The Future of Another Timeline

^EIGHT BETH

Irvine, Alta California (1992 C.E.)

A couple of postcards came, but Hamid didn’t write much on them. One featured a bizarre 1930s incarnation of Mickey and Minnie, and another was a 1970s “family photo” of Donald Duck’s more obscure relatives. I grabbed them out of the mail before my parents did, tucking them into my SAT study guide between the sections on multiple choice guessing and algebra review. The only people who knew about me and Hamid were my friends, and I planned to keep it that way.

I got Hamid’s final postcard on a scalding day when the air conditioner filled our house with an otherworldly whistling noise. In a supposedly happy scene from Disney World, people dressed as the Seven Dwarfs ogled Snow White in an especially creepy way. I flipped it over to read his note: “See you after July 15 I hope.” That was a week away. I immediately ran to the bathroom and threw up. The alien was back in my chest, and I had to get it out.

Or maybe something else was going on. The next morning, I threw up again. On the third day of hurling, I started to panic. My period was late and I was barfing for no reason. I kept thinking about a movie we’d watched in seventh-grade health class about a girl who died from a coat hanger abortion. The teacher gave us one of those unconvincing “I’m your buddy” speeches about how abstinence was the only way to prevent pregnancy. I could still hear his voice in my mind as he dispensed this wisdom. “There’s one simple rule: Wait. Until. You. Are. Married.” He punctuated each word by smacking a fist into his open hand. “That’s why sex education is so simple. Because there’s only one rule. See how easy that is?” He grinned right at me and winked. I think it was supposed to be fatherly, but it made me nauseous.

Which brought me back to the present, where I was hanging on the edge of the toilet, gagging and gasping and telling myself that I couldn’t be pregnant. What was I supposed to do? I could hear my mom talking on the phone downstairs—she spent her entire summer vacation on the phone—and my dad was at the shop. I needed to talk to Lizzy right now.

Dropping my bike in Lizzy’s front yard was already making me feel better. This was normal. I was going to my friend’s house. I was not about to die.

But when I rang the doorbell, I realized my hands were shaking, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to talk. Luckily I didn’t have to say anything when Lizzy opened the door.

“Holy shit, Beth. What the fuck is wrong?”

I must have looked pretty terrible, and suddenly I was crying so hard I could barely stand. Lizzy’s eyes widened and she reached out to grab me in a hug. “Come up to my room.”

I caught a brief glimpse of her mother down the hall, reading something at the kitchen table, then we were mounting the stairs with their mashed-down shag carpet. This pathway was as familiar to me as the one to my own room. Lizzy shut the door and we sat on the floor, our backs against the fluffy bulk of her bed. She put on the Grape Ape EP Terrorist State while my hiccups subsided. Their words rained down on my head like missiles:

Lizzy put her arm around me and I thought about how this room had been our laboratory when we were ten. We spent that whole summer pretending to be geoscientists, keeping notebooks full of observations about the rocks we found in the neighborhood.

“Do you still have those boxes of rocks we collected when we were kids?” My voice sounded shaky and strange.

“Maybe? I’m pretty sure my mom kept them for a little while.” She gave my shoulder a squeeze. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

“I think I might be pregnant.”

“Oh shit. Shit, Beth. What the fuck. Didn’t you use a condom?”

“I mean, mostly. But then there was one time… but he pulled out before…” I put my face in my hands.

Lizzy didn’t say anything for a long time and I stared into the darkness of my eyelids as Glorious Garcia yelled about melting every gun in the world.

“You know that’s bullshit, right? Pulling out is not… it doesn’t… I mean, you are my best friend in the universe, but this is not an unlucky edit. That was really stupid, Beth.”

“I know.” I mashed fingers into my eyes until I saw red spots. “I know, I know!”

“Does Hamid know?”

“No! I don’t want to tell him. I don’t even know if I want to see him again.” As I spoke, I finally looked at Lizzy and realized it was true. My so-called relationship with Hamid could hardly sustain a month of one-sentence postcards, let alone something like this.

“Well, it’s partly his fault.”

“I guess so. But I barely know him. I don’t know what he would do, anyway. It’s not like he’s some kind of magical abortionist.” I started crying again. “He’s just some… idiotic guy.”

“He’s definitely an idiot.” Lizzy shook her head. Then she said the very last thing I would have expected. “We should talk to my mom.”

I’d grown up with Lizzy, but I’d never thought of her mom as somebody we could talk to about anything more serious than what we wanted for dessert. She was one of those vaguely liberal parents who’d told me to call her Jenny instead of Mrs. Berman, her job involved a lot of travel, and that was roughly all I knew about her. When we found her downstairs, still reading, I noticed that she seemed older than when I’d last seen her a couple of weeks ago. Maybe she was tired.

“Mom, we need to talk to you about something private.”

She looked up, her faint smile fading into concern. “What’s going on?”

We sat down on the other side of the table and I looked helplessly at Lizzy. I had no idea what to say.

“Beth thinks she might be pregnant.”

My cheeks burned and I stared at my hands. I couldn’t believe Lizzy was saying it out loud like it was no big deal. But her mom—Jenny—seemed totally unfazed. She put a hand on my arm comfortingly.

“Okay, let’s think. Beth, are you sure? Have you done a pregnancy test?”

I shook my head and felt more tears blobbing up in my eyes.

One trip to the pharmacy and two hours later, it was official. The blue stripe meant I was definitely pregnant. My mother would have been spiraling into total meltdown, hurling accusations, but Jenny gave my arm another pat and looked sympathetic.

“I told Lizzy that she should come to me if something like this happened because I know a doctor who can help. Do you understand what I’m talking about?”

I stared at her, shredded by panic and hope. “Do you mean… abortion? What kind of doctor does that?”

“I met him through a friend, when I needed help.” Jenny and Lizzy glanced at each other, and for a second I could see the same lines in their faces. “He’s a regular family doctor who has a little business on the side. It’s all done in his office after hours.”

Lizzy put her hand on my other arm. “Do you want us to help you?”

I thought of all the times my father had told me I was doing the wrong thing. I thought about how he flipped rules around arbitrarily and invented new ways for me to disobey him. And then I thought, dizzily, that I was not in my father’s house.

“Yes. I want an abortion.”

“Okay. Let me make some calls. The sooner you do it, the easier it will be.” Jenny headed for the phone. For the first time, it occurred to me that Lizzy hadn’t been born a decider. She’d learned it from her mother.