“You can’t do that!” I shout.
“Actually,” Emma says, crossing her arms, “it was easy. He goes to Tampa State, so I’m not applying there. North Carolina is now my top choice.”
I collapse onto her bed and press my hands over my eyes. She doesn’t get it! She knows that even the smallest change to our present will ripple into the future. On that first day, Emma was unemployed. The next day she had a job, but we have no idea what she changed to make that happen. One time we looked, Jordan had gone fishing. But later, he mysteriously hadn’t come home for three days. Then macaroni and cheese became lasagna. Maybe Emma doesn’t think it’s important that her dinner was different, but what if next time she cooks, something causes her to make meatloaf and she gets mad cow disease and dies because one little ripple changes her dinner plans in fifteen years?
But to change her future husband? On purpose? Those consequences are immeasurable!
“Admit it,” Emma says. “You would’ve done the same thing if your life looked as bad as mine.”
“No.” I sit up. “I wouldn’t have. You have no idea what else you’ve changed. This is dangerous stuff, Emma.”
“Look who’s talking,” Emma says. “You made a face at Sydney yesterday. Would you have done that if you didn’t know you were going to marry her?”
“I’m talking about changing the future,” I say.
Emma laughs. “Well, what do you think happens when you do something different in the present? It changes the future! You did the same thing as me.”
“It’s not the same, and you know it,” I say. “Mine was a reaction, but you intentionally made a humongous change. You really wanted to go to Tampa State. I saw you and Kellan researching it in that college-ranking book, and you were saying how close it was to where your dad lives. But now you won’t go there? We need to do things exactly as we would’ve done them before Facebook.”
“Why?” Emma says, and I can see she’s on the verge of crying. “So I can end up unemployed at thirty-one like the first time we checked? Or angry that my husband spends all my money when I do have a job?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I say. “What if, when you were unemployed, you were just one day away from finding your perfect job? Or maybe, when your husband realized you were angry about him buying that iPad thing, he returned it the next day. Emma, all you saw were tiny snippets of the future.”
“I don’t care,” she says. “I know I wasn’t happy, and that needed to change.”
This is making me nervous. The future seems so fragile. For instance, I already saw that I’m going to the University of Washington like my brother. And I definitely want that to happen, but what if knowing I’ll get in makes me slack on the application, and then I get rejected?
“You’re making that face,” Emma says as she types in her email address.
“What face?”
“Like you’re judging me.”
Emma types her password to get into Facebook, and then turns to me with deliberate slowness. “I’m going to speak as calmly as I can,” she says. “The way you’re judging me means you’re not even trying to understand what that life felt like for me.”
“It’s not that I’m not trying. I’m just—”
“You’re being extremely selfish and cruel.”
“How am I being cruel?”
“You know why you don’t care?” Emma’s getting more pissed by the second. “Because you’ve got your perfect wife. You’ve got your beautiful children. And you’ve got me living in your guest room! Do I even have a window in there?”
When Emma says that, I force myself to keep a straight face. “I get it,” I say.
“You don’t get it! You’re acting superior, but what if the roles were reversed?” Emma raises an eyebrow. “That’s right. What if I married Cody and got everything I wanted, and you didn’t get shit? Actually, no, what if you did get shit? Because that’s what I got with Junior!”
“I get it,” I say, quieter this time. “I do.”
“Good.” Emma turns back to her computer and clicks on the tiny picture in the corner.
“Wait!” I jump off the bed and spin Emma around. “Before you look, we need to set some ground rules. This is getting way too big to figure out as we go along.”
Over her shoulder, Emma’s page has mostly loaded. The picture in the corner is different than yesterday. Grown-up Emma’s eyes are closed. Her face is snuggled close to a baby wearing a floppy pink hat.
“What kind of rules?” she asks.
“We can’t be overly picky,” I say. The baby has a small spit bubble between her lips. “If your new life appears relatively happy, we leave it alone.”
Emma turns her head slightly. “You see something on the screen, I can tell.”
“Before you look,” I say, holding tight to her chair, “you have to promise not to tweak the future unless it’s absolutely terrible. Even then, we need to discuss it first.”
“Fine. Now will you let me see if I got rid of him? That’s all I care about.”
I turn her chair around.
Emma squeals. “A baby! I have a baby!” She touches the girl’s face, and then moves her finger across the screen.
Married to Kevin Storm
Emma slowly lowers her hand into her lap.
“You did it,” I say. “You threw Junior to the curb.” I look again at the name of her new husband. Kevin Storm. It sounds like the alias of a superhero.
“I just wanted to be happy,” she says quietly. “But I also want Jordan Jones to be happy. Is that weird?”
“Think of it this way,” I say. “Now that you’ve taken yourself out of the picture, you’re letting him find the person he was meant to be with.”
“Like that bitch he’s been sleeping with the past three nights?” Emma leans in close to the monitor, and then taps the screen with her finger. “Look! I’m a marine biologist now!”
Works at Marine Biological Laboratory
“That’s random,” I say.
“No it’s not,” she says. “I love the ocean. Remember when I visited my dad in Florida over Christmas? We took a scuba diving class together.”
“It takes more than loving the ocean to become a marine biologist,” I say. Also, I don’t want to crush her excitement, but I bet a lot of people work at that lab who aren’t biologists.
Emma looks at me dismissively. “I’ll have you know, I’m going to take advanced biology at the college with Kellan next year.”
“Since when?”
Emma walks to her papasan chair and folds her legs in front of her. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know I had to tell you everything.”
I take Emma’s place at the computer. “Well, now that you’re happy, I’m going to make sure your bliss didn’t screw things up with Sydney.”
I’m about to look through Emma’s list of friends to find myself when I notice my name and something I wrote right there on Emma’s page.
“Listen to this,” I say, and then I read it aloud.
Emma Nelson Storm
They have a farmer’s market here with tons of local
food. Just bought an organic peach pie. Hubby is
going to be ecstatic!
2 hours ago · Like · Comment
Josh Templeton You’re making me hungry.
51 minutes ago · Like
“See?” Emma says. “I make my new man ecstatic!”
The photo yesterday had me with a bunch of balloons. Now it’s just a close-up of an eyeball. I click on the eye, and while my page slowly loads I drum my fingers against the desk.
Married to Sydney Templeton
“Yes!” I jump up and bat excitedly at one of her paper lanterns.
“Easy on the décor,” Emma says, but she’s smiling.
As she should! Our futures are looking awesome. Even with Emma changing husbands, Sydney couldn’t stay away from me. This relationship is meant to be and nothing can stop it.
Settling back in the
chair, I read my entries out loud. The first one is dull.
Josh Templeton
Good things come to those who wait.
16 hours ago · Like · Comment
Dennis Holloway What are you, a fortune
cookie?
14 hours ago · Like
The next isn’t much better.
Josh Templeton
The countdown has begun.
Yesterday at 11:01pm · Like · Comment
I swivel to face Emma. “I have no idea what I’m talking about.”
Emma shrugs as she bites the nail of her pinky finger.
I turn back to the computer and scroll down, scanning through more entries. “Promise me if I ever get this boring you’ll—”
And then I freeze.
Emma catapults out of the chair. “What is it?”
We both stare at a photo near the bottom of the page. It’s a picture of Sydney standing sideways. She’s holding her stomach, and it’s huge!
Josh Templeton
My baby’s having my first baby any day now.
May 16 at 9:17am · Like · Comment
“That’s cheesy,” Emma says, but then she gets it. “Wait, your first baby?”
I stand up so fast I nearly pass out. I told her. I told her! This future stuff is dangerous. We can’t tinker with things, plucking out details we don’t like. I sit on the edge of Emma’s bed and stare vacantly at the mirror hanging on her door. If changing her husband also changes my children, the future’s even more fragile than I thought. The repercussions are impossible to predict.
“If what I did caused this, I’m so sorry,” Emma says. Three of my future children have been erased from existence before they had a chance to exist at all. I’ll never build a model solar system with that boy, or take those twin girls to have their birthday party at GoodTimez.
Emma sits behind me on the bed. She rubs her hands together to warm them up. My mind tells me to pull away, but I can’t.
“I don’t understand,” I say.
She presses her fingers along the muscles at the back of my neck. “I think we need to realize there’s no way to control these particular types of changes.”
“What do you mean, ‘these particular types’?”
“Your children. My children,” she says. “When you took health last semester, how much do you remember about sperm?”
I turn and glare at Emma. “What does that have to do with anything?”
Emma squeezes both of my shoulders. “No matter how small the ripple, the most vulnerable part of the future is going to be our children. If we keep looking at Facebook, we shouldn’t get too attached to—”
“It altered my sperm?” I say. “What are you talking about?”
Emma kneads her thumbs in small circles down the sides of my spine. “All of this stuff occurs years from now. Think of how many billions of tiny details need to line up between now and then to make everything exactly the same. It’s impossible. Even this massage, which wouldn’t have happened yesterday, makes whatever happens next a little different.”
“What does that have to do with my sperm?”
Emma slides her fingers behind my ears. “Do you remember when your teacher talked about how many sperm you guys let loose every time you—”
“On second thought, can we not talk about this?” I say, my eyes rolling back at her touch.
She rubs her fingertips down my arms. Man, I love that so much.
“Every time you ejaculate,” she continues, “you release something like four hundred million sperm. Each one totally unique.”
“I seriously don’t want to talk about this.”
With her fingers running back up my arms, and all this sperm talk, things are getting a little too intense down below. I lean slightly forward, conveniently placing my forearms across my lap.
“Will you just do my shoulders?” I ask.
As Emma moves her hands back up to my shoulders, there’s a ping at the computer, like digital fairy dust.
“An instant message!” Emma scrambles off the bed. “I’ve never gotten one of these before.”
I cross my legs and turn toward the computer.
“The screen name says it’s from DontCallMeCindy,” Emma says. “I have no idea who that is, but she’s asking if I’m the Emma Nelson who goes to Lake Forest.” As she taps at the keys, Emma tells me what she’s writing. “‘Tell me who you are first.’”
I want to watch the screen myself, but there’s no way I can stand up just yet.
Another instant message appears. Emma reads it to herself, and then narrows her eyes at me. “You are in so much trouble.”
“What? Why?”
She types some more words and then hits Enter. “Five minutes ago,” she says, “you were lecturing me about changing the future. But it looks like you’ve been tinkering with it yourself.”
I laugh. “What are you talking about?”
“You are such a hypocrite! Why else would Sydney Mills be asking for your phone number?”
27://Emma
JOSH LEANS FORWARD on my bed, one leg crossed over the other. “You gave it to her, right?”
I grin and tap my chin. “Well, I had to think about whether or not—”
“Emma! Did you give my number to Sydney Mills?”
“Of course I did.”
“What did she say?”
I glance at the screen. I closed the instant message box once Sydney signed out. All that’s left is Josh’s Facebook page with Sydney’s massive belly.
Josh Templeton
My baby’s having my first baby any day now.
May 16 at 9:17am · Like · Comment
That comment annoys me. It’s cheesier than anything Josh would say now. I guess that’s the kind of guy he becomes, all mushy and wrapped up in Sydney like he has no life of his own.
Josh looks at me with a pained sort of hope. “I need to know exactly what she said.”
“What did you want to her to say? That she’s driving over in her convertible to whisk you into the sunset?” That wasn’t fair. I don’t know why I’m being so bitchy. “She said she got my screen name from Graham. So I gave her your number and she said thanks.”
Josh stares at me. “I thought you were happy now that you’re married to Kevin Storm.”
“Don’t change the subject,” I say. “You were so mad at me for calling Jordan, but then here comes Sydney Mills, asking for your number. You must have done more than just make a face in class yesterday.”
Josh raises his shoulders. “I didn’t mean to.”
“But you did?”
“We were in Peer Issues today, talking about relationships, and this senior guy gave her a hard time. So I stood up for her. What was I supposed to do?”
“You stood up for Sydney about relationship issues? Who was giving her a hard time?”
“Rick something. He’s in Mr. Fritz’s class.”
“Does he play football?”
“Do you know him?”
I can’t help laughing. “You defended Sydney to Rick Rolland?”
Josh doesn’t care about who’s popular at school, or who has a history together, and that’s all great. But Rick Rolland is the guy having the bonfire Kellan was excited about. He and Sydney used to date, and Josh should not be involving himself with that.
“He was being a dick,” Josh says. “And besides, what I said wasn’t a big deal.”
But we both know it was. This ripple is going to affect Josh’s future in a major way.
Josh takes in a deep breath. “So I was thinking about Facebook today. Remember last summer at the lake when Frank Wheeler said he was going to become a millionaire, and everyone laughed?”
I’m not sure where Josh is going with this, but I’m relieved to be moving on from Sydney and my husbands. “He said he’d jump in front of a bus if he doesn’t make a million by the time he’s thirty.”
“Exactly.” Josh reaches into his backpack and pulls out a folded up piece of
paper. “I made a list of people we should look up on Facebook. Like my mom and dad, David, Tyson—”
“And Kellan!” I add. “I was thinking the same thing today. I want to see if she makes it into med school.”
I swivel toward my computer, and jiggle the mouse. The brick wall screensaver disappears and I get another chance to witness Sydney’s pregnant belly. “First, we should refresh your page,” I say. “Since you were Sydney’s superhero today, and now she’s going to call you, I bet everything’s different. You probably weren’t supposed to get together until much later, and—”
“Wait.” Josh stands up.
The arrow hovers over the Refresh button, but his tone is so serious I don’t click it.
Josh wriggles his feet into his sneakers and then grabs his skateboard and backpack. “I’ll try to come back later. Don’t look anyone up without me, okay?”
As he barrels downstairs, I shout, “I know where you’re going! Don’t you think babysitting your telephone is kind of—?”
Before I can finish, the latch on my front door clicks shut.
28://Josh
SYDNEY MILLS ASKED for my number!
I sprint through my front door, then up the stairs to my bedroom.
Sydney Mills asked for my number!
It still makes no sense, but I need to accept this reality. It’ll start with a phone call, which will lead to marriage, children, and a house on Crown Lake. I’ll have a fancy graphic-design job, and I’ll probably drive a nice car, too. A BMW or, since we’ll be out in the country, a Chevy Tahoe. Or both! In fifteen years, maybe I’ll drive something so insane I can’t even imagine it now.
My bed is unmade and T-shirts are strewn all over the floor. This does not look like the room of someone Sydney Mills would be calling. But it is! And she could be calling any second now.
Where is the phone?
I turn in a slow circle around my room. If the phone rings, I could kick piles around until I find it, but what if I answer too late? What if, because she couldn’t reach me, Sydney chats with some other guy and they start going out? Maybe they’ll end up getting married, and he’ll be taking my tropical vacations.