I try to disguise my panic, but I’ve already lost three grandparents, and my parents look like grandparents. They both have more wrinkles around their eyes and mouths, plus a few age spots. Dad’s hair is iron gray, and it’s not all there. It’s receding along the temples. He appears to be in decent shape, but he’s … sixty-eight. Nearly seventy years old! There’s a slight slump to his shoulders where he always stood tall before.
And Mom … her hair’s not strawberry blond like mine anymore. It’s light brown and clearly dyed because I can see roots at the part. It’s cut in a short bob that curves around her face, which is significantly more rounded, as is the rest of her body. She used to wear tailored pants and blouses, even on her days off. Now, her knit pants and shirt just scream “grandma.”
But I won’t say it. I won’t mention how old they look or that I’m internally calculating how long it will be before they join Grandma Elaine at the assisted living facility. I think I understand now why all the photos are missing from the walls at Bradley’s house. He—or more likely Kelly—didn’t want me to freak out over how Mom and Dad have aged.
I stretch my face in a smile, ignoring the tightness in my chest and the mental slideshow that’s rapidly aging them to seventy-five, eighty-five, ninety-five. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Mom squeezes my hand. “Let’s go upstairs. Brad can get our luggage.”
Even after days with Kelly calling his name, I still don’t think of him as Brad, but I might have to start if even my parents no longer call him Bradley.
“On it.” He jogs down the steps. Although he is younger than my parents were when I left, he is closer to what I expect them to be.
I start up, Mom behind me.
“Give me a sec,” Dad says. “Bad knee.”
He holds the railing and takes the steps slowly, one foot up, then the other on the same step.
“Is he okay?” I ask Mom, my voice rising.
Mom hugs me against her side. “Eventually he’ll get a knee replacement. It wasn’t too bad, but he stepped off a ladder wrong the other day at the site and it flared up again. Part of getting older.”
“But you’re not supposed to be this old!” I burst out, ruining my resolve.
Dad pauses on the top step. Mom stares at me, her expression full of regret. “I know, sweetheart. But this is the hand God dealt us.”
My parents raised us as a family of faith, so I get where she’s coming from. My faith has always been pretty comfortable; I like rules, after all, and God provides a book full of them, giving me a set of life guidelines to follow. But if God dealt me this hand, I want to scream at Him. To drive over to the church, march up to the altar, and yell at Him to deal me a new one. Because this time jump is so outside any set of guidelines I can grasp. Where’s the Bible story about time travel? That would be super helpful to me now.
Mom’s still watching me, waiting for me to be strong, but now that she and Dad are here, I just want to let go. “How am I supposed to live here? I don’t understand how things work in this world anymore. Everything passed me by, including my friends.”
Dad cups my cheek. “We may be older, but we’re still your parents. We’re the same people. We love you more than anything on this earth, and we will get through this. Together.”
I close my eyes. At least that’s the same.
Our first evening together is full of tears and many stories. We are a family unit, as Bradley runs out to pick up Grandma (she’s offended at my surprise that she can leave the retirement home). We eat pizza in the living room off paper plates since Mom hasn’t grocery shopped in a week. Thankfully my favorite pizza hasn’t changed.
Mom, Dad, and Bradley tell me their version of my disappearance. Hours in the airport, waiting with other families at the gate and then in a conference room. Finally coming home without answers, only the barest hope that my plane was lost somewhere and might someday be found. Endless months and then decades of unanswered questions. Pressure from the world to declare the passengers and crew of Flight 237 dead, and how the family members of others left behind helped them through. Grandma adds in her anguish, sitting with Grandpa at their house when the news came through, trying to support Mom while she was grieving herself. It’s like having my heart ripped out all over again, but I listen because they need to tell it. By the end, my limbs are all heavy, as if full of the words they’ve spoken. I will write them down with my other stories.
After they finish, they ask to hear every detail of my experience, even though it’s not that exciting except for when we tried to land and they couldn’t find our plane. They have so much more time to cover. They tell me more about the grandparents I lost. Bradley tells me how he met Kelly, about the wedding. It’s like they feel the need to cram twenty-five years into one night.
I tense as I consider why they might be taking me on this emotional roller coaster of all the highs and lows I missed. Is it because they’re afraid I’ll disappear again? I’ve been here for days, so I feel pretty safe, but their uncertainty plants seeds of doubt. After all, nobody knows where we were. Considering I am exactly the same, I tend to think we weren’t anywhere, that instead of flying from one location to another, we flew from one time to another. But how? That’s the question I can’t possibly answer.
When I awake the next morning in my own bed, I am still in the same-different room. Moving back home didn’t reset the space–time continuum. I’m not sure if I’m relieved or not. I want to be in 1995, where everything is familiar, but in 1995, there’s no Kira or Eli. If I somehow returned and lived my life as planned, would Bradley’s story with Kelly still play out the way he told it last night? Or would I mess it up somehow? It’s confusing—and not a question I’m equipped to tackle before I’m fully alert. I smell coffee and bacon, so Mom must have made an early-morning run to the store.
The aroma draws me down the hall. I’m about to go in, but the tone of her voice stops me. “She’s going to find out eventually, Mark, whether we keep her holed up in the house or not.”
Find out what? I plaster myself against the wall, trying to blend in.
“But school?” Dad protests. “Those kids will eat her alive! It’s bad enough what people are saying in the media. Imagine what her classmates would subject her to.”
I’ve been so focused on the now and what happened on the plane I haven’t considered my future, but school is a part of that. I can’t go to college without finishing high school. Also, I really want to know what they’re saying in the news! This media ban is ridiculous.
Dad’s next words catch my attention. “And Angie still needs to talk to her about—”
“Jenny!” Mom pops around the corner, wielding a greasy spatula. “You’re up!”
I slap my hand over my heart. “Geez, Mom, way to Norman Bates me!”
She waves the spatula. “No knife. Come on in. Sit.”
I eye Dad suspiciously, but his mouth is sealed tight now that he knows I was listening. I zero in on his ratty blue robe. “Is that the robe I gave you last year?”
I realize my mistake, that my last year is twenty-six years ago, but Dad smiles. “Couldn’t give it up.”
I lean over to pat his chest. “I think it might be about time.”
“Maybe.”
A timer beeps. Mom places the bacon on a plate covered with a paper towel. “Mark, could you get those biscuits?”
“I’ll do it.” I move to open the second drawer down; thankfully the pot holders are still there. The enticing aroma of fresh biscuits mingles with the bacon as I open the oven and set the pan out to cool. I pour my coffee—one part milk, two parts coffee—and sit in my usual spot.
“No eggs?” There’s a distinct whine to Dad’s voice.
Mom points at Dad. “You’re lucky I’m letting you eat bacon.”
I don’t ask because I’m afraid this is a topic related to aging. It sounds like the sort of thing Grandma Waters used to say to Grandpa Waters. I swallow around a lump in my throat.
Dad slumps into his seat at the table while Mom plates the food and brings it to us. The table is also the same, nicks and dings carved into it from banging our silverware or setting a plate down too hard.
I wait for Dad to bless our food and then dig in. By my second piece of bacon, I’m ready to address what I overheard. “What’s this about school?”
Dad glances at Mom before he answers. “It starts in a couple of weeks—”
“What? It’s still the first week of August!” With no newspaper or TV, I’ve lost track of the days, but school doesn’t start until September. “Have they moved Labor Day?”
Dad chuckles briefly. “No, just the first day of school, but we were thinking it’s probably better for you to do school online this year.”
I hold the bacon in front of my mouth. “Online?” I don’t understand how that would work. Like here, at the house? On a computer or something? We use computers for typing and stuff at school, even to lay out the Press, but I can’t imagine how I could do all my classes that way. “And miss my senior year?”
Mom scrunches up her face. “Sweetheart, it’s not really your senior year.”
I let the bacon drop to my plate. “I know.” As if I need a reminder my most important high school year happened for Angie and everyone else without me. “But what does that even mean? No other students? All my classes some sort of independent study? How does that look for college?”
I may be out of the loop, but missing my final year of high school can’t be a plus sign on my transcript.
“We’d work all of it out,” Dad says.
I love Mom and Dad, but I don’t think I can stand to be stuck in this house with them forever, with no other people my age. I place both palms on the table. “I want to go.”
“Jenny …” Mom looks helplessly at Dad.
“Why are you even arguing, Mom? I heard you talking to Dad. It was your idea.”
She butters her biscuit. “In theory it sounded like a good idea, but it’s so soon since you returned, and some of the classes you already took are obsolete—”
“Obsolete?” I flinch. The word makes me sound irrelevant in this century. It’s a nice way of saying, You’re a dinosaur, Jenny.
“Well …” Mom shrugs. “That computer programming class you took sophomore year. Computers are much more advanced these days. They don’t even really look the same …”
Dad jumps in. “Our phones are basically minicomputers.”
Now that I think of it, I didn’t see a computer at Bradley’s house. He always closed the door when I went near his office. “My phone will be my computer?” Based on what I’ve seen in this century, I need one of those.
Dad shakes his head. “That’s not what I meant.”
“When can I get one?” I need a crash course in technology if I’m going to survive here.
Dad and Mom share another glance. “We’ll talk about it.”
“The phone?”
“School,” Mom says. She taps my plate, as if I’m a small child. “Your bacon’s getting cold, Jenny.”
Obediently, I shove the bacon into my mouth, but I’m not finished with this conversation. My senior year will not be spent within these four walls. There’s a whole new world out there for me to explore, answers to track down. I’m pursuing this story whether they want me to or not.