Once in a while you find yourself looking at your life as if you’ve just arrived in the present, via time travel.On this occasion, you’re investigating current conditions from the perspective of 18-year-old you. That feels right. There is something surprisingly monumental about being 28. It’s the ten-year anniversary of turning 18. You’ve come from the past to investigate the juxtaposition.
At 18, you are a C student, waiting to find out whether you’ve gotten into any of the colleges you haphazardly applied to. You’ve never traveled by plane; in fact, you’ve barely left northeastern Pennsylvania. Friends you have, but your roster has included the same names since grade school.
As you look around this apartment, presumably yours, you don’t see any familiar faces in the photographs; finally you discover a picture on the fridge: an Olan Mills portrait of you and your siblings. You’ve seen this picture before, it was taken in 1986. This truth — that in ten years time the only people you’re still celebrating with pictures on the fridge are siblings —strikes you. A mental pact is made. You’ll take your sister to the mall. You’ll be nicer to Matt. You’ll at least try.
The windows here are tall to match the mountains just outside them. Most notable are three mammoths identical to the snow capped mountains you’ve been doodling in margins of notebooks and lazily entering into school mandated art contests since the second grade.
Your brow is furrowed. There are threads from the life you know in the apartment you will inevitably inhabit, but not the ones you expected.
There is a chalkboard that says, “Reading this confirms you are a time traveler.” Though the handwriting is neat, you recognize this is your message. Without realizing it, you’ve relaxed and the corners of your mouth are now turned slightly up. You begin to think, you might be cool.
The book shelves are full of titles you have not heard: “Jitterbug Perfume,” “Organic Housekeeping,” “Hairstyles of the Damned.” Travel, language and cookbooks own the bulk of shelf real-estate.
Rather than the ubiquitous paneling you’re accustomed to, the walls in this place are painted in rich colors. The counter-top is granite. Intuitively, you suspect you rent.
There is a paper star hanging from the ceiling and a string of brightly colored elephants. The cabinets and fridge are stocked with food, some of which you don’t recognize. You think that is an avocado, but how could you be sure. Are those yellow beets? You’ve only seen jars of magenta beets on dad’s bar, next to pickled pig’s feet.
Noticeably missing is a stereo. Eight-year-old you shows up to remind you of the radio under your pillow. You see speakers plugged into a shockingly thin laptop. Come on, did you really think you’d leave you hanging?
You don’t recognize your presumed boyfriend from photos, but he’s handsome, painfully so, and you look as you do now, but somehow different. With magnet letters, upon the fridge, it’s written, “I Love John Best.” You and John look happy together in a picture taken from across a dinner table from who knows who. You try his name on a couple times. John. John. Beth and John. John and Beth. John and Beth sitting in a tree…You suspect that maybe John lives here too. This is confirmed when you find your bedroom. You find drawers filled with men's clothing. In an otherwise tidy house, your clothes are strewn throughout the bedroom. Some things don’t change.
You hear what you think is an alarm clock and follow the noise to a phone the size of a pager. Incoming Call from Jacey. You hit a couple buttons, SEND, POWER, OK. One of them worked.
“Hello?”
A perky voice answers, “Buenos Dias Senorita.”
You don’t know anything but English. Your panic is audible.
“You okay?”
Relieved. “Yes. Are you?”
Asking “who are you?” isn’t an option as really no reasonable answer from her would explain.
“Oh yeah, just couldn’t find my goggles but I’m on my way. Are you still up for skiing?”
You glance back out those big windows and see what you didn’t notice before: ski slopes, a lift, make that two lifts, and people skiing down a very steep trail.
You swallow hard, “Yeah, how soon before you’re here?”
“I’m at the spur. I’ll be there in 10.”
You don’t know what the spur is, but hopefully, in the future, ten minutes still means 15. But really, it's gonna take ten years to figure this out.
