by Bella Thorne
“Jenna, this is perfect,” I gush. “I promise you, back in my time, you and I are going to work together to make sure all this comes true.”
Just then, Future Me, Jenna, and I turn at the sounds of jingling and footsteps outside the front door. Jenna grins to Future Me. “The boys are back.”
“The boys?” I ask. Then I remember the two extra wineglasses Jenna brought in from the kitchen. It would have to be her husband, right? And…
“Hey!” Simon calls as he opens the door, and I’m surprised and thrilled to hear his British accent. His cheeks are red from the cold and he’s bundled in a thick coat, but I only glance at him before I’m completely distracted by his two giant black Labs. They bound inside and race up to Future Me, tails wagging furiously.
“Adorable accent…and dogs!” I squeal it to Jenna, but she’s already up off the couch and out of my sight, I assume off wrapping herself around Simon. “I can’t even deal with the level of perfection.”
“Hey.”
The voice comes from behind me. It turns my whole body to liquid, and my blood rushes closer to my skin.
I’m afraid to turn around, but I don’t know what scares me: being right, or being wrong. Instead I keep my eyes on Future Me. She looks up toward the sound of the voice and smiles. It’s a smile that’s familiar, but I’ve never seen it on my own face. It takes a second before I recognize it. Future Me has the same look on her face that my mom and dad had whenever they looked at each other.
Okay, not whenever they looked at each other. That would be weird and kind of disturbing. But it would happen a lot. Not just in romantic moments like when they were toasting their anniversary or he heard a song they loved on the radio and swept her into his arms to dance, but little nothing moments like when he’d make a really dumb joke or when she came in from gardening all dirty and disheveled. They’d just look at each other with this doe-eyed expression that said nothing in the world meant as much to them as one another. Erick and I used to roll our eyes and make gagging noises whenever we caught them at it, but we both secretly loved it. We knew it meant they were crazy in love…just like Future Me is crazy in love with the voice behind me. The voice I know too well to second-guess.
I don’t have to turn around to see. J.J. Austin walks right through me on his way to my future self. He looks like himself…only better. His jeans show off the muscles in his legs, and his shoulders are broader underneath his blue tucked-in button-down shirt. His face is more chiseled, and he has a light scruff of facial hair that I never would dream would work on J.J., but it totally does.
It’s not just his body that’s different, though. It’s the way he carries himself. He moves like he’s completely confident and comfortable in his skin. He sits down next to Future Me and kisses me…us…effortlessly, like he does it all the time. It’s a take-it-for-granted kiss, but not in the kind of blow-off way we shared when I felt smothered and I wanted to get out. Our lips linger together, and when we pull away we’re both smiling like nothing in the universe could make us happier than staring into each other’s eyes forever.
“Enough!” Jenna declares from the couch opposite us, where she and Simon sit close together. She has her knees curled up onto the couch and Simon’s arm is around her, but she ducks away just long enough to fill everyone’s wineglasses and hand them out. “You get each other all the time. We only get to see you when you visit. Tell us everything.”
Future Me and J.J. do as she asks. The two of them—the two of us—talk animatedly, bubbling over one another and finishing each other’s sentences, but never rudely. Each interruption only picks up the story with more energy, and whichever one of us is cut off just smiles at the other, fascinated, as if hearing the next part of the story for the first time, until we’re inspired to jump back in. All the while, we’re constantly in contact. I reach out and touch his knee. He puts his hand on my back. We lace our fingers together. We do it all automatically, like we’re moving together as a single being, with no boundaries between us.
I don’t get our whole history from J.J. and Future Me. They recap some things Jenna has to already know but leave out big obvious things like when we got together. I have no idea if it was at Aventura High or in college. I don’t even know if we went to the same college. What I do learn is that we must have been together at college graduation, because that’s when we decided to pool any money presents we got and put them into a joint savings account we opened just for this purpose. It doesn’t seem like we lived together after graduation, or even lived in the same city, but we both had jobs and put part of our paychecks into that account every month. Finally, after we’d saved for a year and a half, we each wangled four months away from work to empty out our vacation account and take a massive road trip around the country.
“Like the road trips you planned for us when we first went out,” Future Me says, grinning at J.J., and I’m stunned because I was thinking the exact same thing. I’m even more stunned that J.J. doesn’t seem upset by the memory. I mean, our first time going out wasn’t exactly a huge success. But I guess since everything ended with us together, it’s all just part of our story.
“And we’re the last stop?” Simon asks. “We’re honored.”
“Beyond honored,” Jenna seconds. She raises her glass. “A toast!”
“Wait,” J.J. says. “I think you’ll want to hold that a second.”
He pales a little and swallows hard, and for a second I see the quirky, skinny, sunburned boy I met on my first day at Aventura High. Then he takes a deep breath and gets down on one knee.
My heart thuds so loud I’m sure everyone can hear it.
He’s down on one knee. Is he…?
I look at Future Me to see what she thinks. Her eyes are wide and her face is flushed. She stares down at J.J. with this weird mix of elation and fear, like she can’t actually believe he’s about to do what it seems like he’s about to do.
I move right next to her. I want to move into her, so I’m looking through her eyes and seeing what she sees, but no matter how much I want to, the idea totally weirds me out, so I just get as close as I can.
J.J.’s trembling. I can see his hands shake as he reaches up and takes the hands of Future Me.
“Autumn,” he says, “I fell in love with you the first second I saw you, and I’ve loved you ever since. No one else in this world makes me as happy as you. No one makes me laugh as hard. And when things are bad, you’re the one who makes them better. When I think about my life, I think about you there, next to me, always. I can’t even imagine me without you, and I think I knew it even then, the day we met. Autumn…”
His voice cracks and he gives a nervous laugh. It’s so sweet I can’t help but smile, and I guess Future Me does the same thing because he smiles back, more relaxed. He swallows and takes another deep breath. When he finds his voice again, it’s soft but strong.
“I love you. I love you more than I can ever say in words…and I’m really good with words…but they’re not enough. None of them are. Except maybe these.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a black velvet box. His hands are steady now as he opens it to reveal a beautiful round diamond on a delicate platinum band. He looks back up at me—at us—and his eyes shine with tears.
“Autumn Falls,” he says. Then he grins wickedly.
“J.J.,” Future Me says with a jittery laugh, “I swear to God if you anagram now—”
J.J. grins wider. “Autumn Falls…”
A dramatic pause. He can’t stop smiling and neither can I, but I’m dying to hear him say it. Then he stops smiling. He looks up at me, completely open, sincere, and vulnerable.
“…will you marry me?”
“Yes.”
My voice is soft when Jenna answers the phone. I can’t help it. I’m completely in awe of what I’m about to say. “Jenna…I’m in love with J.J.”
“You are?! What happened?”
I tell her everything, and when I’m done she screams. “Th
is is amazing! I don’t even care if Sam goes to MIT. I have perfect-Brit-boy Simon waiting for me!”
“Yeah,” I say, “it’s amazing. For both of us. But the future keeps changing. What if we mess it up?”
“You won’t,” she assures me. “We won’t. The future you saw is based on what’s going on now, right? So all we have to do is stick with that and everything will work out the way it’s supposed to. I stay with Sam, and you keep going with your plan to break up Carrie and J.J. at the Scare Pair dance.”
“But what about J.J.?” I ask. “The way I feel…it hurts to have it inside like this. I just want to run over to his house and tell him!”
“No,” Jenna says. “That’s off-plan. Off-plan changes the future. Break him and Carrie up, then let it happen naturally from there.”
“How?! How do I wait that long?”
“Future You did, right?”
“I don’t know! I don’t when J.J. and I got together. They didn’t say. What if they got together after I saw this future and then ran to his house and told him how I feel?”
Jenna’s silent for a moment, but I can hear her breath speed up the littlest bit as she paces her room. “No,” she finally says. “I get what you’re saying, but it doesn’t sound right. Every time you’ve made a move based on what you’ve seen, it changed the future. I don’t think you can risk it.”
“You’re just saying that because you want to meet hot-boy Simon,” I grouse.
“Yes!” she retorts; then she pauses a second. “Wait a minute…when you were at my house, did I look for you at all?”
“Why would you look for me?” I ask. “I was right next to you.”
“No, I mean you. Past You. ’Cause you’re telling me this now, so when I’m actually there in the future, I’ll remember this is the moment you told me about and I’ll look for you, right?”
“I guess…”
“And you’ll look for you too!” she shouts. “Which will be even weirder because now you’ll know J.J.’s going to propose before he actually does it, which could change everything…unless the Future You that you saw already knew he was going to propose because she had once been you you and had seen it all before….”
“Okay, you’re making my head hurt,” I say. “I’ve got to go.”
“No off-plan!” she calls just before I click off. “Simon and I are counting on you!”
Once she’s off the line, I stare at the phone.
I really want to text J.J.
Like, really want to text J.J.
Would it really hurt things if I texted J.J.? We’re friends again now, right? We used to text all the time.
I surf the Net until I find the perfect thing to send: an episode of Drunk History about Baron von Steuben getting Washington’s army into shape. I copy the link and text it to J.J., then wait an agonizing thirty minutes until he texts back:
“That’s it?!” I scream to my phone. “A smiley face?!”
I throw my phone onto the bed and throw myself down after it.
I suck at being patient.
I’m convinced there’s no way I’ll ever get to sleep. I do, but I dream about J.J. and me on our amazingly perfect four-month cross-country road trip, so I’m completely miserable when I wake up and realize I have to wait six years for that to happen.
As if to rub in my trauma, there’s an email from Carrie on my phone. It’s for the whole Senior Social Committee. Tomorrow’s the Scare Pair dance, and tonight we have to put all the date cards together. It’s all about the last minute, because Carrie had the Senior Social Committee extend the questionnaire deadline until the end of the school day today so we get as many people as possible. Carrie’s plan is to have all eight of us in the sisterhood meet at Brody’s house right after school. That’s when Brody will stop the server from accepting any more questionnaires, run her program, and print out the results onto fancy cards that we’ll stuff into envelopes and label.
I have only the vaguest idea of how I’ll sabotage the Scare Pairs and make them what I want. I’m hoping it’ll all come together at the last second.
School is all about dodging J.J. There is no way I can handle our kinda-sorta not-really-around-other-people friendship right now. Just before lunch, there’s a horrible moment when I see him walking down the hall toward me with his arm around Carrie. He’s smiling down at her with his forehead close to hers, and even from twenty feet away I can tell they’re all flirty and whispery, and I know if he looks up and sees me my chest will open up and my heart will flop onto the floor in a pool of horror.
He starts to raise his head, but I duck into the library. Clearly it’s a Quest Bar and Diet Coke by myself day.
When school ends, I desperately wish I were meeting J.J. for another tutoring session, but I’m also desperately glad I’m not. I don’t think I could sit two inches away from him and not say something stupid or try to curl into his arms. Instead I ask Brody LeClair for a ride to her house. Better to ride with her than with Carrie, who would be telling me all kinds of cute stories about her and the guy I’m supposed to marry.
Brody’s house is huge. There are four giant bedrooms upstairs, and since she’s an only child and a tech genius, one room is her “office.” It’s filled with computers, scanners, printers, and machines I can’t even comprehend. I wouldn’t be surprised if she could control a manned space flight from here. The one machine I do understand is the giant wall-mounted TV at the end of the room. In honor of Halloween, we’re going to have a Tim Burton film fest while we work, starting with The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Brody and I are the first to arrive, which gives her a chance to stop the questionnaire site and start her pairing program. Carrie and Gus are the last to show, but we’re all happiest to see them because they bring the pizzas, drinks, and snacks. Their timing is close to perfect, because the Scare Pair program finishes up just five minutes before they arrive.
“Okay, here’s the deal!” Carrie says after we lay out all the refreshments. “Eat and drink all you want, but don’t get the date cards or envelopes dirty. Brody just printed out labels for everyone coming to the dance. Now she’s printing out the Scare Pair cards.” She reaches for the humming printer and pulls out one of the freshly printed cards. It’s thick stock and about the size of an iPhone 6 Plus, with a fancy orange and black border around the edge. The envelopes match perfectly.
“Ouch.” Carrie winces as she looks at the card. “This one’s for Steffi Aaronsen and it pairs her with Wayne Jarvitz. She won’t like that at all. See?”
Carrie holds out the card. It has Steffi’s name in huge drippy-blood font. Below that, it says, shall meet her Scare Pair in italics. Then, in a smaller version of the drippy-blood font is Wayne Jarvitz’s name. Since Steffi’s name is the big one, this is her card. Wayne’s will have the same information, but the other way around. Beneath the smaller name it says in smaller italics, Don’t like what you see? Give it just one dance. Don’t be a ghoul—that’s the rule.
“Brody’s awesome and already printed out eight stacks of label sheets, one for each of us. The whole student body is there alphabetically, so you’ll find who you need. Everyone start grabbing cards as they come out of the printer, stuff them into the envelopes, label the envelopes, seal them, then put them into one of the two plastic bins. When we have enough, the envelopes should stand upright in there. Just please try to keep them all in alphabetical order. The time we spend now is time we save at the start of the dance.”
We all set to work. Despite the efforts of each year’s Senior Social Committee, dances don’t usually get big crowds. The computer thing helped, though. We have around two hundred people coming—two hundred envelopes to stuff with cards for one hundred Scare Pairs. For a high school dance, that’s huge. It’s also a ton of stuffing/labeling/sealing work, but it helps that we’re all snacking, watching the movie, and squealing about every pair we read.
“No! Way!” Gus shouts as he looks at one of his cards. “I got Doug Church! I didn
’t even know he was out!”
“But you knew he was gay?” Meegan Rudolph asks.
“Oh, please,” Gus says. “Everyone knows he’s gay. He’s as gay as Kyler Leeds.”
“Kyler Leeds is not gay!” Carrie and I shout at the same time. We catch each other’s eye and smile, and for a second I forgive her for wanting to steal my perfect future.
We all gab about most of the pairs we read, and though I keep an ear out for my friends, I know it’s actually better if I don’t hear their names. Then only one person and not all eight of us will know I changed things around. And maybe one person will think they remembered it wrong.
“YES! Brody, your program is a genius!” Carrie cries, waving her card in the air. “I got J.J.!”
“Of course you did!” Kassie dolphin-squeals back. “You guys are MFEOFAETLND!”
My head throbs, and it’s not just because Kassie’s screeching nonsense letters in a register high enough to break glass. My life jut got a lot harder. I can still change Carrie and J.J.’s Scare Pairs—I have to more than ever now—but everyone’s going to know someone swapped them. If I’m lucky, they won’t guess it’s me.
A few minutes later, Mariah Amhari holds a card in front of her face and moans. “I got Keith Hamilton.”
Carrie wheels in her seat to face Mariah. “Seriously? Want to trade?”
I don’t move a muscle, but inside I’m turning cartwheels. Yes! This is perfect! Switch!
Then Carrie laughs. “Just kidding. I’m taken. Keith’s a cutie, though. You should work that thing.”
