“You mean AOL?” Melinda looked around her desk and produced a CD. “I haven’t installed it yet. I have it at home. Do you want it?”
Alice closed her eyes and tried to imagine her life without a soul-crushing number of unread messages in her inbox. “No thanks,” she said. Alice couldn’t remember coming into this office as a student, not really—there was no reason she could manufacture for needing to be there, but she also knew that Melinda wouldn’t push if she couldn’t provide one. It was often impossible to get kids of any age to talk about something directly, and so all school administrators were used to a sort of backward dance into conversation. “I just mean, are you here to make sure that the kids—that we—don’t destroy everything?”
“Something like that. But I like coming in on Saturdays. Schools are noisy animals, and sometimes it’s nice to have the run of the place.” Melinda was wearing a necklace that Alice recognized, a fat string with dangling wooden fruit. There was a stack of paper on the long desk, and it felt nice to see Melinda’s familiar handwriting—strong, slanted generously to the right—on Post-it notes stuck to her computer monitor. Melinda pointed to the couch in her office, used by many students as a chattier nurses’ station, a place to crash. Alice scooted over, past the space where she usually sat, and where Emily sat, straight to the couch, where she gingerly lowered herself down.
Melinda crossed her legs at the ankle and let her knees splay out to the sides, creating a tent of mouse-colored corduroy. Alice rubbed her hands together and thought about how to put into words the fear that she was having a breakdown, the fear that she had time-traveled, and the fear that she might have to live her whole life again, starting now.
“I guess, downstairs . . .” she started. “I guess I just don’t really know what my plan is, you know? Like, my life path?” The light in the room was so familiar, the stripes of sunshine that would slice through the air and land on the computer screens, making them impossible to read. What Alice wanted to ask was: Is it crazy if I try to do my whole life differently, and my dad’s, too? Is it possible to make things better, starting now?
Melinda nodded. “You’re an artist, aren’t you?”
Alice didn’t want to roll her eyes, but she couldn’t help it. “I mean, I don’t know. Yeah?”
“What kind of art are you interested in?” Melinda knit her fingers together. She looked just the way she did when she was talking to five-year-olds—open, patient, and kind. Alice had seen this happen before, Melinda talking down an angsty teen. Eventually she would send the child back to class, but first, she listened.
“Who even knows anymore. I used to be into painting. I guess I still am.” Alice frowned. She couldn’t ask what she wanted to ask, which was what the hell was happening, and why. Anyone who had ever read a book or seen a movie about time travel knew that it was never pointless. Sometimes it was to fall in love with someone born in a different century, and sometimes it was to do your history homework. Alice had no idea why she’d woken up on Pomander, or what she was supposed to do now. “I guess my real question is how do you know which choices matter, and which ones are just dumb?”
“Alas,” Melinda said, “that can be hard. But a decision like which college to go to, and what to study, those matter to an extent, but they’re not face tattoos. You can always change your mind. Transfer schools. Start over. I studied art, too,” she said, which Alice hadn’t known. Melinda’s hair was thick and dark, held back in a French braid. She and Leonard were the same age, more or less, but Melinda had always looked so much older, so much softer than Alice’s father. “I studied painting and drawing. And after I graduated from college, I moved to New York and worked for some galleries, but then I needed a job that gave me health insurance, and that’s when I started working here. And it made me happier than anything else, and I could still make art, and I could make art with kids. And I didn’t have to pay for my two C-sections.”
“So college does matter.”
“Everything matters,” Melinda said. “But you can change your mind. Almost always.”
Alice nodded. She looked around the office, searching for a reason to linger. “I should get back to the class. But thank you.”
“Of course,” Melinda said. “Anytime.”
On her way out, Alice ran her hand over the desk, half-heartedly hoping for a secret button to push. When she didn’t find one, she stood in the open doorframe. “Can I come back another time?”