Chapter 1
It was time to clean the closet. This was not one of Kendall's favorite jobs, but he knew it had to be done. His mother demanded it of him. He hadn't touched that closet since they had piled all of their things in it when they had moved in. Kendall knew that opening the door and attempting to organize the heap would be bad for him. It didn't helped that this closet was shared by all four of the boys. His mother had left the apartment with Katie for the day and had told the four boys that they were to organize their closet since it was their day off. She told them she was tired of having piles of junk fall on her every time she went in there to look for something. Of course a job that was intended for the four of them would land on Kendall's shoulders. It always did. As soon as she left, Logan insisted that he had to finish his homework, Carlos absorbed himself in some kind of video game, and James sat down on the couch and started reading a Cuda magazine, which left Kendall with the horrible job that had to get done.
Kendall took a deep breath and opened the closet door. Sure enough, as soon as he opened the door, junk fell down on him. Kendall sighed and immediately set himself to work. He certainly knew that he had a lot of it ahead of him. As he bent down to move aside the wadded up pieces of paper and the crumbling remains of the brown boxes once used for storage, he noticed a bundle of letters, held together by rubber bands. Kendall picked up the fragile looking letters and undid the elastics. A small smile appeared on his face as he recognized the familiar, juvenile handwriting.
Kendall walked out into the other room where the other boys were busily engaged in their activities.
"Hey guys! You will not believe what I found," said Kendall not taking his eyes off what was in his hands.
"What did you find?" asked Logan looking up from the mountain of textbooks at the table.
Kendall placed the letters gingerly on the table in front of Logan as if they would fall apart if they weren't handled correctly. Logan peered at the letters in curiosity. He wasn't sure what they were until he saw the familiar loopy letters.
"Where did you find those?" asked Logan as he reached forward and grabbed the letters that were his. "I thought these were lost forever!"
"I did too," said Kendall, still mesmerized by the letters which were starting to turn yellow from their age. "They were in the closet."
"What are you guys talking about?" asked Carlos as he paused his video game and turned to look at them.
"Kendall found our 'Dear Future Us' letters in the closet," said Logan.
"Really?" asked Carlos as he came over to join the two of them at the table.
"See? Here's yours, and Kendall's, and mine. Even James's are here," said Logan, saying the last part louder to attract James's attention.
James was still absorbed in his Cuda magazine; he didn't seem to hear a thing.
"Oh well. I guess we'll just have to let James be. He must not want to find out what his younger self wanted to tell him," said Logan with a sigh. "He's too focused on Cuda."
"Am not!" stated James as he brought the magazine away from his face and slammed it onto the couch cushion beside him.
"Oh, so now you listen," said Logan with a teasing grin.
"Very funny! What are you guys so focused on anyway?"
"'Dear Future Us' letters," said Carlos.
"We still have those?" said James as he quickly stood up from the couch and came over. "Cool! Where are mine?"
Kendall handed him a stack of letters and James quickly sat down at the table. All four of the boys sat at the table together, the letters in front of them. They all took a deep breath and picked the first letter up. It was time to see what wisdom their twelve year old selves were going to impart on them.