Page 3 of 16 Forever

“Hey,” a man’s voice says. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, you know,” Mom says. “I’ll let you talk to him.” She hands me the phone. “It’s... Well, you’ll see.”

“Hey, bro,” the man on the screen says, and I sort of want to pass out because he does resemble my little brother. He really does. But, like, a nineteen-year-oldmanversion of him. His huge locks are gone, replaced by a short cut with a few bouncy curls dangling down his forehead. He’s sitting in front of a white wall, a sticker that says Arlo Parks behind him. “Happy birthday.”

I look up at Mom and Dad. “Who is this? Did you hire anactorto play older Lincoln? This is seriously messed up.”

“I know this seems batshit, CT,” the man on-screen says, smoothly incorporating Lincoln’s nickname for me, “and itisbatshit, but it’s what we’ve all been dealing with for more than half a decade.”

“What are you talking about? My brother is thirteen. Which isless than sixteen.”

“No, I know,” the Lincoln imposter says. “But you’ve been sixteen for six years. And every time you’re about to turn seventeen, you don’t. You flip back to thinking you’re sixteen, and you lose all the memories and, like, physical changes from the past year. And it just happened again.”

I stare at the screen for a long moment.

Then I start cracking up. “Dude, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. And so unnecessarily complicated.” I look to my parents, who are both grimacing like they need to number two. “Mom and Dad, you have to keep a prank simple. Like, you could’ve rearranged the furniture or something, put all the kitchen stuff in the bathroom, so, for example, I’m about to pee, right? But then there’s a microwave on the toilet. And I’m like,Whaaaaaa?And you’re like,Ha ha!And I’m like,Ohhhhh.That would be a good pr—”

“Our wrestling safe word isCheetos,” fake Lincoln says.

I look back at the screen. “Come again?”

“We once accidentally broke the glass on Mom and Dad’s wedding photo—the one where they’re standing in a random meadow holding umbrellas—and Dad freaked out at us and said we were maniacs. We once wrote a play about being doctors in space doing surgery on an alien, and we performed it for Mom and Dad and Uncle Flip and Uncle Jed. Well, actually, you said you weren’t a writer so I would have to come up with everything myself, but then you kept having all these great ideas.”

My fingers are trembling. That is a lot of really specific information.

“Okay,” I say, working extra hard to form the words. “So... clearly my parents prepared you well. But did they tell you what thenameof the alien in the play was?”

“Ah yes!” the guy says, excited. “You asked me this last year, and I couldn’t remember, so I dug up the play from the box in the basement. It’s Flanghorn! The alien is Flanghorn.”

He’s right, dammit. The alien was Flanghorn.

I glance at my parents, and suddenly I see it: They look a little older than they did last night. Mom’s black pixie cut is the same, but she has way more lines on her face. Dad’s hair, on the other hand, has gone almost entirely gray.

Which is when it dawns on me:

This might not be a prank.

Maggie

He hasn’t texted yet.

This isn’t good.

But there’s still hope. Right?

Maybe his parents took away his phone, thinking he would loop back, but then hedidn’t.

So he needs to get his phone back from them andthenhe’ll text back.

Something like:

Success, Mags! It really worked!

Maybe he won’t text. Maybe he’ll call.

We should have discussed this ahead of time.

But, really, any kind of message coming through this phone will suffice.