The Future of Us (3 page)

The electronic voice offers a cheery, “
Goodbye!
”

“Thank you,” Emma’s mom says. Then she tilts her head at me. “It’s nice to have you over again, Josh. Would you like to stay for dinner?”

I stand up and grab my skateboard, avoiding Emma’s eyes. “I can’t. I’ve got too much homework, and my parents . . .” As I trail off, I feel my cheeks flushing.

The three of us walk downstairs. Emma’s mom joins Martin in the bathroom where he’s arranging plastic bags from Home Depot. Emma opens the front door for me and leans in close.

“I’ll try to get back online later,” she whispers.

“Okay,” I say, my eyes shifting down to my skateboard. “Call me if you need anything.”

ALL I CAN THINK ABOUT during dinner is Emma Nelson Jones.

“You can hardly tell it’s low-fat cheese,” my mom gushes to Martin as she nibbles her pizza. “And pears instead of pepperoni? Delicious.”

“I agree,” Martin says.

We’re eating on TV trays while watching
Seinfeld
. They record it on the VCR every Thursday and then watch it on Sunday night. I grab another slice of pizza and transfer it onto my plate.

“Be careful with that,” Martin reminds me.

“The new carpet,” my mom adds.

The show breaks for commercials. Rather than fast-forwarding, Martin moves closer to my mom and strokes her arm. I can’t deal with this. I balance my plate in one hand, grab my glass of milk, and head up to my room.

I sit cross-legged on my bed, eating pizza while staring at the brick wall screensaver on my computer. Maybe this isn’t a prank or a virus. Maybe there really is a woman in her mid-thirties named Emma Nelson Jones. She went to Lake Forest High years ago and just happens to have my birthday. But even if all those coincidences are true, why is she showing up on my computer?

I pick up the phone and dial Josh. I know his number so well I don’t have to look at the list on my corkboard. But then I set the phone back on its cradle. Josh doesn’t want to be dragged into this. He sprinted out of my room as soon as he had a chance.

I try Kellan, but her line is busy, and I can’t decide whether to call my dad. Back when he and Cynthia lived in Lake Forest, we saw each other all the time. We took runs together, and when he played sax with his jazz band, I’d often come up on stage and join them for a song. But now whenever I call it feels like I’m intruding on their time with the new baby. I’ve only been down to see him twice since he moved, for a week at Christmas and four days at spring break.

I finish my pizza and head to the bathroom. Since the downstairs bathroom is out of commission, I have to cut through my mom and Martin’s room every time I need to pee. As I look in the mirror, I think about Emma Nelson Jones and her highlights.

I’ve always liked my hair color, especially in the summer when I spritz it with Sun-In and lay out in the backyard. But maybe someday I’ll contemplate highlights, too.

Maybe someday I am.

I hurry to my computer and jiggle the mouse. When I dial into AOL, it’s just the regular homepage. But then I look in the “Favorite Places” box, where I know Kellan stores links to all the webpages she likes.

And there it is. Facebook. When I click on the word, that box appears asking for my email and password, which I quickly enter.

In the top corner, next to where it says “Emma Nelson Jones,” there’s a different photo than last time. When I click her name, a page appears with a larger version of the same photo. She looks glamorous in a wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses.

Below the photo, I click on a tab labeled “Info.”

1997? That’s when
I’m
going to graduate. That’s next year!

I force my eyes away from the graduating class that hasn’t happened yet and scroll down. Emma Nelson Jones has created lists of her favorite movies, music, and books.

I haven’t heard of the first two movies, though I’m happy to see
Toy Story
apparently has two sequels, but it’s the books section that really jumps out at me.

I don’t know what
Harry Potter
or
The Help
are, but Josh gave me
Tuck Everlasting
for my eleventh birthday. I still remember reading the scene where Tuck rows Winnie across the lake. The boat gets stuck in a tangle of roots and Tuck explains how the water rushing by is like time flowing on without them. Reading those words made me feel deep and philosophical.

I click back to the page where Emma Nelson Jones talked about wanting to highlight her hair, but I can’t find anything about that now. It still says she’s married to Jordan Jones Jr. but there’s no photo of him with the fish. That’s odd. How did everything I saw before change like that?

Today
is May 19! So that means this is all happening right now. But today isn’t Thursday. It’s
Sunday
.

Three people have responded to Emma, asking what she’s cooking. She’s replied with, strangely enough, one of my favorite meals.

A few more people have written, saying how much they love comfort food. And then, at the bottom, Emma wrote something just twelve minutes ago. As I read it, my arms prickle with goose bumps.

MY PARENTS GOT HOME LATE, so it’s scrambled-eggs-with-hot-dog night in the Templeton home. Any other night I’d be loving it, but now I’m a little distracted. I tried calling Emma before we sat down to eat, but her line was busy.

“You seem quiet,” Dad says. He tilts the frying pan toward my plate and slides on more hot dog wedges.

The telephone rings. As Dad goes down the hall to answer it, I push around the eggs with my fork. The website on Emma’s computer doesn’t make any sense. It has to be a prank, but if it is, I don’t get it. If I were going to make a fake future for someone, I’d put in outrageous stuff, like they’re going to win the lottery or own a castle in Scotland. Why go to all that trouble for hair coloring and fishing trips?

Dad walks back to the table. “It was Emma. I told her you’d call her back after dinner.”

“How is Emma?” Mom asks me. “Did she want that America Online CD?”

“CD-ROM,” I say, shoveling some hot dog into my mouth to avoid the rest of her question.

“Is Sheila going to let her use AOL?” Mom asks.

I nod and fork in more hot dog. Why did Emma call? She knows my parents hate getting phone calls during dinner. Did she find an inconsistency, proving the website is a prank? Or maybe she figured out who did it!

“Things change so fast when you’re a teenager,” Dad says, spooning salsa onto his eggs. “You and Emma used to be so close. Last summer Mom and I started to worry that you needed to hang around with other people, too.”

“I hang out with Tyson,” I say.

“Other girls,” Dad says.

“At least we know Emma,” Mom says. She looks at Dad and laughs. “Remember how David was always going to that girl Jessica’s house after school, but they never came over here? We finally insisted they study here, and look what happened with
that
.”

“The next day,” Dad says, “he broke up with her.”

David is my older brother. My parents assumed he’d go to school at Hemlock State, where they’re both sociology professors. Instead he moved to Seattle for college, more than two thousand miles from here. I honestly wonder if he chose Washington State to keep Mom and Dad from probing into his life so much. He even stays there during the summer to do internships. I had to fly out over spring break to spend time with him.

The phone rings again. Dad looks at his watch and shakes his head, but it doesn’t ring a second time.

“I think I’m done,” I say. I wipe my hands in my napkin and crumple it on my plate.

“Are you sure?” Mom asks. “There’s plenty more.”

“My stomach kind of hurts,” I say, which isn’t a complete lie. I’m feeling queasy because I think Emma is trying to reach me. I carry my plate into the kitchen and set it in the sink, then walk back down the hall. The phone is on a small table by the stairs. I pick up the receiver, dial Emma’s number, and then stretch the cord as far as possible from my parents’ earshot.

Within the first ring, Emma answers.

“Josh?” she asks breathlessly.

“What’s the matter? Was that you who called a—”

“I don’t know where to begin,” she says, her voice tight. “I got onto that website again, but—”

“It was there? How did you find it?” I can’t help feeling excited.

“Can you come over?” she asks. It sounds like she’s been crying. “My mom and Martin just left for a walk so you can use the emergency key to let yourself in.”

“Will you tell me what’s going on first?”

“I think the website might be real,” Emma says. “And I’m not happy.”

“I can tell. But why?”

“No,” she says. “I’m talking about the future. I’m
never
going to be happy.”

“HEY,” JOSH SAYS, pushing open my door.

I look up from my bed. He’s standing at the edge of my room, holding the spare key we hide under a rock by the garage. It has a Scooby-Doo keychain that lights up when you press the nose.

“Sorry I took so long. My parents made me load the dishwasher.” Josh pushes his hands into his pockets. “So what’s going on? You found something bad?”

I’m worried if I open my mouth I’ll start crying again. As it is, Josh already looks uncomfortable being up here. It’s kind of sad, because we always used to be there for each other. He went on so many bike rides with me when my parents were splitting up. That was back in fifth grade. When Josh broke his leg skating, I hung out in his backyard even though everyone we knew was swimming at Crown Lake. Josh sat with me at my mom’s wedding last September, pinching my arm every time I succumbed to inappropriate giggles.

And here he is again, yet things feel like they’ll never be as easy between us as they once were.

“I was able to get back to that website,” I say, wiping my eyes. “Only it was different.”

I catch Josh glancing at the wilted roses on my dresser. Graham gave them to me before prom, when we were taking photos in my yard. I make a mental note to chuck them as soon as Josh leaves.

“It still says Emma Nelson Jones went to Lake Forest High,” I say, “and it’s still says ‘Facebook’ at the top. No matter where you click, it always says that.”

“Do you think Facebook is the name of her company?” Josh asks.

“Maybe.” But that’s not the point. The point is what the website says about her. Thinking about it makes my chest hurt.

“Emma, you still don’t know what this thing is, or whether it’s even real,” Josh says. “Somebody’s probably just screwing with—”

“No, they’re not!” I sit up and touch the necklace resting against my collarbone. “Emma Nelson
Jones
was wearing
this
necklace in her photo.”

Josh looks at the gold chain I always wear, with the delicate
E
pendant dangling from it. “The woman’s name is
Emma
,” he says. “What other letter would she put on her necklace?”

“And she said it’s Thursday, May nineteenth.”

Josh’s forehead wrinkles in confusion.

“Today is
Sunday
, May nineteenth,” I say. “That means she’s writing all this from another year where May nineteenth is a Thursday.”

Josh shakes his head. “If someone is trying to prank you, they would’ve thought of all that.”

“But
everything
was different! When I checked just now, it was a brand new picture of Emma. And there were different people saying things to her. You think all that could change with one corrupted CD-ROM? Don’t you get it? This thing . . . Facebook, or whatever it’s called . . . it’s from the future.”

Josh sets the keychain on my desk and sits down. When he jiggles the mouse, the brick wall disappears and everything’s right where I left it, with Emma Nelson Jones writing about macaroni and cheese.

“Why does it say she has three hundred and twenty friends?” Josh asks. “Who has that many friends?”

“Scroll down,” I say, peering over his shoulder.

Josh looks up at me. “Who’s JJJ?”

“My husband. Jordan Jones Junior. The guy with the fish. I never say why he hasn’t come home, but obviously I’m suspicious. When I saw that, it made me sick.”

Josh rubs his forehead with the tips of his fingers. “Maybe he went on another fishing trip.”

“Keep reading,” I say, reaching past Josh for the mouse.