Аннали Ньюиц - The Future of Another Timeline

Bewildered rage gathered in his face, and for once my mother noticed. She made a quick cutting gesture in the air. “Go to your room, Beth. That was a nasty thing to say.”

The silence I left behind, I knew, was more dangerous than a scream. But something was different. My father didn’t come to my room with a list of new restrictions, nor did he spend the next hour breaking things and yelling about me downstairs. Maybe it was that admission to UCLA. No matter what happened, I would be gone at this time next year. My father could no longer claim to be my eternal watchman, ever vigilant. His tour of duty was almost over.

When the phone rang, my mother tapped on my door and said Lizzy was on the line. It was like nothing had happened. I grabbed the upstairs extension next to the computer, crumpling the curly cord in my hand so hard that it left little half-moon shapes in my palm. One thing hadn’t changed, at least: a clicking sound meant that my father was listening to our conversation from the downstairs phone. He only did that when he was looking for reasons to say I was breaking the rules.

We had to be on our guard, so I spoke first. “Hey, Lizzy! Did you still want to get together to finish our presentation for class?”

She got my drift immediately. “Yeah, that’s why I was calling. I figured if we finished it tonight we could actually have some free time this weekend.”

“I have to ask. Can you hold on?” I made a big show of putting down the phone and walking loudly downstairs so my father would have time to hang up. If I caught him, I’d have to listen to his lecture about why he was justified because I couldn’t be trusted. I found him at the table, morosely reading a novel by V.S. Naipaul. He barely looked up as he gave me permission to leave the house.

When Lizzy picked me up, she was jumpy with excitement. “What are you doing over winter break?” The school called it Christmas Vacation, but the kids who weren’t Christian usually came up with other names for it.

I thought bleakly about spending two weeks with my family. “I have no idea.”

“Heather and I want to go to this private show in Beverly Hills. I heard about it from one of the older guys at that backyard party on Saturday.”

“What’s the show?”

“I guess somebody from Matador Records is in town and there’s a rich record exec throwing a 1993 preview party for new indie bands?”

“That sounds… potentially interesting.” I used my bemused scientist voice, which was our code for “holy shit yes.”

We turned onto the cul-de-sac where Heather’s chocolate-colored house was exactly like all its neighbors. Lizzy killed the engine. “Want to get stoned before we go in?” She gave me her best naughty pirate smile. For the first time since that day with Tess, I felt a rush of unambivalent love for her. This was my best friend, who understood geology and never judged me and was a disobedient badass like Glorious Garcia. I was right that we weren’t going to murder anyone else. That was a seriously fucked-up thing that had happened, but maybe it wasn’t the most fucked-up thing I’d survived.

I took a hit off the wood-and-plastic tobacco pipe we’d bought improbably at a drugstore. “I am so glad we are getting the hell out of here in…” I counted on my fingers. “Six months? Do you think we could move up to L.A. in the summer?”

Lizzy blew smoke over her shoulder, into the murky wayback. “I don’t think we can get into the dorms until fall. But maybe there’s a way?”

We passed the pipe a few more times, and I felt the last remaining toxins from my father’s gaze draining out of me. Beyond the foggy windows, Irvine was evaporating, its endlessly repeating contours replaced by UCLA’s Spanish colonial architecture and the ragged, strobe-lit concrete of East L.A.’s hidden backyards.

When Heather let us in, I could see the remains of a large family gathering in the dining room behind her, full of aunts and uncles and cousins. Hamid was there too, clearing up dishes. His hair was longer, and when he looked over at me I felt a jolt that wasn’t an alien seizing control of my cardiovascular system. It was only my heart, beating faster. He grinned and I realized that I had forgotten to keep walking down the hall to Heather’s room with Lizzy.

“Hey, Beth.” He walked to the foyer and leaned awkwardly against the wall where everybody hung their coats.

Though his family was in the next room, and my friends were waiting pointedly in front of the X-Ray Spex poster on Heather’s door, it felt like we were completely alone. Nobody could hear us.

“Hey… are you back for winter break?”

“For a couple weeks, yeah.” He glanced at Heather and Lizzy. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

My head buzzed with more than a few hits of pot. “Um… sure.”

“Let’s take a walk.”

I left Heather and Lizzy listening to records and promised to be back in a few minutes.

Outside the air was sharp with a damp chill, and I shoved my hands deep into my jacket pockets. We walked for a few seconds silently, our shadows rotating around us as we moved from one pool of lamplight to the next.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about last summer,” Hamid said, his words coming out in a rush. “I guess I just wanted to know what happened? I thought we liked each other and then you stopped talking to me. I was talking to one of my friends in the dorm about it—I mean, part of it, I wasn’t breaking our privacy—and she said that I was a jerk. Was I a jerk? Were you mad?”

I balled my hands into fists and thought about how there were certain kinds of pain that Hamid could never feel because he literally did not possess the biological parts for it. Still, there were many kinds of pain that we had in common.

“I don’t really think you were a jerk.”

“Then what happened?”

I wasn’t going to tell him, and then suddenly I was. “Something… I mean, there was nothing you could do. But I got pregnant. And it’s all over and taken care of, but… I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Holy fuck, Beth. What the fuck. Oh my god.” Then he paused, as if everything I’d said was sinking in. “What do you mean that it’s over?”

We turned onto another cul-de-sac where the houses hadn’t been built yet. Clean gray sidewalks led to square plots of gravel where one day there would be condos whose backyards could hold nothing larger than tables bisected by folding umbrellas. I stopped to stare into the invisible places where people like us might live one day. Or not.

“I got an abortion.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have…”

“What? What would you have done? Become a traveler and edited time?” I snarled the words before I could stop myself. I wondered if this was what happened to my dad—if he felt one way inside, but it always came out as rage.

Hamid scuffed his foot on the ground. “How did you…? I mean, I thought that was illegal.”

“It is.” I folded my arms and glared at him. “This is another reason I didn’t really want to talk to you about it.”

Hamid didn’t say anything for a long time. When he spoke again, it was almost a whisper. “I think I can see why you didn’t tell me.”

“It’s nothing against you. There was nothing you could do.” I wasn’t furious anymore, just talking.

“I know, but… I’m so sorry. It was my fault.”

“It was my fault too. It’s not like I grew up in a world without condoms. It was… an unlucky edit.”

He laughed and shook his head. “I know, but… I want you to know that you are a true friend for taking care of that…” He broke off, his voice woolly with emotion. “I haven’t had very many friends in my life who would do something like that for me.”