Аннали Ньюиц - The Future of Another Timeline

“Wanna talk outside? Your queen requests an audience.”

I should have known Lizzy was lying when we were at the railroad tracks. This was exactly like that night at the horrible party with Richard. Was she still carrying a knife? There was an alley behind Starless where everybody went to do drugs and have sex. Etiquette dictated that nobody looked at anyone back there—you had your dark, private spot, and you let your neighbors have theirs. It was the perfect place to murder a scumbag.

The scumbag in question gave Lizzy an appraising look. “I’m Elliot.” He grabbed her hand and lifted it to his mouth for a kiss. She reached her other hand around to her back pocket and adjusted something that had the unmistakable shape of her knife sheath. I had to intervene.

“Hi, Elliot. Wow, it’s great to meet you. I bet you are a really fun guy, but my friend is unfortunately super busy right now. Super busy. Like until the end of time.” I yanked as hard as I could on Lizzy’s arm and unglued her from the counter.

She was so surprised that I had her halfway to the door before she protested. “What, Beth? What the hell?”

“We are leaving. Now. ” I was so pumped with adrenaline that I thought maybe I was having one of those moments of super-strength where people lift cars to rescue trapped children. I dragged her to the alley where I was pretty sure she’d been planning to kill Elliot and pushed her against the graffiti-caked wall. “I thought you said you weren’t doing that shit anymore. Remember how like three hours ago you said that?”

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

I glared.

“I was just going to scare him.”

“No. I saw the knife in your pocket.”

“Fine. Maybe I was going to fuck with him. But you heard what Flaca said. You heard how he talked to me. That guy is a shitstain of epic proportions.”

The door to the café slammed and Elliot and his pals stumbled into the alley. One of them hooted drunkenly. “There’s your little feminazi cocktease.”

Elliot took a step in our direction then changed his mind. “Let’s go to a bar with some real women.”

“Yeah. I hate these cuck-making bitches.”

They wandered away, their insults growing fainter as the street swallowed them.

“Did he say ‘cock-making bitches’? Or… ‘duck-making’? What is that? I need to know for my research into neologisms of the asshole class.” Lizzy gave me a quizzical scientist look that used to crack me up. Now it made me tired.

“I can’t be your friend anymore.” Saying it out loud made it real at last. More real than months of pretend politeness. “I’m going to take the bus home.”

“Beth, you can’t take the bus. At least let me drive you.”

“I don’t ever want to get inside your car again.”

I didn’t care what she would say next. I didn’t want to see the expression on her face. I walked into the street and aimed myself in the exact opposite direction from the one Elliot and his friends had taken.

I wasn’t actually sure how I would take the bus home, but my mood was so big that I didn’t feel pragmatic about my situation for about five blocks. I was in a residential neighborhood with no bus stops, and I was starting to see a lot more chain link fences. Probably not a great place to be walking alone at midnight. Maybe I could use the pay phone at Starless to call a cab. I had my mom’s emergency credit card, and it’s not like I could possibly get in more trouble tonight anyway.

“Beth!” The voice came from behind me. Great. Now I was going to have another argument with Lizzy.

But when I turned around, it was Tess, in the Gunne Sax outfit she wore when I first met her. It knocked the wind out of me. “What the hell! Where did you come from?”

Before I could splutter anything else, she crushed me in a hug. “Oh my god, Beth, it’s you! You’re alive! Oh my god.” Her voice wavered and she pulled away awkwardly.

My stomach churned. Her face was so familiar, like her voice. As familiar as my own. But something had always been off.

“Why wouldn’t I be alive? You’re alive. I couldn’t possibly be dead if you are alive.” My voice sounded a lot more reasonable than I felt.

“Right, right.” Tess looked down, hair falling across her cheek. “Yeah, right.”

With a sense of dread, I realized that I already knew what was wrong. The times I’d met her before, it had been dark or I’d been so weirded out that I wasn’t thinking straight. Now I could see her clearly.

“Tess. You’re not me, are you?” I took in her skinny shoulders, and the way she flipped her hair to the side, briefly creating a mohawk-like shape over her forehead. “You’re Lizzy.”

When she met my eyes, it was the same expression she’d worn at the railroad tracks. Hours ago. Decades ago. I raised my hand to smack her but made a fist instead, bringing it down hard against my own thigh. “Why did you lie to me?”

“I’m sorry, Beth, I’m so sorry.” When she started to half cry as she talked, I couldn’t believe I’d ever mistaken her for anyone but Lizzy. She swallowed hard and composed herself. “I knew you wouldn’t listen to me. I was a bad person. Maybe evil. You taught me that. I wanted to get you away from me, before… before…”

“ Before what? ” It was louder than I’d ever yelled.

She whipped her head around, looking at the darkened houses. “Let’s talk somewhere private. I can drive you home.”

“You just literally tried to drive me home and I said no.”

Tess put a hand to her forehead and winced. “Yeah. I know. I mean, I am starting to remember. Fuck, it hurts. Please let me drive you.”

Something about her tone was suddenly so unlike Lizzy’s that I was jolted. She’d traveled through time to find me, more than once. This really might be more serious than murder. “Okay,” I conceded. “Where’s your car?”

When we slid into the seats, Tess gulped some aspirin and took a winding route to the freeway. She didn’t say anything until we were on the I-5, heading south. I vacillated between rage and numbness, rewinding our previous conversations in my mind with different players in the roles. So it was Lizzy who had become the traveler, not me. I still didn’t know what I would become. It was a relief to know my future was uncharted, and I didn’t have to wonder anymore what would turn me into the kind of person who liked the name Tess.

Finally Tess glanced over, then back at the road. “I can’t talk to you about your future, but there aren’t any rules against telling people about their alternate present.” She sighed. “Look—I came back here because I remember a timeline where you killed yourself, Beth. Right before we went to college. You jumped off that bridge in Pasadena where we used to hang out. You know the Colorado Street bridge? We were standing there smoking and then you were gone. I couldn’t stop you, and it… it destroyed me.” She looked over again and I could see tears on her face. “I don’t know if you can understand because you’re not that person anymore. But I never killed anyone else after you… after that. My whole career has been about changing history without violence. It’s been hard. I still have the same urges. You’re one of the only people on Earth who knows what I’m struggling with.”

I wasn’t sure that was true, but it was my chance to ask something I’d been wanting to know for months. “Lizzy, why did you keep killing those guys? I mean, I understood when it was with Scott, but after that… what happened to you?”

I could see more tears making reflective tracks down her face, but she kept her eyes on the scatterplot of taillights ahead. “That first time was so easy. It felt—I don’t know. Like we’d really fixed something. Made a difference. But also it felt good. Natural.” She paused, thinking. “Remember that documentary we watched—jeez, I guess it was last summer for you. It was about how female lions hunt their prey, and we kept joking about how great our faces would look bathed in blood like that one lion who had fucking dipped her whole head inside an antelope’s guts? It was like that. Magnificent and honorable. But also… natural? Because we were doing it to protect all the baby lions and the big fluffy male lions who just wanted to sit under trees and look pretty. I don’t know if that makes sense.”