Yesterday (28 page)

Suddenly Garren covers his mouth and leaps up from his chair. He stomps off in the direction of the main fl oor bathroom and leaves me alone in the kitchen listening to “Because the Night.”

Before I was sent back here I’d never been sick in my life.

In the future people don’t really get ill. Not in the U.N.A.

anyway. The fl u my mom, Olivia and I had shortly after we reached Canada must not have been a fl u at all but a physical reaction to traveling through time or an aftereffect of the wipe and cover. Remembering the truth about my past this afternoon made me feel horrible all over again. Garren’s in that same state now and I feel sorry for him, almost mater-nal, on top of all the other weird things I’m feeling.

Two minutes later he shuffl es back into the kitchen and stands in front of me like a shadow of his regular self. “You win,” he says. “I have to sleep. At least tell me you won’t go anywhere while I’m sleeping.”

“I won’t. Why don’t you take the master bedroom? It’s probably the most comfortable.” Neither of us has slept in it yet. I guess it felt like a bigger intrusion into the Resniks’

lives than sleeping in any of the other rooms but I think we’re both well past worrying about that now.

A very fragile-looking Garren nods at me and goes off to sleep in the master bedroom like I suggested. I return to the spare room, feeling wide awake. Despite that, soon I’m asleep, dreaming about Latham, Garren and Kinnari. We’re sitting in a semicircle in Garren’s old bedroom, the four of us in lounge chairs like the one I sat in at Lou Bianchi’s.

A Hendris song is playing and I look over at Latham and say, “I never really forgot you, you know. You were always there … this feeling in my head that I couldn’t explain.”

“I know,” Latham says. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore, Freya. I’m fi ne.”

“What about Dad?” I ask.

Latham smiles. “I thought you were going to hate him forever.”

I thought so too. I meant it at the time. “I thought he was killing you. That it was his fault.”

“And now you know better—

that it wasn’t anyone’s

fault,” Latham surmises. “But anyway, don’t worry about him either. He’d just want you to focus on yourself now, focus on getting where you want to go.”

“Does that mean you think that I shouldn’t go tomorrow?” To meet Nancy, I mean, but I can see that Latham already understands that. It’s so good to see him, even though I know it’s only a dream. It’s like there’s a part of him that still exists, a part that I dragged back with me seventy-eight years in time.

“You’d know the answer to that better than I do,” Latham says. “You’re the one who can see things. It’s not like you’d listen to me anyway, is it?”

“Maybe,” I answer.

Garren’s sighing from his chair, making a sour face.

“No, you wouldn’t.”

With that I wake up in the sunlight to the sound of a door closing down the hall.
Garren.
I should check on him, make sure he’s okay. I get out of bed and head for the master bedroom. The door’s closed and I hesitate before grabbing the knob and twisting.

Garren’s sitting up in the queen-size bed, shirtless, swig-ging from a tall glass of water. I stand blinking in the doorway, memories from last night in the spare room streaming through my mind.

“Hey,” I say, moving slowly towards him. “How’re you feeling?”

“Better,” he tells me. “Thirsty.”

“I was too afterwards. Let me get you another glass of water.”

“Thanks.” Garren holds out his freshly emptied glass.

I take it and then motion to the walk-in closet, which I disappear inside without further explanation. Paula’s entire wardrobe is draped neatly on hangers and it only takes me a couple of seconds to locate a pair of her jeans to throw on.

I pick out one of her sweaters too. Everything’s slightly too tight, too short and overall too small on me but it’s better than continuing to walk around in front of Garren in Mr.

Resnik’s T-shirt.

I don’t take another look at Garren before leaving the room in my new clothes. Because I keenly remember the unquenchable thirst I felt yesterday, I not only refi ll his glass but bring him a second, both of them full to the brim with ice water.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Garren says when I put down both glasses on the bedside table next to him.

I smile. “That’s a really 1985 thing to say.”

Garren snaps up one of the glasses and drains half of it before smiling back. “Yeah, I guess it is. It’s still all there in my head, those eighteen years’ worth of fake memories. The scientists did a good job.” He takes another sip of water. “But I remember better now. Better than last night, I mean. A lot of things were jumbled up in my head, like with the song.”

“I’m glad you’re feeling better.” I try not to stare at him too fi xedly. It’d be easier if he were wearing a shirt.

I pivot to leave the room and Garren says to my back, “Can you stay a couple of minutes?”

There are hours yet before I have to leave to meet Nancy.

My bag’s still packed. The only things I really have to do before I leave are shower and dry my hair.

I turn and step closer to the bed, edge my way around it and sit cross-legged on the farthest corner from Garren. “I’m still going later you know.”

“We can get the money some other way,” he says.

“Maybe, but no one else is going to have the answers to my questions.”

Garren sets down his water, a bottomless frown sinking into his face just like it did last night in the kitchen. “She won’t tell you anything. It’ll be like with Doctor Byrne all over again.”

“But Doctor Byrne didn’t try to take us,” I remind him.

“We weren’t in any danger from him.” I’ve spent a lot of time with Nancy. I can’t really believe she’d want to hurt me either. She said she couldn’t tell me anything but that must have been a lie. Since she knows who my father is she must know other things, like how we got back here. For all I know she might be able to get a message to my father and make them change their plans about me and Garren.

The covers are twisted around Garren’s lower legs and he tugs on them as he sits back in bed. “I was serious last night.

If you go, I’m coming with you.”

“I made that decision for myself when you weren’t around. The only person I want to risk here is me.”

“Well, it’s not just you anymore,” he says. “We
are
in this together. I shouldn’t have left you yesterday and I’m not letting you leave without me today.”

“I could rush out into the street this second,” I tell him.

“It’d take you a minute to throw your clothes on and follow me. I could be gone in that time.” I’m angrier than I thought I was. I was so happy to see Garren last night but clearly I haven’t forgotten about him ditching me in the fi rst place.

“Maybe I wouldn’t bother with my clothes,” Garren says, sounding angry too. “I think you’d have a rough time trying to go unnoticed with a half-naked guy chasing after you through the snow.”

I suck my teeth and stare at my ankles.

“Try me,”
Garren adds.

I raise my head to look at him. Our eyes lock. He’s staring at me with an intensity that makes me wonder if he seriously wants me to do it just so he has the chance to prove himself. I stare stonily back, not giving him the opportunity, not giving him anything.

Finally he reaches for his water. Swallows what’s left in his glass and moves on to the second.

Then his eyes fi nd me again, the challenge gone from them. “Are you okay?” he asks.

“You’re the one who’s sick. I’ve been fi ne since last night.”

“I don’t mean that. I mean …
last
night.
” His tone is tentative. He focuses on my ankles like I was seconds earlier.

“Last night you were in shock,” I say evenly. “We both were.”

“We were,” he agrees. “That doesn’t mean you were okay with it … or not okay with it.”

I don’t really want to talk about this now. We have more important things to think about. But since he’s brought it up I can’t stop myself from asking, “Why did you stop?”

Garren pulls his knees up towards him under the sheets and folds his arms around them. “I thought … it was really fast. Maybe too fast for you. And I wasn’t sure about the Bio-net.”

“The Bio-net,” I repeat. “What about it?”

Garren’s green eyes won’t let go of me. “I didn’t know whether they’d turned parts of it off before sending us back.

Like fertility controls.”

That never occurred to me. It should’ve but it didn’t.

I had a period a couple of weeks ago. Maybe that means I could get pregnant like any other 1985 girl.

I look away as I say, “I think you’re right— I think they’re off.” I adjust my posture so that it mirrors his and try to put some distance between us and the topic. “My mother and Olivia don’t remember where we’re really from. I can tell.

The wipe and cover worked on them.”

“On my mother too,” Garren says. “She’s mourning a person we never even knew. A stranger. Someone the scientists slotted into our memories. They treated our minds like playgrounds.”

“No one should have that kind of power. They tried to erase my brother and your sister.”

“Tried,”
Garren repeats, respect blazing in his eyes. “You were too smart for them.”

I don’t think it’s about being smart but I bet my premonitions have something to do with it. And I’m beginning to think loss plays into the persistence of memory too. Fresh grief can’t be an easy thing to write over. There was some part of me that never forgot Latham, like I told him in my dream. I only needed a push to break through. It was probably the same for Garren; it just took a little longer.

“So all that aside, is being grounded all the time everything you hoped it would be?” I ask.

Garren smiles a little. “I wouldn’t say that exactly. I never pictured being back in 1985, living on instant coffee and food that tastes like it’s made of plastic.”

“And you probably didn’t picture running for your life,”

I say. “Living by candlelight and wearing someone else’s clothes.”

“That’s kinda put a damper on the fun, yeah.” Garren’s grin brightens. It reminds me of the one he gave me in the backyard the day of Kinnari’s birthday party. “It’s so different here,” he continues. “No eco-refugees. No Ros polic-ing everyone. No welfare camps— all the jobs done by real people. The people here still travel to other countries. Fly, even.”

Most of the planes in the future are pieces of DefRo weaponry, not passenger jets. The commercial industry is in ruins. “No gushi,” I add. “No instant communication.”

“The telephone,” Garren points out. “And broadcast news on the TV.”

The
telephone.
I smile automatically at the suggestion.

The telephone is primitive compared to what we grew up with. You can’t even see who you’re talking to. And back here all the communication and entertainment devices are stationary and external. Once, ours were part of us. Now we’re without. I’ve had over a month to get used to it but it’s an odd feeling, being disconnected this way. Cut off from something that doesn’t exist yet.

I reach out and curve my fi ngers around my toes, feeling the future stretch out ahead of me, too far to reach. “People here get sick all the time. They die from things we’ve cured. But they seem … I don’t know … less jaded, less suspicious.” Maybe because they haven’t seen how things turned out.

“And they live their lives for real,” Garren says. “Not spend half of them hiding in their own heads.”

I release my hold on my foot to point at him. “Aha, you do love it here!”

I watch Garren’s grin bloom again. “You have to admit that it has its good points.” He pauses, his expression turning sheepish. “So you’re not mad at me?”

I thought we’d gotten clear of the subject and it takes me several seconds to catch up to and say, “For leaving yesterday, yeah. But not for what happened last night.” That’s the truth of it but it’s not the whole truth. “Things are already complicated enough, though. I think it’s better if we don’t complicate them more.”

Garren nods thoughtfully.

I uncross my legs and begin to get up. “I should jump in the shower and start getting ready.”

Garren reaches across the bed to grab my arm. “Wait a second.”

“What?” My skin begins to break out in invisible goose bumps.

“Just … that makes sense— we need to focus on this meeting and then on getting out of here. But I don’t want you to think last night was only because of the shock.”

He releases my arm but my skin’s still singing where he touched me.

I’m quiet. My throat’s stinging like it was last night in the spare room. “For me either,” I admit. “But still …”

“But still,” he repeats, his green eyes sticking to me like crazy glue. “I know.”

I tear my gaze away from him and head for the shower.

When I slip out of the bathroom twenty minutes later Garren, in Mr. Resnik’s borrowed jeans and a black shirt, intercepts me in the hall. “We have to leave early,” he tells me. “There’s something I want to do before this meeting, to even up our odds a little.”

“What?” I ask, my wet hair piled up on my head under one of the Resniks’ bath towels. We won’t be coming back here again and the thought of leaving even a little sooner than expected is a mental adjustment.

“Janette’s dad has a gun. No one should be home now.

We can go in through the back door, just like we did here.”

“You know where he keeps the gun? Maybe it’s locked up.” I intended to grab the sharpest knife from the kitchen and bring it with me as protection when we left but a gun would be better. I don’t want to hurt anyone but if they fi nd us and try to take us …

“She said he keeps it in the nightstand beside the bed,”

Garren says. “There’s a lock on the drawer but how hard can that be to break?”

“She told you all that?”

“Last week before all this happened. Her grandfather gave it to her dad when they moved to the city a few years ago.” Garren slouches slightly but his eyes are steely. “I hate to do this to her but those guys who showed up at Henry’s had guns.”