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“But you could.”
Dr. Okamoto doesn’t seem to have heard us. Rather, she looks touched. “And you decided on me?”
The lie feels like acid on my tongue. “Based on a poll from last year, you were the favorite in the physics department.”
“I’m honored,” she says, sounding genuine. “As it turns out, I have about twenty minutes before I have to get back to my office. I don’t mind answering a few questions.”
We pull up chairs next to hers, Miles’s gaze lingering on a particularly menacing monstera hanging above his head. Dr. Okamoto is different in this environment—more casual. Relaxed.
“Okay, then.” I fold my hands in my lap as though I am a True Professional. “Let’s, um, start with a little background information. How did you begin teaching at the University of Washington?”
“I did my undergrad and master’s at the University of Texas.” She pauses. “Don’t you need something to take notes?”
Ah, yes. A True Professional who forgot the most basic step. Journalism 101.
Get yourself together, Barrett. This may be an interview under false pretenses, but it’s still an interview. I know how to do this. And if I can slip in some very casual questions about time travel, all the better.
“Right, of course,” I say, working some smoothness into my voice. “You don’t mind if I use my phone to record, do you?”
She gestures at me to go ahead, and so I accept the notebook and pen Miles has so helpfully presented to me and start up my recording app.
Over the next few minutes, Dr. Okamoto gives me her life story. She was born in Dallas to first-generation Japanese parents and met Miles’s dad in grad school. Surely, Miles has heard all of this a hundred times before, but he listens politely, hands folded in his lap, only occasionally fidgeting with the strap of his backpack.
“Not long after we graduated, we had a baby—”
“Miles,” I interject, but she shakes her head.
“Max. Miles’s brother. Miles didn’t come along until a couple years later,” she says. “I taught at UT until tenure-track positions in both physics and history opened up at UW within weeks of each other. We lucked out—it was an easy choice to move our family up here. That was about twelve years ago. Anyway, I’m sure the Washingtonian readers would rather hear about my teaching.”
Miles hasn’t mentioned a brother, but then again, I haven’t mentioned plenty. I give Miles a raise of my eyebrows, but he remains fixated on the possibly carnivorous plant.
Dr. Okamoto lights up as she talks more about physics, though I don’t understand half of what she’s saying about her research.
“I’d love to get into some questions that might be a little out there,” I say, now that she’s sufficiently warmed up.
“I’ll do my best.”
I tap Miles’s pen on the notebook, considering my words. “The average person might associate physics with time travel. Is that something that’s ever come up in your research? Not actual time travel, but theories that might indicate whether it’s possible?”
She barely seems fazed by it. “I get asked about time travel in my 101 class every year,” she says with a laugh. “I don’t know if students are looking for an equation, or if they’re being facetious.”
A nearby professor, who’s been taking measurements of a trio of birds-of-paradise, turns his head. “Hope you don’t mind if I interject,” he says. “You weren’t here when Ella was still teaching, were you, Sumi?”
Dr. Okamoto furrows her brow in the same way Miles does when he’s buried in a textbook. “Ella…?”
“Devereux.” The professor, a middle-aged man with tawny skin and a neat gray goatee, retracts his tape measure and steps closer. “That class she taught, the one everyone went gaga for. Time Travel for Beginners.”
Something clicks, and Dr. Okamoto’s face lights up with recognition. “Oh! I believe my first year was her last year. Outrageous class, I’m guessing?”
“That’s putting it lightly,” he says, then holds up a hand to Miles and me. “I’m Professor Rivera, by the way. Horticulture.”
“Barrett. Nice to meet you,” I say. “I’d love to hear more about the class.”
“You and everyone else,” he says with a laugh. “It was a four hundred level, absurdly popular. It was about the physics of time travel—all theoretical, of course. Dr. Devereux taught it once a year and always had a wait list a couple hundred students long.”
Miles lets out a low whistle. “That’s unbelievable.”
“Impossible to get an A, too, from what I heard,” Professor Rivera says. “In ten years, she probably only gave out a handful.”
