A Letter From My Dead Future

A week before the National Studio Placement Exams, Larry and I went down to the Cape to clear our heads, and that was when we found the bottle.

It was half-buried in the wet sand, a vintage glass container sealed with a weathered cork. Inside was a piece of parchment, yellowed and damp. The looping handwriting claimed she was me, writing from ten years in the future.

At seventeen, the world still felt malleable, suspended in a state of endless possibility. I thought it was a beautiful, elaborate prank. Grinning, I took a pen from my pocket and scribbled my teenage hopes and burning questions on the back of the parchment.

In ten years, did I actually get into RISD? Did I become a successful art teacher?

Did Larry and I finally get married? Is my best friend, Leah, still happily single, or did she find someone too?

Do we have a baby? Does she look more like me, or does she have Larrys eyes?

I corked the bottle and threw it as far as I could into the Atlantic.

To my absolute shock, it washed ashore the very next morning. I pulled out the parchment, and my breath caught. The ink was fresh, the handwriting identical, but the words were a cold splash of water.

You failed. You didnt get into RISD.

Larry paid someone to ruin your final canvas so Leah could take the last early-admission spot.

You tried to rely on your SAT scores to get into a second-rate state college, but on the morning of the exam, you were so sick with morning sickness that you completely blew it.

Years later, Larry confessed the truth to you. He said the academic pressure had been suffocating, and because he loved Leah too much to ruin her reputation, he settled for youthe girl who was always desperately throwing herself at him.

You had a shotgun wedding. You became a housewife, trapped in a silent house with a beautiful baby girl.

Beneath the text, a small, dark shadow lay at the bottom of the bottle. When I tipped it over, a handful of fine, gray ash spilled into my palm.

But today, she left you forever.

...

"No!"

I screamed, bolting upright. My cotton sheets were damp, stuck to my back with cold, clinging sweat.

Before I could fully register the room, something freezing touched my cheek, making me flinch. It was a cold can of Coke.

Larry was leaning over me, his brow furrowed with that gentle, familiar concern that had anchored my entire childhood.

"Dana, hey. You were having a nightmare." He sat on the edge of the mattress, his hand hovering near my shoulder, hesitant to touch. "You look completely bloodless. Do you want me to call a doctor?"

I stared at him, my heart hammering against my ribs. The phantom texture of that wet sand and the dry, powdery ash still felt printed onto my fingertips. It was too vivid. Too terrifyingly real.

I opened my mouth to speak, but before the words could form, Leah ran up to us, clutching two more soda cans.

"Larry, you idiot! You grabbed the wrong one," she scolded, swatting his shoulder playfully. "Danas on her period, she can't have ice-cold drinks right now. Why did you give her that?"

She kicked his shin lightly. Larry let out a dramatic wail of pain, leaning into her space.

"I only bought the cold ones because you said you had a sore throat, you ungrateful brat," Larry grumbled, though his eyes were crinkling at the corners. He turned to me, a mock pout on his lips. "Dana, look at her. Shes abusing me again. Aren't you going to defend your boyfriend?"

They stood there, laughing and bickering over the soda cans, and the sheer normalcy of the scene finally pulled me back to earth.

I let out a shaky breath, laughing at my own paranoia.

If there were two people in this world I could trust implicitly, it was them. Larry Warren was my boy-next-door boyfriend, and Leah Davis was the sister I never had. We had been inseparable since we learned to ride bikes.

It was just the pre-exam stress. It had to be.

A week later, the tension was thick enough to choke on as the three of us stood outside the convention center where the National Studio Exams were being held.

Larry reached over, pulling my laminated exam ticket from my hand to inspect it for the third time.

"Okay, let's double-check. Brushes? Palette knives? Fixative?" He looked down at me, his eyes wide with anxiety. "Dana, you're a scatterbrain. Don't tell me you forgot your gesso again."

"I have everything, Larry," I said, offering a soft smile as I adjusted the heavy strap of my portfolio bag on my shoulder. "You've gone through the checklist a dozen times."

He sighed, reached into his jacket, and slipped a dark chocolate bar into the front pocket of my bag. "You have terrible memory. If I don't look out for you, who will? Eat this mid-way through. Don't let your blood sugar drop; itll mess with your brushwork." He squeezed my shoulder. "We made a pact, remember? All three of us, New York or bust. Don't fall behind."

"Whos a scatterbrain?" Leah interjected, slipping her arm through mine. She handed me a sleek, unopened watercolor palette. "Here. I bought an extra one just in case you muddy your colors like you did during the mock trials."

Looking at the pristine pans of paint, a warm, thick sense of gratitude filled my chest.

Inside the testing hall, the energy was electric. Once the timer started, the world faded. My hands moved with a rare, fluid confidence. Every stroke felt deliberate, the colors bleeding together exactly as I had envisioned. It was the best piece I had ever painted.

When the final bell rang, signaling the end of the session, I stood up to carry my wet canvas to the submission table.

Suddenly, the girl in the row ahead of mewearing a low-slung baseball capstood up quickly. She stepped backward, almost too perfectly, angling her wet canvas directly toward mine.

A sudden, icy memory of the warning in the bottle flashed in my mind.

...ruined your final canvas...

Instinct took over. I took a sharp step to the left, pivoting my body to shield my painting. The girl stumbled, her canvas scraping harmlessly against the wooden easel instead of my work.

"Watch it," she muttered, her voice tense.

My heart hammered. I looked down at her canvas, which she was holding awkwardly. On a whim, I reached out and tipped her frame slightly to look at the back of her stretcher bars.

My blood ran cold.

The entire backside of her canvas was coated in a thick, wet layer of white titanium acrylic. If she had collided with me, that wet paint would have pressed directly against the face of my piece, smearing my colors into a hopeless, chalky blur.

My knees felt weak.

The bottle. It wasn't a dream. It wasn't a joke.

I didn't let the girl leave. I immediately raised my hand and called the proctor over, reporting the bizarre presence of wet paint on the back of her canvas. Leaving the room in a daze of suspicion and fear, I walked out into the lobby.

Larry and Leah were waiting by the glass doors. The moment they saw me, they came running.

"How did it go? Was it okay?" Larry asked, his eyes searching mine.

I opened my mouth to tell them about the terrifying near-miss with the girl in the cap, but my words caught in my throat.

Larrywho was notoriously germaphobic, a guy who refused to share a fork even with his own motherwas holding a mango bubble tea. On the clear plastic straw, there was a distinct, unmistakable smudge of dusty-rose lipstick.

The exact shade Leah was wearing today.

Larry caught me staring. His hand twitched, and he quickly pulled the cup back, cleared his throat, and looked at Leah.

"Oh, sorry, I grabbed the wrong one," he said, his voice entirely too casual. "Leah, this is yours. Hand me mine."

They swapped cups seamlessly, a practiced, silent exchange that suggested this was a routine they had perfected long ago.

I stared at the mango tea in Leahs hand.

Larry was severely, dangerously allergic to mangoes. One sip of that drink would send him into anaphylactic shock. He would never "accidentally" take a sip of it. He knew exactly whose straw he was sharing.

They had been sharing a drink. And worse, Larry had lied to me instantly, without a single blink of hesitation.

A heavy, suffocating weight settled onto my chest. Suddenly, all the tiny, mismatched puzzle pieces of the last two years began to lock into place.

Larrys affection for me had always been a shared commodity.

Whatever he bought for me, Leah got too. For my seventeenth birthday, he had given me a delicate silver chain. The very next day, Leah had the exact same one on her wrist. Hed laughed it off, calling it a "best-friend discount" he got at the jeweler.

But there were things Leah had that I didn't.

Whenever I was sick or down with cramps, Larry always "happened" to have booked tickets to a concert or planned a trip to the aquarium that he couldn't cancel. He would apologize profusely, then take Leah so the tickets wouldn't go to waste.

I had always thought he was just trying to be practical. Now, I realized I was just the excuse.

"Dana? What are you staring at? The Ubers here!" Leahs voice broke through my thoughts. She was already sliding into the back seat of the car, and Larry was climbing in right next to her, leaving the front passenger seat empty for me.

I looked at them sitting close together in the shadows of the cab.

"I'm actually not going back to school," I said quietly. "My moms nearby. Shes picking me up."

I didn't wait for their response. I turned and walked away, ignoring the sound of Larry calling my name.

When I got into my mother's car, the tears finally spilled over. My mother looked at me in shock, immediately pulling over to offer me tissues, asking what was wrong. I just shook my head, turned off my phone, and let the quiet hum of the engine drown out my thoughts.

My mother assumed I was still upset about our argument from a few weeks ago regarding my college choices. She sighed gently, reaching over to pat my hand.

"Dana, honey... Ive been thinking. I won't force you to go to Parsons in New York. You three have been together since you were toddlers. It was wrong of me to try and pull you away from your friends just for a prestigious name."

I looked out the window at the passing Cape Cod shoreline. I wiped the tears from my cheeks, my voice steadying.

"No, Mom. I changed my mind. I want to go to Parsons."

From that afternoon on, I muted both of them.

The unread messages piled up into the hundreds, but I didn't open a single one. I stopped going to the library on Saturdays where Larry used to tutor me in algebra.

The first to corner me was Larry.

It was during class recess. He showed up outside my classroom, holding a greasy brown paper bag from the local diner we loved. He looked exhausted, his hair messy.

My classmates immediately started whispering and nudging my arm.

"Dana, your boy's here with peace offerings."

"Seriously, Larry is the standard. Don't forget to invite us to the wedding, okay?"

I walked out of the classroom and stopped a few feet away from him.

"My mom hired a private tutor for my SAT prep," I said, my voice flat. "We don't need to study together anymore."

Larry froze, the brown paper bag crinkling in his hand. "Dana, are you still mad about the bubble tea thing? I told you, it was an accident. I can explain..."

"Its not about that," I lied smoothly. "I just need to focus on my academics. That's all."

He wanted to say more, his jaw tight, his eyes reflecting a deep, wounded confusion. But in the end, he just stood there as I turned around and walked back into the room.

That afternoon, Leah was waiting for me by my locker.

"What is wrong with you, Dana?" she demanded, grabbing my wrist. Her grip was tight, almost painful. Her eyes were rimmed with red. "What did you say to Larry? Hes been a complete ghost all week. He got a C on his practice calculus exam today. He never gets Cs!"

She wasn't worried about me. She was terrified for him.

My eyes drifted down to her backpack. Hanging from the zipper was a small, hand-woven blue leather tassela good luck charm from a boutique in Boston. Larry had the exact same one on his keys.

They had gone to Boston together last weekend.

So many details, once hidden behind my own willful blindness, now felt like a dam breaking.

The local sushi place we always went tothe one where Leahs phone automatically connected to the Wi-Fi the very first time she walked in. The Valentines Day roses Larry bought me that came in the exact same wrapping paper as the single stem on Leahs desk.

The time Larry went camping with "the guys" and came back with clean hiking boots and a subtle scent of white jasmine clinging to his flannel shirtthe exact body spray Leah bought by the dozen.

And the hand-knit wool scarf I spent three weeks making for his birthday? He smiled, said it was beautiful, and left it in his closet all winter. Meanwhile, he wore the customized sneakers Leah bought him until the soles wore thin.

I had been their shield. The convenient, naive third wheel that made their secret devotion look like innocent group friendship.

At the end of the semester, our art studio organized a weekend retreat at a rustic cabin lodge in the mountains of Maine to let us unwind before final portfolio submissions.

That night, everyone gathered on the wooden deck, drinking cider, grilling, and singing along to acoustic guitar music. The air was crisp, but my head was heavy from a couple of cups of spiked cider, so I decided to slip away early to wash up.

As I walked down the dim hallway toward the guest rooms, I heard hushed voices coming from the screened porch around the corner.

"There are only three early-admission spots for the district," Larrys voice was tense, strained with an unfamiliar desperation. "Leah is ranked fourth. Dana is third. If Dana submits her final portfolio, Leah is out. What the hell am I supposed to do?"

My chest tightened. I stopped, pressing my back against the pine wood wall.

"Man, it's not that complicated," another voice answered. It was Trent, one of Larrys friends from the studio. "Listen to me. You take her out before the final exams. Give her a real 'initiation.' You know... make her think youre taking things to the next level."

"Trent..."

"Think about it. If you guys finally hook up, shell be completely obsessed, totally distracted. Her focus will tank, and her scores will drop. Once her portfolio grade slips, Leah slides right into that third spot."

A long, agonizing silence stretched between them.

"That... that's messed up," Larry murmured.

"Is it? Shes the one whos been chasing you since middle school anyway. She'll get over it. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do for the girl you actually want."

Larry didn't argue. He didn't defend me. He didn't say no.

I stood in the dark hallway, my hands trembling so violently I could barely breathe. The betrayal felt like a physical blow to my stomach.

I went back to my room, packed my bags in ten minutes, sent a curt text to the art teacher saying my mother was picking me up, and called a local cab. I rode all the way back to the Cape in absolute silence, crying until my throat was raw.

I slept for eighteen hours straight.

When I finally turned on my phone the next afternoon, the school group chats were on fire.

There were dozens of leaked photos and frantic paragraphs. During a midnight room check at the cabin, the chaperone had walked into Larrys room and found him and Leah in the same bed.

The scandal had erupted instantly. The school, wanting to avoid a lawsuit so close to graduation, had issued a formal warning but kept the details quiet from the public.

Everyone who knew about Larry and me was sending me pitying texts.

I didn't reply to any of them. I put on my noise-canceling headphones, sat at my desk, and studied until my eyes burned.

Larry caught up with me after our final study hall. He grabbed my arm, his fingers digging into my skin with a frantic, angry strength.

"Dana! Why did you leave the lodge early? Why didn't you tell me?"

Leah was hovering behind him, her eyes puffy and swollen from crying.

Looking at her, I felt a strange, cold detachment. Leah hadn't always been the pretty, popular girl. In middle school, she had struggled with her weight, and the boys used to call her terrible names. I was the one who held her hand, helped her research healthy meals, and walked with her every evening. When a group of older girls cornered her in the girls' room, I was the one who took the punches and got suspended protecting her.

I had thought I was protecting my best friend. Instead, I had nurtured the person who would eventually try to steal my life.

"Did I force him into your bed, Leah?" I asked, my voice terrifyingly calm. "Did I make you two sleep together?"

I looked at Larry, pulling my arm out of his grasp.

"I have a question for both of you. One of you was my boyfriend. One of you was my best friend. How long have you been making a fool out of me?"

I took a deep breath, looking at the boy I had loved for half my life.

"We're done, Larry."

Before Larry could speak, Leah burst into hysterical tears, offering loud, theatrical apologies that made me look like the heartless one in the school hallway.

Larrys face hardened, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close.

"Fine," he snapped, glaring at me. "We're done. Just remember, Dana... karma has a way of sorting things out."

He said it with such smug certainty. He was still waiting for the news that my canvas had been ruined at the exam.

I didn't say a word. I turned around and walked away. I hadn't told him that my painting was safe. I couldn't wait to see the look on his face when the final results came out.

On the morning of the SATs, we were assigned to the same regional testing center.

Just before we entered the quiet rooms, Leah walked up to me, her voice dripping with artificial sweetness.

"Dana, good luck today. Don't be too nervous." She tilted her head, offering a sympathetic smile. "But hey, if things don't go well, Larrys uncle is on the state education board. I can ask him to help you find a decent community college nearby."

"Save your breath, Leah," I said, walking past her without looking back.

When the final bell of the exam rang, I felt an incredible, weightless freedom.

My mother was waiting for me outside the gates with a bouquet of yellow sunflowers and a reservation at my favorite restaurant. I rolled down the passenger window, letting the salt-kissed summer air wash over my face.

On the day the results were released, I sat in front of my computer, holding my breath.

I clicked refresh.

SAT Score: 1560.

Parsons School of Design: Accepted (Portfolio Rank: #1 in State).

I grabbed my mother, screaming and crying with joy, and she held me close, tears streaming down her face.

But when it came time to submit my official enrollment confirmation, she hesitated, looking at me with gentle, worried eyes.

"Dana, sweetie... are you sure you don't want to apply to any local schools? Just in case? I know you loved him for a very long time..."

I clicked the "Confirm Enrollment" button for Parsons.

"No, Mom," I said softly. "I'm never going to look back."

In mid-July, we had to return to school to pick up our final diplomas.

The moment I walked in, my old desk mate, Becca, ran over and grabbed my arm, her face red with indignation.

"Did you see their Instagram posts? It's disgusting. Aren't you furious?"

I glanced down at her phone screen.

There was a photo of them at Lake Tahoe. Leah was laughing, her hand resting on Larrys waist. They looked picture-perfect, framed by the blue water and the mountains.

"Why should I be mad?" I handed the phone back. "They deserve each other."

Just then, the classroom doors opened.

Larry and Leah walked in, wearing matching vintage denim jackets. They looked undeniably striking together.

Larry leaned against the teacher's desk, looking down at me with a smirk. "I heard you're moving to New York. You know, you didn't have to flee the state just because things didn't go your way here. Leah and I are locked into our first choices. If you need study guides for a gap year, we can lend you ours."

Leah stepped up, her voice soft. "Don't take it the wrong way, Dana. We just wanted to say goodbye. After all, we used to be friends."

"Friends?" I nearly laughed out loud. "How do you know things didn't go my way?"

Before either of them could respond, Mrs. Gallagher, our senior art teacher, hurried into the room clutching a stack of official letters. The moment she saw me, her eyes lit up with pure excitement.

"Dana Collins! You absolute star!" she beamed, stepping up to the podium. "Quiet down, everyone! We have some incredible news to announce."

The entire room went silent.

"Lets give a massive round of applause to Dana Collins," Mrs. Gallagher announced proudly. "She has just been awarded a full-ride presidential scholarship to Parsons School of Design, making her the only student in our districts history to receive this honor!"