Hello future me, p.4
Hello, Future Me, page 4
Later, Dad brought me my presents when I was getting into bed. He sat down, and the mattress sank under his weight. I wished I was a little kid again so he could crawl in next to me and read a story.
“You wanna open these now? It’s still your birthday.”
I shook my head. Dad’s face was hidden under all his hair, but I could tell his cheeks were still red from the car. “All right, in the morning, then.” He squeezed my knee and sat there awhile longer before getting up and turning off the light. “Love you, baby,” he said, silhouetted there all wild and shaggy in the doorway.
“Love you, Daddy.”
He clicked the door shut, and it was just me alone with the shadows. I lay still, sweat trickling down my back, thoughts thudding like june bugs inside my skull. The rain cloud that had been trailing me ever since Mountain Musings turned hot and heavy, wrapping around my throat.
I wished I had my own phone, so I could text Calvin, but Dad couldn’t afford one. So I was stuck with my thoughts. And my thoughts kept drifting back to last year’s vision board. It looked a lot like this year’s, a poster filled with drawings and photos and magazine clippings. My main goal had been to convince Mr. French, the drama teacher, to put on Bigfoot in Paris: A Love Story as that year’s school play. It’s basically the best play ever, and not just because Gram wrote it.
It took a lot of planning and lists and hard work, but finally I convinced Mr. French to put on the play. I’m a problem solver, remember? Except, not so much. The play turned out to be a total disaster. At first. The gazebo where bigfoot proposes to the mermaid collapsed during the second act. Bigfoot spilled tomato soup all over his costume, the Eiffel Tower melted under the hot lights, and Mr. French’s cell phone rang during the big dance number. Total. Disaster.
Then I’d had an idea. That’s the power of positive thinking for you. I rushed around backstage, whispering instructions to all the actors. In the final act, we made even more mistakes, but this time they were on purpose. The mermaid tripped on her tail fin and ended up facedown in her own wedding cake. Bigfoot’s mother wore a rubber chicken on her head in place of a hat, and the villainous hunter, who came to capture bigfoot before he could tie the knot, slipped on a banana peel and split his pants.
It worked. When we stepped onstage for the curtain call, the audience roared with applause. Because of my quick thinking, they all thought the play was supposed to be a comedy, instead of a huge mistake.
That meant the divorce would work out too. As in not happen. As in I would be the one to stop it.
All I needed was a plan. I know, I know, my first plan had failed. Majorly. But it’s not like that was my fault. A soggy sign wasn’t responsible for Mom missing my birthday, or the Divorce—notice that capital D as in oh-so-dire. I knew that now. This was bigger than any sign. Bigger than anything I’d faced before.
But I could do it. When things fall apart, I find a way to fix them. Presto change-o, positive thinking magic. Oh, and I’m a matchmaker now too! If I can’t convince Mom and Dad to stay together, who can?
Yes! I would fix this. Absolutely!
In the morning.
When my brain wasn’t a heaping bowl of mush.
I pushed off the covers and slid onto the carpet, where it was cooler. My brain needed some major chill time. I lay down in the square of light coming in from my one big window, staring up at the ceiling fan and my bigfoot mural and the dirty beige blinds. Dad always kept the floodlight on out front, and it brought the moths and crane flies and other flying bugs with their big veiny wings. It was kind of gross, but also kind of nice, the way you could hear the gentle brush of their wings against the glass. Maybe I did have a little artist in me after all.
I lay there awhile, trying not to think, but the thoughts kept right on bobbing up to the surface. Tired and upset and willing to do anything for a distraction, I decided to go ahead and check out my presents. I didn’t plan to open any.
You can probably guess what happened next.
I picked up a square box wrapped in newspaper with a huge duct tape bow. Dad could do just about anything with duct tape. That bow was a beautiful sight to behold. I only meant to loosen up the tape a little to get a peek inside, but the next thing I knew I had unwrapped the most epic bigfoot alarm clock in history. It had this huge plastic bigfoot with a clock in its belly, and the sticker on the bottom said, WAKE UP TO THE GROWLS OF THE MYSTERIOUS WILD MAN. I could tell it wasn’t brand-new, because bigfoot had a few scratches on his cheek, but the clock was ticking away just like it should be, and that was good enough for me.
The next present was a pair of bigfoot socks complete with hairy toes and, inside, about a pound of chocolate. Awesome.
The last present was a total mystery. I told myself not to open it, but, yeah, you know how that goes. I picked up the long, flat rectangle, weighing it in my hands. It was super heavy. I had no idea what could be inside. What better way to find out than to lift off the lid? Dad had left a sticky note, written in his big, scratchy script: “Didn’t get a chance to fix the screen yet, but it works. Hope you can use it.”
I peeled back the newspaper to reveal a laptop. It was totally ancient, and huge, and the screen was split with one big spidery crack, but that laptop was the most gorgeous thing I’d seen in years.
Maybe I should stop to explain. I’d never had my own computer, let alone a laptop or a cell phone. Even Mom and Dad still used old-timey flip phones that couldn’t do anything but call or text. We weren’t exactly rich, but we had everything we needed, like our trailer, and Dad’s truck, and plenty of food to eat, just none of that other fancy stuff.
But this … I pressed the button in the corner and waited for my new baby to power up.
It took a while, but boy was she beautiful. And that’s not all. Dad had put a bunch of pictures on the desktop. Of me and him and Gram in our hiking gear back when I was nine, posing next to this mammoth footprint. It turned out to be a bear footprint, according to Gram, but it was still pretty cool. There was one of Mom painting my face at Halloween. That year, Dad and I had gone as tinfoil aliens, like from our favorite episode of The Twilight Zone, and Calvin had made a spaceship costume out of cardboard and duct tape.
I looked through the rest of the pictures, and that was when I noticed a tiny black label just below the screen. The silver letters said REFURBISHED COURTESY OF THE SHOP OF LAST RESORT. I flipped the laptop over, looking for a pink tag like on the other items in the shop, but didn’t find one. Maybe Dad had taken it off, or maybe he’d found it in the Odds & Ends bin like with my painting. What a strange place to buy a laptop. How had Dad even found the place?
My new discovery got me thinking. I found the purple bag where I’d tossed it on the floor and unrolled the painting. Even in the dim light from the screen, I could see that some of the petals had perked back up. Half were still brown and brittle, but a few had turned yellow again, arcing up toward an invisible sun.
Weird. I held the painting at different angles, to see if it would change depending on the light, but the picture stayed the same. Double weird.
I browsed around on the laptop some more, checking the settings and turning on the Wi-Fi. I knew how laptops worked, obviously, since I’d spent so much time using Calvin’s. I connected to the free trailer park Wi-Fi and held my breath. I’d been waiting for this moment my whole life. My very own computer. No more begging Calvin any time I needed to type something for school because our ancient desktop had decided to stop working again. It took a lot of spinning and refreshing, but I finally got a web page to load: Dr. Eliza Day’s bigfoot blog, of course. I surfed around awhile, relishing the awesomeness of the moment, before deciding to message Calvin.
I knew he liked this messaging app called Hi-hi!, so I downloaded it, which took just under one million years, and then I sent him a contact request. He didn’t respond. To be fair, it was 2:27 a.m. according to my brand-new(ish) bigfoot clock. Yikes!
I wondered where Mom was at this hour, and if she was awake. I wondered why she hadn’t come home. Didn’t she love Dad anymore? Had she totally forgotten about my birthday? Was she planning to move back to New York, and if so, would I ever see her again?
A message popped up in Hi-hi!, along with a quiet ping. Finally, distraction.
I expected it to be from Calvin, because who else? But the username said JUNIEPIE28. Dad called me Junie Pie sometimes, though not so much lately. I blinked at the words on the screen.
JUNIEPIE28: Sorry, kid, but you can’t change her mind. It’s not about you.
I watched the little cursor blinking on the screen, waiting for me to type in my response. My fingers hovered over the keys. Outside, the moths kept up their nighttime dance. I wasn’t going to type anything because gross, creepy stranger, but my curiosity got the better of me.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Who r u?
I watched those three scrolling dots appear below my message, so I knew the creepy stranger must be typing.
JUNIEPIE28: I’m you. From the future.
Okay. Not weird at all. What kind of internet troll would pretend to be me? That’s just … gross.
BIGFOOT_GRL: No, for real. Who r u?
Scrolling dots again. Maybe it was because it was the middle of the night and I never stayed up this late, but my Freak-o-Meter was suddenly wide-awake and whirring. It had to be some troll playing a joke, right? Maybe Calvin trying to be funny, except … he still hadn’t accepted my contact request, so I was pretty sure he couldn’t message me. Ping!
JUNIEPIE28: Clean the spiders out of your ears, kid. I’m you. I just said. You didn’t think this was a normal laptop, did you?
Major. Freak-out. Time. “Clean the spiders out of your ears” was one of Dad’s down-home sayings, and like I said, I’m pretty sure he makes them up, so … who the heck was I chatting with?
JUNIEPIE28: Sigh. If you want to get technical, I’m an alternate version of Future You existing in a parallel timeline, but forget about science. This is magic, remember? The important thing is, I’m here to help.
JUNIEPIE28: Hello? Paging Alternate Me.
JUNIEPIE28: Don’t freak, okay? I remember all about freak-out mode, trust me, but try to chill for once. I’m on your side.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Calvin? This is so seriously not funny!
JUNIEPIE28: And I’m so seriously not Calvin. How else can I say it? I’m. You. As in you from an alternate universe created specifically to facilitate this magical interaction.
I thought back to all the pink tags claiming that the objects in question had magical powers. But that had been a joke. A marketing gimmick to get tourists to buy a bunch of broken junk, right? Yes, obviously. Magic wasn’t real. It was made-up, like leprechauns or gnomes or monkey hands that grant wishes. Of course, a lot of people thought bigfoot was made-up too. No! I was being ridiculous. It wasn’t the same at all. Was it?
What had Mag said about the items in the Odds & Ends bin? Not that they weren’t magic, just that they were unpredictable. No. Come on, brain, don’t even go there. This had to be some kind of trick.
JUNIEPIE28: Look, you don’t have to believe me if you don’t want to. Like I care. You’re probably thinking that magic isn’t real and this must be some kind of trick, yeah? Whatever. Pretend I’m a stranger if that helps. Just a wise old soul reaching out through the internet to give you some helpful advice.
It ended up that even my Freak-o-Meter had a breaking point, and JUNIEPIE28 had just pushed me way past the red line. So far past I almost wanted to laugh, because there was no way this could be happening. It was silly, impossible …
JUNIEPIE28: Oh, by the way, remember how you always wanted to get a flaming mermaid tattoo, just like Dad’s? Well, you did it. Wanna know where?
No. Freaking. Way. No one knew that I wanted to get that exact tattoo, not even Calvin. Not even Dad. My fingers tingled as they hovered over the keys, trying to decide what to type next.
BIGFOOT_GRL: So this is actually a magic laptop?
JUNIEPIE28: I knew you’d catch up eventually. But don’t get too excited. Magic is way overrated. Actually, that’s kind of why I’m here.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Oookay.
My brain was still locked in this-is-all-a-trick mode. But …
BIGFOOT_GRL: So where did you get the tattoo anyway?
JUNIEPIE28: Yeah, sorry, kid. No spoilers. What’s the fun in that?
BIGFOOT_GRL: What? You just said …
JUNIEPIE28: Oh, what the heck? I guess spilling the beans about a little tattoo won’t bend the fabric of reality or anything. Let’s hope.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Bend the fabric of what now?
JUNIEPIE28: Right ankle, next to that big bumpy foot bone. And, yes, it totally hurt.
I sat back, blinking at the screen. This couldn’t be happening. True, the shop had been weird, unbelievable even, but this was … I didn’t have any words.
But if it was real, then maybe I could ask about—
JUNIEPIE28: Anyway, let’s get down to business, okay? Some of us actually have lives. Whatever you’re planning to do to fix the whole divorce thing, don’t. Got it? D-O-N-T, don’t!
BIGFOOT_GRL: Hang on, that’s why you’re here?
JUNIEPIE28: Look, I know it’s the last thing you want to hear. It feels like the end of the world, right? Like you stepped into an episode of The Twilight Zone, and you’ll never get out again. But you so totally will.
Remember how I said my brain was mush? In that moment, it was like someone had taken that mush, boiled it, zapped it in the microwave, and left it to be devoured by wild dogs.
JUNIEPIE28: Not that you’ll feel better right away. It’ll take time. Things will be weird at first, different. Point is, everything that’s about to happen, you can get through it.
Three dots appeared below the last line, scrolling. I waited to see what she would type next, but then the dots vanished. The part of my brain that had turned to mush was so freaked, I wanted to close the laptop and never open it again. But the other part …
BIGFOOT_GRL: How do you know I’ll get through it? Mom and Dad are … Mom and Dad. If they’re not together, that changes everything. All of my plans, my life, everything.
I would have written more, but my hands and my fingers and pretty much my whole body had started tingling. It was like that feeling you get standing on the end of a diving board, waiting to jump off, only stronger.
JUNIEPIE28: Because I did.
JUNIEPIE28: And it wasn’t because I made the perfect list, or followed the perfect plan. And those vision boards I used to make, OMG! Like gluing down a bunch of pictures could change the future.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Hey!
JUNIEPIE28: Sorry, just saying. Forget about perfect. Oh, and forget about that magic stuff too. Don’t even go there!
BIGFOOT_GRL: Wait, what? Aren’t you talking to me on a magic laptop right now?
JUNIEPIE28: Yeah, but that’s different. Look, pretend I didn’t say anything. Besides, my memory’s kind of fuzzy on the whole M-word front. That whole wild summer, one big blur. But I remember enough, and I’m telling you, don’t mess with it. No matter how bad it gets. Divorce sucks, sure, but it’s not the end of the world. Magic just might be.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Not the end of the world!
JUNIEPIE28: That’s what I said. Man, you are such a drama queen!
BIGFOOT_GRL: Rude! You do realize that you’re insulting yourself?
BIGFOOT_GRL: And what are you saying anyway? That I should just give up? Let Mom and Dad get divorced, even though they so totally love each other? It’s my life too. Or maybe they forgot about that part.
JUNIEPIE28: Look, kid, it’s complicated. And it’s not about you. Getting Mr. French to do that bigfoot play was one thing. Planning and positive thinking, am I right? I remember how much you love that stuff. This is other people’s lives we’re talking about. Trust me, it’s different.
BIGFOOT_GRL: Mom and Dad are not other people. They’re … my people … our people.
JUNIEPIE28: Sigh. Self-involved much? Look, I’ve gotta split. Class. But do me a favor. Try to chill out, for once. You’ll thank me later.
With that, the little green dot next to JUNIEPIE28’s icon turned gray. I hadn’t noticed before, but her icon was a cartoon microscope. Did that mean she was some kind of scientist, or maybe studying science? I clicked on her profile. Most of the fields were empty. No information apart from her username and a date of birth: July 9, 2008. Same as mine.
I shut the computer with a satisfying click and sank back on the carpet. As soon as I did, my certainty about JUNIEPIE28 started to fade. True, she had known a lot about me. Impossible stuff, but maybe I had told someone about the tattoo. Yikes, or maybe someone had read my diaries. Calvin knew all about the divorce, Mr. French, almost all of it. But no way it could be him. He’d never do that to me. Why would he? It was all so totally … confusing. I closed my eyes, listening to the moth wings fluttering against the glass. JUNIEPIE28 was a fake. She had to be, but I couldn’t help but wonder … what if? What if?
When I woke up, all sweaty and groggy on the carpet, my first thought was, Hey, I’m twelve. I looked over at my vision board, at all the happy pictures and glitter. Then I remembered about The Talk. In my brain, the vision board shattered, like it was made of glass instead of paper, the angry shards showering down on the carpet.
Now I would never get what I wanted, like Mom coming home, or finding bigfoot, or finishing Honey Pie, i.e., the motorcycle Dad and I have spent practically my whole life repairing. Calvin thinks vision boards are silly, because how can gluing a bunch of pictures on a poster board change the future? I used to think he was so wrong. It’s called the power of positive thinking, hello! But maybe he’s been right all along.
I sat up and opened the laptop. A vague memory of chatting with someone pretending to be me floated to the surface of my mind. It was like that feeling you get when you know you had a strange dream, but no matter how hard you try, you can’t remember the details. I was certain it had happened. I had chatted with some so-called Future Me, who had blabbed on about magic and alternate timelines. But surely …
