Джей Эшер - The Future of Us

Next up is Jones, J.D. I follow the steps on the card and dial the number.

A woman with a singsong voice answers. “Hello?”

“Hi,” I say, “is Jordan there?”

“Junior or Senior?” she asks.

I clutch the phone against my shoulder, wipe my sweaty hands on my shorts, and clear my throat. “Junior, please.”

“My nephew’s living with his mom now.”

Think fast, Emma .

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “I couldn’t find his number, but I thought this might have been it.”

There’s silence on the other end.

“What’d you say your name was?” the woman asks.

I consider making up a name, but I feel nervous enough as is. “My name is Emma. We’re friends from school.”

“Jordan certainly had plenty of those. You got a pen?”

As she recites the number, I scribble it in a margin of my photocopy. We say goodbye and I hang up, staring at the phone number of my future husband.

Some people would wait. Josh, for example, would think this through carefully. He’d weigh the options, and then call David to get his brother’s opinion. I, on the other hand, just flip over the phone card and start dialing.

“Hello?” It’s a guy’s voice.

“Jordan?”

“No, it’s Mike. Hang on.”

The phone gets set down. There’s a television on in the background, and something that might be a blender. Mike, who I’m guessing is my future brother-in-law, shouts for Jordan and then says, “How should I know?”

The blender stops. Footsteps approach the phone, and then a guy’s voice says, “What’s up?”

“Is this Jordan?” I ask.

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Emma,” I say, smiling broadly. “We met at that party… recently?”

I hold my breath, hoping Jordan went to a party at some point in the past month.

“Jenny Fulton’s?” he asks.

I exhale. “Yeah. Jenny’s.”

There wasn’t much to go on when I looked up Jordan on Facebook. It had his name, his picture, and his hometown. Even so, my goal is to keep him on the phone long enough to figure out how, at some point in the future, our lives intersect.

“So what’s up?” he asks.

“Not much,” I say. “What have you been up to?”

“Just hanging out.”

Silence.

“Have you been… fishing recently?” I ask.

“Uh, no,” he says. “I’ve never been fishing.”

Dead silence.

“So what have you been doing?” I ask.

“Mostly looking for a summer job.”

“Cool,” I say.

The blender starts up again. “Listen, was there something you wanted?” he asks. “Because I should probably get back to—”

“Oh, right,” I say, picking up speed. “Anyway, I was thinking about our conversation at the party.”

“Are you sure you’re not talking about Jordan Nicholson?” he asks. “I think he was there, too. People always get us mixed up.”

It’s strange, but Jordan doesn’t sound like an asshole. He almost seems nice. So how is it possible that someday he becomes the kind of person who ends up staying out for three nights, most likely cheating on me? Would he believe that was possible if I told him right now?

“It was definitely you,” I say. “We were talking about where we’re applying to college and you—”

“Hang on,” Jordan says.

I hear a screen door slam and a girl’s voice say, “You ready?”

Jordan tells her it’ll be a second. “Sorry,” he says to me. “No, I really think you’re talking about Nicholson because I’m already in college. I just got home for the summer.”

“Really?” My voice catches. “Where do you go?”

I squeeze my eyes shut. Maybe this is where Jordan and I meet. I have a rough list of where I want to apply next year, all out of state, and all near an ocean.

“Tampa State,” he says. “I just finished my first year.”

I open my eyes and force a laugh. “You’re right. It was Jordan Nicholson. I am so sorry.”

“Do you need his number?” he asks. “I think Mike has it.”

“No, that’s fine. I’ve got it.”

“Okay, well…” Someone shuts off the TV and I can hear the girl laugh in the background.

As I hold the phone against my ear, I actually feel sad. In the future, Jordan and I were supposed to meet at college and get married. Now, we’ll probably never even know each other.

We say goodbye. When the line disconnects, I continue listening to the silence in the receiver. An automated voice eventually comes on, saying I have ninety-three cents remaining on my card. I hang up and walk over to my dresser.

In my top drawer, beneath my socks and underwear, I keep a journal. I don’t write in it a lot, maybe a few times a year. I flip to an entry I wrote back in March. It’s a list I made after a college counselor talked to us about the application process.

Emma’s Top College Choices

1: Tampa State

2: University of North Carolina at Wilmington

3: University of California at San Diego

I grab a black marker from my desk and draw a line through “Tampa State.” If I don’t go to college there, I won’t meet Jordan. And if I don’t meet Jordan—

There’s a knock on the door. I bury my journal back in my drawer. “Who is it?”

The handle turns, but the door is locked.

“Emma,” Josh says. “I need to talk to you.”

When I open the door, Josh’s hair is sweaty, with several strands matted to his forehead. He’s holding the Scooby-Doo keychain in one hand, and a folded-up sheet of paper in the other.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

He wipes his brow. “I skated here from the public library.”

I glance nervously at the paper in his hand. “I guess we just missed each other.”

Josh frowns as he unfolds his paper. It’s the first photocopy I made from the phone book. It came out too dark and I tossed it in the recycling bin.

“I know what you’re about to do,” Josh says, “but you can’t unmarry your future husband.”

The way he says “unmarry your future husband” makes my stomach lurch.

“You can’t go around changing what’s supposed to happen,” he says. “I know you’re upset because you’re married to this jerk, but according to Facebook, we’re still friends. I promise I’ll be there for you. If you end up going through a divorce, maybe I can loan you money for a lawyer, or I can let you move into my guest room for a while.”

Loan me money? Anger pulses through me. Right, because he and Sydney are so rich!

Josh notices my phone card on the desk, with the silver scratched off the back to reveal the activation code.

His voice is hushed. “You did it?”

I nod slowly.

“You talked to Jordan?”

“It’s over,” I say. “We’re never going to meet.”

The color drains from Josh’s face.

JUST LIKE THAT, the future is changed forever.

Fifteen years of history— future history—is changed because Emma didn’t like the guy she married. But she only had a few sentences from fifteen years in the future to work with. That’s not nearly enough information to make such a drastic decision about her life. And his life! Come to think of it, any person who was impacted by their relationship, even in the slightest way, will be twisted in countless new directions.

I want to both scream and laugh hysterically. Instead, I crumple the photocopy in my hand and throw it across the room. The paper barely makes a sound when it hits the wall.

“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.”