Chapter 6
I bolt upright in a sea of pink satin sheets. My head smacks the ceiling.
“Ow!” I rub at my forehead, glancing around, freshly terrified. I’m on the top bunk. Of course I am. It’s junior year of college. Allegedly.
Last night’s dress drapes over my white desk chair in the nook by the windows of our giant bedroom, which overlooks the street. The Alpha Gamma house is the prettiest one on the block, all red brick and white columns, an unexpected touch of Southern splendor in the heart of the city.
This room. We fought so hard to earn it with house points by attending every sorority mixer, intramural sporting event, and philanthropy fundraiser possible.
Quinn, Camila, Sutton: Roommates. BFFs. Until forever was taken. Scents of Burberry perfume, stale coffee, and L’Oreal Elnett hairspray settle around me. College, indeed.
I glance down to Quinn’s single twin, next to our bunk bed, which she has made with surgical precision as always: perfect corners, neat tucks. I know she’s already off to O-Chem or some other early and impossible premed class.
Just as I sense the primal urge to reach for my iPhone again—scan my socials and skim the news—something buzzes under my pillow.
I fish, retrieving in my palm a true artifact of yesteryear: my old silver Samsung flip phone.
I hold it out with two fingertips like it might give me a rash.
The biggest, most pressing question confronts me: Can I recall how to use it?
Three digital letters glow from the small screen, vibrating: MOM.
My pulse jolts. At both the letters of her name and the fact that it’s 9 a.m. on a weekday—and I’m still in bed.
I think of everything I accomplish before 9 a.m. in my real life.
Peloton workout, beds made, breakfast for five, lunches for three, business emails, several to-do lists . . .
I unflip the cellular time capsule I’m holding. “Mom?” I croak in full morning rasp as I peer down to Camila’s bed underneath mine. Empty too. She’s at the gym or dance class, no doubt.
“Hi, sweetie!” my mom chirps. “Did you just wake up?”
Yikes. “Do I sound that bad?”
She laughs. “You sound like you had a fun night. I just called to see how it was!”
My chest squeezes. She’s so thoughtful, ever on top of everything.
She’s a wonderful mom—the mother I strive to be.
But this time, I realize, this second time living the morning after my twenty-first birthday, I don’t get to tell her that I think I met my husband last night.
Instead, I say, “We had so much fun!” Didn’t we?
My head aches, I realize, but more from my clumsy whack on the ceiling than from the night before. I only had one cocktail, a pink tropical number adorned with lime and hibiscus, then sparkling water and a few sips of champagne. Young and old Sutton both hate the feeling of being out of control.
Still, the night is a blur, memories of two versions of the same night comingling in my muddled time traveler’s brain.
Then I remember . . . no rooftop terrace.
I remember . . . no Reid. I remember . .
. the billboard—there in both timelines—our limo of dances and jokes about the underwear model the size of Godzilla.
But there was a club, and then a saloon, definitely a mechanical bull.
Dancing and laughing and the limo and pink and white . . .
“Quinn and Camila knocked it out of the park,” I say to my mom. “They are so good to me.”
“You need to hang on to friends like that,” she instructs. “They don’t come along every day.”
Or every year. Or decade. “Don’t worry, Mom. I think we’ll be friends for a very long time.”
“Well, Dad and I can’t wait to see you this weekend. We’re bringing Grandma!”
I gulp. Grandma Mabel? Coming up to Los Angeles? But of course. I remember the dinner at the Ivy for this big milestone birthday of mine—us four together, this coming weekend Grandma’s eyes open wide for movie stars.
“I want to see Tom Cruise!” she kept saying. “This feels like his kind of place.”
“He kind of lost his mind, Grandma,” I said gently. “Didn’t you see him jumping on that poor couch last year?”
She scoffed. “Stop, dear. Tom Cruise is perfect. He has that it factor. He’s got longevity. Mark my words.”
I think of Top Gun: Maverick and grin. Grandma was usually right. Even though I’ve always been more of a Tom Hanks girl.
Now, in present day, my beautiful grandma is in a retirement home and bedridden, unable to speak since her stroke last year. The vibrant, glamorous goddess who taught me how to bake a pie, respect myself, say my prayers . . .
“I can’t wait to see you guys either,” I croak into the phone through the heavy ball in my throat. We finalize the plans for Saturday night as my mind whirls with questions of how that will go. “I love you,” I tell her.
“Love you more.”
We hang up, and now, more than anything, I really just do not want to leave this bed. Do I really have no lunches to make? No projects to pitch? Not a single tween or dependent? I wished for youth, and baby, I got it!
While I’m tempted to keep on sleeping, I also don’t want to miss out.
I rub my temples in cozy bliss. What matters most is that I need to make this count—while also not mucking it up.
I genuinely want to savor this, explore the impossible as it unfolds.
Enjoy the freedom. Try on this second chance. How many people truly receive one?
I blow out a breath. It’s thrilling, sure, but how will I know what to do today? How will I live it to the maximum extent of the laws in this weird new world?
Everything will make sense, as much as it needs to, the angel promised.
I recall with relief that I’m nothing if not a schedule junkie with a fervent commitment to calendaring. Right up to present day, I keep a meticulous handwritten planner to mirror my iCal. My daily planner will tell me what to do, and when. I’m sure of it.
I’m jittery, I realize. Unmoored and elated all at once. I don’t like being alone in here. The atmosphere is like a dream with the edge of a possible nightmare. Seriously, can this be real?
I climb down the ladder and pad over to my white laptop. It’s Apple, so tiny, almost as small as a makeup compact—but other than the size, it’s not all that different from my present-day MacBook Air. Phew.
I open my Calendar app and gulp when I see the date: March 16.
The day after my birthday. More proof. I launch the internet and search the news: Texas wildfires produce staggering losses.
I remember those fires, the millions of dollars in devastation, lives wrecked.
Some girls in our house lost their childhood homes.
Lastly, I type Facebook into the browser. Sutton Lancaster pops to color in front of me in her yellow sundress and bright smile:
Sex: Female
Birthday: March 15
Hometown: Newport Beach, California
College: University of Southern California
Major: Theater and Communications
Residence: Alpha Gamma Sorority
I see twelve photo albums and 217 birthday wishes, there, on my Facebook wall. Oh my gosh, the wall—such a social phenom.
I lurch at the next certifiable jump scare: my own two hands. I gasp at them, working the keyboard. Not one single crease, vein, or spot. They’re practically baby hands, milky. I clasp them into a prayerful pose and realize I need the restroom.
My body carries me in my Victoria’s Secret pajama shorts set to the closet, where I yank open the double doors and bend down to grab my shower caddy.
Sure enough, I weirdly know just what to do.
I snatch my towel and head for the hallway, marching down the seafoam-green carpet stuck in the mid- to late nineties.
I could have a field day with a house makeover.
Marble and lavish, the pearly white bathroom is the one space that passes the vibe check.
It greets me with tall ceilings and tender memories.
It’s the only part of the house that’s been renovated, like a midlife woman who only gets Botox in one small part of her face.
A step of renewal, a test in reversing time.
Not unlike my own house, honestly. Or my own face.
I approve. It looks wonderful. Prettier than I remembered.
After claiming a shower stall with my caddy, I strip down to my towel and look both ways to make sure the bathroom is empty.
Sheepishly then, I walk past the long row of porcelain sinks, all the way down and around the corner to the one full-length mirror.
Here we go, head to toe. Let’s see what we’re working with.
Inhaling softly, wrapped in my towel, I swallow at what I see.
I look so impossibly . . . young. First, I touch my makeup-free cheeks, freckled and plump with tight skin.
Laser treatments have erased my freckles over the last few years of my life—and something like sadness stabs me a little at seeing them here again.
My speckled Maisy asked me once after a treatment, black spots flaking off my face, “Mommy, why don’t you like freckles? Are they not pretty?”
Here, I’m reminded that of course they are.
And they make me look so young. I raise my eyebrows and notice plenty of lines, creasing my forehead and framing my eyes.
Expression, personality, nuance—I’ve chosen to freeze some of these things, gradually, medically, in my older age.
I sense a weird squeeze of regret, so I try for a smile.
Yes. Dimples for days. My hair is the same, too, thick and honey-colored, down to my belly button. Oh—my belly button. We need to see how she’s doing.
Nervously, I open the towel to expose the length of my body—with one eye shut and the other peeping at the glass. If this adventure through time is really unfolding, this part will be irrefutable proof.
Despite my smooth golden gams, I expect to hate what I see because, frankly, I never loved my body in college.
Or in my twenties, for that matter. Or my thirties, at that.
I’ve always felt a little too thick in the hips, long in the torso, flat in the chest. But my throat constricts as I scan the length of College Me.
My chest is perky and taut. My waist is narrow.
My belly button, unstretched. I thumb the skin a few inches below it and gulp when I see there’s no C-section scar.
No stretch marks. No twins. I have the heart and the brain of a mom, but the body of a twenty-one-year-old, and isn’t this, well, the dream?
Like last night, my thighs are both lean and smooth, all the skin nicely bronzed—although that’s about to stop because second-chance Sutton will not be caught dead in a tanning bed.
Instinctively, I reach out to my reflection, full of sudden protectiveness toward this Me.
I wish I had more love for her when she needed it.
“I looked amazing,” I hear myself say. Why did I never believe it?
Meeting my own eyes in the mirror, I vow to love us better this time.
I jerk to attention at the sound of the bathroom door creaking open, covering myself back up.
Rounding the corner, I halt when I practically smash right into my friend.
“Sierra!” I cry, lunging toward her, ecstatic—but I stop as she wrinkles her nose and takes a step back.
“Um. Hi.”
It’s barely a greeting, but her familiar Alabama accent is stronger than whiskey. She doesn’t look directly at me, just tosses the casual words and a perfunctory nod.
Sidling up to the sink, she moves languidly, like dripping honey.
She wears a giant SAE T-shirt as a pajama dress, and I must admit, she makes it look good.
Last night’s makeup creates the effect of two bar-brawl shiners around her blue eyes, though—and truly, this shocks me.
In present day, she would never dare sleep without washing her face and applying her seventeen serums.
She looks . . . exhausted. Distracted. In desperate need of a shower. Hungover without a doubt. It pains me that we’re not friends in this version of things, and I can’t help my desire to probe.
Maybe I can shake up the facts. I wonder for the first time if this younger self has the power to change things. Alter other futures, besides my own. I make a mental note to ask the angel.
“What did you do last night?” I blurt and then cringe at myself. She’s a senior, the queen. She probably doesn’t even know my name. “I’m Sutton. I’m in the pledge class below you.”
I study her. The Sierra I know, where are you?
“I know who you are,” she says, squeezing aqua paste onto her toothbrush.
“From rush. Sutton Lancaster, Newport Beach!” She wiggles her shoulders in a small dose of playfulness, but her voice remains flat.
“I went out with a bunch of our girls and some Pi Phis. We just got back a few hours ago. I am beat,” she drawls.
“You don’t look beat,” I lie. “Where did you go? What did you do?”
I’m asking too many questions.
But she throws me parties! She loves my kids! She’s kind and warm!
She’s Sierra.
But who on earth is this chick?
She spits into the sink. “You don’t want to know.”
But I really do. Tell me. “Okay.”
She scrapes her blonde locks into a scrunchie on top of her head, and my gratitude surges that scrunchies remain one of womankind’s greatest historical mainstays.
“I don’t want to corrupt you, sweetheart,” she says.
I lift my chin, taking offense. I’m almost twice your age. “Try me.”
“You sure?”
I lift my brows in a dare.
She dabs her lips clean with a towel. “We went to the Hox House.”
“You did?” I widen my eyes, faking admiration while siphoning through ancient facts.
Click. Of course. The Hox House. The once-famous name twists around in my stomach.
It was known at the time for being one of the hottest clubs in Los Angeles—but also hauntingly more than that.
There were too many whispers of what went down behind those doors.
Eventually louder stories came out: the drugs, the crime, the abuse.
Officials finally shut the place down, ten years ago.
“You went all the way to Hollywood?” I ask. Did she really use to go to the Hox House? I knew USC girls went sometimes—but not from our sorority, I assumed. I thought we were—I don’t know—the “classy” ones. Sierra, one day you wear pearl headbands on a regular basis! How much did I never know?
Her eyes finally spark at me in the mirror. “Don’t ever go there.” She smacks her toothbrush on the edge of the sink, knuckles white. “It’s not a good place.”
With that, she spins away in her slippers, and I’m left alone, wondering how it’s possible we ever become like sisters.