Yesterday (23 page)

As angry as I was with my mother, I couldn’t bear to argue with my brother for long. “Maybe you have the opposite blindness and forgive
her
everything too easily,” I said.

“Did you ever think of that? You know how she’s always been about my visions. She wants us to match up with these ideals she has in her head— an ideal daughter who I’ll never be.”

Latham stood with his hands on his waist and said, “I’ve told you before, I think your visions scare her because of what they could mean for you.”

Latham has his own pet theories. He’d overheard my parents discussing my second sight when it fi rst started to manifest. My dad wanted to take me into a facility for test-ing but my mom said she didn’t think my abilities were very strong. Then she reminded my father that the government might show too much of an interest in me if I was proven talented. My father replied, “Our enemies are multiplying. The U.N.A. needs all the defense assistance it can get. If Freya can help, we should make that help available.”

I didn’t doubt that our father had said that but it didn’t mean his motives were bad or that my mother wanted to protect me. “Look, we’re never going to agree when it comes to them,” I told Latham. “But let’s not let them make us fi ght each other, okay?”

Latham rolled his eyes. “We’re not fi ghting. I’m just trying to clue you in. But okay, okay. Fuck them both. I’m tired of their expectations hanging over me.”

At the time my parents had high hopes for the both of us— that at least one of us would take an interest in Coppedge—

Hale Corp (which with my father’s infl uence could easily become a fourth career option) and that perhaps the other would show an aptitude for politics. This was never to be as Latham and I turned deliberately away from my parents’ dreams. As he moved further into his teenage years, Latham began dealing in false transit documents, banned substances and other illegalities. His criminal dealings were low-key and he was well connected and smart enough never to be caught but people in general sensed there was something wrong about him and believed my parents had spoiled him.

I developed nasty habits of my own, at fi rst behaving badly (causing disturbances at school, failing to show up there on various days and taking things that weren’t mine) to get back at my mother and later because I’d grown used to it. My father interacted with me and Latham less and less as his disappointment with us grew but my mother was forced to continue disciplining us. Latham tried to charm his way around her, and often succeeded, but although my rage over Joanna faded slightly with time, my anger with my mother never entirely disappeared. I wasn’t interested in trying to get along with her. The more she made her unhappiness with me known the more I challenged her.

Latham said I only made things harder on myself and that if I eased up on her she’d ease up on me. “Yeah, and what fun would that be?” I asked with a smirk.

But in unguarded moments I still had a soft spot for my dad. He must’ve sensed it because there were occasions when my father cast his disappointment aside and sided with me against the school, something he never did for Latham.

My old friendship with Elennede continued into my teenage years. Her rebellious nature made our alliance seem like fate. Elennede was the only person I confi ded in about my parental troubles. She was also the only one who knew how I stared at Garren Lowe, although she didn’t understand my fascination with him and as a result we didn’t talk about him much. I’d pass him in the halls— usually taking too long a look at him— and overhear snatches of conversations he was having with other students. Often they were devotees of the grounded movement too. They were like an unoffi cial school club and some people complained that they were cultlike but I never got that feeling; they were just passionate about what they believed and wanted to change things for the better.

I didn’t think that everything about their way necessarily was better (I liked gushi as much as most people) but I knew that the government W + Cs were wrong. My brother wasn’t very political either and avoided most of the more activist types from school. Then, at seventeen, he surprised me and began to change, developing an interest in Kinnari Lowe.

Although she brought out the best in Latham, infl uenc-ing him to curtail his criminal dealings, my parents disapproved. It wasn’t wildly unusual for young people to develop temporary romantic attachments to each other but Latham spoke about Kinnari as if their relationship would become something permanent, a love match.

Because she was often at our house in those days I became friendly with Kinnari, who I already knew a little from school. Since her mothers were members of the grounded movement they saw nothing wrong with Latham and Kinnari’s relationship and invited our entire family along to Kinnari’s sixteenth birthday party at the end of July.

My father offered a work-related excuse for his absence but my mom, Latham and I agreed to attend, despite my parents’

continuing unhappiness at Latham and Kinnari’s pairing.

I was looking forward to the party because I knew Garren would be there. He was scheduled to leave for law school at the end of summer and if I didn’t speak to him soon I’d probably lose my chance entirely.

Like most of the young people in Billings, there was nothing Kinnari really needed, but Latham had told me she was a fan of old-style movies and named several she was hoping to collect in a format from the early twenty-fi rst century known as Blu-ray Disc. They’d stopped making spectator movies altogether in 2037— by then the rising popularity of interactive gushi had made spectator movies an unlucra-tive business— but Garren and Kinnari were fans of many old things and their mothers had bought them each Blu-ray players for Christmas. With this in mind, I instructed my trans to drive me over to the shopping zone on the far side of town to visit an area populated with antique stores. Clean and swift, the single-person solar-powered vehicle was the most common method of local transportation, for those who could afford it.

As I neared the antique media shop I noticed that the area was somewhat dilapidated, as most people have no interest in old things and the ones who do are drawn to them despite the unattractive surroundings. Only a block from my destination I happened to spot my mother traipsing out of a dingy café with a stranger. He was holding her hand and as I whizzed by them he pulled her close and kissed her full on the lips.

I was shivering as I commanded my trans to park on the next block. I couldn’t believe my mother would allow
anyone
to kiss her on the lips. I was a product of my upbringing and was disgusted to imagine that my mother might be engag-ing in grounded sex. It was one thing for my brother to do it; he was young and free. My mother had children and had dedicated her life to being with my father.

I selected three Blu-ray movies for Kinnari from the antique store and returned home visibly upset. Latham wanted to know what was wrong with me. I told him about the kiss and he smiled to himself a little and said, “Good for her if it’s true. She should’ve left Dad years ago.”

“I should’ve known you’d say that.” I shook my head at him. “It’s not like she’s a prisoner here. You wouldn’t say the same if Dad was tonguing some woman in the street, would you?”

Latham wrinkled his forehead. “Look, what they do with their own lives isn’t our business, right? You should just let it go.”

If it weren’t for the bonfi re of anger for my mother that I’d built up inside me over the years, maybe I would’ve been able to do that, but I was fuming with her when the three of us left for the party and snapped at everything she said in the multiperson trans my family rarely used anymore. Kinnari’s mothers were kind and gracious to us when we arrived but I continued to tear strips off my mother, who had no idea why I was furious with her. It was a rare lovely day— not too hot and without a cloud in the sky— and the party was held in the Lowe’s backyard garden. A large group of us were seated on the patio drinking mango juice and snacking on fi nger foods when my mother decided to fi ght back with a dispassionately delivered comment. “If you think you’re embarrassing me with this behavior, Freya, you should think again.

The only one you’re embarrassing with this selfi sh display is yourself. Why don’t you think of someone else for a change?

This is Kinnari’s birthday party. Can we focus on that for a few minutes?” She slanted her gaze away from me and sought out a connection with one of Kinnari’s mothers. “And a lovely party it is, I might add. Your garden is beautiful and you’ve done a wonderful job with Kinnari.”

My
mother, the ultimate fake.
She would have been happy if Kinnari never set foot in our house again but it was always about appearances with her. She must have totally lost control of herself to go as far as kissing someone on a public street (even if it was in a part of town most people she knew would never fi nd themselves).

My bottom lip was trembling when I stared at my mother and I’m not sure what horrible thing would’ve burst out of my mouth if Garren Lowe hadn’t, at that very moment, crouched down by my chair and said, “Freya, if you have a second there’s something I want to show you.” He smiled as he waited for me to answer him, his dark hair wild and wavy like it would later be in my dreams.

I’m sure my face was reddening with humiliation but Garren refl ected none of my discomfort in his face. “Listen to, actually,” he added. “That seventies record I was talking to you about at school the other day.”

I nodded as if I knew what he was talking about and followed him from the table. “Thanks for the rescue,” I said as soon as we were far enough away not to be overheard.

“You looked like you were about to twist her head off,”

he said. “You two really know how to push each other’s buttons, huh?”

“It’s not even that.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I mean, I hate her all the time.
All
the
time.
But today I found a new reason.” A live human band of classical musicians was playing near the back entranceway to the Lowe house and I stopped to listen to them. If my mother ever paid for a live band it would probably just be as a show of status, otherwise she’d consider Ros or holographic musicians just as good.

Garren was listening to the band too and I glanced into his green eyes and said, “I wish I had your mothers for parents. They’re so cool.”

A shrug stretched slowly across Garren’s shoulder blades.

“A lot of people think they’re kooks.”

“Only stupid people. And who cares what stupid people think?”

“Exactly.” Garren smiled again and this one felt like it was one hundred percent genuine and just for me.

I didn’t want our time together to end and I smiled back, feeling warm in the face again. “So the seventies record, does it exist?”

“I have a lot of records but I didn’t have a specifi c one in mind,” he said. There’d been a sixties and seventies music revival going on for years and China (the parts of it that were still functioning) was cashing in on it by ignoring a human cloning ban and assembling their own super-groups and artists from the spliced DNA of former rock stars. Some of the current biggest acts were female singer/songwriter Chena (a Tina Turner/Cher clone), Supreme (another female solo act who was an amalgamation of all the original members of the Supremes), and the rock band ABBA3+Elton (having failed to secure Benny Andersson’s DNA, Chinese geneti-cists had substituted a cloned Elton John as the fourth member of the band). So far many of the Chinese acts had proven hugely successful in the short term but quickly crashed and burned, suffering addictions and mental health issues that had largely been eradicated in the U.N.A.

I was already well aware, from what I’d overheard at school and later from Kinnari, that Garren’s interest was mainly in original music rather than genetically engineered copies and I said, “Play some for me then. Keep me away from my mother for a while.”

We went up to Garren’s room, which looked as contem-porary as my own except for the contents of the wooden shelves in the corner and what I guessed must be an antique record player. I stood peering down at it, afraid to touch it.

“Don’t worry, you’re not going to break it,” Garren told me, freeing a thin black disc from its outer cardboard sleeve.

“The machine’s not as fragile as it looks but the records themselves can get pretty scratchy.” He handed the disc to me and pulled the glass lid of the record player open. “Here, I’ll show you how to use it.”

Soon I was putting on records for myself and we listened to old music by Neil Young, Patti Smith and The Band, musicians I’d barely heard of before. During “Heart of Gold”

I almost broke down and told Garren about my mom and the stranger kissing but changed my mind at the last second and murmured something about the song being haunting.

I fi gured Garren wouldn’t see the incident from my point of view, being big into the grounded movement like he was.

Just then Kinnari knocked on her brother’s door. She and Latham slipped into the room, joining us to listen to records, and the opportunity to be alone with Garren had passed in the blink of an eye.

When Latham found out Hendris (the Jimi Hendrix/

Janis Joplin hybrid who critics agreed was the most talented of all the spliced musicians) was playing one fi nal live concert in Chicago before she gave up music, he asked me to go with him and Kinnari. “You know you love Hendris,” he said, and he was right. She wasn’t a product like the others; she was a genuine artist. That’s why she was giving up the music industry. She said no matter what her genetic roots were she was still a real live person with her own dreams and feelings and though she loved music she didn’t want to feel like she owed her success to her DNA.

So she was turning away from a multimillion-dollar career and towards her other great passion, painting, which she intended to do under another name.

There’d been heightened terrorist activity in the U.N.A.

recently and neither my parents nor the Lowes would’ve allowed Latham and Kinnari to travel all the way out to Chicago but Latham (who hadn’t given up his old delin-quent tricks entirely) promised he’d fi x things so that they wouldn’t have to know. He’d scored multiple transit documents through one of his many contacts and planned to tell our parents that he was going to do a twelve-hour volunteer stint at the social welfare camp just outside of Great Falls.