Fast Forward to us

37- JEM

Emma

Once Butts dropped me off, I briefly went to my room and fell into my bed to sleep for an hour. Waking up, something in me knew that I wouldn't get any sleep for the rest of the night. In response, I decided to check up on Marvin who was still in the racecar. Getting in the car with him, I noticed the dashboard looked better compared to when I last sat with Marvin in the car. Even the radio was fixed.

"How was your day?" he asked while scanning the different radio stations.

"Long and sucky. Had a showcase tonight. Jeremy never showed up. What about you?"

"Well, I got my feet back today around three this afternoon." To my amazement, he took off his shoes to show me those bare feet. Crap, it was true. He could walk again. "Unfortunately, I lost my left thumb about a couple of hours ago." Grabbing his hand, he in fact had lost his thumb. This was getting weird. How was I supposed to react to this? What the heck was going on? Why was he so calm?

"You fixed the radio?" I asked in eagerness not wanting to think about this weirdness. "I remember the time Jeremy and I found the radio back at the junkyard. I think we were about eleven years old. Took a couple of months for Jeremy to get it working."

Marvin sat there with a smile on his face. "I take it you must really love music? Just like my parents." A chuckle left Marvin at the thought.

"Guess you could say I love music. Jeremy probably loves it more than I do. Me, I've mostly always been a huge fan of Selena and some other similar artists." At that moment, a cassette tape was pulled out of my pocket and Marvin took a look at it. "Jeremy and I worked on this mixtape once we had the radio working."

Alright, I got the radio installed," proclaimed Jeremy. "We can also listen to cassettes if we want."

"I got a couple of songs we could listen to on this," I responded while pulling the tape out of my pocket.

And that's exactly what we did. Putting in the tape, the first song that began playing was "Sukiyaki" by Selena. For the first half of the song, we both sat there and listened while Jeremy lightly smiled.

Por ti estoy aquí, Tan triste derrotada

"You know, my tio used this tape to make a copy of this song from the Selena album that he bought. I danced with my daddy to this song at my abuela's taco shop the night of the father-daughter dance." With that said, a giant sigh was released.

"You miss him, don't you?" The boy turned up the volume a little.

"Yeah, I miss him like crazy. It feels like this song is the only memory I have left of him. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that night and dance with him all over again."

"I can dance with you right now if you want." This certainly came out of nowhere.

Jeremy seriously wanted to dance with me in the middle of an open field? Guess he wasn't joking. The next thing I knew, we were out of the car with the song at full blast while the two of us held on to each other in the stars and the moonlight slowly moving to the rhythm. I'm not sure about Jeremy, but I was completely lost in the spark of his eyes. They were beautiful. It was as if I was on some kind of new adventure.  

...

A couple of weeks went by and I found myself sitting with Jeremy in the car again. He was searching through radio stations until he came across a song. It caught him by surprise and it was clear that he liked what he was hearing.

"Hurry, put in the tape," the boy commanded. "I need to record this song."

And just like that, the tape was inserted and we were recording it just like he wanted. It was a nice song, but while I wasn't crazy about the song as much as Jeremy was, I was glad he was enjoying it.

I'm your average ordinary everyday kid

Happy to do nothin', In fact, that's what I did

I got a million ways to make my day.

Neither of us knew what song this was, but regardless, Jeremy was bopping his head to it. Somehow, he even knew part of the lyrics. Once the song was over, we found out this was a new song called 'Let's Get Rocked' by Def Leppard.

"I have an idea," claimed Jeremy with a vibrant grin covering his face. "This tape will be our official mixtape. Every time we hear a song, we like that we feel might have a special meaning to us, we'll record it onto this tape. You might have a few Selena songs as I might have some songs by these Def Leppard guys. Once both sides of the tape are filled up, we will have our official mixtape. We can do something like go on a road trip when we finish this car. Heck, we could just cruise around town in this car and just listen to our songs. We'll call it the Jeremy and Emma Mixtape. Or we could call it "JEM" for short."

It actually wasn't that bad of an idea. I couldn't believe how on board I was with this plan. There was absolutely no hesitation in agreeing to this idea. We both shook on it. From that day, JEM was born.

"Wow," responded Marvin with JEM still in his grasp. "This whole thing started because of a dance you had with your father?"

"Yup," I stated while trying to hold in some tears. "And at this point, I'm not even sure I want to put it in the time capsule on Friday. How can I let a memory like this sit in the ground for the next several decades? What do I do?"

"I don't know."

Hope y'all enjoyed this chapter. Remember to comment and vote!

What songs would be on your mixtape?

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