Tomorrow

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  “You said stopping the wipe was better than continuing.” The desire to hurt Elizabeth rages through me again, pumping out from my heart and into every part of my body. Anger with myself charges in after it—I shouldn’t have left Freya alone when she was least able to protect herself. It was stupid to think they’d forgotten about us.

  “I believe that. But I can’t say how what’s been done so far will affect her.” The remorse in Elizabeth’s face has no impact on me. “I’m sorry. Just have some patience with her.”

  I have endless patience for Freya, if that’s what she’ll need. But the injustice of the U.N.A.’s actions burns. Reading someone’s mind is invasive but butchering it with a wipe and cover is barbaric. Especially when we’re talking about Freya, and the scientists don’t have the technology to make a clean job of it. “You’re the one who suggested driving across the border,” I snap. “How can we do that when she can’t keep her eyes open?”

  “We can’t.” Elizabeth’s mouth sours around the disappointing syllables. “We have to wait.”

  But we can’t stop moving—that would give them a better chance to hunt us down. We’ll have to keep going until Freya’s fully conscious. “How much cash do you have?” I ask. The eight hundred dollars in my pocket could keep me and Freya going for a while but it won’t be enough to buy us international plane tickets and fake passports.

  “Only what’s in my wallet. About ninety dollars.” Elizabeth bites her lip as she slaps her cardigan pocket. I watch the realization sink in that her bank account and credit cards will soon be inaccessible to her; if she uses them the well-connected U.N.A. could track her through the information. “I saw a bank machine a few minutes ago,” she adds hastily. “I could withdraw more before we leave the area.”

  My own ATM card is either being devoured by feeders back at the farmhouse or in the hands of the director, and the banks themselves won’t be open for hours yet. Even if they were, my Robert Clark ID is gone. The only person I can pass for now is Chris Henderson, the name on my fake driver’s license and social insurance number. And Chris Henderson has no bank account.

  “I’m guessing you don’t have secret ID under a different name they don’t know about,” I say. “Which means it’s possible they could find out if we cross the border anyway.”

  “I didn’t prepare for this; I didn’t expect it.” Elizabeth’s look of exasperation makes me roll my eyes. “What about you—do you have any money or identification?”

  She couldn’t know that Minnow returned the eight hundred dollars U.N.A. security had stolen from me, and I lie. “Isaac gave me two hundred dollars back in the barn along with the fake IDs for me and Freya that your people had taken.”

  I don’t owe Elizabeth the truth and I have to protect the money Freya and I have left. Besides, admitting to less might inspire Elizabeth to get creative about putting her hands on extra cash. I’m not going to carry her—she needs to pull her own weight.

  Because the U.N.A. have seen my emergency ID the three of us will need new identities as soon as possible. I know a guy just outside of Chinatown that puts together convincing documents, but heading into Vancouver now would be lunacy. Maybe hopping over the border is our best option after all. Even if the U.N.A. discovers we’ve crossed into the United States they won’t know where we’re going. A population of 240 million should give us a fair opportunity to blend into the background in the short term, until we can get enough money together to book a flight.

  I tell Elizabeth to head for the ATM and we pull off the Fraser Highway and double back to the bank. Ten minutes later we’re in an otherwise empty Surrey parking lot and Elizabeth’s climbing out of the car. She trudges to the bank machine wearing the expression of a moving target while I hop into the backseat with Freya.

  I know she’s not exactly in a coma and that Elizabeth said I shouldn’t force her to wake up, but maybe her subconscious can hear me and needs encouragement. “Remember all those horror books we used to read when we first got here?” I ask, my voice hushed.

  A quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray springs into my head: “The basis of optimism is sheer terror.” What I’m feeling now is too complicated to be only one thing, but sheer terror is part of it. I have to believe she’s reachable—that the Freya I knew is still in there.

  “I don’t know what we were thinking,” I continue. “We should’ve been reading happy, hopeful things. Stuff like A Christmas Carol and Jane Austen novels. The Lord of the Rings books even—at least they would’ve had a positive ending.” I wish I had a book with me so I could read to her. Hearing something familiar could help bring her back.

  Something like Hendris maybe. As much as Kinnari loved her, Freya was a bigger fan. I only know the lyrics to one Hendris tune, her biggest hit, “Shade.” I stumble over the verses as I sing aloud, fishing for some words and peppering my rendition with mistakes. But I know the chorus as well as anyone and that part I croon with quiet certainty:

  We could live in the shade forever

  I will take you there tonight

  But first you have to learn how to let go

  of the difference between darkness and light

  The truth is a silence

  The truth is a shadow

  The truth is a memory

  The truth is our right

  The rhythm of Freya’s breathing doesn’t alter. Her brow is furrowed in her sleep, her posture unchanged. When Elizabeth yanks the car door open and gets in, I sigh to myself.

  “I could only take out two hundred dollars,” Elizabeth explains as she glances at me in the backseat. “It would’ve been less but I raised the limit this past winter.” Anxiety carves into her cheeks. “We’ll need more.”

  I slide out of the backseat and take my place next to Elizabeth in the front. “It’ll have to come from somewhere else then.”

  Elizabeth nods unhappily and starts the engine. We turn out of the parking lot and onto the street. The day looks golden, like one that will draw people to the beaches although officially, summer is weeks away. I squint as I stare towards the sun. Out of nowhere a crow crashes into the windscreen, its body bouncing against the hood of the car and into the roadway.

  A savage shriek rings out from directly behind me. Flinching, I twist to see Freya sitting bolt upright in the backseat, her hands on her thighs and her eyes drilling into the spot the crow collided with our windscreen. The sound spilling from Freya’s mouth is raw and forlorn, almost alien. I didn’t know a person could sound like that in real life and the shock delays my reaction.

  “Freya!” I have to shout at her to be heard over the unending scream. “Freya. It’s okay. It was just a bird.”

  But she won’t stop shrieking. Elizabeth pulls over to the curb, an angry brown Chevette on our tail honking in complaint, and then whipping around us to zoom past.

  “Freya,” Elizabeth intones gently as she peers into the backseat. “Freya, dear, don’t worry. It’s done. It’s over and done.” Her tone is reminiscent of a mother addressing a child with a skinned knee and Freya presses her lips together and stares, wide-eyed and silent, at Elizabeth.

  My own eyes interpret Freya’s expression as fascination and now that she’s quiet, her harrowing screams fading into the upholstery, I lower my voice and say, “She helped us get away from them.” I cock my head to indicate Elizabeth. “But we have to keep going to stay safe.”

  The intensity of Freya’s gaze unnerves me. The relief I want to feel at seeing her awake is halved. “Freya, are you all right?”

  Elizabeth rejoins the flow of traffic as I wait for Freya’s answer.

  Her eyes don’t leave mine but she remains quiet. “Freya?” I repeat. “Say something. I need to know you’re okay.”

  With Freya sitting behind me in a stranger’s clothes—the pink miniskirt that couldn’t be more unlike her—and staring at me from familiar eyes that suddenly seem unknowable, I feel frantic. My instincts tell me to leap into the backseat with her again, but the more cautio
us side of me warns that any sudden movements might scare her, that after all she’s been through I shouldn’t violate her personal space.

  “Hey,” I say softly, deciding Elizabeth’s approach was right. “It’s okay. Are you thirsty? Is there anything you need?” I thought I saw some orange juice in the trunk among the groceries.

  Freya won’t even nod or shake her head for me and I stare accusingly at Elizabeth, who avoids my eyes. Have they turned Freya’s mind into a wasteland? My heart crumbles, but I try again. “Freya, listen, can you just…will you raise one of your hands for me?”

  Freya glances down at the back of her hands, her face long. Then she lifts both her hands into the air and holds them about a foot from her face, gazing out at me from between them like she’s awaiting further instructions.

  My face explodes into a smile. She understood me. Her mind wasn’t shredded like the boy with the brain tumour.

  “Thanks,” I tell her, my body filling with gratitude. Tears form behind my eyes. I want to say so much more but I remember what Elizabeth said about giving Freya time.

  I watch Freya fit her hands back into her lap, her eyes darting between me and Elizabeth before settling on her own window. Riveted, she stares out at the British Columbia sunshine.

  “What about the border then?” Elizabeth asks quietly. “Should we try?”

  Break for the border. Like in a western movie. The smile’s stuck on my cheeks like it was etched into them with a laser beam. But Freya’s silence is a barrier to successfully crossing into the United States. If she refuses to speak to the border guard, he or she will have the car searched and question us in depth. “You know we’re less than half an hour away,” I warn. “She’s not ready.”

  Elizabeth bobs her head and glances into the backseat. “Freya? How are you doing there?”

  Freya switches her attention from the window to Elizabeth. I watch Freya’s long lashes blink slowly, her posture frozen as though every bit of her concentration is centred on the sound of Elizabeth’s voice.

  No reply comes, though. Freya sees me staring and returns my gaze. There’s a self-consciousness in her face that makes me feel I should look away.

  “Freya,” Elizabeth says, her tone as gentle as it was when the crow crashed into the car. “We’re going to need you to do something for us soon.” Elizabeth glances my way. “Do you have her identification?”

  I fish Freya’s fake driver’s license and social insurance card out of my jeans. The day before our driver’s license photos were taken we went white water rafting on the Elaho River. The valley was so unspoiled that time vanished. The effort of paddling was distracting in itself but it was the old growth forests, hanging glaciers, and water that ran wild, rough, and pure, that made me forget—for hours at a time—that I’d ever lived in another time and place. Later that night, as I was thinking back on the day, I remembered how Freya’s expression in Elaho had reflected feelings identical to mine. In the middle of that ageless landscape we had nothing to hide. For once, we felt like exactly who we appeared to be.

  Looking at her now, I have no idea what Freya’s thinking or feeling. I peer at the girl in the photo and am flooded with memories. The real birthdays we celebrated in private because they didn’t match up with Robbie and Holly’s paperwork. Freya repeating Spanish phrases from the tapes she’d take out of the library. No hay de que. Lo siento. Te extraño mucho. Any smattering of Spanish I know is what I picked up listening to Freya.

  Last October. When Freya won tickets to see The Cure at the Coliseum and she was so excited the feeling was contagious. I wrapped my arms around her as we danced to “In Between Days,” her hands reaching back to grasp my legs and the voices of thousands of Cure fans ringing in my ears: “Come back come back come back to me.”

  In the present I glance at Elizabeth, wondering what she wants me to do with Freya’s ID. “Give it to her,” Elizabeth instructs. I reach into the backseat with it, Freya staring at my fingers for ponderous seconds before she lifts one of her own hands to take the driver’s license and social insurance card.

  “That’s who we need you to be, Freya,” Elizabeth explains. “If the border guard ask for your name and birthday, that’s what you tell them. Can you do that?”

  Freya’s lips part. She drops her head to examine the documents made out in eighteen-year-old Amy Lewandowski’s name, and then nods hesitantly.

  I hope she understands, and that she means it. But I don’t want to put her through this if it means we’ll fail or the effort will strain her mentally. “Look, I know we need to get away from here,” I say to Elizabeth. “But if we reach the border and she still won’t say anything we’re going to attract unwanted attention. Can she even handle this?”

  “We’ll do most of the talking for her,” Elizabeth insists, laying out a back story for customs. I’ll be Amy’s boyfriend. Elizabeth will say she’s Amy’s aunt and she’s driving the two of us to California for Amy’s mother’s wedding.

  The second marriage story is a nice touch—countless people get divorced here and now, while in the U.N.A. the vast majority of marriages lasted. That doesn’t mean the marriages of the future were necessarily stronger, only that gushi gave people a place to escape to where the state of their real life marriages often didn’t matter as much.

  “Why California?” I ask. Elizabeth’s pulled herself together and is thinking on her feet—I’m relieved and surprised to see that, but I’m not sure we’re ready to carry out her plan yet. A single look at the gunshot wound under Elizabeth’s headband or one wrong word from Freya could push us into more trouble than we’re capable of crawling out from under.

  “In case the border guard reports back to anyone about us,” Elizabeth replies. “We tell them Sacramento but stop in Seattle instead.”

  “Pick up new identification and book flights out of the country,” I add, my eyes swimming to Freya. “Do you understand what we’re talking about? Do you remember what happened to you?” I’m desperate to know how much damage we’re dealing with.

  “Don’t ask her about that now,” Elizabeth protests, her eyes harsher than her tone. “Save any complicated questions for later. You can see how fragile she seems. We don’t want to risk upsetting her and we need to keep her focused on the basics of our story.” Elizabeth’s features soften as she gazes into the backseat. “We’re heading to California for your mother’s wedding on Saturday. I’m your aunt Elizabeth and this here is…” She looks to me for confirmation.

  “Chris,” I say.

  “Chris,” Elizabeth repeats. “We’ll be gone five days. You’re Amy Lewandowski and you’re…”

  “Eighteen.” I point to the ID in Freya’s hands. “Born on November 13, 1967. Just like it says there. You’re Canadian and live in Vancouver. Can you remember all that?”

  This time Freya nods readily, like she wants to please us. “Amy,” she echoes. “Canadian. My mother’s getting married in California on Saturday.”

  It’s amazing to hear her voice. Like a genuine miracle. “Right,” I say happily. “Good.”

  Freya’s eyes zoom back to her window and stay there. I give Elizabeth directions to the border: Highway 99 South, which becomes the I-5 in Washington State. I’ve heard other people discuss the route often enough to remember it.

  We pull into a gas station to fill up and so I can dump the gun and most of the groceries before we get on the 99. Then Elizabeth goes to the bathroom to clean what’s left of her ear. While she’s gone, Freya and I switch seats—if Elizabeth really were her aunt, Freya would be riding up front with her. Climbing out of the car, Freya seems steady on her feet and I want to throw my arms around her and hold on to her for a minute, but she slips nervously past me like I’m a stranger.

  The drive down 99 is mostly quiet, punctuated every five minutes or so by Elizabeth’s repetition of our cover story. Freya successfully parrots Elizabeth each time. I hold back all the questions I want to ask, and Freya offers no explanations of her own. She’s lucid
but like a deer caught in headlights.

  Twenty minutes later we’re at the Washington border, part of the convoy of traffic winding around the Peace Arch. Because of Reagan’s death, both flags atop the monument are at half-mast, and although I’ve lived in Canada for fifteen months it strikes me as strange that the United States and Canada are two nations rather than one. Growing up I always knew them both as the U.N.A. Truthfully, they still seem that way to me. In my mind the border’s an illusion that hasn’t yet been erased.

  There are only a few cars ahead of us in the rapidly shortening customs line. Four. Three. Two. One. We’re next. Elizabeth turns expectantly to Freya. “Freya,” she says loudly, her hand tapping Freya’s shoulder. “Freya.”

  I unbuckle my seatbelt and lean forwards in my chair to look at her. Freya’s fallen back to sleep at the worst possible time. “You said we shouldn’t wake her up,” I counter. “We need to get out of here.” I glance over my shoulder at the cars gathered behind us. We have to turn around somehow, go back where we came from.

  But Elizabeth’s driving onward. She’s decided it’s show time, whether we can pull it off or not. Elizabeth rolls down her window, the border guard in the tiny hut to our left gazing down at us. “Citizenship?” he asks.

  “Canadian,” Elizabeth says, handing him each of our driver’s licenses. “All of us.”

  The border guard flips quickly through the documents. He smiles through his greying beard, pointing at Freya with his thumb. “Looks like you brought a sleeper with you.”

  Elizabeth pauses, her moment of reticence reeking of guilt. We shouldn’t have chanced crossing yet. Her panic to get away has ruined us. Then Elizabeth’s right hand flies out to stroke Freya’s hair. “The poor thing isn’t feeling well,” she says. “A touch of food poisoning from the fish she had for supper last night.”

  Freya wriggles in her seat, gasping into consciousness like someone saved from drowning.