Missing in time // {UNDER EDITING BEFORE CONTINUATION}//

Chapter 1

"Yeah..." Tess says, "but it's cool!"

"It's a camera," Andrea deadpans, "you're literally using one right now."

"But we can watch what's on it!" Tess squeals, "what if we find embarrassing home videos of Cassie?" Tess presses the power button, the camera, surprisingly, turns on. Tess quickly brings up a random video. My face flits across the screen briefly as I walk by in a bikini top and dark blue jeans.

"Whatcha got there, Kat?" Cassie's voice prompts from other side of the camera. You can hear the grin in her voice.

"I got this clover," I say "an' I was gonna put it in my hair. But I dunno how ta do that."  I hold up a four leaf clover.

"Oh god!" I cringe at my past self. "Aahh! No! Listen to my voice! Noo! I sound southern! Why the hell do I sound southern? What accent even was that? What am I even wearing?" I pause the video, pulling the camera closer to me to see better.

"It's that frilly, yellow bikini top you had back in eighth grade or something," Jessie says.

"Ew! Why was I wearing that? With jeans? God Kat, is it cold or hot? Why are you wearing long pants and a bathing suit? Make up your mind!"

"Shhh!" Tess shushes me, "I wanna play the video." Tess hits, play, the video resumes.

"That clover is pathetic," Cassie laughs, "how the hell would you possibly fit that in your hair?" Camera-me shrugs, walking away, still trying to get the clover in my hair. It's visible now that I'm also barefoot. What the hell, me? Fix your fashion sense!

Cassie turns the camera to face herself.

"What even are my friends? Why are you like this?" she sighs, grinning. She crosses the lawn around to the back of the house, through the back door to the kitchen.

"Hey mom, we got any watermelon left?" She calls.

"Yeah! It's in the fridge!" You can hear her mom yell back from some unknown place in the house.

"Great! Thanks!" Cassie pulls open the fridge and retrieves a tubberware of watermelon slices.

"Welcome to heaven," she sings, opening the container and stuffing a slice of watermelon in her mouth as she runs back outside.

"I have fruit!" she yells, putting it on the railing of the porch.

"Yaass! Ow!" Tess can be heard hitting the ground.

"What the hell?" Cassie laughs, her camera panning around, trying to find Tess. Thirteen-year-old Tess picks herself up from the ground, grass in her hair and dirt smudged on her face.

"Were you in a tree?" Cassie asks as Tess comes over. Present day Tess groans at her younger self.

"What are you doing Tess? Brush your hair!" she sighs.

"I had to film this ladybug," Camera-Tess explains. You can see her camera, the one she still has even now, hanging from her hand.

"Camera-ception," she says, holding hers up to film the lens of Cassie's camera. They're both laughing as the video cuts off.

"What is my hair doing?" Tess instantly cries, looking around at us.

"I think that was when you forgot to buy a hairbrush for a year," I say, laughing.

"What even was you fashion sense, though, Kat?" Jessie giggles, "who the hell goes barefoot in bell bottom jeans with a bikini top!?"

"Me! Apparently!" I cry.

"Shh! Let's watch some more!" Tess says.

We gather back around the camera as video after video plays, until it reaches one in a place we don't recognize; it's not the lake house.

There are torches spread out across an unfamiliar lawn, with unfamiliar people milling about. Clearly a party scene, but no one we've seen before.

"Wow, this totally party rocks, even if it is 19somethingorother. I can't wait to tell the gals about this." A familiar voice says, Cassie's heart shaped face coming into view. Her brown hair is loose, hanging down to frame her face.

The camera is picked up and moved, zooming in on different people, Cassie repeatedly asking what year it is. Every answer says 1981; It must be some weird, throwback party. Eventually the camera finds a girl who looks strangely familiar.

"State your name and business," Cassie says jokingly.

"Mitchell Marie Holland, and I'm here to lose my virginity," the girl laughs. We all freeze, I pause the video.

"Is that your mom?" Jessie asks. I just shake my head, unable to answer. That's my mother's name, my mother's eyes-- if you look you can tell the face looks like my mother's, but she's seventeen.

"I..." I rewind the video, playing it again.

"Mitchell Marie Holland-" I pause it again. That is definitely my mom. She did say she lost her virginity at a party to a guy named Edmund when she was seventeen. But it can't be my mom, if Cassie, my best friend, who was very much born the same year as me, is also there.

And yet, it's unmistakably a seventeen year old version of my mom.