The rain had been coming down since noon—starting off soft, then building into a steady downpour that rattled against the windows. The sound should've been calming, but to Andrew it felt more like background noise, too dull and repetitive to notice for long. He sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor, a half-empty cardboard box in front of him, its contents spilling out in messy piles. His mom had been nagging him for weeks to clear out his shelves, and he'd finally given in—not because he wanted to, but because fighting about it took more energy than just doing the stupid chore.
Scattered around him were little leftovers from his teenage years: bent comics, old worksheets smudged with erased pencil, a toy robot missing its arm, even the cracked face of an alarm clock he hadn't used in forever. The air in his room smelled faintly like dust and that strange sweetness old paper gets over time.
Andrew sighed, shoving a hand through his messy hair. Seventeen. Supposedly the "beginning of adulthood." Instead, he just felt lost. His friends went on about college plans, careers, traveling abroad. His parents wouldn't stop talking about exams and grades, like his whole future boiled down to test scores. Meanwhile, Andrew felt like he was just drifting along, a side character in his own life.
He reached under a pile of battered notebooks and pulled out something unexpected: a leather-bound journal, the cover worn and scuffed, edges frayed like it had been carried around for years. He frowned. He didn't remember owning anything like this.
Curiosity tugged at him. He untied the loose string holding it closed and opened it. Inside the cover, in looping handwriting, was a single word: Andrew. His name.
His chest tightened. He turned to the first entry.
April 9th, 2035.
Andrew froze. 2035? That was ten years away. He stared hard at the handwriting. It looked exactly like his. The same tilted "A," the same sharp curve on the "d."
The first few sentences hit harder than he wanted to admit:
"Tomorrow, you'll meet someone. A girl named Grace will transfer into your class. Don't brush her off. Pay attention. Listen when no one else does. Your choices will matter more than you think."
Andrew blinked, then let out a shaky laugh. It had to be a prank, right? Maybe he'd written it years ago as some kind of joke, pretending to be his future self. But as he flipped through the pages, he saw dozens—maybe hundreds—of entries, all dated for times that hadn't even happened yet. And all in his handwriting.
He turned back to the rest of the first entry.
"You won't believe this now. You'll think it's nonsense, or some dumb game. But it's real. If you follow what's written here, you might save her. If you ignore it… well, I already made that mistake once. You don't want to."
Andrew slammed the journal shut, as if the words themselves might creep into him if he stared too long. His pulse hammered in his ears. Save her? Who even was this Grace? He'd never heard the name before.
He tossed the journal aside and leaned against the wall, exhaling. His room felt suddenly smaller, the rain outside louder than before. Maybe it was some elaborate trick. Maybe one of his friends forged it, though the thought was ridiculous—the handwriting was too exact, too personal. And who would go through all the effort to write hundreds of fake entries for a joke?
Andrew rubbed at his temples. He should forget about it. Tomorrow would come, no Grace would show up, and this whole thing would dissolve into the background like every other weird dream.
But his eyes kept drifting back to the journal. Dark cover, sitting on the floor. Before he realized what he was doing, he'd picked it up again and reread the final lines of that entry:
"If you don't act, you'll regret it for the rest of your life."
The letters were pressed deep into the page, the ink darker, as if his future self had been desperate to make the words last.
Regret. The word sat heavy in his chest. He thought of his dad's disappointed stare when he brought home another mediocre report card. He thought of middle school, the day he stayed silent when his best friend got mocked, too scared to stand up for him. All the small failures, all the times he hesitated and let moments slip away—they haunted him more than he liked to admit.
Regret was already part of him. The idea of carrying one so big it shaped his future—it scared him.
This time, Andrew shut the journal gently and slid it under his pillow. He wasn't sure why. Maybe he didn't want his mom to stumble across it. Maybe he just felt like it was safer there, close to him, instead of thrown back into the box.
Outside, the rain thinned into a drizzle. Andrew stretched out on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Sleep wouldn't come. His thoughts looped endlessly around those words.
Tomorrow, you'll meet someone.
He pressed his eyes shut, telling himself it was ridiculous, just some trick of his imagination. But underneath the doubt, something lingered.
A quiet unease.
What if the journal was right?
What if tomorrow really would change everything?