This Time Tomorrow

by Emma Straub

she had always been just fine. So fine that no one ever checked to see what was happening underneath.

Alice wondered if no one ever felt as old as they were because it happened so slowly, and you were only ever one day slower and creakier, and the world changed so gradually that by the time cars had evolved from boxy to smooth, or green taxis had joined yellow ones, or MetroCards had replaced tokens, you were used to it. Everyone was a lobster in the pot.

Sometimes she felt like everyone she knew had already become whatever they were going to become, and she was still just waiting.

“Everything matters,” Melinda said. “But you can change your mind. Almost always.”

Maybe that was the trick to life: to notice all the tiny moments in the day when everything else fell away and, for a split second, or maybe even a few seconds, you had no worries, only pleasure, only appreciation of what was right in front of you. Transcendental meditation, maybe, but with hot dogs and the knowledge that everything would change, the good and the bad, and so you might as well appreciate the good.

The problem with adulthood was feeling like everything came with a timer—a

This was how Alice imagined marriage, and family—always having someone to float through the day with, someone with whom it didn’t take three emails and six texts and a last-minute reservation change to see one another.

The first twenty years of her life had gone by in slow motion—the endless summers, the space from birthday to birthday almost immeasurable—but the second twenty years had gone by in a flash. Days could still be slow, of course, but weeks and months and sometimes even years zipped along, like a rope slipping through your hands.