Think I Want to Twist the Plot This Time

Part 5

"When?"

"Did anyone know you were from the future?"

"Did you do something crazy and like try and kill Columbus?"

"Uh..." They're bombarding her with questions she isn't sure how to answer. Maybe it's best to just tell the story? "I saw a horse and carriage on the way to Barbie Land and took that instead. Weird Barbie told me it could take me anywhere and anyplace in time if I just thought about it, and I thought about our trip to San Francisco last summer, and Sasha's World War II project, and... that's just where I ended up for the night," she explains quickly, keeping her shoulders at a shrug. "In 1942."

"So... like theoretically, I could take this horse and carriage back in time and just off Hitler as a baby?" Sasha asks, and honestly, Barbie's not sure if that's a joke.

"Sasha, you will do no such thing—no changing the course of history with the Barbie method of time travel... which is not a sentence I thought I'd ever say in my life." Gloria shakes her head, still trying to process what Barbie just told her. "Okay, okay... so time travel is real through Barbie Land. But we're all still here, so clearly you didn't do anything too crazy. I'm still a little worried about how you spent an entire evening in the 40s."

"Mom, Barbie's a grown woman; you still infantilize her sometimes," Sasha points out. "She's still here with us in one piece, and I'm sure she had fun."

Gloria sighs, her stance relaxing at the wheel. "You're right, you're right... Did you, though? Have fun, I mean? And... you were safe, right?"

"I did, and I was," Barbie laughs, twirling the rose in her free hand. "I went to a jazz club and talked and danced with a... very charming physicist." Yes, talked and danced. That's all true. And they did talk most of the night, in between everything else. "I got the rose from him."

"Oh?" Now that's piqued their interest.

"Someone famous?" Sasha asks, and through the rear-view mirror, Barbie can see her incline in her seat.

"Um... is Robert Oppenheimer famous now?"

Sasha snort laughs at that, putting a hand in front of her mouth. Barbie flushes; was she supposed to know who he was beforehand?

"Sasha!" Gloria warns again, but it sounds like she's holding back a chuckle or something, too.

"Sorry, Mom, I know Barbie probably has no idea, but like... J. Robert Oppenheimer? As in, like... the guy who invented the atomic bomb?"

"The..." Barbie trails off, remembering how the war ends again, in that fire and destruction. He made that? Was that the project he was talking about, drawing him away? Is he really the one responsible for killing so many innocent people? She feels her stomach sink to her feet and her throat go dry. "We didn't talk about anything like that because the war was still going on..."

"No, and why would you?" Gloria shoots Sasha one more warning glance. "I'm sure you had a nice time."

"I mean... we did talk about the war for a bit, but mostly about how he sent funds to Germany to get some Jewish colleagues out—you know, since he's also Jewish..." Well, maybe she should have done that crash course Google search, after all.

"Hey, if you talked like all night, surely you got something else interesting out of him," Sasha presses, and at least she's getting more into the conversation without looking to make fun of her.

"Um..." What else can she say that has nothing to do with their more romantic part of the evening? "He mentioned hosting union rallies at Berkeley and how his brother and some close friends of his were Communists—but I guess not in the way the government thinks of Communists?" That should probably get Sasha interested.