All Our Yesterdays (12 page)

This frantic writing is starting to worry me. It’s too intense, even for him. I want him to look at me and say something, anything to stop the manic scratching of his pen against the paper, so I ask, “Did you eat, James?”

“He ate,” Finn says. James crosses something out on his pad with feverish strokes.

“You mean that sandwich with the three bites out of it?” I say, nodding at the forgotten peanut butter and jelly on the table.
“’
Cause I’m not really sure that counts as eating.”

“And you’re one to talk?” Finn says mildly.

I feel the blood drain from my face. Luz glances up at me but quickly turns back to her knitting. “What does that mean?” I say.

“Nothing.”

“No, tell me!”

“It means lay off, okay, Marina? He’ll eat when he’s hungry.”

“I’m just trying to look out for him, not—”

“Jesus, I’m still
here
, you know!”

I whip my head around to look at James. He’s on his feet, and he flings the legal pad into the far corner of the room, where it smacks against the wall and flutters down behind a chair.

“Nate’s the one dying,” he says. “Not me.”

The air leaves my lungs. “James—”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Vivianne says. “They’re just trying to help.”

James pulls on his coat. “I’m going to get some fresh air.”

I jump up. “I’ll go with you.”

“No, Marina! I need . . .” He takes a deep breath and lowers his voice. “I just need a minute, okay?”

I sink back into my seat and blink back tears. “Yeah. Okay.”

When he’s gone, I rest my forehead on my knees and cover my head with my hands.

“Let him breathe, M.”

“Shut up, Finn!” I say.

Eight

Em

My legs are starting to cramp from sitting in the cold so long. I extend them in front of me, flexing and pointing my feet to stretch the muscles and get the blood moving again. I try to focus on the ache in my calves and the tingle of numbness in my toes rather than the deep black pit in my stomach.

Finn looks up at the sky. I’m not sure why; there are no stars in the city, nothing to see but blackness and the hazy blue glow of the streetlamps.

“It must be close to time,” he says.

“I know.”

“How do you feel?”

“How do you think?”

He puts his hand over my clenched fist. My first instinct is to pull away, but I make myself stay still. The feel of his skin against mine is still new and strange, his touch strangely hot after so many months of touching no one. He rubs his fingers over mine until I start to relax, my fingers loosening.

“We can think of another way,” he says. “This is too messed up.”

I shake my head. “There is no other way. We’ve already tried everything else.”

“I’m so sorry, Em.”

“Don’t be,” I say. “I hate what he’s done. I hate
him
. The world will be a better place when he’s gone.”

Finn wraps an arm around my shoulder. “Okay,” he says in a placating voice. He obviously doesn’t believe me, but does he think I’m lying to him or to myself? Maybe my hatred isn’t simple, maybe it’s complicated by lots of other things, but it’s true. It burns inside of me like the bluest, hottest flame.

I can do this. I stamp down the weakness I feel building inside of me.
I can do this.

I lean into Finn and inhale the smell of him. Well, the smell of Connor, I guess. Detergent with stale cigarette smoke hidden underneath. When I close my eyes, I can remember the way Finn used to smell, like soap and that terrible cologne he wore too much of on special occasions, and later the dirt and sweat of life on the run. I burrow closer to his skin. I think of the scars he’s hiding under his shirt, the bruises that are probably still visible from his last beating, anything to fan the flame of my anger until it burns away everything else.

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him.

“Don’t think about him,” Finn says, like he can read my thoughts. He rubs his hand up and down my arm, warming me. “Think about her.”

Her. Marina. She’s in that building somewhere, hurting and confused, probably biting her nails to the quick. Finn’s right. Marina’s the reason I’m doing all of this. More than anything, what I want is for her to be happy and have the life she deserves. My love for her is a stronger motivator than my hatred of him could ever be.

Finn presses a kiss to the crown of my head, and I shiver. His lips travel down to my temple and my cheek, skimming kisses there, too.

“Em,” he hums.

I tilt my face to look at him, and we’re so close, I can feel his breath against me. “Yeah?”

“I know you know already,” he says, “but I always wanted to be looking at you when I finally said it for real. I know my timing is terrible here. . . .”

Oh God, Finn. Don’t.

“But soon we’ll be gone, so this is my last chance.” He gives me a shy little smile. “I love you.”

He’s right, I
did
know, but I suddenly can’t hold his gaze. It’s too much. My face is hot in the cold air, and I look away from him, turning automatically toward the doors of the building we’ve been watching.

They’re opening, sliding silently apart, and a figure is walking out.

“It’s him,” I whisper.

I would know him anywhere, even in the dark, even with his shoulders bent and his lean frame clad in borrowed scrubs. I try not to look at him too closely. I don’t want to see his face.

I scramble to a crouched position behind the Civic, Finn at my shoulder. His rapid breathing puffs out around us. For once, he doesn’t say anything, just touches my back to remind me he’s there.

My fingers shake so violently that I can’t flip off the safety of the gun. I close my eyes and try to find a single piece of stillness inside of me to focus on.

Marina.

The shaking stops, and I flip the safety. I won’t remember who he was. That person is dead and gone. I’ll only think about who he’ll be.

I’ll only think about Marina.

With one last deep breath, I stand, aim the gun straight at James Shaw’s head, and pull the trigger.

The gun kicks violently in my hand, and it throws me back.

And
back and back and back
 . . .

A fist tightens around my belly and jerks me away, wind rushing through my hair, the world blurring around me. I’m flying and falling at the same time. Finn and the gun and the hospital smear into gray streaks, and a different world materializes in their place.

I’m going to do it this time, I’m sure.

Other kids get their parents to give them a push to start out, but I don’t have that, so I poise my bike at the top of our inclined driveway and let gravity do the job. I fly down the driveway and into the quiet street, and I’m finally riding. My heart soars. The houses on the block whoosh by impossibly fast. I’m free.

No. I’m not riding. I’m falling. The big wheel beneath me wobbles out of control, jerking the handlebars to the left and the right, nearly pulling them out of my little hands. So little. The ground rushes up at me, and before I can cry out, I’m sprawled across the pavement, my palms and knees stinging. I roll over and pull one knee up to my chest, see the abraded skin and blood through my ripped tights. These are my favorite pair, the bright pink ones with the white polka dots. When I pictured this moment in my mind—flying down the street on my bicycle, riding away from this place with my hair streaming loose behind me—I was always wearing my favorite tights, so I insisted on putting them on this morning. And now they’re ruined.

Hot tears roll down my cheeks, and I don’t try to stop them.

“You okay, kid?”

I look up and see the boy next door through my watery eyes. When we moved in a few weeks ago, Mom told me I should ask him to play, but I was too scared. He’s a
boy
, and at least eight. He would laugh at me.

My jaw tightens. “I’m fine.”

“You forgot to pedal.” He grins and offers me a hand.

“No, I didn’t!”

“Yeah, you did.” He sits down on the curb beside me. “It’s okay. I did the same thing when I was learning to ride. Fell into a big bush.”

“Really?”

He nods. “It was full of stickers, too. You hurt?”

I shrug, but he takes my hands in his and turns the palms to face him. They’re scratched and covered with grit from the road. He leans forward and blows across them, clearing away the dirt and cooling the burn in my skin.

“Want some help?” he asks.

I nod. He stands, and this time he looks like a giant to me. I gaze up at him in wonder—in
worship
—before he loops his arm under mine and helps me to my feet.

“I’m James,” he says.

“I’m Marina,” I say.

Far away, someone is calling my name. I turn. It must be Luz or Mom. . . .

But no. They’re not calling for Marina. They’re calling for someone else.

There are hands on my shoulders, shaking me. I look up into James’s face, and it blurs, becomes another. I blink, and James becomes Finn.

“Em!” he says.

“Finn?” I slam back into my body from whatever strange place I was in. I’m on the ground, the barrel of the gun resting in my lap, the metal hot even through my jeans. Finn is crouched over me, his eyes wide with panic. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” he says, hauling me to my feet, “but we’ve got to run.”

Finn is dragging me away, but I stop and look back at the hospital, where there’s a sudden swarm of people. “Did I kill him? Is it over?”

He pulls on my arm. “Run, Em!”

And we do.

Nine

Marina

After James storms out, Vivianne excuses herself to the restroom, and I wander to the waiting room window, watching the back entrance of the hospital. It only takes a minute for James to emerge. He looks like any other hospital employee in his blue scrubs and black coat, but I could recognize him with my eyes closed. He paces back and forth beside the ambulance bay and then sits on the low stone wall that lines the driveway. His head sinks down into his hands.

Behind me, Finn is shuffling and reshuffling the deck of cards. Even the sound is an angry one, the impatient
fuht-fuht-fuht
of the cards seeming to judge me for not being able to let James have even this tiny moment to himself.

My eyes unfocus, and in my mind I see James standing in the doorway, barking at me to leave him alone. The stupid puppy always following at his heels.

This is
not
how I imagined this night would go.

Luz leaves off her knitting to squeeze my hand, but I don’t want to be touched right now. I cross my arms over my chest and pinch the inside of my elbow to keep from crying. I won’t cry in front of Finn Abbott again. Down below, James stands and starts to swing his arms to keep warm.

Then there’s a bang.

It’s not like the sound from the hotel ballroom. Three floors up, filtered through the city noise and the thick panes of glass, it’s more like a pop than an explosion, but I still shriek. I’m back in that ballroom, watching blood spread across Nate’s chest, only this time it’s James, and I can’t breathe.

“It was only a car backfire,” Finn says.

“No, it wasn’t!” I press my face to the window. James is still standing, still whole, but he feels a hundred miles away. I put my hands against the window, like I could reach him somehow. I follow his gaze out into the parking lot, and that’s when I see her. A girl, her face obscured by shadows. Holding a gun.

The air leaves my lungs, and time slows to a crawl. The girl falls behind a car, and a boy I hadn’t noticed before bends over to haul her back to her feet. They start to run, but the girl stops under a streetlamp and turns back toward the hospital. Her face and that of the boy with her as he tries to pull her away are suddenly illuminated, their features clear.

The world sways in front of me, and I clutch my head with my hands. I’m hallucinating.

Officers in black uniforms run out of the hospital, and things move quickly again. They surround James and bundle him back inside even as he’s pointing at the parking lot and struggling against them.

I
didn’t
imagine it.

Someone just shot at James.

I run from the room.

I skip the elevator and take the stairs down to the first floor two at a time. Somewhere behind me, I hear Finn saying my name. I run through what I saw again in my head: a girl with a gun, a boy helping her up, stopping under a streetlamp to look back at the hospital—

That’s where my mind judders to a halt. Because the faces I saw, even with the distance and the darkness, were so familiar, looked so much like . . .

I hit the first floor landing and run into the ER, where James is seated in the waiting room, surrounded by a cloud of black suits and uniforms. The hospital is swarming. The agent in charge is barking orders at a nurse, who relays everything he says through the PA system. They’re putting the whole building into lockdown, no one allowed in or out, and I’m swimming against the stream of panicked people to try to get to James.