Джей Эшер - The Future of Us

I have to get rid of this guy.

“Where are you headed?” Josh asks. He pops the passenger seat forward and leans into the back.

“Nowhere,” I say. Then, because that sounded too guilty, I add, “Just the public library to research something.”

Josh glances covertly around and then whispers, “After dinner, we should go to that website again.”

“Fine,” I say.

“Also, I was thinking we should have a code word for it so people don’t know what we’re talking about.”

“How about ‘Facebook’?” I say, starting my engine. “No one’s heard of that.”

AS I’M HEADING toward the library entrance, I run into Dylan Portman. We went out at the beginning of tenth grade. We’d been counselors-in-training at the YMCA day camp that summer. By the time school started, we were a couple. We didn’t have much of a connection beyond camp, though, so when he broke up with me, I didn’t take it too hard. That’s why it’s never weird when we see each other.

“How’s it going?” Dylan asks. He’s carrying a huge stack of hardcover books, so I grab the door and hold it open for him. He grins at me, flashing that sexy dimple on his left cheek. Dylan knows he’s hot, and he can work it.

“School lets out and you go straight to the library?” he says, walking next to me.

“Well, look at you with that massive pile of books.”

“I’m returning them for my little sister.” Dylan grins and adds, “I’m that kind of guy.”

Generally, I wouldn’t mind flirting with Dylan, but I’m on a mission and I can’t let anyone get in my way, even if that person has a sexy dimple and tousled brown hair.

“I have a lot of research to do,” I say. Then, to make sure Dylan doesn’t come along while I look for the phone books, I add, “I might be meeting Graham later.”

“Graham Wilde? Awesome how he buzzed his hair.” Dylan points his chin in the direction of the returns desk and then says, “Don’t work too hard.”

The air conditioner is blasting in the library, and it makes me shiver. Or maybe the shiver comes from knowing that I’m about to find my future husband’s phone number. I head straight to the reference desk. The guy working there is chewing on a pencil as he stares at a computer screen.

“Excuse me?” I ask. “My school librarian said you might have phone books from other states.”

He taps at his keyboard and then rises from his chair, sliding the pencil behind his ear. I follow him around a corner and down a flight of stairs, finally arriving at a long shelf crammed with phone books.

The librarian crosses his arms. “Is there a particular state you’re looking for?”

“California,” I say. “Chico, California.”

“That’s in Butte County, I believe.” He plucks the pencil from behind his ear, studies the bite marks, and then retrieves a medium-sized phone book. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

When he disappears back into the stairwell, I sit cross-legged on the floor and hurriedly flip to the J s. There are hundreds of Joneses in Chico, California. I focus my eyes on the tiny print. Jones, Adam. Jones, Anthony. Jones, Anthony C. Jones, Arthur. They go on forever! But if my husband’s name is Jordan Jones Junior , then his dad must be a Jordan, too. I flip the page, and with a stab of disappointment, I see there’s no one named Jordan Jones.

If there isn’t a Jordan, maybe his dad is listed by his first initial. I glance at the beginning of the Joneses where they list the single letters, but there are tons of J s there. Clutching the phone book against my chest, I run upstairs to find a photocopy machine.

I give the librarian a dollar and he hands me ten dimes. I spread the phone book across the smooth glass of the copy machine, close the top, and drop a coin in the slot. It lands with a tinny plink , and I hit the green start button.

I’M SITTING ON TOP of the half-pipe in Chris McKellar’s backyard. My legs dangle over the lip while Tyson skates up one side and back down to the other. Chris graduated last year, but his parents still let us use the ramp. As usual, almost everyone else on the half-pipe is a senior. They’re okay with us being here, though, because we always bring pizza.

Sitting beside me, a non-skater guy is full of questions. “Why do they call it a half-pipe?”

He’s here with his girlfriend, who just stepped off on the deck at the opposite end.

“Really? You don’t know?” I ask.

“It looks to me like a U-shaped ramp,” he says.

His eyelids are half-mast and he nods slowly to himself. I wonder how much weed he’s smoked today. For whatever reason, I feel compelled to answer him. “If you took another half-pipe, flipped it upside down, then placed it on top of this one, you’d have a full circle, like a pipe,” I say. “Actually, I guess it’d be more of an oval.”

“You know what you should call it then?” His face goes completely serious. “A half-oval.”

I’m tempted to slide down the ramp, grab my backpack, and add this guy to my “I wonder what becomes of…?” list, which is now up to thirty-seven names. It starts with Tyson, then my brother, my parents, and all the way down to this kid in my grade, Frank Wheeler, who once told us that if he’s not a millionaire by the time he’s thirty he’ll jump in front of a bus.

Tyson roars up beside me, rocks the middle of his board against the lip, then rolls back down again. Across the ramp, the stoner guy’s girlfriend adjusts her helmet. When she first showed up last month, no one wanted to give her a chance. But on her first drop she put most of us to shame.

“You should ask your girlfriend to teach you to skate,” I say.

“No way,” he says. “It requires too much balance.”

Tyson skates up close, locking his rear truck against the lip. He extends his arm and I pull him onto the deck.

“Ready?” he asks. “I need to get to work and prep for a party.”

Fifteen years in the future, I wonder if Tyson’s running GoodTimez Pizza. It wouldn’t be a bad job. Free pizza for life sounds like a sweet deal to me. In fact, Sydney and I probably take our kids there on their birthdays.

I drop down the ramp, twisting halfway and ending in a knee-slide.

“What time’s the birthday party?” I ask as Tyson and I push through the side gate.

“Five thirty,” he says. “But I told Kellan I’d meet up for a few minutes before I start. She has a break in her college class and wants to talk.”

I tap the tail of my board against the sidewalk. “What about?”

“Who knows,” he says. “She’s probably pissed at me about something. I can do no right by that woman.”

“You don’t have to meet her,” I say. “Not if she’s just going to chew you out.”

We pause at an intersection and Tyson turns to me with a grin. “But she’s so hot when she’s mad.”

We cross the street and Tyson nods toward the road leading to the cemetery. “Are you up for a quick detour?”

We lean our boards against the cemetery gate and walk along the winding gravel path. It’s odd to think that only a few rows over, near Clarence and Millicent’s final resting place, Emma and I began to pull apart. It was cold that night, so she snuggled against me. It’s not that she hadn’t done that before, but it felt different that time. She asked about the upcoming winter formal and whether I was thinking of going. I wasn’t, but I said that if no one asked her, maybe we should go together. I said it with a half-smile so she could take it as a joke if she wanted. She remained quiet as we walked through the shadow of gravestones, and then finally said, “Maybe.”