The Future of Us (25 page)

THE PORCH LIGHT is on when I get home. I set my skateboard against the front door and reach into my pocket for the key. I can hear my parents talking to each other inside. They probably won’t say a word to me when I go in, but Dad will glance at his watch, letting me know I cut it close.

Emma’s house is mostly dark. The outside lights are off, as are the lights upstairs. From within the downstairs living room there’s a faint blue glow.

I walk across the lawn between our houses, listening to the chimes on Emma’s front porch. When Martin first hung them up, Emma complained that even his noises were infiltrating her life.

Stepping softly, I approach their living room window. In the center of the room, Emma is asleep on the couch, her head cushioned against the armrest. She’s facing the TV, but it’s angled so I can’t tell what she was watching.

I miss Emma. Even if we didn’t say anything to each other, even if she remained asleep, I wish I could be sitting on that couch with her right now.

“EMMA?” my mom calls from downstairs.

I glance at my alarm clock. It’s not set to go off for another ten minutes.

“Emma!”

I groan and pull the covers over my head. I fell asleep on the couch last night, and finally stumbled to my room at two in the morning. When I got upstairs, I noticed the light was on in Josh’s bathroom. He takes showers in the middle of the night when he can’t sleep. I considered blinking my light a few times. If he blinked back, I would have held a note to my window like when we were kids. But I decided not to bother him. Josh doesn’t want to hear from me. He spent the afternoon with Sydney, taking their first steps toward a future together.

My mom’s sandals click on the stairs, and I scan my tired brain for what I could’ve done to piss her off. I didn’t see her at all last night. She and Martin were buying cabinetry out in Pittsburgh. I ate dinner and stacked my plate and glass in the dishwasher. I even wiped down the counter before watching
Wayne’s World
.

My mom is wearing a yellow dress and her hair is pulled back with a matching headband. She’s frowning, and holding up a black videocassette.

“
Wayne’s World
, Emma?”

I rub the shoulder I was sleeping on. “Is that why you woke me up?”

“No.” She flashes a different video in her other hand.

“
This
is why I woke you up.”

I grab a scrunchie from my nightstand and pull my hair into a ponytail. “Can you be more specific?”

“You ejected our
blank
tape to watch
Wayne’s World
,” my mom says, pressing her lips tight.

I shrug. Maybe I ejected a tape. I can’t remember.

“We were taping
Seinfeld
,” she says. “We had it programmed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We tape it every Thursday, Emma. You know that.” She looks at the ocean poster tacked above my desk, and then back at me. “Martin and I are concerned about your lack of respect for this house.”

I sit up. “Lack of respect? What are you talking about?”

She points to the floor by my dresser. “Martin noticed that stain right there. Emma, we just put in new carpeting. How did you already spill something on it?”

I do
not
want to talk about that. Spilling the vase water was a dumb thing to do, but it wasn’t the stupidest thing I did that afternoon.

“I tried cleaning it,” I say.

“You should have asked us for help. We have products that lift stains—”

Wait a second! “What was Martin doing in my room?”

My mom sighs. “He was just measuring with the contractor.”

I leap out of bed and tug my shirt down over my hips. I’m not in the mood to fight, especially after the arguments with Josh and my dad, but I can’t leave this one unchecked.

“It’s for his office,” she adds. “But that’s not until after you graduate.”

“This is crazy!” I say, my pulse racing. I hold my hands near my eyes, almost as blinders. “This has been my room for sixteen years and it’s
still
my room. Maybe Martin has designs to turn it into his office someday, but he does not have my permission to enter whenever he wants.”

My mom sets both videos on top of my dresser.

“I’m sorry about
Seinfeld
,” I say, opening a drawer and pulling out a green T-shirt and jean shorts. “I’ll call around to see if anyone taped it. But you have to tell Martin to stop plotting his takeover.”

My mom looks into the distance like she’s fending off tears. “It’s been an adjustment for all of us,” she says quietly.

I consider telling her it was an adjustment when she and my dad divorced, and her brief marriage to Erik was another adjustment. I’m tired of adjustments.

“Just tell Martin to stay out of my room,” I say.

That’s my future this morning. It doesn’t say I’m married. It doesn’t say I’m single. Now I’m a graduate of San Diego State and I live in Oakland, California.

The last thing I wrote was on Wednesday.

My photo is black and white, almost a silhouette. I’m playing the saxophone in front of an open window, and my hair is shoulder-length.

I click open my list of Friends and start scrolling down. Cody is there. He’s wearing a different tie, but he looks basically the same as yesterday. I scroll down to the
J
s, but there’s still no Josh.

I click back to my main page. I just wrote something twelve seconds ago!

I’m getting rid of
Millicent
?

Clarence and Millicent represent everything good about my friendship with Josh. And now I want to let go of that? Did I ruin our friendship forever all because I kissed him? Or is it because I didn’t have a clear answer when he asked
why
I kissed him?

Hang on! I can’t change my password. That’s how I’ve been able to log on to Facebook. And I
need
to be able to get onto Facebook. My relationship is complicated now. There’s no mention of a career. Even though I’m not telling much, I imagine at some point I’ll start revealing again. If I can’t learn the details of my life, then I won’t have a chance to repair things.

“Emma!” my mom calls, startling me. “Martin needs to make a work call. Can you sign off now?”

“No, I—”

“This is what we were talking about,” she warns. “We’re getting another phone line soon, just for the Internet. But for now, you need to quit.”

As I close my screen, I think about that photo of Kellan, Tyson, Josh, and me at GoodTimez that I tore up the other day. I hurry over to my trashcan, hoping Martin didn’t empty it when he was in here. And there, underneath several crumpled tissues, are the jagged pieces of the photograph. I pick them out of the garbage, one by one, and cup them in my palm.

Maybe Josh and I aren’t going to be friends in the future, but I can’t throw away these memories. I open my top drawer, slide the pieces of the photo into my journal, and then close my dresser again.

IT’S SENIOR SKIP DAY. With a quarter of the students gone, the hallways feel uncomfortably wide and open. They’re also quieter, making it too easy to get lost in my thoughts.

As I walk to third period, I slide my shoulder against the locker doors and think about time. If I could, I’d travel back six months to the night I tried to kiss Emma, and I wouldn’t do it. She would still hug my arm for warmth as we walked through the cemetery, but when we got back to her car with Tyson and Kellan, there would be no awkwardness between us. If I couldn’t go back that far, I’d return to Emma’s porch the day she set up her new computer, and I wouldn’t give her that CD-ROM. Then she never would’ve discovered Facebook. While we still wouldn’t be as close as we once were, at least we’d be talking.

I continue down the hall until a voice behind me says, “There you are!”

I take a shallow breath, and turn around.

“Isn’t this weird?” Sydney motions at the surrounding hallway. “It’s like no one’s here today.”

She really is beautiful, with her light brown hair and amber eyes. She could be featured in one of the magazines Emma and Kellan flip through for the quizzes.

“Are your arms tired from yesterday?” Sydney asks. She reaches forward to squeeze my bicep. Thankfully, I did my extra push-ups today. “I worked you hard.”

“Not a problem,” I say, though my arms are pretty sore. “What about you?”

Sydney lets her shoulders and arms droop forward. “I was exhausted when I got home.”

The two-minute warning bell rings and I’m grateful for the interruption.

“Where are you eating lunch?” Sydney asks, glancing at her phone.

I’m going to my usual spot at the oak tree, but I’m not sure I should invite her to join me. That’s what Tyson suggested, but Emma may be there, which would be more awkwardness than I can handle right now.

“If you already have plans,” Sydney says, “we can have lunch some other time.”

She deserves an explanation. “It’s not that I have plans,” I say, “but there’s been some tension with one of my friends, and I’m hoping to talk to her about it today.”

Sydney momentarily looks away. I shouldn’t have used the word
her.

“That’s good,” she says. “I mean, that’s sweet of you.”

On Facebook, Sydney and I seem happy together. Even though we’re different people now, we must become more similar over time. Maybe Emma was right and I pushed things too soon.

“This is going to sound weird,” Sydney says, looking down. “Last night I was telling my sister, Haley, what we did yesterday, and about how much fun I had hanging out with you.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I had fun, too.”

She sighs, and then looks up at me with a half-smile. “But when I told her I took you out to Rick’s house, she called me an idiot. If that put you in an uncomfortable position, I just want to say I’m sorry.”

I give a slight shrug but don’t say anything. I was definitely not expecting an apology.

Sydney smiles bashfully. “Haley would probably say I’m being an idiot again for asking this, but do you want to come with me to that bonfire tonight?”

“The one at Rick’s house?”

“It’s not actually
at
his house,” she says. “It’s down by the lake.”

Shana Roy bursts over. “Hey, Syd!” After a brief glance at me, she holds her palm out to Sydney. “I need some gum or mints. Do you have any?”

As Sydney digs through her bag, I try to figure out what I’m going to say about the bonfire. If we aren’t supposed to get together this early and I go with her, am I forcing things beyond the breaking point? But if I try to slow things down, will they ever pick back up again?

Thankfully, there’s a way to find out. Whatever answer I give, I can go onto Facebook after school and see the repercussions. I can use Emma’s emergency key and check while she’s still at track. I know her email address and password, so I’ll just take one quick peek and decide if—

No! If I really wish we’d never discovered Facebook, then that’s how it has to be from now on. As far as I’m concerned, Facebook never existed. And if that’s true, and Sydney Mills was asking me to a bonfire, I’d be stupid to say no.

Shana folds a stick of gum into her mouth and then waves goodbye. Once she’s gone, Sydney smiles at me. “So do you want to go?”

“Let’s do it,” I say.