Eloise Gardner.

That is the name that popped up on my phone the second it turned midnight tonight. My eighteenth birthday.

Traditionally, when one officially becomes an adult (by law, at least), they receive the first and last name of their designated soulmate, who can reside anywhere in the world.

I, unfortunately, have never met an Eloise Gardner in my life, so I don't even know where to begin my search.

I stare at the name for what seems like a long time, but as I decide to rush to the phonebook and start there, the clock on my phone only reads 12:02.

Flipping through page after page, I have no luck so far. But she has to be in the phonebook, right? Everyone is.

I search for hours. I go through the book again and again— I look at every Eloise, every Gardner, every name on every page. And nothing. I refuse to lose hope.

The next morning, I decide to take my search elsewhere. I dig out my laptop and do the simplest thing that comes to mind: I Google her name. A few Eloise Gardners come up, but as I read their descriptions and look at their pictures, they are either much too old or much too young or simply don't feel right. When it's your soulmate, you know just by looking at them. It clicks.

Nothing clicks for me.

I spend the next several weeks leaned over my laptop, staring at the pages of newspapers and textbooks, watching every news channel I have access to. I just can't seem to find her.

A month into my search, a groundbreaking announcement hits the news: time travel has finally become possible.

I stare at the TV as the headline rolls across the screen in an endless loop, over a photograph of a woman smiling. She stands next to an awfully futuristic-looking machine, one I could never hope to learn how to use. Or be allowed to.

Then it dawns on me.

I sit straight up, the realization creeping in goosebumps up my spine. I've had no luck finding Eloise here, not in any country or any continent in the world. I have even gone so far as to look in history books, as if it would be possible my soulmate lived long ago. As if I would be so unlucky.

But what if it's not like that?

What if Eloise is from the future?

Some seventy years later, Eloise Gardner sits in a recliner, watching the hologram in front of her. It shows her the seconds ticking by, the countdown to her eighteenth birthday.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Her phone dings. She picks it up immediately, heart racing as the moment she's waited for her whole life comes to fruition.

Penelope Green.

Her soulmate.

For weeks, she goes through the exact same routine that, though she doesn't know it, Penelope Green went through so many years before her.

For weeks, she searches. Until it occurs to her that Penelope Green may not be living at the same time as she is. In the same life.

It's happened before. It isn't unheard of now, for a soulmate to be from the past or the future just as they might have been from the present.

So she extends her search.

And after a long week of bringing out dusty books that nobody bothers to touch anymore, and pouring over the internet day after day, she finds her.

Penelope M. Green died just eight years ago after a fatal heart attack in the comfort of her own home. Not married, no kids. Waiting for me, Eloise thinks.

There is one picture of her made available to the public, young and beautiful, bangs framing a soft heart-shaped face, on it the prettiest smile Eloise has ever seen.

This is her. This is definitely her.

Now it's only a matter of getting to her.