Autumn's Wish (4 page)

“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.

By the time I'm done, our pizza arrives. Erick tells me to give his slices to Schmidt, our basset hound. Erick would rather make a smoothie out of some protein powder Mom apparently got him last week.

“Ugh, you sound like Jenna's last boyfriend,” I say. “He was this total musclehead.”

“Jenna likes guys with muscles?” Erick asks, intrigued.

“
Some
muscles,” I say. “This guy was one of those workout heads who got so huge he couldn't lower his arms all the way. And eating with him was a nightmare. He wouldn't put anything in his mouth but protein shakes. She dumped him after their second date.”

“Really?” he asks, sitting down and grabbing a slice of pizza. “Even though he was ripped?”

I smile inwardly. The story's a complete fake, but Erick has always been disgustingly in love with Jenna, and if he thinks she doesn't like her guys bulked up, maybe it'll save him from his 'roid-rage future.

Mom gets home late, but I'm still awake, and she's thrilled when I tell her about the pizza. She grabs a slice and a diet soda and takes them to the couch. I curl up with Schmidt on my lap and sit with her while she eats. She's totally impressed when I tell her about my new SAT date and prep class; then she fills me in on all the construction drama at the new Catches Falls branch.

The whole time we talk, there's a question I'm dying to ask, but it's so the kind of thing I never thought I'd say to my mom that I can't imagine getting the words past my tongue. I have to stare down at her pizza and address the question to her uneaten crust rather than to her face.

“Mom…have you thought about…I mean, are you…” Ugh, even asking the crust is hard. I close my eyes and blurt it out. “You're not dating anyone, are you?”

Mom chokes on her soda.

“No!” she says. “Autumn, what would make you even ask that?”

Other than seeing her get married? “I don't know, I just…” Inspiration! “I had this weird dream that you were getting married again and—”

I don't mean to well up. I don't. I honestly have no idea it's coming. It's just that I see her in my head in that wedding dress with that strange guy, and from where I'm sitting I can see my mom and dad's
real
wedding picture on the coffee table in the other room, and the next thing I know I'm starting to cry and Schmidt's licking my face and Mom's running around to sit next to me and put her arm around my shoulders.

“Oh, baby,” she says. “It's okay.”

“I'm sorry.” I sniff. “I don't know why I was thinking about it—”

I sob and Mom rubs my back.

“It's normal,” she says. “It's totally normal to wonder about that. But look at me, Autumn.”

I meet her eyes. They're reaching out to mine, full of strength and certainty.

“Your father was the love of my life. There's no one else, and I'm not looking for anyone else. I have you, I have Erick, I have Schmidt and Eddy and my work and my friends….My life is full. Okay?”

I sniff again, and nod.

Later, while I'm brushing my teeth, I wonder if I already changed the future. I didn't do anything big, just signed up for a test and a class and had a couple conversations, but maybe it was enough. When I get back to my room, I yank on the chain and pull the locket out from under my shirt. I open it and make sure it's still set for my mother's potential wedding day, but before I can snap it shut, I notice something.

The little number in the top window—the one that used to show a 10—now shows a 9. I can't imagine why. None of the other numbers in the locket have moved, and this one doesn't even have a dial next to it. The number changed all by itself, sometime after I made that first jump.

Chills crawl over my skin as I realize what it means.

“It's a countdown,” I whisper.

It has to be. It was at 10, I made one jump, and now it's at 9.

The locket isn't like the diary or the map. I can't use it as much as I want. I have ten jumps and that's it.

I decide not to jump again just yet. If my jumps are limited, I need to use them more carefully. I need to accomplish more in the present before I check back in on the future. I need to make sure my life can't possibly turn out the way I saw.

On Monday I harass Erick to speed up his morning grooming routine—which these days takes
way
longer than my own—so Mom can drive us both to school early and I can visit the guidance counselor before classes start.

“Ms. Falls!” he cries when he sees me, and springs up from the largest beanbag chair in the office. Mr. Winthrop had some kind of epiphany over the summer, I guess, and decided he'd get more guidance customers if he became a “cool” teacher. For him that meant ditching his desk and chair and replacing them with an assortment of beanbags, a thick plushy rug, and a giant chalkboard where anyone who comes in can scribble down whatever's on their mind. As far as I know, Jack and J.J. are the only people who use the board. They sneak in whenever Mr. Winthrop isn't there and write innocuous anagrams for the most disgusting phrases they can come up with. Today the board says “aging toad goon,” but I can only imagine what the letters spell rearranged.

“After last winter, I thought I'd lost you,” Mr. Winthrop says.

Last winter was the last time I tried to reinvent myself. I was dating J.J. and feeling suffocated, plus I wound up losing all my friends due to map complications, so I threw myself into becoming the best possible college applicant ever. I was pretty amazing at it and have a single semester of admissions office perfection to show for it. But then I got my friends back and wanted, oh, a life, so I fell off the wagon a little bit.

“You did,” I agree, “but I'm back and I'm all in. How do I get colleges begging for me?” I tell him I'm already on the SAT part; it's the other things I need help with.

“Well,” he says, “there's the obvious: grades and teacher recommendations.”

“Study hard and kiss up to the teachers,” I echo. “Got it.”

Mr. Winthrop doesn't think “kissing up” is exactly right, but I'm still pretty sure it's what he means. For a second I consider giving a Catches Falls puppy to each of my teachers as a big win-win. The puppies find homes and my teachers love me for bringing them joy!

With my luck all my teachers would be allergic. Maybe I need a better plan.

“Beyond that it's your extracurriculars,” Mr. Winthrop says. “Are you still following your singular life's passion to improve the lives of the elderly by volunteering at Century Acres?”

“Did I say that was my singular passion?” I ask.

“You're not volunteering there anymore?”

“I
was
…” Right up until I found out Lame Future Me works at the Century Acres front desk. Now I think I'm more likely to change my future if I avoid the place except for Eddy visits. I try to explain this to Mr. Winthrop without giving anything away, but he just looks at me like I'm crazy. Then he reminds me that colleges love “arrows,” kids who follow one passion and see it through, no matter what. He urges me to come up with some kind of extracurricular that at least seems similar to helping the elderly, even if it's not at Century Acres.