Catch You Later
10:44 PM
Someone bumps into you from behind, hard, jostling you sideways. It’s one of those senior jocks with the thick arms and snug fitting polos. “Watch where you’re going,” he growls, not bothering to look back.
“Uh, sorry.”
Another one pushes past, nearly knocking the backpack from your shoulder. “Dude, what the fuck?” Only, you’re not carrying a backpack. “I swear,” he says, frowning over his shoulder at you. “That fucker just appeared out of nowhere.”
“Yeah,” laughs the first. “They do that sometimes.”
You are standing in the middle of a crowded school hallway with bodies shuffling past you in both directions, but you can’t remember why you are here or where you were going. And where is your backpack?
You take a breath and try to get your bearings. There is a brisk, freshness in the air, despite the smell of deep-fried burritos coming from the cafeteria. You check your watch. 10:45. That can’t be right.
“Excuse me?” you ask an approaching girl with feathered bangs and a friendly face. “Can you tell me what time it is?”
She glances in your direction but continues walking.
“Time to get a new watch,” someone behind you says. You turn to recognize a freshman from your biology class, one of the few smart ones who gets to take the course a year earlier than everyone else. “You okay, dude?” he asks, pushing the wire frames of his thick lenses back up onto the bridge of his nose. “It’s fourth period.”
“Yeah, no,” you say, distracted by something behind him. “Thanks man.”
“Yeah, sure,” he says, “Catch you later.”
A boy at the far end of the hallway with light brown hair and a blue plaid shirt is walking your way. He has your hair, your shirt, and, apparently, your backpack slung over one shoulder.
In a rush, it all returns to you. Except, this isn’t a vineyard next to an empty field with an old double-wide trailer beneath a lone cottonwood tree. This is school, safe, secure, beautiful school. You breathe a sigh of relief. Even better, now you have time to warn yourself. Whatever stupid thing you are about to do—so stupid it leaves you in the middle of nowhere bleeding to death face down in the dirt—now you can stop yourself from doing it.
You are about to cut into the hallway on the right and wait for him to pass when you see him hesitate, glance at his watch, and then turn back the way he came. You know exactly where he is going, behind the art rooms. It’s your shortcut, the one that makes you late to fourth period.
You hurry after him. As soon as you are out of the hallway and free of the crowd, you cut across the grass and quickly weave your way among the empty tables in the lunch area to get to the opposite end of the building and wait for him to arrive.
Just as you duck into the alley behind the art rooms, a figure enters from the other side. His head is lowered and his eyes are on the ground as he makes his way around the stacked pallets and battered garbage cans lining the walkway. Do you always walk like that? Kind of pathetic, you observe, but at least he hasn’t noticed you yet. You turn your back on him before he does and lean against the wall trying to appear as casual as possible, just another slacker avoiding his next class.
“Mathew,” you say, as he moves past you, and he immediately turns around.
It’s an unsettling feeling, this gazing into a mirror, but for a moment, as the look on his face shifts from confusion to anger, it’s your brother that you see, the same narrowing of his eyes when he got angry, the same tightening of his jaw. “Who the fuck are you?” he asks.
You step forward, slowly, with both hands open in front of you. “You know who I am, Matthew,” you say. “I’m you. We’re the same person.”
His eyes sweep from side to side. He thinks someone’s messing with him, you realize, playing some cruel joke. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Look,” you say, continuing to move toward him. “This isn’t an illusion, you’re not dreaming. I’m you. I’m here from the future.” He’s going to run, you think, any second now. It’s what I would do, isn’t it?
But he doesn’t.
“Oh, okay. Cool,” he says, appearing to relax. “You must have a message for me then, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Wait, don’t tell me.” He raises an open palm. “I’m in some kind of terrible danger.”
“How did you—?”
He shoves you hard in the chest with both hands. “Get the fuck away from me,” he says, and turns to run.
“No, wait!” You grab him by the shoulders and spin him around. “Just listen,” you say, “I don’t have time to explain it and you wouldn’t understand.”
He tries to push away from you, but your arms are tangled with his and you pull him even closer. “I’m not stupid,” you say. “So, neither are you!”
His eyes move rapidly over your face, taking you in. Reality and reason collide. He stops struggling.
“Trust your senses,” you say, your face still level with his. “You’re not on something, not hallucinating—wait, you’re not are you, on something?” Maybe he is, you think. Maybe that’s how it all starts. You take hold of his chin and turn his head to one side in order to get a better look at his eyes. For some reason, he lets you. “No,” you say, tugging down on his lower eyelid. “No, not yet.”
“When?” he asks. “When in the future?”
You let go of him and step back. “Today,” you say, looking over your shoulder, “later today.”
“How later? Tell me, do I go to the dance?”
“The dance?”
“With that girl on the dance team?”
“Claudia?”
“Yeah her. Do we go?”
“Dude,” you say, shaking your head. “That’s not even the half of it.”
“Well then what the—”
“Look,” you take hold of his shoulders again. “I don’t know how long I have, but…” You pull him with you up against the back of the building. “I do know no one can see us together.”
“Why not?”
“Because we look like identical twins. Do you have an identical—”
“Jesus, already!” He shrugs free of your grip. “What’s the message?”
“Look,” you say, “Whatever happens, don’t—” One moment you are behind the art rooms and the next moment you are not. “—go anywhere!” you finish, but your voice has no sound in the echoless dark. Then you are with him again and suddenly he is gone, as the world blinks on and off around you one last time.
THE MISADVENTURES OF MATTHEW VAN DER BOOT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental … no matter how many times you ask.