EVAN AND ABBY, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL YOUR LAST SUMMER – OR ELSE!!!
LOVE, YOUR 10-YEAR-OLD SELVES
“That’s a bit ominous, don’t you think?” Evan said, wiping more dirt off the corners of our keepsake box. Years ago, we dug a hole in his backyard and threw a random assortment of whatever we thought would be important items for our future selves inside of a green pillowcase. One item was this wooden box. Taped crudely to the front was a small index card with the note, written as a warning.
“Yeah, we weren’t messing around back then.” I laughed, grabbing the green pillowcase from his free hand. I could hear things clinking together inside. Evan continued rubbing the edges of the box, almost like he was trying to uncover some secret code along the ridgeline of it. “Are you going to open that thing?” I asked, watching him continue to mess with the outside of it.
“I thought I remembered putting something else on here…but I guess not. The box needs a key to open it. Do you have it lying around somewhere?” he said.
I thought carefully. A key? Hmmm, no I didn’t think I had anything like that laying around in my room. Not wanting to disappoint Evan though, I told him I’d look for it at my house sometime soon. I’d been gone for a long time, so I figured it was a long shot at me finding something so small. I ruffled the pillow sack.
“Let’s check out some of these other things we willed to our future selves. We can worry about the box later.” I pushed my arm inside the pillowcase and almost had a stroke when I touched something that felt furry. “What the **** is that?!?!” I yelped, throwing my hand backward and out of the bag. Evan laughed at me and traded the box for the pillowcase in my hands.
“You’re such a baby Abs, honestly. You think a freaking hamster or somethings been living in there for almost a decade? Jesus.” He reached into the bag and pulled out a small, stuffed lion. The fake fur around the edges of its neck was matted into the rest of its body. Bits of threading had come loose, and bits of stuffing poked through the seams.
“Mr. Hamish!” I squealed, leaping my hands towards the grungy toy. A note was tied around his left paw, written ins smeared blue ink.
“Be brave Abs, you’re going to kill it at the spelling bee next Thursday. I know I’ve been busy but don’t worry! Haven’t forgotten about you. Mom and I made you some cookies to snack on while you study. See you sometime soon.”
—Evan
“You kept that thing? Oh my god, what child names their stuffed animal Hamish? And the note too?” Evan laughed, looking at the beat-up lion.
“Don’t laugh at me, it’s not like you never had a stuffed toy you loved.” My face was beaming. A mixture of long-lost love for a childhood toy, and rage directed towards my old friend.
“Ah yes, and I left him to wither away in a pillowcase for almost ten years.” I was fuming. “Shut it. It’s not like I knew what time was going to do the guy.”
“Clearly. Just pull out another item already.” Evan impatiently started scrolling on his phone.
The older we got, the more difficult it was to engage with him. We ran in different circles after middle school, and this reunion we had going on wasn’t what I’d imagined. My mother always told me that she thought we’d end up together someday, but that never happened. I was off attending school across the country, and Evan stayed here with his family. It was his idea to dig up our little time capsule a few weeks ago. He had heard I was back for spring break and reached out. Maybe I just thought he would be a little more excited to see me, but the longer I spent in his backyard with him, the more I realized just how much time had changed us. It’s not a bad thing, people grow up and apart from each other — that’s just part of life.
Still, standing here rummaging through our memories, I wish we could go back.
The next item I pulled out was a section of tie-dyed material. In red sharpie across the fabric, I recognized my blocky handwriting.
PROPURDEE OF EVAN OCONOR (Property of Evan O’Connor)
Evan grabbed the fabric from my hands, forgetting about whatever he was looking at on his phone.
“You gave me a tie-dye shirt with my favorite colors for my 7th birthday. I was new here and nobody came to my party but you. My parents had rented out a bouncy house and set up a huge table for our entire class. You’re the only reason that is still a good memory to me.”
“That can’t be true. Miley Practor showed up for a little bit!” I chuckled. Till our senior year of high school, Miley had been apologizing for what she did at Evan’s birthday party.
“I don’t think you can call vomiting the second you arrive and dropping off a present much of an appearance.” Evan snorted and rubbed his fingers on the tattered cloth. It was a faded sprinkle of red and blue. He seemed to be caught up in old feelings.
The last item we pulled from the pillowcase was a stack of miniature Jenga blocks. Not enough for a full set, but we had written words along a few wooden pieces. On most though, only a few letters were given.
THE KEY IS LEFT ALONE
HEREWA HETA LOWERSFA SEDUA ROWGA
“Did we think we were going to grow up and be CIA agents or something? Half of this isn’t even in English.” Evan tossed the wooden blocks back into the pillowcase.
“God you can be dense. Don’t you remember anything from elementary school?”
“We didn’t learn any new languages in elementary school,” Evan said, scrunching his eyebrows together.
“Not any real ones, but the older kids on the playground taught everyone pig latin so we could pass notes in class.”
Evan smacked his forehead and grabbed the blocks back out of the bag. Before he could line them up to read, his phone started buzzing like crazy. He picked up the call, and panic covered his face. “It’s already 5:15? Shit. I’m sorry Amanda. I’ll be right there.”
Evan poured the wooden blocks into my lap and fished his keys out of his pocket. “I have to go, I told Amanda I’d pick her up for dinner and I’m already late. Maybe we can look through the rest of this some other time.”
Without giving me the chance to respond, I watched my childhood friend run out the side door of his parents’ house and over to his pickup. He sped away within seconds. I should’ve figured something like this would happen.
Placing the wooden Jenga blocks on the ground, I mentally rearranged the letters in my head and took off all the A’s. As soon as I uncovered the message, I knew where I needed to go to find the key. THE KEY IS LEFT ALONE WHERE THE FLOWERS USED TO GROW.
The key had to be buried inside one of my mother’s flower pots on our back porch.
I gathered up Hamish, the wooden blocks, and locked box. Placing them into the green pillowcase, I left Evan’s backyard and started towards my parents’ home.
When I arrived, I b-lined directly to the pots out back. I had three to choose from for finding buried treasure. I decided on the smallest one to the right, thinking that at a younger age that would’ve been my choice. Digging around in the dirt, my hands clasped around a small object.
I’d found the key.
By then it was beginning to get a little dark outside, so I carried the green pillowcase and my key towards my old room. Since moving, I hadn’t changed a thing on the interior from my senior year of high school. There were photos of friends lining my walls, and progressively as the years went on you would see less and less of Mr. Evan O’ Connor.
I sat down on the corner of my bed, placing our childhood treasures in the corner of my room. All except for the box. The words on the index card screamed at me.
EVAN AND ABBY, DO NOT OPEN UNTIL YOUR LAST SUMMER – OR ELSE!!!
LOVE, YOUR TEN-YEAR-OLD SELVES
I wonder what we thought was so important that we needed to lock it away from the other things. Gently shaking the box revealed that whatever was inside didn’t make much sound. It was fairly light too.
My hands gripped the small silver key and slid it into the lock. One turn and it was opened with ease. Opening the cover, my curiosity melted away into a memory.
In the box were clippings from an art project we’d done years ago. There was a folded-up poster we had spent hours drawing. At the top it was labelled, EVAN AND ABBY’S HOME.
I suppose it was easy to think you’d end up living with your best friend when you’re younger. We had colored our house to be bright blue with white shutters. There was a room dedicated to things Evan used to love adjacent to my own. We’d given ourselves a green lawn, mowed improperly because neither of us could scribble grass really well. Our house tilted a little.
Misshapen foundations lead to unstable structures.
We must’ve thought we would own a farm or something because littered throughout the poster were various interpretations of future pets we would own one day. Each given a name and a vague description. Like the fat goat-like creature that Evan had added in the corner of the picture. He’d written in bent letters: MANNY THE MUNCHER.
Smaller details emerged on the paper. We had drawn ourselves standing in front of the home. Smiling and throwing our hands in the air.
BEST FRIENDS FOREVER scrawled around us.
Smaller notes filled up the rest of the box. Pieces of scrap paper we passed in class, tickets from concerts our parents had taken us to, a few pictures of us from when we were little.
There was one of us covered in dirt, we had spent the day four-wheeling with our families and gained a million mud freckles from the adventure. Another from Evan’s birthday party, we were laying on our backs in the bouncy house and giving goofy grins. A third was a prehistoric selfie from a disposable camera, our eyes looking at the wrong side. We were laughing.
These were moments I hadn’t thought about in forever.
The final thing I found was another index card like the one on the front of the box. This one looked like it was written in Evan’s handwriting and not my own.
HEY ABS, I ADDED THIS IN AFTER YOU LEFT MY HOUSE. I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND.
I smiled.
ANYWAYS, I WANTED TO ASK YOU A FEW QUESTIONS ABOUT OUR FUTURE LIFE.
Okay. I said in my head. I was imagining myself talking to Evan again, only this time we were in the bodies of our childhood selves.
DID WE –END UP GOING TO THE SAME SCHOOL?
No.
DO WE BUY A BLUE HOUSE AND MOVE IN TOGETHER?
No. We didn’t.
DO WE SEE EACH OTHER OFTEN?
We haven’t for a while.
IF NOT, WHY?
This one got me. I didn’t know how to answer ten-year-old Evan’s simple question. Why was it we grew apart? Even I didn’t really know the real answer.
A messaging sound went off on my phone. I sat the box back down on my bed and picked it up.
Did you end up finding a way to open that box? – Evan O’Connor.
I looked at the message for a little bit before closing my phone. I didn’t have the energy to with him then. I wanted to go back to those moments. I wanted to touch each drawing, every note and photograph to transport myself back to when things were better.
The last index card, I took it out again and looked through Evan’s questions. Flipping it over, I noticed one more thing he had written.
EVEN IF WE DON’T, I HOPE YOU KNOW I STILL CARE ABOUT YOU. ALWAYS WILL. MAYBE WE SHOULD TRY TO HANG OUT AGAIN. I’M SURE WE’D LIKE THAT.
I smiled again.
We might.