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Grade
7

I reached under my bed and my fingers brushed against a hard object. I grabbed it and pulled it out from under the bed. I sat up and looked down at what I was holding. It was a circular box wrapped in purple wrapping paper. There was a piece of paper taped to it that said my name. It said: Dear Drissa, open this box when you’re leaving for college. I hope that it will help you. Love, your grandma. I smiled at the piece of paper with the familiar loopy handwriting and the adamant refusal to call me “Dris”, which was what everyone else called me. Grandma was the only one who could call me “Drissa” and not receive a stink eye.

Grandma had died when I was fourteen, but before that, she had been my best friend. I know, it’s weird to have an old lady as your best friend, but I didn’t care. Whenever my people would ask me who my best friend was, I would say, “My grandma,” and they would look at me like I was the craziest girl in the world. Grandma was one of the only people who really understood me because she had been just like me when she was my age: quiet and introverted, but inside, an observant, smart, and strong-willed person. I didn’t really look like either of my parents. I looked a little bit like my dad,  but I looked the most like his mom, my grandmother, with the same black hair, the same brown eyes, and the same faint dimples. I remember that whenever someone was mean to me at school, I would go home and call her, and we would laugh about how silly and insecure people could be, to the point where they would decide it was okay to make fun of my poofy ponytail and my large glasses and my strange clothes. We would talk about her latest travels, and I would tell her about school and my friends. I didn’t see her in person that often because she lived on a different continent, but when my family went to visit her, I would always have the best time. She hadn’t even been that old when she died. After her death, I had been devastated.

I looked back at the box. Well, I was leaving for college now, wasn’t I? I ripped apart the wrapping paper to find a round blue box. I balled up the wrapping paper and dumped it in the trash can under my desk and pulled the lid off the box. Inside was a sand timer. It looked ancient and very fancy, and the sand inside was literally golden. It was beautiful, but how was a sand timer supposed to “help” me? What did I even need help with? How did my grandmother know what I needed help with if I didn’t even know? I stared at the sand timer, and I flipped it. I watched as the golden sand slipped down, back to the bottom. A minute had passed when I felt the ground shift under me, and I looked up. I wasn’t in my room anymore. I looked at the ground to see the stone floors of Grandma’s old fashioned village house instead of the dark blue carpet of my room. I saw the chalky white walls that would stain your fingers if you touched them. I saw the wooden ceiling that my grandfather had painted yellow so that it wouldn’t deteriorate. I hadn’t known him that well, because he’d died when I was five. I was in my grandmother’s house, and I had no idea why. I opened my mouth….and I screamed. Then something even stranger happened. Grandma came rushing into the room. My eyes widened and I screamed even louder. She seemed surprised, but then she looked at the sand timer that I was still clutching in my hand and she smiled. She came over to me and pulled me into a hug. “Grandma! How are you alive? What am I doing here? How did I even get here?” I asked, my voice muffled by her shoulder. She sighed and pulled back to look at me.

“Hello, Drissa. I’m guessing that in the present I’ve already died, from what you said. I’m still dead. You’ve just traveled back in time,” she said. I stared at her, trying to see if she was lying. I could usually tell because I was an observant person, and she wasn’t. My grandma never lied, which was how I knew that she was telling the truth.

“How?” I asked. Grandma gestured towards the sand timer that I was clutching in my hands.

“The sand timer. It’s magic. I must have given it to you before I died, knowing that you would need it,” she said. I stared at her, trying to act as though this wasn’t the craziest thing that had ever happened to me. Anything was possible, I guess. I noticed how my grandmother hadn’t commented on how much I’d grown, which I was glad about. She knew I hated that because she was the same as me. We both didn’t like change very much. 

“W-Wh-What year is it? I mean, like, how old am I? In this year?” I stammered.
“You’re twelve. You’ve traveled five years back in the past,” she answered. I gulped and nodded.

“Your note said the sand timer would help me. Help me with what, exactly?” I asked. Grandma looked at me, and I knew she was thinking of what to say.

“How do you feel about going to college?” she asked. What? Why was she asking that? What did that have to do with anything?

“Fine, I guess,” I answered slowly. She nodded, but she didn’t look like she believed me. 

“How do you feel about my death? Have you moved on?” she asked. I looked at her like she was crazy.

“Of course I have! I mean...I’ve come to terms with it and accepted it,” I mumbled, trying to sound sure of myself. But even I didn’t believe myself, and I knew Grandma didn’t either.

“Have you really?” she asked. I looked into her eyes and burst into tears. I hadn’t cried in a long time, the last time being when I was fourteen. I had decided that to move on, I had to stop being sad. So that was what I did. I had bottled up my tears for the last three years, and now it was all pouring out. Grandma cradled me in her arms and I cried into her shoulder, no doubt making her blouse wet. She pulled back and gave me a sad smile. “I think you do know what you need help with. You aren’t ready to go to college yet, because you’re still holding on to the memory of me. You tried to move on by keeping your sadness inside, but that didn’t work. It only made you sadder,” she said. I stared at her in surprise. Grandma had always been able to read my mind. I dried the tears off my face and looked down at my lap. “It’s okay to be sad, Drissa. You can be sad about one thing but still be happy in your life. You aren’t dishonoring my memory if you let yourself be truly happy. I don’t want you to be sad all the time. And remember that I love you and if there is such a thing as heaven, then I will always be watching over you. And your brother,” she said, adding the last part as though it were an afterthought. My little brother, who had just finished fifth grade, had never been as close with Grandma as I had.

Grandma was right. I had to move on, but how was I going to get used to such a big change? I had never really been good at coping with change. I guess I’d have to figure it out on my own. “Thank you, Grandma. Thank you for helping me. I miss you, and I love you too,” I said, giving her a hug. She smiled. “So are you going to explain this magic sand timer to me now? How am I going to get home?” I asked.

“I came across the sand timer during my travels. It is an ancient artifact that can give you the power to travel to the past and the future once when you need it the most. But when you get back to the present, it will be a normal sand timer. It won’t work for you anymore. You’ll have to pass it on to someone else who needs it,” she explained.

“Wait, so I’ll go to the future, too? How far in the future? And how do I get home? I still have to finish packing,” I said.

“You’ll travel the same amount of years you traveled into the past. So, five years. You get to meet your twenty-two-year-old self! And you’ll only get back home once your problem is resolved,” said Grandma.

“What? My problem isn’t resolved yet?” I asked.

“I guess twenty-two-year-old Drissa has some advice for seventeen-year-old Drissa,” she said, shrugging. “To get to the future, you have to flip the sand timer and wait for all the sand to reach the bottom. At the end of the minute, you’ll be there,” she answered. I flipped the timer and watched the golden sand slip back down for the first few seconds. 

I turned to Grandma and said, “I’ll miss you, Grandma. Thank you for all your help.” I hugged her again, and as I was hugging her, I felt her body disappear from my arms and I felt the ground shift. 

I was no longer sitting on a stone floor, and now I was sitting on a generic grey carpet in front of a wooden door with a number on it. I was in a hallway of identical doors on each side of it. I had a feeling, and urge, telling me that I had to knock on the door I was sitting in front of. I looked at the sand timer, and it was moving, vibrating, almost as if it was telling me to knock on the door, so I stood up, brushed myself off, and knocked. The door opened a few seconds later, and twenty-two-year-old me was standing there. I couldn’t believe how much I had changed. I looked so sure of myself and less….sad. Also, my hair looked way better. I guess my flyaways had finally grown out because my hair wasn’t as poofy anymore.

“So today’s the day, huh? I knew this was coming soon,” she said. I stared at her, not knowing what to say. “Come in, before someone sees you!” she said, grabbing my arm and pulling me inside. 

It was an apartment. My apartment. Did I live alone? How had I gotten used to that? Maybe my future self wasn’t as scared of change as I was. 

“So, mini-Dris. How’s Grandma?” asked future-me, breaking the silence.

“I’m not mini-Dris. And Grandma is fine. Still dead,” I said indignantly. 

“That’s what I said to future-Dris when I was seventeen,” she said, smiling.

“When you were seventeen, you were me,” I said.

“And when you’re twenty-two, will you be me? Will you say the exact same things that I’m saying to the next seventeen-year-old Dris? And was there an original Dris and an original future Dris? Are there multiple timelines to allow this to happen? We don’t know. The future isn’t set in stone,” said future-Dris. “Time travel is confusing, mini-Dris.”

“You’re hurting my brain. When did I get so deep?” I asked.

“When I learned from my future-Dris what I’m about to tell you,” she answered. She left the main room and went down a hallway. She came back holding a piece of crumpled up lined paper.

“What is that?” I asked.

My future-Dris read her speech off a piece of paper, and I decided that I should probably write it down because you and I both know how terrible our memory is,” she said. I smiled for the first time since I’d met future-Dris.

“Can I borrow a piece of paper? And a pencil?” I asked. Future-Dris nodded.

When we were both ready, sitting at the kitchen table across from each other,  future-Dris cleared her throat and started reading off her paper. “Dear mini-Dris, if you are hearing this speech right now, that means you’ve just come from talking to Grandma, and we both know that Grandma is way smarter than we are, so forgive me if my advice sounds immature. I know you’ve been wondering how you’ll ever be able to let go of Grandma, even after what she told you, and that you don’t know how you’re going to be able to just accept all the change and let go of the past. How can you just go with the flow of your normal, boring life and not think of all these good memories of things that happened when you were young, all these shared memories with friends and family that you love? Do they remember? Do they even care? How can you not think about better, more fun times, when things were good? Unlike the present, which is so boring and lonely. How can you stand to be alone when you have all these memories of a life filled with the people you love, a life you are leaving behind to go to college? These are questions that everyone asks themselves, and I don’t know the answers to them. But what I do know is that you can’t let the past control you. You have to learn to accept that what’s happened in the past is over, and you have to focus on making new memories. The people you love are still there. And even if they’re gone, you can always remember that they will always love you and that you will always love them. No matter how much you have changed and no matter how much they have changed. The memories will always be there, but you can’t spend all your time thinking about them. Nostalgia is nobody’s friend, and it will only make you sadder. I think that’s why you couldn’t move on from Grandma’s death. You let the nostalgia consume you, and the happy memories were making you sad because you couldn’t think about anything else. Even as you change and grow, those memories and the people you love will stay with you, as long as you don’t let them control you. Don’t try to stop the change, just let it happen. Even as everything around you changes, know that there are parts of  you that will never change.” 

Future-Dris finished reading and looked up at me. My hand was throbbing, but I had managed to get it all down on my paper, even as tears were streaking down my face for the second time that day. My paper was covered in teardrops. Future-Dris saw my tears and gave me an understanding smile. She came over to me and showed me her paper. It was covered in tears too. Each dried teardrop was in the exact same spot as it was on my paper. I wiped the tears off my face and smiled at my future self.

“How’d I do? Did it sound mature enough?” asked future-Dris jokingly. I hugged her to answer her question. “So are you ready to go home mini-Dris?” she asked.

“I think I am. For real, this time,” I said. Just then, someone knocked on the apartment door. “Who’s that?” I asked. 

Future-Dris’s face went red. “I may have changed, but I’m still the same on the inside. I still have a fear of living alone. What if someone breaks in and there’s no one to help me? There are crazy men out there who target girls who live alone...if you know what I mean. I heard about it on the news once when I was twelve-” I cut her off.

“Yeah, I remember that news story. Anyways, I can’t exactly say it was nice to meet you because you’re me, so...bye future-Dris! Thanks for all your help,” I said, flipping the sand timer. I smiled at her and stood up from my chair, gripping the sand timer in one hand and the tear-stained speech in the other hand. Future-Dris waved goodbye as the ground shifted under me. This time, the world spun around me and I could feel change in the air. When everything stopped spinning, I was back on the floor of my room. I smiled down at the sand timer and hugged it to my chest. I flipped it, and I watched as the golden sand fell back to the bottom. When a minute had passed, nothing happened. The sand timer was just a normal sand timer now.

I put the sand timer back in Grandma’s round blue box and closed the lid.