I cuddle into Steve’s unusually soft shoulder. There’s a hint of stubble on his neck and a small spot where he nicked himself shaving. He smells like fabric softener, as if his shirt just came out of the dryer. I nuzzle in, and then—whap!—I ricochet off his shoulder. My entire body bounces.
Wait. My eyes snap open. What I thought was Steve’s shoulder is actually a pillow. I’m bouncing because there’s a small body jumping beside me.
“Auntie Jenny, Auntie Jenny!” A little girl with light brown skin and Bradley’s blue-green eyes leans in until her nose nearly touches mine. “I’ve been waiting to meet you your whole life. You’re an unsolved mystery!”
Well, that’s one way to wake up in the morning. At least I assume it’s morning based on the sun streaming through the partially open blinds. And does she mean she’s been waiting to meet me her whole life?
“This is my room,” she says. “Wanna see my Barbies? I have nine. My birthday’s next month, and I’ll be five.”
I run a hand over my face. I think kids are okay, although I’m not like some of my friends who choose to babysit for extra cash. This girl’s adorable, though, and she’s my niece. I attempt a smile, but I’m never fully alert when I first wake up.
“Hi, Kira.” My voice is scratchy. I clear my throat, hoping I remembered her name correctly. She doesn’t stick her tongue out at me or anything, so I must be okay.
“Mama’s making breakfast. She took the day off work. Nana and Papa brought us home this morning, but they didn’t stay ’cause Mama said you needed time before you meet strangers. But I’m not a stranger. I’m family. And—”
“Kira! There you are.” Bradley swoops into the room, his face flushed. “Sorry, Jenny. I thought she was on her tablet. I turned my back for a second, and she was outta there.”
He shakes his head, but there’s affection under his frustration. I’m sure “tablet” has some other definition here, since I can’t imagine he means that she was sitting on a stone slab, unless that’s some sort of new parenting thing.
Another head peeks out behind Bradley—obviously his son and my nephew. Despite being older than Kira, he’s clearly not as outgoing. I sit all the way up, grateful I’m still wearing my T-shirt and shorts from yesterday, because at least I’m decent for all the introductions.
“It’s all right.” I redo my ponytail, which is a tangled mess, and swing my legs over the side of the bed.
Kira snuggles up beside me and points toward the door. “That’s my brother, Eli.”
I press my lips together, hiding a smile. “I figured.” I wave. “Hi, Eli. It’s nice to meet you.”
He steps out from behind Bradley but keeps a hand wrapped around his dad’s leg. His expression is super serious, as though he’s contemplating a heavy philosophical question. “Did you really travel through time?”
I wish I could cram my face back into Kira’s pillow and return to my dream, where I was back in 1995 with Steve. Unfortunately, I have Kira, Bradley, and Eli here to prove that everything I experienced yesterday was the truth and five minutes ago was make-believe. In actual reality, Steve is old, five years older than Bradley. The thought makes me squirm. I’d rather keep him tucked in my memory as the boy on the other end of the phone at the airport. “It appears so.”
Eli shifts forward. “That. Is. Spacetacular.”
“Uh-huh,” I say noncommittally. I’m not quite on board with Mom’s assessment it’s a miracle or Eli’s creative description either. If nothing else, I guess I’m the coolest aunt ever. Or maybe not. Kelly might have three awesome sisters who take the kids out for ice cream and the zoo once a week.
At a muffled call from outside the room, Bradley tilts his head toward the door before facing us again. “Kelly says breakfast is ready.”
I suddenly realize I have an urgent need for a bathroom. I haven’t gone since Grandma’s yesterday.
“Bathroom?” I say.
Kira grabs my hand. “I’ll show you.”
She leads me down the hall and about follows me in. I hear Bradley dragging her away on the other side. Living with kids will take some getting used to, but hopefully I won’t have to do it for long. Mom and Dad should return soon.
Ten minutes later I’m seated at the breakfast table with my brother’s family, and I’m on sensory overload. Thankfully the food is normal. I suspect Bradley told Kelly what I like because she made ham-and-cheese omelets, and they’re delicious. The kids eat from plastic plates while we use nicer ones. Their milk cups feature cartoon characters I don’t recognize.
What’s weird is that Bradley and Kelly both have their phones sitting next to their plates. Two minutes into the meal, Kelly’s trills out a two-tone signal and lights up. She sets down her fork and taps on the screen, murmuring something to Bradley about a person I don’t know. A few minutes later the same thing happens with Bradley’s phone. He casts a look at me before tapping on it.
“What are you guys doing on your phones?” I ask.
Bradley sets his phone facedown on the table, grimacing guiltily. “Texting. Sorry, it’s rude. We shouldn’t do it at the table.”
Kira scoops omelet onto her fork with her fingers and shoves it into her mouth, then speaks around it. “Daddy does it all the time.”
It’s cute how she throws her dad under the bus, although it doesn’t explain anything. “What’s texting?”
“Uh …”
And there’s the Bradley I know and love.
Kelly explains that you can instantaneously send written messages through phones. She shows me a conversation between herself and her mother, arranging to bring the kids back this morning.
While I’m holding the phone, a box pops up on the screen. There’s an outline of a blue bird in the corner. “What’s this thing with the bird?”
“Bird?” Kelly frowns at her phone. “Oh. Twitter. It’s a social media site where—”
“Social media?” Anything that has to do with media has my attention. “Is it like a newspaper?”
“What’s a newspaper?” Kira asks, and for a moment my heart stops. Because if I’ve traveled to a time where newspapers don’t exist, God doesn’t just have a wicked sense of humor; He’s playing the cruelest trick of all on me.
Eli points his fork at Kira. “It’s those gray papers Nico puts in his hamster cage.”
The pressure in my chest releases. I’m both relieved Eli at least knows what a newspaper is and disappointed his only point of reference is as a pet hamster’s cage liner. Although, Bradley used to do the same thing.
“It’s sort of hard to explain social media out of nowhere.” Kelly bites the corner of her bottom lip. “It’s all online, and it connects people. There are several different social media sites, and you can access them on your computer or phone. Twitter uses a short format, like headlines, but you can also link to web pages with more information or add photos or videos.”
“Why wouldn’t you read the paper and get the whole story?” Just adding that word “social” in front of “media” makes it sound sketchy to me, like it’s a club to join instead of real news.
“You can.” Bradley’s no better than his four-year-old, talking around a mouth full of food. “But it’s faster online. Like yesterday they posted a picture of the plane right after it landed. It had twenty thousand retweets within five minutes.”
This Twitter thing reminds me of those chat rooms my lifestyle editor is so into. She keeps trying to get me to sign on because “nobody knows who you are and you can say anything you want.” But I’m not interested in wasting hours gossiping with random strangers on a computer when I can call my friends and get together in person. Besides, we don’t even have internet access at home, so I’d have to go somewhere else to do it, although I guess in this time you can chat on your phone.
I remember the man outside the plane holding up what I now realize was a phone. “Do phones take pictures?”
“Duh,” Kira says.
So that guy outside the plane was photographing us before Mr. Fernandez confiscated his phone. Wow. There must not be any secrets in this time.
“I went shopping yesterday while you were at your grandma’s,” Kelly says.
Um, random. I’m not sure how to respond. “Fun?”
“For you, I mean. Since you don’t have any clothes.”
No clothes. The airport kept my luggage yesterday, but I sort of figured I’d go home and—my shoulders hunch. Of course Mom and Dad didn’t save my clothes for twenty-five years. But still, I want to know for sure. “Mom and Dad got rid of my clothes?”
Bradley clears his throat. “They held on to them for a long time. Like ten years. But then they were convinced to give them away.”
I wonder who convinced them. Some well-meaning people, I’m sure. You have to move on, Carol. She’s never coming back.
“There might be a few things they set aside,” Bradley says. “Packed away somewhere. But you’d have to wash them since it’s been so long …”
So long. I was gone for a week. I talked to them the night before, called them from Grandma and Grandpa’s house. It’s just too much.
“We can go over there if you want,” he says. “I have a key.”
I exhale. Everything is different. It makes sense the house will be different. “Not without Mom and Dad.”
Kelly leans in with a broad smile, clearly trying to lighten the mood. “If you’re done eating, let me show you what I bought,” she says cheerfully. She’s trying so hard.
“I wanna see!” Kira climbs out of her chair. She might be the best thing in this whole place, excluding the following-me-into-the-bathroom incident.
We leave Bradley to clean up breakfast (he never did that before!) and head into the living room. The TV still looms like a giant specter in the space. I can’t get over its size. I turn my back to it so it won’t distract me, and I settle into a chair.
Kelly fingers the bags she has lined up on the couch. “Brad told me your favorite store, but it went out of business.” She grimaces. “And styles are a lot different now, so I just sort of guessed.”
She pulls out a bright pink top with “j’adore” scrawled across the front. I try to mask my grimace, but I’m unsuccessful based on the way her face falls.
“No problem.” She sets the shirt aside. “Maybe this one.”
Her next choice is a striped halter top. I’m more of a basic T-shirt and shorts girl.
“Can I have it?” Kira dances forward and grabs the shirt, pulling it over her head like a dress.
Kelly’s next few top options are all too flashy for me, with sequins that change color when Kira runs her hand across them and sayings across the front. The simplest is a blue V-neck shirt with sequins on the shoulders.
Kelly’s own shoulders are slumped by the end of the unveiling. “Sorry. I’m used to shopping for a four-year-old girl.”
Yeah. A four-year-old girl who likes to sparkle. “No, I really appreciate it.”
“I like it, Mama,” Kira pipes up.
Kelly ruffles Kira’s springy hair and gazes down at her fondly. “She’s still young enough I can pick out her clothes.”
Kelly would’ve been better off choosing something like her own outfit, a pair of jeans and a cap-sleeved button-down shirt. I’m not so sure about the paisley pattern, which seems a bit seventies to me, but it’s better than sequins.
I look awkwardly at the TV because that monstrosity continues to distract me. “Mom stopped buying clothes for me about seven or eight years ago. I always shop with …”
Oh, no.
Kira bounces before me. “Who, Auntie Jenny?”
Tears prick my eyes. All the activity in the room this morning kept me from thinking about everything else I’ve lost. “My friends,” I say softly. “Especially Angie.”
Kelly inhales in a way that makes me think there’s something I should know about Angie. I whip my face up and catch a glimpse of Kelly’s consternation before she can mask it. “Is Angie okay?”
She glances toward the door. “Brad?” she calls, an odd note in her voice.
He bounds into the room, Eli on his heels. “Yeah?”
She nods toward me. “Jenny’s asking about Angie.”
My pulse kicks up. I’m sure now that she’s dead or lost her legs in a car accident or some other horrible incident they’re too afraid to tell me. I leap to my feet. “What? What happened to Angie?”
Bradley throws up his hands, a dish towel in one. “She’s fine. Great. She wants to see you. She’s texted and called me multiple times.”
I exhale, sinking back onto the chair. “Man. You had me worried.”
Although even if Angie’s perfectly fine, she’s—I quickly calculate—forty-two. She should be partner in a law firm by now. Maybe she’s married, possibly with kids, although I doubt it if she stuck with her goals. I want to see her, but like Bradley, she will be a different Angie. It’s on the tip of my tongue to ask them about Steve too, but it’s hard enough to fathom Angie as an adult.
Maybe I’ll ask Angie about him. Maybe after I see her I’ll be able to consider Steve as someone other than the boy who loved chess and baseball and maybe would have loved me with more time.
Kira crawls into my lap, startling me from my thoughts.
“Are you okay, Auntie Jenny?” She blinks up at me, her eyes full of worry.
Even though I’m nowhere near okay, I nod. Eli, Bradley, and Kelly are all staring at me like they’re afraid I will shatter into a million pieces on their living room floor.
“I’d like to see Angie.” She’ll be different, but there must be some of my best friend in there.
Bradley slaps the dish towel against his thigh. “All right.”
My stomach clenches. Because even though he agreed, he couldn’t hide his dread.