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Someone’s shaking her. Carol cracks an eye open and sees Bart leaning over her fuzzily - but then there’s a blinding flash. She slams her eyes shut again.
“Get it outta m’face,” Carol mumbles to him.
She keeps her eyes closed, waiting for him to give the all-clear, and tries to remember when they’d decided on a sleepover. Whose house are they at, anyways - Preston’s or Bart’s? It can’t be hers, Casey would’ve woken them up by now.
“Carol,” someone’s whispering. “Carol, wake up.” She grumbles, but squints up again, wary of Preston’s camera.
“Carol,” Meloni says again, face drawn tight with worry, and she shoots up and nearly hits her head on the top of their small shelter. Meloni holds out her glasses and Carol tries not to see Bart.
She remembers, now that she’s awake. About that older version of herself and why she’s in the future with Bart’s mom but not Bart. She misses him. Maybe because they’re - they were dating. Kind of. Maybe. She doesn’t think about that a lot, but that’s just because she misses him, like she misses Preston and Bobby and Casey and drawing and everything.
Carol always misses drawing. There are so many things in the future that are cool, for-real cool, like the plants and the buildings she sees once in a while whenever she and Meloni set up camp close enough and even the outfits, but those are kinda weird too. But her fingers itch and itch for a pencil and paper and colors.
She takes the glasses instead and listens to Meloni tell her how they’re leaving this time because that’s what she does now, she runs away and saves the world by not doing things and leaving her whole life behind.
She’s never even going to graduate high school.