The Future of Us (19 page)

Waikiki. Acapulco. When I read about Sydney and my vacations, I imagined we’d be alone, drinking fruity drinks and having sex in exotic locations. Now it seems like our trips involve a house overflowing with her family. Not that I wouldn’t go. As long as I get time alone with Sydney, I’m there.

Up ahead, the road gradually rises where it meets the train tracks.

“Do you know what to do when you drive over train tracks?” Sydney asks.

“Of course,” I say.

As the car bumps over the tracks, we both lift our feet off the floor.

“Feet-up-a-loo!” I shout.

Sydney laughs as the road descends. “Feet-up-a-
what
?”

“Feet-up-a-loo,” I say, my face getting warm. “Everyone knows that.”

“I don’t think so,” Sydney says, smiling. “Everyone knows you lift your feet and make a wish.”

I’m tempted to ask her what she wished for, but maybe I don’t want to know. Or maybe I do, but if she tells me it won’t come true.

AFTER DROPPING KELLAN OFF, I drive along the east side of Wagner Park, heading home.

If Kellan says she has no use for condoms, then she’s not even
anticipating
going all the way soon. When I get home, I need to tell Josh everything so we can figure out what to do. I just hope he’s gotten over today’s ego kick.

After the stoplight, I turn up the block toward my house. A white convertible is parked at the curb by Josh’s house. It’s Sydney’s car! And Josh is in the passenger seat.

As I go past them and pull into my driveway, I can almost hear Sydney’s voice saying, “Is that Emma Nelson?” I bet Josh won’t tell her we’ve been friends since we were little. And that omission will be the first stone in the wall he builds around his precious life with Sydney.

I reach into my backseat for the swimsuits and towels, and then step outside, slamming the car door much harder than I intended.

ONCE I GET TO MY ROOM, I look out the window. Sydney’s convertible is still there. Josh tells her something and she laughs like he’s the funniest guy in the world.

I peel off my sandy clothes, toss them into the laundry basket, and then pull on my robe. When Josh comes up here, I want to immediately check Facebook and see how everything that happened today affected our futures. I bet as soon as Sydney drives away, he’ll be knocking at my door.

To get ready, I dial up to AOL. While my computer beeps and crackles, I go back to the window.

Sydney leans over and kisses Josh on the cheek, and then he climbs out of the car. As she drives off, Josh gives her a two-fingered salute. Now
that’s
annoying. I pull away from the window and walk back to my computer. If he’s going to move forward with Sydney, then I don’t have to keep up my end of the pact.

I enter my email and password to log in to Facebook.

Life looks about the same as yesterday. I’m tempted to take a peek at Kellan or search for Josh before he gets here, but I’ll wait. That’s what friends do. They keep their word.

I spin around in my chair.
Where is he?

Finally, I can’t help myself. I locate Kellan in my Friends column, and click her name.

Lindsay’s still there! Okay, now I
have
to talk to Josh.

I look out the window. Josh is sitting on his lawn, facing the park. I click back to my webpage on Facebook, knot the belt in my robe, and hurry down the stairs.

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.”