Early in the morning, the old-fashioned digital alarm clock by the bedside completed the last second of 6:59 and, with great effort, tried to play a lively tune.
Perhaps because the battery was nearly drained, the ringing sound became distorted and strange, not at all like a vibrant wake-up call but more like the mumbling prayers of an elderly priest soothing souls.
Tommy Hawk opened his eyes, stretched out his hand to switch off the alarm clock, and then leapt out of bed. He walked over to a simple clothes rack, sniffed a T-shirt, and after making sure it was still wearable, slipped it on.
The landlady, Aunt Melanie, had already gotten up early to go out and make money. As a substitute teacher still searching for a stable position, today she had to go and teach at an elementary school forty kilometers away for pay.
On the coffee table in the living room, there was a cup of warm Italian espresso and a croissant; beside them was half a pack of Kimberley cigarettes that Melanie had left for him.
He quickly finished washing up in the restroom, then sat on the sofa and lit a cigarette, lost in thought.
He was a time traveler, not understanding why, he, a 27-year-old Chinese exchange student Hawk from Boston University's School of Business in 2022, had traveled back in time to America in 1982 two months ago, becoming the 17-year-old American high school student Tommy Hawk of today.
Hawk only remembered that day accompanying his girlfriend shopping near Boston's Chinatown when they happened to witness two robbers holding up a nearby convenience store. The arriving police arrested them, and during the shootout, the police were unharmed, the robbers were unharmed, but Hawk was hit by a stray bullet.
Then, he closed his eyes and upon opening them, he had transformed from a wealthy Chinese exchange student Hawk into the current American high school student, Tommy Hawk.
Now, he had merged the memories and emotions of both individuals, and he was forced to confront a bleak reality.
That reality was his current life, impoverished and desperate.
He was living in Rhode Island, the smallest state in the United States of America, specifically in Warwick City in Kent County. Warwick was the second-largest city in the state, with a population of eighty thousand, but its size was only slightly larger than the bustling town he was from in China.
Riding a bicycle, he could tour the entire city in one hour and still have plenty of time to ride seventeen kilometers to the state capital, Providence, for a visit.
Furthermore, the timing of his arrival was quite unfortunate; his family had just gone from living comfortably to complete disarray due to his father's unemployment.
This meant that he did not get to enjoy the comfortable life of blue-collar workers under capitalism but witnessed the dismal tragedy of America's lower-class citizens.
Tommy Hawk's father, Colin Hawk of German descent, had worked in General Motors' component factory in Rhode Island. Five months ago, due to the company's production line being cut, he lost his job. Now he was doing temporary work at a small ship dismantling yard and dock to make ends meet.
Mother Alida, of Italian descent, died in a car accident in 1981. A pair of young white trash, high on marijuana, struck her down in a stolen family car while speeding down the street. She was opening the mailbox to retrieve the household bills at the time. The culprits were paupers who in the end provided no compensation, no apology, and were prosecuted for hit-and-run manslaughter. According to state law, they should have served four years in prison. However, because these white trash were of Irish descent, and Irish descendants composed 70% of Rhode Island's total population, the jury—taking racial and electoral considerations—only sentenced the two to six months in prison with three years of probation. As for the five thousand dollars in compensation, it was obvious they couldn't possibly come up with it.
Older brother Tony Leon, a year older than Tommy, was originally named Tony Hawk, but in 1980, Italy enacted a law allowing children to take their mother's surname. Although their mother was a third-generation Italian immigrant born in the United States and had never been to Italy, the equal rights movement was prevalent in the northern states of America those years. To respond to Italy's legislation and show support for the civil rights movement, their mother and father decided to change his name from Tony Hawk to Tony Leon. A typical small-town white boy, once his father became unemployed, he promptly dropped out of high school, trying to be the man of the family, earning a living with an apprenticeship at a repair shop, making eighty dollars a week. He was rumored to be nearing the end of his apprenticeship and might start earning more soon.
Tommy also had a younger sister, Bessie, who had just turned seven that year. At the beginning of the year, Child Protective Services, triggered by suspected family abuse, forcibly arranged for her temporary stay with a foster family. The reason was as minor as her father being busy earning money with temporary jobs after unemployment, which led to Bessie wearing dirty clothes to school for several consecutive days—a fact noticed by her teacher. Moreover, when the teacher paid a home visit, they coincidentally found a few issues of Penthouse magazine within Bessie's reach. This discovery was a treasure for the Rhode Island Child Protective Services, who had just received the new Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act as a weapon. It was finally their chance to put it to use. Now, Bessie stayed with a middle-class family in the capital, Providence, living a comfortable life. Her father's biggest obsession was bringing his daughter back home. But it was easy for her to be taken away and hard to bring her back. Even if Bessie and the foster family agreed, the cold regulations of the law disagreed. According to the law, certain stringent conditions had to be met—such as the child having a sufficiently large and independent bedroom, the family earning a minimum of eight hundred fifty dollars a month, with no less than seventy dollars per month spent on the child's growth and education and the recognition of the child and foster family—then, after being confirmed by the protection agency, the court could rule to return the child to her family.
If Tommy's father had not become unemployed, it would have been easy to meet the conditions to regain custody, but because of Japanese cars rapidly taking over the American market, local car factories were cutting production lines, turning many blue-collar workers who used to earn two to three hundred dollars a week and easily support their families into the lower echelons of society. For example, his father used to make two hundred seventy-five dollars a week working at Ford's factory. Now, paid by the hour at the shipbreaking yard and making less than four dollars, he could only earn about one hundred seventy a week after eight hours a day, five days a week. Moreover, due to the high-intensity labor of shipbreaking yards, after a day's work, there was no energy left for a side job. The one hundred seventy dollars could barely sustain a family's utility bills, car loans, insurance expenses, and daily expenditures, and they were only hanging on by credit cards, far from starvation but unable to save a penny.
When Tommy crossed over, his father and brother were trying hard to persuade him to drop out of school and get a job so they could quickly meet the income requirements to bring Bessie back home. In the eyes of the family, graduating from high school or dropping out midway didn't make a difference, as attending college had never appeared as an option for the family.
But the crossed-over Tommy knew clearly that attending college was the only chance to change his fate. If he didn't go to college, his life would be the same as his father's—working in a factory in Rhode Island, or at a leather shop or auto repair shop as an apprentice, then spending the rest of his life cooped up in this small northeastern coastal border town of America, marrying a woman from a similar background, and struggling to feed his family until death.
If he wanted to change his fate, the only chance for a breakthrough was being admitted to an excellent university. Only then might he have a chance to barely touch another wholly different America.
Because the house was often lent out by Tony for parties with his friends to make some money, Tommy, who had crossed over with a determination to attend college, couldn't stand the disturbance and chose to move out to a decrepit British-style apartment in Warwick Harbor, renting a bedroom to focus on his studies. The landlady Melanie was a distant cousin of his mother's, with a family relationship so remote that he didn't know just how far removed it was. Touched by Tommy's diligent studying, she rented out her apartment's small bedroom at a weekly rate of thirty dollars to him.
In the month that he moved out, while diligently studying for AP courses and preparing for the SAT, he squeezed out four hours to work part-time to earn money. Unfortunately, due to his family's circumstances, to this day Tommy hadn't saved a single coin.
To focus on his studies, he needed to solve the money problem first. Tommy Hawk finished his cigarette, picked up his extremely bitter espresso, sipping it down one gulp at a time, then packed up his cigarettes from the table and stood up, walking towards the door.
In the corridor outside, a white-collar worker wearing a wool hat and a suit held a briefcase in his left hand and today's newspaper in his right, reading as he walked.
The cover of "The Boston Globe" he held featured a photo of President Ronald Reagan, with bold news headlines:
"President Reagan: In the face of the Soviet Union, we need to adopt all means necessary, breaking every rule!"
"Good sign, finally a reason to convince myself to make some money. If anyone is to blame, it's our President. It was he who told me, 'We need to break every rule.'" Tommy Hawk glanced at the newspaper cover in the other man's hands, smacked his lips, and said softly:
"By any means necessary."