“You’d know the answer to that better than I do,” Latham says. “You’re the one who can see things. It’s not like you’d listen to me anyway, is it?”
“Maybe,” I answer.
Garren’s sighing from his chair, making a sour face. “No, you wouldn’t.”
With that I wake up in the sunlight to the sound of a door closing down the hall. Garren. I should check on him, make sure he’s okay. I get out of bed and head for the master bedroom. The door’s closed and I hesitate before grabbing the knob and twisting.
Garren’s sitting up in the queen-size bed, shirtless, swigging from a tall glass of water. I stand blinking in the doorway, memories from last night in the spare room streaming through my mind.
“Hey,” I say, moving slowly towards him. “How’re you feeling?”
“Better,” he tells me. “Thirsty.”
“I was too afterwards. Let me get you another glass of water.”
“Thanks.” Garren holds out his freshly emptied glass.
I take it and then motion to the walk-in closet, which I disappear inside without further explanation. Paula’s entire wardrobe is draped neatly on hangers and it only takes me a couple of seconds to locate a pair of her jeans to throw on. I pick out one of her sweaters too. Everything’s slightly too tight, too short and overall too small on me but it’s better than continuing to walk around in front of Garren in Mr. Resnik’s T-shirt.
I don’t take another look at Garren before leaving the room in my new clothes. Because I keenly remember the unquenchable thirst I felt yesterday, I not only refill his glass but bring him a second, both of them full to the brim with ice water.
“You’re a lifesaver,” Garren says when I put down both glasses on the bedside table next to him.
I smile. “That’s a really 1985 thing to say.”
Garren snaps up one of the glasses and drains half of it before smiling back. “Yeah, I guess it is. It’s still all there in my head, those eighteen years’ worth of fake memories. The scientists did a good job.” He takes another sip of water. “But I remember better now. Better than last night, I mean. A lot of things were jumbled up in my head, like with the song.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better.” I try not to stare at him too fixedly. It’d be easier if he were wearing a shirt.
I pivot to leave the room and Garren says to my back, “Can you stay a couple of minutes?”
There are hours yet before I have to leave to meet Nancy. My bag’s still packed. The only things I really have to do before I leave are shower and dry my hair.
I turn and step closer to the bed, edge my way around it and sit cross-legged on the farthest corner from Garren. “I’m still going later, you know.”
“We can get the money some other way,” he says.
“Maybe, but no one else is going to have the answers to my questions.”
Garren sets down his water, a bottomless frown sinking into his face just like it did last night in the kitchen. “She won’t tell you anything. It’ll be like with Doctor Byrne all over again.”
“But Doctor Byrne didn’t try to take us,” I remind him. “We weren’t in any danger from him.” I’ve spent a lot of time with Nancy. I can’t really believe she’d want to hurt me either. She said she couldn’t tell me anything but that must have been a lie. Since she knows who my father is she must know other things, like how we got back here. For all I know she might be able to get a message to my father and make them change their plans about me and Garren.
The covers are twisted around Garren’s lower legs and he tugs on them as he sits back in bed. “I was serious last night. If you go, I’m coming with you.”
“I made that decision for myself when you weren’t around. The only person I want to risk here is me.”
“Well, it’s not just you anymore,” he says. “We are in this together. I shouldn’t have left you yesterday and I’m not letting you leave without me today.”
“I could rush out into the street this second,” I tell him. “It’d take you a minute to throw your clothes on and follow me. I could be gone in that time.” I’m angrier than I thought I was. I was so happy to see Garren last night but clearly I haven’t forgotten about him ditching me in the first place.
“Maybe I wouldn’t bother with my clothes,” Garren says, sounding angry too. “I think you’d have a rough time trying to go unnoticed with a half-naked guy chasing after you through the snow.”
I suck my teeth and stare at my ankles.
“Try me,” Garren adds.
I raise my head to look at him. Our eyes lock. He’s staring at me with an intensity that makes me wonder if he seriously wants me to do it just so he has the chance to prove himself. I stare stonily back, not giving him the opportunity, not giving him anything.
Finally he reaches for his water. Swallows what’s left in his glass and moves on to the second.
Then his eyes find me again, the challenge gone from them. “Are you okay?” he asks.
“You’re the one who’s sick. I’ve been fine since last night.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean … last night.” His tone is tentative. He focuses on my ankles like I was seconds earlier.
“Last night you were in shock,” I say evenly. “We both were.”
“We were,” he agrees. “That doesn’t mean you were okay with it … or not okay with it.”
I don’t really want to talk about this now. We have more important things to think about. But since he’s brought it up I can’t stop myself from asking, “Why did you stop?”
Garren pulls his knees up towards him under the sheets and folds his arms around them. “I thought … it was really fast. Maybe too fast for you. And I wasn’t sure about the Bio-net.”
“The Bio-net,” I repeat. “What about it?”
Garren’s green eyes won’t let go of me. “I didn’t know whether they’d turned parts of it off before sending us back. Like fertility controls.”
That never occurred to me. It should’ve but it didn’t. I had a period a couple of weeks ago. Maybe that means I could get pregnant like any other 1985 girl.
I look away as I say, “I think you’re right—I think they’re off.” I adjust my posture so that it mirrors his and try to put some distance between us and the topic. “My mother and Olivia don’t remember where we’re really from. I can tell. The wipe and cover worked on them.”
“On my mother too,” Garren says. “She’s mourning a person we never even knew. A stranger. Someone the scientists slotted into our memories. They treated our minds like playgrounds.”
“No one should have that kind of power. They tried to erase my brother and your sister.”
“Tried,” Garren repeats, respect blazing in his eyes. “You were too smart for them.”
I don’t think it’s about being smart but I bet my premonitions have something to do with it. And I’m beginning to think loss plays into the persistence of memory too. Fresh grief can’t be an easy thing to write over. There was some part of me that never forgot Latham, like I told him in my dream. I only needed a push to break through. It was probably the same for Garren; it just took a little longer.
“So all that aside, is being grounded all the time everything you hoped it would be?” I ask.
Garren smiles a little. “I wouldn’t say that exactly. I never pictured being back in 1985, living on instant coffee and food that tastes like it’s made of plastic.”
“And you probably didn’t picture running for your life,” I say. “Living by candlelight and wearing someone else’s clothes.”
“That’s kinda put a damper on the fun, yeah.” Garren’s grin brightens. It reminds me of the one he gave me in the backyard the day of Kinnari’s birthday party. “It’s so different here,” he continues. “No eco-refugees. No Ros policing everyone. No welfare camps—all the jobs done by real people. The people here still travel to other countries. Fly, even.”
Most of the planes in the future are pieces of DefRo
weaponry, not passenger jets. The commercial airline industry is in ruins. “No gushi,” I add. “No instant communication.”
“The telephone,” Garren points out. “And broadcast news on the TV.”
The telephone. I smile automatically at the suggestion. The telephone is primitive compared to what we grew up with. You can’t even see who you’re talking to. And back here all the communication and entertainment devices are stationary and external. Once, ours were part of us. Now we’re without. I’ve had over a month to get used to it but it’s an odd feeling, being disconnected this way. Cut off from something that doesn’t exist yet.
I reach out and curve my fingers around my toes, feeling the future stretch out ahead of me, too far to reach. “People here get sick all the time. They die from things we’ve cured. But they seem … I don’t know … less jaded, less suspicious.” Maybe because they haven’t seen how things turned out.
“And they live their lives for real,” Garren says. “Not spend half of them hiding in their own heads.”
I release my hold on my foot to point at him. “Aha, you do love it here!”
I watch Garren’s grin bloom again. “You have to admit that it has its good points.” He pauses, his expression turning sheepish. “So you’re not mad at me?”
I thought we’d gotten clear of the subject and it takes me several seconds to catch up and say, “For leaving yesterday, yeah. But not for what happened last night.” That’s the truth of it but it’s not the whole truth. “Things are already complicated enough, though. I think it’s better if we don’t complicate them more.”
Garren nods thoughtfully.
I uncross my legs and begin to get up. “I should jump in the shower and start getting ready.”
Garren reaches across the bed to grab my arm. “Wait a second.”
“What?” My skin begins to break out in invisible goose bumps.
“Just … that makes sense—we need to focus on this meeting and then on getting out of here. But I don’t want you to think last night was only because of the shock.” He releases my arm but my skin’s still singing where he touched me.
I’m quiet. My throat’s stinging like it was last night in the spare room. “For me either,” I admit. “But still …”
“But still,” he repeats, his green eyes sticking to me like Krazy Glue. “I know.”
I tear my gaze away from him and head for the shower.
TWENTY
When I slip out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, Garren, in Mr. Resnik’s borrowed jeans and a black shirt, intercepts me in the hall. “We have to leave early,” he tells me. “There’s something I want to do before this meeting, to even up our odds a little.”
“What?” I ask, my wet hair piled up on my head under one of the Resniks’ bath towels. We won’t be coming back here again and the thought of leaving even a little sooner than expected is a mental adjustment.
“Janette’s dad has a gun. No one should be home now. We can go in through the back door, just like we did here.”
“You know where he keeps the gun? Maybe it’s locked up.” I intended to grab the sharpest knife from the kitchen and bring it with me as protection when we left but a gun would be better. I don’t want to hurt anyone but if they find us and try to take us …
“She said he keeps it in the nightstand beside the bed,” Garren says. “There’s a lock on the drawer but how hard can that be to break?”
“She told you all that?”
“Last week before all this happened. Her grandfather gave it to her dad when they moved to the city a few years ago.” Garren slouches slightly but his eyes are steely. “I hate to do this to her but those guys who showed up at Henry’s had guns.”
“I can’t argue with that. Okay, just give me a chance to dry my hair and finish getting ready.”
While I’m doing that, Garren jumps into the shower himself. Then I take a thorough look around the house, trying to return the rooms to the state we found them in as much as possible. I can imagine how creeped out the Resniks would feel if they knew strangers were sleeping here and using it as a base. With the beds made maybe they won’t have to know and will just think it was a basic robbery.
I’m in the middle of drying the glasses I brought Garren earlier when he steps into the kitchen. He peeks at what’s left in the fridge and cupboards and then leans against the counter. “Did you eat anything?” he asks.
“I was thinking about having the spaghetti. Do you think there’s time?”
“If we’re fast.” Garren puts a hand to his stomach. “I’m starving.”
He dives back into the cupboard for the spaghetti sauce and soon we’re eating it over undercooked pasta (we’re both too impatient to wait long). We do the dishes again and double-check the contents of the bags we’ll be bringing with us. This time I’ve remembered a toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant and soap. I take one of the bigger knives from the knife block and stuff it into my bag too.
After checking that the coast is clear, we leave by the front door, same as we always have, me back in my Doc Martens knowing they’d win a footrace against Paula’s pinchy boots any day. Garren guides us east towards Janette’s house at the other end of Cranbrooke Avenue. There’s no car in the driveway and both her neighbors’ driveways are also empty. We jump the fence into the backyard, dropping our bags over first. Garren says he wishes he’d thought to steal a set of keys when he was inside the house last night.
He kicks in the door easily enough anyway. We race through Janette’s house and up to the second floor. “Money,” I say suddenly. “We should check for money while we’re here.”
“Yeah.” Regret drags at Garren’s jaw. “I’ll get the gun. You take whatever cash you can find.”
I start in the master bedroom where he immediately goes to work on the nightstand with a hammer and screwdriver that he liberated from the Resnik house. I rifle through dresser drawers and then the closet, scanning for cash. There’s a camera bag on the top shelf of the closet, next to a travel iron and hot water bottle. I pull them all down hoping to find a secret stash of twenty-dollar bills behind them.
“Bullets!” I yell to Garren. The packaging makes them look almost like office supplies or soap for men. For a second I’m horrified.
But it could come down to us or them. I jump up and grab the ammunition.
“I’ve got the gun,” Garren shouts back. “Let’s go!”
I jam the box of bullets into my coat pocket and loop my bag back over my shoulder. We hurry into the hall where the noise of a door opening turns us both to stone. He said no one would be home. Garren motions back to the bedroom. I take a silent step backwards and then another. Garren follows. The floorboards groan underneath him.
He doesn’t waste a moment. He surges forward, charging along the hall and downstairs with the gun in his right hand. I’m right behind him but I can’t see anything yet. The foyer, downstairs hallway and living room are all empty.
Then we reach the kitchen. The woman who must be Janette’s mother is standing stock-still with the telephone in her hand. Garren has frozen in front of me too. I step out from behind him, grab the telephone receiver out of her hand and hang up with a slam.
“What are you doing?” she asks in a shaky voice. “What do you want?”
Garren hesitates.
Since I’ve never met Janette’s mother, acting the part of a criminal for her comes easier to me. “Give us your car keys. Quick.” I glance at her purse on the counter. “Are they in there?”
She nods, her face a study in tension and her eyes clinging to the gun in Garren’s hand.
“Hand them over,” I command. “Any cash you have too.”
She reaches cautiously for her purse, jerks the zipper open and plucks out her keys. She holds them out to me. Then the money from her wallet. I can see at a glance that it’s only twenty-seven dollars.
Garren springs to life, ripping the phone from the wall and then stuffing the phone cord into one of his
pockets. “Now you’re going to go down to the basement and stay there until we’re gone,” he orders.
Janette’s mother flinches. She edges past us and out of the kitchen. We follow her to a doorway. She glances back at us before reaching for the doorknob. We stand at the top of the stairs and watch her descend into the basement. Cool air wafts up to meet us.
I close the door behind her. Garren drags a kitchen chair into the hallway and jams it under the doorknob. “It won’t hold her long,” he says. “Let’s go.”
We rush out of the house. Since I’m the one with the car keys in my hand, I head for the driver’s seat. They programmed me with driving memories. I should be able to do this.
I lean over to unlock the passenger door and Garren hops in next to me and tosses his bags into the backseat. I slide the key Janette’s mother gave me into the ignition. Twist it and pump the gas pedal. The engine starts. So far so good. I slide into reverse, relieved that Janette’s mom has an automatic.
My implanted memories of driving in New Zealand involve shifting gears but this should be easier. I back out of the driveway like I’ve done it a thousand times before, but once we hit Yonge Street I’m so focused on obeying traffic signals and making sure not to run anything over that I don’t have any spare brain power for directions.
“Where am I going?” I ask Garren as we zip down Yonge Street.
He’s busy ejecting the gun magazine. “Bullets,” he prompts.
The box is jutting out of my pocket and I reach for it and then hand the box over. “Do you know what you’re doing with that?”
“A little. I had a friend back in Billings who was into old weapons like this.” He pauses to look over at me. “Sounds weird, I know. He took me to a shooting range once.”
“I didn’t know there were any shooting ranges left.”
“Not many,” Garren says.
I smirk. “All you grounded people are crazy for old things, huh.” The car behind me honks for no reason that I can see. Garren glances up to catch me staring into my rearview mirror.
“You’re doing fine,” he says. “The guy’s just an asshole.”
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