Women in Maria's family got glimpses of the future, and as she was growing up, Maria found that she was no exception. Sometimes they would be random, ordinary moments from the future. Pouring milk on cereal. Waiting for the bus. Often, it wouldn't be a complete experience, just a small sliver of sensation. A pineapple cake her mother hadn't baked yet. These visions, if you could call them that, could come from years in the future, or minutes.
When she was 14, Maria was doing her history homework, when she was taken out of that moment, and into another one. In the vision, she had to be older, because her breasts were filled in. It was the middle of the night, and she was holding an infant in her arms, its tiny lips latched onto her nipple, until it slipped free. With a gasp, it started to cry, and Maria felt the weight of her future exhaustion. She could hardly think straight over the baby's wailing.
She could end up bearing a child, she realized. She would someday, if the vision was guaranteed to come true. It was daunting. She didn't want kids, at least not for a long while yet, and she couldn't imagine the burden of taking care of one. Her future self's exhaustion and frustration were what she thought of, whenever the topic came up.
If she'd had any thoughts of crushes and boyfriends, this scared her straight for years that followed. Not that she was in constant demand, but there were a few boys who noticed her. At one point she tried taking the pill, but it wouldn't stay down. An IUD gave her the worst period of her life. And she had long known about her allergy to latex, amongst other things. Sometimes she considered herself consigned to a life of celibacy, but her fantasies never let her rest. If only a vision could tell her when it would be safe...
Finally, at age eighteen and six months away from graduating high school, she had a vision of that graduation day. Striding to the stage to accept her diploma, feeling her best. And she realized that in the vision, she hadn't been toting a round, heavy belly, just her usual wide hips. That meant, even if she messed around now, nothing was going to come out of it. This was her chance to get it over with. To lose her virginity once and for all, without a cloud in the sky.
"Toby, are you a virgin?" she asked Toby the next day. Toby was a shy boy. Not a stunner, but not bad looking, by any means.
Toby blushed and forced out a laugh, at a loss. "What's this about?"
It was a clear answer, whether he intended it or not. "Just curious, that's all."
"Why? Are you?" he asked, realizing that the topic wasn't off limits between them.
"Well, not for long," she said quickly, and was immediately mortified herself.
"Huh. Does the lucky guy...or gal...know what they're in for?" Toby asked.
Now or never, she thought.
"I don't know, you tell me," she said, catching his eye with what she hoped was a seductive smirk. For a teenage boy, it didn't take much. He licked his lips. "My mom's working tomorrow night, if you want to come over."
"Yeah," he said, his dry throat catching on the word.
He seemed to lose the ability to speak after that. Once she caught him wiping sweat from his brow, and he didn't step out from behind the table until after she left. Maybe he got hard just talking about it, she thought. It was certainly how she felt, too.
The difficult thing then was acting normal the rest of that day, and all of the next. She could hardly bare to see Toby in the halls and in class, though they shared a secret smile whenever their eyes met. Her stomach was a bundle of nerves. She could still back out of this, she knew. But also she was almost constantly aroused, her underwear almost embarrassingly soaked. She had to put on a pad to contain it, though it wasn't time for her period, far from it.
When Maria got home from school, she had to endure an hour of her mom getting ready for work before she left. Then she started agonizing over what to wear, and how to act. If this was a bad idea, a vision of that could be really useful right now, she thought.
