Autumn's Wish

by Bella Thorne

  It doesn’t really work. Taylor thinks I’m talking about my mom and dad, Ames thinks I’m talking about myself and J.J., and it leads the conversation into all kinds of different places that have nothing to do with the fact that Taylor’s boyfriend seems to be a ticking time bomb.

  When we get back to school on Monday, I kind of expect our lunch group to be back to normal. Yes, J.J.’s upset with me, but he’s tight with Amalita, and Jack always follows him. But neither of them joins us at lunch.

  “You won’t see him,” Ames says when she sees me looking around for J.J. “He’s in a bad place. Kinda wants to be by himself.”

  I get it. I do. But the thing is, I know I can make it better, and it makes me crazy that he won’t let me.

  “I see a Lloyd Dobler moment in your future,” Jenna says when I talk to her about it after school one night. Jenna has always had a huge thing for ’80s teen movies, and when we both lived in Maryland, we watched them all. She’s always been a big J.J. fan because she thinks he’s my Duckie.

  “The Say Anything guy?” I ask.

  “Really?” Jenna shoots back, insulted. “You seriously had to ask? Of course he’s the Say Anything guy. You have to do something like he did. Make a statement that reminds J.J. of everything you guys have.”

  Lloyd Dobler made his statement by holding a giant boom box above his head and playing Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” to his girlfriend, Diane Court. Giant boom boxes no longer exist, I would look ridiculous holding one over my head, and I happen to know that J.J. Austin is not a Peter Gabriel fan.

  He’s also not a Kyler Leeds fan, but there is that song Kyler wrote that’s literally all about J.J. and me. I have it on my phone. And I even have a Bluetooth speaker that would be way easier to hold over my head than a boom box.

  I decide the next day will be my Lloyd Dobler day. I warn Amalita in advance that I won’t be at lunch. I don’t tell her where I will be because she won’t approve, but I don’t want her to feel abandoned when I don’t show.

  Ames told me J.J.’s in a bad place and wants to be by himself. I’ve had a lot of time at Aventura High in bad places, and I know all the best spots to be by myself, so I figure if I look hard enough I can find him. I don’t bother with the library. It’s one of my go-tos, but J.J. likes to move around when he’s upset, like at the dance when he went out and walked around. I figure the lower fields are my best bet. I wander down to the track and the bleachers, but he’s not there. Then I walk down to the equipment shed by the soccer fields, but he’s not there either.

  I have one more shot. The lower field bathrooms are in this cement bunker, but one side of the building is completely blocked off by trees. There’s a bench against the wall on that side, which is hysterical because it’s almost like the school put it there purposely as a completely secluded spot for kids to hide and make out. If they did, it’s kind of brilliant, because no one actually uses it for that. Since it’s so obviously a make-out spot, everyone figures either

  A) someone else is already there and you don’t want to walk in on them, or

  B) a teacher will come by any second because it’s such an obvious place to catch against-the-rules PDA.

  Point is, if I were J.J. and I really wanted to get away and be alone, it’s where I’d go.

  I get Kyler’s song all queued up on my phone, get the Bluetooth speaker synced, then squeeze my way between the edge of the trees and the cement building.

  There’s someone on the bench…but it isn’t J.J.

  It’s Jack and Tom.

  And they’re full-on making out.

  “Ohmigod!” I squeal.

  Jack and Tom jump at the sound of my voice, and Jack leaps off the bench and as far as the clearing will allow. He’s bright red, completely disheveled, and hunched over a little. He holds out his hands in twin “stop” signs, scrambling to explain.

  “It’s not what you think. What you saw, it’s…it’s…”

  “Wait, hold up,” I say quickly. “I’m so sorry—I meant ‘ohmigod, this is great,’ not ‘ohmigod…ohmigod.’ ”

  “Huh?” Jack asks.

  Tom, who’s still on the bench, perfectly calm, explains. “She means she’s not freaked out.”

  “Of course not!” I say. “I’m totally happy for you guys! I knew you’d be great together!”

  Jack looks like someone just short-circuited his brain. He gapes at me. “You…you knew?”

  Tom rolls his eyes. “She totally knew. She outed you to Gus.”

  “Okay,” I balk, “I didn’t out him—”

  “ ‘Personal stuff’ that makes it hard for him to handle a guy for a Scare Pair date?” Tom asks.

  “That could have been anything!” I shoot back.

  Tom just raises an eyebrow.

  “Wait-wait-wait,” Jack stammers. “How did you know?”

  There’s no way I can tell him the truth, so I just shrug. “I don’t know…I just knew. Or suspected, I guess.”

  “Does anyone else know?” Jack asks. He looks terrified.

  “No,” I say definitively. “Not at all. No idea.” Then I grin. “But they could! No one would care. We’d all be happy for you! See this smile?” I ask, pointing to my face. “Imagine it on all your friends’ faces. Oh! Yes!” I gasp as I come up with a brilliant idea. “We can have a coming out party for you! We’ll do it at my house! It’ll be fantastic.”

  “Autumn,” Tom says, amused, “gay men aren’t debutantes. We don’t have coming out parties.”

  “Right. I knew that,” I say. “I just want to help. I mean, why keep it a secret when you totally don’t have to anymore?”

  “No, I do have to,” Jack says. “And if you’re really my friend, you’ll keep it a secret too.”

  “But why?” I ask. “I mean, don’t get me wrong—I totally won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to—”

  “Even though you outed him to Gus,” Tom notes.

  I’m about to object, but instead I cede the point. “Yes, even though. But just…why?”

  “Just…because. Okay?”

  He looks earnestly into my eyes, and I nod. “Of course. Whatever you want.” Then I grin again. “But I’m happy for you guys.” I run and give Jack a hug, then stand there, smiling at the two of them.

  Tom looks at me pointedly. “Autumn? Don’t you have someplace to be?”

  “Nope,” I say. Then I realize what he’s getting at. “I mean, yes! Absolutely! Gotta run!”

  I zip through the trees surrounding the clearing and twirl around happily as I start back up to the main lawn. I may not have fixed things with J.J. and me—yet—but I fixed Jack’s future!

  I wonder if this means Nathan’s back in the picture.

  One way to find out. I choose a cozy patch of grass, plop down with my legs crossed, and pull out the locket. I open it and play with the dials. Three years and six months from now should be good. The summer after our junior year in college. I close the locket, squeeze it tight, and close my eyes….

  I’m on the beach. I recognize it immediately—the beach near the Shack, where we go every Friday after the football games. I’m close to the water, and I see a whole group of us is there: Sean, Reenzie, Taylor, Jack, Amalita, and Future Me. We all look good—like ourselves, really. We’re on the sand, laughing and talking and I’m immediately happy. It feels easy and simple and it’s everything I’ve missed since we haven’t been like that in my time for a while now.

  As I listen, I get that we’re all miraculously home from college at the same time and trying to get some time in before we split off for internships and jobs and vacations and other stuff we have planned. We’re talking about where we want to live when college is over next year, and if maybe we’ll all be in the same city again.

  “Wanna hear something crazy?” Future Me asks. “I think I’m going to stay in school.”

  “Callate, you are not,” Ames says.

  Ames sounds dubious. I’m more concerned. “Why?” I ask. “Are we
failing?”

  But Future Me explains it’s because she loves her psych major so much, she wants to pursue it professionally and go on to get her doctorate. “So I can change people’s lives,” Future Me says, and there’s a twinkle in her eye that I totally know comes from the fact that she did change all their lives, back when she was me.

  Of course, this is a line of reasoning that makes my head hurt, so I just smile and hold up a hand. “Yeah, you change people’s lives,” I say supportively. “Up top.”

  She does not slap my hand, but Jack chimes in playfully. “How will you change lives, exactly? Outing them like you outed me to Gus Carillo?”

  A guy I don’t know gasps. “She outed you?!”

  “Shut up!” Future Me laughs. “I did not out you!”

  “Totally outed me, Ben,” Jack says dramatically to the guy. “Scarred me for life.”

  “Can’t hold it against her,” Ben says. “I’d have lost out if you were still in the closet when we met.”

  “I’d have come out in college,” Jack says. “For sure.”

  “You wouldn’t, though,” I say. “I saw. You’d be miserable without my help. So you’re welcome.” I look Ben up and down. He’s got the dorky-cute thing going on, but he seems very into Jack and they look happy together. “Nathan was cuter,” I say, “but this guy’s good too.”

  “Oy,” Ames says. “You’ll never believe what my manager asked me about yesterday.”

  “The picture?” Taylor asks sympathetically.

  “The picture,” Ames agrees.

  At first when she says “manager,” I think maybe she’s an actress, but when she keeps talking, I realize she means hotel manager. Ames is majoring in hotel management, and for the last three summers she’s been working at the same beach hotel in Maine. Her boss had Googled her before, but this time he apparently clicked a few pages in and found the contraband.

  “What did he say?” Sean asks.

  “He didn’t,” Ames says. “I didn’t let him. When he started in I said, ‘Look—am I good at my job?’ He said ‘Yeah, you’re the best.’ So I told him that’s all that mattered, and if he had a problem with that I’d just quit. So he shut up. And he gave me a raise.”

  “Yes!” I shout. “Ames, you rule!”

  Everyone else seems to agree, but then Sean’s face goes dark.

  “Oh, hey,” he says, “did you guys see in the news about Garth Cheskin?”

  “Who?” everyone asks.

  “Garth Cheskin. I knew him from football summer camps. He’s a quarterback at FSU. Or…he was. Took a nasty sack in a game last season.” Sean shakes his head miserably. “He went down hard. Ended up paralyzed from the neck down.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Reenzie says, echoing the sympathy on everyone’s faces. “Were you guys close?”

  “No,” Sean admits. “Fell out of touch years ago. But the crazy thing is…that could have been me. Remember how badly I wanted to play football there?”

  “Remember?!” Future Me asks. “You hated me for messing that up.”

  “I didn’t hate you,” Sean balks.

  Reenzie, Jack, Ames, Taylor, and Future Me all laugh out loud, and Sean grudgingly admits he might have hated me a little.

  “So what’s up with you and Drew, Tee?” Ames asks. “Everything good?”

  I hold my breath for a second, even though Taylor’s wearing a white shirt and denim shorts, which seems like a good sign.

  “Amazing,” she gushes. And as she talks, I get their whole story. They’ve been together this whole time. He graduated a year ago and moved to New York, where he worked on Broadway, then got some big job performing a show in London. The long distance sucked, but Taylor says he’s flying home even as she speaks, and the two of them will have two whole weeks together. She can’t wait.

  Turns out Reenzie’s in love, too. She met her boyfriend at Wesleyan, where she applied after Stanford rejected her. When she talks about the school, I can tell she loves it. She says it’s just as hard as any Ivy, but the vibe is more laid-back. “Laid-back” was never a term I’d use for Reenzie, but it seems to suit her, and she’s on track to graduate top of her class and hit a great law school.

  “This is incredible!” I shout. “I changed our futures and it worked! We’re all happier! I am a Time Goddess Genius!”

  Yet even as I say it, I’m very aware there’s one person very obviously not on the beach. I assure myself it doesn’t mean anything. This future is so good, J.J.’s absence has to be just a scheduling thing, and he and Future Me are either together or just really good friends but on our way back to one another.

  Then there’s a lull in the conversation, and Future Me asks, “So…anyone hear about J.J.? Is he in town?”

  She says it in a tinny, forced-casual way that makes my heart sink, and the way all my friends look at each other and won’t meet her eyes is unbearable.

  “Oh no,” I whisper. “Come on, everything is so good. This has to be right.”

  But it’s not. After a painfully long silence, Taylor speaks up. “He’s in town, but Naomi won’t let him meet up with us.”

  Future Me’s face clouds over even more. “All of us? Or me?”

  More glance exchanges.

  “Wait, I don’t get it,” I say. “Who’s Naomi and why won’t she let J.J. see me?”

  “Seriously?” Future Me bursts out. “It’s been two years! I get it. They’re together. I’m not going to get in the way.”

  “I know, but look at it from her side,” Taylor says. “You’re the last woman her boyfriend was with before her.”

  “You ask me,” Ames says, “she only keeps him away because she thinks if you’re together, he’ll go back to you.”

  Future Me looks at Ames intently. “Do you think that?”

  Ames shrugs, but Jack says what she’s thinking. “Doesn’t matter,” Jack says. “J.J.’s whipped. And it’s bad. She treats him like dirt.”

  “So why is he with her?” Future Me asks, and I can feel her hurt in my own chest.

  “You know him,” Jack says. “He’s gun-shy. After you and Carrie in high school, he never trusted that someone would stay with him. Even in college, when he visited you and you got back together, he was always jealous. He’d freak out that something would happen at a party or someplace, and you wouldn’t tell him. Then he met Naomi, and she was at his school and always there and always hanging on him and always doing things with him—”

  “Only with him,” Ames mutters, “ ’cause she’s a muy posesivo mujer loca and wants him all to herself.”

  “Whatever,” Jack says. “Point is, whatever we think about her, he’s fine with it, so…” Now he shrugs too.

  “But he’s not fine with it, right?” Future Me asks. “ ’Cause if he were, Naomi wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

  “What do you want me to say, Autumn?” Jack asks. “That he’s secretly still in love with you and maybe he wishes things were different?”

  “Yes!” Future Me says. “That’s exactly what I want you to say!”

  “What would it matter?” Jack asks. “He’s not going anywhere. I don’t know if he loves Naomi. Maybe he does. He says he does. I think he just feels safe with her, and he’s messed in the head enough that he won’t risk that to go after something more.”

  Taylor puts out a hand and rubs Future Me’s back. “You gotta get over him, Autumn,” she says gently. “It’s over.”

  Future Me looks like she’s about to cry. I feel the same way. No matter how well I fixed everything else, J.J. and I are still hopelessly broken.

  Taylor’s phone rings. She answers it, then listens and her face goes pale. My heart sinks lower because even though all my friends and Future Me are asking her what’s wrong, I already know.

  “It’s about Drew’s plane,” she tells us, her eyes misting over as she tilts the phone away from her mouth. “Something…something went wrong.”

  I’m crying now. It’s the middle of a school day, I’
m on the lawn where anyone can see, and I’m crying.

  Was that one Colorado future I saw the only one where I end up with J.J.? And if it is, why did I have to see it? How is it at all fair that I have to live out the rest of my life knowing I could have been ecstatically happy, but instead I messed it all up?

  No. There has to be a way to get him back.

  I keep trying the Lloyd Dobler route. I keep my Bluetooth speaker with me at all times all week, but J.J.’s so good at avoiding me that I never catch him alone. I could show up at his house like the real Lloyd Dobler, but given how happy he was the last time I tried that, he’d probably call the cops and have me arrested for stalking and trespassing, which would not look good on my college applications.

  At least Jack and I are friends again. It takes a while. Even though I was totally cool about him and Tom, he’s nervous around me all week. Every time he sees me, he gives me these nervous looks and quickly walks away. By Friday, though, he seems confident I won’t give away his secret.

  “Hey,” he says softly when he catches me in the hall. “Thanks for…” He looks around to make sure no one’s watching. “You know.”

  “No problem,” I say. “How’s it going?”

  Jack smiles, and it’s completely adorable. He looks nervous and happy and excited, and it’s like I can feel his energy bring me up just being around it. “Really well,” he says softly. “Yesterday my parents were out at some work dinner, so he came over, and—”

  “What up, mi amigos?” Ames cries as she and Taylor approach from down the hall.

  We hear a distinctive stomping of low heels and spin around to see Reenzie. She’s clearly on the warpath. I’ve seen her in this mode many times since I’ve known her, and the results are never good. My blood chills as I realize why she might be on the warpath.

  “I’m going to hit my locker,” I say, already moving in the other direction. “Want to make sure I have everything before class.”