letting go of what might have been

Sometimes, Julia can't help but wonder what would have happened if they'd stayed at home. It would be pretty impossible not to, or so she believes. The moment she and Donny both came from would have prevented that. She tries not to think about that too much, knowing that nothing good will come of it, but it's there in the back of her head even so. No matter how steady things may be here, how much better than she would have expected them to be when she first arrived, alone and adrift, she's tired of always having unanswered questions to grapple with, of losing things all at once with no warning. She has Donny, and she's even more grateful for that than she would know how to say, but she still misses her home, her mother, her friends, the trappings of a life she understood better than she does this one. Living in the future may have its perks, but she's not sure she'll ever entirely get used to it.

She can try, though, as she's been doing for months now, and at least not everything feels like a totally different world. A movie is a movie, for example, even though ticket prices still seem completely absurd to her. Some of them are even half-decent, such as the one they've just walked out of, her arm in Donny's as they step out to the sidewalk and a smile on her face. This, too, feels normal and right, despite being something they've only had in this place. "That wasn't bad," she assesses cheerfully. "Better than a lot of what seems to get popular around here."