POSTMARKED 2046
The envelope appeared between the electricity bill and an advertisement for a new supermarket.
My name was handwritten across it.
Not unusual.
The strange part was the handwriting.
It was mine.
I opened the envelope.
Inside was one sheet of paper.
Dear Aarav,
You are fifteen years old today. I am thirty-five.
I stopped reading.
My birthday was tomorrow.
Nobody should have known about the argument I had just had with Dad.
Nobody definitely should have known what thirty-five-year-old me wanted to say about it.
I continued.
First: apologise to Dad. You will eventually understand why he keeps asking you to take your studies seriously. He is terrible at explaining it. You are equally terrible at listening.
That sounded annoyingly believable.
Second: stop worrying about whether everyone likes you. You will not remember half their names.
Rude.
Also believable.
Then came instructions.
On 17 September, your science teacher will ask for volunteers for a competition. Raise your hand.
In November, Rishi will ask whether you want to help him start something. Say yes.
And please learn how to cook before university. Trust me.
I laughed.
Then I reached the final paragraph.
There is one thing I cannot tell you.
I cannot give you examination questions, lottery numbers or a list of everything that goes wrong. I used to think that if I could send you this letter, I would prevent every mistake.
I don’t want to anymore.
I read that twice.
Some of my best decisions happened because one of your plans failed. Some of my closest friends entered my life because you went somewhere you did not want to go. Some things will hurt. I wish I could remove those parts for you. But removing them would also remove the person writing this letter.
At the bottom was one final sentence.
Do not try to become me too quickly. I already got my turn to be thirty-five. You only get one chance to be fifteen.
There was no signature.
Just a small ink mark shaped like a star.
I sat there for several minutes.
Then I did the obvious thing.
I inspected the envelope.
No address.
No stamp.
No clue.
I placed the letter in my desk drawer.
The next morning, I apologised to Dad.
He looked suspicious.
“What do you want?”
“Nothing.”
This made him even more suspicious.
Two weeks later, on 17 September, my science teacher walked into class.
“We’re looking for volunteers for an inter-school innovation challenge.”
My heart began hammering.
Around me, nobody moved.
I remembered the letter.
Then another thought arrived.
What if raising my hand was exactly what caused everything my future self regretted?
What if the letter was not advice?
What if it was a trap created by my own choices?
The teacher looked around.
“Anyone?”
I stared at my hand.
For the first time, I understood the problem with knowing the future.
You could follow it.
You could fight it.
But either way, it was making the decision for you.
So I did something the letter had never mentioned.
I raised my other hand.
“Ma’am,” I said, “can you tell us more about the competition first?”
She smiled.
“Excellent question.”
And somewhere, twenty years away, I hoped a thirty-five-year-old version of me was staring at a disappearing sentence and wondering what I had just changed.
