90s Girl

by Mia Archer

  I could understand the screeching. I’d just wheeled back and kicked him pretty hard in a sensitive bit of anatomy that meant I probably wasn’t getting any half-siblings any time soon.

  “Fuck you,” I said. “And fuck your shitty attitude. George wasn’t hitting on you, Amy was the best thing that ever happened to you, and you’re nothing now that your last football season is over and done with.”

  That got a few tongues wagging. I guess Aunt Olivia hadn’t been lying when she said he was the big man on campus, but what the fuck ever.

  I turned to Jenny and my mom. They were both staring at me like I’d turned into a giant radioactive lizard and started tearing things down or something.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Remind me to never piss you off,” Jenny muttered.

  “Thanks,” my mom said.

  “You’re very welcome. Now let’s get out of here before he gets up,” I said.

  “Good idea,” Jenny said. “We can hole up in the office while my mom kicks him out.”

  29

  Big Reveal

  “Seriously,” my mom growled. “How the hell is it possible you’re this good at this game? It hasn’t even been out that long! At least not around here!”

  I deftly flew under the last goal post and then back up. That was good for a gasp from my mom and Jenny alike. I landed on logs I shouldn’t have been able to, then walked up to the second goal post hidden behind the first one.

  “How the hell did you do that?” Jenny asked. “How the hell did you even know that was there?”

  “Well the little marker for this level is glowing red, so there has to be a way to get to a second post. And there’s that star leading to Star Road out in that island in the middle of the ocean, so there has to be a path to get there, right?”

  “I thought that thing was supposed to be there for decoration or something,” Jenny whispered, looking utterly gobsmacked.

  “The path to the second exit could’ve been in a tube or something,” my mom said.

  “Yeah, I thought that too the first few times I played it,” I said, relishing the fact that I was teaching my mom something that she’d eventually teach me. Another one of those time travel closed circle things. “The thing you have to look for is the little sign with the arrow. The designers put one on the other side of the goal post at the end of the level, and that means there’s a goal beyond it. You just have to figure out how to get there.”

  “Damn,” my mom breathed. “I never would’ve thought of that. And you just did that on your first try.”

  I pursed my lips together. I wanted to tell her this was far from my first try. That we’d spent hours bonding over this game when I was younger. That I’d played it to the point that I had muscle memory that would pick up whenever I grabbed one of these old fashioned grey controllers.

  I sighed. Handed the controller over to my mom. They were still muddling their way through some of the levels in the second world, and I figured I’d let them have their fun while I blazed a trail through the far reaches of the game.

  “I still don’t understand how someone can be this good at this game,” my mom muttered as she ran into one of those annoying sleeping fish who wakes up and homes in on your poor Italian plumber.

  “Don’t you play this game all the time with your sister?” I asked.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this was before they got their Super Nintendo. I had distinct memories of my mom talking about playing this with Aunt Olivia all the time, though, and it struck me as odd that she wouldn’t be better at it considering what a big part of her life the game supposedly was.

  “What are you talking about?” my mom asked.

  “Guess not,” I muttered.

  I made quick work of another spoke of the star road. Some people liked to blow through the whole thing as soon as they could, but I’d always been more of a fan of going through the levels one by one as I discovered them on the game’s normal map.

  Besides, the only advantage to going through the whole thing all at once was hitting the most difficult levels in the game and transforming everything to autumn colors and putting weird plumber masks on all the koopas running around, and I figured I’d save that for later.

  I didn’t want to seem too good at this game, after all. Though soon enough I was done with my level and I handed the controller over to Jenny who proceeded to do her thing.

  The rule was the controller changed hands when one of us died, and so far I’d retained control over my beloved Luigi without dying once, though I knew that wasn’t going to last forever. Another reason to avoid the never ending frustration that was Tubular.

  “Y’know I really do appreciate everything you did for me out there,” my mom said as Jenny took over. “You didn’t have to do that. Especially after…”

  Her voice caught. Tears came to her eyes. Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, or maybe she really was that choked up that I’d stood up for her when she didn’t think she deserved it.

  I put a hand on hers. “Don’t worry about it. It’s what friends do.”

  My mom looked between me and Jenny. She seemed to be thinking over what she thought of that. Or maybe she really was trying to decide whether or not we were hitting on her or something. Finally she smiled.

  “Yeah, friends. That sounds nice,” she said. “I’ve never had anyone who just wanted to be my friend, or at least it feels like I haven’t since elementary school.”

  “Probably because you worked so hard to push everyone away,” Jenny muttered in between moving the controller around as though that was somehow going to magically give her an edge in the game even though it’d be nearly a decade and a half before motion controls were invented.

  “Come on Jenny,” I said. “You don’t have to be like that.”

  My mom, for her part, sighed. “I probably deserved that. I’m sorry for the way I treated the two of you. I could blame most of it on James, but I chose to act like that and I’m sorry. I was wrong about the two of you.”

  “Apology accepted,” I said, hitting Jenny with a significant look.

  She was concentrating so hard on the game that she missed the significant look, but then she glanced over at me and sighed. That glance also led to her plumber’s demise, and she let out a few choice swear words at that.

  “Yeah, whatever,” she said. “Apology accepted I guess.”

  “There,” I said. “Was that so hard?”

  Jenny hit me with a look that said it was pretty hard, but she didn’t say anything. The three of us going up against dear old dad seemed to be enough to forge a bond for the moment, though I wondered how long that was going to last.

  After all, I knew the future, and I was pretty sure it was a future that didn’t have much of Jenny in it. At least my mom’s future didn’t have much of Jenny in it if my memories of growing up were anything to go on.

  Though I was also pretty sure that my future was one that wasn’t going to have much of Jenny in it considering we were from two very different times. Literally. I sighed as I went to the next level, a castle, and did a quick play through.

  Next to some of the really difficult levels the castles were practically easy mode.

  “I guess the only question I have is why you’re being so nice to me,” my mom said, staring at me.

  That was enough to get me a hit which lost me my cape. I muttered a couple of curses under my breath, but managed to keep it together. Losing a power up wasn’t the end of the world, even if it was annoying.

  I liked my capes. They made everything so much easier if you took the time to master them.

  “Why can’t I help someone?” I asked.

  “I mean I guess there’s no reason why you shouldn’t help me,” my mom said. “It’s just weird. You don’t know me at all, the only time I ever saw you I was being a total bitch, and yet you’ve been so nice to me.”

  I sighed as I put the finishing touches on the koopa kid who held sway over this part of the game. I turned
to my mom who was staring at me so intently that she didn’t seem to care that it was her turn.

  “I guess I’m just a sucker for people who seem to be in trouble,” I said.

  Jenny hit me with a significant glance from behind my mom where she wouldn’t see it. Which was probably good, because with the way Jenny was wiggling her eyes it would’ve been pretty fucking obvious there was something going on here if my mom could see what she was doing.

  “So what’s up with you, Liv?” my mom asked. “You don’t have a crush on me, you and Jenny seem to have a good thing going on, so why be so nice to me?”

  “I just want to be a friend?” I asked.

  “Well thank you for being a friend,” my mom said, echoing another activity that would become one of our favorite things to do in a few years when I was old enough to understand how funny the four old ladies on the TV were. “But I’m still not buying it.”

  “Oh would you just come out and tell her?” Jenny groused. “Might as well with the way you’re dancing around it. It’s not like you’re going to stop yourself from existing now.”

  I glared at Jenny. I mean it’s not like letting the cat out of the bag was going to stop me from existing, but it might stop me from existing as I was now. There was a lot that went into making a person, and I still had no idea how much what I was doing here in this time was affecting that future me.

  What if this whole thing operated on Back to the Future rules, and the only reason I hadn’t noticed some of the changes was because the time ripples hadn’t caught up with me yet? Though I was starting to doubt that with the number of closed circles I’d run into.

  My mom looked between the two of us like she wasn’t sure what the hell to make of this.

  “Tell me? What are you supposed to tell me?” she asked. “I don’t get it…”

  I sighed and glared at Jenny.

  “What the hell is going on here?” my mom asked, her eyes darting to the door like she was trying to decide whether or not it’d be a good idea to run for it.

  “Thanks a lot Jenny,” I growled. “Really making things nice and easy here.”

  “I aim to please,” she said with a smarmy smile that said she was enjoying all of this entirely too much.

  I guess all those significant looks she’d been giving me had been all about me telling my mom everything. Not about keeping everything from her. Damn it.

  I sighed and put a hand on my mom’s arm before she could get up and try to get the hell out of here. She sat back down, she’d been in the process of getting up, but she still looked like she was confused and thinking about getting the hell out of here if the answers she got weren’t to her liking.

  “I guess I might as well come out and say it,” I said. “You already had your fun in the jet arcade machine, so it’s not like this is going to change anything.”

  Her eyes darted back and forth as she searched my own. She looked more and more confused.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “What are you…”

  “It’s simple,” I said. “I’m from the future.”

  She giggled. It was a nervous giggle. The sort of giggle someone might let out when they realize they’re sharing the room with a crazy person. Again her eyes darted to the door, and I felt her arm tense like she was getting ready to bolt.

  If me admitting I was from the future was enough to make her want to bolt then that was nothing compared to what she was going to do when I told her the next bit.

  “That’s not all,” I said.

  “That’s not all?” she asked, her eyebrows shooting up so fast it was a miracle they didn’t go into orbit. “Please, tell me what else there is future girl.”

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “You’re also kind of my mom. Like there are two of me in this room right now.”

  I glanced down at her stomach. She followed my glance, then shook her head like she couldn’t believe this was happening. Hell, it was a feeling I could identify with considering I was having trouble believing any of this had happened, but here we were.

  “Right,” she said. “Okay then. I guess I see why you were helping me out, and I appreciate it, but I think it’s time to go now.”

  30

  Proof

  “Wait,” Jenny said, grabbing my mom by the shoulders and pushing her back down into her chair as she tried to get up again.

  I frowned. I didn’t care to see my mom getting manhandled like that, but I sort of needed her to stick around if she was going to hear me out and believe me.

  “Seriously,” my mom said, her eyes darting around the small office like she was starting to wonder if this was going to show up on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries which was totally still a thing.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “Think about the video games I was just playing. I’m so good at this game that’s brand new because it’s a couple of decades old where I come from and I used to play it all the time. With you.”

  “I’m serious,” my mom said. “I’ll scream. Someone will hear me and come help me.”

  “Well yeah,” Jenny said. “But what’s the point of screaming? We’re not doing anything to hurt you, and she’s telling the truth.”

  “I am,” I said. “Check this out.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the thing that’d finally convinced Jenny. My phone sprang to life with a picture of me and Aunt Olivia smiling out of the screen, looking almost like twins separated by a couple of decades.

  “What is that?” she asked. “Is that your mom or something? She looks just like you.”

  I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t getting through to her, and it made me want to scream.

  “That’s not my mom,” I said. “That’s my Aunt Olivia, and I live with her now.”

  I paused. That was getting close to some subjects I didn’t want to get into with her. Not when it meant revealing a little too much about her future.

  “But James doesn’t have a sister,” she said.

  “That’s not what we’re talking about here,” I said. “What we’re talking about is I’m from the future. This is a portable computer I’m carrying around in my pocket!”

  “So?” she said with a shrug. “They show that kind of stuff in the movies all the time. Why should I be surprised or amazed that you’re walking around with something like that?”

  I stared at her, dumbfounded. Meanwhile behind her Jenny sighed and rolled her eyes.

  “Are you serious?” I asked. “They don’t make stuff like this in the real world in this time! This is like something in the movies because for this time period it literally is something out of the movies!”

  “Whatever,” she said. “I don’t know anything about computers, so why should I be impressed by that thing?”

  I stared at my phone. It was a technological marvel that probably had more computing power than the most powerful supercomputer in this time, and my mom wasn’t suitably impressed because she lived in a world where computers weren’t things that everyone had, let alone cell phones.

  Unlike Jenny, who seemed to have a geeky streak to her which was one of the things that drew me to her, my mom didn’t know enough about how impossible this was to be properly impressed or convinced that I actually was from the future.

  “Fine,” I said. “You don’t believe me when you see a phone from the future, but there’s plenty that I know about you. The kind of stuff someone shouldn’t know unless they’re close to you.”

  “Great,” she said. “So you’re a stalker on top of waving around weird pocket computers. That doesn’t make you from the future at all. It just makes you a weirdo with delusions.”

  “Your name is Amy Simmons,” I said. “Your mom and dad got divorced when you were five years old and your dad hasn’t been in the picture for awhile now.”

  “Everyone knows my parents are divorced,” she said. “You’re gonna have to try harder.”

  “Right,” I said, taking another deep breath. “You promised yourself that if you ever ha
d a child of your own you weren’t going to bring them into a situation like that, and it’s eating away at you that James isn’t going to be in the picture.”

  That was good for her staring at me like I was a witch.

  “Closer to the mark of something you never told anyone?” I asked.

  “That’s still something you could figure out,” she said, crossing her arms. “Color me not impressed.”

  “Well you don’t need to worry,” I said. “Growing up without that James asshole in my life never bothered me, and now that I’ve seen what he’s really like I feel like I dodged a hell of a bullet.”

  “Stop talking about yourself like you’re my daughter,” she growled through gritted teeth.

  “Your favorite TV show is Golden Girls,” I said.

  “Lucky guess,” she said. “I just used the opening line from the song. You could’ve figured that out from context.”

  “Yeah, but does anyone know that your second favorite show is Murder, She Wrote, followed up by Star Trek? And you weren’t sure about this new show featuring the Enterprise’s second bald captain, but you gave it a chance, and you don’t breathe a word about your other favorite shows to your friends because you’re afraid they’ll make fun of you for liking old lady shows and geek shows?” I continued.

  “You need to shut the fuck up,” she said. “I don’t know what the fuck kind of stalker bullshit you’ve pulled to learn all this stuff about me, but I don’t appreciate it and…”

  “…and you won’t admit it to anyone, but the one thing you want in this world is to be loved because you never felt like you got that from your mother,” I continued, talking a little softer this time around. After all, I was dealing with some heavy shit. “In the end you were loved though. So very loved by everyone around you.”