“Here’s the phone, Maya,” said Dad as he handed me the receiver in one hand, a tackle box in the other.

  “Thanks, Dad,” I replied as I took the phone and put it to my ear. “Good morning, Mr. Henderson.”

  “Good morning, Miss Peterson. I’ve had your instructions for weeks, and I have to say that the floor guys are still in shock. Everyone’s still trying to crawl out from those short positions on Iomega. They’re still hurting.”

  Iomega had been volatile since it peaked last month and I had made my sale. Granted, I didn’t know the exact date when it would tumble, and if I had waited one more day I could have maxed out my payout. All things considered though, a quarter of a million was still good.

  “Thank you, Mr. Henderson. I just didn’t like the looks of that growth. It…had a bad vibe. For now, I think I prefer some stability. I’d like to initiate the action that we planned.”

  I heard some keyboard tapping on the other end of the line. “I’m ready when you are.”

  I pulled out my notes. I always made sure to use the correct jargon. “I would like to purchase December put option contracts on Iomega. Ticker symbol IOM.”

  More key tapping on his end. “Still don’t like the looks of it, I see. Are you still comfortable with the ten dollar strike price for the December expiration? It’s about two dollars below the current market price. Very bearish.” I noticed he began speaking to me as if I were an adult lately. To be fair, we hadn’t actually met in person so I wonder if he even knew I was just fifteen years old.

  “The premium is reasonable. The position is a necessary hedge. I’d like an order for two hundred contracts. Please secure and close the position before the weekend starts.”

  “Two hundred at the December ten dollar strike. It is locked in. Very disciplined, Miss Peterson. We’ll get that confirmed and sent to you by Monday.”

  “Wonderful. Thank you again, Mr. Henderson. I will be in touch when my father gets back from his trip.”

  I hung up the phone, and still dressed in my lavender bathrobe, I took my cup of tea downstairs and outside to the front stoop. I had been waiting to put in this order for weeks while the market reeled from Iomega’s crash. If history was any indication, Iomega was going to continue to crumble for the rest of the year, and for the mere price of twenty-five grand I would make five times that by the end of the year. It was an interesting piece of trivia that Matthew had in his memories; the collapse of Iomega was a notable example of crazy speculation in the stock market of the 90s. It was nothing compared to what was coming, though.

  I sat on the step, watching my twelve year-old brother Tim help my dad load their fishing gear into the back of his truck parked in the driveway. Dad made a trip to the Boundary Waters for a multi-day camping trip every June with my uncles. Tim had gone for the past two years since he was old enough, and Matthew’s memories also had years of going up north with Dad for most of high school. As Maya, however, I was not extended the invitation.

  It was just one of the subtle differences of being a girl versus being a boy. I was never expected to do lawn chores or to help haul cargo like Tim was, but I was expected to help clean the kitchen after dinner or to babysit Janie when Mom and Dad went out. It also stung that Tim was already two inches taller than I was and still growing. I was often treated too tenderly as a girl, but generally people were nicer to me than they ever were with Matthew. A lot of doors opened for you when you were a pretty teenager, but every so often doors were firmly closed.

  As I sipped my tea and watched them pack their equipment, my seven year-old sister Janie plopped down next to me, with her own mug of milk in her hand. She and I sat watching Dad and Tim hitch the boat to the truck, and while we did a car pulled into the driveway. Out of the passenger seat came my boyfriend Jake with a backpack and sleeping bag. Jake had been a regular fixture at our house, and Dad offered to bring him along on the trip. Jake lived with his single mother, and Dad felt he could do with a little guy-time. It was sort of an insult to injury that Jake was invited and I wasn’t because I was a girl.

  “Hey, Maya,” called Jake as he tossed his stuff in the truck and gave me a quick hug. “Cute bathrobe.”

  “Mmm hmm,” I said, taking another sip. “Ready to spend the next week smelling like fish?”

  “Ha. I’m glad your dad invited me. I haven’t been fishing for a long time.”

  Suddenly, Dad came from behind and headlocked Jake. “There he is,” laughed Dad as he ruffled Jake’s hair. “I can’t wait to get to know the kid who thinks he can date my daughter.”

  “David,” scolded Mom as she came in from the entry. “Don’t you torture this poor boy.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Peterson,” greeted Jake as he smoothed his hair.

  “Come upstairs, everyone. Breakfast is ready before you hit the road.”

  Jake and Tim bounded upstairs at the sound of food, with Dad and Janie trailing them. “I wonder if Matthew would be going with,” I said sardonically.

  Mom shot me a look. “Don’t be like that, Maya. Would you even want to trudge through the wilderness for a week?”

  “No.”

  “So you have nothing to complain about. Besides, men just need to have their own time together. It’s just something you have to know about them.”

  I didn’t argue; I knew full well how to be a man from the decades of memories as Matthew. That being said, she was right in that I had no reason to complain. I was still monitoring my positions and couldn’t be away from my Wall Street Journal to go gutting fish for a week. And to be perfectly honest, I just wasn’t interested in a lot of things that Matthew had been. I had a nostalgic fondness for them, but I was far more interested in all of the new pursuits that Maya was into.

  After we all finished breakfast, the guys loaded into the car as Mom, Janie, and I waved from the mailbox. “Okay girls,” clapped Mom once they were out of sight, “it’s been too long since we had a mother-daughter day! Why don’t we head to the mall this afternoon?”

  Janie was immediately excited, but my automatic response was an aversion to spending time with my mother and kid sister. My brain, however, usually outranked the visceral teenage girl reactions I had to things. I understood why teenagers could be so horrible with all of the hormones and lack of consideration, but it took every amount of will power to keep that in check. Besides, I had no other plans for the day.

  A few hours later we arrived at the mall. I had been so busy with school and my extracurriculars that it had been a while since I had spent time with Mom or Janie, but a day of poking through the clothing racks could be a nice change of pace. Janie was clearly stoked that she got to spend the day together. Physically, she was practically a miniature version of me with the same hair color and face, and I noticed that she had picked out an outfit to match with my knit top and plaid skirt combo I usually sported.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  In Matthew’s timeline, he and Janie were not particularly close as siblings. He was eight years older than her, and their relationship was rather tepid since she was still a kid when he went off to college. As sisters, our dynamic completely changed. I wasn’t a mere older brother with little in common, I was her ideal on how to be a girl. In fact, she was going through a phase right now where she was copying my every move, hence her matching outfit. It was actually kind of affirming to think that I was so successful at being a girl that she wanted to emulate me.

  I didn’t really have plans to pick out any clothes today, and I also didn’t want Mom to feel obligated to buy me anything. She wasn’t aware of my bulging bank account, let alone the fact that I was trading stocks, so if I really wanted something I would buy it myself. Instead, we picked out clothes for Janie, and of course my approval for a blouse was all she needed to convince Mom to buy it for her. Afterward, we walked by a photo booth and Janie begged me to go in with her, and each of us kept one half of the photo strip of us making faces. We ended our mall trip to the ice cream shop.

  “What flavor do you want, girls?” asked Mom.

  “Cookies and cream,” I said.

  “I want that too,” echoed Janie.

  Mom handed our cups to us and we found a booth. “So Maya, how are things going with Jake?” asked Mom. “You’ve been dating for quite some time, and that’s unusual for a girl your age.”

  “Things are good. But is it weird that we dated all of freshman year?”

  “Well, it’s not a bad thing. Maybe it just means you clicked.” Mom leaned in closer. “So tell me, what do you like best about him?”

  I took a small bite of ice cream. “We like the same music, and he likes that I play guitar. Plus, most of the boys at school are idiots. Jake doesn’t pressure me about anything.”

  Mom tilted her head. “Doesn’t pressure you?”

  I shrugged. “I told him I wasn’t comfortable about being too physical. We hold hands and everything, and we kissed a few times, but I don’t want anything more than that. He’s okay with it, so we just get to have fun together. He’s one of my best friends.”

  Mom had a curious look in her eyes. “Well, I’m glad that you two get along so well. He’s a nice boy and I really like him.”

  “I like him too,” added Janie with ice cream in her mouth. “He’s really cute.”

  ***

  A week later the guys returned home covered in sun burns, mosquito bites, and a cooler full of slimy walleyes they were quite proud of. It was a stark reminder that I wasn’t missing much by being left behind.

  While it was nice not having to worry about schoolwork in the summer, I only had a brief reprieve from my busy schedule before junior varsity cheerleading began their summer practice. Last year I wasn’t sure if I would continue, but Erin was very driven. She insisted we prepare for the JV tryouts together, and we both managed to get slots on the squad. If you had asked me five years ago if I would ever be able to do a handspring or the splits, I would have scoffed.

  I did regret ever thinking that cheerleading was easy; it required a lot more physicality than I had thought. As a result, I was in fantastic shape – better shape than Matthew had ever been – though I will say there’s no way I could possibly do cartwheels if it wasn’t for the invention of the sports bra. Practices intensified in the summer, and routines were relentlessly drilled, and the formation transitions had to be flawless. There were many times in the summer that I wished I could simply practice my music in my room by myself instead of performing the same routine fifty times.

  When my sophomore year began in September, it was the next phase of my time in student government. Sarah Poole and I teamed up in the spring, since we made such a good team, and I supported her to run for sophomore class president. She was quickly becoming a close friend of mine, and we were able to storm the elections together. Sarah was very good at organizing events and I liked playing the support role as sophomore treasurer. Still, with my duties and with the JV squad, it gave me less time to check with my investments online in the computer club.

  Granted, I was sort of on autopilot when it came to moving around my investments. It was a struggle to resist using any of my gains to buy…well, pretty much whatever I wanted. I affirmed that the money I was making wasn’t mine quite yet, just numbers on a page. It was all being distributed to whichever tech companies I recognized from the future, and for the moment there were no dramatic movements coming up. Still, I had to make sure not to make any mysterious high-end purchases that might make people suspicious.

  It was a good thing it was, because the monotony of JV practice and my treasury responsibilities were chipping away at me. We would do the same routine, in tandem, for hours after school until we were exhausted. If someone was out of step, we started over. What’s more, my duties as treasurer were pretty mundane. I had to review all of the orders from our candy sales and record them for the books, and having to count fifty cent purchases for days felt beneath me, as someone who was managing a portfolio of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Sometimes I wish I could just write the school a check and skip all the work.

  By the time homecoming week arrived, we had practiced the routines to the point where they were automatic. The JV football game was immediately before the varsity game, so our squad was going to pull double duty; primary routines for JV and support for the varsity squad for their game. The anticipation of the biggest game of the year filled the room where we applied our makeup and checked our uniforms, as we went over the list for the game. I had practiced each one a hundred times, and everyone on the squad was dead-focused.

  The JV crowd wasn’t as full as the varsity game would be, as it was a few dozen parents as well as a smattering of students looking to get early seats. I even spied my family in the bleachers, with Tim studying the field and Janie waving like crazy at me. I was in the zone, however, as we started with our basic cheers as the team took the field. Moving on to defense chants as the half continued, we flowed from one formation to the next, ignoring the stiffness of my muscles already starting to build.

  We did our new formation transition after halftime, where we had precise movements that moved from a straight line to a diamond. Like we had dozens of times, we hit our pivots and completed the shift flawlessly. My face seemed frozen into a smile, and by the end of the game (which we won, of course) I was sweating bullets through my cotton uniform as we revved up the crowd for our victory formation.

  I was dead to rights, but I had no time to dawdle; after a brief water break it was time to set up for the varsity squad. Our role was for crowd leading, manning the sidelines to guide the crowd while the varsity girls performed their routines. I was in charge of the megaphone since my voice carried the most, and we couldn’t rest for a moment while we fired up the crowd. At a certain point my forced enthusiasm became pure adrenaline, and when we eventually claimed victory for this game, I would have passed out were it not for the excitement as we screamed our heads off.

  We were all still pumped by the time we hit the locker room, and there was no small amount of celebrating as we showered and dressed. Six hours of pure cheering was a new record for me. Thankfully homecoming comes only once a season. There was talk about going out, but in all honesty I was running on fumes and my curfew meant I wouldn't have been able to stay out long.

  When I got home, I immediately collapsed onto the bed with my feet still planted on the floor. My head was still buzzing from the activities of the evening, and while my muscles were still sore, I felt a profound sense of accomplishment. It occurred to me that cheerleading was an area that my future knowledge or my adult mindset couldn’t help me. My investments were not skill or genius; I was cheating to a certain degree. My academic record was spotless because I had already completed high school as Matthew.

  All of the drills and coordination I had to work on was from Maya alone. I had to learn from scratch without having all of the answers tucked away in my brain. I may have scoffed at cheerleading in the beginning, but I did something completely outside of Matthew’s experience, and excelled on my own.

  I smiled to myself as I stared at my ceiling. I was actually more proud of performing tonight that I had been earning hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was fifteen and secretly wealthy, but somehow being able to pull off the routines and feeling the ache in my bones from my hard work meant more than the millions I was going to make by gaming the market. Being Maya Peterson meant that I was going to be remarkable, and I didn’t even need to be from the future to do so.