It’s different, when you know it’s ending. You have the chance to look at it properly, really study it. Whatever was weird at first that became normal becomes weird again. You start to miss it when you haven’t quite lost it yet. And you have to work hard to stay present, really appreciate it, which only leads to more proper looking, more studying and more weirdness …

Sunday mornings, the centre plays classical music for the shoppers who aren’t here yet. Workers wear baggy jumpers over their uniforms as they rearrange displays behind shuttered shopfronts. Some talk to themselves, some dance.

Nina doesn’t dance. She doesn’t work retail either, she says she’s allergic. She leans against a tall fridge and sips her smoothie. She has a navy-blue streak dyed into her hair. It’s nothing new — she’s cycled through coloured streaks for as long as I’ve known her — I’m just noticing it again. Along with the name badge that reads Damien, and the scar on her cheek she calls Foreboding Backstory, but really, the doctor just nicked her during the C-section.

When the centre closed the food court to make way for some European clothing chain, we were banished to the basement with homewares and electronics everyone can buy cheaper online. Nina and I are from two different worlds. I work the register at Phat Buns, a twelve-year-old’s greasy fever dream, and she’s the teen queen of the juice-bar island HealthiU. Their smoothies come with activated almonds, standard. For an extra three dollars at Phats, we substitute our signature phat buns for deep-fried crumbed chicken fillets. But that said, for six hellish hours every Sunday, we’re unlikely allies, trading fries for smoothies, triple cheeseburgers for fruit salads. And today, we’re over.

Phat Buns has been flirting with the idea that I’m too expensive to work weekends, and like the person who unfriends you on Facebook when a birthday notification reminds them they don’t really like you, Tilly called on my eighteenth last week to let me know she was yanking me from the Sunday roster. She offered me Thursdays after school, which I refused because one, a six-hour shift after a six-period day sounded like hell, and two, it wouldn’t be the same. I could forget casually eating fistfuls of nuggets at the counter and taking extra-long breaks in the walk-in with free soft-serves — weekday managers lack all chill. And Nina wouldn’t be there.

She squints over at me. ‘Adam, you look bored,’ she says.

‘I am.’

She sighs like I’ve just revealed some heavy truth, then she pushes off the fridge, discards her drink and reaches for a rag. She wipes down the bench with all the enthusiasm of, well, an eighteen-year-old wiping down a bench. She gets me. We get each other. I wonder if we’d be friends if we met in any other place, if we went to the same school or were invited to the same birthday party. Are we friends because we’re trapped together, or is there more to us than fries and smoothies?

Will we be friends after I’m gone? Can we? I mean, is it possible that our friendship could extend beyond short bursts of conversation, metres apart? Or even further, to maybe …

‘How’s your girlfriend?’ Karl asks from the back.

I don’t bother looking at him. ‘Shut up, Karl.’

Everyone who works Sundays acts like Nina and I are inevitable, like a guy and a chick can’t have solid banter that builds for years and goes nowhere. I guess part of me must have believed them, because now it feels so … unfinished. Even though it never actually started.

‘You hungry?’

I turn. Karl is hunched over the grill, checking the temperature of various breakfast meats with a needled instrument. When he’s done, he stacks them on an opened muffin to make one of his towering breakfast monstrosities. My stomach churns.

‘I’m good.’

He’s not fazed, more for him. He’s been back crew for the two years I’ve worked at Phats. Recently promoted, he’s exercising his managerial right to grow a beard. Beard is probably too strong a word. There are patches.

‘You ready to open?’ Karl asks.

‘I’m sure we’ll survive,’ I say.

He chews with his mouth open. A bit of meat almost escapes, and he guides it back with a light touch. I tear my eyes away, back to the front, to Nina. What if she was my girlfriend? I wonder what shape dating her might take. Without meaning to, I live it: the two of us sitting against the concrete brick wall of the service passageway, shoulders touching and …

I fall back into my body, and Nina feels too far away.

‘Oi,’ I call.

She stops wiping down the bench. ‘What?’

I ask her when she finishes work.

‘Quarter past two.’

I finish at two. That gives me enough time to run some water through my hair.

I ask if she has plans.

The service passageway is her idea. She says it’s like seeing the world’s seams. The shopping centre’s glossy white walls and faux-marble trimmings vanish. The passageway’s just concrete bricks and exposed piping. We find a spot far enough from the bin that it doesn’t smell like garbage. She brings the smoothies, I bring the burgers and chips. I sit and she sits close. Our shoulders touch.

It’s like that jarring moment when you see a scene from the trailer in the actual film, and you’re pulled out of the action for a sec. It’s enough for me to lose grip on the conversation. She finishes her anecdote — someone called Ed found the goose behind the woodshed — and she makes a face like she’s expecting a laugh. I laugh.

‘So, Adam,’ she says, tilting the remaining half of her burger away from her mouth, ‘what’s the deal with this?’

I search her eyes. She can probably tell my hair’s wet. Shit.

‘What? I just wanted to hang. We hardly ever talk, y’know? Like properly sit down and talk.’

‘True.’ She stares harder. ‘But nah, that’s not it.’

‘Are you saying you don’t want to hang? ’Cause I can leave if you —’

‘Shut up.’

‘Can’t. It’s not in my nature.’ I push on. ‘Who do you live with?’

‘A talking squirrel and a cat that solves crimes.’

‘Be serious.’

One eyebrow arches in delicate condescension. ‘Whatever you’re doing, it’s not subtle.’

I shrug. ‘Go with it.’

Nina relaxes. ‘My dads and my brother, Declan.’

It’s a detail I can’t believe she’s gone this long without mentioning, and the only follow-up I can think of is, ‘Oh, gay dads?’

‘Dad doesn’t say they’re gay. He just says they really like having sex with each other, which is gross when he says it so I don’t know why I’m repeating it to you.’ Her words run together like she’s eager for the sentence to stop. ‘How about you?’

‘Just Mum, no dads.’

‘Oh, now I feel selfish.’

She doesn’t show much remorse. She polishes off her burger and moves on to the chips we’re meant to be sharing. She has the bag in her lap. I don’t mind. I still have the melted cheese on the inside of the burger wrapper. There is nothing in the world that will ever come close to melted burger-wrapper cheese. I peel it off the paper and drop it into my mouth. I food moan. Heaven. I’m going to miss it.

‘Get a room,’ she says.

I’m going to miss this.

‘I wanted to hang because today’s my last shift.’

She drops a handful of chips back into the bag. ‘What? Why?’

‘They’re replacing me with Dimitri.’

‘Who the fuck’s Dimitri?’

‘He’s fifteen.’

‘So?’

‘He’s cheaper.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘Look, I’m not the first guy to be aged out of a fast-food job.’

‘But Dimitri isn’t gonna smuggle me chips …’

‘Nice to know that’s what you’ll miss the most.’

She’s unapologetic. ‘They’re really good chips.’ She holds a few up as evidence and halves them with a single bite. ‘Y’know, Gloria always gave me grief that we were gonna pair off.’ She clicks her tongue and eats the rest. ‘Guess we proved her wrong.’

I don’t trust myself to look at her, in case I give myself away. ‘Yeah.’ I sigh.

I want a diversion, and I get one in the form of Dan, in his oversized Phats uniform, wheeling a bin down the service passageway. I pull my legs in and we nod at each other. Nina’s quiet, contemplating something.

When Dan’s far enough away, she asks, ‘Why didn’t we, though?’

‘Huh?’

‘You don’t have a girlfriend, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Boyfriend?’

‘No.’

‘Then why haven’t we gone out?’ She sits up a little straighter. ‘Invite me to the movies.’

‘What?’

She doesn’t blink. Her gaze cuts through me. ‘Invite me to the movies.’

‘Um … Do you want to go to the movies with me?’

‘No, jeez, pick a more creative date idea.’ She barely gets through the joke before she laughs. She tries to compose herself, but the laughter escapes her closed-lip smile in bursts.

My heart pangs. Her brow twitches. I lean in and —

— hesitate for a fraction of —

Our lips touch. We kiss. Time slows. Her chest rises into mine. I reach for her cheek. I feel her scar beneath my palm. Our bodies shift closer. The bag in her lap crumples.

Time bends. I feel the hot rage before I see her. We’re standing on some street. She’s shouting, spitting, all rage, too. She’s older, we both are. I can tell without a mirror. I know the difference in my joints, my body seems less cooperative as I amble towards her. She raises a hand and throws something at my chest. I catch it, almost fumble. She leaves. I hold a ring.

I crash back into my eighteen-year-old body, and Nina feels too close. I pull away. I’ve never seen that far before. Twenty, thirty years? My breaths are shallow, pointless. She asks if I’m all right.

I’ve got to go. I’ve got to …

‘Wait.’

I’m on my feet.

Her lips have left a mark on mine. Beneath the taste of the Double Pattie Heart Clog, there’s the hint of strawberry. She put on lip gloss especially for me. And I’m walking, almost running down the service passageway.

It’s different, when you know its ending.

My life as I know it is scrawled on yellow notes and stuck in vague chronological order to the timber floor under my bed. I take a pen and record the details — the rage, the ring — and peel the note off the stack. I clear a patch of dust below the others and stick it down. There’s a rough sequence that traces my path through high school, uni, to full-time work and now … a marriage?

‘How exciting.’ This is Sophia Tan, confidante and cat lover. She sits on the single bed we’ve pushed flush against the wall, casually stroking a Bengal cat. Sophia has been around long enough that me seeing the future is as regular as me breathing. I usually mention the details of a future in a text and she usually replies with an over-dramatic GIF from a Spanish soap opera. But this future, it isn’t usual. It’s worth more than a GIF. It’s worth coming over for. ‘It’s your first love affair.’

‘Can you please stop calling it that?’

Lara Bengal fidgets in Sophia’s lap. Sophia tightens her loving vice grip, knowing Mum doesn’t like a loose Bengal in the house.

‘What else do you want me to call it?’ she asks. ‘You kissed a chick and flashed forward to —’

‘Her throwing a ring at me.’

Sophia’s looking down at Lara when she corrects me. ‘A wedding ring.’

‘We don’t know that for sure.’

‘I don’t throw my dollar-shop ring at people when we’re fighting, I’m not gonna do it when I’m old enough to afford some seriously expensive bling,’ Sophia says. ‘No, it only makes sense as a wedding ring. You’re definitely getting future divorced. I’m so happy for you.’ She hears it. ‘For the stuff before that, I mean.’

I sigh. ‘Thanks.’

My eyes drift from the note (Angry, oldish Nina throws ring during fight) to the one above it (Me in office elevator. Suit pants, white shirt, tie). I remember that future, saw it at the Year 10 Careers Expo when I leaned against an investment bank’s stand. I’d seen myself reflected in the mirrored back of the elevator. I’d looked older, but in the kid-playing-grown-up way twenty-somethings do when they wear adult clothes. There’s so much time between that future and this latest one. I need more to go on.

‘Did you see kids?’

‘No.’

‘Kitties?’

‘No.’

‘How old did she look?’

‘I’m guessing forty? Fifty? Can’t say for sure.’

‘Well, you’re fucking useless.’

‘Cheers.’

Sophia has been aware of and frustrated by the limitations of my ability since day dot. In Year 5, when the futures started, she was irritated that I couldn’t conjure the answers to Dr K’s next pop quiz, or confirm a boy band would re-form after her favourite member quit. To be fair, I tried to control it once. She asked me what she’d get for Christmas, so to coax a future out of hiding, I tipped Mum’s stash of wrapping paper and ribbons into an empty bath and sat in it. I thought of Sophia’s Christmas and instead, I got my own: a tiny present with a card from Mum, not Mum and Dad. I was too scared to ever try again, so I just told her it was impossible.

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have told anyone. It’s just kind of hard to keep an ability like mine secret at the start. Seeing the future isn’t like it is on TV, where some wizened psychic touches something, gasps and sees it. Nah, it’s like you’re ripped out of yourself and injected into your future self. You’re a stranger in your older body, seeing, smelling, hearing, touching, tasting. Then you snap back into yourself. It’s enough to make you sick.

In Year 5, it made me spew a lot. I shared a desk with Sophia, and after the third incident involving her favourite cat-themed pencil case and chunks of my breakfast, I felt I owed her an explanation. She was just young enough to believe me without much evidence. She kept a stash of old lunch-order bags, and an eye out for when I seemed out of it. She became a pretty decent catch.

Short-term pain for long-term gain. She figured being best friends with a psychic would have its perks …

There haven’t been many, though. But at least the projectile vomiting’s stopped.

I bend over and peel off the note closest to the skirting board (Fired from Phats). I scrunch it into a ball, and the other futures feel that little bit closer. Time marches on, one inevitable little yellow sticky note at a time. I take a deep, deep breath.

‘So,’ Sophia asks, ‘when’s your next date?’

‘I’m not going to date her. How can I?’ I’m asking myself as much as I’m asking her. ‘I can see the ending.’

Sophia’s supportive in her own special way. ‘It’s a teenage love affair. They’re not made to last forever.’ She lowers her head and starts cat-speaking. ‘Uncle Adam is going to piss away his one chance at love, isn’t he, Lara Bengal? Yes, he will. Oh, you’re so pretty.’

Whatever magnetic field Lara has that attracts Sophia, has zero effect on me. She’s the scratcher of forearms and the source of the putrid smell in Sophia’s laundry, but for as long as I’ve known Sophia, she’s been scarily attached to her — so much so that she rarely walks the two blocks to my place without cradling Lara.

The thought of Lara sends me flying. I collide with a self that doesn’t feel that different. Sophia sits beside me, a tiny kitten in her lap. She calls her Laura, and me her new uncle. Her voice wavers when she tells Laura about her older sister. She wishes they could’ve met. Her eyes are red raw. She’s been crying. I’m flung back into my present self and my heart hurts. The feeling lingers. Sophia doesn’t notice anything’s up. Her face is level with Lara’s. ‘So pretty,’ she coos.

The cat doesn’t give a toss. Sophia pays some attention to the gap between her shoulder blades, and Lara lifts her head, satisfied.

‘Have you done the modern history essay yet?’ Sophia asks me.

I tell her I’m too busy worrying about the future to think about the past.

‘Oh, how long have you wanted to use that line?’

‘A couple of weeks.’

She looks up. Her forehead creases. ‘You all good?’ she asks.

I clear my throat and make an effort to stand straighter. ‘Yeah.’

‘Trying to think of a line that doesn’t suck?’

Sure, I’ll let her think that. ‘Pretty much.’

‘Do you want to go outside and poop?’

‘Wha—?’ Oh, she’s talking to the cat.

Lara doesn’t even flinch, but Sophia reads it as a, ‘Yes.’ Part of me thinks she only brings her over to make it easier to leave. It’s hard to argue with, ‘I think my cat’s about to shit on your hardwood floors.’

Sophia puts her hand on my back on her way out. ‘Support,’ she says.

When she’s gone, I write another note. I peel it off the stack and stick it somewhere close to the skirting board.

Something happens to Lara. New cat, Laura.

Shit, indeed.

I remember the future of my childhood. It was all hope and optimism, my kindergarten teacher squeaking there was no life that was out of my reach. Absolutely anything was possible. But now the meaning of the word has changed. The future is static, a dark, inescapable thing.

Every yellow sticky note is a trap.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’ve misremembered the futures, or misinterpreted what they mean. Is it possible they’re warnings more than solid truths, affected by diverging paths and missed trains?

I need a manual. I need a mentor. I … have a mother. By the time she gets home after ‘long brunch’, it’s dark out. I’ve pulled the bed back over the sticky notes and any courage I may have had to broach the subject with her is gone.

It’s not that she’s difficult to talk to. She’s never had a problem fielding questions about anything — drugs, sex, the psychic abilities that run in her family. We can talk about that joint she tried at uni, and that guy Alek from work who doesn’t come by anymore, but we hit a snag when it comes to the future. I guess any conversation about it shines a spotlight on the elephant in the room: she’s a fucking psychic. She has dirt on me before I’m dirty.

I can ask her any question about my ability, and she’ll make some general comment about knowing a lot, and I’ll start unpacking it like, Hang on, what does she mean by that? Does she know I lied to her about LJ’s? Crap, she knows it wasn’t really a movie night. It was a house party. Somebody called the police. We bailed and spent the night in the park freezing our arses off, spewing vodka. Why won’t she just say it? Maybe she doesn’t know. Maybe I got away with it. Or is she just letting me think I did? Then she’ll smile and I’ll be like, Shit, can she read minds now?

It’s not worth the anxiety.

I have books open on the dining table while I smash out my modern history essay. She steps out of her shoes and instantly shortens. She approaches cautiously, like she’s afraid to disturb me.

‘Don’t worry, Mr Ferguson isn’t marking it.’

She exhales. ‘Good. How was your day?’

‘Fine.’

She reminds me it was my last day at Phats. I tell her I know.

‘No big emotions?’ she prompts.

‘Nope.’ I’m already up to unload the fridge. Reheating all the week’s takeaway leftovers is a crucial part of our Sunday-night ritual. ‘Big whoop, it’s the last time I’ll ever serve somebody fast food.’

‘That you know of,’ she says, and I start unpacking it like —

‘No, don’t do that,’ I tell her.

She cackles. ‘Honestly, I see no more fast food in your future.’

‘Stop.’ I think about it. ‘And obviously. I’m too expensive.’

‘Exactly.’

I get to work microwaving one ethnic dish at a time, and Mum parks herself on the couch. The other crucial element of our Sunday-night ritual is judging the contestants of whichever talent show is currently on the air. It’s an escape, an opportunity to crawl out of my own head.

And it is until a teary piece to camera, in which Janelle from Narrabeen shares her struggle to be taken seriously as a spoken-word poet slash popstar. She’s all hope and optimism.

‘No-one can tell me there’s no future in this,’ Janelle says.

The judges have just told her exactly that.

‘Anything is possible.’

I want to ask someone if she’s right. I turn to Mum and hesitate.

When I walk to school with Sophia, it’s a given we won’t take the direct route. Some mornings, we have to drop off her dad’s dry-cleaning, others, like this morning, we have to quest ten minutes out of the way so she can visit the cheaper convenience store, because a dollar difference overall really matters.

‘Yes.’ She’s indignant. ‘It really does.’

When we get there, we immediately take different aisles. She lingers by the confectionary, and I head for the magazines. I ignore the bulky tomes to women’s fashion and male body dysmorphia, and start flicking through the thin gossip rags to the ads near the back.

‘You sure you don’t want anything?’ Sophia asks.

I want a mentor. Somebody who knows what it’s like to be psychic, but who isn’t going to ground me for anything in my past or future. Mum used to scoff at the flashy psychic hotline ads in the magazines she nicked from work. She said they felt too razzle-dazzle to be legit, but I dunno, I’m willing to give them a shot.

Except the ads with mysterious, glammed-up psychics are gone, replaced with dating-show recap columns written by psychics who just look like normal journalists. No fancy jewellery. No starry-night banners across the top. They don’t even list their toll numbers.

Sophia heaps her selections on the counter. ‘You done?’

‘No.’ I put the magazine back on the rack and head over. ‘I can just search online like a normal person anyway.’

Sophia taps her card and runs her arm through the plastic bag before the payment clears. The moment the register chimes, she drags the bag off the counter. I follow her out and we’re absorbed by the amorphous blob of corporate suits ambling towards the train-station underpass.

‘It can’t be that hard to find a psychic who isn’t your mum or a charlatan,’ she says as we descend the stairs. There’s a lady sitting on an upended milk crate at the other end of the tunnel. ‘What about her?’

The woman is spruiking palm readings and evil-eye necklaces to morning commuters. She is very much a charlatan.

‘Yeah, no.’

‘Yeah, yes. Besides, what’s the worst that’ll happen? She’ll con you into buying a necklace.’

‘But, I …’ We’re too close to keep talking about her.

According to the cardboard sign leaning against the wall, she’s the Astounding Anne-Marie. We stop near her and she motions to her spare milk crate. It really doesn’t look comfortable, but Sophia pushes on the small of my back until I step forward. I drop my bag by my feet and sit down. It feels like I’ve taken an oversized cheese grater to the arse.

‘Hello, my child.’

Ugh. I was worried that was how she was going to play it.

I look to Sophia, but she’s already out of the tunnel.

‘How may I help you?’ Anne-Marie asks. There’s a cardboard sign at her feet that lists her services and prices.

I’m here now. I might as well …

‘I actually …’ My eyes drift back to the cardboard sign and the texta’d prices. I take out my wallet to mitigate the guilt. I fish out a gold coin. ‘I wanted some advice.’

She licks her bottom lip. ‘There is not much Anne-Marie does not see and cannot help with.’

Ugh. Third person.

She accepts the coin. ‘What is it, child?’

I readjust myself on the crate. It makes it worse. ‘I was wondering, is it possible to change the future? Or are you stuck with a bad one?’

‘Oh.’ She smiles warmly. ‘If you are afraid, Anne-Marie can make sure she only tells you the good things.’

‘I … meant, for me.’ I check over my shoulder for guys from school. The tunnel’s practically deserted. I lean in. ‘I’m a psychic.’ It never really stops sounding stupid when I say it out loud.

She makes a face and I think the discomfort of the seat is getting to her, too.

‘There’s this girl. We’ve been … I don’t know if it’s flirting, but we’ve been close for ages, and yesterday I kissed her.’ Anne-Marie nods and her eyes dart to my palms as if they hold the answer. ‘I know our future, it doesn’t end well. But is it definite? Can I change it? Is that ethical? Are there cosmic repercussions? Would I be creating an alternate timeline, and in avoiding one future, does that mean the other futures I’m aware of but haven’t lived won’t happen?’

Anne-Marie laughs. ‘Oh, darling, you read too many books. Give me your hand. Palm reading is ten dollars.’

‘Honestly, I —’

She takes my forearm and pulls my palm closer to her. I gasp and it’s a roller-coaster dip out of myself and into … her. There’s a hospital bed, a young girl and a stern-faced doctor. The doctor’s talking. He calls the girl Bridget. I feel a faint sensation on my palm. I focus on it. The details blur, the doctor’s voice muffles, but the sensation becomes a touch. I collide with myself, and the Astounding Anne-Marie is tracing the lines of my palm with her thumb.

‘Bridget,’ I gasp.

Anne-Marie is too involved explaining the different lines to me and what they mean.

‘Bridget,’ I repeat. ‘Who is she?’

Her thumb eases off my skin. She blinks at me.

‘Is she in hospital?’ I ask.

‘You see.’ Her eyes are wide. Her grip on me tightens. ‘What have you seen? Tell me.’

I stammer. I didn’t see much and I’m still getting over being in somebody else’s future. I offer her something. ‘I saw a doctor.’

It isn’t enough.

‘What did he look like?’

The more I try to recall details, the hazier my recollection. The future isn’t mine and it’s like my body is rejecting it.

Anne-Marie pulls on me harder. ‘Is my baby going to be all right?’ Her voice cracks.

I snatch myself out of her hands. I don’t know how to answer her.

‘Tell me. Tell me, please.’ Her purple shawl rises and falls with every short, shallow breath. Whatever gift I have, she doesn’t. ‘Do you want money? I do not have much, I …’ She’s fishing in her bum bag, plucking out shrapnel.

People invade the underpass with heavy steps and loud conversations. A train must’ve just arrived. Anne-Marie’s eyes are locked on me, and mine, on everyone passing. Randoms. School kids. Matt and Aidan from geography. They snigger on the way past. I’m gonna cop it in class.

‘Look, I … have to go to school.’

I stand and scoop up my bag. Anne-Marie pleads for me to stay. I almost run.

I don’t usually consider my abject failure as a human being during geography (that’s what maths is for), but this morning, it’s weighing on my mind. Mostly because Matt doesn’t let me forget it. At regular intervals, he leans his chair back into my desk, rubs his temple with the fingers of one hand, twinkles the fingers of the other and reels off a psychic prediction. They get less and less funny, and they weren’t exactly side-splitting to begin with. Each one reminds me of Anne-Marie, how desperately she needed comfort, and how I let her down.

Matt leans back. He does the stupid thing with his fingers again. He’s going for psychic, but his delivery reads more like ghost. ‘In your future, I see … you being pathetic and visiting an old lady psychic in the underpass.’

Okay, so he’s not wrong. I jump the fence at recess. I have fifteen minutes, thirty-five if I skip pastoral care. I take the back streets so there’s less chance of somebody spotting me going AWOL. I jog as fast as I can, for as long as I can, which is not very fast, or very long, but I get to the underpass quicker than I thought was possible. Not quickly enough, though. Anne-Marie and her milk crates are gone.

Sophia saves my seat in modern history with an empty chocolate wrapper. I dust it onto the floor and she asks where I was at recess. Before I can answer, she supersedes it with a more urgent question. ‘How did this morning go?’

‘I got nothing. She’s a fake.’

‘Damn.’

I only feel half-bad because it’s only a half-lie. I didn’t get a solution to my Nina problem, which is what Sophia means, but I did get something: I’m shocking at using my gift to help others. Worse still, I know something bad happens to Lara. If Sophia comes to me for help, and I fuck it up … I don’t know what I’ll do.

‘Chocolate?’ she offers.

I have homework, but I fire up the TV instead. I’ve spent so much of the past twenty-four hours worrying about futures that I feel depleted. I need to veg out and channel-surf and watch dumb game shows and forget about everything.

Mum gets in around six. She hangs her keys on the hook by the door, peels off her heels and death stares. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

I’ve sunken so deep into the couch that I’m practically horizontal. It’s hard to speak. ‘Nothing’s wrong. What would make you think that something’s wrong?’

‘Besides the body language?’ She walks through to the kitchen. ‘Russia.’

‘Huh?’

Mum remains silent until the game-show host asks the next question. ‘Which country is home to one-quarter of the world’s fresh water?’

I wait for it. The contestant answers, ‘Iceland,’ and the buzzer sounds. The game-show host is sorry, the correct answer is …

Mum cackles. I sit up and look over the back of the couch. ‘Mum!’

‘What?’ She’s biting back a smirk. ‘It’s not as if I asked about Nina.’

She consults the menus stuck to the fridge and I wonder what she knows and how long she’s known it. She eliminates one of the menus, glances at the two remaining, and then at me. ‘Don’t do that with your face. If you just told me about your life, I wouldn’t have to look ahead.’

‘You don’t have to look ahead, period. It’s like reading a diary I haven’t written yet.’

‘But she’s so lovely. We get on well. We will get on well, once you sort out your little dramas.’ She consults the menus again. ‘Chinese for dinner?’

Mum already knows. I don’t know why she bothers asking. ‘Whatever.’

‘Attitude!’ she warns. She opens the fridge and plucks out a container of chopped celery. ‘And don’t swear.’

I stammer. ‘What? I didn’t …’

‘Not yet.’

‘Oh, come on. This isn’t fair. Nobody else has fights with their parents in four dimensions.’

She chews on a stick of celery. ‘We’re not fighting. You want to see fights with kids? Just you wait. Brandy is a piece of work.’

‘Ah!’ I cover my ears. ‘Fuck, Mum. Spoilers.’

She threatens me with what’s left of the celery stick.

‘Sorry.’ I drop my hands.

‘Forgiven. Mongolian lamb, lemon chicken and mixed vegetables?’

I nod.

She dials the restaurant and even with the phone to her ear, she won’t drop the subject of my unborn daughter. ‘How can you not know about Brandy?’ she asks. ‘Haven’t you had a peek?’

I can’t control it. I’m too scared to try, and I’m too chickenshit to admit it. I deflect. ‘Why would I name my daughter after alcohol?’

‘The singer,’ Mum corrects.

I’m blanking.

‘You don’t know Brandy? R&B, voice like silk.’

‘I’ve got nothing.’

‘She was the soundtrack to my uni years.’

‘You do realise I was not alive for them, right?’

Mum sighs and someone answers on the other end. ‘Jake, hello!’ She laughs. ‘Yes, it’s Sarah.’ She laughs again. We really order too much takeaway. ‘We’re after dinner … Well, what would you recommend?’

I roll my eyes. I hate this shtick.

Cue the shit-eating grin. ‘Mongolian lamb, lemon chicken and mixed vegetables?’ she repeats back at him. ‘Sounds perfect. I’ll send Adam up in twenty? Wonderful.’ She ends the call. ‘Have a shower before you go, will you? I can smell the hormones on you.’

‘Thanks.’

I’m almost out of the room when she stops me. ‘You know, I saw your father when I was about your age. My friends and I were at the corner shop buying snacks for a sleepover. I grabbed the buttered popcorn and your dad just popped right into my head.’ She taps it, as if to clarify which head. ‘He swept me off my feet. I didn’t actually meet him until my last year of uni. By the end of our first date, I knew we weren’t going to last.’

‘Well, you weren’t wrong there.’

‘No, I was not.’

It makes me think of the Nina and Sophia futures. I wonder if it’s possible. ‘Mum?’

‘Yes, hon?’

‘Can we be wrong?’

She takes the last of the celery and tosses the container in the sink. ‘I’ve never been.’

‘I just really don’t buy that I’m going to name a kid after some retro R&B singer.’

‘Well, I’d tell you, but what is it you say?’ She screws up her face. ‘Rah, spoilers!’

‘I sound nothing like that.’

She shrugs and lets the tap run. She tips the accumulated plates and containers into the sink and adds a liberal amount of detergent. Watching her, the thoughts and futures swim around in my head, they mingle and knot and I remember what she said about Dad.

I mightn’t have a manual or a mentor, but I have a mother.

‘Hey, question.’

She looks back at me. ‘Mm?’

‘If you knew it wasn’t going to work with Dad, why would you even go there?’ It’s the most direct question about living with our ability I think I’ve ever asked her.

She tilts her head to one side. ‘Oh, bless.’

The Chinese restaurant at the end of our street is steeped in our history. When the three of us moved west, it was the Oh Yum Bistro. We would order from images on an illuminated menu board, and sit at the round tables meant for larger families. I would play Wheel of Fortune with the lazy Susan, spin and eat and spin and eat until Mum would still the wooden disc with one hand and tell me to stop playing with my food. She and Dad would be having one of their conversations. She saw his mistakes before he’d even made them, and he said she didn’t have any faith in him. She didn’t, no. When Dad moved out, and more people moved west, Oh Yum became The Bistro. It was dark and dramatic, with home-brew beer options written on the wall in chalk. Mum was halfway through the list the night she gave me the, ‘Yer a wizard, Harry,’ talk in Year 7. She did it just like that, too, thought I’d appreciate the intertextuality. We quickly realised it wasn’t the kind of chat we could have in public, so we became takeaway customers exclusively.

Whenever I come to collect, the smell and sound of sizzling meat makes me miss the old days when Mum knew everything and I didn’t know how. When we didn’t have to hide in case someone overheard.

There are three customers in the waiting area, but my eyes are drawn to one. She has a navy-blue streak dyed into her hair. Mum’s insistence that I shower before grabbing dinner suddenly makes sense.

Nina flicks through a magazine too quickly to absorb any details. My heart knots itself. I want to shout her name and exchange stupid jokes, but the air between us is thick with what happened, and what will happen. I don’t want to wade through it to get to the vacant seat beside her. I want to linger by the door, hope my order is called before hers, and hide my face if it isn’t. But can I avoid her that easily? Our futures are entwined.

I exhale.

I wade through it, the giddy awkwardness of our first kiss, the clumsiness of my escape, and the blinding rage of our breakup. I sink into the seat beside her.

I have to say something.

‘Hey.’ It will go down in history as one of the greatest ever icebreakers.

Nina looks up. She’s startled, but she recovers. Her face hardens. ‘Hello, Adam.’ There are icicles hanging from her words and I’m seriously wondering whether it’s poor form to run away from two out of two encounters.

Yes? Yes. Of course it is.

Jake approaches the counter with two loaded plastic bags and I hope they’re mine. He calls for a Josh. Not mine. Damn.

‘You know,’ Nina says, ‘most people who don’t want to kiss someone just don’t kiss them. They don’t kiss them, freak out and then piss-bolt.’

It’s hard to wrap words around these feelings. It’s not something I’m used to talking about. ‘I wanted to.’

‘Am I a dud kisser?’ she asks.

‘No, I —’

‘Were you about to shit yourself? Because, fair warning, no excuse less than imminent diarrhoea will help you recover from this,’ she says.

Josh only walks off with one bag. Jake checks the ticket taped to the remaining one. ‘Gower?’ he calls.

Nina stands.

‘That’s not your name.’ I don’t know why I say it out loud.

‘Um, yeah, it is. Surname.’

‘Oh.’

‘Dickhead.’

She walks over to Jake and becomes a different, warmer Nina. Their banter is light and fun. I tilt my head back against the shopfront window. This is messed up. I want her to like me, I want to go out with her, even though I know it won’t last. I’m defeated. I slide my hands into the pockets of my trackies, and there’s … I pull out a pen. I turn it over. Izzy Bella Cosmetics is printed in pink cursive down the side. It’s from Mum’s work. She must’ve slipped it in while I was in the shower.

Nina’s leaving. I look to her seat and tear a corner off the magazine. I write my number on it and follow her out the door. She’s almost around the corner.

‘Nina Gower!’ I call.

She stops and turns. ‘Just because you know it doesn’t mean you have to say it all the time.’

I clear the rest of the distance between us and hold out the glossy corner with my number on it. ‘Adam Thomas.’

Her brow creases.

‘Please?’

She takes my number. ‘I’ll think about it.’ She turns back and swings her dinner as she walks away. She raises her free hand. ‘Notice how I’m not trying to break a world record here?’

My phone vibrates on the table during dinner. It’s from a number I don’t recognise. The body of the text reads, Nina Gower.

‘You’re welcome,’ Mum says.

I text back a string of random emoji she’ll appreciate and bite back a smile. Her response is instant: love-heart emoji, engagement-ring emoji.

I feel the future, the ring in my hand, the hot rage.

Sarcastic obvi, Nina adds.

I fight against the future, push it down and hold it there. I am here, now. The hot rage festers. I reply, Hahaha, but I don’t even smile.

I want to ask Mum about the future, but I want her to answer like she doesn’t know mine. ‘There’s this girl,’ I explain. ‘We’ve worked Sundays for ages, and yesterday, we kissed.’

‘Yeah, I …’ Something clicks and she understands what I’m doing. ‘Oh, really? What’s her name?’

A bit much, but I appreciate the effort. ‘Nina. I kissed her and I saw our future, her breaking up with me.’

Mum nods. ‘That is … surprising.’

‘It wasn’t just the breakup though. I felt the anger, like, I really hated her in that moment, and I think she hated me.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘Fascinating.’

‘My question is, I’ve lived us breaking up, how does that not taint everything before it?’

‘Mm.’ Mum straightens up and she chews on her bottom lip. She’s thinking. Eventually, she settles on, ‘Think of it a lot like driving off a cliff.’

‘That’s not reassuring.’

She points her fork at me. ‘You can’t see the future and be blissfully unaware, they’re mutually exclusive,’ she says. ‘Everybody has their share of cliffs, we just have the pleasure of knowing that they’re coming. We have to work extra hard to enjoy speeding towards them as best we can, teach ourselves to appreciate the wind in our hair. Life will break your heart, and if you don’t learn how to live with that, you won’t have much of a life.’

I’m quiet. I don’t quite know what to say.

‘That would be my advice to you if I had no idea what happens next, which I absolutely do not.’

I meet Nina after school. We walk home together. I focus on the wind in my hair. Not literally, there’s not much hair and the breeze is piss-weak. I mean, I focus on the build-up. Easing back into our friendship, trading barbs and anecdotes until it feels more like it was before the kiss, and then nervously stretching past it, our fingers edging closer, our knuckles grazing, and then, me finding the courage to hold her hand in mine.

She doesn’t look at me when she says, ‘We’re doing this.’

‘We are, yeah.’

‘If you feel the urge to bolt, make sure you let go, yeah? I’m not adequately warmed up for a sprint.’

She works it into conversation every time I see her. She has every intention of running it into the ground.

‘Get it?’ she asks over Macca’s breakfast the next day. ‘Running it into the ground?’

‘I saw it coming, yeah.’

Her navy-blue streak is now lime green. I ask what the deal is with the colours.

‘This is going to sound weird and you’re not gonna believe me, but I actually have supernatural abilities.’

My heart skips a beat, an excited nervousness spreads across my chest and … then I realise she’s kidding. The supernatural is fiction in her world. I play it straight. ‘Oh, really?’

‘Totally.’ She nods. ‘Some people wear mood rings, I have mood streaks.’

‘And what does lime green mean?’

She cocks her eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

‘So long as it doesn’t mean you hate the guy you’re eating breakfast with.’

‘No, it does not mean that.’ She says it like it does. ‘You are not completely insufferable.’

‘I don’t like you.’

‘I don’t like you either.’

We smile at each other. It’s funny, how loud the present is when you force yourself to really listen. I don’t have a future for weeks. I have Nina. We waste weekends on my bed, my body pressed into the back of hers, it’s the only way we fit. We binge TV on my laptop, our fingers interlocked, and I lose myself in her. I watch her, the scar on her cheek, the freckle on her neck, the streak through her hair. It’s bright pink. I run my hand through it.

‘When I was a kid, I was at my aunt’s house,’ Nina says, talking over the video. ‘She had this flight of stairs from the second-storey balcony down to the yard, and I fell from the top and hit my head on a step. I got up and walked to her. She thought I was fine. She didn’t realise I had fallen from so high. I collapsed and I was in a coma for five days.’

‘You were in a coma?’

‘Yep. The doctors couldn’t do anything. They didn’t know if I’d ever wake up, and if I did, whether I’d have brain damage or not. I didn’t, but … Yeah, ever since, that patch has grown white. I was a bit depresso about it when I went back to school, so my teacher dyed it with me one lunchtime. I haven’t stopped.’

My fingers trace a line up to the streak’s grey-white roots. I wonder how many people she’s told that story to, and how many others she’s let believe her streaks are just some colourful rebellion. She twists her body to face me, and the roots are out of reach.

‘Hi,’ I whisper.

She smiles. ‘Hi.’

We are drawn into each other and the whole pretence of watching TV is lost. There is just us, now. A frantic mess of limbs and movements. An awkward kiss, teeth click, clothes peel off and the doorbell rings.

‘Was that …?’ Nina asks.

I’m off the bed and hurriedly turning my shirt right side out. ‘Mum’s probably forgotten her keys,’ I say. ‘One sec.’

Nina has perfected the art of We Weren’t About To Do What You’re Thinking. She’s already scrolling through notifications on her phone.

I rush down the hall. The hook Mum hangs her keys on is bare. I open the door and Sophia is standing on the porch. It’s a sledgehammer. She’s upset and Lara’s empty lead is in her hands.

‘Tell me she doesn’t …’ There’s a sharp intake of breath and my heart cracks. ‘Tell me she’s going to be okay.’

I have nothing. She steps forward and collapses into me. I wrap my arms around her and hold her close.

I want to say something perfect. I should have something comforting ready to go, I mean, I knew this was coming. All I have is, ‘Soph …’ It’s useless.

She sniffs, and after a few false starts, she struggles through an explanation. Lara wandered the neighbourhood in the early hours of the morning, and a car hit her in the low light.

‘I’ve been with her at the vet. I tried texting, but you didn’t answer.’ Sophia pulls away. ‘Do you know?’

I can’t lie to her. I hesitate and her face twists anew.

‘Really?’

I remember Anne-Marie and how spectacularly I had failed. I don’t want to do that to someone else. Especially not Sophia. I treat it as my do-over. I lead her inside and offer her some water. She declines. That was my attempt to stall. I had hoped that by the time I’d filled the glass, I’d have an inkling of what to do. I can’t tell her it’s going to be all right. I mean, it is. There’ll be a new kitten, and Sophia will love her every bit as much as Lara, but …

Nina emerges from the bedroom, hands in her jeans pockets.

‘Oh. Hi.’ Sophia wipes her eyes and tries to make herself seem presentable. ‘Nina, right?’

‘Yeah.’

Sophia sniffs. ‘Sophia.’

‘Hi.’ Nina smiles faintly. ‘Is everything okay?’

‘Not really, but yeah.’

‘Did you want something to eat? I have chocolate in my bag.’

Sophia sniffs again. ‘What kind?’ She stops Nina halfway through the brand name with, ‘Yes!’ Nina disappears and Sophia whispers, ‘She seems nice.’

‘She is.’

‘And I like her hair.’ She punches my arm softly. ‘That’s for making her divorce you.’

When Nina comes out again, it’s with a block of chocolate and her backpack. There’s this awkward dance, where she says she really ought to go home and study, because she doesn’t want to intrude. I don’t want her to leave, but I also don’t want Sophia to have to grieve with an audience. We go around in circles, but Nina cuts it short. Nina doesn’t dance.

‘I’ll just hang in your room until you’re ready?’

Sophia promises to be gone in ten, max.

‘No, seriously, eat all the chocolate.’

‘I will.’ Sophia’s wide-eyed and Nina believes her.

She brushes past my legs on her way out.

‘This is the worst,’ Sophia says. ‘Thing is, I know if I call Ma, she’ll try to reassure me, tell me Lara’s doing fine. She’ll say the vet’s optimistic and whatever, but it won’t give me hope. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s like it has, and I just want to cry and cry and … I have no idea how you do it.’

‘I’m trying to ignore it.’

She thinks. ‘I don’t know if I can do that. If I only have a limited time with her, I want to be right there. I can’t pretend it isn’t coming. And it is, isn’t it?’ She looks to me for confirmation. I nod slightly. She keeps composed and stands. ‘I have to go.’

We hug, and in an instant, she’s out the door with a block of chocolate. I wait. Sophia’s visit was a wrecking ball, and I need to rebuild myself. I recover, brick by brick, and start to retreat back to my bedroom. Nina’s surprised Sophia’s left so soon. I climb back on the bed beside her. She asks for details and I give them. We lie silently and I try to lose myself in her again. I can’t though. I know my life is laid out in notes beneath us, and I can’t pretend it isn’t coming.

There is just us, now and then.

I push the bed against the wall and lay the notes bare. Mum must sense I urgently want to talk because she flutters around the house, busying herself with odd tasks, avoiding my bedroom like the plague just to mess with me. When she eventually passes my doorway, it’s on her way to brush her teeth, dry her hair, and given how long it takes her, re-tile half the bathroom. I’ve sprouted an island-castaway beard by the time she comes in. She sees the yellow sticky notes.

‘Oh, we’ve stopped trying to hide these, have we?’ she asks.

I sigh. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

‘I vacuum your room. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve sucked them up by accident, stopped the Hoover, fished them out without spilling dust everywhere and slapped them back down without you realising.’

I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.

Mum looks over the notes and then at me. ‘How are things?’

‘I did what you said —’

‘You did half of what I said.’

‘Mum!’

‘Sorry. Got ahead of myself. Go on.’

I exhale. ‘You told me to focus on the wind in my hair. I did. I knew something bad would happen to Sophia’s cat, but it was completely off my radar, because I was so wrapped up in the now with Nina. I wasn’t prepared. Sophia came over today, she wanted to know if everything was going to be okay and …’

‘You were useless.’

‘I was useless.’

‘What did I tell you?’

‘Focus on the wind in my hair.’

‘And?’

‘And?’

‘You can’t see the future and be blissfully unaware.’

Damn. She did say that.

‘People with two good eyes don’t keep one closed for the hell of it. If they did, they’d see, but they’d lose depth perception. It’s the same for us. We have three eyes; they’re meant to be open, or else we wouldn’t perceive the world as well as we can. You only knew you were useless because you knew Sophia would need you, and you didn’t take advantage of that knowledge. Someone who wasn’t like you, he wouldn’t think he was useless. He would tell himself he was just doing the best he could. But you know you didn’t do the best you could.’

‘But if I don’t ignore the future, then how do I build something with Nina without dreading how it ends?’

‘The dread fades. Trust me, you’ll come to appreciate the warning. If I went into marrying your father with rose-coloured glasses, I would have been shattered when he turned out to be a baboon. I saw what was coming and tapered my expectations.’

‘That’s bleak.’

Mum shrugs. ‘As much as you might want to, you can’t live like everybody else. Your life is your own. Let them be slaves to the moment. They can’t see the forest for the trees. Sure, they don’t have to contend with spoilers, but you … you live with purpose. The shocks don’t rattle you when they’re spread thin. You anticipate them and have time to prepare for them, and the joys … the joys last long enough for you to really savour them.’

‘I haven’t seen any joy with Nina.’

‘See more, then,’ she snaps. ‘The first time your father and I have dinner, he walks me to my car. He doesn’t kiss me, but he does hold my hand. Our fingers interlock and whoosh, I see the moment I kick him out. I can’t get into the car fast enough. I’m adamant I won’t see him again. I will avoid that future. Meanwhile, he’s standing by the car, oblivious to all this. He thinks it’s been a pretty good night. In his defence, it has been. He smiles at me. I catch it in the rear-view mirror and … Fuck, I really love that smile. All things considered, I shouldn’t. I know he’s going to disappoint me. But that’s ten, fifteen years away. That’s a long time for things to sour.

‘I need proof it isn’t all crap, but my control over my power is limited to knowing I see more when I skip a meal. My mother told me our minds stitch related memories together. All her memories with your grandfather, they were linked. When she wanted to know if his health would improve, she would conjure a recent memory. She would live it like we live our futures, sit on the edge of his hospital bed, feel the mattress sag beneath her, smell the disinfected air, and she would take control. She would ask him, point-blank, if he was dying. He would say, “No,” and she would get a preview of their future. She kept asking whenever he took a turn, until one day, he said, “Yes,” and there was no future.’

Mum pauses for a long, slow breath. ‘I had tried that, remembering and then asking, never worked for me. She said that everyone’s different. I had to discover my own way in my own time. Bugger that. I’m sitting in that car, and I want to discover it now. I grip the wheel, look at your father and see the patchwork of our recent past, the candlelight, the dinner, the wine. And I realise, if they’re connected, I must just be able to go the other way. I stop travelling backwards and instead, go forwards, past the walk to the car, to ten, fifteen seconds ahead. I see him tapping on my window, asking if everything’s all right. It’s working. I push on — ten, fifteen days ahead. I see us sitting on the beach at night, he’s in a suit, I’m in a dress, and we’re laughing so hard our sides hurt. I try weeks, months. If I know it’s not going to work, why do I still give us a go? Sitting at the wheel, I see you. And everything else suddenly doesn’t matter. I sit back and smile. Your father taps on my window and asks if everything’s all right. And it is. I have you to look forward to.’

I feel the story in waves. First, as a rare look into my parents’ early, less messy life together. That wave recedes, and the second one hits with more ferocity: This is my solution. I have to spoil my life with Nina to keep me from spoiling my life with Nina.

I wait for Mum to leave for ‘long brunch’, and allow ten minutes for her to return having forgotten something. When she doesn’t, I grab a fresh stack of sticky notes and every pen in the house in case a dozen inexplicably fail. I lie back on my doona.

I’m going to control my ability, no big deal. Mum did it in a car, under pressure. I’m on a bed, with no time constraints. Easy. And if I discover something I don’t like, that’s just a part of it. I’ve just got to spread that shock thin.

Besides, it’s not as if I can find out Dad’s leaving again.

I take a breath and shut my eyes. Right.

The thought of Nina sparks a patchwork of memories. I hug her goodbye on the porch. I lie beside her. She offers Sophia a block of chocolate. I … reverse the flow. I lie beside her. I hug her goodbye on the porch. I strain to remember forwards, past the present and into the future … Nothing. I open my eyes.

Yeah, the odds of what works for Mum working for me were slim, but I lived in hope. Maybe it skips a generation.

I shut my eyes.

The thought of Nina sparks my memory again. I hug her goodbye on the porch. I follow Gran’s example and force myself to feel it like my futures. I step into my past self’s skin. I can taste the strawberry on her lips. She’s pressed into me. I can smell her, touch the streak in her hair. We pull apart, I take control.

‘Will we have good times?’ I ask her.

She smirks. Holy shit, it’s happening. The memory’s changing.

‘I’m not telling you that,’ Memory Nina says.

I open my eyes and curse a fuckload. I was close. I was close. I changed the memory. Related memories are linked, I just need to find a way to get from one to the next. And it’s not as if I can walk …

Wait. Am I sure I can’t? I mean, if related memories are linked, then all I need to do is find the edge of a memory and pop over into the next one. It could be walking around the block. It could be opening a door.

I lean back, eyes closed.

The thought of Nina sparks my memory again … again. I hug her goodbye on the porch. I can taste strawberry, it’s sweet. I take control and pull away abruptly.

‘What’s wrong?’ Memory Nina asks.

I make for the door. I open it and step through, into my future self, slow dancing with Nina under fairy lights. She tosses her head back and laughs. She looks so damn beautiful.

I snap back into my body and open my eyes. Holy shit.

Nina suggests the night markets. I’m game, and game enough to get there twenty minutes early. I wait by the Lebanese food truck on the outskirts. When she arrives, she’s disappointed by the fairy lights. It’s a bit too indie-movie pretty for her liking.

I tell her I don’t mind them.

We wander through the stalls, collecting cardboard plates and splitting meals the other just has to try. We mix hot meats with ice-creams; Nina believes in concurrent dessert, and I’m a convert. We end up in the fenced-off seating area, nursing expanded waists. They’re clearing the plastic tables and chairs around us.

‘Should we move?’ I ask.

‘I don’t think I can.’

The first thing I did after adding a Dancing with Nina sticky note, was YouTube how to do the foxtrot. Attempting the dance with an invisible Nina, I thought about what Mum said about needing to live with purpose. That has to be about more than simply preparing for it. The future might be inescapable, but I can control how I arrive there.

‘So, I need to tell you something, and I’m aware of how bonkers it’s going to sound,’ I warn her.

Nina shifts in her seat. ‘I’m always down for bonkers.’

I expect tests of the ‘Guess which number I just keyed into my phone’ variety, but, turns out, convincing her is as easy as convincing a pre-teen Sophia. Like, she just accepts it. It’s kind of unnerving.

‘Seriously?’ I ask.

‘Oh, it’s totally bonkers,’ she says. ‘If it’s true, I could be down with it. If not, I want to see your endgame.’

‘This isn’t a joke.’

‘And that’s exactly what someone who’s playing an elaborate prank would say.’

She asks how it all works, and I try to explain. Her eyes glaze over, like she’s bored, fascinated and a little terrified.

‘My mum never told my dad,’ I say, ‘and I wanted to date differently.’

‘You’re not making this up, are you?’

I shake my head.

‘Bonkers,’ she repeats.

A guy leans into the front window of a nearby food truck and turns up the radio. I recognise the song from the future. Nina nods in time with the beat.

‘Do you want to dance?’ I ask.

She’s firm. ‘I don’t dance.’ And then something occurs to her. Her brow bunches. ‘Do I really have a choice?’

I stand. ‘Yeah, but I’ve already seen you make it.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘Do what?’

‘That. I’ve seen you get up, so I assume Future Nina dances with you, so I don’t really have a choice.’

‘Were you not going to dance?’

‘No, but … it’s the principle.’ She stands and takes my hands. ‘You’re lucky I like this song.’

I’m a little over-prepared. We don’t so much dance as shift our weight from foot to foot. With each step, she gets closer until we’re almost touching.

‘So, the first time we kissed,’ I start.

‘Before you ran away.’

‘Yeah, before that. I saw our future and it freaked me out.’

‘What was it?’

I hesitate, as if not naming it might keep it from happening. But it won’t. It is inescapable. It’s amazing how far into the future you can get by leaping through doors and windows. ‘We get divorced.’

‘Wicked. Was I throwing a plate? I’ve always pictured myself as a throwing-plates kind of wife.’

‘You threw the ring at me.’

‘Choice.’ She rests her head on my chest. ‘How long do we last?’

‘A while.’

Nina goes quiet. ‘I’m gonna take you to the cleaners.’

‘My lawyer is going to be a misogynistic arsehole.’

‘I’m going to turn all the kids against you.’

‘I’ll make new ones.’

Nina tosses her head back and laughs. Fuck, I really love that laugh. It evolves into her humming along with the chorus.

‘This song isn’t bad. Who sings it?’

Nina answers, ‘Brandy.’