Calling My 18-Year-Old Self to Dump Him

The day I turned sixty, I got a phone call. The person on the other end was me — the eighteen-year-old me.

If not for that call, I would have died at my husband's hands without ever knowing my life could have been anything else.

Brooklyn, New York. 2024.

I was curled up on the cold concrete floor. Blood was still trickling from the corner of my mouth, where my husband, Marcus Doyle, had just whipped me with his belt.

"Useless old hag. Can't even fry an egg right. What's the point of keeping you around?" Marcus's voice bounced off the walls of our cramped apartment.

He kicked me hard one more time, then slammed the door on his way out.

I was sixty years old. My face was lined with wrinkles, my hair gone gray, my hands rough with calluses from years of cleaning other people's houses.

This was my life. Over forty years ago, I'd given up my acceptance letter to Stanford for what I thought was love, and run off with Marcus. All I got in return was decades of abuse, betrayal, and poverty.

I dragged myself up and made my way to the old landline in the corner. Marcus had picked it up secondhand years back. No one ever called it.

Then it rang. The sound cut through the silence like a blade.

I hesitated, then picked up the receiver.

"Hello?" My voice came out rough, like sandpaper.

"Hi! Is this Nora Hale?" The voice on the other end belonged to a young girl, bright and buzzing with energy.

I froze. That voice. I knew it too well.

"This is Nora. Who's this?"

"Oh, good, it's really you!" the girl said, practically bouncing with excitement. "I'm Nora too — the eighteen-year-old one! It's my birthday today. Marcus gave me this magic phone and said I could call my future self with it. So tell me, sixty-year-old Nora — are you happy? Like, so happy you could just die?"

My hand jerked.

Eighteen. Marcus. A birthday.

In an instant, I was back in 1982. That day, Marcus really had given me a phone.

"You... you're really me, at eighteen?" I couldn't believe it.

"Of course I am! I'm in the basement Marcus is renting right now. He went out to get me a cake. We're leaving New York tomorrow — I'm giving up Stanford to go chase his dream with him in Nashville!"

Something inside me caught fire.

His dream?

Bullshit.

"Sixty-year-old me is dying, all right." My voice came out ice-cold. "Just not from happiness. From despair."

There was a pause on the line.

"You're joking, right?" A hint of irritation crept into her voice. "Marcus loves me. He promised he'd take care of me for the rest of my life."

"Love?" I let out a cold laugh, and the movement pulled at the cut on my lip. Pain shot through me, and I sucked in a breath.

"Did he tell you he went to that old bakery in Brooklyn to get you a Black Forest cake?"

"How do you know that?" Eighteen-year-old Nora sounded stunned.

"Because I lived it." I gritted my teeth and spelled it out. "He never went for any cake. Right now, he's in a cheap motel in Queens, with your best friend, Paige Sutton."

"You're lying!" the girl screamed. "Marcus would never betray me. Paige is my best friend!"

"Go see for yourself, then you'll know if I'm lying." I took a deep breath and forced myself to stay calm.

"Queens. Seventh Avenue. The Rose Motel, room 204."

I'd never forget that address. The day after my eighteenth birthday, I'd stumbled on a matchbook from that motel in Paige's bag. But I'd been too foolish back then, and Marcus had talked his way right out of it.

"I don't believe you! You're some kind of scam artist!"

"Nora, listen to me." My voice hardened. "If you don't want to end up like me — sixty years old, ribs broken, crawling on the floor like a dog because of this man — then get up and go, right now."

"Go to the Rose Motel. See for yourself what your precious 'love' really looks like."

I hung up before she could say another word.

I leaned against the wall, chest heaving.

If any of this was real, if I really could change the past, I would not let myself make the same mistake twice.

Just then, I heard the lock turn.

Marcus walked in, his face dark with anger, gripping a baseball bat.

"Who were you talking to?" His eyes bored into me.