Chapter 2 Good Omens
In the early morning, the old-fashioned electronic alarm clock next to the bed tried hard to play a burst of fast-paced tunes after the last second of 6:59.
It may just be that the battery is about to run out, and the ringtone becomes distorted and weird. It doesn't sound like a wake-up call full of energy, but more like the vague requiem of an elderly priest.
Tommy Hawke opened his eyes, reached out to turn off the button of the electronic alarm clock, then jumped up from the bed, walked to the simple hanger next to him, took out the T-shirt from it, sniffed it, and put it on after making sure it could be worn for a day .
The landlord, Aunt Melonie, has gotten up early to go out to make money. As a substitute teacher who is still looking for a stable teacher job, today she is going to help a primary school 40 kilometers away for a fee.
There was a cup of warm espresso and a croissant on the tea table in the living room, and next to it was the half pack of Kimberley cigarettes that Melonie had left for him.
Go to the bathroom first to finish washing quickly, then Tommy sits on the sofa and lights a cigarette in a trance.
He is a time traveler. I don’t know why. In 2022, a 27-year-old Chinese student studying business at Boston University, Hawke, traveled to the United States in 1982 two months ago, and became the current Tommy Hawke. An American seventeen-year-old high school student.
Hawke only remembers that when he was shopping with his girlfriend near Chinatown in Boston, he happened to meet two **** robbers who robbed a nearby convenience store and were arrested by the rushed police. The robber was fine, but Hawke was shot by a stray bullet.
Then he closed and opened his eyes, and he changed from Hawk, a rich second-generation foreign student in China, to Tommy Hawk, an American high school student today.
Now he has fused the memories and emotions of two people, and has to face the bleak reality.
That's his life now, poor and hopeless.
He lives in Rhode Island, the smallest state in the United States. Specifically, it is located in Warwick, Kent County, Rhode Island. This is a city with a population of 80,000 and the second largest city in the state, but its scale is only smaller than a prosperous town in his hometown in China. It looks slightly bigger.
By riding a bicycle, you can go around the city in an hour, and you can spare enough time to ride to Providence, the state capital 17 kilometers away.
And the timing of his time travel was very unfortunate. Because his father was unemployed, his family had just changed from having no worries about food and clothing to a mess.
This prevented him from enjoying the good life of blue-collar workers under capitalism, and only saw the misery of the people at the bottom of the United States.
His mother, Alida, was of Italian origin. She died in a car accident in 1981. A pair of young white trash who were high on hemp were killed when they were running wildly on the street in a stolen family car. She is a poor pair of family bills, no compensation in the end, no apology, and was prosecuted for driving and fleeing death and manslaughter. According to state law, she should have been in prison for four years, but because the pair of **** is Irish , and the total population of Rhode Island, Irish people accounted for 70%. The jury was based on the consideration of race and votes. The Rhode Island court finally sentenced the two to six months in prison and three years of probation. Thousands of dollars in compensation, if you think about it, they can't afford it.
Brother Tony Leon, one year older than Tommy, should have been called Tony Hawk, but Italy issued a bill in 1980, allowing children to take their mother's surname, although the mother is a three-generation Italian immigrant born in the United States and has never been there. Italy, but the women's affirmative movement has been popular in the northern states of the United States in recent years. In order to respond to the Italian bill and at the same time show support for the women's affirmative movement, after discussing with the father, the mother changed his brother Tony Hawke to Tony Leon. A typical white boy in a small town. After his father lost his job, he dropped out of high school decisively, trying to be a man and earn money to support his family. He is currently working as an apprentice in a car repair shop with a weekly salary of 80 yuan. more.
Tommy also has a younger sister, Bethea, who just turned seven years old this year. At the beginning of the year, the Children's Protection Agency forced her to temporarily live in a foster family on the grounds that domestic abuse triggered the protection mechanism. As a result, Bethea was noticed by the teacher when she went to school wearing dirty clothes for several days in a row, and when the teacher visited her home, she happened to find several copies of "Penthouse" magazines within Bethea's reach. The Rhode Island Child Protection Agency, which has received the newly introduced "Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act" as a precious sword, finally has the opportunity to try its edge. Now Bethea is being fostered in Providence, the state capital. A middle-class family with a good life, the father’s greatest obsession is to bring his daughter home, but it is easy to be taken away, but difficult to bring back, even if Bethea agrees, the foster family also agrees, but the cold regulations of the bill do not agree, That is, according to the provisions of the bill, it is necessary to meet the requirements that children have a separate bedroom of sufficient size, the family's minimum monthly income reaches 850 US dollars, and the monthly expenditure on children's growth and education is not less than 70 US dollars. There are harsh conditions such as the recognition of the foster family, and the protection agency confirms that the child can be returned to the family by the court.
If Tommy's father hadn't lost his job, it would be easy to meet the conditions for getting back his custody rights. However, because RB Motors quickly seized the US market, local car factories have cut off their production lines one after another, so that a large number of people with a weekly salary of two to three hundred dollars can easily support their families. Blue-collar workers quickly became the bottom of society. For example, my father used to earn $275 a week at Ford’s factory, but now at the shipbreaking yard, the hourly wage is less than $4 an hour, eight hours a day, five days a week, and can only earn To about 170 US dollars, and because the shipbreaking yard is a high-intensity physical labor, basically after a day, I have no strength to go to other part-time jobs, and 170 US dollars, for a family’s utility bills, car loans, various insurance expenses and daily expenses As far as sales are concerned, it can only be said that it is barely supported by credit cards, so that it will not starve to death, but don't even think about saving a penny.
When Tommy crossed over, his father and brother were trying to persuade him to drop out of school and find a job, so that he could meet the income requirements as soon as possible and bring Bethea home. Anyway, in the eyes of his family, there is no difference between graduating from high school and dropping out halfway. Didn't show up in home options.
But Tommy, who came back from time travel, knows that going to college is the only chance to change his destiny. If he doesn't go to college, he will have the same life as his father. Find a factory in Rhode Island to start a job, or go to a leather goods store or an auto repair factory to do it. Apprentice, and then spend the rest of your life nestled in this little frontier town on the northeast coast of the United States, marrying a woman of similar origin, bearing children, supporting a family until death.
If you want to change this fate and break through class solidification, the only chance is to be admitted to a good enough university. Until then, you may have the chance to barely get in touch with another completely different America.
Because Tony lent his home to those friends from time to time to hold parties and earn some small money, Tommy, who traveled through time and wanted to be admitted to university, was overwhelmed by the disturbance, so he chose to move out of the house and rented an old English-style apartment in the Warwick Harbor area. Studying hard in the bedroom, the landlord, Melonie, is a distant cousin of his mother who has an unknown family relationship. Impressed by Tommy's attitude of studying hard, she paid thirty dollars a week for the small bedroom of the apartment she lived in. The price was rented to him.
The month he moved out, he was working **** AP courses, preparing for the STA exam and working part-time for four hours to make money, but unfortunately, because of his family, Tommy has not been able to save a coin so far.
If you want to concentrate on studying, you must first solve the problem of money. After smoking the cigarette, Tommy Hawke picked up the cup of extremely bitter espresso and drank it in one sip. Then he put away the cigarettes on the table and stood up, facing the door go.
In the corridor outside the door, a white office worker wearing a fedora hat and a suit is holding a briefcase in his left hand and today's newspaper in his right hand, reading while walking.
The front page of the "Boston Globe" in his hand has a photo of President Ronald Reagan on it, and a line of bold news headlines:
"President Reagan: In the face of the Soviet Union, we need to do whatever it takes to break all the rules!"
"Good sign, I finally have a reason to convince myself to make some money. If you want to blame, blame our president. He told me that we need to break all the rules." Tommy Hawke glanced at the newspaper in the other party's hand Cover, smacked his lips, and said softly:
"play hard."
(end of this chapter)