Text From the Future: Dump Your Girlfriend novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Question Before the Exam
A viral app texts Malcolm that his girlfriend and best friend are betraying him; he takes the SAT in full and walks to the Starlite Motel, where he knows the voices behind the door.
Four minutes before the SAT, every senior in the hallway outside the library was typing to their future self.
Kids lined the lockers with their thumbs going, reading the answers out loud and laughing.
The app was called Talk to Your Future Self, and everybody had it.
I took out my phone, mostly because everyone else was doing it.
I typed: Dear Future Me, did I end up marrying Chelsea Alder?
The screen flickered. A text came in from a number I didn't know.
Yes. The wedding is huge. Your whole street comes.
I grinned at the lockers.
Chelsea lived two streets over, and I had known her since we were seven.
She had been my girlfriend since my eighteenth birthday in January.
I typed: Is Toby my best man? He's been my best friend since fourth grade.
The answer came right away.
He is. He's also the man in your wife's bed on your wedding night.
I read it twice with my thumb still over the keyboard.
Another text arrived before I could type anything.
Last night she asked you to tank your exam. She wants you at Ashford State, where Toby can keep up.
A second later came the rest of it.
She doesn't want him feeling small next to you.
Last night.
I had been standing in my driveway with Chelsea's hand in mine.
She had said she felt awful and was sure she'd bombed the math section.
She had said there was no way she was getting into a good school.
Then she had looked down at her phone, looked back up at me, and asked me to leave the last section blank.
"Then you, me and Toby can all go to Ashford State," she'd said. "We'd never have to be apart. I'd love only you for the rest of my life."
I had laughed, because it was ridiculous.
Then I had said yes, because it was Chelsea, and I couldn't remember ever telling her no.
The phone buzzed again.
If you don't believe me, go to the Starlite Motel on Dunmore Road after the exam. Room 9.
The warning bell rang.
Students pushed past me toward the library doors.
I stood there until the proctor said my name.
"Malcolm Lindahl, phones in the bin."
I switched mine off and dropped it into the canvas pouch with all the others.
I sat down at my assigned desk, and the booklet was in front of me.
I couldn't read the first question.
I thought about Chelsea's hand in my driveway.
I thought about Toby's laugh in April, when I told him Kingswell University was my dream school.
"Dude, you'd hate Massachusetts," he'd said.
Toby had never once offered to split a check.
I had paid for his bowling and his gas and his burgers since the ninth grade.
Chelsea always said his family struggled and he'd had a hard life.
I tried to think of a reason the texts were fake.
Maybe it was a prank by some kid in the hall, or a glitch.
But no prank would know what Chelsea had asked me last night.
I could ruin the exam like I'd promised and follow her to Ashford State.
I would find out in a year, or ten, whether the texts were true.
Or I could take the exam for real.
If I was wrong, I would apologize to her for the rest of the summer.
If I was right, I would be throwing away three years of work for two people who had already decided what I was worth.
So I turned to the first page and started writing.
The proctor called time at noon.
Outside, kids were tearing pages out of prep books and tossing them off the steps.
A girl from my chemistry class was crying and laughing at once.
I got my phone out of the bin and turned it on in the middle of the crowd.
Two messages came in.
The first was from Chelsea.
Babe, how'd it go?? My mom is driving me to my grandma's tonight, so I can't celebrate with you guys.
Love you. XOXO. I'll make it up to you!
The second was from Toby.
Dude, my stomach is killing me. Gastritis again, I'm going home to lie down.
You two go eat barbecue without me.
I looked from one to the other.
Both of them had a reason to be somewhere else tonight, and both reasons had come in within a minute of each other.
On any other day I would have bought Toby stomach medicine and walked Chelsea to her car.
I put my phone in my pocket and walked off the steps alone.
I went past the buses and through the gap in the fence behind the gym.
Dunmore Road smelled like hot asphalt.
The Starlite was a two-story motel with a broken sign and a vending machine in the breezeway.
Room 9 was on the second floor.
I climbed the stairs one at a time.
The carpet in the hallway was worn through to the backing, and the whole corridor smelled of air freshener sprayed over something else.
I stopped at the door.
There were voices on the other side.
I knew both of them.
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