All Our Yesterdays

by Cristin Terrill

  “I . . . it was closed,” I say. God, why am I lying? Why am I dragging this terrible moment out any further? I glance at Finn, expecting to see the thought mirrored back at me in his expression, but his eyes have gone soft and sad as he looks at James. I understand the spell that’s fallen over him. It’s hard to remember the doctor and the cruelty of his ambition when you’re standing so close to the boy he was when he was our best friend. When he was our James. I still feel it, too.

  “James . . .” I say, my voice choked.

  “You okay?”

  “How can you ask me that?” I whisper, forgetting the gun behind my back and Finn standing a few feet away. Forgetting everything but the sweet boy I loved so much for so long. “After what’s just happened to you, how can you worry about me?”

  “It happened to you, too.” James steps toward me and envelopes me in a hug. It happens so quickly that I don’t know how to stop it, and I’m not even sure I could. I bite my lip as hard as I can and try to remember what Finn said, how this James—who is so real and solid against me—is already dead and gone. I think of how many tears Marina will shed and all the different ways he’ll take her to pieces. All the people who will die.

  But I had forgotten what it feels like to have his arms around me, how small and protected it makes me feel. I can take this moment to say good-bye, can’t I? Haven’t I earned that much? I tuck the gun into my waistband and wrap both arms around James, closing my eyes and inhaling the familiar boy-and-detergent smell of him, suddenly sixteen and desperately in love with him again.

  I open my eyes and find Finn staring at us, his expression heavy and unreadable.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, not totally sure which one of them I’m talking to.

  “God, Marina, you’re shaking,” James says. He holds me tighter, cupping the back of my head. He runs his fingers gently through my hair.

  The hair I hacked short, watching the long, dark locks pool at my feet like orphans, just before we were discovered and dragged off to those concrete cells.

  James’s hand pauses at the edge of my hair—which only hangs to my shoulder, not halfway down my back like Marina’s—and I stiffen. He pulls back and looks at me with eyes that are suddenly sharp. He stares at me for a moment and then scrambles away, wheeling backward until he hits a wall.

  “Who are you?” He looks back and forth between Finn and me, taking in our borrowed clothes and the changes the years have wrought on our faces. “Who the hell are you?”

  Finn holds his hands in front of him like James is a frightened animal who might charge. “It’s us, Jimbo.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s us,” I repeat, taking a step closer to him. He flattens himself against the wall, trying to move every atom as far away from me as he can. “It’s just not the us you know. Not yet.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You did it,” Finn says. “The fourth dimension. You figured it out.”

  “Shut up! You’re a . . . This is a trick. It’s a trick . . . or something.” James can’t seem to catch his breath. He turns to leave, but I’m too fast for him, wedging myself between him and the door.

  “Look at me, James,” I say. “Look at me.”

  He raises his eyes slowly to mine. I’m not sure what he sees there. The seriousness of my expression, the thinner, harsher planes of my face, or maybe a glimpse of my anguish, but it convinces him. The truth hits him like a blow, doubling him over.

  “Oh God,” he breathes. “It’s really true?”

  “Yeah,” Finn says. “Sorry, man.”

  “Sorry?” James laughs, and his whole face changes. “This is incredible! I really did it, you’re really from the future! How far?”

  His happiness is like a needle, sharp and bright, right through my heart. “Four years.”

  He throws his arms around us. “I can’t believe you’re here! We’re going to change science; we’re going to change the world! Oh my God, Nate—Nate.” His eyes widen. “If you could come back here, then I could—”

  “Stop!” I can’t take it anymore. I shake James’s arm off of me and press a fist to my mouth to stop a sob escaping. I have to stop this now, before he starts talking about using time travel to save Nate’s life.

  “Marina, what . . .” James stops, and uncertainty creeps into his expression. “Why did you two come back?”

  I look at Finn, who seems suddenly old to me, as old as I feel. Then I look at James, who is lit up from the inside, so alive and beautiful and James.

  “We came to kill you,” I say.

  Twenty-Two

  Em

  James stares at me.

  “What?” he says, the shocked remnants of a smile still on his face.

  “James . . .” I whisper.

  “I don’t understand. Why—” I pull the gun from my belt, and he swallows the rest of the sentence with a gulp. “Jesus Christ, Marina.”

  “I don’t go by that name anymore.” I lift the gun. “I’m sorry, but I have to do this.”

  “Wait! Stop!” James moves away from me and toward Finn, who must seem friendlier since he doesn’t have a weapon aimed at his head. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

  I should pull the damn trigger and be done with it. I hate that my last memory of this world will be James looking at me like that, but I can’t fail again. I tighten my finger on the trigger. Pull it, I tell myself.

  Pull it!

  “Wait!” Finn throws a hand in front of James’s chest, and I release the trigger. My heart is pounding. I might have been able to do it, and I’m simultaneously enraged and thankful for the interruption. “He hasn’t done anything yet. He at least deserves to know why.” Finn turns to James. “I’m sorry, man, but the future is an awful place. The machine changes everything.”

  “It ruins everything,” I say. “And you become so scary, James.”

  “What?” he whispers. “No.”

  “We’ve tried every other way to prevent it happening,” I say. “Previous versions of us tried to convince you to stop your research, burned your notes, got rid of people who helped you, you name it. Nothing worked. But this?” I nod at the gun. “This has to work.”

  His face darkens. “Oh my God. It was you. Outside the hospital. You’re the ones Marina saw.”

  I nod.

  “And my brother?” His voice rises to a break on the last word, Nate’s name hanging unspoken in the air like a ghost.

  “Not us,” Finn says.

  James holds his head between his palms, like the press of his thoughts is painful. “No. No. No. I don’t understand.”

  “We know you never meant to become a monster,” Finn says, “but you did. You couldn’t help it.”

  “I can’t let you hurt her again,” I say, raising the gun.

  “Marina, wait!” There’s a bright flash of panic in James’s eyes when he realizes I really do mean to shoot him. “We can talk about this! Whatever I am in the future, I’m not that person right now, here in this room.”

  I clench my jaw. “No. This is hard enough for me already.”

  Finn stands next to me, laying a soft, steady hand on my shoulder.

  “I don’t get this.” James raises his hands in surrender and looks around, but there’s nowhere for him to run. “You’re my best friends. I would never hurt you.”

  In my mind, I see the doctor sitting in a chair across from me while hot, sharp electricity sizzles through me. I endured it because the pain was the only alternative to dying, and, as much as I couldn’t understand why sometimes, I didn’t want to die. But the feeling of helplessness, being so powerless in my own skin, was worse than every bruise and scar. I wonder if James knows that now, with my gun pointed at his head.

  He must see something in my expression, because his voice is soft and heavy when he speaks. “My God. What did I do to you?” He takes a step toward me, like he wants to take me in his arms again.

  “Don’t come any closer!”
<
br />   His eyes fill with tears. “Marina, please.”

  I swallow. “I’m sorry, James. I’m so sorry.”

  My finger begins to tighten on the trigger. In a fraction of a second, there will be sound and blood and then nothing. I still don’t want to die, but Marina will live. That fierce, loyal, innocent girl who just wants someone to love will get the life I never had, and that’s more than enough.

  There’s a bang on the door. I flinch, and James uses the opportunity to leap at me.

  “James?” Marina calls from the other side of the door. “Can you let us in? Our hands are full.”

  James is trying to wrestle the gun from my grasp. I twist, and the back of my knees hit a bed. I topple backward, him on top of me. I keep hold of the gun, but James has me pinned painfully to the mattress, his forearm across my neck. I hold the gun over my head to keep it out of his reach, but I can’t get it pointed at him.

  Finn pulls James off of me, and I gasp for air and roll away from the boys. Finn is strong, but James is bigger and fueled by pure terror; the fight won’t last long.

  “James?” I hear the sound of a key in the card reader.

  “We have to go!” I hiss at Finn.

  The door starts to swing open but is jerked to a stop by the chain.

  “Jimbo, open the door!” the younger Finn calls through the crack.

  I run to the window and pry it open. I could try to take a shot at James now, but I’d risk hitting Finn. And Marina, God, she’s only a few feet away. I can’t bear it. I kick the screen out onto the parking lot below.

  James knocks Finn back with a clumsy but powerful punch to the jaw. He scrambles to his feet. “You can’t be in the same place they are, can you?”

  He runs to the door, and Finn runs to me. Finn jumps into the bushes four feet below and lifts his hands up for me. I take one look back at James, who is struggling with the chain on the door but looks up at me at the same moment.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, “but this isn’t over. We won’t stop.”

  I jump into Finn’s waiting arms, and together we run.

  Twenty-Three

  Marina

  “James?” I shift the soft drinks and vending-machine food Finn and I got on our way back to the room into the crook of my right arm so I can wiggle the fingers of my left through the gap in the door. Inside I hear shuffling and a muted bang, whispers. “What’s going on?”

  Silence.

  “James!” I cry. “You open this door right now!”

  “Move your hand.”

  I sigh in relief and pull my fingers free, and the door closes and then opens. James’s face is red, which I expected, but it looks oddly sweaty and flushed, like he’s been running a marathon instead of crying. He stares at me like he’s seeing me for the first time. Finn pushes past him, not seeming to notice anything amiss.

  “Burgers all around,” he says, dumping the Denny’s bag on the rumpled floral coverlet of the nearest bed. I lay my load of junk food in a pile beside it.

  James stalks past us, grabbing my tote off the floor and his coat from the back of a chair. “Let’s take them to go, okay? I think we should get back on the road.”

  “What?”

  “We should keep moving,” he says. “I don’t want to stay here.”

  “You’ve had a shock.” I try to catch him and hold him still, halt his frightful momentum around the room, but he keeps slipping through my grasp. “You need to get some rest.”

  “What I need is to get the fuck out of this hotel room!” He’s visibly shivering, his entire body quaking like he’s freezing from the inside out. He slams the side of his fist against the wall, and I jump, suddenly frightened of the stranger in front of me. James sees it and bows his head. “I’m sorry, Marina. God, I’m so sorry. But please, I need to leave.”

  Finn steps between us and puts a hand on James’s chest. “Okay. We’ll go. It’s okay.”

  James’s voice is thick when he says, “Thank you.”

  We go back to the car—the burgers cooling, forgotten, in the backseat beside Finn—and James drives like the devil is on his heels. I’d feel safer if Finn were behind the wheel again. The speedometer approaches the triple digits, and he weaves around other cars, eyes flicking into the rearview mirror every few seconds. I’m too scared to ask him what’s wrong or even speak to him. This quiet, smoldering James reminds me uncomfortably of the day of his parents’ funeral, when the rage in his eyes as he hit that lamp seemed like it could burn a hole right through me.

  Finn doesn’t share my concern. He’s flopped across the backseat, dead asleep, his mouth hanging open ever so slightly. When I notice, I roll my eyes, but I end up watching him longer than I mean to. He looks so young when he’s asleep; I can almost see the little boy he must have been once.

  “Marina?” James whispers.

  It’s the first word he’s spoken since we left the hotel. “Yeah?”

  “Do you think I’m a bad person?”

  “What?”

  “Is there evil in me?” He searches the road in front of him like it could give him answers. “Could I become a terrible person someday?”

  “James.” I’m too shocked to even find words. I put a hand over his where it rests on the console. “You’re the best person I know.”

  “I want to be good.” His lip starts to wobble, and he raises a hand to his mouth to cover it. “I want to do good. I want to help people.”

  “I know—”

  “That’s what everything in there is about.” He nods his head at the manila folder at my feet. “It’s what I’ve worked for all these years.”

  “James, I know.” He’s not hearing me. Whoever he’s talking to, it isn’t me.

  “I wish Nate were here.” His voice cracks. “I need him.”

  “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “No,” he says, looking at me for the first time. His pupils are so big that they’re like black holes, just the way he explained them to me, so deep they swallow all the light around them. “It’s not going to be okay, Marina. Nothing is going to be okay, ever.”

  I pull my hand back. “You’re scaring me.”

  “I know. I’m scared, too.” He clenches his hand around the steering wheel. “I’ve been scared of so much stupid crap in my life. Making a bad grade or not fitting in. God, I was scared of you. And it was all such a waste. None of it matters a damn now that the real scary shit is here.”

  “Why were you scared of me?” I whisper.

  He doesn’t look at me. The streetlamps fly past outside the window, outlining his silhouette in orange and then plunging it into blackness again. The pulse mimics the beat of my heart.

  “Don’t make me tell you now,” he says. “Not like this.”

  Hope balloons up inside of me until I could be floating, but I pop it and come back down to earth. I know how that conversation will go. He’ll look at me and say, I love you, Marina. Like the sister I never had. I was scared to tell you, because the people I love tend to go away. And I will try to smile and tell him I love him, too, like a brother, and then I’ll cry myself to pieces and never, ever tell him the truth. I can already feel the pain of it, the hot burn of misery somewhere behind my eyes.

  But, oh God, what if I’m wrong? What if my crazy, racing heart is right?

  James reaches for my hand. “Just don’t leave me, okay, kid? Please don’t ever leave me.”

  I squeeze his fingers. “Never. You’re stuck with me, Shaw.”

  I think he tries to smile. “I’ll hold you to that, Marchetti.”

  Twenty-Four

  Em

  I stare at the dashboard for at least an hour as Finn drives, following the speeding lights of the BMW. I’ve been turning the dilemma over and over in my mind, examining it from all angles and probing it for a weakness, but it’s impenetrable.

  “It’s over,” I finally say. “Now that he knows, he won’t let Marina or Finn leave his side, and the doctor will send someone back tomorrow to
hunt us down, if time doesn’t erase us first. We’re done.”

  “Probably.”

  I look down at the gun in my lap. I don’t know why I haven’t put it away yet. I touch it with one fingertip. “Even if we manage to get him alone again, I don’t know if I could do it. I’ve had three chances now, and I’ve failed every time.”

  “Three?”

  I look up, realizing what I’ve said. Stupid. I glance at Finn and the angry red bruise rising on his jaw. “There was . . . while you were asleep in the car at your house. I watched Marina and James through a window.”

  “Together?”

  “They were just sleeping,” I say softly.

  Without a word, Finn jerks the wheel violently. We veer off the highway and down a small exit ramp.

  “What are you doing?” I yelp. “We’re going to lose them!”

  “I don’t care. You said yourself we’ve as good as failed already.”

  He drives us into the parking lot of a gas station and gets out of the car, slamming the door behind him. The sound reverberates through my body, like he screamed without ever opening his mouth. He disappears inside the garishly lit station, and I sit frozen in the car, shame pressing me into my seat, making me feel small.

  He’s gone a long time. At first I try to keep track, counting the seconds in my head and watching the windows for his fair head. But eventually I give up. I rub my hands across my arms to keep off the chill creeping in through the broken window we taped up with a trash bag.

  When he finally comes back to the car, at least a half hour later, he’s clutching two cups of coffee and has a plastic bag dangling from one wrist. He opens the door and slides back behind the wheel.

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper,” he says. “But please don’t talk to me yet.”

  I swallow and nod.

  He hands me a cup, which is deliciously warm in my hands, and dumps the contents of the bag. Two turkey sandwiches, potato chips, and a package of Oreos. God, how many times did I dream about Oreos in that cell? How many times did I tell Finn that the biggest regret of my life was not eating more of them when I could, because I’d been stupid enough to worry about the sugar and fat? My eyes suddenly burn. I lift the coffee cup to my mouth and use the movement to cover my brushing away tears.