All Our Yesterdays (35 page)

I try to elbow him in the stomach, but his grip around me is too tight. My only advantage is that he can’t grab for the gun without letting me go enough for me to twist free.

We’re in a stalemate.

One of us will weaken first. I’m afraid it will be me, and I can’t just wait for it to happen. I take a deep breath and drop the gun. I give it a good kick, sending it clattering across the tiles to the other side of the bathroom. I feel James hesitate, and then he lets me go to throw himself after it. I grab his leg, clawing into his jeans as he tries to kick me free. He’s sprawled out across the floor now, and I have the leverage. I can beat him to the gun. . . .

But then one of his feet connects, kicking me right in the nose. My vision explodes, and I think I hear the bone crack. My hands fly to my face, and I use the sleeve of Connor’s hoodie to staunch the warm flow of blood.

When I force my eyes open, James has the gun. He points it at me, his chest heaving.

“Do it,” I say. “I’ll only come back.”

His eyes are bright. “I could never do it. That’s not what this is about.”

I bow my head, thinking of Marina and how I’ve failed her. All the fight seeps out of me. Does the doctor have her by now? “You’ll feel different someday.”

The shrill ring of my cell phone fractures the silence, and I jump. Finn. I keep my eyes on James as I pull the phone slowly from my pocket. He can shoot me if he wants, but I’m damn well going to answer it.

I flip open the disposable phone and push the speaker button. “Finn?”

James’s jaw tightens, but otherwise he remains still.

“He’s got them.” Finn’s voice is harsh and distorted over the line. “The doctor’s got them.”

His words sucking all the air out of the room. There’s suddenly no bathroom, no gun, no James, only Finn’s voice. “What happened?”

“He ambushed them down the street from Marina’s house. He knocked me out, and when I woke up they were gone.”

“Where did he take them?”

“I don’t know,” Finn says. “There’s something else. He left a note beside me that says
Bring James unharmed
. Have you found him?”

“Bring him
where
?” My voice rises hysterically. “Where are they? He’s going to kill them!”

Visions of blood and bone and pain float before my eyes. My grip on this world is so tenuous with Marina’s life in the doctor’s hands that I expect to dissolve at any moment.

“No, Em, think.” Finn’s voice is like a rope mooring me back to the earth. “If he wanted to kill them, he would have done it right there in the street.
We’re
the ones who betrayed him, so we’re the ones he wants to punish. He won’t do anything to them until we’re there. They’re just—”

“Tools,” I say. The doctor knows the best way to hurt me is through Marina. He’ll do to her the things he’s done to me. It took four years for all of my illusions about James to be stripped away, but he could do it to her in mere minutes.

“You’ve got to know where he is, Em,” Finn says. “He would have told us if he didn’t think you could figure it out.”

I rack my brain. James had favorite places—like a café on M Street that had big squishy chairs, a preferred table by the window in the library—but nowhere he could take a couple of hostages. I have no idea where he’s taken them. He’ll get impatient and kill them, all because I can’t read his mind.

Oh.

Panic, or maybe the multiple blows to the head, must have clogged my synapses, because it takes me a good ten seconds to realize I have another James sitting right in front of me. He still has the gun pointed at me, but it lacks conviction. The gun betrays the tremor in his hands. He’s flushed and disheveled from our tussle, but his gulping breaths are too fast to be from the physical exertion alone.

“Wait there, Finn. I’ll come get you.” I snap the phone shut. “You must know where he would go.”

“What’s going on?” James says slowly, like he’s taking great care to keep his voice even.

“It’s you, from the future,” I say. “You followed us back, and you’ve taken Finn and Marina.”

“Why?”

“To punish me. And to keep me from doing what I came here to do.”

“You don’t mean I’d
hurt
them?”

“I’m sorry, but that’s exactly what I mean.” I almost regret having to tell him this. No one should be confronted with the depths of darkness they’re capable of all at once. “He’ll kill them both, because it’s the only way to stop Finn and me for good.”

James’s face is a frozen mask of horror. What is he thinking? Is he thinking about Marina, how much he cares for her, and how devastated he’d be if something happened to her? The doctor wouldn’t be, but this boy still might.

“We have to help them,” he says. “I know where he took them.”

“We?”

“You can’t do it by yourself, and neither can I.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You don’t have much choice, do you?” James snaps. “You can’t find them without me. Look, I know you think I’m a monster, but Marina and Finn are the only people left in the world who I care about. I won’t let anyone hurt them. So how about a truce until they’re safe?”

I stare at him. He’s not the doctor yet, but he will be one day. There’s no way I can trust him.

But then I think of Marina. I imagine her crying, hurting, maybe dying, and I have no choice. I have to do whatever it takes to help her.

“Okay,” I say. “Truce.”

“Good. But I’m keeping the gun.”

The stolen Chevy is still where I left it. I drive while James points the gun at me.

First we go to Georgetown to pick up Finn. As we turn onto my old street, I spot him sitting on the curb, head between his knees, like the weight of his guilt is folding him in on himself. He looks up at the sound of the approaching car, and I see an ugly red bruise rising on his cheekbone, joining the purple one on his jaw. I’m out of the car before it even stops rolling.

Finn stands to meet me, and I crash into him, throwing my arms around his neck. He staggers back but holds me close.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” I say.

“I was right there,” he says, “but I couldn’t stop him—”

“Shh, it’s not your fault.”

Finn goes rigid against me. I turn and follow his gaze to where James stands, inside the open passenger’s door. He’s staring at us like he’s understanding something for the first time. Suddenly self-conscious, I loosen my grip on Finn.

“You know I had to bring him,” I say softly. “And this is
James
. Not the doctor. He’s still your friend.”

“I know, it’s just . . .” Finn’s jaw tightens. “We should kill him now, and then the doctor won’t be a problem.”

James shows the gun in his hand but doesn’t say anything.

“Shit,” Finn mutters.

“He could have killed me when he got the gun,” I say, “but he didn’t. He insisted on coming to rescue Marina and Finn. And since he’s the only one who knows where they are and the doctor demanded to see him safe, I don’t see what choice we have.”

“I don’t like this.”

“I know. Me neither, but I’m not wasting time arguing about it.”

He drops his head. “Fine. Let’s go.”

James hands the keys to Finn and climbs into the backseat, where he can keep the gun trained on us both. We drive eastward in silence except for the directions James occasionally gives.

“Is there a pen in the glove compartment?” James asks after we’ve gone twenty minutes down the road.

I frown, but James has a gun aimed at my head, so I check. “Yeah.”

“Give it to me,” he says. “The owner’s manual, too.”

I hand the items back to him. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry about it.” He adjusts so that he can write with one hand and keep the gun pointed at us with the other.

“How much farther is this place?” I ask.

“Not far,” James says. “My parents had a cottage on the Chesapeake. Nate never liked to go there—the memories, I guess—but sometimes I go when I need to think. It’s . . . quiet.”

The word makes me shudder.

“Finn,” James says.

At length, Finn meets his eyes in a rearview mirror.

“I’m sorry,” he says in a small voice. “For everything. I really am.”

Finn sighs. “I know you are, Jimbo. But it’s not enough.”

We pull up to the cottage—which is a gross misnomer, since it’s a two-story Victorian with a wraparound porch and probably six bedrooms inside—as the setting sun tosses its last red rays above the waterline. The headlights of the car sweep the draped windows as we crunch up the seashell drive, and I imagine the doctor inside with Marina, watching the light beams across the curtains.

Finn kills the engine, but none of us moves.

“How are we going to do this?” James asks. “They can’t see you, can they?”

“Past versions of a person can’t see their future selves,” I say. “At least, that was your theory. It could severely disrupt the fabric of time or even drive the younger versions of us insane.”

“I’ll keep my eyes closed,” James says. “Then you can show him that I’m here and safe.”

“What’s our plan?” Finn says. “We’re not just going to walk in there, are we? What’s to stop him killing Marina and Finn?”

“He’ll want to make us suffer first,” I say. “That’ll give us some time to . . .”

“To what?”

“I don’t know.” I press my shaking fingers against my eyes. “What are we going to do?”

A scream rips through the air, jolting us all.

It’s Marina.

Thirty-Five

Marina

I stare up at the man who is and isn’t James through hazy eyes. The jolt of electricity he gave me didn’t knock me out this time, just sizzled painfully through me, like knives in my veins.

“Why are you doing this?” I say.

He’s watching the windows with a frown. “I think you should scream again. I’m not sure she heard you, and I’m getting tired of waiting for them.”

“Who?” I sob.

“You. You’re out there, running around trying to kill me. The person who shot at James outside the hospital? That was you. The you that you’ll be someday, at least.”

A tear rolls down my cheek. I didn’t know it was possible to be
more
scared than I was just moments ago. “You’re insane.”

“I know it’s a lot to take in at once.” He puts a hand on my shoulder as his voice attempts kindness, which makes my skin crawl. “But you know I’m telling the truth.”

I close my eyes, willing this nightmare to pass. I’ll wake up in my warm bed to the sound of Luz calling me down to breakfast—waffles with strawberries—and then the real James and I will go see a movie. By the time the trailers come on, I’ll have completely forgotten this crazy, terrible dream.

“No,” I say through gritted teeth. “You’re not him.”

“Yes.” He brushes a stray piece of hair out of my eyes. “It’s me, just a little older and wiser than the me you know.”

“No, no,
no
!” My voice is beyond my control now. This isn’t James. This isn’t James from the future, a man who’s finally solved the riddle of time and come back to knock me out and tie me up. It’s impossible.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Marina,” he says, “but Em . . . She’s the one person I always thought I could count on, and she
betrayed
me.” He closes his mouth with a snap. “I need to make her understand what she’s done. She’s determined that only one of us can survive this, and it has to be me. In the future, I’m changing the world.”

I long for James, the real James, with a sudden, wild intensity. I remember the hurt in his eyes when I walked away from him in that restaurant, and more than anything I want to go back to that moment and change things, put my arms around him and tell him that I love him and will never leave him again.

“It’s going to be okay, kid,” he says, the sympathy in his voice a mocking parody of my friend’s. I whip my head toward him, rage momentarily eclipsing my fear.

“Don’t you ever call me that!”

He looks down at me with genuine sadness in his eyes. “It’s a shame you’ll never understand.”

Beside me, Finn coughs and raises his head.

“Oh God, Finn,” I say. I think I might cry with relief at not being quite so alone anymore.

“What the . . .” he says. He looks at the man in front of us and blinks, like he expects him to disappear. He jerks against his restraints. “What the fuck is going on here?” he yells.

“We’re saving the world,” James says.

Em

The birds in the trees above our heads leap into the air in a flurry of feathers when the scream fractures the silence. I start to run before I even consciously know what the sound is, like my body understands before my brain. It’s Marina in pain, and such a thing is intolerable.

Finn catches me around the shoulders, pulling me back when I would have bulldozed into the cottage, charging through any wall or person standing between me and my younger self. I push at him and struggle in his arms.