It's a warm summer day in Massachusetts and I'm on my way to work. It's a far drive, about and hour and 15 all the way to Brockton MA for a tournament. The windows are rolled down and the country music playlist that is mostly Jon Pardi and Dan + Shay is blasting at pretty much full volume. All of a sudden a voice in the back seat says "Dude turn the country music off!" My eyes dart to the rearview mirror and sitting in the middle seat is 10 year old me.

"What the hell!?" I yell and automatically turn my eyes back to the road because I'm going 72 on I-495 South.

"Whoa man, mom would be pissed if she heard you say that." 10 year old me responds in a high pitched voice. He has light brown hair that swoops across his forehead and bright blue eyes. His bottom teeth are lined with blue braces and his arms are lying awkwardly between his legs.

"How'd you get here?" I ask still bewildered by the fact that he's sitting there.

"I brought him." Sitting next to me in the passenger seat is yet another version of me, yet he looks a little bit more like me now.

"Who are you?" I ask,

"I'm you from senior year, bro." He's got basically the same haircut I have now, lengthy on top with the sides short. He looks to be in pretty good shape, solid legs but still a little scrawny up in his shoulders and chest. And he's got the three racing stripes on the right side of his head so I know it's me the summer before I go to college.

"How's the legion team?" I ask him.

"Bro, we're nasty. We're going to the World Series for sure." He's cocky no doubt about that, but he's not wrong.

"Thanks for saying hi to me!" a sarcastic voice says from the back.

"Yeah, what the hell man?" adds another. Sitting in the back next to 10 year old me looks like me as a freshman in high school and me as a 6th or 7th grader.

"Sorry guys, I'm a bit taken back by the fact that I have an entire car full of Kevin's on my hands right now." I say.

I grip the steering wheel a bit tighter and adjust my body in my seat. I wait to see if any of my past selves say anything before I do. My guess is it's either going to be the 10 year old or 18 year old. The 13 year old Kevin definitely looks a bit sad which makes sense, he's at the age where I was bullied a lot in school so him being a little melancholy is reasonable. Like I suspected, the 18 year old spoke first.

"So dude, what's college like? Is it as sick as everyone says it is?" I just look at him and say "No, it's not. It's nothing like Blue Mountain State or American Pie."

When I said that it looked like I just told him the puppy he wanted for Christmas got adopted by another family. He responds with the most dismal 'Oh' I've ever heard, obviously a little heartbroken. He slumps down back into his seat.

"No man look, it's wicked fun, you're gonna have a blast trust me. I'm just saying it's not what it's like in the movies."

His eyes glanced back over but his head didn't move "Yea?"

"Yeah man, you're gonna have a lot of fun trust me."

"Dope." he responds. He's making it really easy for me to make fun of him but I'm not going to.

The freshman in high school Kevin looks to be a little awkward. Definitely hasn't hit his growth spurt yet. He's jittery, really energetic, not sure what he should be doing cause he's not involved in the conversation. 10 year old me sits just blatantly staring at me as if he's saying "I can't believe that's me!" He's got no idea what's in store for him the next couple years in Shrewsbury.

The 13 year old is sitting in his seat just chilling, not really saying anything but not in a bad way. He's observing what's going on in the car. He stares at me and 18 year old me for a bit, kinda brushes off 15 year old me cause the two are pretty similar, and keeps pushing 10 year old me back into the middle seat.

The 15 year old says to me "Hey, do you still do musicals in college?" I laugh because I get that question a lot from people I went to high school with.

"No buddy, but you should definitely do them in high school, you'll have a lot of really good friends in that department and make memories that will last forever." I say to him.

"Pfft" I hear from the back. It's the 13 year old.

"What's up bro?" I say to him.

"The musicals are stupid. None of the cool kids in my school do it, and they make fun of me for doing them." He flips his hair out of his eyes and stares out the window.

"You know what man?" I say to him, "I know you're going through a tough time right now, but believe me you're going to want to keep doing the shows."

"Why? Everyone calls me gay for doing them."

"Yeah that may be the case, but girls love it when you sing to them, gonna get a lot of pretty fine girls with that."

"Really?" he says, obviously a little bit more intrigued in my point of view.

"Absolutely man." He smiles, a small one but it's still a smile.

The drive rolls on for a little bit longer, 10 year old me asks if I play baseball at University of Miami like we thought I would, I tell him he'll have to find out on his own because I couldn't crush his dream like that. The 13 year old is pretty quiet for the rest of the ride but he chimes in with an occasional sarcastic remark that makes us all chuckle. 15 year old me is definitely the loudest in the car, always trying to be the main focus, which checks out. The 18 year old just seems to be having a good time. Him and I both know that this is a pretty cool thing to be experiencing.
Then all of a sudden, the different Kevin's start disappearing one by one. The 10 year old slowly fades out while screaming "BYE!!!" at the top of his lungs.

The 13 year old says thanks for the advice and opens the door of the car while I'm still driving, gets out, hovers over the asphalt, closes the door then walks away.

15 year old me leans up to the two of us, daps us both up, says peace, and vanishes into thin air.

But the 18 year old me doesn't leave as quickly as the other ones. I look at him puzzled and say with a laugh, "Is you're stop not for a couple miles?" He looks up at me and he's crying. Not a heavy cry, but enough tears for it to be noticeable.

He looks at me and says, "Is everything gonna be alright?"

"What're you talking about man?"

"My future, I'm freaking out about it man. I'm scared I'm gonna be a terrible student, what if I don't do well on the team? Am I gonna get a good job out of college if I even graduate?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, man take it easy." I say "Everything's going to be fine."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I do. Am I saying that it's going to be easy? No. There's going to be speedbumps, there's going to be days where you doubt yourself, but at the end of the day it all works out."

He sniffles and wipes some of the tears away. "I don't know man, I just don't want to let Mom and Dad down."

"Hey, trust me I know. But Mom and Dad are going to love you no matter what you do. If you get bad grades they'll be there. If you have a bad game they'll be there. You're going to be fine, I promise."

"Okay, thanks."

"No problem bud." He looked at me one last time and started to fade away. I turned my head and all of a sudden there wasn't a highway anymore, just a brick wall. I slammed on the brakes but not quick enough.

I shot up out of bed, it was a freaking dream. Later that day I did make the drive out to Brockton and the ride was not nearly as entertaining as the one I was apart of earlier that morning. I kept glancing in the rearview mirror hoping to see that skinny kid pop out of nowhere but he never showed. So I sat in silence and replayed the conversations in my head pretending the brothers I never had were there with me.