Аннали Ньюиц - The Future of Another Timeline

It didn’t seem like Tess was having the same lexical vertigo. “Lizzy has a lot of problems and she’s sucking you into them. Do you know what I mean?”

“I have problems too. I’m the one who killed Mr. Rasmann. I’m the one whose dad…” I stopped myself. There was no easy word, like murder, for what my father had done.

“Yeah, but Lizzy caused that. I mean, she caused the murder.” She shot me a nervous frown, and for the first time something looked vaguely familiar about her. Trying to find my features in her face was the inverse of hunting through my mother’s baby book, packed with snapshots of a tiny, puffy-faced stranger. I couldn’t believe either of them was me, separated only by years of cell division.

“Okay, so what do you want me to do about Lizzy?”

“Do about…? No, there’s nothing you can do. You have to get the hell away from her.”

“She’s my best friend. Our best friend! I can’t do that. Plus, what about Heather and Soojin? I can’t stop talking to them, too.”

Tess seemed pensive, as if she hadn’t really considered any of that. “You don’t have to stop talking to them. But you have to get away from Lizzy. If she tries to pull you into this murder thing again, you have to say no. You have to leave, no matter where you are. Do you understand?”

“Why aren’t you talking to Lizzy instead of me? Shouldn’t you be telling her to stop murdering people too?”

She sighed. “No. It’s about more than the murders. Lizzy is a bad person. At least, she is right now. She’s out of control. She gets people to do things and then doesn’t take responsibility for it. Do you understand what I mean?”

I thought about how Lizzy was always the decider. Then I remembered how she’d hugged me when I was scared. How she and her mom had rescued me from the worst possible thing I could imagine. I shook my head. “I don’t think Lizzy is like that. I mean, she’s not perfect, but… she wants to protect us.”

“She didn’t have to murder Scott to protect you. She didn’t have to murder Mr. Rasmann. And now all of you are implicated.”

“I mean, she’s angry sometimes… and I know we shouldn’t have killed anybody. I know that. But it’s not going to happen again.”

“It will.”

“But maybe we’ve already changed the timeline, right? Maybe I can stop Lizzy next time and then there won’t be more murders.”

“Travel can cause a lot of random effects, so I suppose that’s remotely possible. But typically edits of that magnitude are a lot more difficult than you might think.” She sounded like a professor, which I guess she was. At least she’d gone into geoscience like I planned.

Tess regarded me with her uncanny face, half-self, half-other. I knew she was right that we’d done something very wrong, and we had to stop. But I didn’t want to be on her side about dumping Lizzy, especially when she used her teacher voice. I stood up. “You don’t know for sure! I might be about to change the future right now!”

“You’re not. And besides, you don’t need to change the future. You need to deal with what’s happening today. This situation with Lizzy is going to get really dangerous. These murders have consequences.”

“You said before we’re not going to get caught. Do you think anyone believes that we could kill a serial killer? Or a rapist? No! They blame it on drifters and criminals! They say men did it!” My voice was jagged with rage, and I was saying everything that came into my head. “I don’t care if you are me—you aren’t me! I would never stop being friends with Lizzy! She’s a good person! So whatever fucked-up shit you did to become you, I’m not going to do it!”

I walked away fast, before Tess could reply. When finally I glanced back, she was hunched over, hands covering her face.

My mom was on the phone when I got home. She ignored me as I pulled the vacuum cleaner out of the hall closet and dragged it upstairs. My father’s shoe obsession had evolved into a more generalized obsession with preserving the cleansed state of the rug. I vacuumed upstairs twice a week, making sure to get every corner. Sometimes dirt and fluff would hide between the edge of the furniture and the wall. The worst was the hair, though. My mother and I both had long hair, and removing it from the rug was a key part of this chore ritual.

I began in my room, using the hose attachment with its bristly mouth to get beneath the narrow bed and around my dresser. I shook out the comforter covered in horses I’d gotten for Hanukkah seven years ago. Then I dusted my desk and bookshelves, all part of a fancy wooden wall unit my father had installed with maniacal precision, deploying rulers and specialized screwdrivers and a level full of golden liquid that caught the light as he worked. My books covered up the indentation where he’d punched the wall when one of the screws didn’t quite fit. I could still hear his voice from that day, rising to a high, birdlike pitch as he reached the peak of his rage. “You know why this doesn’t work? Because the people who put this kit together are goddamn lazy! There’s no reason why they can’t give you good materials! No reason other than… deliberately cutting corners!” And then the blur of his arm connecting with the wall as his words crashed together to make one, furious sound.

I moved into the hallway, around the nook where we kept the Mac SE on a tiny table, its only companion a tidy plastic box of floppies. As the roar of the vacuum cleaner sank into me, it became a soothing overlay on everything that had happened this afternoon. I wondered if I should have stayed to talk with Tess for longer. Maybe she could have told me more about what was going on. Or maybe she would have kept insisting that I dump Lizzy as a friend. Which—it’s not like I hadn’t considered that on my own. But I loved Lizzy, and we’d been best friends since we were little. I couldn’t imagine my life without her. I wasn’t going to stop being friends with her just because some asshole from my future said so.

I was so deep in thought that I almost jumped when my father’s hand wrapped around my shoulder from behind. Thankfully I remained outwardly calm and switched off the motor. In the years since that night—the one Tess confirmed was real—I’d learned to make no sudden moves.

“Thanks for doing the vaccuming, Beth.” His pale blue eyes revealed nothing. I couldn’t tell what his mood might be, which meant the best tactic was to play along. Pretend I’d done the cleaning to be nice, rather than to avoid punishment.

“No problem.” I smiled brightly. Were we friends today?

He smiled back and I didn’t relax at all. “Let’s see how it looks.” He walked into my room and swept his fingers through the rug, leaving a jagged claw mark behind. One long hair was snarled between his fingers. “Huh.” He sounded perplexed, as if he couldn’t understand how the strand had gotten there. Then he looked meaningfully at me.

“I’m not really done yet. Almost, though!” I smiled again, his friendly daughter, having a perfectly normal conversation with her perfectly normal father.

He walked back downstairs without saying a word. I wasn’t in trouble, but I’d been warned.

A few hours later, the rug was clean enough that it was safe to call Lizzy. The answering machine was on, and I had to yell after the beep. “Hey, Lizzy! It’s Beth! Pick up, pick up, pick up! Are you there?”

A series of bumps and clicks. “Hey, Beth! Can you go out tonight? I found out about this awesome backyard party in L.A.! It’s a total lucky edit. Grape Ape is playing! It’s going to be fucking amazing. Can you come?”

I glanced over at my father, who was swirling a stir-fry together in the wok. The kitchen smelled like garlic and ginger. “Can I go out to the movies with Lizzy tonight?”