Jay Asher - The Future of Us

I drive home slowly, watching a father in his driveway lift up his young son so he can dunk a basket. Sprinklers quietly arch across front lawns. These neighborhoods feel so serene, almost frozen in time.

Meanwhile, Josh and I are hurtling into our futures.

I hit the power button on my radio, and turn the volume high. “Wonderwall” by Oasis is playing. That’s Kellan’s new favorite. She was humming it as we left study hall earlier.

I turn off the radio. I don’t need to feel any guiltier for going home, locking my bedroom door, and permanently blocking one of those winding roads.

I’M SWEATY when I arrive at the library, and the cold air is a shock. I don’t know what Emma’s looking for in here, so I have no idea where to find her. I race across the carpeted floor, looking through the aisles of fiction. No Emma. She’s not at the magazines or in the children’s room, either. Finally, I go to the reference desk. The man working there is staring at a computer screen.

“Excuse me?” I ask. “Was there a girl in here, probably not too long ago? She would’ve been looking for… something.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.” The man removes a pencil from behind his ear. “What does she look like?”

“She’s shorter than me,” I say. “She’s pretty. Her hair is curly and comes down to here.” I touch behind my shoulder.

The man writes something on a yellow legal pad and then nods. “I meant to ask if she’s going to college in Chico, because there’s a—”

Shit!

“Why would you ask her about Chico?” I say.

His eyes notice something behind me, and then he tosses up his hands in exasperation. “I told the interns not to leave empty carts near the copy machine. People set their books there and don’t return them to the shelves.”

“Why Chico?” I ask again.

The man walks out from behind the desk and I follow him to the copier. “The last time I saw her,” he says, lifting a phone book from the cart, “your friend was over here making copies.”

He’s holding a phone book from California. Emma, what are you doing?

I glance into the blue recycling bin next to the copier and notice a single sheet of paper in there. I pull it out. The copy is dark, but I can make out enough. Someone copied a two-page spread of phone numbers for people named Jones.

“Is your friend thinking of going to California for college?” the man asks. “Because my daughter—”

“I highly doubt it,” I say, folding up the paper and stuffing it into my back pocket. “But thanks.”

I hurry to the front door of the library. Once outside, I hop on my board and skate toward home as fast as I can.

THERE’S NO ONE AT HOME. Even so, I lock my bedroom door before pulling the two sheets of paper from my backpack. I unfold them onto my desk, pressing my fingers along the creases.

After punching in the toll-free activation number on the back of the phone card, I start by calling J.B. Jones. An answering machine picks up, saying it’s the home of Janice and Bobby. I quickly hang up and cross out Jones, J.B. with a pencil.

The next number I try is an old lady who’s convinced I’m her granddaughter. It takes almost five minutes before she lets me hang up. I should have gotten the ten-dollar phone card.

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.

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.