Yesterday (31 page)

“The bullet barely grazed me,” Garren says under his
breath. “But it’s like a shaving cut—won’t stop bleeding. I had to take off my socks and tie them around my arm.”

I stare down at Garren’s feet but his jeans are long enough to hide the fact that his feet are bare inside his shoes. I throw my arms impulsively around his waist and hug him close, overcome with relief that we’re okay. His arms fold around me. We stand in a tight knot on the platform, neither of us saying a word until we hear the train’s approach.

I release him and stand back, sinking my hands into my coat pockets. The train screeches into the station, Garren staring at me with his eyes full of questions. On the train to Oakville we choose the loneliest seats we can find and I tell him about the contents of the envelope and everything the director revealed to me.

“I couldn’t ask about your mother still back in the U.N.A.,” I say, knowing he’ll be disappointed. “I told him I hadn’t seen you in days, that you’d taken off somewhere on your own. But she must be with the survivors in the north.” She was one of the top physicists. She’d have important connections.

“From what you’ve said I think she was probably one of the key people researching the chute,” Garren tells me. “She was always taking trips to Ontario. She told us she couldn’t talk about the project she was working on there but that must be how she had the influence to have my mom and I sent back.” His eyes are dazed. “
Time travel
. It’s insane. I know we’re living proof of it but to think there’s this thing that’s natural to the planet that makes it possible, it changes
everything, doesn’t it? It’s like when they used to think the world was flat or that the sun revolved around the earth. This is a different place than we thought it was.”

That falling sensation overcomes me again. Forever falling. Never hitting solid ground. Down and down and down, tumbling weightless but dizzy.

“Everything feels different,” I agree. “And the weird thing is that it’s
always
been this way. We’re just now catching up. It must’ve been so hard for your mom knowing something like that and not being able to share it.”

The sudden sadness in Garren’s face makes me reach for his hand. “She must be okay,” I say again. “They need her.”

Garren nods, his thumb running along the edge of my hand. “But they’re both alone now. Both my mothers. They wouldn’t have wanted that.”

“They’d both want you alive. They did what they thought was best, like my parents did. No one could’ve known it would turn out this way.”

Garren stares down the length of our near-empty car. There’s an elderly couple sitting at the other end of it. The man has his eyes closed and the woman’s staring dreamily out the window, although there’s not much to see. Fields brimming with snow-covered weeds. Cookie-cutter subdivisions. Salty roadways.

“Maybe it’ll turn out better this time,” Garren says in a faraway voice. “And then it’ll all have been worth it.”

“You think they’ll be able to change the course of U.S.
politics? Slow environmental change enough to make a real difference?” I hope so.

Garren smiles faintly. “We’re going to be around to see what happens, aren’t we?”

“We are.” It’s a strange thought. We’re here for good now. Home is 1985.

“Shit, if we live long enough there might even be two versions of us kicking around for a couple of years,” Garren says, his eyes coming to life.

We start tracing back our family trees, calculating which of our ancestors would be alive now, and come to the conclusion that some of our grandparents would currently be toddlers. Then we freak ourselves out with thoughts of disrupting the timeline, somehow leaving messages for our future selves.

“That must be how they communicate with 2063,” Garren says. “Leave messages in newspapers or books for them to read. Bury them even.”

“Near Lake Nipigon maybe. And they must have people working for them down in Australia too, dragging the people they’ve sent back from that salt lake in Western Australia.”

“They must.” Garren glances out the window and into the cold. “And I bet they send us through unconscious because there’s a gap in my memory after being taken. The real memories only start up again in Sydney just before we flew back here.”

“Same here. Who knows how many people they have
working for them? That’s at least three different countries they have people stationed in. I bet they send us through in some kind of submarine. Otherwise, according to the director, we’d either be suffocated by the salt or, if the lake happened to be full, I guess we could drown.”

It’s crazy to imagine the scale of such an operation and I begin to worry that Vancouver isn’t far enough away from their reach. If they want to find us so badly, what could possibly stand in their way?

I share my fears with Garren and suggest maybe we should think about leaving the continent once our trail has gone cold and we can get false identities and put our hands on enough money.

“Or go farther north,” he says. “Hide out in the Yukon or the Northwest Territories.” There are countless options ahead of us but I can’t see which one is best. There are no hints from my second sight to help.

“But, you know, maybe once they figure out we’re really not going to say anything they’ll stop looking for us,” Garren adds. “What happened at the Eaton Centre is the kind of visibility they wouldn’t want.” His hand lands on my thigh. “Obviously they didn’t think you were going to be that much trouble today.”

My lips twitch into a grin. “Or that you’d be there doing a James Bond impression.”

We’re both caught in an intensely bizarre intersection of emotions—giddy at being alive while still buried up to our
necks in shock at our profound losses and the unbelievable situation we find ourselves in. I wish we had more time to sit still and process everything that’s happened over the past two days. I feel like I can’t get a grip on any of it and as Garren smiles back I realize I’d almost forgotten about the gun itself.

“Do you still have the gun on you?” I ask, my voice low.

“Yeah, but it’s empty,” he whispers. “Most of the bullets were in my bag. I dropped it when I had to start shooting. Do you think we should dump it somewhere?”

“Maybe.” If the cops stop us, having it in our possession would be bad news. On the other hand, would dumping it be leaving a breadcrumb for the police or the director? And what if we find ourselves in a situation where having a gun could be the kind of threat that keeps us safe (in that case no one has to know it’s not loaded).

We’re still trying to decide what to do with it when we arrive in Oakville. In the station parking lot I spot a guy about my age in an Edmonton Oilers hat tapping ash from his cigarette to the pavement beneath his feet. I slow down and ask him if we’re anywhere near a shopping center. Having left the bags behind there are things we need. And Garren’s being stoic but I can tell by the way he’s holding himself that his arm’s sore. We have to get him some aspirin and real bandages.

The guy in the Oilers hat gives his cigarette another tap before raising his hand to point to the left of us. “Right
across the street there, but be warned that it sucks. If you want a good mall you have to go that way.” He shifts his hand to indicate the direction of the superior shopping center.

We head for the closer mall and as soon as we get inside Garren wants to make the research calls to figure out the fastest way to reach Parry Sound. It’s safest to collect all the info over the phone so no one will be able to recognize us and match our faces to our travel plans. I make Garren sit down while I place the calls and commit the bus times to memory.

First, we’ll catch a bus from Oakville to downtown Hamilton. The next one leaves from the station back across the street in about forty-five minutes. Hamilton’s only about an hour outside of Toronto—a worrying proximity—but it’s a city in its own right, one I remember Ms. Megeney referring to as Steel Town.

There are only two buses from Hamilton to Parry Sound every day—one leaves at five-thirty in the morning and the other at two in the afternoon. I plop down next to Garren and quote the information, both of us with gloomy faces because we were hoping to make it up to Parry Sound today and now we’ll have to spend the night somewhere in Hamilton.

“We’re lucky we have the money to do it,” I say, trying to look on the bright side. “Let’s go get you some aspirin.”

We slip into Woolco—a discount department store—and pick out a backpack each, several changes of underwear and socks, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, a bar of soap, a hairbrush, hair dye, disposable razor blades, a couple of pairs
of super-cheap jogging pants each, some tops, a sewing kit (to fix Garren’s coat), aspirin, a package of large adhesive bandages, antiseptic ointment and two cans of soda. After paying for all that with Nancy’s money I tell Garren I want to have a look at his arm. Ahead there’s a unisex wheelchair access bathroom we could slip into and I’m worried that his injury is worse than he’s letting on.

“There’s no time,” he says. “We have to get the bus tickets. Besides, I think it’s better to leave the pressure on it for now.”

The part of our Bio-net that promotes fast healing must be turned off, just like the fertility controls, otherwise Garren would already be starting to feel better. I watch him swallow three aspirin and chase them down with soda.

“Honestly, it’s not that bad,” he insists. “I’m just not used to anything hurting. You know how it was back there.”

I do. We were surrounded by threats but cushioned by the Bio-net and gushi. In 2063 I never went a full day without disappearing into the gushi dreamworld. We were all specialists in emotionally anesthetizing ourselves and any physical pain was short-lived.

Anxiety curls under my skin as I realize all my old crutches are gone forever. I wonder, for a moment, how well someone from 1985 would adapt to life in 1907 if they were whisked seventy-eight years back in time without warning. Poor Victor Soto thinking he was insane with no one around to believe him or remind him of the world he was really from.

Garren and I return to the Oakville station where I buy
our bus tickets and the guy behind the ticket counter tries to flirt with me by asking what’s so special about Hamilton that it’s coaxing someone like me over there. I can’t decide whether flirting back or shutting him down will make me more memorable so I don’t exactly do either and mumble something about my divorced dad living in Hamilton. Our parents (like countless others in Billings) must’ve believed they were bestowing an advantage on us when they had the scientists make sure Garren and I were highly attractive but it makes it more difficult to blend in now.

As I hand him his ticket, Garren, who was watching my encounter with the ticket guy from a spot about twenty-five feet away, says, “I’ve been thinking that you should keep a low profile while I get the motel room later. If the two of us walk in together we’re guaranteed more problems.”

I agree and find myself half hoping it’ll be a woman behind the motel check-in counter and that she’ll be so transfixed by the sight of Garren that she won’t care that he doesn’t have a credit card or that his only identification is a (fake) student card.

On the bus, I watch Oakville fade into the distance. I’ve never been here before and I’ll never be back. All I’ll ever really know of it is the guy with the Oilers hat and the discount shopping center.

Things will be different when we get out west, I tell myself. We won’t have to look over our shoulders every second. And if it still doesn’t feel far enough away from the
director and his people, we’ll keep moving on until we find somewhere that does.

Winston Churchill said, “Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer. You have only to persevere to save yourselves.” I swear his words will be running around in my head for the next fifty years at least.

I didn’t have a solid plan for my life back in 2063. I’d had vague thoughts about going into arboriculture and I guess I would’ve opted for it as a career if it was one of three offered to me. Arborists were greatly in demand in 2063 and helping plants and things grow seemed like something tangible and positive. Eventually I’d probably have had children with whoever the Service paired me up with—that’s if some other major plague or nuclear attack didn’t come along.

Nothing was ever certain but any assumptions I made previously are out the window. Anything can happen now. It scares me and thrills me at the same time.

I don’t want to be captured. I don’t want to forget who am I or where I came from. I want to move on from this day with full knowledge behind me.

When we get off the bus in Hamilton a police car drives by us and I flinch at the sight. As much as I’ve lost so far there’s still more to lose. Garren sees my reaction, his eyes trailing mine to the police car. Then he looks away, strokes my hair, grabs my hand and pulls me closer. I start breathing again and rest my head against his shoulder. We’re okay. The cops didn’t notice us.

Garren goes into the station to ask about nearby motels. I stand outside watching people pass and wondering what their stories are. For all I know some of them could be wanted by the police too. One of them—although it’s less likely—might even be from 2063.

Shortly Garren returns with the news that there’s a budget hotel on Main Street, within walking distance. He has a small foldout map of Hamilton in his hands and we start trekking in the cold, talking about tomorrow’s bus trip to Parry Sound.

“There’s no point catching the early-morning bus up there,” Garren says. “The train from Toronto doesn’t get to Parry Sound until after midnight anyway. If we take the two o’clock bus we’ll still have hours to kill there.”

Parry Sound’s a really small town, from what I’ve heard, and we’ll have to work hard at not standing out. After that it will be four whole days on the train until we reach Vancouver. Since we don’t have the money to waste on a compartment there’ll be four days of sitting in place and we agree that we’ll have to construct background stories for ourselves in case anyone tries to make casual conversation. There, too, we’ll have to be careful not to call attention to ourselves but our other option, stealing a car, would add to our list of crimes and further interest the police.