All Our Yesterdays

by Cristin Terrill

  “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.

  “Let me go! It’s Marina!”

  “I know!” He shakes me. His grip around my arms is bruising, but comforting, too, grounding. “We’ll help her, Em, but you can’t go running in there.”

  James is white as a bone. “I made her do that.”

  “I’m going in,” Finn says. “If it came down to a fight, I could overpower him.”

  “Me too,” James says.

  “No—”

  “That was the one thing he asked you to do, right? Bring me along to show that I’m not hurt?” He levels a look at Finn. “If you don’t, he’ll hurt her again.”

  I press a hand to my mouth.

  “Fine,” Finn says. “Is there another entrance to the house?”

  “Sure, there’s a door around the back.”

  “Em, can you try to sneak up on him from behind?” Finn asks. “If we can keep him distracted long enough, maybe you can get a shot off.”

  “Jesus,” Jam
es whispers.

  “Can you handle that?” Finn asks. “Because it’s that monster with your face in there or Marina. No way both of them are walking out of this one.”

  It suddenly strikes me how small James looks. He was always like a god to me, a giant at seventeen, someone I had to crane my neck to see, both physically and metaphorically. But although he’s still a good eight inches taller than me, he’s nothing more than a kid. I may only have two years on him, but I’ve also got ten extra lifetimes of experience. James looks soft, fragile.

  “All I care about is Marina,” he says.

  The answer placates Finn, who gives a grudging nod. James explains to me how to edge around the side of the house to the back porch, where there’s a door that leads into the kitchen. He slips a plain silver key off his key ring and presses it into my hand.

  “That’s not all she’s going to need,” Finn says.

  My eyes go to the bulge barely visible under the bottom of James’s shirt hem. He looks up at me, suspicion in his eyes. I know we’re imagining the same thing: he’ll hand over the gun, and I will point it at his head and pull the trigger. Sure, he risked everything by choosing to trust me and help me save Marina, but if there’s anything I’ve learned from James, it’s that he believes the ends justify the means. If this boy crumples dead at my feet, all my problems will be solved. Marina will be safe from the madman holding her hostage, and Cassandra will never be built.

  It’s what I should do. The only problem is I know now, for sure, that I can’t.

  Maybe it really is a sign of strength, like Finn said, or maybe I’m too much of a coward, but I can’t kill the part of me that still loves James. Still believes there’s goodness in the world. Thousands or more may suffer because of my weakness, but I know myself now. I just have to hope that the girl inside will be stronger when her time comes.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I can’t do it. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

  Inside the cottage, Finn cries out.

  “Come on,” my Finn says, “we’ve got to go!”

  James pulls the gun from his belt, eyes locked on mine. Then he turns and hurls it into the woods lining the driveway.

  Thirty-Six

  Marina

  “James!” a voice calls from outside. “I’m coming in.”

  My head snaps up. I know that voice. Its ashen, wide-eyed owner is tied to the chair next to me.

  It must be the man who tried to save us before, in the street. The man who looks like Finn, but older. Just like this terrible James who keeps talking about the future like it’s someplace he’s been.

  It’s Finn from another time.

  We hear the front door open. “Finn, close your eyes!” the voice says.

  The voice is so intense that the Finn beside me instantly shuts his eyes, and the other Finn turns the corner from the foyer into the living room. I stare at him like I wasn’t able to before. His hair is longer, curling at the ends where it’s tucked behind his ears, and he’s grown taller and more muscled. There’s a thin white scar cutting through his eyebrow, and bruises on his face from the struggle in the street. He looks fierce.

  “You’re not really the one I want to see,” the older James says.

  “I’m not exactly thrilled by the reunion, either.”

  “Marina, what’s going on?” the Finn in the chair beside me whispers, his eyes still screwed shut. “Who’s here?”

  “Shh, it’s okay!”

  “Let them go,” the other Finn says. “They haven’t done anything.”

  “Neither has he, but that didn’t stop you trying to kill him. I want to see him.”

  “You know that’s dangerous.”

  James’s lip curls. “I think I know what’s dangerous better than you do.”

  Finn inches farther into the room. “No offense, Jimbo, but you lost perspective on that a long time ago.”

  “Em!” James yells, turning a circle. “I know you’re out there!”

  “She’s not coming in, man,” Finn says. “She doesn’t want to see you like this, with her. It’ll break what’s left of her heart. Don’t you get that? Don’t you understand what you’ve done to her?”

  Who are they talking about? I feel like I should know, but my mind becomes heavy and plodding when I try to think about it. Like I can’t . . . can’t . . .

  James’s eyes flare. “I saved her life. I protected her, like I protected you, and all the thanks I got—”

  “Protected?” Finn demands. “You sat there and watched while they tortured her and she screamed for mercy—”

  “Are you trying to stall me, old friend?” James says. “James! Come out, or I make her scream again! I better see him in five seconds, Abbott, or . . .”

  He moves behind me and presses the metal prongs of the device into my side. I whimper. I don’t know what the two men with the faces of my friends are arguing about—only the most vivid and terrible words stick in my mind, forming a terrifying impressionist’s painting of the future—but the metal jammed into my ribs with bruising force is concrete. I shake in anticipation of the scorch of lightning through my body, and my eyes meet the future Finn’s. It’s the first time he’s looked at me since he entered the house, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. No one, not even my James, has ever looked at me with such tenderness and depth, as though he’s seeing straight into me. In that moment, I feel like he builds a bridge between us and sends a steady stream of warmth and strength across to me. For a second I forget about the contraption digging into my side.

  Then I hear the click of James pressing a button, and I’m on fire.

  Em

  I stare at James for one wide-eyed second and then sprint into the woods in the direction he threw the gun. The last light of the day is rapidly falling, and the underbrush is thick and choked with dead foliage and fallen branches. I look over my shoulder once and see Finn entering the house with James right behind him.

  I crash through the woods, first turning over the underbrush with a long stick and then searching on my hands and knees, increasingly desperate. I pray that Finn can keep the doctor occupied long enough for me to find the gun and slip in the back door. In my frenzy, I rip up weeds and savage bushes, looking for a glint of metal. My hands are scratched and bleeding, and I don’t care.

  Marina screams again. I jam my hands over my ears, but the screaming goes on and on. Each second of the sound is like a white-hot poker through my chest. I have to make it stop.

  As I rifle through dead leaves on the ground, the tips of my fingers brush something hard and cold. I lunge for it, my hands closing around metal. I close my eyes and say a silent thank-you.

  I work my way around the house to the back door quickly. Marina is still screaming. I jam the key into the lock and slip inside.

  Marina’s voice grows hoarse and becomes ragged sobs. One more second of this and I will throw myself into that room. I don’t care that it will ruin our only plan; I’ll fire at anything that moves to stop the terrible sound.

  “Stop!” James’s voice rings out above the screaming. “I’m here! I’m coming in!”

  Marina

  I slump in my chair and would probably slip off if it weren’t for the bindings around my wrists. My body hums with the aftereffects of the shock, like a tuning fork slammed against the edge of a table.

  “M, you okay?” Finn says from his chair, his eyes still tightly shut.

  “Sh-shh . . .” I don’t want him to draw their attention; he’s better off silent.

  My eyes water and refuse to focus, so I can barely see the boy who steps into the living room. He’s just a blur, but the sight sends relief coursing through my veins.

  James. My James. I’d know him with my eyes closed.

  “Stop!” the older Finn says. He throws his hands out, blocking the younger James’s face. “Don’t look at him!”

  But the two Jameses stare at each other, my James bright and beautiful, and the other James like his reflection
in a dusty, cracked mirror.

  The older James smiles. “It’s okay. The universe won’t explode.”

  Finn’s face goes slack. “What?”

  “Coming face-to-face with yourself is no bigger paradox than anything else you’ve done,” my James says. “He lied to you.”

  “I thought it might buy me some time if you two ever came after me in the past.” The older James smiles. “After all, the three of us were inseparable.”

  My James takes a step farther into the room, toward himself. “Please don’t hurt them. Let them go.”

  “I can’t do that. They’re trying to kill us.”

  “Only the ones from your time! Do what you want with them, if that’s what it takes, but Marina—”

  “Marina’s tried to stop us every step of the way, over and over, using every conceivable method. This girl here”—he puts his hand on the crown of my head—“won’t stop until we’re gone.”

  “Please!” my James says. My mind spins as I watch him arguing with himself. “I don’t want her hurt, which means you must not, either, somewhere deep down.”

  “You’ll learn that things change. Now, if we could stop these pathetic attempts to distract me,” he raises his voice, “while Em sneaks in the back door, I’d appreciate it! You think I don’t know exactly what you would tell her to do in this situation?”

  The older Finn’s expression is grim. “I guess that’s why you’re the genius, not me.”

  “Em, I swear to God, if you don’t come out here right now,” James calls, “I’m going to do something you’ll regret!”

  Silence. I quiver. I don’t want to know who Em is. An impossible idea is taking shape in my mind, but I can’t face it.

  The older James bows his head. He seems genuinely disappointed. “Fine.”

  “Nooo . . .” I sob, waiting for the electric jab of the device to boil my blood again. But it doesn’t come. I open my eyes and see him kneeling at my side. His fingers touch mine, and for a second it feels like an embrace, the comforting warmth of his skin. Then with a swift movement, he yanks my pinkie and ring finger back, and I hear a sick crack. The pain hits a moment later, and I howl.