Turn Here

The Left Turn

At the intersection, I could go right and head home — but turning left would take me somewhere I hadn’t been in almost fifteen years.

My blinker clicked softly in the quiet cabin of the car, ticking toward the predictable safety of my apartment, my dog, and a leftover meatloaf dinner. The rain had slowed to a mist. Streetlights cast long shadows across the wet pavement, everything glowing slightly unreal, like the world couldn’t decide if it was dreaming or not.

I sat there too long. A car behind me honked once, politely. I turned off the blinker. Then I turned it on again — to the left.

I didn’t have a good reason. Just a pressure in my chest that had been building for months. Maybe longer. Some weightless anxiety that never showed up in blood tests or therapy sessions. I didn’t believe in fate. But the left turn felt like something was tugging on the threads.

So I took it.

The road narrowed almost immediately. Trees leaned closer. No more big-box stores or gas stations. Just old houses, dark windows, and porch lights glowing like eyes. I passed a sign for Marlowe Township. I hadn't thought about that place in years, not since my mother’s funeral. And I hadn't set foot near my childhood home since.

The idea had been to forget it. Leave it all sealed up behind me like a bad chapter in a book. But here I was, the tires crunching wet gravel as I pulled off the road and stared up the hill.

The house was still there.

Slate blue, paint peeling. One shutter missing. The mailbox hung open like a jaw. Weeds tangled around the porch railings, and the porch swing — Jesus, it was still hanging there, creaking in the breeze like it had never stopped.

I killed the engine. My heart was doing something strange — not racing, exactly, but pulsing with a kind of recognition. Like it knew something I didn’t.

I didn’t mean to walk up to the front door. I didn’t mean to try the knob. But I did. And it opened.

The smell hit me first. Dust, mold, old wood, and time. But underneath that, there was something warmer — like sugar and cinnamon. I used to come home from school and smell that exact thing. Mom’s apple pie.

Which was impossible.

I should’ve left. Any normal person would have. But I stepped inside.

The floor creaked in the same familiar way under my boots. My fingers traced the dent in the banister where I used to run toy trucks up and down. I could still feel the grain of the wood.

The living room was the same — mostly. The furniture was dusty and covered with sheets, but it was still ours. The old TV in the corner. The bookshelf with Mom’s romance novels. Dad’s armchair.

And then I heard it. Footsteps upstairs.

Not creaking randomly. Not the house settling. Footsteps. Two of them. Measured. Slow.

I froze.

The last time someone had been in this house was years ago. It had been locked up. No one wanted to buy it. The town practically forgot it existed.

But someone was up there.

I crept toward the stairs. Each one whined beneath me. I half expected the boards to give out. At the top, the hallway stretched to my old bedroom. The light was on.

The door was ajar.

I pushed it open with one finger.

The room was exactly as I left it.

The bed made, posters on the wall — The X-Files, Nirvana, and that weird oversized photo of a wolf I’d insisted on keeping. My old baseball glove sat on the dresser. A backpack leaned against the desk, the zipper half-open, showing notebooks covered in doodles.

And sitting at the desk was me.

Not current me. Not the thirty-two-year-old with stress lines and a boring desk job.

It was me at seventeen. Same hoodie. Same hair. Even the scuffed Converse sneakers I used to draw skulls on.

He — I — didn’t look up.

I stared.

I don’t know how long I stood there. Time felt thick, like syrup. My younger self scribbled something in a notebook, tapped a pencil against his lip, then finally sighed and looked toward the doorway.

Right at me.

“I was wondering when you’d come back,” he said.

I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.

He nodded at the chair across from him. “You can sit down if you want. Or you can run away again.”

My knees felt shaky, but I sat. The chair groaned like it hadn’t been used in years.

“What is this?” I asked. “A dream?”

He shrugged. “It’s whatever you need it to be.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He smiled. “Neither is that a real question. You’re not really here to ask what this is.”

I wanted to argue. But he was right.

“You’re here because something’s broken,” he said. “You forgot who you were.”

“I didn’t forget,” I snapped. “I changed. That’s what happens. You grow up.”

“Grow up and sell out.”

I glared. “Easy for you to say. You never had bills. Or bosses. Or a funeral to plan.”

He didn’t flinch. Just stared at me with that frustratingly calm expression. The one I used to give Mom when I was trying to pretend I had things under control.

“What happened to the list?” he asked suddenly.

“What list?”

He opened the notebook and flipped to a page. There, in block letters, were ten scribbled lines. I leaned closer.

1. Backpack through Europe

2. Make a short film

3. Learn guitar

4. Apologize to Dad

5. Write a novel

6. Kiss a stranger in Paris

7. Go skydiving

8. Live by the ocean

9. Make something that matters

10. Be the kind of person I needed

I stared at it like it was an artifact.

“I forgot I even wrote this.”

“You didn’t forget,” he said. “You buried it. Along with everything else.”

I didn’t know what to say. I remembered writing the list one night after a terrible fight with Dad. I’d sworn I wouldn’t end up like him — bitter, stuck, small. I was going to live.

Instead, I found myself in a gray box of a life. Dead-end job. No more writing. No music. I hadn’t traveled. I hadn’t even been on a date in over a year.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

He gave me a sad smile. “I could ask you the same.”

There was a long silence.

Finally, he said, “You don’t have to fix everything tonight. Just stop pretending you’re not lost.”

I nodded, slowly. It felt like something in my chest cracked open. Not pain. Just space.

“Okay.”

“And don’t go right at the intersection anymore,” he added. “Left turns only.”

I laughed, a little. The first real laugh in months.

When I looked up again, the room was empty.

The chair across from me was dusty. The bed was bare. The posters had peeled off the walls. The backpack was gone.

But the notebook was still on the desk.

I picked it up. The list was still there. I ran my fingers over the paper.

When I stepped outside, the rain had stopped. The sky was clearing. I walked down the porch steps, slowly, like the world had become fragile and new.

I got in the car, turned the key, and looked back at the house.

Then I drove away. Not home.

Not yet.

I had somewhere else to be.