The Time Capsule

Twenty years after he left school, Matteo drove back to his old town. The class time capsule was being opened. In their last year, the whole class had written letters to their future selves. A teacher had sealed them in a metal box and buried it under the school yard.

The ceremony was short. The head teacher opened the box in the school hall. She handed out the envelopes one by one, each with a name on the front. Matteo watched his old classmates open theirs, laugh, and pass pages around. His own envelope wasn't there.

"It must have been lost," the head teacher said kindly. "Or perhaps you never wrote one."

But Matteo remembered it exactly. He had spent a whole evening on it. He had written three pages about his plans. He described the city, the job, and the kind of man he hoped to be. He wanted to know how wrong he had been.

He tried to hide his disappointment. He talked to old classmates and ate a piece of dry cake. All the time, he was looking for the one person he really wanted to see. Vladimir, his best friend from school, was standing at the back. His hair was grayer, but his smile was the same crooked one. They hadn't spoken in fifteen years, since a stupid argument that neither of them could remember clearly.

"I'm sorry about your letter," Vladimir said. Then someone called him away, and he disappeared into the crowd.

Later, while Matteo was helping to stack chairs, he noticed Vladimir's envelope on a table. It was much thicker than the others, and it had been left open. Inside were two letters. One was in Vladimir's handwriting. The other was in handwriting Matteo knew better than his own.

It was his letter, all three pages, a little yellow at the edges. On the back, in blue pen, someone had written: "You will do all of this and more. If you get lost, come and find me."

Matteo read it standing up, with a chair in his hands. He remembered now. On the day of the sealing, he had wanted to tear it up. He thought it sounded stupid. Vladimir had taken it from his hands and said, "You'll thank me in twenty years."

He found Vladimir near the door, putting on his coat.

"You kept it," Matteo said.

"I kept it safe," Vladimir said. "Did I wait too long to give it back?"

"Come and have a coffee," Matteo said. "I'll tell you how wrong I was."