Capsule

by Mel Torrefranca

  DEAR STRANGER

  Sometimes I wonder what your life could have been

  Had you never left that day

  I think of the love you had

  The naive faith in forever

  And everything I took

  When you left

  That day

  Sometimes I wonder how I can move on

  When the love I pursue is stolen from you

  And my faith in forever relies on lies

  I wonder how I can possibly deserve

  Everything I took

  When you left

  That day

  19:05:29

  KAT ENJOYED A few things about Halos. First, a part-time job couldn’t be located anywhere better. Halos stood directly between Brookwood High and her house, which was convenient for a student without a license or a stay-at-home mom willing to be her personal taxi driver. The second perk was the free and discounted food. Nearly every evening she’d get to bring leftovers home with her. It wasn’t gourmet or anything, but it was free, which somehow made it taste ten times better.

  No, scratch that—those pros were meaningless. Kat had been trying to remind herself of why she enjoyed Halos on her walk there, but she’d only managed to cloak the real reason why she’d applied for the job at the beginning of her sophomore year.

  Life had been so boring lately. She’d do absolutely anything she could to spice up her life, and finding a mediocre job was one of those things. Halos came with coworker drama, annoying customers, and the most frustrating boss someone could have. His jokes were annoying as hell, and he’d always end up acting passive aggressive if her and her coworkers didn’t pretend he was the funniest man in the world. But those little sparks only made her life more interesting for a brief moment, and then they were gone.

  Kat arrived at the front of Halos thirty minutes early for her shift and stood between two white fences overgrown with buzzing lavender bushes. The wooden sign above the door had HALOS scribbled in splattered ink to reference ketchup but had ended up looking more like blood. Kat’s focus drifted to the two plant boxes at the front door to give customers the impression that their ingredients were fresh, which wasn’t at all the case, but she smiled thinking about how many people it subconsciously fooled.

  Smiled. But just for a moment.

  I’m bored.

  Kat took a step back as a bee landed onto the rim of her glasses. She turned around, heading toward the main strip of Old Town Brookwood. If she showed up to work now she’d most likely end up scrolling through Instagram at a grimy booth, and although a little social media stalking could be fun, she’d rather burn her free time somewhere else.

  No sting? Kat frowned as the bee flew away. Rude.

  Only a block from Halos was Pepperdine, one of the many identical brick buildings bordering the main road of Old Town Brookwood, but also the most popular. Brookwood students flooded the cozy candy store after school, but luckily it was hardly past 1:30, so it’d be a fast trip.

  Kat entered Pepperdine with the quick chime of a bell dangling from the door. The aroma of sweet chocolate and artificial fruit struck her in a soothing rush. The complex scent relaxed Kat more than her occasional unnecessary dose of NyQuil.

  “Hey Kat, what’s new?”

  Kat lowered her head from the lollipops dangling from the ceiling to the cashier standing behind a shiny wooden table. Choppy hair, awkwardly skinny arms. Yep, he was the guy who sat two seats away from her in English class. Fairly popular, but a real nerd too. This would be fun.

  “Oh, you know.” Kat swiped a strand of hair behind her ear. “Just doing anything I can to satisfy my raging sweet tooth.”

  The boy smiled, his teeth glimmering under the pink-tinted lights.

  Kat skipped to the wall on the right side of the room. Everything from the brick floor to the ceiling was covered in rows of plastic containers, neon scoopers, and a colorful assortment of candies. The three containers on the left exclusively held chocolates—dark, milk, and white—and the rest were comprised of gummies, sour candies, and those hard ones shaped like fruits that literally no one but serial killers enjoyed.

  Kat yanked a candy bag from the dispenser and reached for the container of Sour Patch Kids. “What do you know about Peter?” She poured a few solid scoops into the bag before glancing over her shoulder. Besides her and the cashier, Pepperdine was emptied out. Perfect.

  “Peter Ackerman or”—the cashier paused, his voice deepening—“the other one?”

  Kat tied the stuffed bag, tossed it onto the floor, and grabbed a second bag from the dispenser. “The other one.” She took a few steps to the chocolate section and ran her fingers along the containers. Some variety would be nice. Her hand paused on the chocolate nonpareils—those weird-looking flat ones with the white dots.

  “Moon, huh?” The boy’s voice raised a pitch unintentionally in glaring enthusiasm, lighting up the old-fashioned store. “I happen to know quite a bit about him. When you get the chance, look up Moon Monkeys. People say he doesn’t have a social media presence, but that’s not entirely true if you scroll back far enough.”

  “Oh yeah?” If Kat hadn’t remembered Peter’s fifteenth birthday earlier today, she wouldn’t have known anything about his family’s YouTube channel. “And how exactly did you find out about this Moon Monkey thing?” It definitely wasn’t common knowledge. Even if their audience of 12,000 subscribers had grown significantly over the past two years, family-focused content would easily go undiscovered by the students at Brookwood who were much more interested in watching Jubilee social experiments or PewDiePie’s Minecraft Hardcore Series.

  “Believe it or not, I was friends with Peter a couple years ago. You know, back before he went all psycho on us sophomore year. So I happen to know some blue things about him that most people don’t.”

  Kat stuck the scooper into the bin of candies, stopping at the word blue. Her mind flashed with the username she’d seen in the comment section of every entry of Moral Moon. Blue—Indigo. First of all, what a lame username. Second, the user by the name of Indigo was the only commenter who seemed to know personal information about Peter while everyone else simply raged. He had some of the nastiest replies, not that he was in the wrong or anything. Peter had it coming.

  “No way. You?”

  “Yeah, me.” A hint of pride snuck into his voice. This boy was practically an anonymous celebrity at Brookwood. Everyone wondered how he always managed to calculate the most perfectly-crafted insults to spur back at Peter. “But don’t tell anyone, obviously.”

  Kat spooned a heap of dotted chocolates into the bag. “If you don’t want your identity spilled, maybe you should think twice about sharing your username with the most careless girl at Brookwood.” She paused after a second scoop. “Kidding, of course.”

  The boy let out a broken laugh as Kat tied the second bag and leaned over to retrieve the heap of Sour Patch Kids from the floor.

  “It’s stupid. I know I’m on the right side here, but I’m scared if people find out they’ll turn on me too. But you? You’re cool, Kat. Wish I could just do whatever and stop worrying about what other people will think.”

  “Yep, thanks.” Kat slid her shoulder through one of the straps of her backpack and unzipped the main compartment. “That’s me.”

  “Uh—I have to weigh them first.”

  “You don’t have to.” Kat tossed the bags into her backpack, zipped the compartment shut, and headed toward the entrance.

  “Wait!” The boy held his tense hands out in front of him and glanced at a door on the other side of the room, where his boss probably was, or at least another employee. He leaned forward and whispered, “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving. What does it look like I’m doing?” Kat adjusted her glasses before stealing his line. “But don’t tell anyone, obviously.” She flashed a peace sign and t
hrew her back against the door, using her body weight to swing it open.

  He gulped. “See ya.”

  “Bye Indigo,” she said before the door closed in front of her.

  Kat spun around the corner with a grin uncomfortably wide for her face. Oh gosh, it was too great! A perfect threat. If he told anyone about her petty crime, he’d be risking his school reputation. She’d gone in with the intention of sneaking out, but she didn’t need to do any sneaking. The nerd set up his own trap and fell right into it. Crazy how students thought they knew her based on the strings of comments on her Instagram photos.

  Kat rushed down the empty sidewalk and approached a nearby park a few buildings down. She usually came here after her stops at any of the innocent shops in the area to decompress. Well, not decompress exactly. More like deescalate. Waiting for the excitement to slowly drain from her veins. The fun moments never lasted.

  She stopped at the edge of the grass clearing. The park was too small to have a name, nothing more than a single bench under an old oak tree. It was only included in Downtown Brookwood because a group of environmentalists wouldn’t let the city cut it down. Fair. Funny, but fair.

  Kat checked her phone. 1:41. She still had nineteen minutes until the start of her shift, so she figured it wouldn’t hurt to rest for a while. She approached the bench, sat, and tossed her backpack onto the grass by her boots. For a moment her fingers lingered on the zipper, considering whether she was in the mood for candy or not. She wasn’t.

  Kat’s phone buzzed in her hand.

  what did jay say after i left, Whitney asked. he still hasnt txted me yet :(

  nothing important Kat leaned her back against the prickly bench. leave me alone

  A lady in a frilly white dress flowed down the sidewalk in front of the grass. She stopped as the phone in her hands chimed. A girl around the age of five tugged at the lady’s arm, attempting to drag her back in the direction of Pepperdine.

  “Candy!” Tears streamed down the girl’s face as she pulled harder. “I want candy!”

  The mom held her stance firm, eyes glued to her phone screen. “Will you stop that?” She yanked her arm away.

  The little girl crying in her long-sleeved, strawberry-colored dress mesmerized Kat. The girl cried effortlessly. Her tears were genuine. She was truly bothered by the fact that she didn’t have candy, so she cried.

  How does she make it look so easy?

  Kat reached for her backpack, remembering how she’d cry when she was younger too. She’d cry whenever her older sister received the attention she wanted. Cried when Mr. Pike worked overtime instead of taking her to the mall like he’d promised to. She’d even cry when she’d watch those stupid rom-com movies over the summer. But for some reason, it was so hard to cry now. Hard to feel anything anymore.

  “Hey.” Kat held the bag of chocolates in the air, the girl dropping her mom’s hands instantly. “You want these?”

  After wiping the tears on her sleeve and smoothing out her auburn hair, the little girl held her arms out in front of her as though she were receiving a hug.

  “Ready?” Kat pulled her hand back and launched the floppy bag of candy across the grass.

  The chocolates landed in the girl’s grip as she jumped with excitement.

  Kat smiled, but it felt fake. “Nice catch.”

  The lady finally tucked the phone into her purse and stepped forward, the little girl following her calmly with chocolate already smeared across her lips. As the lady wrapped an arm around her daughter’s shoulder, she turned her head in Kat’s direction and mouthed the words thank you.

  Now Kat sat alone on the bench, the adrenaline from her theft fading. She’d been constantly pushing her limits. Acting a bit more rude. Stealing one more thing. Saying whatever she dared. Everything helped bring more spice into her life, but nothing made her feel guilty. Nothing made her feel bad.

  Kat lifted her boot to reveal a trampled patch of grass.

  18:51:44

  “LET ME GET this straight.” Peter leaned his head against the headrest, chin facing the ceiling. “Kat and I went missing on the same day, and the whole school was talking about it?”

  Jackie nodded.

  “Sweet!” Peter threw himself forward, a wide grin meeting his knees. “That must have driven people crazy. I can’t even imagine the theories behind that one.”

  Jackie crossed her arms and stared through the Riderr window. Move faster.

  They were currently on Altemir Avenue in Downtown Brookwood, the busiest road in the city. The sidewalks featured mostly middle-aged adults wearing anything from casual jeans to full-on business suits as they merged into coffee shops, the mall, commercial banks, and overrated restaurants with lines trailing through the front doors. They’d been stuck bumper-to-bumper on this same road for at least five minutes, a new group of impatient pedestrians crossing every time finally had a chance to move forward.

  Peter had taken Jackie’s story surprisingly well. She’d explained how she found the game on her phone the same day Peter and Kat had been announced missing and the fact that she’d gone back in time after starting the countdown.

  Peter’s smile faded. “Do you have any idea who could’ve created a game like this?” The confusion in his voice blasted through the car in a bullet of dread, but Jackie was unfazed.

  “Trust me, dude. I’ve done my research.” She rested her head against the window and instantly regretted her choice as the car jolted forward without warning and forced her cheek into the glass. She pressed a palm onto her throbbing face as she explained her long night of Googling for anything related to the game.

  “But there has to be a logical explanation behind that—that thing we saw earlier.” Peter pulled his phone out, resorting to the internet in the same way she had. The fact that he didn’t take her word for it left Jackie fuming, but he could search the internet to his heart’s content for all she cared. He wouldn’t find anything.

  The car finally reached the end of Altemir Avenue, and the driver signaled to make a right turn toward the east side of the city. “Are you two alright?” He adjusted the rearview mirror to catch sight of their faces. Jackie let Peter do the talking, considering how he was a pro at running his mouth.

  “Oh, we’re good.” Peter scrolled through the first page of the 163 million search results for capsule app. He’d be trapped in the research bubble for a while.

  “Are you two”—the man paused as he made the turn—“high school students?”

  “We go to the junior college, actually.” Peter winked at Jackie, proud of his choppy lie as though he’d managed to convince someone he was a giraffe.

  The driver held his gaze on the rearview mirror for an unsafe amount of time before pasting his focus onto the road. The gentle rumbling of the car on the rocky street brought Jackie into a trance of her own thoughts. She’d spent less than an hour with Peter, and although she wouldn’t dare say she knew him, she couldn’t deny the fact that part of her wanted to. After opening the first capsule, she understood him on a new level and was itching to get to the next one.

  “So, your uncle.” Jackie paused in shock by her willingness to ask him a question so effortlessly. “Did he ever find anyone?”

  Peter tapped an article. “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you guys—”

  “Why book club?”

  “Huh?”

  “Out of all places, why was the capsule in Room 43?” Peter shut his phone off. “There’s absolutely no correlation between book club and my fifteenth birthday.”

  The car swerved to a stop. “Here you are,” the driver said as Jackie stepped out of the car in front of Cherry Ice. “You kids stay safe now.”

  “We’ll try,” Peter muttered before slamming the door shut. He crossed his arms as the man drove away. “That guy should learn to mind his own business.”

 
The ice rink was located only a few minutes from Downtown Brookwood, but the sidewalks were nearly empty here. If it wasn’t for the cheesy cherry logo hanging above the sliding front doors, the building could easily be mistaken for a mansion. Cherry blossom trees bordered the massive length of brick steps leading to the front door of Cherry Ice—perhaps a subtle joke left behind by the building’s landscape architect.

  Peter stopped at Jackie’s side. “I haven’t been here since a worthless third-grade field trip.”

  “I don’t think this level has anything to do with you.” Jackie recalled a photo from Kat’s Instagram account, the one with her and that other girl—most likely Kat’s sister—at Cherry Ice.

  “I sure hope not.” Peter headed up the stairs. “Do you have any cash on you? I think they charge general admission.”

  Jackie followed behind him, watching the chestnut hair jump on his head with every step. “Aren’t there bigger problems to worry about?”

  A group of elementary students had gathered around the door—most likely the wealthier homeschoolers that flocked the east end of Brookwood. They ran around sipping chilled water from Hydro Flasks and tossing branded duffel bags between each other in a game of hot potato. Skate sessions were often divided by age, so the group was likely waiting for their turn on the ice.

  Jackie and Peter passed the kids and entered the packed lobby through the automatic sliding doors. To their right were two cutouts in the wall to form booths. Above the first hung a wooden plaque titled Admissions followed by a list of prices. Behind the booth next to it stood two teen girls dressed in glittering black shirts and crimson jackets handing out skates. Jackie scrunched her nose at the mixture of sweat and artificial cherry that filled the air.

  Across the other end of the lobby was a second set of glass doors, and through them was a massive field of painted red ice. Teenagers twirled in circles, adult coaches sprinkled evenly among them.

  “Are you here for the Connexus Academy skate trip?” A boy around their age poked his head through the admissions booth, his voice nearly a shout to overpower the chattering in the lobby. Connexus Academy—one of Brookwood High’s rivals, a private school on the eastern side of the city where more vineyards and wineries existed than actual homes. Jackie flashed the boy a grin before grabbing Peter’s wrist and shooting in the direction of the second glass doors. They lost themselves in a crowd of teens wrapping paper bracelets around each other’s arms and workers handing out complimentary packages of cherry-shaped gummies.