It
wasn’t until she was on the sidewalk and headed home that Kendra realized she
had no idea what to wear or how to behave when she arrived at Carlisle’s Pub
that evening. She mentally
reviewed her wardrobe: one bathrobe, sensible clothes that wouldn’t alarm her
professors, a business suit for meeting money people, running shorts that she
hadn’t worn for a year, and sweats and a T-shirt both flecked with the tiny
holes that were signs of age in knitwear for the few waking hours she spent in
her apartment.
“Ohmigod,”
she whispered. “I have nothing to
wear.” She hadn’t had occasion to
feel that way since she’d been fourteen--come to think of it, perhaps LB…Elle
could help. It was time to start
tutoring the kid anyway. Kendra
sighed. She’d have to be careful
not to let Elle know that she needed advice or the girl’s head would swell too
much to stuff any physics into it.
Kendra
changed course, and instead of heading to her apartment, she walked back to her
lab. She sat at her computer and
pulled up her equation. She calculated
a travel arc that should land her
in Elle’s room a few minutes after the girl’s curfew, but the pressures of the
final months of the PhD program must have taken more out of her than she’d
thought. She landed face down on
top of Elle, who’d been asleep.
“Ow!”
cried the girl.
“Shhh!” Kendra clamped her hand over the girl’s
mouth. “It’s me.”
The Little
Bitch bit down.
“Ouch!” Kendra drew her hand away, giving LB
the diversion she needed to dump her older self on the floor.
“God
damn it!” Kendra whispered loudly.
“I told you I’d be back to tutor you. Why are you being such a jerk?”
LB
sprang out of bed, and snapped on her desk lamp. The girl wore a black tank top and yellow Lion King pajama
bottoms. Kendra glanced at her own
ensemble: pleated tan khaki pants,
brown flats, and a light blue short-sleeved blouse. Even in pajamas, LB…Elle looked more cool than she did. Kendra hid a smile.
“What
are you grinning at? You are a lezzy,
aren’t you?”
“No,
and even if I were, lesbians are cool now, so what are you worried about?”
Elle
wrinkled her nose. “Yeah
okay, but…licking…down there?”
“You
have the same anatomy. How can you
be such a misogynist?” Kendra
stared at her younger self, perplexed.
It was the wrong thing to say.
The girl stared back at her with defiance.
“Never
mind,” Kendra said and backed away from the toxic murk that was teen
sexuality. “I’m sorry I landed on
you. Let’s get busy.”
“Just
like that? Where were you when I
needed you for math homework all week?”
“Working
on my landings and fending off industrial spies.”
“Really?” The girl’s mask of bored superiority
slipped for an instant, but only for one.
“Well, I hope you’re better with spies than you are with time travel.”
“Let me
see your math and science texts.”
Elle
sifted two books out of the stack on her desk and plunked them down in the
circle of light on her desk.
“How
are your grades?”
Elle
clicked her tongue against her teeth, crossed her arms, and stared sullenly at
the floor.
“That
good, eh?” Kendra opened the
algebra text. “Show me where you
are.”
While
Elle looked for the appropriate section, Kendra sifted through the girl’s
spiral-bound notebooks until she found the one with math notes and
assignments. The kid had tried the
last few days, but had no sense of the power of math.
Elle
nudged Kendra’s arm with the algebra book. “We’re here.”
She pointed to a section on trinomial equations.
Kendra
took the text, and flipped back toward the beginning until she found the chapter
she was looking for. “The heart of
what algebra has to offer on its own is here in chapter three--”
“What
do you mean, ‘on its own’?”
“Algebra
and geometry don’t really fly until you get into calculus. They’re precursors, and not a lot of
fun on their own.”
“So why
do they teach us this stuff without calculus?”
“I
don’t know.” Kendra studied her
younger self for a moment. “Want
to see if it makes more sense to you with some calculus?”
“Okay.” Elle shrugged.
“We
need to find a problem to solve.”
“What
do you mean? There are tons of
problems in the book.” Elle
sounded worried.
“Yeah,
but most are designed to avoid calculus.
Let’s check science--biology, hmm.” Kendra flipped rapidly through the text. “Okay, take capillary action for
example.”
“We
covered trees at the beginning of the term.”
“Good,
then you’ll appreciate this. Remember that the height of the column can be
figured using this equation.”
Kendra wrote the equation from memory as she spoke it aloud.
“Um, I
don’t think we learned that. We
don’t take geometry until next year, so I don’t know what a cosign is.”
“That’s
the beauty of calculus.” Kendra
launched into an explanation of the dynamic real-world number-crunching power
of calculus compared to static algebra and geometry. Elle’s eyes glazed over.
“Sorry,”
said Kendra, noticing Elle’s shoulders, slumped in defeat. “I’m doing this backwards, like your
teachers. Tell me about some of
the problems in your life, and we’ll solve one with math.”
Elle
launched into a dizzying account of her complicated social life. Kendra thought her brain might explode.
“…and I
have to wait until the stupid things go on sale, because Mom and Dad give me
such a tiny allowance,” her younger self complained.
“Ah,”
Kendra’s numb brain seized on what seemed a concrete problem. “Would it help you to know when things
were likely to go on sale?”
“Yeah,”
Elle annunciated two tones of sarcasm, as if Kendra were dense.
“Okay.” Kendra showed LB…Elle how to find
market trends and how to plot a price curve. “You can get as complicated as you want to, but probably
watching the major producers in Asia, and the major consumers in the West will
get you a prediction accurate to within a week. There will be a lag in the price variable between New York
and Kansas, of course, but once you figure out what that is, it should stay
fairly consistent.” Kendra looked
up.
“Well,
duh,” said Elle.
Kendra
took that as a sign that she understood, and decided not to be insulted.
“The
real power comes from understanding the long-run marginal cost curve. The manufacturers want to make a
profit.”
“So?”
“So if
we use an integral equation to find total cost over a period, and plot that
against the differential of consumer price, then--”
“Hold
on. Won’t that make a three
dimensional curve?”
“Yeah,
and we’ll find the peaks that correlate with your favorite stores in Wichita.”
“Cool!”
Just
after midnight, Elle figured out when the fall wardrobe she wanted would go on
sale. “But that’s too late!” she
wailed. “That doesn’t help me at
all.”
“Okay,
what do you need to know that would help?”
“I
guess if I knew when things would be on sale farther ahead, like a year, that
would help.”
That
ought to earn me a couple of favors, Kendra thought.
By dawn
they had used indefinite integrals to find the functions that described the fashions
for the next ten years. They
plugged in their unique variables, and spit out some real results.
“So are
these right?” Elle asked. “You’re what, ten years older than I
am? You ought to know.”
“I’m
five years older than you are,” Kendra half-snarled.
“Geesh,
you must be really hard on my body,” Elle objected. “You look older.”
“Hey,
it’s my body, twerp.”
“What
are you so mad about? All I said
was that you should know if these fashions are right for the first five years…but
you don’t, do you?” Elle asked, notes of disbelief and wonder in her voice.
“No, I
don’t. I eat and sleep
irregularly, and I work. Now it
looks like I’ll be tutoring you, so when would I have time to read a fashion
magazine or shop?”
“God,
chill a little, would you?” Elle
squinted at her. “This might be
the weirdest sleepover I’ve ever had, but you know, you would look pretty hot
with a little makeup.” Without
further ado, she made up Kendra’s face, then smiled. She turned Kendra toward the mirror over her bureau. “What do you think?”
Kendra
looked at herself, expecting to see some outrageous parody of adult style, but
she liked what she saw. Her lips
looked full and sexy, the circles were gone under her eyes, and she actually
had a healthy glow. Her eyes were
best. She looked almost as
powerful and mysterious as Xenopoulos.
“Wow. Pretty good, kid,” Kendra whispered.
“At
least you haven’t gotten fat or anything,” Elle said with uncharacteristic
cheer. “I think I have some
clothes you could wear.”
“What,
and look retro or something?” Kendra objected, and then wondered why she would
care.
“Hey,
our equations showed predictable recurrences and even persistence of a few
trends. You’ll be fine in a tank
and jeans.”
Kendra wanted
to ask if Elle had another black tank, but instead she said, “It’ll be cold
when the sun goes down. It’s
February in California, about 40 or 50 at night.”
“Black
leather jacket,” the girl said without thought. “Do you still have this one?” LB hoisted a new version of a jacket that Kendra thought
might be moldering in the front closet of her apartment. “Um, I think so.”
“Can
you take this one just in case, or would that fuck up the time-space
continuum?”
Kendra
laughed. “We can assume that’s a
myth. You and I are mass of the
same origin, currently occupying the same moment in time. Essentially we’ve doubled, but neither
of us has exploded or gone crazy.”
“Assume?! You mean you didn’t check that out
before you started hopping back here to bug me?” Elle asked, truly angry. She shoved her jacket back into the closet.
“Kendra?”
called a voice from the hall. “Are
you all right?” It was Kendra’s
mother.
Both
Kendras opened their mouths to answer, but the older version caught herself in
time.
“Yes,
Mom. I’m fine. I was talking to myself.”
“Okay.” Their mother didn’t sound convinced,
but Kendra heard her go into the bathroom.
“I
better get going. Study
hard.” She touched the reversal
button on the remote in her pocket.
“Wait!”
Elle shouted. “You didn’t answer
my--”
“Question,”
Kendra finished her young counterpart’s complaint, as she stepped into her
lab. “Well, that was better,” she
muttered, referring to her landing, but thinking about her time with Elle. She glanced at the time, almost 9 p.m.
already, but she’d have time if she hurried.
