Do Not Open Until

"It's an antique," Grover said adamantly.

"No," Eleanor piped in. "It's definitely money. Lots of it!"

They never agreed on anything. Except that Aunt Janine's wishes were worth honoring. I don't know if it was because of all the ghost stories we loved to tell under the covers with a flashlight to our chins, or if it was because Aunt Janine was a stout and formidable woman with sharp red fingernails that could pierce your soul, but that box remained untouched. I was too little to remember hearing my dad share explanation at the time, but my older siblings loved to take me into my parent's closet and tell me the story.

After Grover and Eleanor went off to college, I liked to go look at our inheritance, as my sister used to call it. The box was neatly wrapped in brown paper with a simple hemp string double knotted on the outside.

It wouldn't have been too difficult to open without anyone knowing. I was certain I could slide the string off of the box. Maybe one of my siblings already had? No. They spoke of the box with such urgency. But there were rules. We were not to touch it until 2022.

"Maybe she's a time traveler," my best friend Mark told me.

"Umm, what?"

"Maybe," Mark said, with great determination,"your Aunt was a time traveler, but she couldn't fix the future before dying. So she left a package to help you understand what's going to happen in the future and in order to prevent the collapse of the government by angry leather jacket wearing space aliens, you need the contents of the box."

"Why do the aliens wear leather jackets?" I asked him.

"That's what you got from my explanation?" Mark shook his head. "If this is about the end of the world and you're the one who's supposed to save it, we are all in big trouble."

"Why does everyone assume it's something so ominous," I wondered aloud, stepping quietly across the gray carpet, on my tiptoes.

"What are you doing?" Mark asked.

"This has gone long enough," I said. "It's 2020."

"BETH!" Mark said. "Are you serious?"

"My brother and sister have probably already opened it," I said, reaching for the top shelf of the closet. I had looked at it so many times from across the room, but I had never held the suspicious brown package in my hands.

I didn't know it yet, but Eleanor and Mark were already gone.

It makes the contents of the box so eerie. A necklace with a locket. Some baseball cards. My mother's first compact. Dad's lucky sock. A photo of everyone at the beach, the last family trip before I was born- I was still in Mom's belly.

Mark laughed at me when I told him I could feel my sister and brother's energy as I slide the hemp string off of the box and raised the lid, but there's no way to know.

My parent's, I believed, had gone on a date. But really, they were picking Eleanor and Grover up for their first visit home from college. It had been planned months in advance. I just knew I had the afternoon alone, and Mark and I were bored.

"Let's make some hot pockets," Mark said, showing himself out of my parent's walk-in closet and down the hall. As a frequent visitor, he was capable of making his own hot pockets. I stayed for a moment. I slid the hemp string back over the package and replaced it in the exact spot where it had sat for a decade.

By the time I came down the stairs Mark had our favorite snack ready- a whatever's-left charcuterie board- Hot Pockets, Uncrustables, M&M Chips Ahoy, American Cheese and Apples cut into heart shaped slices with a cookie cutter.

"Wow, what is this, Thanksgiving?" I asked with a laugh.

Neither of us had realized how close it was to Thanksgiving, which is probably why my siblings were coming home. Mark and I were mostly just trying to stay awake for Zoom classes and staying up date with our favorite shows.

We figured the pandemic would be over any moment, though, and things would go back to normal. By the new year, Covid would be a thing of the past.

I panicked for a moment when the doorbell rang. Mom and Dad wouldn't be thrilled to see that Mark and I had eaten all the snacks or that we'd let the perishable stuff out all day. Then I realized they wouldn't be ringing the doorbell.

Mark got the door and the masked policeman didn't bother asking who he was speaking to. I listened from the kitchen table.

There had been an accident- the car had been T-boned by a trucker who had fallen asleep.

Mark didn't say a word, but after a moment, the officer looked at his paperwork and apologized. He followed Mark into the kitchen and sat down with me at the table. I didn't even notice the social worker he had brought with him.

They said because I was a minor I wouldn't be able to go to the hospital. I would have to be brought to child services. And of course they could contact whoever I'd like, but according to my parents records, there were no relatives. There never really had been. Mom and Dad were both only children.

"That's impossible," I told the social worker as she took the duffel bag I'd only been given 10 minutes to pack even though they said I had 15.

"Arnold and Melissa Kutcher," the social worker read, "both only children. Grandparents have been gone quite a while. I'm sorry."

I shook my head in disbelief. She kept asking if I'd met any Aunts and Uncles. I was sure I had- I just didn't remember.

But when I tried to look back, all our holidays, were just the five of us. I gave Mark the brown package for safekeeping. I didn't trust anyone where I was going. I didn't even know where I was going. But whether it was an ominous call to protect the world from leather jacket wearing aliens or it was just an imaginative time capsule, I wanted to keep it safe.