FutureImperfect (11 page)

Harry pulled back. He wasn't sure where he was anymore; it was as if Siara had stopped being Siara, as if her entire being had somehow melted into this hideous event.

Images continued to assault him. The red flash grew white and hot, enveloping everyone in the auditorium. It blew outward, through the halls, the classrooms, the gym, heating the lockers so that the papers inside them, the hard work of the now-dead students, evaporated. It chased down the janitors, security, even the mice, until it reached the outer windows and blew them out, sending shards of glass into the courtyard and the surrounding street. But by then the explosion had weakened the beams that supported the center of the school, and the roof itself began to fold into the growing fire.

Harry heard a terrible wail, as if all the dying voices had joined together as one long moan. Then everything went black, black as the tower itself. A burning all over his body, on his arms, legs, torso, and head drove Harry back into the terrain, where he collapsed in a sullen heap.

He'd seen RAW High School destroyed, and everyone in it killed.

Reminding himself that none of what he'd seen had happened yet, Harry closed his eyes and tried to shake himself free of his grief. He'd seen Siara die once before, in an alley, but he'd saved her. He'd changed the future and saved her.

I can change this and save everyone. I can still change this.

He repeated it, over and over again, until his breathing slowed; then he opened his eyes. The unusual wind was whipping harder, slapping his mussed brown hair into his cheeks. The future sky was darker, its grayness beginning to complement the black of Jeremy's tower. The tower was changing, too; the cracks in it were elongating, giving off more of the vile ooze. The gray-green fluid stretched down along the huge shaft, into the ground and along the terrain.

The fissures in the past grew as the ooze spread into them. The ooze seeped along the crevices, down into every crack and cranny of the dried surface, where it sank and swelled and made even the adamantine surface of what-had-gone-before rumble.

The pressure built. The ground shook harder. If it kept growing that way, Harry worried that the past itself might yield and break.

“But that's impossible,” Harry said aloud. “You can't change the past.”

“Of course you can,” a familiar voice behind him answered. “If you change the rules.”

Harry whirled, expecting to see the Fool, but he didn't.

Instead, he saw Jeremy Gronson, standing just a few yards away.

It had been an hour since Siara's ex-boyfriend left her at the entrance of the modest apartments where she lived. They arrived at about the same time she'd would've been coming home from school. The timing was so perfect, he couldn't have planned it better.

Remembering Jeremy's words, those soft but powerful things repeated over and over during the course of the long drive, she went straight inside and locked herself in her room. As she sat on her bed staring at a wall, she barely noticed that her father hadn't installed the promised window locks. Dimly, she felt thankful.

She waited for time to pass, counting the seconds, the minutes. Occassionally the phone would ring. The machine would pick up and take a message.

“It's Dree! Why weren't you you-know-where today? Tell me what's up.”

Hutch's voice was less friendly. “I demand an explanation, young lady.”

Jasmine, who called last, just laughed nervously and said, “Oh…I wish you had a cell phone so I could leave you private messages! See you tonight?”

Part of her wanted to call back, to ask them for a hug, or to mourn for Harry with her, but instead she did as she was told. After exactly forty-three minutes, she dressed in the smart blue business skirt and jacket her mother had laid out for her. It was Peroxisome's official dress code, a wink of the eye from her mother to the corporate execs who'd be sure to see her that night.

Siara emerged from her room right on time to leave for the demo, the iPod earbuds firmly installed.

Seeing the buds, her father said, “Siara,” in a disapproving tone.

“Must you?” her mother asked, finishing the thought. “Tonight?” But then she straightened Siara's jacket, swiped at the shoulders a few times, and kissed her on the cheek. “Never mind. Just thank you.”

Her father sighed and rolled his eyes. Her parents said nothing more to her, chatting amiably to each other during the entire ride to school.

And not once—not once—did Siara ever even mention Harry or the fact that he was dead. It was okay. She was too busy listening to the music and looking forward to a time when the night would finally be over and she could stop being so obedient, stop wearing the monkey suit, stop being everything she hated so much.

 

“Think I'm a jackass? Think I wouldn't see you because you
hid
? The second I spotted your lame-ass trail, I knew you were still alive,” Jeremy snarled. “Again.”

He stood on a rise, glaring, black robes flowing around him like dark water. It was like he was posing or something, giving Harry a good long chance to appreciate how pissed off and scary he was. And he was both.

His A-Time form was as thick and muscular as his body in linear time, where he was the star jock of the school. In comparison, Harry wasn't exactly frail; he was…well, yeah, he was pretty frail compared to Jeremy Gronson.

What was really new to Harry was the unadulterated rage in Jeremy's eyes. In linear time, Jeremy had this wonder-boy thing going for him. Always the one with the gentle smile, the good-natured pat on the back. He only got angry when provoked, and why the hell would you want to do that? That was one reason Harry hated seeing Siara with him. It was like the guy was too good to be true.

Turned out, he was.

But here the alpha senior was gone, shed like a mask. (Hadn't the Fool said they were all masks?) The muscles in his jaw were tight with fury, twisting his face. Even the gleam in his eyes was different, as though a veil of compassion had been peeled away, letting the predator beneath show through all the more clearly.

The better to beat the crap out of you, my dear.

The A-Time wind, the wind that had never been there before, grew harsher. It whipped Jeremy's robes around, pushed his blond hair back, as if it were being angry right along with him, or rather, as if their anger was one in the same. And all of it, every ounce, was directed at Harry.

A dozen things to say to Jeremy, the guy who'd tried to kill him, the guy who was trying to kill everyone, flipped through Harry's mind: clever lunchroom comebacks, pointed commentary, insults, sarcasm. Among them:

Really? You saw my trail? That is
so
cool!

So, Gronson, what's up with the mass murder, dude?

Well, if you're so damn smart, then why am I still alive, huh, smart-ass?

You bastard, what have you done with Siara and, like, the world?

He also thought of screaming,
Hey, what's that behind you?
and running like hell in the opposite direction. But all those responses were useless, too ridiculous, so Harry settled on a look of total confusion and a single word that seemed to sum things up:

“Why?”

Jeremy's grin bared his teeth. “Like I'm going to answer that, Keller? Like your cesspool brain would get it if I did? You think this is some stupid comic book? You the hero, me the villain?”

Harry looked at him there, standing in his black robe, planning to destroy the world, and shrugged. “Well, yeah, kinda. I mean, you
are
trying to kill all these people and I
am
trying to save them. Right?”

Jeremy's face shot past furious and squirmed to a whole new level of pissed. He spat as he screamed, “Shut up, Keller. Just shut up! You think you're so damn smart, don't you? Getting into A-Time—by accident! Screwing with my plans—by accident! You're just a pawn of the Masters! A puppet! A mask! You have no idea where you are, no idea what you've gotten into, no idea what I'm trying to do!”

Harry looked at the seething tower, then back at Jeremy. “Uh…trying to blow up the school and everyone in it, right? Kind of like…a comic-book villain?”

Jeremy screamed again and barreled toward Harry, shoving him with both hands. The moment his palms made contact, an intense vibration filled Harry's chest.

Harry flew backward, off his feet, onto his butt. Jeremy fell on him, knocking him back to the ground, then holding him down with his knees.

When he grabbed Harry's skull in his powerful hands and squeezed, the vibrations intensified. They weren't just on the surface of his head, they were working their way in, as if pushing pieces of whatever he was made of in A-Time out of the way, drilling deeper and deeper. It was a familiar feeling, like the one he had whenever he entered his own trail, just before he was hurled out.

The azure coals of Jeremy's eyes likewise bored into his brain. “Now
I
get to ask why, and the difference is
I'm
going to find out.”

Jeremy's hands squeezed tighter. His long middle fingers pressed the top of Harry's skull, drilling past his hair to the scalp. His thumbs wedged themselves at the joint of Harry's jaw. If Harry had been in his trail, the force would have ejected him, high into the A-Time sky, but here he was pinned.

“How did you survive? How?”

“You…could've…just…asked…,” Harry said.

Harry's arms flailed impotently at Jeremy, his hands trying to pull the thick tree-trunks of his arms away. Beads of sweat appeared on Jeremy's flat forehead. They pooled and ran in rivulets, falling on Harry's face in thick salty drops.

“Peh!” Harry said, spitting and twitching. “That is so gross.”

Jeremy's brow furrowed. He looked confused. “How can you stand to be what you are? It's so chaotic, so uncertain, so inept, so impossible.”

The burrowing vibrations hit the back of Harry's head and seemed crash out into the ground under him. Jeremy inhaled sharply. His face shivered, his grip relaxed. At first he seemed to understand something, but then the look of confusion deepened.

“The Masters didn't help you. A clown? A clown saved you? It said it was a god and you believed it? Why would a god come to you and not me? That doesn't make any sense!” he screamed.

And everything has to make sense.

His grip tightened again, sending new waves of pain into Harry's skull, increasing the intensity of the reverberations until Harry thought he would burst. Despite the pain—which he was starting to get used to, after the beating the Fool gave him—he realized Jeremy was reading Harry's past the same way Harry read trails, only through his fingers somehow.

Why not? They weren't physical here; they were A-Time energy, ergo, generated by their life trails.
Jeremy must know how to follow the energy back to the trail and read it.

“There must be some other answer!” Jeremy wailed. He was getting tired, as if the strain of touching Harry was too much. Now why would that be?

“The vibrations,” Harry realized. “You're…feeling them, too…aren't you?”

A flash of panic in Jeremy's eyes told him he was right.

And if that's mutual, if you can read me, maybe I can read you!

Harry lifted his hands and imitated Jeremy, wrapping his own fingers around Jeremy's thick skull. Jeremy looked vulnerable for a moment as he quivered and growled.

“No!”

The moment was short-lived. Jeremy recovered, pulled Harry's hands away, rose, and kicked him in the side, but it was too late. Harry had held on long enough to yank something free from the power-mad jock.

Images flooded Harry's head, whole hog, like the way the Fool spoke. Now it was just a question of sorting out the details. He snatched at a vision and focused. A beautiful young couple, well dressed, hopeful yet somehow severe, sat in a doctor's office awaiting his word. To Harry's surprise, a narrative voice rose, just like in the trails:

Red lightning flashes played on Harry's inner eye. He saw dozens of healthy embryos rejected before the Gronsons settled on the one they loved best. The day it was planted in her womb they named it Jeremy, and set about planning the rest of Jeremy's perfect life.

They were like Harry's dad in a way, accepting no less than perfection from their son. But their motives were different. Frank Keller wanted to defeat death in the name of his deceased wife, but the Gronsons wanted to win at life, as if it were some sort of game.

Jeremy's life accelerated, speeding by too quickly for Harry to follow. In the broken mirror shards that shimmered around him, he saw a parade of tutors. One, in particular, glowed sharply. Harry shuddered as the man came to meet Mr. Gronson in his Wall Street office.

“You think you can touch me? You think you can see my life? The joke's on you, Keller. The joke
is
you, Keller. None of that matters. None of that is me!” Jeremy said.

Dizzied by the visions, Harry didn't even block as Jeremy punched him, he just fell. A flurry of hard kicks followed. The pain was so overwhelming, it made Harry want to give up. The only thing that kept him going was something the Fool had said: Asking questions in a way that got him beat up was part of Harry's character. This just seemed like more of the same.