Twenty-one year old Liza McDuffy was well aware both that Devon did not even know her name and also that Hannah had dated the two most handsome and eligible young engineers in the firm. She was, further, aware of their claims regarding shifting time and Will Robertson’s tacit corroboration.
How Hannah and Devon treated her was not the first time in her life that she had felt ignored and looked down on. In truth, it was more how they didn’t treat her. There were no overt actions either of them had taken against her. That hadn’t been the case since middle school.
Starting in 7th grade, when the company her father worked for closed, her family had lived with her aunts and uncles, bouncing her from school to school. Eventually, her mom had just homeschooled her until they got reestablished. She had just enrolled as a Junior in Newark when COVID hit and everyone masked up. She graduated high school early with some college credits, then went right to Rowan University in Aug. of 2020.
She had managed to make it through the years—at best unnoticed; at worst looked down upon. She was, to most who met her, the geeky, homeless, new girl—the cringy home-schooler. At least those people noticed her. Most people didn’t.
Liza had come to embrace being overlooked, become good at watching and listening. She had become an able observer, learning from what she saw.
The gist of Hannah, Devon, and Merritt’s time-traveling claims was familiar to her. The in’s and outs of their romantic relationships, their weekend practices of volunteering… all were things she had learned from afar. Things she had discovered despite them hardly even knowing that she existed.
She thought she had a fair understanding of them as people. Understanding the time-travel claims would take more time. But aside from time-travel, they were like everyone else; Liza was just some girl in the building, inconsequential, ignored.
Liza’s thoughts on the matter occupied much of her time, and from her thoughts had grown a plan.
Hannah was not unkind. Not beyond the violence of not noticing. Her pretty face, lovely outfits, and charming smile were painful blows that hurt Liza when Hannah—and girls like her—aimed them at other people. Being overlooked hurt. Sometimes more so than being made fun of or put down.
Devon was no worse. Lost in his plunge into a new job and the prospect of starting college, it was not a surprise that he wouldn’t notice her or know her name. It hurt no less. Him being nearly oblivious left an emotional taste like bile, bitter and burning in the throat.
Liza decided to share a morsel of her unhappiness.
It was Friday night and Liza had nothing to do. And no one to do it with.
She stayed at the office until everyone left. When the Manhattan skyline was her only company, she went to one of the common workstations that David Stewart, the manager of the infamous pet store re-engineering project, used.
She had opened the files for the pet store re-engineering project just after lunch. There, alone, she disconnected the computer from the Internet. Then, she reset the computer clock to just after 2 pm. She was ready.
“This will be my version of time-travel,” she thought as she began opening files.
She went into Hannah’s markup and changed various numbers to obviously wrong values. She wasn’t trying to fool Mr. Stewart. He’d find the mistakes. Hannah would have to explain them.
She left Hannah and Devon’s notes untouched. She didn’t want the project to fail or fall behind schedule. She just… When she was honest with herself, she couldn’t exactly identify what she hoped would happen.
Her mischief complete, she saved the file locally, then reconnected to the network so it would sync to the server with the faked timestamp. And it would update the clock of the workstation to the correct date and time.
Beyond CSI level forensics, her mischief would go undetected. Done, Liza’s inkling of guilt was assuaged by a reminder that at any moment, Devon and Hannah would be sitting down—together—at the ballet, and that they would have not one moment that thoughts of her would pass through their minds.
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