Woke Up Like This(25)

“Yeah. My mom told me.” He runs both hands down either side of his face.

“You saw your parents?”

“I saw my mom,” he says definitively, jaw ticking with unease.

A lump forms in my throat at his expression. “Your dad . . . wasn’t home?”

His eyes flick to his shoes. “They’re divorced.”

“Oh my god. How is she?”

“She’s . . .” He pauses, flinching. “She’s . . . different. Happy.” His eyes widen and he shakes his head regretfully, as though he’s said too much. This Renner, disheveled and slumped over, is a far cry from the cocky, smirking one I’m used to.

“Anyway, my mom thinks I’ve lost it. She tried calling you.” He dangles a phone over my lap.

I blink at him. Renner’s parents’ divorce feels like too big a topic to just gloss over. I want him to elaborate, to ask if he’s okay. I want to assure him he will be okay, even if it doesn’t feel like it now.

But do I really expect him to cry on my shoulder and divulge his family problems to me? If the tables were turned, I’d seek support from a grizzly bear before Renner.

“She tried calling you,” Renner repeats, snapping me back to reality.

I have four missed calls. Two from Dorothy, Renner’s mom, one from my mom, and one from Nori.

“What the hell is happening?”

Renner starts pacing around the porch. He folds his arms over his chest, and my eyes flare at the sight of his biceps. Yup. He definitely didn’t have those at school this morning. “Okay, let’s think about this logically. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“It was Wednesday, June 12, 2024. We were decorating for prom and arguing,” I tell him. “The seaweed fell off the wall and you made me fall off the ladder. What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Exactly that. Mostly your boobs crushing my face,” he says, the faintest smile on his lips. “And for the record, it’s not my fault you fell. You’re not blaming me for this.”

“Good to know you’re still immature.” I shake my head. “Anyways, that’s a good sign. We both remember being seventeen, decorating for prom, and the ladder.”

“But what happened to us? To everyone else? How is it now Friday, June 12, 2037?”

I take in a deep breath. “We know this isn’t a prank. There’s no way the entire town of Maplewood could pull this off. What are our other possibilities?”

“Death. We could be dead. This could be purgatory,” he suggests. “Or maybe we hit our heads and got amnesia? What if we have brain damage? Or what if we somehow fell into an alternate dimension? Into the Upside Down?”

I twist my lips. “Do you realize how that sounds?”

He hands me his phone. “Look. Scroll all the way up.”

I flip through the photos. There are at least a thousand. All of Renner and me throughout the years. The earliest is dated 2029, five years after high school graduation. These photos seem foreign, an in-depth look at someone else’s life, someone else’s memories and travels. Logically, I know it’s me in the photos, but I have no memory of any of it, especially not the trip to Paris and what looks like a tropical vacation on a white sandy beach.

“There’s no way Nori had the time to photoshop all of these,” he says.

“Why would we be engaged? Of all people? Were there really no other options?” I ask. He doesn’t respond.



I scan my recent texts. One from Pain in my ass , and others from Nori, Mom, and a bunch of random names I don’t recognize.

Renner plucks my phone and holds it out of reach. I grab for it, to no avail. I wish I could say I’m taller than my seventeen-year-old self, but apparently not.

He holds his arm out, blocking me from another attempt. “Wait!”

“What?”

“We can’t just go around telling people we’ve jumped into the future. Everyone’s gonna think we’ve lost our minds.”

I inhale a labored breath. He has a point. “You’re right. No one is ever going to believe this.”

He shifts his gaze from his feet to my face, like he’s just had a light bulb moment. “We both know someone who might.”

I nod, a little disturbed I didn’t think of it first. Of course. “Nori.”



Adult Nori is a trip. The first thing she does is grab a piece of licorice from the pantry. “Breakfast of champions,” she calls it, practically dive-bombing the armchair in the living area. She looks quite comfortable here. More so than Renner and me as we awkwardly shift on the couch.

Her previously shoulder-length unicorn hair is now streaked with blue and falls around the waistline of her skinny jeans. They remind me of the ones Mom always wears.

“Being old really is the tits,” she says, tearing off a bite of licorice. “I can’t drink sugary drinks anymore. My body can’t handle it. And I didn’t even drink nearly as much as you two. I’m shocked you’re even awake right now.”

Renner leans forward. “We drank last night?”

She juts her chin forward. “Are you kidding me? You threw up on Mitch’s lawn. It was like grad party all over again. Honestly, I thought you’d need a stomach pump—”