This Time Tomorrow

by Emma Straub

Some of those fancy writers were deep, true nerds under the surface,

everyone was equally terrified all the time, and that all high school power required was confidence.

Childhood was a combination of people and places and smells and bus stop advertisements and local jingles.

no one who loved Keanu Reeves could avoid time travel for long.

grief was something that moved in and stayed. Maybe it moved from one side of the room to the other, farther away from the window, but it was always there.

Any story could be a comedy or a tragedy, depending on where you ended it. That was the magic, how the same story could be told an infinite number of ways.

If there’s one thing I know to be true, it’s that stories help, always.