He became a pillar of the community when he returned to his hometown, and was even elected to the school board. Then, when the holier-than-thou board member tried to do away with the high school mascot, my father punted him halfway to the next county. I can’t quite say the Tsunamis were now history, because to be history, you have to have actually existed. No one but me remembers our mascot Tsammy Tsunami, the Angry Wave. Mom is still a nutritionist—that hasn’t changed—only now she’s published books and creates the proprietary formulas for our family’s chain of shops.

I wrote all this down, but it really wasn’t necessary, because once I remembered it, I couldn’t unremember it. It was kind of like that big box-o-crap in your garage. You have no idea what’s inside until you open it. Then, once you do—once you see the contents—you remember every single object. So now I had a brainful of new memories—yet I still remembered the world where we weren’t rich, and the world before that, where red was the color of stop.

I think the weirdest part was the moment I pulled up to our house. Even though I didn’t know where I was going, I knew once I got there. I quickly noticed that mine wasn’t the only car that was different. Instead of Mom’s questionable Kia, and Dad’s dinged-up Honda, our driveway was now a study in German engineering. A second BMW, and a Mercedes. All the cars had the same personalized license plates as they had before. My mother’s was EATRYT, and my father’s was PGSKN♥R (which I always thought was marginally creepy), and of course mine, QBSACKR.

It’s hard to describe what I felt as I got out of my car and approached the front door. You know how before a tsunami, the ocean pulls out and leaves an eerie calm of flopping fish for a hundred yards out? I know all about that, because “the calm before the wave” was always our team cheer before we took the field. Hundreds of people shushing, a few seconds of silence, and then violent screams of death and destruction as the team ran out. Well, my fish were all flopping as I stepped up to the front door—and although I kept waiting for the surge of devastation, it didn’t come. I was just left with that lingering void. A numbness like I was having an out-of-body experience while still in my body.

“Hi, Ash!” said Hunter cheerfully as I stepped into the kitchen. He was scarfing guacamole and chips while standing at the granite-topped island in the middle, because what else do you do with all that space, but have a granite-topped island? “How was the game?”