In the book "The Future of Us" by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler, it takes place in 1996. A girl named Emma and her best friend Josh look 15 years into the future at a website named Facebook. One big focus in the book is when Emma gets a little crazy over looking into the future and goes through a lot of character change from the beginning of the book to the end of the book.
One sign of character change is when she first downloads AOL onto her computer. In the beginning of the book it explains right away that her next door neighbor Josh was her best friend but that they haven't talked in months because he wanted to be more than friends. He brought over the disk because his parents thought that their son shouldn't go on the internet because there were a lot of weirdos on the internet. So after he drops it off and it finishes downloading, Emma sees Facebook and a profile that has her name on it and after a minute she realizes that it's hers. So she invites Josh over for the first time in months and wants them to be friends again so that they can look at Facebook together. Emma changes from being scared to talk to him to wanting him to hang out with her after school every day.
Another sign of character change is when Josh admits that he thinks that she's being childish and just hoping that she can see into her future. Because of this, she's constantly upset with him and goes crazy trying to prove to him that it's real and that she's going to have a horrible future. Emma changes from trying really hard at being best friends with Josh again to just trying to get him to believe her.
Another sign of character change is when after Josh figures out that it's true, she tries anything to make her life perfect and she's also jealous that Joshs life is a lot better than hers. She tries to change her mind about everything if it means that she'll have a perfect life. She even kisses Josh, which causes them to "break up" again because he tried to kiss her because of his feelings for her. But now that Josh is dating the most popular girl in school (who he was destined to get married to), she starts realizing that she has feelings for him .But Josh thinks that it was because it would make a ripple through time and make her future change. Emma changes because she would do anything to have the perfect life no matter what.
But int the end, Josh, and especially Emma, learn to stop obsessing about the future and to live in the present! Which is the message of the book and it's a really good one and seems really fitting for this book. I really liked this book and hope to read more like this one in the future.
