doesn’t have to be huge, but something we weren’t going to do before playing this game.”

  “Emma, I’m not messing with the future. Not as part of a game.”

  “Then don’t call it a game!” she snaps. “Think of it as an award-winning science experiment.”

  Emma picks up the thin blue vase from her dresser. Earlier this week, it held the dying roses Graham gave her for prom. Emma slowly tips the vase until water begins dribbling onto her white carpet.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. But I know the answer. She’s making a small change in the present to see how it affects the future. If I grab the vase from her now, it wouldn’t matter because that wouldn’t have happened before either.

  At first Emma lets the water spill onto one spot, but then she begins spiraling it into bigger circles until the vase is empty.

  “The water had a little dirt in it,” she explains, sitting at her computer again. “When Martin sees this, he’ll probably have a long talk with my mom. My mom will lecture me, and then
she’ll make me clean it when I should’ve been doing my homework. How do you think that will change everything that comes after?”

  I don’t want to guess how the future just changed. It’s impossible to know, and it shouldn’t have been changed to begin with.

  Emma looks over at me pleadingly. “Come on! It’ll be fun.” She scrolls over the Refresh icon. “Fast forward fifteen years and . . .”

  She clicks the mouse and the page reloads.

  Emma Nelson Storm

  Going to Kev’s favorite restaurant tonight. Hopefully

  the babysitter shows up this time.

  36 minutes ago · Like · Comment

  I sit down on Emma’s bed and lean over so my thumbs press into my temples. This is so reckless. Emma doesn’t care what happens to her future because she doesn’t want the future she has. All she cares about is Cody. But since there’s no mention of him on Facebook, she has nothing to lose.

  Emma groans. “I sound about as happy as before. I need to do something bigger.”

  “How do you know you’re not happy in this future?” I ask. “I thought you liked Kevin Storm.”

  “We’re going to Kevin’s favorite restaurant,” Emma says. “And my babysitter has a habit of not showing up.”

  “You’re reading a lot into very few words,” I say.

  Emma glares at me. “If I totally screw things up, then I’ll change it back.”

  “You can’t change it back!”

  “You’re not playing, remember? And if I screw things up that badly, then I’ll keep screwing them up until they get better. I can hit Refresh all night if I need to.”

  “I’m out!” I say, heading toward the door. “I’m done with Facebook. I’m not messing with the future anymore.”

  “That’s because you’re afraid,” Emma says. “You have no idea why Sydney likes you, so you’re terrified that something I do will break that rock solid relationship of yours.”

  “Sydney has plenty of reasons to like me,” I say.

  “Name three.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “You can’t, can you?” she says. “You’re afraid of reality.”

  “If anyone in this room is afraid of reality,” I say, “it’s not me.”

  “That’s it.” Emma moves the arrow from the Refresh icon and clicks on Friends.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m looking you up. Maybe things will never be perfect in my future, but I’m tired of you acting like you’re better than me because your life turns out fantastic.”

  “I never even thought that.” I run to the computer and pry her fingers away from the mouse, then I click back to Emma’s page.

  Emma jabs her finger at the screen. “Do you see where I live now?”

  Lives in Columbus, OH

  “Remember how I was a marine biologist?” she says. “I should be living near the ocean. I worked at the lab in Massachusetts, but we moved to Ohio. I’m sure that’s because of Kevin. So I’m stating out loud that if Kevin even suggests moving there in the future, he’s out of his mind. Right this second, I’m committing to never living in Ohio.”

  Emma’s finger taps the Refresh button. The page reloads.

  Lives in London, England

  “It worked!” Emma says.

  She touches the mouse, but I pry her hand away again. I’m not letting go until she promises to stop this game.

  “This is scary,” I say. “You’re not even doing things anymore. You’re just making up your mind and changing your life.”

  Emma looks up at me but doesn’t say anything. The longer she stares, the more uncomfortable I feel. She smiles faintly, and then lifts onto her toes. Her lips press into mine, and neither of us pull away.

  I close my eyes and lean into her.

  Emma brushes her cheek against mine and whispers, “How do you think this will affect our future?”

  I part my lips as she slides her hand behind my neck, pulling us even closer.

  42://Emma

  JOSH STEPS BACK FROM ME, and I immediately know I’ve gone too far.

  “Why did you do that?” he asks. His voice is shaky.

  My legs feel weak. I sit in my chair and try to make my brain focus. I did it because . . . I don’t know.

  I stare down at my hands. I don’t know what to say. When he left for the bathroom a few minutes ago, I quickly opened his backpack. I’m not sure what I was looking for, maybe a note from Sydney, or a clue as to where they just were. Instead I found a pack of boxers, which clearly shows he’s hoping for something to happen with her very soon. After everything that’s gone on this week, it pushed me over the edge.

  “It was nothing,” I say. “Let’s just let it go, okay?”

  “Let it go?” Josh’s eyes flash with anger. “You know how I felt about you! You can’t jerk me around for some stupid game.”

  “I wasn’t jerking you around.”

  “You rejected me,” Josh says. “But now that I’m moving on, it pisses you off. Did you expect me to mope around forever?”

  “Of course not,” I say, fighting back tears.

  “Maybe other guys don’t mind when you act like this, but I do.”

  “Act like what?”

  “Going out with people and not caring about them,” Josh says. “Even with your future you got rid of Jordan Jones like he didn’t matter. And today you dumped Graham and immediately moved on to Cody. I saw you in the hall with him. But in case that doesn’t work out, now you’re starting something with me. Who’s next?”

  “That is not how—”

  “Yes it is!”

  The way Josh says it feels like a slap across the face. I squeeze my hands into fists and say, “Take that back or get out of my room.”

  “Gone!” he says.

  As soon Josh’s feet hit the stairs, I fall onto my bed. My shoulders shake and my chest heaves. I stare at the corkboard above my bed, at all the pictures of us. There’s Kellan, Tyson, Josh, and me in the ball pit at GoodTimez. I’ve had that up there since last year. In one of my futures, I even posted it in an album on Facebook. Well, not anymore. I rip the picture off the corkboard, tear it into pieces, and toss it in my trash can.

  I LOOK OUT my window toward Josh’s bathroom, but the blinds are closed. Just this morning, he had a phone propped on that sill, waiting for Sydney to call. I didn’t humiliate him by pointing it out because that’s not how you treat friends.

  You don’t judge them. You don’t humiliate them. I bet he’s been judging me all along. Like this morning, judging me for going out with Kyle and Graham even though I didn’t love them. And at lunch, saying I should come to him if I need advice on romance. He thinks I’ll always suck at relationships.

  Screw him.

  I sit down at my computer again.

  Screw his ground rules about Facebook.

  There I am, posing with my husband in London. I enlarge the photo. My hair is lighter, and I’m wearing an orange scarf. Kevin is barely taller than me with dark brown eyes. Big Ben looms in the background. Kevin is holding a baby in his arms. An older child is peeking out from between my knees.

  Emma Storm

  Wishing for a better raincoat. And more sleep. And a

  day that doesn’t involve mashed bananas in my hair.

  17 hours ago · Like · Comment

  The other times I’ve been married to Kevin, and even to Jordan, I kept Nelson as part of my name. What ripple occurred in the past twenty minutes to make me give up my maiden name?

  I scroll down.

  Emma Storm

  I can’t stand how people in England say “Good day”

  all the time. It’s like they’re forcing me to have a

  good day. And if I’m NOT?

  May 16 at 10:47am · Like · Comment

  Emma Storm

  Diapers, meltdowns, teething, more meltdowns.

  Kevin wanted me to stay home with the kids, but I

  keep wondering why more men don’t do it. I use
d to

  have a better paying job than him!

  May 14 at 12:09pm · Like · Comment

  I’m not happy. Again!

  When I said that I wouldn’t live in Ohio, I should have been more specific. I should have said “I will not give up my dream job.” Or “I will not live away from the ocean.”

  Earlier today, I wrote that I wondered what a marine biologist does in Ohio. I was being vague, but I can tell what’s going on. Kevin moved us there so he could be some kind of hero in his job, but he took me away from what I loved. And the boys we had in Ohio were having a tough time adjusting to school because they had to start in the middle of the year. Kevin doesn’t care about us. He only cares about himself.

  I can hear Josh warning me to stop this line of thought. He’d say that maybe my future self is having a bad week. But I know myself. Things are not good.

  I click on Friends and scroll through the names. There’s still no Cody Grainger. Before I can stop myself, I go down to the Js.

  This time, there’s also no Josh Templeton.

  So that’s how it goes. One mistake and he holds it against me forever.

  There’s a box at the top of the webpage where you can search for people. I lightly drum my fingers against the keyboard, and then quickly type “Josh Templeton.” A new page loads, with more Josh Templetons than will fit on the screen. But the third Josh down is him.

  Josh Templeton 2 mutual friends

  I click his name and his page appears. He still lives in Lake Forest and works at Electra Design. In his photo, he’s in a rowboat with Sydney and three kids, but the rest of the page is mostly blank.

  Next to his name is a small rectangle that says “Add as Friend.” I try clicking it, but nothing happens. I click it again, but the future won’t let itself be changed that easily.

  Fine. Have fun with your happy life, Josh.

  I type “Cody Grainger” in the search area and hit Enter.

  Cody’s page is similar to Josh’s. He’s not a Friend, so I can’t get much info on him either. It says he lives in Denver, Colorado, and is an architect, focusing on wind and solar energy. His hair looks as blond and spiky as ever, and he has that same sexy smile. Cody definitely ages well.