To Our Future Selves

When we got back after the school trip, Ms Williams summoned the entire grade to the hall to preach about the importance of our senior years. Many of the monotonous classes such as music (for me anyways), we were finally allowed to drop. She droned on about our weekly test scores that would be finally accounted for, and how each of those scores would play a role in determining our future careers. She explained that in the next four years we would be too focused on our studies to play around anymore. After all we were on our way to becoming adults.

The way she phrased that word was strange. With pride, almost as it was a privilege, as if it were a status only the elites of society could achieve.

"When is this going to end? I want to play soccer." Finn muttered impatiently, sticking his tongue out, while making a funny face.

"Shhh!" I whispered back to him. I was terrified of Ms Williams, ever since our first meeting, and even now those eagle eyes of hers continued to haunt me in my nightmares.

After assembly ended we headed back to class. For Kim, Finn, Darren and I, it was health and personal development classes. In other words, the Health Inspection.

These classes began the moment we entered the 8th grade, in other words senior school. To be fair, for the most part these classes were tolerable, as we spend most of our time, floating in a capsule of mysterious liquid, called a "Bubble". We simply climbed into the machine, somehow it would scan our physical body, combine the information it was receiving with the statistics of the institutional database, and calculate a score out of 100.

Usually each session of health and personal development was divided into two segments. Physical and personal. Our teacher, Mr Thompson preferred the physical part, because it didn't require any effort on his end, so we always began our two hour sessions with a dive into the "Bubble".

As I slowly began undressing and preparing my school issued swimsuit, I stared at the bruises on my knees fresh from my fall down the English block stairs, and winced.

Kim noticed my dismayed expression as she walked up to me and placed her hand on my back.

"I don't think it'll affect your score much." She reassured me.

"I hope so, I don't want my scores going down because of a stupid accident. I have a reputation to uphold."

"Hey." Kim wrapped her arm around my shoulders and proceeded to tease me. "Since when did this turn into a bragging session, honour student?" She giggled.

"What can I say? Can't deny that it feels good to be the top student for once."

"You... you little rascal!" Kim unwrapped her arms around my shoulders and proceed to tickle me.

"Oi, cut... cut it out..." My laughter was so loud that the entirety of the female change room could hear me.

Slightly embarrassed, I bowed my head as I walked out. Smirking, Kim whispered quietly in my ear. "That's what you get, you little show off."

I could feel the blood rushing to my face, she was so close to me, her face a few centimetres away, lips hovering directly above my lips and her soft white breasts pressed up against mine. Would it feel like this, our faces and bodies pressed so close to each other during sex? Could girls even have sex with each other?

No, I forced myself to snap out of it. Those thoughts were wrong. Absolutely disgusting. I was disappointed in myself for having such repulsive fantasies.

As I climbed into my Bubble, I could hear the gasping sounds that many of the boys made, when they saw Kim in her swimsuit. Even though they saw her dressed in this manner every week, it was simply impossible to get over her dazzling beauty. I could also feel the ice cold glare of Finn, in a (futile) attempt at trying to defend his sister from these starving wolves. Somehow I felt guilty too. I was aware that I was one of these dangerous wolves, a predator, violating Kim.

I shut the smooth, colourless lid of the Bubble, as I let myself sink into the murky depths of the warm liquid inside. A directional voice instructed me, throughout the entire process.

"Miss Layla White, my name is AIIB (Artificial Intelligence Inspection Bot), I would like to conduct a few inspections on you, would that be possible?"

"Yes."

"Ok. Can you cover yourself in this liquid? With this I can scan your body thoroughly for any external, internal injuries, harmful bacteria and viruses."

"Yes." I allow myself to sink deeper into the tub of the murky fluid.

"Inspection complete. Please relax, and wait until the session is over."

"Ok."

Routinely during these precise moments of every inspection, I would suddenly be hit with a wave of drowsiness and fall asleep, only to wake up to the sound of my lid opening and the hairy face of Mr Thompson, staring down upon me, yelling at me (and some other kids after me), spit flying onto my face, to wake up, so we could begin the second half of the lesson. Of course the same happened on this occasion as well.

I rose out of the hollow shell that enclosed me and proceeded towards the change rooms to get showered. When I was fully showered and dressed, Kim and I, returned to the classroom. On the interactive white board were the list of all the names in our class, with their scores and ranks in the column behind. As per usual I was not astonished to find the rank behind my name as 1, nor my score, being an entire 10 points ahead of the second place student. 94, those small digits read.

"See I told you that my score would drop". I mumbled to Kim.

"Well, aren't you sorry for getting an entire 14 points higher than me?" She bantered playfully.

"Maybe I was blessed with good genetics? But I still got worse." I continued our banter as cheerfully as I could, although I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Kim seemed to notice my dissatisfaction and tried to lighten the mood.

"Hey, maybe those 2 marks of yours have gone to me? I mean I suddenly improved out of nowhere, so maybe you gave them to me?" She grinned at me.

I couldn't help but chuckle at her cute remark. She was far too good for me.

I stared at the board for a while longer comparing everyone else's scores. Bella had scored a 20, the lowest score in our class, Darren, a 79 and Finn an 82. Well Finn was going to be happy because his score had also gone up by two points, and Darren even more so as his went up by 5 entire points.

Kim's hand wrapped around mine, as she slowly guided us to two empty seats, to wait for the rest of the class. A warm feeling was growing in my chest, I wanted to nurture it and protect it forever. I wanted to make it mine and mine alone.

Does Kim also feel the same way? Of course not.

Mr Thompson's wrinkly hands made a muffled sound as he clapped them together to signal the beginning of his class. His modulated voice echoed smoothly around the room.

"As you all know, this is your first year in senior school. You will be busy studying and have less freedom. During these 4 years, I have no doubt that you would all have become completely different people. So today I want you to write a letter to your future selves, as a type of time capsule, to remember the time you were 14."

"That's kinda lame." Finn protested.

"Indeed it's lame but it's your task, not mine." Mr Thompson fired back. "So you have to do it, not me."

Our classed cheered at his witty retort as Finn quiety grumbled to himself.

The moment my pen and paper made contact my mind blanked out. I had no idea what to write and I felt like a complete idiot sitting next to the furiously inking Kim. What did I want to tell myself in 4 years? After 10 minutes of procrastination, I resolved myself to write something, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't come up with anything worthwhile.

Dear Layla of the future,

The year is 2199. You are 18. How are you? Are you doing okay, getting along with your friends? What about Kim? I really don't know what to write, so all I'm going to say is: stay happy Future Layla.

From Laya of 2195.

Why was I so useless, when it came to the important things in life. I could think of a thousand witty retorts for Darren, annoy Finn as much as he annoyed me, tease Hannah about her crushes and yet I couldn't think of anything meaningful to say to myself. In an attempt to distract myself from the tears of frustration that welled up in my eyes, I glanced over to Kim's paper. Though my blurred lens, I couldn't get a clear glance of what she wrote, all I could see were chunks and chunks of large paragraphs. Of probably meaningful things. Unlike my empty letter.

As autumn's spell began to wear off, allowing winter to take over, and as the mahogany leaves of the maple tree, fell to the ground with a delicate crunch, followed by suddenly indigo dusks, filled with smoke, leftover from our heating system, Kim became more reserved, and started on long walks in the woods of our school, leading to nowhere. Then spring, with the welcoming of thousands of tiny forget-me-nots in the fields, and summer with a choir of cicadas, and a clear blue sky, touching the oceans, merging the two masses.

Two years had passed in a flash. I was 16. It was 2197, a year that would change the course of my life forever.