There was a flush in the occupied stall. Alice pushed Sam into the shower stall and drew the curtain. “Are you going to pee in here?” Sam whispered. Alice shook her head. She didn’t know how to explain, where to start.
Suddenly, a hand pulled the curtain aside. “Thought I heard my ladies.” Phoebe Oldham-O’Neill was wearing jeans so long with bells so big that it looked like she didn’t have any feet. Alice was the tallest of her friends but it was true for her, too; her pants were so long that they dragged on the ground, creating a seismograph of filth along the raw bottom edge. Phoebe kissed them both on the cheeks, her oversized nylon jacket shushing itself every time she moved her arms. Phoebe’s breath smelled like Newports and every other inch of her smelled like the first floor of Macy’s, like an entire bottle of CK One was being sprayed out of her pores. Alice felt drunk on the idea of how many of her friends smoked, how adult they had all seemed and felt. How the cigarettes had been giant flashing signposts, to themselves and each other. You could never trust someone who smoked Marlboro Lights, the Diet Coke of cigarettes—those were for the girls with pale lipstick and overplucked eyebrows, the girls who maybe also played volleyball and had sex with their boyfriends in their beds which were still covered with stuffed animals. Girls who smoked Parliaments were neutral—it was as close as you could get to not smoking, but still, you could flick your thumb against the recessed filter, and you could bum one to anybody, the type O negative of smoking. Girls who smoked Marlboro Reds were wild—those were for girls who had no fear, and in their whole school, there was only one, a tiny girl with brown, wavy hair to her waist whose parents had been in a cult and then escaped. Newport girls were equally harsh but listened to hip-hop, and those girls, like Phoebe, wore lipstick and nail polish like vampire blood, rich and purple. Newport Lights girls were like that, only virgins. The girls who smoked American Spirits were beyond everyone—they were grown-ups, with keys to their boyfriends’ houses. Alice had to laugh at the secret rooms of her brain, where this information lived and had been sleeping. She had smoked Newport Lights, and yes, she was a virgin.
Sam looked at Phoebe. “Did you get it?” She batted her eyelashes.
“I did. My brother was being super stingy, but he finally caved.” Phoebe’s older brother Will was a freshman at NYU and Belvedere’s main source for drugs that weren’t just weed.
“What did you get?” Alice asked, even though she knew the answer. She felt like she should close her ears, like she was a teacher who had just walked in on these girls, and if she wanted to, she could get them all thrown out of school. They shouldn’t be saying any of this in front of her—sometimes, in her real life, Alice would walk to the corner and see some of the high school students smoking a joint and she would spin around and go the other way.
“Birthday surprise,” Sam said, and kissed the air. “Thanks, Pheebs. We’ll meet you out there, okay?”
Phoebe nodded, as serious as a marine. She would get expelled in the spring, and vanish for a decade before resurfacing in the Catskills as a potter who charged her crystals in the moonlight.
When the door clicked shut, Alice took a deep breath.
“What’s up? Did you talk to Tommy? He’s coming tonight, right?” Sam asked. They moved out of the shower stall to the sinks. Alice shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe we have to do this stupid class, it’s so annoying. And on your birthday!”
“Can I tell you something that is very strange and will sound like I’m making it up?” Alice asked.
Sam shrugged. “Obviously.”
Alice watched them in the mirror. Even in the unforgiving fluorescent light of the bathroom, she and Sam looked glorious.
“I came from the future.” Alice looked at Sam when she said it.
“Sure, okay.” Sam nodded, waiting for the rest. Once, when they’d shared a six-pack of Zima, Alice had told Sam that she felt like her head wasn’t actually connected to her body, like they were totally different organisms that just happened to be roommates. Another time, on a field trip to Rye Playland, Sam had told Alice that sometimes she had dreams that she had a twin sister but ate her when they were small children. It was important to have friends who could listen to you say what you needed to say and not burst into laughter.
“Not, like, the distant-distant future. Not, like, two hundred years in the future. But when I went to sleep last night, it was the night before my fortieth birthday, and then I woke up on Pomander Walk, looking like this.” Alice chewed on her thumbnail. “You know, like Peggy Sue?”
Sam leaned back against the wall, whirring the automatic hand dryer awake. “Shit!” she said, and repositioned herself with her back to the lip of the sink.
“I know it sounds crazy, and it is crazy, but that’s what happened. So I’m me, but I’m like, this me.” Alice put her face in her hands. “I know, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Sam crossed her arms. “Did you take drugs, Alice Stern, and not tell me?”
Alice shook her head. “No, Sam. I know how it sounds, but that is what happened. I think! I mean, I don’t know! I thought maybe I was asleep, but, like, it’s been a while, now, and I don’t really think I am. I mean, I am here. Right? Like, you’re real, right? And so I have to figure out what the hell is going on. And I have to figure out how to get back to my regular life, if that’s a thing that still exists. Because I’ve seen enough episodes of Time Brothers to know that shit is not supposed to last.”
“Or like in Back to the Future. You could erase yourself.” Sam was nodding. She lifted a finger to her lips and tapped it there, thinking.
“Well, I think that happened because Michael J. Fox was messing up his parents’ relationship, which then made him and his siblings potentially not exist, which is not the same, but yes, I take your point.”
Sam crossed her arms. “Alice, are you fucking with me? Are we on Candid Camera? Because honestly this is kind of creeping me out.”
Alice thought about it. “I get it.” When the Time Brothers rocketed around, they never had to tell people. They showed up in their time-traveling car and helped housewives in the 1950s, or medieval princesses, or space women of the future living in a moon colony. They never went back two and a half decades and had to look at their own friends and family and say, Hey, guess what we can do? It sounded objectively unhinged.
Sam nodded. “But listen, if that’s what we’re doing today, then okay. I can’t say that I totally believe what you’re saying, but I want to be supportive, especially since it seems like you don’t totally believe it either? Is that a fair assessment of the situation?”
Alice wanted to burst into tears. “Yeah.”
“God, and you still came to SAT class?” Sam rolled her eyes. “If I thought that maybe I had time-traveled, I think I would skip the SATs. Like, even the actual test. Do you have children? Are you married? Am I married? Oh my god, I don’t want to know. Do I want to know?” Sam put her hands on her stomach. “How do I look? Am I happy? We’re friends, right? Still?” She quickly closed the gap between her and Alice and hugged her tightly. “I still don’t actually believe you, but just in case.”
“Yes, Sam,” Alice said. “That’s why I told you. And yes, you’re married, and you have kids, and you’re happy, and we’re friends. But no specifics, okay? I don’t want to Michael J. Fox you or your beautiful family. But can you help me?” Alice felt herself tear up. “I just, you know, haven’t been sixteen in a while and I don’t really remember how this goes, and I just need your help.” Sam smelled like herself, like Love’s Baby Soft and cocoa butter and Herbal Essences shampoo.
Sam held both of Alice’s hands. “I promise to try to help. Even if it means helping you talk to someone. You know, like a doctor.”
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