Tomorrow (21 page)

Freya freezes when I tell her about Latham and
Kinnari. She’s motionless for so long that I wonder if she’s going into shock. Then her shoulders quiver. She shakes her head, pounds the table with her fist and tells me to stop. “This is crazy!” she yells. “Latham’s not dead. There’s no such thing as
Toxo
. Latham’s probably never even spoken to your sister.”

Freya’s
eyes are wet and that makes it tougher for me to keep going. I tell her what I know about her and her family. Details about Latham and her parents that it would be impossible for me to know if she or Latham hadn’t shared them. Freya’s second sight too. The numerous times she forgave her father for being “too tired for children’s voices.” I offer it all as proof of our unbelievable story before confessing the most staggering part—the Nipigon chute, an unexplained natural phenomenon. Real life magic that hurtles anyone or anything that encounters it seventy-eight years, seven months, and eleven days back in time. And how the U.N.A. used the chute to save us from Toxo, giving the world a second chance but also making us victims of a wipe and cover.

“It was you that figured it out
,” I tell her. The food arrived a while back and I’ve finished most of it, so immersed in what I’ve been saying that my taste buds haven’t registered a bite. The fat and salt have done their job, though. Filled me up and kept me from passing out. “You recognized me on some level despite the wipe. You wouldn’t leave things alone until you found out the truth.” A sliver of embarrassment roosts in the pit of my stomach as I describe our time on the run—the highlights of the last fifteen months, from Toronto to Vancouver to her being taken. The nature of our relationship seems natural to me but I can imagine how it would feel to a mentally fourteen-year-old Freya—someone who was never grounded like I was and who hasn’t had the introduction to 1985 the cover gave her the last time she was wiped.

Freya’s eyes are dry again by the time I stop talking
. Pity battles with anger in her face. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?” she says. “Every minuscule detail. It’s like a paranoid delusion from the old days. Is that what’s the matter with you? Some kind of sickness?”

I’ve overloaded her with her information
—it’s too much to process at once. “How would I know about your second sight if I was delusional? That was your family secret. You told me your mother even made you hide it from your father later on because he wanted you to be tested. He thought you might be able to use your gift to help the U.N.A.”

“Then
this isn’t real,” she insists. “Something’s happened to my brain. You’re not here. I’m not here. There is
no
here. This place doesn’t exist outside my head or gushi.”

“What
’s happened to you then?” I challenge. “You know there hasn’t been any gushi cementing in decades.” And if we were in the 2060s, the Bio-net would correct nearly anything else that could be wrong with her.

“I don’t know what
’s happened.” Freya stands up quickly, knocking over her empty glass in the process. “But not the things you’ve said.”

I stand up with her,
blocking her way. “Don’t run again.” I grab both her arms and hold her in place. “I know it sounds insane. I felt the same way when you told me the truth last year. But if you take off again they might find you and try to finish the job they started. Even if they don’t find you, you have no idea how to survive here. It’s not like where we’re from.”

The
two things I haven’t mentioned yet are Isaac’s virus—a threat that could still be out there—and the nuclear war of 2071. I can’t tell her about either of them now. They would only sound like more outrageous lies and she has so much to digest already.

Freya doesn’t struggle
with me but her stare is stubborn and icy. “Let go of me.”

I try using
her own logic against her. Whatever will keep her safe. “If you think this is all in your head maybe I’m here in your mind for a reason, to look out for you somehow. You protecting yourself.”

Freya breaks our visual connection and focuses on the table.
“You’ll say anything, won’t you? It’s like a game. If you get me to stay with you, you win.”

“How does that fit with your theory about everything being inside your head
?” I argue.

I have her there.
Freya shrugs listlessly, her arms tense and her hair falling into her face.

“Please.” I release her
, our bodies still less than a foot away from each other. “Come back to the motel with me. We can talk more. I’ll tell you anything you want to know. Just don’t disappear on me again. I thought I lost you. Twice in two days.” I’d drag her back to the motel by force if it wouldn’t cause a scene. If I had Elizabeth’s car with me I might risk it. Without it, we’d never make it that far. I know how tough Freya can be, even if she doesn’t realize it herself yet. She’d scream her lungs out and fight me so hard that we’d attract police in no time.

Freya shifts her weight and
brushes her hair out of her face. Out of the corner of my eye I spy our waitress behind her, waiting to be paid. I yank a fistful of cash out of my pocket, afraid to take my attention off Freya for even a few seconds.

“What happened to your hand?”
Freya asks as I drop a couple of bills on the table, next to our dirty dishes. Her tone is muted and slightly curious.

“I think
my wrist is broken. I fell while trying to escape last night.”
Which she doesn’t believe happened
.

“You look
different,” Freya allows. “Older than I remember.”

“Because I am.”

“Right,” Freya says doubtfully, glancing at the café door. “I don’t want to go back to the motel but I can walk with you for a while, if you want.”

I’d rather we stay out of view indoors but at least she isn’t
making me chase her. As we head for the door together I’m acutely aware she might break into a sprint at any moment.

Outside w
e begin walking down First Avenue. Freya makes me explain, a second time and in greater detail, about the Nipigon chute and the many things that have happened since we were sent back in time—the man who pretended to be our grandfather but was an agent of the U.N.A., leaving our mothers behind for their own safety, the hypnotherapy that returned our authentic memories, our jobs and apartment in Vancouver, and our old plan to settle in Ronda after travelling the world to see the animals we’d lost to extinction.

“It’s a good story,” Freya tells me, not unkindly.
By now we’ve found our way into a secluded walled-in park where tables and chairs are laid out near a waterfall. The setting looks like a fairy tale, which doesn’t help my cause.

Freya’s sitting next to me, her toes scrunching up in her stolen sandals. “These clothes feel
weird,” she observes, her fingers scratching at the fabric of her skirt.

U.N.A. fabrics had come a long way. As comfortable as a second skin
; you were barely aware of them. I’ve grown used to the clothes here, along with most other things, but they must seem as rough and heavy as a burlap sack to her.

“That was one of the reasons they wiped and covered us
, supposedly,” I tell her. “To help us adjust to life back here.”

A
tiny bird lands on the small circular table between us. It hops towards Freya and the trace of a smile appears on her lips. The expression vanishes before it can take hold. “The first thing I remember is the trans hitting that crow,” she says. “I was in the school gym before that. Then I was here. I must’ve suffered a head injury or been infected by something. A new terrorist virus like the one you told me about.”

The bird takes flight, soaring away from us and into a nearby tree. We both watch it go.

“So you don’t believe this is gushi anymore?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I’ve never felt this tired in
gushi.” Freya hunches over, her elbows in her lap and her chin in her hands. She should be resting back at the motel, but at least we’re well hidden here. The only other people in the park with us are a middle-aged couple sipping coffee out of paper cups and a college-aged girl with her head buried in a John le Carré novel.

“
You don’t have any virus. You’re fine.” I slouch in my chair, my legs sloped in front of me like fallen tree trunks. “We’ve both been through a lot. I’m tired too.”

“The part of my brain
that’s protecting me is tired,” Freya notes lightly. “I guess we need to get you an understudy.”

I
smile, a chuckle escaping from my throat. Despite her weariness Freya smiles back at me. “You sound the same,” she says. “Not that we ever talked that much, but from what I remember. And in your…your story about us, you said we were
together
?”

“
For the past fifteen months. Since just after we met back here and realized who we really were.” I don’t know what will become of us if the last three and a half years of her memories are gone for good. I’m practically a stranger to her. In Freya’s mind, the things I remember so vividly never happened. Will she grow into that person I remember? Can we start over or will it be different between us this time?

“What was it like?” she asks. “What were
we
like?”

I hesitate
. The thought of discussing our shared past with a different Freya is too surreal for words. Can’t she see in my face what were we like? How hard it is for me to sit across from her like a casual acquaintance when I want to pull her into my lap and bury my face in the crook of her neck?

I push my lips into a
rigid grin. “You won’t believe me whatever I tell you.”

Freya rubs her eyes,
tiredness overtaking her again. “I don’t know what to believe, Garren.”

My name on her lips
makes me shiver. “We fought sometimes,” I volunteer. “But we were good together.” Better than good. “I can’t imagine being with anyone else.” A shyness that shouldn’t have any place between us steals into my ribs. I ignore it and continue. “I’m in love with you.”

Freya flinches
. Her hands balance on either side of her chair. Her expression morphs from sheepish to dispassionate as she stares at me from under her lashes. “I must have felt that same thing if I went back in time to save you.”

She’s referring to old Freya.
The very first Freya. The one who watched me die in the street and then hurled herself into the chute to give us a second chance.

I can’t tell if
I’m making any headway with this Freya or whether she’s still convinced the present is some kind of illusion, a joke being played out in her mind. But what she’s just said couldn’t be more serious to me, and I don’t know how to respond. I hesitate for so long that she adds, “You don’t seem like a bad person but I wish you hadn’t said those things about Latham dying and the virus. Maybe you couldn’t help it because you’re only a part of my mind—some kind of manifestation of my deepest fears—but it was a cold thing to lie about.” Freya glares at me indignantly. “You should take it back.”

So far my patience with her has come naturally
, but now it collapses under the weight of a grief that will never fully heal. “I won’t take back the truth. And it wasn’t just Latham who got sick, it was Kinnari too. If you think I’d lie about her horrible transformation—the inhuman things the Toxo virus did to her—then you’re hopelessly in denial.” My voice sprouts thorns. They slice into my throat as I describe the night I woke up to find Kinnari in my bedroom, scratching her face, laughing manically, and apologizing to me for something she couldn’t have helped.
The infection.

That was only the
beginning and I explain the rest in anguished fits and starts. Kinnari’s devolution. The monster my sister became while my mothers and I could only watch helplessly from beyond the force field. My eyes are searing and blinded with unspilt tears as I remember what Kinnari did to her pet bird, what she would’ve done to us if she’d had the chance.

I could’ve prevented her infection in the first place, but I thought I had more important things to do. Freya used to blame herself for Latham’s infection too
, back when she could remember it. We tried not to speak of the terrible details from that night and instead hold fast to our previous images of Kinnari and Latham. The people they truly were. Not the puppets the Toxo made them.

But being forced to confront that night again
after everything else I’ve been through in the past twenty-four hours breaks me. My vocal cords are slashed to shreds, my inner strength bleeding into the pavement underneath my feet.

Freya grips my
good hand under the table, stopping me dead. Her fingers are warm, unlike the last time I held them, and her eyes are pink and pained. It’s minutes before either of us says anything, and then Freya cuts through the silence. “You’re too tired to do this anymore,” she says, newfound tenderness in her tone. “I think maybe we should go back to the motel now.”

I nod and push my chair back, our hands untwining.
We stroll slowly out of the park together, probably looking, to any passersby, like two regular people who’ve been poking holes in their relationship and then trying to knit the pieces together again.