Broken timeline - Part One

Chapter One - New York 2017

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Ipad, Iphones, Youtube, TikTok...

I feel like our world is evolving so fast, and if you miss one memo, you're out. At least that's how I feel, and last night's conversation was no exception to this cardinal rule.

"What ?! How come you haven't seen it Emma ?!" yelled my best friend. Or BFF nowadays. I know, I sound like an old book...

"Well... sorry I was busy" I replied, "Sorry for not always being on my phone. I DO have a life."

"Oh pe-lease ! This has nothing to do with your I-don't-want-to-conform rule ! You just want to make a statement and be different. And I call that 'being hipstery", she screamed.

I chuckled, "hipstery ? Really ? are we inventing words now ?", I asked raising one of my eyebrows.

"Yep, we are ! Come on ! You have to live a little ! Taking your nose out of these dusty books every once in a while, is not going to kill you. I might be on my phone 24/7, but it's a window to the outside world ! You however, are only seeing pages... that's not being very sociable..."

Yep, that's my BFF to you. Let me introduce her, Caila Reynolds. Nineteen years old and, a very opinionated Film and Media major. She wants to be a director someday, and she has the money to. Old money.
Her parents acquired their fortune by having a lucky hand at finance, a very lucky one. Her great grand-father was a big investor in the 1920's. Survived the great depression of 1929, and raised himself to the upperclass.
Like a phoenix from the ashes, their family emblem. Oh, yes, they have an emblem.

But Caila is different from her family, and that's what I love about her. She doesn't flaunt her money like it doesn't mean anything. She's very careful with her interactions with people, and wants to make it on her own in the world.
I respect her so much, for not using her family's influence, to get what she wants in life.

I, on the other hand, am the exact opposite. But that's how it works right ? Poor sad girl meets rich nice and attractive girl. They become friends, roommates and college buddies.

But in this case, I'm neither sad nor poor. Okay I'm not rich to the point of lighting cigars with hundred dollars bills, but I'm not scrubbing off the floor of a dirty old diner to make ends meet.

My name is Emma Hastings. I'm nineteen, and an English literature major, minoring in History.
Oh boy! There she is, neither sad nor poor, but girly, with short floral skirts and flannels. Surely drinking lattes and carrying a Macbook pro, writing sad sappy stories on it behind her humongous fake glasses, in the hopes of having her stories being discovered by a very influential publishing house, while claiming not to be doing this for money.

Wrong again, I'm not girly, not in the Instagram way at least. But I do think that I have a reasonable sense of fashion. Caila always makes fun of me for having 'weird taste' sometimes. But she eventually comes around and admits that my pieces of clothing are in fact, incredible.

I have to thank my mom for that. Growing up, my parents kind of struggled in the financial aspect. My mother had my brother when I was just 10 months old. Blame that on birth control, or in her case, the lack of. Like many women across the globe, she thought that breastfeeding would be enough of a contraceptive.
That was her first mistake.

Having two toddlers around the house did not allow much room for her to find a job. So my dad had to compensate. He worked around the clock and I barely ever saw him. He was a Med student back then, with a huge student loan.

And since money was an issue, my mom started making our clothes. And actually she got quite good at it. She even started selling them to her friends and our neighbors. Word got out and she struck a deal with a very notable company. Now she runs her own business and sells clothes from her own fashion line, «Haste Things».
Nice pun.