Each graduating class at Maplewood High School fills a metal time capsule with handwritten letters to themselves at age 30. At 17, Char and J. T. find their class’s time capsule in a supply closet, waiting for the day when it will get filled with their letters. Despite Char’s incredible organization, she puts off writing her letter. She is not happy with her life because of her unachieved goals: She’s not student council president, she has no date to prom, she bombed her driving test, and her relationship with her best friend is troubled. This inhibits her ability to speak about her present to her future.

However, when Char and J. T. time travel to age 30, the very year her class opens the capsule and reads their letters, Char finds it on a shelf in an out-of-town thrift store called “Dead People’s Stuff” (197). Evidently, it has so little meaning now that no one even thought to keep it after it was unearthed. The time capsule, then, is ultimately rather meaningless, and this emphasizes how much more significant the present is than the past or even the future. Whoever Char was at 17 is, as the store’s name suggests, dead and gone, and she is someone else at 30—someone with new friends, a new job, and new opportunities for joy.