In the second week of June, our family moved into the familiar house where I spent my teenage years in Matthew’s timeline and was about to repeat my teenage years as Maya. Our family had been packed inside of the blue Ford Bronco as we followed the moving trucks to the north suburbs of Minneapolis. It wasn’t a long drive, though with an entire house full of appliances and a couple of kids, there was a lot to move. The moving truck was backing into the driveway, and we parked in the street in front of the front yard.
It was an orange/brown split-level house with a connected two-car garage. The front door opened up to the entryway that led to a TV room and fireplace. To the left was the garage and to the right were half-stairs going up and half-stairs going down. The kitchen, sitting room, and the master bedroom were upstairs, and down was the basement lounge as well as Tim’s room and my own. It was like a photograph coming to life; the feel of the carpet on my toes and even the slight oak smell in my nostrils were the same.
The movers began hauling in our boxes while Mom and Dad coordinated, and us kids simply wandered around getting our bearings. Eventually, boxes marked with our names started appearing out of the moving truck, and Mom called us in to start unloading. I found it amusing that Dad or one of the movers insisted on carrying my boxes to my room, but Tim was expected to lug his down himself. Being exempted from manual labor was definitely a perk of being a girl.
I was staring at the upstairs bedroom that was designated as Mom’s office and hobby room, as the movers lugged her sewing equipment and desk inside. The dull ache in my chest I’d felt for weeks as I watched what would have been my sister Jane’s room was particularly wrenching. I had been quietly mourning her loss for weeks now, with everyone in my family assuming I was sad about leaving my old house. It was easier to let them think that; there was no way to describe the loss of someone who was never going to be born.
“Excuse me, miss. We need to get through here,” one of the movers said behind me, carrying boxes of pots and pans. I realized that I was getting in the way of all the bustling, so I squeezed past them and went out the front door to sit on the porch. The movers weren’t even halfway done emptying out the truck. Bored, I sat on the edge watching everyone work since most of my things were still buried in the back of the truck. It was then that I saw my brother Tim purposefully walk out of the garage and make his way down the driveway.
“Tim,” I called out, chasing after him. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go out and see if there are any kids in the neighborhood,” Tim had decided. He was just the kind of eight-year-old boy who would simply ring random doorbells looking for friends. “Mom said it was okay as long as we stayed on our street.”
I decided to join him, since it seemed like a perfectly innocent way to reacclimate myself to the neighborhood I remembered from my previous life. My middle school years of my previous timeline were lonely and isolated, and as Matthew I had no fond memories of this period in time. I had been thinking deeply about how I could make a better go of it this time around, but that meant I had to learn to do it as a girl. Something I had no clue about.
We made our way, house by house, down the hill. Tim would walk up to the front doors, introduce himself, and ask if any kids lived there. I merely followed him as he took the lead. The first few doors we knocked on were fruitless; there was a retired couple, a couple with a pair of toddlers, and a house with a girl Tim’s age that he took an instant dislike to. I vaguely remembered these people from my memories, but had never actually met them.
Near the end of the street, Tim rang the doorbell as I hung back. A woman who was blocked from my sight by my angle to a bush answered the door.
“Hello, ma’am,” began Tim with his hands behind his back. “My name is Tim and we just moved up the hill, and we wanted to know if there are any kids who live here. I’m eight.”
“Well, nice to meet you, Tim! I’m Mrs. Janski. Well, I have one daughter, but she’s older than you are.” I could hear the amusement at Tim’s earnestness in her voice.
“Oh,” said Tim disappointedly. “Well, my sister Maya is eleven.”
She stepped out of the doorway and peered over to me standing off to the side. “Well, hello Maya! My daughter is also eleven! Let me introduce you. Come inside!”
I recognized the dark-haired woman immediately. No, it couldn’t be, I thought to myself as Tim and I stepped inside.
“Catherine!” Mrs. Janski called from the entryway. “We have some visitors! I want to introduce you to someone!”
From downstairs, a girl poked her head through the door, curious. She was shorter than me with a bob of dark hair slightly shorter than mine. Mrs. Janski continued. “It seems as if we have some new neighbors!”
I cleared my throat, assembling my friendliest voice and pretending my heart wasn’t rising to my throat. “Hi, my name…is Maya and this is my brother Tim. We just moved in up the street. I’m going to be in sixth grade.”
Catherine grinned. “I’m going to be in sixth grade too!”
“You know,” Mrs. Janski murmured, “I just made a batch of cookies. Why don’t you girls go upstairs and sit down at the table? You can have some too, Tim.”
Tim was already eyeballing the door, since he was not interested in a house with no boys his own age. The promise of cookies was the only thing luring him upstairs. I quietly sat at the Janskis’ dinner table, trying not to gawk at everything. Catherine gave me a friendly smile and started asking me questions about myself. I kept tripping over my words, which I hoped came across as me being shy instead of dumbstruck. I couldn’t stop staring at her.
Tim eventually snuck out of their house after devouring his cookies, and I suspected that he was eager to get away from all of the girl-talk. Catherine showed me around her house, eventually ending up in her bedroom where she showed me some of her toys. It was also the first time I had spent any amount of time in a girl’s room doing girl things. It was surreal watching Catherine talk about herself. I ended up having dinner with the Janskis, where I mostly sat politely and soaked everything in. Catherine’s parents thought I was a very well-behaved girl.
When the streetlights came on, that was the signal that it was time to go home. Catherine and I made plans to hang out the next day, and with a pensive wave I made for home. I was still in shock as I walked up the hill and back to my house. The moving truck was gone, though there was still some activity around the house. I nonchalantly entered through the garage and right into Mom, who was sifting through boxes in the TV room.
“Young lady, where have you been?” scolded Mom. “I expected Tim to disappear without telling us, but not you!”
“I was just down the street. I…made friends with a girl named Catherine.”
Mom’s anger immediately disappeared. “You made a new friend?” She smiled.
“Yeah,” I answered uncomfortably. “Her name’s…Catherine Janski. She’s, um, in the same grade as me.”
Mom’s smile got even wider. “Maya, that’s so good to hear! Did they feed you?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Well, that’s good to hear. Now go down into your room and start unpacking some things. You don’t have to do everything, but at least put on your sheets so you can sleep tonight. Then you can tell me everything about this Catherine.”
“Everything, huh,” I whispered under my breath as I went downstairs. “Sure.”
For starters, she was my wife.
***
I locked the door and pulled out my familiar notebook, which I had recently named the Butterfly Manifesto. Decades’ worth of future events and my plans to navigate them made the name seem appropriate. I sat on my fluffy carpet in the middle of the room, set it on my lap, and opened it to the tab marked FAMILY, where Catherine had her own entry. It wasn’t as dire as the other entries I had listed, but it was one of the more detailed sections I had.
Matthew and Catherine may have lived in the same town and gone to the same schools growing up, but they moved in different circles and were practically strangers. She was a popular cheerleader in high school, whereas I was more of a nerdy loner. We rarely interacted with each other, and eventually life took us in separate directions.
We didn’t officially meet for many years. Catherine enrolled at DePaul University in Chicago spent her twenties working various low-level office jobs until she crawled her way up to an operations manager job at a firm. It was the same firm where I was hired as a financial analyst. It was an amusing encounter at a holiday party where we realized after years of being in the same office that we grew up in the same neighborhood. We started dating not long after.
As I read Catherine’s entry in the Butterfly Manifesto, I felt pangs of sadness that her husband would never exist. I knew there was no chance that anything would happen now; Catherine was many things, but she definitely wasn’t gay. I didn’t even know if I was. It felt wrong just contemplating a relationship like that. I didn’t expect to meet Catherine and my former in-laws so suddenly, and it was strange seeing her as the girl she was compared to the woman I married.
Still, this time around we had managed to meet as friends. I didn’t remember many kids my age in our neighborhood, and Catherine had been the first who ever saw me as just another girl instead of an ex-boy. It felt right, oddly enough. And if part of my plan in the Butterfly Manifesto was to improve myself, Catherine would be a safe way to figure out how to live like a girl. Plus it would be intriguing to get to know her as a kid.
“Good morning, Maya,” Mom greeted cheerfully when I woke up the next day. “Your father ran out to bring breakfast home. Would you mind helping me put away some of this kitchen stuff?”
I gestured to Tim, who was just sitting idly at the table. “Why can’t Tim do it?”
Mom shot me a look. “Because I asked you, young lady.”
I didn’t argue, and started pulling out utensils and handing them to Mom. Intuitively, I remembered which one went where, since I had lived in this house for over a decade in my previous timeline. It still annoyed me that Tim happily played on his Game Boy while we worked. Dad came home about fifteen minutes later, carrying several oily bags from a fast food breakfast, and everyone gathered at the table to have our first family meal in the new house.
“After we’re done eating,” began Mom with an egg muffin in her mouth, “Tim, I want you to help your father in the garage. Maya is going to help me finish up the kitchen and then we’re going to set up the bathroom.”
“Why aren’t I helping Dad in the garage?” I asked. “There’s a lot more to do out there.”
Dad cleared his throat. “You’re older, and the kitchen stuff is more breakable.”
“So you’re going to let Tim haul around your power tools?”
“Of course,” smirked Tim, “that job isn't for girls.”
“Tim, be quiet,” shot Dad, “and Maya, don’t argue.”
“All I’m saying is that –” I was cut off by the doorbell ringing. Collectively, we all glanced towards the front door, not expecting any visitors. Mom wiped her mouth and stood up to answer the door. I followed her, and from the top of the stairs I saw Catherine peeking through the side windows. Mom opened the door.
“Hello, ma’am. My name’s Catherine Janski and I wanted to see if Maya was home.”
Mom pursed her lips amusedly. “Well, nice to meet you, Catherine! I’m Maya’s mother. Please come in! It’s a bit of a mess at the moment.”
Catherine stepped inside, and I waved as I descended the stairs. “Hey, Catherine!”
“I brought my bike here,” said Catherine. “We could ride bikes today, if you wanted to, Maya.”
“Is that okay, Mom?” I asked.
“You know, it’s so hectic here,” observed Mom. “You two should get out of the house today. I think your bike is unpacked and in the garage somewhere.”
“Hey!!” shouted Tim at the top of the stairs. “Why does Maya get to go out today and I have to unpack?!”
I flashed a wicked grin at Tim. “You’ve got a job that isn’t for girls, remember?”
Tim sneered at me and went back to the table to finish breakfast. The two of us scampered out the door to the garage. I had to dig a bit to pull my green bike out and wheeled it out to the driveway. Catherine was already on her white and pink bike.
“That’s your bike?” Catherine asked. “It looks like a boy’s bike.”
I glanced down at it, realizing it was one of my few possessions that survived the boy-purge from last summer. “Oh, I just liked the color,” I pivoted. “So, where are we going to go?”
“Well, I could show you where the parks and everything is around here.”
“Sounds good,” I agreed. I knew where everything was, but I decided to be polite and let Catherine take the lead. We biked around the block to the nearby school and the adjoining playground. We rode over to the nearby Tom Thumb, a local convenience store, as well as the nearby library. Catherine liked to read as well, but obviously not all of the overly complex books I read.
We spent a lot of time asking each other questions, though I tried to stay relatively quiet and observant. I tried my best to match the way Catherine was talking and gesturing, as if she was my template for girl-talk. She was happy to answer any question, and was generally very chatty. We rode down one street, and Catherine told me to pull into one of the houses with her.
I was soon introduced to Danielle, a heavier girl with long dark hair, who pulled out her own bicycle and joined us on our ride. We biked down the street to yet another house and another friend of Catherine’s named Carla. The new girls began asking me the same questions Catherine had, and I tried my best to give the kind of response Catherine would.
I made a number of observations about the girls, really trying to emulate them to the best of my ability. I suppose I was still self-conscious, but I was quietly elated that I was just “one of the girls,” something that I could never have been back in my old town. I learned quickly that girls could be so bawdy when no one was around. I acted modestly because that’s what I thought girls were supposed to do. They all seemed to like me however, and I actually enjoyed their company.
The four of us roamed around the neighborhood for the rest of the afternoon. There were various kids we encountered here and there, but as far as I was concerned I already had my gang. It was funny; in Matthew’s timeline I spent the majority of my middle school years rather isolated and didn’t really make friends for the first year of middle school. Somehow as Maya I had a group of friends within the first day. Is this how easy it is for girls, or did I just get lucky?
The sun was starting to sink below the trees, and I figured it was time to go home. The girls rode with me to my house, where Tim and Dad were tossing a baseball in the front yard. Mom was on the front porch hanging up a few decorations on the front door. Mom had an amused look on her face when she saw me ride up with my posse of girls, and I had to ask her what our new phone number was. I collected each of the girls’ numbers and handed out my own, and they all waved goodbye as they sped off.
I sat with Mom on the porch, chatting about my day while we watched Dad and Tim play catch. Mom wanted to know everything, and I relayed every bit of information about my new friends. Even Dad was impressed that I made so many friends so quickly, since I had had a reputation of not making friends even when I was Matthew. When Dad was out of earshot, I whispered a concern.
“Mom…do I have to tell them about me at some point?”
Mom blinked. “Tell them what, sweetheart?”
“You know. How I was born Matthew.”
Mom shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Your birth certificate says Maya Elizabeth Brown. And last time I checked, there’s not one bit of boyness in you. You don’t need to tell people everything.”
I went silent. True, the less I say the better.
Mom threw her arm around my shoulder. “Maya. This is why we moved to this new house. We wanted you to get a fresh start.”
I frowned. “I thought it was because Dad got a new job.”
“That was one reason,” Mom said. “But what pushed us forward was so you could have a chance to live the life you were supposed to.”
The life I was supposed to. That line had been repeated to me so many times by doctors, and it had always stung. Was everything in Matthew’s life meaningless? Just decades of financial knowledge and trivia, a disposable marriage, and a younger sister who was snuffed out of existence? I wanted to be grateful that I was going to re-experience my life, but it stung to think that Matthew’s life essentially would mean nothing and cost so much.
I didn’t really respond, but Mom hugged me closer. “Come on. I ordered a pizza and it should be here any second. Let’s go set the table for everyone.”
“Just one thing, Mom,” I said.
“What’s that, dear?”
“Um…Catherine noticed that I was riding a boy’s bike…we may have to go out and buy a whole new one now.”
Mom squinted her eyes at me and smirked. “I think we’ve spent enough money replacing everything you own. You’ll just have to deal with it, unless you can come up with the money and buy one for yourself, kiddo.”
My mind flashed to the Butterfly Manifesto and the plans within.
“Fine by me.”