Yesterday

by C. K. Kelly Martin

  The food is weird (so much salt, fat and chemicals) but my body craves it anyway. Cars and factories spew pollution into the air. People throw things away like it doesn’t matter what they do. It’s crazy and they can’t keep living like this but there are so many things about 1985 that I like. No SecRos. No terrorist plague. The freedom to do what you want and become what you want.

  The people here fear nuclear war but I know that won’t happen anytime soon. Or could it? Have Garren and I changed the past by coming back? How many others like us are out there—refugees from the future?

  Back in the darkened Resnik house my mind runs wild trying to formulate answers to an endless sea of questions. Eventually my brain’s too worn out to think beyond myself and what’s going to happen to me tomorrow. I’m dying to turn on a light—or better still, the TV—but I have to settle for the kitchen radio. The noise is company. I’m afraid to go to bed because I know that when I get there it’ll be impossible to avoid being overcome with loneliness and fear.

  When I can’t put off sleep any longer (I don’t want to be late meeting Nancy tomorrow) I try the couch where I toss and turn, not because it’s uncomfortable but because it’s not any less lonely than being in bed. In the end I head upstairs, pull off my clothes and change into one of Mr. Resnik’s T-shirts. Then I settle myself in the spare bedroom, the last place that Garren slept, as though that will somehow inspire a vision about him.

  It doesn’t.

  I just lie there curled into a ball until the darkness takes me.

  For hours I have no awareness of myself. If I dream, I don’t remember it. There’s nothing and no one.

  It’s still dark when I open my eyes again. There’s a figure in the room with me, coming closer. I must be dreaming and I try to open my eyes a second time.

  “I thought you’d gone,” a male voice says. “I checked the kids’ room first and I thought you were gone.”

  When I realize the voice belongs to Garren, it only confirms I’m dreaming—or having a premonition. The real Garren would be miles from Toronto by now. I was the only thing stopping him from going sooner.

  “You were right,” Garren continues as he looms over me. He stops and sits on the side of the bed. I feel the mattress shift under his weight. “I don’t know why I couldn’t remember everything before but …” The pain in his voice prompts me into an upright position. Even in the dark I can see that his eyes look glassy. They gleam with grief in the moonlight. “Kinnari. I shouldn’t have let her go. There’d been so many terrorist threats lately. I should’ve known it was too big a risk.”

  This is no dream and I feel tears begin to form behind my own eyes as I think of Latham and Kinnari and the years they should’ve had ahead of them. “It wasn’t the terrorists,” I say, my voice creaking with sleep and sadness.

  “I know. I remember that too.” Garren grips the bedspread, his knuckles flaring. “But I could’ve stopped her from going to the concert. She could be here now, with us. Alive.”

  “I should’ve seen it beforehand,” I tell him. “I didn’t see anything until it was too late and then …” I don’t have the words. Latham’s lost forever. He would’ve loved this time, despite its many faults. I want him and Kinnari to be alive so much that it seems my will alone should have enough power to change history.

  “It’s not your fault,” Garren says, tears fighting their way out of his eyes and slipping down his cheeks. “You can’t control what you see.”

  If I hadn’t spent so long denying my gift maybe I would be able to control it by now. I should’ve tried at least.

  Garren’s staring at me like he can guess my unspoken words. “It’s not your fault,” he repeats. “None of this is your fault.”

  “And not yours either,” I remind him.

  Garren’s head bends like a broken twig. I hear him crying under his breath. Such a low, desolate sound that I can’t stand it and pull myself closer to him on the bed. I fold my arms around him and feel his wet cheek against mine.

  We don’t talk. We just hold each other, our tears mixing until I can’t cry anymore.

  I kiss his cheek, my fingers creeping up the back of his neck and into his hair.

  I’m glad he’s here but together our sadness is overwhelming, even once my tears have begun to dry. Garren holds himself apart from me and touches my face. Slowly, he follows the curve of my cheek around my chin, like a blind man intent on discovering what I really look like.

  No one’s ever touched me like that.

  I stare back at him like we’re two other people entirely, although I’ve felt this way about him for so long. I lean closer and press my lips against his, our mouths closed. Mine tingles at the thought of what I’ve just done.

  His lips are soft but cold and I wonder where he’s been all this time but I don’t want to break the quiet between us by asking. I open my mouth as I slide mine back against his, slip my tongue into the shared space we’ve created. We’ve never done this together either but it feels as familiar as walking, or maybe it’s just Garren himself who makes it seem that way.

  My body feels like a constellation, like a hundred stars glittering in the darkness. To feel so sad and so light at the same time seems like a minor miracle. I thread my fingers through Garren’s and squeeze. He squeezes back. Kisses me longer and harder until I feel as though I’ll burst.

  I untangle myself from him just enough to tug Mr. Resnik’s T-shirt over my head and let it fall to the floor. Garren sweeps his fingertips across my naked shoulders, tracing my form. Then his fingers are featherlight on my back and my waist, his eyes clinging to my breasts. I reach out to help him slip off his T-shirt. He’s so perfect in the moonlight that it seems almost unfair and I touch his chest and kiss him again, my hands roaming everywhere, even the places I can’t see.

  I feel for the button on his jeans and snap it open. Garren yanks off his pants and cups his hands around my breasts. The way he looks at me makes me beam brighter. He runs his perfect fingers over me until I can’t stand it anymore and wriggle out of the last thing I’m wearing. Garren pauses to take in the sight of me. Our mouths merge, his lips as hot as mine now. The bed creaks under our shifting weight.

  We’re quiet and still, Garren lying between my legs, staring into my eyes like he’s waiting for something. I’m waiting too. My hands skim restlessly down his back and begin to slide off his underwear. Garren finishes the job of getting rid of them and I press one of my palms into his chest, easing him back so I can look at him the way he looked at me.

  He’s a minor miracle himself—the stuff that artists dream of—and I feel my throat sting and swell, too small to contain my feelings. I lunge for him on the bed, drowning him with kisses as I sit astride him. He’s hard under me, would barely have to push up at all to disappear inside me. I could do it myself if I wanted to. Swallow him up the way the house swallowed me earlier.

  I could … I could.

  But then I stop to look at him and he’s giving me that steadfastly quiet look again as if to ask me the question neither of us will voice out loud. I hold his gaze but somehow I can’t say yes or no. I’m mute.

  We freeze on the bed like a paused movie scene. Garren’s the first to move again. He spreads his palm gently across my pelvis and then drops his eyes, breaking the current between us. Then he’s pulling away from me, forcing me to move too. I climb off him and sit back on the bed. Garren squeezes my thigh, like a gesture of reassurance. Then he’s sweeping his clothes into his arms and padding out of the room naked. With the door ajar, I hear him on the stairs.

  I reach for my T-shirt and huddle under the covers, working my way through everything that just happened. Garren didn’t leave town after all. He’s remembered our past and we just got closer than we’ve ever been but I don’t know what it means. My mouth, and most of the rest of my body, is still tingling.

  It takes me a while to cool down and get my head together. The clock radio reads 3:07 by the time I follow Garren downstairs. He’
s sitting in the candlelight listening to the radio with a mug of coffee in front of him. His feet are resting on the chair across from him and when I step into the kitchen in my T-shirt, Garren’s eyes flicker. He looks sad again, confused.

  I lean against the counter and ask, “Are you okay?”

  “Not really.” He peers down at his coffee. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” I don’t want to start regretting what happened upstairs and I’m beginning to wish that I’d pulled on a pair of Paula’s jeans before coming to check on him.

  “Sorry that I didn’t believe you,” he says, raising his head to look at me. “Sorry that I left you there outside Lou’s house. You’ve been right about everything all along.”

  I wish he’d never left me too but it’s difficult for me to blame him. The truth sounds like science fiction. Not many people would believe it.

  “Where did you go after you left?” I ask. “I thought you would’ve been far away from here by now.”

  Garren’s frown is weighted with guilt. “There was no one else I could go to so I went to Janette and asked if she had any money she could give me. I told her that the cops were after me but that I couldn’t tell her why. She was upset that I was leaving town and convinced me to spend the night. She snuck me in after her parents went to bed.” He curves his hand around his coffee mug. “I was thinking about all the things you’d said when I fell asleep. I started to dream about them but it was so detailed. Too detailed to be a dream and when I woke up I kept on remembering. Everything. My whole life until the time the SecRos took me and my mom.”

  “Did they explain what was happening? What they were going to do to you?” Knowing how we were sent back won’t change our circumstances but I can’t stop wondering about it. I’m a person out of sync with the world around me. Somehow I need to make sense of it.

  “It happened fast,” he says. “I think my mom may have known more but she just said we were being evacuated.”

  “And your other mother, do you think she’s still back there?” The physicist. I wonder why she wasn’t sent back with Garren too.

  “She was the one who arranged to have us taken so I guess she must be. Like your dad. Unless you think they’re somewhere else?”

  “Given my dad’s position, he probably felt he had a responsibility to stay but I don’t know, maybe he could be somewhere else.” Some other time? I know Garren’s not going to like this next part but he’s not going to change my mind either. “I’m going to talk to someone tomorrow who might know more. A woman who’s been pretending to be old friends with my mom.”

  “Freya.”

  I didn’t think it was possible for Garren’s frown to get any more entrenched but I’ve just seen it happen.

  He swipes his feet off the seat across from him and leans forward in his chair, the candlelight dancing frantically across his face. “Don’t go. It’s too big a risk. Haven’t you taken enough of them lately?”

  “We need more money. And I need answers. I need to know if the U.N.A. is still standing and whether my dad’s alive. Don’t you want to know the same about your mother?”

  “Of course I do. But you can’t trust this woman. She’ll want them to take you, just like Henry did. Obviously they didn’t want us to remember and now they have a damage control plan that we’ve been standing in the way of.”

  I pull at my T-shirt, stretching it long. “This is the last chance like that I’m going to take. If it starts to feel wrong I’ll change my mind at the last minute. You know, pay attention to that early-warning system of mine that went off at Henry’s. And I saw something while we were at Lou’s too. I just didn’t know how to interpret it.”

  “What did you see at Lou’s?” Garren asks.

  “Me, upset.” I hate having to admit it to him. “And now I know it was because you’d left.”

  “I’m sorry.” Garren shakes his head. “I wish I could take it back.”

  There’s no taking anything back. There never is. “What about Janette? What did you say to her when you were leaving?”

  “She was asleep. I didn’t have to say anything.” He stares at the table, plants both his palms on top of it. “You probably won’t believe it but I regretted leaving you like that almost right after I did it. I came back here before I went to Janette’s, in case you’d come here. I didn’t know where else to look for you.”

  He must’ve come and gone before I returned this afternoon. I was lost and then fell asleep on the subway. It took me longer to get here than it normally would’ve.

  Garren’s stopped talking and he tilts his head like he’s hearing something I’m not.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “This song.” Garren motions to the radio. “The person I thought I was liked it. But now I don’t know if the real me knew it back where we’re from or if it’s just down to some scientist’s programming.” He props his elbow up on the table and rests his head wearily in his hands. “There are too many memories clashing inside my head.”

  I move closer to the radio and listen to the music. It makes me feel strange too. Like stepping through time has done something to us that no one else will ever understand. It’s a bit like that dream feeling of falling without ever hitting bottom mixed with a nostalgia for things that haven’t happened yet.

  I know this song. I know it because of Garren. We listen to it on his record player seventy-eight years from now. Will it happen that way again or will the new future be different?

  “Patti Smith,” I note. “ ‘Because the Night.’ You always liked this. Maybe that’s why they put it back into your head.”

  “You remember that about the song?” Garren’s skin is flushed and damp. He pushes his chair away from the table and lowers his head close to his knees. “I feel like shit. I wish I didn’t drink that coffee.”

  “I got sick earlier too,” I tell him. “It must have something to do with remembering. Maybe the Bio-net can’t deal with it.”

  “Maybe.” Garren bites his lip. “My head’s killing me.”

  “Go to bed. Sleep it off. I was out cold for hours. But you should be fine by tomorrow.”

  Garren stares up at me like even moving his head is a major challenge. “I’ll go up to bed in a minute. Just promise me you won’t meet this woman tomorrow. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I have to go.” If I’m caught, it won’t be worth it and he’ll be proven right but I need the missing pieces of the puzzle and Nancy has some of them. This is my final chance.

  “If you go I’m going too,” Garren says stubbornly.

  I know how this works. He thinks that will make me back down and do what he wants.

  “Earlier today you were fine with ditching me and now we’re in this together to the death?” I scowl and stare past him. Neither of us has gone anywhere near the topic of what happened between us upstairs but I still feel it in the air along with the eerie sensation from the song.

  “I wasn’t fine with it.” Garren raises his voice. “I thought you were losing it. Having some kind of break with reality. I thought you’d get us taken, ranting like that, looking for confirmation of something that sounded impossible.” He mops his brow, drives his hands into his hair. “And the worst part was that for a couple of seconds I wondered if it could be true, not because I remembered anything about it but because you were so convincing. I thought if I didn’t get away from you I’d end up as delusional as you were.”

  Suddenly Garren covers his mouth and leaps up from his chair. He stomps off in the direction of the main floor 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 flu my mom, Olivia and I had shortly after we reached Canada must not have been a flu 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 maternal, on top of all the other weird things I’m feeling.

  Two minutes later he shuffles 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 fine.”

  “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.