The Future of Another Timeline

^TEN BETH

Irvine, Alta California… Garden Grove, Alta California… Tustin, Alta California (1992 C.E.)

It had been a week since I took the home pregnancy test, and three days since Hamid said he’d be home. He hadn’t called yet, which was a bitter kind of relief. I didn’t want to tell him anything about my plans with Lizzy and her mom Jenny, but maybe if he’d called I’d have changed my mind.

I told my parents I was sleeping over at Lizzy’s house, so they suspected nothing when Jenny and Lizzy picked me up. It wasn’t a complete lie, of course: I would be staying with the Bermans that night. I left out the part where we’d be driving to Garden Grove for an off-the-books doctor’s appointment, paid for with a year’s worth of my saved allowance.

I kept having panic flashes as Jenny drove. I was going to die. My parents would find out. A fucked-up larva covered in teeth and eyes would squirm its way out of my womb and eat the world.

The doctor was a kinetic, pale man with matted hair on every part of his body except his head. It was weird to see him sitting in the receptionist’s chair when we walked in. “You can call me Bob, because we don’t stand on ceremony after hours.” He reached out to shake my hand, then grabbed my fingers and turned the gesture into a little bow. “Milady. Welcome to my humble chamber.” I could see bright lights in the office behind him, and a vinyl-covered exam table with metal stirrups attached.

Jenny hugged me. “We’ll be right out here, honey.” She and Lizzy sat in the waiting room while I followed Bob to the back.

He kept up the mock chivalry routine, twirling his hand in the air as he gestured for me to sit on the table. “You’re quite a young one. How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Naughty, naughty girl!” He waved an admonishing finger at me. “Take off all your clothes and I’ll be back with my instruments.”

I wasn’t sure why I needed to take everything off, but I also didn’t think it was a good idea to ask questions. There was no hospital gown for me to put on, so I lay bare on the sticky plastic of the table, heels in stirrups and knees pressed firmly together. Hamid was probably back at home in Irvine right now, having a nice dinner with his family.

Bob erupted back into the room, trailing a device on wheels that I couldn’t properly see. After craning my neck, I thought maybe it looked like one of those hair dryers my mom used at the salon, with the silver helmet that blew hot air evenly all over her head.

“I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you, naughty girl.” Bob adjusted a lamp nearby, and suddenly I could feel heat against my legs. “The good news is that this is a state-of-the-art machine that’s sort of like a vacuum, and it does the job really quickly. The bad news is that you might feel a little cramp. Can you handle a little cramp?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, open wide.” He slid a hand between my knees and I opened my legs.

Suddenly I felt his gloved hand inside me, covered in a cold slime. He grunted, withdrew, and pushed in the speculum. I could hear and feel its metal paddles clicking as he cranked me open until I thought I would rip. I focused my eyes on the ceiling, covered in white tiles, and tried to decide whether they were fissured or perforated. Then I heard rattling and what I thought was the low hum of a motor. Without warning, my abdomen wrenched with pain worse than anything I could have imagined.

I clenched my teeth and fists and stared at a place in the ceiling where a water leak had left a cloudy brown stain behind. I wondered if it was normal to feel like a giant lamprey was chewing and digesting my guts.

“Almost done.” Bob sounded distracted. “It’s not so bad, right? Some women love it. One of my patients had an orgasm when she was giving birth.” He paused, as if pondering. “Maybe one day you will too, when you find the right boy.”

Everything hurt so much that his words were just sounds that meant time was passing. Soon it would be over.

When he withdrew, it felt like I was giving birth to a machine. All the mechanical parts slimed out, and I was nothing but scraped tissue and diminishing anguish. I could feel warm liquid oozing out of me, like when I got my period.

“You’ll be spotting for a few days, but if it starts to bleed a lot go to the emergency room right away.” Bob scooted his chair around the table so I could see his face. For the first time, he sounded like a normal doctor. “Also, no sex for a couple of weeks. That’s it. Feel free to go when you’re ready.”

He wadded up his gloves and threw them in a silver trash can, the kind that pops open like a mouth when you step on its foot. Then he jangled out of the room, trailing the vacuum cleaner. I sat up slowly and another warm lump dribbled out of me onto the plastic table, creating a heart-shaped puddle of lubricant and blood. I couldn’t see any tissues or cloths for cleaning up, and finally hobbled to the sink to grab some rough paper towels. I washed up as best I could, and jammed some fresh paper towels into the crotch of my underwear just in case.

When I stumbled out of Bob’s office, I suddenly needed to throw up. The only place to do it was in the receptionist’s trash can, so he wound up with two samples of my bodily fluid that day. I didn’t mind leaving the smell there for him to find.

Lizzy and Jenny jumped up as soon as I came back to the waiting room. They put their arms around me and we walked out together like that, squashing through the doorframe three abreast. It was awkward and warm and safe. I felt shaky when we got into the car, but my bleeding had slowed to a mild seep. I really was going to be all right.

The radio blipped to life as Jenny started the car, and that shitty Don Henley song “All She Wants to Do Is Dance” came on. I thought I was going to scream, but instead I started talking, my words coming faster than outrage.

“I hate this song. Because everybody thinks it’s about a woman who is carefree and beautiful, but it’s actually about how Don Henley goes to some war-torn country and meets this woman who is in the middle of the most horrible situation ever, and all he notices about her is that she’s dancing. That’s the only thing he sees. She’s living in this dystopia where the government is bugging discos and mobsters are selling weapons to the military, and he actually thinks that all she cares about is goddamn dancing!”

My voice was a little too loud. Nobody said anything for a second, then Lizzy laughed. “I hate this song too.”

Jenny smiled. “I realize that I am totally uncool because I like Don Henley. I like the Eagles, too.” Then she shot me a serious look. “But yeah, let’s listen to something else. Do you approve of Tracy Chapman?”

It was mom music, but I still liked it. We sang along to “Fast Car” and sailed down the freeway back to Irvine.

Hamid called me two nights later. I answered on the downstairs phone next to the kitchen, where my mom was washing the dishes after dinner and listening to everything I said. That was fine, because I didn’t want to say much.

“Hey, it’s Hamid. How’s it going?”

“I’m good. How are you?” I twisted the curly cord around my fingers.

“Pretty good. What are you up to this weekend?” He didn’t offer any explanation for why he’d waited so long to call.

“I have plans with Heather and those guys.”

“All weekend? You don’t even have time to watch a very special video history of the Mouseketeers?” His voice hovered between needy and sad. It reminded me of when we’d talked on the beach, where he’d pulled me into his melancholy and left an alien robot baby behind.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m just super busy.”

“Well, what about next weekend?”

“I have a ton of SAT prep so…”

“So you’re busy.”

“Yeah.”

I could practically hear him getting the hint. When he spoke again, there was no emotion in his voice. “Okay cool… well, anyway, maybe I’ll see you around before I leave for UCLA. Or maybe not. Whatever.”

“Okay cool. Bye.” I hung up and tried not to feel anything.

My mom put down the dish towel and looked at me. “Was that a boy?”

“Yes.”

“You were very nice. I thought you did a good job politely turning him down.”

I had one of those split-second fantasies where I smashed every single dish my mom had painstakingly dried. The room was covered in powdery shards, and then it wasn’t.

“I think I’m going out with Lizzy tonight, okay?”

I ran upstairs before she could finish saying yes.

Irvine Meadows was having a summer weeknight concert with four indie bands, including Million Eyes, and we’d been planning to see it for a few days. Soojin and Heather were already in the station wagon when Lizzy picked me up.

“So what the hell happened with you and Hamid?” Heather turned all the way around in the front passenger seat, kneeling on the pleather to face me. “He said something about how you are going to be busy for the rest of the summer?”

After what happened with Scott, I figured Heather could keep a secret. So I told her and Soojin the whole story. By the time I got to the part where I’d puked in the trash can, we were parked in Irvine Meadows’ most distant and secluded parking lot.

“Please don’t tell Hamid, okay?” I looked at Heather.

She nodded slowly and then let out one of her crazy cackles. “Yeah, I can see why you might be busy all summer.”

“It’s not that Hamid is a bad person. Actually, he’s really nice. I’m just not… I know it sounds weird, but I’m not in the mood to talk to him.”

“That totally makes sense. I mean, he’s my cousin, so I feel bad for him. But also he’s kind of a dumbass.” Heather stuffed some weed in a pipe and took a long hit. “You want some?”

“I want some! I’m done driving now, hello!” Lizzy reached for the pipe, still trailing smoke.

We passed the pipe around for a while, and then headed toward our seats. After the first opening act, I heard a familiar voice behind us.

“Hey, guys. Great show, right?”

It felt like the hair was walking off the back of my neck. I turned around to see our social studies teacher, Mr. Rasmann, smoking a cigarette and looking very non-teachery in a leather jacket. He’d graduated from college only a couple of years ago, and a lot of girls at school had crushes on him.

“Hey, Mr. Rasmann.” Soojin smiled at him. “I didn’t know you liked punk rock.”

“Yeah, I miss going to shows in L.A. But this lineup is great. Have you guys heard Million Eyes before?”

I knew I wasn’t going to be interested in whatever he said next. My guess was that he only asked as an excuse to barf out some giant explanation of a band I definitely understood better than he did.

But for some reason Soojin fell into his conversation trap. “I love them, but I’ve never seen them live.”

And, as I predicted, he took her reply as pretext to launch into a long commentary about Million Eyes that he’d ripped off practically verbatim from an article in LA Weekly. Lizzy pulled out a cigarette to share, and Mr. Rasmann leaned forward to light it for us. It felt cool to have a teacher do that, but it also reminded me of Bob, with his “we’re not standing on ceremony” routine.

Lizzy grabbed my elbow. “Let’s take a little stroll before the next band.”

We wandered through the loge section and Lizzy glanced back over her shoulder. “That teacher is so gross. He’s always hitting on girls in my class.”

“Really? Ugh.”

Soojin raced up to us, almost crashing into the railing where we leaned. “Why did you guys leave me with that pervert?”

I waggled my eyebrows. “Why did you leave Heather with that pervert?”

“Heather went to the bathroom.”

“What did he do?”

“Well, at first I thought he was being nice. He was like asking me to call him Tom and talking about cool music. But then he was like, hey you have skin like a china doll, and do you want to party after the show, and it was super gross.”

“That asshole has been molesting girls at our school all year.” Lizzy had a furious expression on her face that I’d only seen once before, on the night we never talked about.

“He’s definitely got a molester vibe.”

“We should teach him a lesson.” Lizzy’s mouth hardened into a smile. Soojin grinned back.

I thought that would be the end of it. But Mr. Rasmann was still there when we got back to our seats, and Soojin wore a fake flirtatious smirk she only used to fuck with people.

“Hey, ladies!” He was trying to riff on a Beastie Boys lyric, and it came out sounding awful.

“Hi, um, Tom.” Soojin shot Lizzy a look as she spoke. “So where do you want to go party after the show?”

He bared his teeth. “You should come to my place. I have some good bourbon I got from my dad.”

“Can my friends come?”

Mr. Rasmann raked his eyes over us. “Sure. What the hell. It’s summer vacation, right?”

We followed his directions to an apartment complex in Tustin. It was one of dozens of suburban developments built during the 1970s to look woodsy and natural. As we wandered between amorphously shaped plots of grass and stucco walls masked by trees, I hung back for a moment to light a cigarette that Lizzy had stuffed in my pocket earlier.

“I’ll catch up, you guys! I’m going to smoke for a minute.”

“See you there!”

They climbed rustic wooden stairs and I leaned against a lamp post, blowing misshapen smoke rings and wondering what the hell we were doing. I kept thinking about Hamid, and how I wished he’d said he was sorry about not calling. I was raging, irrationally, that he hadn’t apologized for that evening he knew nothing about, when I lay naked on a table with a pain machine inside me. Smoke and anguish pricked my eyes, making everything blurry.

Suddenly, a woman rounded the corner, walking straight toward me, her trench coat flaring open to reveal knickerbockers and a high-collared blouse that would have been fashionable during the 1980s Gunne Sax craze. Her brown hair was pulled back into a long, thick ponytail.

She stopped directly in front of me and spoke. “I need to talk to you about Lizzy.”

“What?” I was too surprised to ask how she knew me and Lizzy. She looked oddly familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen her before.

“I want you to know that you don’t have to do something you’ll regret. You can stop now. Tonight.” She tilted her head. “Do you understand? You can go home right now and forget about all this. Don’t let Lizzy suck you into it.”

Now I was seriously weirded out. “What the hell? Who are you?”

“I’m… well, there’s no good way to say this.”

Lizzy opened the door to Mr. Rasmann’s place and called my name. In that moment, his apartment felt safer than whatever was happening here, with this familiar-yet-unfamiliar woman.

“I gotta go.” I raced up the stairs and left her behind, mouth open to say something I couldn’t hear.

We checked out Mr. Rasmann’s living room while he rattled around in the kitchen. He had some worn sofas and easy chairs and an admittedly excellent stereo setup. There was a framed poster of Sid Vicious over the turntable, and some concert flyers tacked up next to it: Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Bad Religion. Pretty good taste.

Soojin picked up one of those fat, clothbound books full of plastic pockets for photos and opened it to a random page. She held it up to show us. It was full of Polaroids of girls, some completely naked. I was pretty sure that one of them was in my fifth-period government class.

Lizzy gaped. “Why would he leave that out?”

Mr. Rasmann made a cheerful noise in the kitchen. “Found the glasses, girls! I’m washing them just for you, because this is such a special occasion.”

Soojin put the book down slowly, in the exact place she’d found it. My entire chest felt like a vector graphic from that Disney movie The Black Hole: a flat, glowing grid with an abstract throat punched into it. I was nothing but a sketchy representation of gravitational forces.

But Soojin wasn’t. As soon as Mr. Rasmann returned, she pointed at the book. “What the fuck is that?”

Improbably, he was unruffled. He arranged some tumblers around the bourbon bottle, then smiled at us. “That’s my look book. I’m a photographer when I’m not being a high school teacher.”

Heather narrowed her eyes. “What kind of photographer takes naked pictures of girls?”

“Those are art. A celebration of the female form. Beautiful women like you should understand that.”

The astrophysical phenomenon in my chest suddenly exploded into life, filling my ears with radioactive particles, and I heard myself yelling from far away. “This isn’t art! You’re a fucking pervert!”

Soojin shot me a nasty grin and snatched up the bourbon bottle. “Want to know what we like to put in our look book?”

I was gratified to see the grin evaporate from his face. “What… what do you… are you photographers too?”

“I guess you’re about to find out, motherfucker.” Lizzy was practically growling. She’d added a streak of red to her mohawk, and it gleamed like fresh blood. Then she grabbed the bottle out of Soojin’s hand and shattered it against Mr. Rasmann’s face. He made a squeaking noise and collapsed. Soojin kicked his ribs with her boots. “Call me fucking china doll, you piece of shit? I’m Korean! And I’m not a doll!”

I started to laugh, then felt a throb of rage working its way up from someplace deep in my intestines. My body moved before my brain could catch up, and that’s how I found myself on top of Mr. Rasmann, looking into the blood and bourbon that streaked his slack face. He had a faint haze of stubble and a few scabby pimples on his forehead. I pushed one knee into his chest, holding him down even though he was passed out and definitely not going anywhere. My abdomen cramped like it had in Bob’s office, and then Bob’s voice was in my head, telling me that my pain wasn’t so bad. His words became a refrain, a maniacal repetition: Some women love it. Some women love it. Some women love it.

Mr. Rasmann opened his eyes and tried to talk. “What… what the fuck… you crazy bitches…”

I leaned down close to his face and put my hands loosely around his neck. “What do you think those girls were feeling when you took those pictures? Do you think they loved it? Do you?” Heather, Soojin, and Lizzy had come close, standing above me on the floor, witnessing.

“Answer her, you dick!” Soojin kicked him in the ribs again.

He started to whimper and struggle under my knee. “They… they wanted to!”

My arms felt loose and strong. “They didn’t want it!” I was howling again, and my fingers were moving up his face, across the slime and roughness of his cheeks, until I was touching the soft skin of his eyelids. I could hear Lizzy and Soojin and Heather above me, taunting him and urging me on.

I thought about Bob putting his fingers and machines inside me, and Hamid’s plaintive voice on the phone, and all the girls in that look book who couldn’t tell us what they wanted. And then my thumbs were in the soft, warm place that Mr. Rasmann used to look through his camera. They curled in deeper. I bet he’d never realized that eyeballs were actually holes in his face. And every hole can be penetrated. I laughed again, as I jammed my fingers in as deep as they would go, maybe touching his brain, listening to his tongue slither around his mouth and deliver a final hiss of realization.

Then there were more sounds, and Lizzy was grabbing my shoulders and Heather was hyperventilating and I’m pretty sure I had shredded eyeball on my thumbs. I finally tuned in to hear Lizzy giving orders. “…take that bottleneck with us and get a towel to wipe our prints off anything you touched.”

I moved in a daze through the apartment, trying not to touch anything, allowing Soojin to hold my hands under hot water.

It was only when we returned to the car that I remembered the woman I’d seen outside, the one who knew me and Lizzy. Was she a possible witness, somebody who could identify us to the police? For some reason, I felt certain she was not.