The Future of Us (22 page)

I look across the length of the empty football field. If Emma was coming, she would’ve been here by now.

AFTER LUNCH, I have Word Processing I with Mr. Elliott. The class has three long tables, all lined with desktop computers. I press the green power button on my computer and then lean back in my chair while it boots up.

Two scenarios play out in my mind. One is that Emma didn’t come to the tree for lunch because she’s still too mad or embarrassed. The other scenario is that Emma left school and went home to investigate Facebook alone. But since Kellan wasn’t at lunch either, they’re probably together. As angry as Emma may be, I can’t imagine her pulling Kellan into this.

Mr. Elliott walks up to my computer and drops a blue slip onto my keyboard. “You need to head to the front office.”

Again? But why this time? The slip has my name written just above the secretary’s signature. The last few class periods of the day are all circled in dark black ink.

Paranoia hits me. What if Mr. Elliott has been monitoring Emma’s computer and he knows what we’ve been doing? A computer geek might know how to do that. Maybe
that’s
why Emma never made it to lunch. Maybe they nabbed her, but she wouldn’t give up my location!

As calmly as possible, I ask, “Do you know what this is about?”

“All I know,” Mr. Elliott says, scratching a flaky patch on the side of his head, “is you can take your stuff with you because you won’t be coming back.”

I CAN ALREADY VISUALIZE my parents—brows furrowed and arms crossed—waiting for me in the principal’s office. The school psychologist will be there, and maybe a physics or history teacher to share their perspectives. Emma and her mom will be sitting in chairs, and Martin too, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else.

“Playing with your futures,” the principal will say, shaking his head with disapproval. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

The teachers will lecture us about the potential repercussions, not only to us, but to the entire future of mankind.

“There you are!”

Sydney is standing outside the front office, grinning excitedly. She’s wearing a light pink button-down shirt, jeans, and sandals. She rises onto her toes and offers a flippy little wave.

I can’t help smiling back. “What are you doing here?”

Sydney points to the blue slip in my hand. “How do you like your get-out-of-jail-free card?”

“This was
you
?”

She winks at me. “You’re welcome,” she says, then takes the paper from my hand and opens the office door.

Mrs. Bender, the secretary, greets us from behind the counter. “All I need are your blue slips and you’re good to go.”

Sydney reaches across the counter, and her jeans pull tight around her perfectly shaped body. “Here they are, Mrs. B.” Then she turns toward me, loops her arm into mine, and leads us out into the hallway.

“Got everything you need?” she asks. “We’ll be gone until the end of school.”

I’m having a hard time focusing with her body so close to mine. Also, the top two buttons on her shirt are undone.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

“Errands!”

My textbooks for tonight’s homework are in my backpack. I’m not sure about reading assignments for my afternoon classes, but I can call people for those. I still don’t know why we’re being allowed to go, so I want to get out of here before anyone realizes there’s been a mistake.

While leaving the main building, Sydney explains our mission. As president of Student Council, she has to pick up items for several year-end events. The vice-president was set to run the errands with her, but he sprained his ankle in gym and had to back out. To fill his spot, Sydney chose . . .
me
!

“I didn’t know Student Council had this much power,” I say. “Can you get out of class whenever you want?”

“You have to be careful. But if the school views it as a learning experience, they’ll approve it,” she says. “We have a lot of errands to run today, so I drove this bad boy.” She taps the rear bumper of a black Jeep Cherokee SUV.

“Is this yours?” I ask. Yesterday’s convertible seemed more her style.

“It’s my sister’s,” she says. “But she and her fiancé swapped with me for the day. They live down the street from us, so it’s no big deal. We do it all the time.”

I walk to the passenger side and climb in. On the seat between us is a clipboard with a to-do list.

“Buckle up,” she says, starting the engine. “For the next few hours, your muscles are mine.”

I PICK UP a silver and black business card tucked into the drink holder. “Electra Design?”

“That’s one of my dad’s companies,” Sydney says. “They do graphic design work.”

“He’s always starting new businesses,” Sydney adds. “My mom tells him he’s a workaholic and that he needs to hire more people to help him.”

He’s going to hire
me
. Someday, I’m going to work at Electra Design . . . for her dad.

We pull into the same shopping center as GoodTimez Pizza, but drive across to the opposite end. Sydney backs into a parking spot in front of Trophy Town and then cuts the engine. We hop out and I help her raise the rear window and lower the tailgate. She leans in to smooth out a blue tarp in back, and I can’t help catching a glimpse down her shirt. She’s wearing a pale pink bra, almost the same color as her shirt. And Tyson would be happy to know that her breasts look mind-bogglingly real.

“Next Tuesday night is the sports banquet,” Sydney says as we walk into the trophy shop. “We have to pick up a bunch of awards here. The weird part is, I already know I’m getting a trophy for tennis. But I’ll just stash it in my closet with the others. It feels so egotistical to put trophies all over your room.”

I don’t tell her I kept my T-ball and soccer trophies up for years after I stopped playing.

In the middle of the store is a three-tiered trophy display. There are different colored columns to choose from in varying heights and configurations. Each trophy is topped with a gold sports figurine: baseball, basketball, bowling, even darts.

Sydney scrolls down her clipboard with a pencil. “Did you ever play a sport?”

“Baseball and soccer when I was younger,” I say. “In middle school, I got really into skating. What about you? Other than tennis, of course.”

“I play soccer in the fall.”

“Are you any good?” I ask, but I know she is. Several times each season, she makes it onto the front page of the
Lake Forest Tribune
’s sports section. She’s either stealing the ball, kicking a goal, or running with her hands in the air.

“I’m not bad,” she says. “But I’m not a crazy jock like my sisters.”

A short man with glasses and receding hair asks if we’re from the high school. Sydney signs an invoice, and he helps us load three boxes of plaques and trophies into the back of the SUV. Then we’re off to order flower arrangements.

“My sisters played tennis in high school,” Sydney says. “For a while, they were ranked first and second in the county.”

“At the same time?”

“They’re ridiculously competitive with each other,” she says, slowing at a light. “They’re identical twins, but they argue all the time.”

“The crazy thing is,” she continues, “they’re both engaged to law school students, and they’re both planning to get married next summer.”

The first time I saw my future, I had a son and two identical twin daughters. The girls looked just like Sydney. Later, we had twin boys who looked like me.

“Identical twins run in my family,” she says. “My mom’s a twin, too.”

I don’t respond. What can I say?
Guess what! We used to have twin girls, but then we lost them. Why? Because Emma didn’t like her husband, and apparently you can’t change one thing about the future without changing everything else. But now it seems we have twin boys. Or at least we did yesterday.

“You’re being kind of quiet,” Sydney says.

She’s right. I should be talking. If I want things to happen between us, I can’t sit here thinking about the future. I need to stay focused on the present. Even though we’re going to get married one day, I know so little about her. I have no idea what her favorite movie is or where she likes to hang out. I don’t even know what makes her laugh.

“Do you want kids someday?” I ask. If Tyson were sitting behind me, he’d smack the back of my head.

Sydney smiles as she flips on the turn signal. “That’s a funny question to ask on a first date.”

I know she’s joking about these errands being a first date, but for those words to even pop into her mind means, on some level, she considers this the beginning of a relationship. And it is!

After we drive a few blocks in silence, I ask, “What are you up to this weekend?”

“I’m playing tennis with my mom and sisters on Saturday,” she says. “And then the whole family, including my dad and the fiancés, are helping out with a picnic at the prison on Sunday.”

There’s a prison about halfway between Lake Forest and Pittsburgh, but I’ve never been out there. “They have picnics?”

“Every Memorial Day,” Sydney says. “It’s volunteer work. At last year’s picnic I made the mistake of bringing Jeremy with me. Do you know Jeremy Watts?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He graduated last year,” she says. “He’s a decent guy, but he can be a little insensitive. The whole time we were there, he pretended to be an inmate and he kept whispering things to me like, ‘Can you pass the macaroni salad? I’d get it myself, but I have handcuffs on
.
’”

I look out the window so she can’t tell I’m holding back a smile.

“They weren’t even wearing handcuffs,” she adds.

I can imagine Emma and me in that same situation. If I made that handcuff joke, she’d punch me in the arm and tell me to behave, but her eyes would give her away. She’d be on the verge of laughing, too.

I point up the road to Sunshine Donuts. “Want to stop? I’ll buy.”

Sydney looks where I’m pointing and then crinkles her nose. “Maybe later.”

We drive past, and I watch the brightly colored sign recede in the side-view mirror.

I HAVE TWENTY MINUTES until I need to be at track, so I’m studying in the library. There’s hardly anyone in here, just two freshman boys on a computer and Ms. Nesbit quietly shelving books. The pink streak in her hair is pinned back with an intricate series of barrettes.

Everything in my life feels like it’s going downhill. Everything except Cody. We smiled at each other twice in the halls today, and all I could think was
he’s still single in fifteen years
. Single and hot and working as an architect in Denver. While that’s not near the ocean, I could learn to love the mountains.

“How did it go with the phone books?” Ms. Nesbit asks, approaching my table. “Were they at the public library?”