Prologue

The other day, I found a piece of ancient history, and by ancient, I mean like, ten years old. It if from my days in Mr. Ratburn's third grade class, an old assignment he gave us just before we left for the fourth grade. We were supposed to write down where we saw ourselves in ten years time, when we would be seniors in High School.

"It is an interesting thing," Mr. Ratburn had said, "to try and imagine yourself so far from now, to try and picture how much you will change in that time."

We all filled out a little bit about where we wanted to be, what we would be doing with our lives and other such crap. On the last day of third grade, he gave us an envelope.

"Here is your third grade time capsule!" He said, enthusiastically, "In ten years time, you can open this and see how your lives differed from what you thought they would." In the end, I stuck mine in the back of my closet and forgot about it, for ten years. Wow, Ratburn, nice one. I hadn't thought about third grade or the assignment since I was eight, but the words of my former teacher kept rattling around. How different was I, how much had I changed, how far from the path I had set for myself ten years ago had I strayed. I opened the envelope and rushed to my bed to read it. Turns out old Ratburn had included everyone in mine. I guess that was so he wouldn't have to label the stupid envelopes and could pass them out en mass. I started reading from the first line, interested not only in how badly I had done, but also on what my classmates had thought.

The first name on the list was Buster Baxter, my best friend; I recognized his messy handwriting instantly. It was a photocopy of the original, but I could just make out the pizza stain on the bottom of the page. It was nice to see that some things never change.

When I am eighteen, I will be a friend to all Aliens, who have come by now. My mom and I will be housing all Aliens who need a home during their visits. I will be the funniest person in high school and I will still be hanging out with Arthur, my mom and Harry.

Bull SHIT! Okay, yeah, Buster and I still hang out together, but nothing else he predicted had come true. It was really obvious that aliens haven't visited, but that wasn't the part that had caught my attention. He mentioned Harry. How ironic it seems now. Three years ago, Buster's mom, Bitzi, remarried a guy named Cliff Roberts. He is this weirdly short guy with mud brown hair, and kind of a big belly, who Bitzi kind of fell for all at once. After they got married, Harry, who had been a friend of Buster and his mom, took a job at the Crown City Gazette, and left within a week. Buster now lives in Cliff's house (I cannot call it Buster's house because it is emphatically not Buster's house) with his mom, two cats and a stepsister called Mia. Mia is Cliff's 16-year-old daughter, who is kind of bitchy, and visits her mom every other weekend, and is the main reason Buster now spends most of his free time hanging around the Library (because it has wifi) and is actually doing well in his classes. He has ADHD, but his meds and his complete hatred of going home have helped. He still is a bit of a pig, but, yeah, he's still my best friend.

Thinking about Buster and me, brought up thoughts of "The Brain". I skimmed over some of my classmates and found his. His handwriting was neat and precise, so radically different from his current scrawl that I almost missed it.

In ten years time, I will be a senior at Elwood Central High School. I could potentially skip a grade, but my parents would like me to remain on a semi-normal educational plan. I will probably still be working at my parent's Ice Cream Parlor. I hope to be leading the Academic Decathlon team to National victory. Other than that, I am unsure about the future.

I wanted to laugh! Brain is not on the Academic Decathlon team, and only works when his parents pretty much beg him to. He is still one of the smartest people I know, but he is also a pothead. He doesn't smoke as much as some, but enough to kind of fry his brain. I guess we should call him by his real name, Alan, but it would be to weird to change now. He plays base in a stoner blues band with a few of our classmates and some weird guy named Jeff, who is like 25, and lives in his parent's basement, but plays the drums like a mad man, so yeah. He, Buster and I still hang out together at school, when Brain isn't working on some new song with his band, or getting stoned behind the comic book store (the only place we can smoke and drink in peace). As I read Brain's overly intellectual pretentiousness, I kept picturing Mr. Ratburn, and how he'd shit himself.

Francine Frensky's paper was the next I looked for. She has had a rough time in life since third grade. When we started middle school, her dad got like this big promotion at work. Instead of just being a garbage man, he was the foreman of a large group of them, and got paid a lot more money. So the whole Frensky clan moved from their tiny, two-bedroom apartment, into an actual three-bedroom house. Francine was so excited; the only thing that she could talk about was the fact that she finally had her own room. Then in freshman year, her sister, Katherine, got married. She was taking Para-legal courses at the Elwood City Community College, while living at home, when she married her Air Force captain of a husband. So for a while, it looked like Francine was riding high. Then, at the end of last year, Francine got pulled out of pre-calc, and taken to the principal's office, and we didn't see her for the rest of the day. Her dad had a stroke. It was a pretty bad one from what Francine has described. He lost the use of his limbs, and is in a wheelchair now, but he also just sits in front of the damn T.V. all day, and doesn't really react when anyone comes by. Its like he's a ghost or something, like most of him has died, and now he's just waiting for the rest of him to catch up. To top it all off, Francine's Air Force Captain brother-in-law got shipped out for active duty, so Katherine and her one-and-a-half year old son have moved in with Francine, her dad and mom and their cat, Nemo. Talk about the fuzzy end of the lollipop! As I looked at her optimistic prediction (I will be the captain of every sports team) and it made me feel sad. Sure, Francine still played soccer, but now she was working at the drug store to help make ends meet at home.

Muffy's was the next one I sought out (I had given up on reading them in their entirety). I will be the ultimate fashion and art icon of Elwood Central High School. Her goofy loopy "f's" and the hearts over the "i's", so familiar to me, reflected how shallow and spoiled miss Muffy Crosswire was, and still is. Her life, unlike that of her so-called BFF Francine, has been nothing but excellent. Her dad now owns like, five car dealerships all over the state, and he is literally richer than God! My dad still caters all of his fancy parties and such. But the only thing on Muffy's mind lately is her boyfriend, Zeke. Zeke goes to Haywood High which is a ten minute drive from Muffy's mansion, and plays guitar and is, according to Muffy, "The most perfect human being on the planet!" She NEVER stops talking about him. You could ask her what she thought of the weather in outer Kazakhstan, and she would somehow manage to turn the conversation back onto the subject of Zeke. She also does not even try and hide the fact that they have more sex than two horny bunnies. It is actually kind of disgusting.

I skipped over George, Maddie, Rachel and a bunch of other girls in my class (none of whom I have talked to since middle school) to get to two more, Sue Ellen Armstrong and Fern Walters. Sue Ellen is the very definition of overcompensating. She is on the student council, plays soccer and lacrosse, has a 4.0 GPA and manages to have a varied and engaging social life. I have no idea how she does it (taking Red Bull intravenously?) but she does, while simultaneously putting us all to shame. Fern is kind of the opposite. She is moody, emo and goth all rolled into one depressing ball of sorrow. Every moment she isn't writing depressing poetry or listening to depressing music, she is saying depressing shit. It can be emotionally draining to hang out with Fern for too long, but out of all of my friends, she is the only one with a fake-id. So she always has booze (and cigarettes, but only Fern smokes). Brain has taken to calling us "The Fern Walters Suicide Prevention Society", in an attempt to be funny, but it isn't, not really. I honestly don't know WHY I still hang out with Buster and Brain and Francine and Muffy and Sue Ellen and Fern, but I do. It is comfortable, seeing as how we were all doing well at one time, and now we all kind of suck at life.

The last page I search for belongs to Jenna Morgan. She went to ECHS along with the rest of us, and was kind of my girlfriend. She moved away at the end of the year (her dad got a job in Kentucky). I say "kind of my girlfriend" because it really was a one sided relationship, because I no more wanted to be Jenna Morgan's boyfriend than I wanted to have my testicles removed via my ass hole. Jenna wasn't bad or anything, I just didn't like her in that way. I remember kissing her at her goodbye party, how she pressed her lips hard onto mine, and how she kept trying to get me to open my mouth (so we could presumably French), but how I kept my lips solidly together. Afterwards, she leaned back and, with tears in her eyes, said "Don't you love me?" GOD! I hated it when she asked me if I loved her, because I didn't. Not in that way. "Yeah," I said, looking away from her, "yeah, of course I do." Then she started crying into my shoulder and sobbing how awful it was that we wouldn't be together and a lot more bullshit like that.

I do not, as a rule, like kissing. It is weird having someone else's lips pressed against yours, breathing in your carbon dioxide while you breath in theirs. I haven't had much experience in the field of kissing, but enough to know that I don't like it. The worst kiss I'd ever had was with Fern. We got really drunk one night and started making out. It was messy and wet and she ended up puking in my lap, which caused me to puke into hers and we were generally drunk and disgusting. Muffy keeps informing me that I just need to kiss the right girl, and it will all be so magical, but I have kissed enough girls to make a call. Kissing is pointless and kind of sucks.

I was just about to put the papers down, when one fell onto the floor. As I picked it up, I noticed the familiar handwriting, small and kind of jittery. It was my own, eight-year old hand that had written my path to the future, and now I was going to see how far I had truly strayed.

In ten years, I will be the best goalie ever, a concert pianist and an all around awesome guy.

I still play piano, I am a mediocre goalie at best, but other than that, I, Arthur Read, am the worlds biggest fuck up.