Аннали Ньюиц - The Future of Another Timeline

My father helped carry luggage up to the dorm room I’d be sharing with another girl. When we arrived, my new roommate was standing in the middle of the room, eyeing the bunk bed.

Immediately, she gave us a big smile. “Hi, roomie! I’m Rosa Sanchez, from Salinas. Do you care whether you get top or bottom? Because I don’t care.” Her black hair was cut into a short wedge that flopped over the shaved back of her head. I liked her instantly.

“Hi! I’m Beth Cohen. From Irvine. I like the top.”

“Done! This must be your dad?”

My father put some bags carefully on the floor. “No.”

She glanced at me uneasily. “Okay, well, nice to meet you!”

My father ignored Rosa. “Beth, remember our agreement.”

“I will.”

He turned his back to leave without saying goodbye. I looked out the dirty window, straining to glimpse my parents driving away. But all I could see was a distant courtyard, surrounded by more residence halls.

“Was that your uncle or something?” Rosa was unpacking clothes and books on the lower bunk.

“It was my dad. He just doesn’t like to say that for some reason.”

“Parents are so weird.”

“Yeah.” I laughed, glad there was an easy way to frame that conversation as if it were a wacky moment from a teen comedy. “They really are. You never know what they’re going to do next.”

Rosa and at least a dozen other students on our floor were also in my chemistry class. Everyone said it was one of UCLA’s most terrifying weeder classes, jammed with so much information that only a tiny handful of people got higher than a C-plus. And it was almost impossible to ask questions. Weeders were taught in auditoriums that held hundreds of students, and were seemingly intended entirely to dissuade the vast majority of us from majoring in science.

At least that made it easy to avoid Lizzy. I spotted her once across the room, but she was busy taking notes. I usually sat with Rosa and other people from the dorm. With so many of us crammed into the same classes, it was easy to study and socialize in packs. My days began to blur into a routine. Every night I stepped out of the student lounge, leaving my books under Rosa’s care, to call my parents on the pay phone in the hallway. Depending on my father’s mood, I was either on my way to scientific superstardom or on the precipice of doom. I tried to keep my voice steady and friendly, to obey all the rules. I kept picturing what would happen if they cut off my dorm payments. One day I’d find all my stuff in the hall and someone else in the top bunk.

But for now, I had a weeder class to deal with. The night before the chem midterm, it seemed like the whole fifth floor of Dykstra was freaking out and pulling an all-nighter with the help of coffee, NoDoz, sugary snacks, or meth. A woman snorting glittery powder off her physics textbook in the hallway shrugged at me. “What? It’s only speed. You want coke, you gotta go to the fancy dorms.”

Rosa and I stuck to cigarettes. After my nightly parent call, I grabbed a lighter and poked Rosa. “Let’s take a smoke break.” We took the elevator down to the butt-encrusted smoking area outside, trading questions about the differences between organic and inorganic acids. The midterm was in roughly fifteen hours, and it was definitely time to inhale some gas and particulates.

“Do you think you’re ready for the test?” I exhaled and flicked some ash in the general direction of the bin.

“Yeah. I’m pretty good with tests. That’s how I got into UCLA, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

“I got 1550 on my SATs.”

My eyes bulged. “Wow—that’s super good.”

“Yeah. It’s how I got my scholarship. But I still need to do work study to pay for everything.” She blew a smoke ring.

“What’s work study?”

“It’s like a financial aid thing. I work part time in the library and it helps pay for tuition and dorms or whatever.” She wouldn’t look at me. “I guess your parents pay for college, huh?”

“Yeah. Right now they do.” An idea was forming in my mind. “But they won’t be soon.”

Rosa glanced up. “It’s expensive, right? I know lots of people who start work study in sophomore year. It’s good if you can focus on school when you’re a freshman taking all the weeder classes. Working is a pain.”

I offered Rosa another cigarette and we kept talking about financial aid. Listening to her made it seem reasonable and real. Maybe I could do work study and support myself. I imagined a future without the nightly calls. Without the fear. It was a tiny vein of hope.

I went to the financial aid office the next day, after the chem midterm. An administrator with a cheesy UCLA tie walked me through some of the forms, and promised I could apply for winter quarter if I needed to.

“Get your parents to fill this out.”

“I’m independent from my parents. I mean, I want to be classified as independent.”

The admin paused. “How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“So do you have legal documentation? You need to prove your parents aren’t supporting you.”

“What if I can’t get documents from them? Like is there a way for me to declare myself independent?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think so. But you should ask a lawyer about that. We have lawyers available for students—make an appointment down the hall.”

Walking down the tiled hallway reminded me of leaving my parents’ house without permission. I had no idea what to expect, or where I was going. I was breaking the rules.

Soon I sat on a cracked leather sofa facing a woman with a fluff of gray-brown hair and droopy stockings.

“I’m trying to find out how I can declare myself independent from my parents so I can get financial aid on my own.”

“Well, that’s something I don’t hear every day.” She perked up and jotted something down on a legal pad. “What’s your reason?”

I thought of a million excuses, and then I remembered what Tess had said.

“My father… he’s mentally ill. I need to be on my own.” I could barely hear myself over the blood throttling my ears.

The lawyer nodded and I thought sympathy inhabited the lines of her face. “I see. Let me research this and get back to you? I think we can figure something out.” Then she jotted down another note, as if everything was normal. I was flooded with relief. Her reaction didn’t feel like the fake normal I knew from home. Maybe she was actually going to help me.

I had one more midterm left, and it was the worst. Cultural geology was my least favorite part of geoscience, and this class involved a lot of hypotheses about travel that couldn’t be proven with repeatable results. Yet somehow Professor Biswas made it interesting. Besides, anything was better than weeder bullshit like chem. The problem was that Biswas had assigned a midterm essay about the Great Man vs. Collective Action theories of history. I was still struggling with those concepts, so distant from the molecular structure of acid or the decay of metals over time. Checking my watch, I decided I still had time to make it to her office hours.

The geology department was in a cluster of old brick buildings surrounded by plots of thick ivy and pine trees. Inside, the upper floors were a maze of narrow hallways lined with office doors. Some boasted a plain placard with the professor’s name; others were covered in cartoons, GIS maps, cutaway views of sedimentary layers, and covers of scientific journals. I waited my turn to see Professor Biswas, sitting behind a few other students on the cool linoleum floor, staring at a two-hundred-year-old map of the Caribbean islands taped to her door. A few minutes later, Biswas motioned me inside. Her window looked out onto the dingy geoscience courtyard, mostly used as storage for particularly large rocks.