“So?” I ask.

Emma raises one eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have made any face at all if I hadn’t told you about your future. I wonder what damage Hurricane Joshua inflicted.”

Emma points the arrow at a group of pictures labeled “Friends.” “Now I’m at four hundred and six friends. Cool! I guess I’ve made a lot of new friends at my job.”

I crouch down beside her. “Am I in there?”

Emma smiles smugly. “I thought you weren’t a believer.”

“I’m just having fun.”

Emma moves the arrow over “Friends (406)” and clicks it. Anew page appears with more tiny pictures and names. I resist the urge to ask Emma to hurry up and find me. I don’t want to seem like I think it’s even a possibility that I’ll marry Sydney Mills. Because it’s not.

The list is organized alphabetically by first name. When she gets to the Js, she slows down. And there it is.

Josh Templeton

My heart beats faster. I don’t know what to say. In the very off-chance that this is real, I don’t know how to feel about what I’m going to see.

Emma moves the arrow over my name. “Josh, here you are,” she says dramatically, “fifteen years in the future.”

A new page slowly appears. The small picture contains a cluster of colorful balloons. At the very bottom of the photo is the face of a man with reddish hair and glasses. I don’t need to ask if that’s supposed to be me. Beside the photo, it says his birthday is April 5. He went to the University of Washington, and works somewhere called Electra Design.

Josh Templeton

The family just returned from Acapulco.

Breathtaking! I’ve posted photos on my blog.

May 15 at 4:36pm · Like · Comment

“What’s a blog?” I ask.

“No idea,” Emma says. “But I wonder why your vacation changed. It has to be more than that face you made at Sydney. Maybe it’s because you knew you were going to Waikiki, but you really wanted to go to Acapulco, so when you and Sydney began planning the vacation you made sure to change it.”

Josh Templeton

Helped my son put together a model of the solar

system today.

May 8 at 10:26pm · Like · Comment

Terry Fernandez We did that last year. Made

me feel nostalgic for Pluto. That was always my

favorite planet.

May 9 at 8:07am · Like

Josh Templeton Poor Pluto! :-(

May 9 at 9:13am · Like

I flinch. “What the hell happens to Pluto?”

Emma shrugs. “That, I’m guessing, wasn’t our fault.”

I rock back on my sneakers. “How can you tell who my… you know… wife is?”

Emma points to the top of the screen.

Married to Sydney Templeton

“But how do you know that’s supposed to be Sydney Mills?” I ask.

Emma looks straight at me. “You need to stop saying things like ‘supposed to be.’ It’s annoying.”

“Fine. How can you tell that person is Sydney Mills?”

Emma clicks on “Sydney Templeton.”

The webpage is slowly replaced by another one. This time, the photo is of a family with three kids sitting on a lawn. The oldest son has red hair. The girls look like identical twin sisters with the same brown hair as their ridiculously beautiful mom.

I back up to Emma’s papasan chair and sink into it.

“Are you still skeptical?” Emma asks.

“I’m just… I want to…” I want to be skeptical. I need to be skeptical. But this rush of impossible information is almost too much.

“Jordan Jones Junior,” Emma says. “I hate him just for that stupid name. Now I have a job, but it looks like Jordan spends everything I make. Listen… here I wrote, ‘Got my paycheck on Thursday and JJJ borrowed every last dollar to buy an iPad. Men and toys!’ I put quotes around ‘borrowed,’ so I’m guessing he’s not giving the money back.”

“What’s an iPad?” I ask.

“That’s not the point! Whatever it is, I gave my husband enough money to buy one.” She clicks around on the webpage. “We live in Florida, but he’s from Chico, California. Where’s Chico?”

“No idea,” I say. “How do you know where he’s from?”

“I clicked on his name. There’s not much here, but he seems like a real asshole.”

“You don’t even know him and you’re calling him an asshole?”

“Some things you can just tell,” Emma says.

I feel ridiculous for even entertaining the idea that this could be real, but there’s no way that wasn’t Sydney Mills and me in that photo. They were older versions of us, but the resemblance was unreal.

“Check this out!” Emma says.

I push myself out of her chair.

“These pictures were attached to my website,” Emma says, pointing to the screen. “It looks like each one leads to more photos, kind of like albums.”

Profile Pictures 12 photos

My 30th Birthday 37 photos

High School Memories 8 photos

I point at the screen. “‘High School Memories.’ Let’s see what you find so important fifteen years from now. I bet they’re all of me.”

Emma laughs. “Only because I don’t have any of Cody yet.”

She clicks that photo album and we stare at the screen as the photos materialize.

The first is a close-up of Emma holding her driver’s license. That’s currently on one of her corkboards. Someone could’ve stolen it for a day and scanned it in the tech lab at school. The next photo shows Tyson and me using our skateboards as battle swords. That one’s taped in her locker. Then there’s Tyson, Kellan, Emma, and me buried up to our necks in the rainbow ball pit at GoodTimez Pizza. That’s also on her corkboard. Whoever is pulling this prank could have borrowed Emma’s photos and put them back without her noticing.

Emma touches her finger to the last photo, a shot of her butt in a light tan bikini. “What’s this?”

She clicks on the image and a larger version begins to appear in the center of the screen.

“Is that Crown Lake in the background?” I manage to keep my voice innocent, but I know exactly where that photo was taken. I snapped it a few weeks ago when we all drove to the lake before it officially opened for the season. I thought it’d be funny to have her develop the film and wonder who took it.

The caption below the picture says, “The good ole days.”

“I just bought that bikini a month ago,” Emma says.

“You know,” I mumble, “I think I accidentally took that picture. I was trying to move your camera out of the sand and I may have hit the button.”

“Josh.” Emma looks me straight in the eye. “This Facebook thing is not a joke. There’s no way anyone could be pranking us.”

“Someone could’ve stolen your pictures. I wouldn’t say there’s no way.”

She reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out a yellow disposable camera. “I haven’t developed the lake photos yet.”

15://Emma

SO IT ALL comes down to a yellow disposable camera left over from my mom’s wedding. If the lake photos are still inside, undeveloped, then Josh will have to admit that this Facebook thing is real.

We stare at the image on the screen, at the bathing suit bottom I recently bought at the Lake Forest Mall. And then, at the same moment, we shift our attention to the camera on my desk.

“Do you think we should—?” Josh begins.

“What time does Photomat close?”

“Ten,” Josh says. “It’s in the SkateRats plaza.”

It’s 8:53pm. Photomat guarantees one-hour prints.

“Let’s take your car,” he says.

“Too risky,” I say, gesturing downstairs. If my mom heard us leave she’d tell us it’s too late for a school night.

“Blade and skate?” he asks.

I nod, reaching for my orange Cheetahs fleece on the back of my chair. I’m still wearing my track uniform because I haven’t had the energy to change.

“I have to grab my board from the garage,” Josh says. The screen is still open to “High School Memories.” “Should we close this?”

“Definitely,” Josh says.

The way he says it, so clear and direct, gives me the chills. Josh is starting to believe this is real.

* * *

WE MAKE IT TO PHOTOMAT at ten after nine. The guy behind the counter has thin hair and tired eyes. I fill out my name and a fake phone number, then slide the film into an envelope.

“Can you develop this before closing?” I ask, rolling my skates back and forth.

The guy glances wearily at me. “We’ll see.”

I clomp out to the sidewalk. “I don’t think he gets the urgency of this.”

“He said he’d try,” Josh says.

“No, he said ‘we’ll see.’ ‘We’ll see’ means he’s leaving it up to the universe. And it’s not up to the universe. It’s up to him!”

Josh pushes off on his board, and I blade after him across the parking lot. We settle on a raised patch of grass under the rotating time-and-temperature clock. It’s dark over here and fireflies are flickering around the lawn. I loosen my blades and lay back on the grass, looking up at the sky.

“Remember when we used to play T-ball over there?” Josh asks.

I lift up onto my elbows and look at the stretch of Wagner Park across the street from the plaza. One year, my dad coached our Little League team. My half-sister, Rachel, is only five weeks old, but I wonder if he’ll coach her when she gets old enough to play.