Free Tomorrow Is Today by Julie Cross

May 14, 2009, 6:30pm

    “I don’t get what we’re supposed to be doing,” Holly said as she spread her worksheets all over the gym floor.
    I moved next to Holly, who was stretched out on her stomach with a pen in her hand. “Well…the first one is just a bunch of nonsense questions that you answer and then seal it up in an envelope so no one can see it.”
    “And the point is…?”
    “Mr. Wellborn holds onto them and mails it to you before camp staff training starts next year and you get to see how much you’ve grown in a year,” I said.
    She laughed and rolled her eyes. “God, that’s corny…maybe I’ll leave mine blank.”
    “Just tell him your life is a blank slate right now,” I teased. “Today is the first day of the rest of your life…”
    “Adam, what are you writing?” Holly asked.
    “Telling you might put your life at risk.”
    Holly laughed and set her future questionnaire aside. “The other assignment is just making camp lesson plans for the first week?”
    “Uh huh,” I said, flipping through my own pages. “We got rosters too, so we can start learning names.”
    “What’s the point?” Holly said. “Most of these kids probably pay someone to go to camp for them so they can sit at home and play video games like a normal child.”
    I shouldn’t laugh since I was one of those kids, but I couldn’t help it. Holly making fun of privileged children had become a high point of our two months of counselor training.
    When Holly got up to turn in her lesson plan, I took the opportunity to talk to Adam. “It’s your birthday tomorrow, right?”
    “Yeah…”
    “My roommates are throwing a party,” I said, lowering my voice so the invite wouldn’t spread like wildfire. My dorm isn’t that big. “You know…end of the year celebration. Do you wanna come? Maybe we can do a little more time-travel experimenting in a different setting.”
    A grin spread across Adam’s face. “Awesome…actually, I have a few ideas already.”
    “I figured.”
    He jumped into several ideas for possible experiments and theories to test. I listened for a few minutes and then found my eyes wandering as Holly sprawled out on the floor again, not nearly as close as before. She had her blonde hair tucked behind her ears, flip flops kicked off and lying next to her. I memorized the way her pen moved fluidly across the page. It was almost sexy, which is totally bizarre. Maybe I’m secretly imagining her doodling my name all over her paper. But I’m not sure Holly is the kind of girl to do that. And I’m not sure I want her to be.
    She must have felt me staring because her head turned slowly in my direction and her cheeks flushed.
    “You’re filling out the corny questionnaire, aren’t you, Holly?” I said to cover for my five minute long session of checking her out. “I had a feeling you’d be all about that.”
    Adam snorted beside me and I assumed I was right. Holly didn’t actually want to leave her answers blank.
    Her eyes returned to the page, but I could see her smiling a little and found myself doing the same. Then I dug for my own paper and wrote my name on the top. “See, Holly…I’m totally into this too. No need to feel embarrassed.”
    “Me too,” Adam said. “Can’t wait to talk to my future self.”
    As soon as he said that, Adam and I both glanced at each other and started cracking up. The irony was just way too good to not laugh.

May, 15, 2009, 8:30pm

    “Jackson! My man!”
    I turned in the direction of the voice. Two guys I didn’t even recognize stepped through the doors of the NYU dorm room I shared with my two roommates. We had a large suite, but had nearly reached capacity and it was still really early.
    “Hey! What’s up?” I said, nodding at the random guys. Behind them, smiling sheepishly, stood Adam Silverman. He stepped tentatively from his world of New Jersey high school and into the world of college parties in the Village. I waved at him, grinning as I moved