Kaitlyne yawned and leaned back over the motherboard. As the tip of the soldering gun touched the shimmering strand of gold, a spark arched upward. She cursed under her breath. Her curse faded away as a puff of smoke rose to engulf her face. She covered her eyes and coughed. When the coughing and smoke cleared, she slowly opened her eyes to survey the damage.
“That’s a sign I should go home.” She said, gently placing the motherboard and the rest of her supplies in the back of the bottom drawer of her workstation.
Before turning off the lights, she scanned the room one last time. Something struck her as odd, but everything looked normal enough, so she didn’t give it much thought. Her electrical engineering experiment had followed a long day of school. In her hyper-exhausted state, the whole world seemed wrong.
She kept her head down and plodded toward the great outdoors. The janitor whistled cheerily somewhere behind her. He punctuated his tune by slapping his sopping mop against the floor again and again. Kaitlyne sped up, wanting to avoid another lengthy, friendly exchange with the aging man. While she enjoyed those conversations, tonight they would keep her from filling her empty stomach and resting her weary eyes.
As she passed the park beside the school, music with a familiar drumbeat rolled out to greet her. She glanced up. A group of teenagers gathered around one who held an outdated boom box. Music that had been popular when her parents were young blared from the oversized speakers. She recognized it from their nostalgic attempts to force their musical tastes on her.
“They are taking that a bit far.” She murmured to herself as she took in their distressed jeans and oversized t-shirts adorned with giant block letters before turning back toward home.
She watched her feet plodding along the paved road, turning by muscle memory. She glanced at passing cars, wondering briefly about the number of older cars out tonight. She finally lifted her eyes from the road as she turned onto her own street. Her footsteps slowed as she neared her house. Every car on the street looked like the beaters some of the seniors drove to school except less beaten. She stopped before her own house and her mouth dropped open.
“That’s not right. That’s not right at all.”
The house stood before her, lit up like always. Except that it lacked the addition her parents had built in anticipation of her birth. She glanced at the mailbox.
“Carter.” She read slowly. “Well, that’s right, but it looks like someone just painted it.”
She reached out to touch the paint.
“Everything okay?” A familiar voice froze her with her finger outstretched.
“Yeah, Dad, I think I just need sleep.”
“Dad?” He laughed.
She turned to face him, startled to see a mullet falling around his thin features—the same embarrassing coif featured in the wedding photo her mom only deemed worthy to hang in their bedroom.
“Um?” She bit her lip to keep her jaw from dropping as wide as her eyes.
“You okay, young lady?” Concern crept into his blue eyes devoid of the crows feet she knew so well.
“Fine. Fine. You just sound like my father.” Her eyes darted up and down the street, looking for someplace to hide while she figured this out.
“Whose this, Karl?” A voice only familiar from old family videos made Kaitlyne’s heart shudder with longing.
She turned slowly to look into familiar eyes. Her grandmother’s eyes crinkled as she smiled at Kaitlyne.
“You look familiar, sweetie. Have we met?”
Kaitlyne didn’t trust her voice, so she shook her head.
“I’m Lynette,” her grandmother extended a hand.
“I’m…Katie.”
“Short for Katherine, I’m sure.”
“Um. Of course.”
“Come on in, dear. You look hungry and I brought a casserole.” Grandma nodded down toward a large rectangular pile of towels in her hands.
Kaitlyne’s stomach gurgled before she could deny this or make an excuse to run away.
“That’s probably wise.”
Her father took the casserole as her grandma linked elbows with her. As they lead her into the kitchen, her mother turned to face them. Her feathered bangs barely moved under a thick coating of Aquanet. Her off the shoulder dress looked like someone splashed neon paint on the black fabric. She fumbled the plate in her hand as she turned to the new arrivals.
“Are you okay, Virginia?” Karl rushed to his wife’s side.
“Yeah. Yeah.” She smiled up at him, but her eyes fluttered back to Kaitlyne and Lynette. “It’s just uncanny how much they look alike.”
“Who is your friend, mom?”
“This is Katie. We just met outside and she looked lost and hungry, so we invited her in.”
“I am sure she isn’t a stray…” She bit back the rest of her words as Lynette raises her hand.
“Of course not, dear, but she couldn’t resist the aroma of my casserole.”
They all giggled at this. Lynette unwrapped the casserole and a delectable aroma filled the room.
“Are you related to any Newsomes, dear?”
Kaitlyne feigned confusion. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m a Newsome,” Lynette informed her.
Kaitlyne nodded her understanding but doesn’t dare speak and let her tongue betray her.
Lynette didn’t seem to notice as she helped her daughter set the table. Kaitlyne joined them, hoping the activity would break her out of this bizarre daydream. Talking to her parents made her uncomfortable, so she spent most of the evening listening to her grandmother tell story after story. Her parents didn’t notice since the newness of their nuptials left them with eyes only for each other. In fact, they said their goodbyes and headed off to bed before Lynette finished her last story.
As the conversation finally wound down, Kaitlyne’s eyes closed though her mind wanted to keep listening.
“You should sleep, dear. I have an open invitation to use the guest room if you would like to sleep there.”
Kaitlyne shook her head and snuggled into the blanket from he back of the couch. “It’s so comfy here.”
“Do I need to call anyone?”
“They won’t answer.”
Lynette’s eyes narrowed in confusion, but she just tucked the blanket around Kaitlyne’s shoulders. She surveyed the girl’s face one more time before heading off to bed.
~~
Kaitlyne woke before the sun rose the next morning. Thoughts of her motherboard experiment filled her head throughout the night. Finally, they dragged her from her dreams. These thoughts had to be the key to return to her own time before she risked erasing herself from the future somehow. She slipped her socks and shoes on, took one last glance at the familiar yet foreignness of her home and slipped out the door.
She got to school right as the janitor was opening the doors. She lowered her head, so he couldn’t see her face. The effort went unnoticed as the much younger version of her afternoon chatterbox took little notice of anything around him, confirming her suspicion that he once spent a lot of time high.
She crossed her fingers and closed her eyes as she reached the computer room. As she pulled the door open, the familiar desks came into view. Instead of computers, however, they supported typewriters. Tears already streaming down her cheeks, she rushed to her seat and pulled open the narrow drawer. She sniffled as she wiped back the tears upon seeing the incongruity of her motherboard pushed into the back behind a stash of funny looking pencils.
“Here goes nothing,” she whispered as she pulled out the motherboard, closed her eyes again, and gently pried loose the last bit of gold she had soldered into place.
The door to the room opened, causing her eyes to flutter open. They rested with relief on her computer teacher, who nodded at her before propping the door open. Glancing back to the desk, she saw her computer waiting to be booted up. With a sigh of relief, she turned it on and went to work as if nothing unusual had happened. She would unpack that later.
~~~
A year later, a package arrived from a lawyer. I opened it curiously and found a journal carefully wrapped in brown paper. A quickly penned note on stationary that held a hint of lavender falls from the book as I opened it.
“My dear granddaughter Katie,
I am so glad I got to meet you. I knew when you disappeared the next morning that my suspicions must be true. You loved my stories so that I wanted to share the rest of them with you, but you wouldn’t believe why until you were at least sixteen. I hope I guessed your age right, my dear. I love you,
Grandma Lynette”
~~
In case you are keeping tabs, today is my bona fide birthday. If you haven’t showered me with gifts, you still have time. I am accepting birthday gifts for 2023 until July 21, 2024.
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