by Bella Thorne
Then someone in the room starts clinking a fork against their glass. I hear the tap-tap-tapping from somewhere behind me, and I freeze because I’ve been to a wedding before, and I know what that means. When the glass clinks, the bride and groom have to kiss.
“Hey!” I shout. “Who’s doing that? Cut it out!”
But it doesn’t stop. Soon the clinking sound rings out from everywhere. Mom and Giant Bobblehead tear their eyes away from one another to smile at the crowd; then he leans down and—
“Whoa!” I shout. “No! Cut it out! That’s my mom! Get off her!”
I try to swat Mr. Scruffy Face away from her, but my hand flies right through his body. I’m whacking at air, while he and my mom lip lock for just this side of an eternity. Finally they pull away from one another and smile at the room. Everyone applauds and awwws.
“Uh-uh,” I call to the room. “No aws. This is not an aw moment. You understand, people?”
Across the room, someone else clinks a glass.
“Are you kidding me?” I shout, wheeling in that direction. “They just kissed. Let the people breathe!”
The clinking continues.
“That’s it,” I say. “I’m confiscating silverware.”
I march to the closest table and stop short. Three seats are empty, but at the others are Reenzie, Carrie, J.J., Ames, some guy I don’t know, and…is that Jack? It looks like him, but a really hot version of him. He’s got to be around four inches taller than the Jack I know, and instead of baby fat and freckles he has cheekbones and manscaped facial scruff. He’s even wearing a tuxedo, and as far as I can tell there’s no Marvel character on it anywhere.
“You guys!” I cry. “It’s so good to see you! If you’re here, that means we’re all still friends in three years! You all look amazing! You especially, Jack. I mean, like, wow! And you!” I add, turning to the guy next to Jack. “I don’t even know you, but you look great too! Are you a friend of mine from college?”
He doesn’t answer, which I forgive since of course he can’t hear me. I actually seem to have arrived in the middle of some drama, because Reenzie looks furious enough to bite through a china plate.
“You had to know it was coming, Reenzie,” Jack says. “Weddings are hookup central.”
“I know,” Reenzie says. “But he’s supposed to be hooking up with me. He said we’d be here as a couple. And look—right in front of everyone! It’s embarrassing!”
She looks over her shoulder and I follow her gaze to the next table. The only people sitting there are Sean and some girl I’ve never seen before in my life. I don’t get a great look at her now either, since she and Sean are attached at the tongue.
Reenzie spins back around and rolls her eyes.
“Seriously?” I ask her. “Sean’s cheating on you right in your face? Ew!”
“Drink,” Ames suggests. She is wearing one of her skintight dresses, this one in bright purple. She’s seat dancing while balancing some kind of frothy cocktail that sloshes a little as she moves. “Open bar. It’ll make you feel better.”
She takes a giant swig of the cocktail, and I notice everyone else at the table exchange glances.
“What?” I ask. “What’s the deal? Isn’t it three years from now? She’s twenty-one. She can drink, right?”
Again I get no answer. Carrie puts her hand on top of Reenzie’s. “I say you forget Sean,” she says. “You don’t need him. You’re on different paths. You’re top of your class at Stanford. You’ll be president one day. He’s a Division Two quarterback with bad grades and no future.”
“Wow,” I say. “Thanks for the update, but…harsh.”
“Preach it, girl,” Ames says. She raises her glass in a toast and downs the rest of the drink. Carrie shoots her an annoyed look.
“Okay, I get it now,” I say. “Ames isn’t just drinking; she’s drunk.”
Carrie turns back to Reenzie and continues her thought. “I’m just saying, high school relationships aren’t meant to be forever.”
“Ooooh!” Ames exclaims way too loudly, leaning heavily onto J.J.’s shoulder. “She just burned you!”
J.J. smiles tightly.
“Except us,” Carrie clarifies to J.J. “We’re the exception that proves the rule. Right, Forrvee?”
“Forrvee?”
I say it at the same time as the guy next to Jack. J.J. blushes bright red, and as I look at him, I notice for the first time that he’s the only guy at the table not wearing a tux. He’s in a suit that I’m pretty sure I’ve seen before, so he’s had it for at least three years. And unlike Jack, who got more buff over the last three years, J.J. seems a little thinner than before, with dark circles under his eyes.
“J.J. came up with it, Nathan,” Carrie explains. Not to me, of course, but to the guy next to Jack—Nathan! “It’s an anagram for ‘forever.’ I love you, Forrvee.”
She leans over and kisses J.J., and I’m very glad my actual stomach is three years in the past or I’d definitely vomit.
“Hey! How come you guys aren’t dancing?” a voice asks, and I spin to see Taylor walking over from the dance floor.
“Tee!” I cry. “You look gorgeous!”
It’s true. Unlike the perfectly styled Reenzie, Taylor looks naturally stunning. Her long blond hair flows halfway down her back, and she wears a simple cream-colored dress and heels.
“We’re not dancing because the two of you look like Cinderella and Prince Charming,” Nathan says. “The rest of us can’t stack up.”
“Two of you?” I ask. “You have a new guy?”
As I ask, a ridiculously gorgeous guy sidles up behind Taylor. “Aw, come on. You sell yourself short,” he says to Nathan.
“You’re Taylor’s boyfriend?” I ask. I look him up and down and notice he’s taller than Tee, even though she’s in heels. He’s also seriously polite. He holds two drinks but puts them down on the table so he can pull out a chair for her first. Before she sits, she wraps her arms around him and they kiss, and I’m blown away by how striking they are together. They’re both beautiful, but there’s also something about her pale skin, blond hair, and cream dress against his dark skin, hair, and tux that fits perfectly, like a yin and yang. And it’s not just their looks. There’s an energy between them that just feels right.
I lean my face right between them as they pull apart. “I like him!” I say. “Good job!”
“So I forget,” Nathan says when Tee and her boyfriend are sitting. “How’d you two meet again?”
“Yeah, how?” I ask.
Taylor and her boyfriend share a giddy smile.
“You tell him,” Tee says.
“No, you.”
“No, you.”
“Ugh, gag me,” Reenzie moans. “No one tell him. I can’t deal right now.” She turns to Nathan. “Tee and Drew met senior year of high school. End of story.”
My nerve endings all perk up. “Senior year? That’s now! I mean…my now. I mean…cool!”
“I’m bored,” Ames sighs. She grabs Jack’s drink, climbs clumsily onto her chair, raises the glass in the air, and shouts to the room, “Gwen Falls just got married! Conga line!!!!”
She hops down, sloshing most of the drink onto herself, slugs down the rest, then congas her way onto the dance floor. Amazingly, a long line of people form a train behind her and join in.
“She is mortifying,” Reenzie declares.
“She’s Amalita,” Carrie says, as if that explains everything.
“Hey, that’s mean,” I say. “She’s drunk at a wedding. It’s not like she’s always like this…right?”
Then Carrie spins to J.J. “Let’s join in. We haven’t danced all night. It’ll be fun.”
J.J. raises his eyebrows. “You sure you’re up for it?”
Carrie rolls her eyes. “Worry wart. Besides, she’s in the mood to move!”
For a second I think Carrie’s talking about herself in the third person. Then she pushes back her chair and stands and I see the giant pregnant belly
stretching out of her dress. Carrie grabs J.J.’s hand and puts it on the ginormous lump. “See? She’s already dancing! She just wants her mommy and daddy to join in!”
J.J. smiles, but his face pales.
“NO!” I gasp. “No-no-no-no-no.” I walk through the table to get in J.J.’s face. “What did you do? I mean, I know what you did, but…seriously? Is this for real?”
The minute Carrie and J.J. are gone, Nathan leans across the table to Reenzie and drops his voice. “Okay, you have to spill. Jack tells it like it’s a major soap opera. Is it true? She trapped him with the baby?”
“What, you don’t believe me?” Jack asks. “She totally trapped him. And they weren’t even together. He broke up with her six months before it happened.”
“But it’s not like he was forced,” Taylor says. “He didn’t have to—”
“He wouldn’t have if he knew what she was planning!” Jack shouts a little too loud for the room, and Nathan puts his hand on Jack’s arm. Jack looks at the guy…lovingly? Then he puts his own hand on top of the guy’s.
My head is still reeling from J.J. and Carrie, but I lean down and put my face closer to the guys’ so I can check this out. Something’s happening here.
“Hold up,” I say. “Are you guys…together?”
“Look, Jack,” Reenzie says, “I’m with you. I think they’re throwing their lives away. But it’s their choice. How would you and Nathan feel if J.J. got all upset about your choice?”
Nathan smiles. “Did she seriously just say being gay is a choice?” he asks Jack.
“I warned you,” Jack says, though he doesn’t seem angry. “She and Amalita are the two.”
“So you are together!” I say, grinning at Jack. “So all your jokes and lusting after Carrie…what was that, a cover? Why didn’t you just tell us?”
A glass clinks across the room. I wheel to the sound and expect to see my mom kissing Giganto Groom, but instead I see something worse. It’s my brother, Erick, at age sixteen, and apparently he gets even more serious about the weight training, because his neck is as thick as a tree, with veins snaking up from his tuxedo collar. He’s several shades too tan and wears a sleazy thin mustache. And mirrored aviator sunglasses. Inside. At his mom’s wedding.
Immediately I know I must have gone away to college. No way would I let Erick do this to himself. And who’s the bleach-blonde sitting next to him with the pushed-up boobs and spray tan? Don’t even tell me that’s his girlfriend. She has to be in her twenties! He’s thirteen! Okay, sixteen since it’s three years later, but still!
Erick’s been talking, but I’ve been too stunned to pay attention. I start listening now and quickly gather that he’s making some kind of toast.
“…and it’s a great thing to see our mom so happy. Autumn, you have anything to add?”
I freeze. I’m about to see myself, three years in the future! I’m about to hear myself make a toast! What will I say? Will I make a huge scene and scream at everyone for forgetting my dad? Or I bet I’ll be cleverer than that. I’ll say something that sounds nice and supportive. Only when everyone plays it back later in their heads will they realize how much I’m against this travesty.
I wait for me to stand up, but it doesn’t happen. What’s going on? Even Erick looks concerned. “Really, Autumn?” he asks. “Are you sure?”
Then I see me. I’m crouched low in my seat at a corner of Erick’s table. I’m wearing a blue sheath dress that’s so gorgeous I should totally be owning the room, but I shrink into it. I look thin, but not healthy thin. Gaunt. And my hair…it’s not even orange anymore. It’s mouse-poop brown.
Erick asks me again if I want to speak, but I shake my head, keeping my eyes focused on the plate in front of me.
Blood starts pounding in my ears. Something is terribly wrong with me. Am I sick? Am I dying? Did something bad happen to me? Why do I look like that? Why am I acting that way?
“I still can’t believe that’s Autumn,” Nathan whispers to Jack. “That’s not how you described her at all.”
“She’s different now,” Jack says.
“She’s been different for a long time,” Reenzie clarifies. “Since that panic attack senior year. She was so freaked out about everyone splitting up and leaving, she lost it. Wouldn’t send out any college applications. Which was stupid because then everyone did leave and she was stuck here alone.”
“I told her she should go to community college and transfer,” Tee says, “but she wouldn’t. She got a job working the front desk at Century Acres and kind of fell off the grid. I haven’t even seen her in a year. None of us have.”
“Really?” Nathan asks. “But she invited you to the wedding.”
Jack shakes his head. “I told you—Gwen invited us. She thought maybe seeing us all would help Autumn.”
“Something better help her,” Reenzie sighs, “or Gwen’ll be stuck with Autumn living in her old room forever. Not what she wants with a new man in her life.”
“Reenzie,” Taylor scolds.
“What? It’s the truth. Autumn’s a mess. If you ask me, there’s only one thing that could make it better, and that’s…”
“What?!” I scream when she doesn’t finish the sentence. “What’ll make it better?!?!?”
“Ow, my ear!” Jenna wails. “Stop screaming!”
I’m hyperventilating. I know everything has changed, but it takes a second to make any sense of it at all. I’m on Eddy’s bed. Eddy’s still asleep in her chair. My cell phone’s on the bedspread in front of me. That’s where Jenna’s voice is coming from.
I pick up the phone. “Jenna?”
“Of course it’s me. I just said—” Her voice stops, and when it comes back it’s breathy and excited. “Oh my God, you just went, didn’t you? You went and it brought you back like a second after you left, so no time passed at all. What was it like? What did you see?”
The more I look around Eddy’s room, the more everything I saw feels like a dream. Already, some of the details are slipping away, like my brain can’t handle them and wants to pretend they never existed. I rush to say the details out loud, just to cement them all in my head.
“It was horrible,” I say, and my voice sounds cracked and harsh. “It was my mom’s wedding, and—”
“Your mom’s getting married?” Jenna gasps. “In three years? Were you and I totally freaking out?”
“You weren’t there,” I realize.
“What do you mean I wasn’t there? Why wouldn’t I be at your mom’s wedding? Your mom would totally invite me to her wedding!” She stops for a second, then squeaks. “Oh my God…am I dead?”
“You’re not dead,” I assure her.
“How do you know?! Did someone say I wasn’t dead?”
“Jenna!” I snap. “Listen! You’re not dead! It wasn’t about that. It’s everything else. It’s all messed up.”
I tell her everything I saw. Sure, there were some good things, like Taylor finding the perfect guy and Jack out of the closet and happy, but most of it was absolutely horrible.
“I don’t get it!” I finish. “Why would my dad’s spirit give me a locket that lets me know I’ll be a complete loser?”
“He wouldn’t,” Jenna says. “We talked about this before, remember? It’s why you can’t use the locket to go back in time. The past is done. The future you can change. Your dad doesn’t want your mom to marry this guy. He doesn’t want you to be a complete loser. He doesn’t want me to be dead.”
“You weren’t dead.”
“You have no proof of that. What I’m saying is he showed you all that stuff so you can make changes now and stop all the bad parts from happening.”
I nod, taking it in. “Okay. Okay, that makes sense. But what do I do first? Do I break up Reenzie and Sean so he doesn’t cheat on her? Do I steal Erick’s weights so he doesn’t become a muscle meathead? And how do I get Carrie’s tubes tied without her knowing it?”
“All good plans,” Jenna says, “but maybe harder than
you need. You know the butterfly effect?”
“Yes, it’s a Kyler Leeds song,” I say.
“Ew, really?”
“Come on, it’s good! I have it on my phone; I’ll play it for you.”
“Please don’t,” Jenna says. Now that I actually know Kyler Leeds and he’s done nice things for me, Jenna puts him down far less than she used to, but she still thinks his music’s unforgivably cheesy. “The butterfly effect is that thing that says something tiny, like a butterfly flapping its wings, can have this huge domino effect of changes that makes things really different.”
“So I need to get a butterfly?” I ask.
“No. You need to concentrate on one thing that’s easy to change. Changing that will change everything else. Then the next time you go to the future, it’ll be totally different.”
That makes sense, and it’s not hard to figure out the easiest thing to change.
“Reenzie said everything got bad for me when I freaked out about everyone leaving and I wouldn’t apply to school. So I won’t freak out. I’ll make myself the perfect college candidate, so applying won’t be a big deal at all.”
“Yes. Excellent. Sounds perfect.”
“You’ll hold me to it?” I ask. “You’ll make sure I don’t slack off?”
“Of course I will. My life depends on it, remember?”
I don’t bother telling Jenna again that she wasn’t dead in the future I saw. She won’t believe me anyway, and the truth is she’s right—technically I guess she could have been. We talk for a little more and then I slip out, leaving Eddy asleep in her chair. I call the pizza place before I leave Century Acres, so Erick’s and my dinner will show up soon after I get home. Before it does, I hop on my computer and sign up for the very next available SAT date, three weeks away at the beginning of October. I didn’t do so great when I took the test last spring, but back then I figured I’d just let it slide and trust that I’d get in somewhere. Now I know that’s not good enough. I want a lot of colleges to choose from. That’s why I choose a test date so close—if I flame out again, I’ll have time for another retest. I’d rather not do that, though, so I also sign up for an online prep class that practically guarantees at least a two-hundred-point jump in scores. Perfect.
