Yesterday Is History

by Kosoko Jackson

  “Not really,” I say bluntly.

  Blake chuckles mid-sip and hisses. “Smoothie went up my nose.” He turns and grabs a napkin, blowing his nose loudly.

  “So she…”

  “Stalked you through time? Yes.” He empties his glass and puts it in the dishwasher, closing it with his foot. “Creepy, right?”

  “Extremely.”

  “Welcome to my life.”

  Blake gets a new glass from the top shelf and pours himself the remainder of the smoothie from the blender. I have half a mind to ask him why he got a new glass, but I know the answer: rich white wastefulness. He’s probably never been told not to run the dishwasher with only half a load. Or to make sure he has all the clothes he needs for the week in the laundry because there won’t be another chance to do it this weekend. That’s what happens when you’re rich.

  “I was an ass when you came over to visit,” he says.

  “You were justified. I mean, this is a lot.”

  He shrugs. Again. “Sure, but it’s a lot for you, too, I imagine. Learning that you can time travel. Meeting the family of the person who gave you his liver. It’s a lot to take in, and I should have…considered that before lashing out.”

  Blake reaches back with his right hand, rubbing the back of his head. My breath hitches. It’s a beautiful sight, the way his abs flex and his skin stretches, how his bicep shows. It’s almost model-worthy, the type of pose and body that you think is unobtainable, just a figment of reality crafted by the beauty industry. But Blake actually has it. The strong pecs. The V in his hips.

  Riverdale should just cast him right now.

  “Ask anything you want,” he offers. “Any question that you think you need to know to help you process this. I know it’s a lot. Trust me, I grew up in a family of time travelers and it’s still sometimes too much for me.”

  “To clarify, you’re offering me a free pass.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “On anything?”

  “Well, if you asked me if I wear boxers or briefs, that’s probably not the best use of your question, but I’d answer anyway.”

  “Trust me, that’s not a question I’m going to be asking you.”

  But there are a lot of others: the rules of time travel, why he isn’t able to do it, what the limitations are, the consequences. All logical questions that a scientist would ask. All questions that my parents would ask.

  And something about that makes me feel sick.

  Ever since I can remember, I’ve been compared to them. I’ve been told that I have my father’s knack for quick thinking. My mother’s skill in logical deduction. Two years ago, one of Dad’s colleagues said that I was the perfect mix of both of them.

  And it never struck me how screwed up it is to say that to someone.

  I like being like my parents. But I don’t want to be a perfect copy of them. I want to be my own person. That’s what everyone wants, right? Call it a teenage cliché or the need to rebel, but it’s true.

  “Can I get…three questions?”

  Blake’s brow furrows for a moment. It’s like watching something click in his head in real time. “You asked for three instead of two because you knew I’d say that question right there was one question, didn’t you?”

  “You’re smarter than you look,” I fire back.

  “Some of us have beauty and brains. It’s possible, you know.” He gestures. “Go ahead.”

  So I do something that my parents would never do: I ask a completely off-the-wall question.

  “Is your dad’s hair naturally brown, or does he dye it?”

  Blake stops mid-sip, slowly putting his glass down. He doesn’t even swallow the mouthful of liquid for a moment, not until his mind seemingly remembers that he’s holding it in his mouth. He gives an exaggerated gulp, never looking away from me.

  “Let me get this straight. I just confirmed a family secret that only about a dozen people in the world know, and you’re concerned about my father’s hair color?”

  I nod. “It’s for science.”

  “You know time travel is science, too, right?”

  “Science fiction, maybe.”

  “Science fiction is something that’s not real.”

  “I’m still not completely convinced that I’m not losing my mind—or that I’m not in a coma and this is just some fabrication that my brain has made up to help me deal with some horrific trauma.”

  “Are you always like this?”

  “All the time.”

  “So, Mr. I’m-Stuck-in-Some-Dantesque-Coma, what do you think all this is?” He gestures toward the smoothies.

  “A lucky guess?”

  “You’re stubborn as hell.”

  “You’ll grow to love it.”

  A slow grin spreads over Blake’s face as he crosses his strong, well-defined arms over his broad, bare chest. “Naturally that color.”

  “So, you’re the lucky one,” I reason. “There was a fifty-fifty chance that you’d get the gene for red hair. Well, you might still have it, actually. But a fifty-fifty chance that it would manifest. Your brother got it. You didn’t. It’s basic science, really.”

  “That’s not basic at all,” he replies.

  “If you pay attention in science class—genotypes and phenotypes—it is.”

  Personally, I think the tidbit about red hair is interesting. It’s a mutation, after all. A dying out one at that. But Blake’s sullen face proves that he doesn’t think the same. His muscles tighten, and he looks sharper, more angular and threatening than he did before, when his edges were rounder. Quickly, he stands, taking his glass and rinsing it out.

  “That’s another thing David got that I didn’t,” he mutters.

  The tension in the room instantly becomes so thick that it’s hard to breathe, and to combat it, I check my phone. Two texts from Isobel and one from my mom asking how the meeting went. Before I can finish my informative three-sentence reply, Blake says, “Here’s the deal. I didn’t call you back for smoothies or to talk about genealogy.”

  “Technically, I called you, but…point taken.”

  Blake rolls his eyes. “My mom is, frankly, obsessed with time travel. She’s been looking for other people like us, our family, for…I think her whole life. There aren’t many. It’s a dying genetic trait.”

  “Like red hair.”

  “Get over the red hair, but yes.”

  “All right, next question then.”

  “There’s more?”

  “How much do you know?”

  Blake arches his right brow. “About time travel?”

  “That, yes, but also about…me and my ability to do it.”

  “About as much as you do,” he says honestly. “This isn’t normal. I’m not sure how long it’ll last. I don’t think anyone is. You’re, in some ways, a new breed of time traveler—don’t let that go to your head.”

  “Already has.”

  “I could’ve sworn your head looked bigger. But I do know that you need to learn how to control it. Because what you don’t want happening is you time traveling to the wrong time period and dying or getting stuck or jumping at the worst possible time or… Well, a lot of things can go wrong.”

  “Wait, sorry, pause. That can happen?”

  “Amy Grant. My mom’s great-grandaunt. Traveled back to the fifteenth century and landed in a river. Couldn’t swim. Drowned. Ian McIntyre. My father’s grandfather. Traveled back to the Civil War. Stood in the path of a musket and jumped back just in time to die on the living room floor. Oliver…”

  I hold up my hand. “I get it.”

  “You sure? Because I have about a dozen more.”

  “What changed? Three days ago, you wanted nothing to do with me.”

  “A lot can change in three days.”

  “Your mother forced you,
didn’t she?”

  “Correct.” He juts his head toward the living room. He walks. I follow.

  When I enter the room, Blake’s already sitting on the couch, his right leg under his left.

  “I have a proposition for you.”

  Well, that doesn’t sound good. But what other choice do I have? Right now, Blake is my only hope if I want to understand any of this.

  “Let me guess, you’ll tell me about time travel—”

  “And, in exchange, you’ll do something for me in the future,” Blake interrupts.

  And there it is.

  I cross my arms and shake my head. “A blank check IOU? Those never end well for the recipients.”

  “You know what doesn’t end well? My mother as your teacher. She’s a tyrant, Andre.”

  “That’s just what men call a woman who has the confidence to demand the best results from the people around her,” I say, quoting word for word what Isobel once said to a guy in a movie theater who called her a bitch for outsmarting him in trivia.

  “Oh my God,” Blake groans, flopping back on the couch. He rests his feet against the arm of it, covering his eyes with his forearm. Lying there, he lets out a loud breath, which for a moment makes his abs look even more defined than they already are.

  “Wouldn’t you rather work with me than my mother? Someone your own age? Someone dashing and charming and with a six-pack?”

  “Are you flexing your abs right now?”

  “Are you looking?”

  I shake my head. I totally was.

  He grins and shrugs. “I’m not going to ask you to crash the stock market or get me, like, Martin Luther King Jr.’s tie or anything like that. It’s going to be something small. I promise.”

  “But you don’t know what it is yet?”

  He shakes his head and sits up. “Probably something borderline illegal. Enough to piss off my parents but not, you know, actually screw up time. Don’t worry, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.” He extends his hand. “So do we have ourselves a deal, Andre?”

  “I’m not going to call you master or anything like that.” I shake his hand firmly—that’s what confident people do. “For now.”

  “Ah, an alliance of convenience. I’m going to like you.”

  In response, I roll my eyes. “So when do we start?”

  He doesn’t miss a beat. “Are you free now?”

  “I can make time.”

  “See, you’re already doing well. Time-travel humor. That’s a key part of being one of us.”

  He stands up and walks by me, leaving the living room, then turning down the hall, expecting me to follow. Part of me wants to be stubborn and not follow him. To remind him that he should ask people before just assuming.

  But curiosity gets the better of me. There’s a whole world in front of me, a world I didn’t know was possible, and Blake is my ticket to knowing more about time travel.

  And I want to know everything.

  Part Two

  Eleven

  “There are three main rules that every time traveler needs to follow before they jump.”

  Blake and I are in the study as he lectures me about the dos and don’ts of time travel. He’s walking around at a hurried, anxious pace that makes me feel sick, and he’s pulling random books off the shelves, checking them, and deciding whether to put them in a stack in front of me or put them back on the shelf.

  “One—you can’t go forward, only backward.”

  “And why can we only go backward?”

  “It’s more of a societal rule than an actual physical one,” he says, clarifying. “We’re not supposed to take knowledge from the future and bring it back. Like, you can’t go forward, discover how to make…say, a worthy competitor to the iPhone because one exists in twenty years, and then bring it back and make it yourself. It’s frowned upon.”

  “So, it’s not really a rule?”

  “No, it’s a rule.” He slams a large book shut, and dust flies everywhere. “It’s the most important rule.”

  “Then why are there two other rules?”

  “Because…” He groans and puts the book down. “You’re annoying; you know that?”

  “It’s a gift, really.”

  He sits down at the desk across from me, and pulls on a shirt, a jersey with a hawk on it: the Hutcherson Hawks. It fits him well, that elite private school whose tuition is $3,000 more than mine per semester. I don’t have much room to complain. It doesn’t matter what private school you go to in Boston; most of them are good. No…great. That’s what Isobel said, at least.

  We’re all going somewhere, she reminded me one day. Whether you go to Hutcherson or St. Clements, we’re privileged enough to afford these schools. There’s no reason to fight over which is better.

  Easy for her to say, since she got into both of them.

  “Hey!”

  A sharp snap in my face jolts me out of my thoughts. I twitch and glare at Blake. “Not cool. Don’t snap in my face.”

  “Don’t zone out, then. I’m not taking time out of my day to watch you go…wherever it is you go. I have things to do, you know? I’m doing this—”

  “—out of the goodness of your heart?”

  “There can be more than one reason to do something, Dre.”

  “Andre,” I correct him. “My friends call me Dre. We’re not friends. You’re my teacher, and that’s a very different relationship.”

  Blake’s jaw tightens. Maybe that was a bit too harsh, but I’m not going to take it back now. Blake helping me doesn’t mean that I have to be nice to him. It means that I have to respect his teachings and treat this seriously.

  “Fine. Rule two…only one jump at a time. You can’t go to one place and then jump to another place. You have to return home.”

  “Like a yo-yo.”

  Blake rolls his eyes. “Yes, Andre. Like a human yo-yo.”

  “Are you going to let me ask why we have to go from point A to point B and back, or am I going to be shot down for that too?”

  “Are you just going to ask annoying questions over and over again?”

  “Probably.”

  Blake sighs, pinching his nose. He leans against the desk, which wheezes under his weight. His bicep flexes instinctively, and I do my best not to stare. It’s a normal human reaction, right? Finding beauty and recognizing it in front of you? Blake’s good-looking, objectively speaking.

  “About your question… I’m not exactly sure.”

  A fake gasp leaves my mouth. “What? The Blake McIntyre doesn’t know the answer to something?”

  “God,” he growls, pushing off the desk. “Bite me, Andre. I’m not a science nerd like you and my mom and…”

  He falls silent, and his eyes darken. His body stiffens for a moment, like how people tighten right before a nurse gives them a shot or someone hits them.

  Then, as quickly as he disappeared, he returns, snapping back into his body like… Well, just like a yo-yo.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Right then, you stopped in the middle of a sentence. Like you were thinking about something.”

  He pushes his lips into a thin line. “It was nothing.”

  “I’d reckon it was obviously something.”

  “I said it was nothing!”

  His voice hits like a wave of ice-cold water. Now it’s my turn to tense up. Blake runs his fingers through his hair, sighing so hard that his nostrils flare. For two minutes, he makes himself busy, moving books, organizing papers, changing objects around, and making sure of his tactile sense.

  “What you’re doing? All that touching? It helps you stay grounded, right? I do it, too, except for me, it’s pacing.”

  At first, he doesn’t respond; he only hesitates, as if he’s been discovered. Then, slowly, h
e turns to me, but he doesn’t move any closer. He keeps the distance—because, I can only guess, the distance makes him feel safe—and crosses one leg over the other.

  “I was going to say I’m not a scientist like you, my mom, or my brother.”

  Ah. Of course. The dead brother. Great job poking the sore spot, Andre.

  “David, right?”

  “Dave. Only Mom and Dad called him David. He hated it.”

  “Dave,” I repeat slowly. I make a mental note to remember that. “Were you two close?”

  Before I can finish, Blake’s already pulling out his wallet. He tosses it to me, and the first thing I see, besides his ID, is a photo of him and his brother.

  “We weren’t as close as some people are with their siblings,” he admits. “But we were there for each other when it counted. He was family.”

  “That doesn’t mean that you liked each other,” I say gently. “Not everyone likes their family. You don’t have to like them. Only love them.”

  This time, Blake opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. I don’t blame him. It’s a hard question, deciding whether you like or love a family member. Everyone wants to think that they like their family, but that’s not always the case. That’s a luxury. And once you realize that? Things become…tricky.

  I’m lucky enough to like and love my parents. Maybe that expression “Money can’t buy happiness” really is true.

  “But—more importantly, what’s rule number three?” I ask. Might as well try to bring back his focus. “You said there are three rules; you only gave me two.”

  Blake hesitates, but I can see him slowly restarting. “Yeah, right. The rules,” he mutters. “Rule number three, and this is kind of an all-encompassing rule: don’t try to change anything that happens in the past. Don’t take anything, don’t change anything. You should go and come back and leave no evidence of your existence.

  “Which reminds me…” Blake moves close, completely invading my personal space, and starts patting me down.

  “Hey!” I try to swat him away, but he bats my hands, like someone brushing off a child who keeps fidgeting.