Аннали Ньюиц: The Future of Another Timeline

We burst into giggles.

“Okay, I’m definitely going to need another cigarette then.”

Lizzy handed over the pack and I slid out the matchbook she’d tucked into the cellophane.

That’s when we heard a noise almost like a wolf howl. “What the hell was that?” We stood silently for a minute and it came again. It almost sounded human.

Lizzy’s eyes widened and she stamped out her cigarette. “That’s Heather.” She took off running faster than I’d ever seen her, spiked hair wobbling as she scrambled past us and half skidded on the sandy path.

Soojin and I raced after. Within seconds we could see the car and it was obvious that Heather was screaming, “NO NO NO!” and Scott was laughing in a way that was the opposite of laughing and somebody’s bare foot was sticking out the back window at a weird angle.

Lizzy reached the car first and pulled open the tailgate door, launching herself inside the station wagon. “GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER, YOU FUCKER!” She wasn’t yelling. It was more like a war cry.

It was so dark that at first all I could see was the dim slope of Lizzy’s back. She was perpendicular to Scott, and had settled the weight of her left side against his throat while she looped her arms under his back, pinning him down uncomfortably. Every time he kicked the roof or tried to wriggle away, she followed his body with her own, levering herself against him with a bent leg. He groaned. “Can’t you take a joke? It was a joke, okay?”

Heather scrambled into the back seat, gasping and crying and holding her hand to a red bruise wrapped around the side of her neck. Her long black hair was tangled and eyeliner was smeared in wet streaks around her dark eyes. Soojin came in through the passenger door and scrunched next to her, gently touching the mark. “What did he do to you?”

“He was strangling me!”

“What the fuck are you talking about? We were playing around!”

“No, Scott! Don’t fucking lie! You said you wanted to kill me!” Heather’s voice shook.

“I was joking, obviously !” Scott struggled again, trying to escape from Lizzy’s grip, but she twisted around to crush his right arm beneath her shin while she kept his chest pinned. He was practically immobilized.

“That hurts! My arm is going numb!”

“It should hurt.” Lizzy was growling. “I’m going to let you up, and you’re going to get out of the car and walk home. Do you understand?” He didn’t answer and Lizzy shifted her weight, pushing harder.

“Yes! Yes! I understand!”

Slowly she crab-walked backward, dragging him with her out the back door, yanking him onto the asphalt outside. It was only then that I realized he was naked from the waist down. Scott looked dazed for a minute, and Heather threw his underwear and jeans at him. “What the fuck is wrong with you, rapist!”

He stood up and lunged so fast it was like he was on angel dust. Hell, maybe he was. Before any of us could react, he was back in the car, reaching into the seat where Heather was cowering, smacking her face, head, shoulders—any part he could hit from that angle. Then he grabbed Heather’s breasts in clawed hands like he wanted to rip them off her chest.

Heather was screaming and Soojin was pulling at his fingers and then Lizzy was on Scott’s back, reaching around to put him in a chokehold.

Except it wasn’t a chokehold. A knife flashed in her hand—one of those Swiss Army deals that they always tell you to bring to Girl Scout camp.

“Lizzy, stop! What the fuck are you doing!” It felt like I was screaming underwater. I crawled into the back of the station wagon and reached out, connecting with her shoulder blade. It spasmed under my hand. Lizzy was stabbing the knife in the direction of her own body to penetrate his neck and face. Eventually she was going to miss and impale herself.

“LIZZY! STOP IT NOW!” I grabbed her arm in mid-puncture and she finally went still, her breath the loudest sound in the car. Scott slumped over the back of the seat between Heather and Soojin. His neck was wet and shredded. The knife was buried in what remained of his mouth.

Blood was everywhere. It was running in the seams of the faux leather blue upholstery. It was splattered on the steamy windows. It was dripping onto the floor. It was soaking Heather’s lacy dress. Soojin’s knees made indentations in the seat that quickly turned to bloody pools. It was like a burst watermelon, I thought in a surreal haze of incomprehension. Because this couldn’t be happening. My life hadn’t turned into a gore movie.

Heather was holding herself and hyperventilating. The bruise on her neck had darkened to purple. I crawled around Lizzy and Scott to hug her, the seat back an uncomfortable lump between us. She buried her wet face in my shoulder, whimpering words I couldn’t hear.

“It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay,” I said to her, to us, to myself.

Lizzy was more practical. She poked her head out of the rear door and checked whether anyone was watching us. Through the windshield, I could see the streets were empty except for a distant figure, a woman in a bulky jacket who kicked the front tire of her car before driving away. There was no way she could have seen anything.

“Coast is clear. Right now, nobody knows what happened here.” Lizzy climbed outside and wiped a bloody hand on Scott’s jeans, wrinkled on the ground along with his underwear. Glancing at his body next to me, I realized that he really had been getting off on this. From the waist down, it looked like he was raring to go. I crawled back through the cargo area, past his bare feet, and threw up. Down the hill I could see that woman’s car, headlights tracking the twisted streets that led back to reality. Lizzy yanked up the back door, slamming it hard. She led me around to the driver’s side and all four of us crowded into the front seat, away from the blood.

Heather talked between panicked hiccups. “What you did was right, Lizzy. That was self-defense.” A hiccup. “He said… he said… he was going to rape me to death. And then he started strangling me. He put his hand over my mouth. I thought he was going to…”

“We’re all witnesses. We saw it.” Soojin nodded vigorously as she talked, and the tiny plastic barrettes in her hair began to lose their hold.

“We should drive to the police station right now, and tell them what happened. He strangled Heather. He was raping her. You saved her, Lizzy. It wasn’t just a lucky edit. You saved her.” I was babbling.

I still couldn’t believe he tried to do that with us right there, a few yards from the car. But Scott had always been a dick—he thought rape was totally punk rock, in an ironic, GG Allin kind of way. We tolerated him because of Heather. But my guess was that all of us, including Heather, had fantasized about knifing him in the face at some point. Plus, fuck GG Allin. His music sucked, and so did his politics.

Everyone in the car was silent, and Scott’s body started to smell really bad, like diarrhea mixed with something worse. I returned to my earlier point. “Lizzy, he went full psycho and attacked Heather. We need to go to the police now .”

Lizzy was shaking her head slowly back and forth. “We’ve got to get rid of the body. And clean the car.”

For some reason Heather thought this was a great idea. “Yeah, we can’t go to the cops.”

“What. Why.” I had a terrible feeling it was already decided. Lizzy was always the decider.

Soojin looked at me, then back at Lizzy, waiting for an explanation. I rested my fingers on the door handle, wondering if I should get out right then. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Not yet.

“Beth, we can’t go to the cops. They’ll tell our parents. We’re not even supposed to be here.” Heather was right about that. We were supposed to be seeing a movie at one of the theaters near the South Coast Plaza megamall. “Plus my mom says that the police always take the easy way out. They won’t believe us. We have no proof.”